Tag Archives: K2

Boardgames in the News: The Peril of Box Inflation

The increase in the number of games available has increased the pressure on the market considerably in the last couple of years, and as a result, buyers are getting more canny. Backers are more discriminating on KickStarter, and it is becoming harder to get market penetration with an original product. As a result, in the last year, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of reprints, deluxe editions and revisions of popular games.

– Image by boardGOATS

The explanation for this is relatively simple. When a game becomes scarce, the price rises. This creates its own frenzy of people calling for a reprint. In turn, this raises the profile of this now unavailable game, fanning the flames of desire in those that can’t get it, and increasing the price still further. This creates huge demand, and when the game is eventually made available, a lot of people perceive this as their only chance to obtain it. The combination of this Fear Of Missing Out (aka “FOMO“), and the fact that people have a better idea of what they are getting, means the product is more likely to be successful than something relying solely on “the cult of the new”, reducing the risk for all parties encouraging more cautious people to take the plunge.

– Image by boardGOATS

The downside is that some people will already have a copy, so the problem is how to encourage them to get involved too. One way is to provide a special edition, often including new material, or deluxe, better and, perhaps, larger components. These often also provide a better margin for the producers, making it a win for them, in all directions. The downside is that the box size has to be increased, partly to hold all the additional/larger content, but also to signal to everyone that the new edition is better than its predecessor.

– Image by boardGOATS

Games to get a deluxe reprint in the last year include, Luna, Snowdonia, Glen More, Cleopatra and the Society of Architects and Age of Steam, with Rococo, Lords of Vegas, K2, and CliniϽ coming in the next twelve months or so. These editions are truly beautiful and delightful to play with, but some of the boxes are enormous, especially when compared with their original editions. This makes them a problem to store, but more importantly, they are much less transportable and therefore less likely to be taken to games nights.

– Image by boardGOATS

If the likelihood of games being played is dependent on them travelling, “box inflation” reduces the chance of them being played. This is a great shame, because these deluxe editions are really lovely to play and have had a lot of time and money invested in them.

– Image by boardGOATS

30th April 2019

For a while, it looked a lot like the “Feature Game”, Lewis & Clark , wasn’t going to happen – it’s a longer game and one that requires a specific type of gamer. Of the usual candidates for this sort of game, Burgundy had given notice that he was feeling under the weather, so wouldn’t be coming; Blue was in attendance but was feeling a bit off-colour too; Black wasn’t in the mood for something heavy; Mulberry was recovering from jet-lag so needed an early night, and Green and Ivory hadn’t arrived by 8pm. Inevitably though, we were just deciding what else to play when Green and Ivory turned up and looked keen to give Lewis & Clark a go.

– Image by boardGOATS

With Blue joining them, that left Black, Purple, Mulberry and Pine (who was celebrating coming off his antibiotics again), to come up with something to play. While everyone played musical chairs, suggested games and admired Blue’s shiny new copy of Roll for the Galaxy: Rivalry (freshly muled from the US by Mulberry), the foursome decided to play Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra. This is the new implementation of last year’s Spiel des Jahres winner, Azul, which features the same market, but with glass pieces instead of ceramic tiles.

– Image by boardGOATS

The differences are more than cosmetic though – instead of placing their 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. 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.

– Image by boardGOATS

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. 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.

– Image by boardGOATS

Mulberry was new to the game and had not even played the original Azul, despite it having been so popular within the group. Pine, Purple and Black had, of course, played the original game many times, but were less familiar with the Stained Glass of Sintra variation and Pine at least had played it just once. It was a tight game and it wasn’t clear who was going to win until the end of the sixth and final round when it became apparent that Black was in a good position to make a killing and probably take an insurmountable lead. Unfortunately, for him, he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by putting his red glass pieces in the wrong place. Pine meanwhile had made a bit of a mess of things elsewhere which left him a score of minus ten for his unused tiles, but this wasn’t enough to knock him of the top of the podium where he sat two points ahead of Black in second and a few more ahead of Mulberry in third.

– Image by boardGOATS

Mulberry needed an early night to help with the jet-lag and Lewis & Clark was still underway, so the remaining three decided to play a recently released game, Gingerbread House. In this game players are witches in the Enchanted Forest, building their gingerbread house and attracting hungry fairy tale characters with colorful gingerbread. Each player has a player board showing a three-by-three grid of building spaces with a symbol on each space. They also have a pile of rectangular tiles each featuring two squares showing two symbols, a bit like dominoes, which are placed face-down in a stack with the top three turned face up (a little like the train cards in Ticket to Ride). On their turn, players draw one of the face up tiles and place it on their player board, then carry-out the effect of the symbols they covered up. The most likely symbol is one of the four different types of gingerbread, which means they collect a token of that type.

– Image by boardGOATS

Sometimes a player wants to cover two squares on different levels, in which case “stair” tiles can be used as a spacer; players can also receive these as an effect of placing tiles, or they receive two stair tiles if they forfeit their turn. Other effects include the opportunity to swap one type of gingerbread for another or cage a fairy tale character. If the two symbols covered are the same, the player gets the effect three times instead of twice adding a positioning element to the tile placement. Once a tile has been placed, the active player can use some of their gingerbread tokens to capture fairy-tale characters, either from the face up character line or from their “cage” trap near the gate of their cottage. If placing tiles completed a level, the active player may take a bonus card (up to a maximum of three).

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine, who had not played the game before went for a very tall house combo, taking a “Chimney” bonus tiles which reward players with eight or more levels (complete or incomplete) and a “Treasure Chest” bonus which would give points if his had at least four complete levels. Black started off capturing the most valuable fairy tale creatures and then added the “Magic Wand” bonus card which gave him even more points. Purple meanwhile, also concentrated on the characters she was capturing, taking the “Cauldron” bonus, which rewarded her for catching non-human characters. Black’s strategy was very effective and, although the characters are hidden once they are taken, so it was no surprise that he was well in front, scoring as many points for his characters alone as Purple and Pine scored in total. It was really close for second place, however, but Pine just pipped Purple by a single point.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the next table, Ivory, Green and Blue had been playing the “Feature Game”, Lewis & Clark. This is a resource collecting race game, with a deck building element. Players are explorers trying to get from St. Louis to Fort Clatsop, traveling up the Missouri River over the Rocky and Bitterroot Mountains through Montana and Idaho, and down the Columbia River to the Oregon coast. Players do this by playing character cards from their hand which provide actions including gathering resources, traveling or converting primary resources into secondary resources. There are several very unusual things about the game. Firstly, each card has a power as well as an action. Whenever a character card is played it must be empowered either by playing a second card and using it’s power rating, using natives, or a combination of both. This dictates how many times the action is carried out (up to a maximum of three).

– Image by boardGOATS

Once a card has been played, either as an action or to activate another card, they are placed on the player’s personal discard pile, so there is also an element of deck-building to the game, with more characters available through the “Journal” . Of course, the most exciting cards are those with the highest rating, so using them to activate other cards may be efficient, but means that action will not be available until the deck is recycled. This is another interesting and clever aspect of the game: each player has their “Scout” and their “Camp”, and they move their scout along the rivers and through the mountains and then, when they “make camp”, they move the camp to join the Scout and pick up all their used cards. This is a similar mechanism to that used in K2 where players have tents to shelter in, however, in Lewis & Clark the key part is that there are “time penalties” that penalise inefficiencies, like any unused character cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

As well as the cost associated with inefficient use of their characters, there are also penalties for hoarding resources. In order to travel players need buffalo (or bison…?), canoes, and horses, Acquiring canoes and horses require other resources and these must be transported to the new camp by boat—the more resources a player has when their camp moves, the more costly it will be. Each player’s expedition also has a number of natives, and these also travel by boat. Players start with five boats three that will hold resources and two for the natives; transporting two resources and one native is free, but the costs increase significantly when more travel.

– Image by boardGOATS

Another interesting mechanism used in the game is way players gather some of the resources. Each player starts with action cards that generate the four primary resources, wood, equipment, fur and food (depicted by buffalo, or bison—what’s the difference? You can’t wash your hands in a buffalo…). These have a brown, grey, pink or yellow icon associated with them and each character card depicts one of these. When a player plays, for example, a lumberjack card, they get wood equivalent to the number of visible brown icons visible in front of them, but also those displayed by their each of their neighbours. Thus, if a player has two wood icons in front of them, and their neighbours have another two each, they would get up to six wood (enough to make four canoes), and if they activated that card three times, that would increase to eighteen. If both neighbours decided to make camp, however, they would pick up all their cards and playing that lumberjack activated once would then only yield two wood. Thus, timing is critical and one turn can make all the difference.

– Image by boardGOATS

Instead of playing a character card, on their turn, players can take a village action by placing a native on the board. Some of these locations, like the Hunter space, can only hold one native, so the player can only take the action once and nobody else can visit the Hunter to get food and fur until the space has been vacated. Other spaces like the Canoe Maker, can be visited many times, so a player who has a lot of wood can turn them into up to three canoes. Natives can also visit the Shaman, which enables players to repeat another player’s Character card. This turned out to be really important as spaces are only emptied when a player plays their Interpreter card. The Interpreter calls all natives on the board to a powwow in the middle of the village and then as many of these natives as desired can be recruited for that player’s expedition.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once per turn, before or after the compulsory action (playing a Character card or deploying a native in the village), players can make camp and recruit new Characters from the face up cards drawn from the Journal deck. Each character has an intrinsic cost in equipment, as well as a cost in fur dependent on it’s position in the Journal. There is a potential for hands to become full of unwanted cards, however, it is possible to use one card to pay part of the cost. Additionally, there is a location in the village, “Farewell” that players can use to discard cards and also refresh the Journal.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although the game seems to take an inordinately long time to play, it is not actually that complicated. Essentially, players are trying to gather resources and use these to recruit helpful Characters and acquire secondary resources (horses and canoes) and then use these to travel along the rivers and through the mountain. Although it seems simple, planning and timing is absolutely critical—getting it wrong can easily mean that a Scout finishes his round behind his camp so that the expedition fails to move forward. The location of the mountains can mean that even a successful forward movement may be inefficient as The Commander (the movement Character card everyone starts with) only allows players to use canoes to move four spaces along the river and horses to move two spaces in the mountains.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory went first and began by collecting resources, followed by Blue and then Green. Blue was the first to move and headed off up the river from St. Louis and then made camp. Ivory and Green weren’t far behind, but when they came to make camp the time penalties they accrued meant they actually went backwards. This is not always such a bad move in this game if it is due to building a robust engine for later in the game. So in the first few rounds it looked like Blue had a massive lead, but that didn’t last as the others began the chase.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue was first into the mountains and then realised she had mis-read her expedition leader card and found that horses would only move two spaces each through in the mountains, not four (like canoes). The mountains are key to the game and particularly changing ovement and avoiding wasting moves. Green thought he had it sussed with his Cut Nose Character card, but hadn’t checked the rules and just assumed that it would allow him to move one space through the mountains without needing any resources. That would have made it a very powerful card, as trading for horses to get through the mountains requires three nonequivalent primary resources per horse (which moves two spaces). He was very disappointed and, like Blue had to completely reconsider his options.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Ivory had a plan to get his expedition through the mountains. His combination of the Black Cat and Coboway Character Cards meant he could collect any missing resources he needed easily and then use them to move fast through the mountains. Inevitably, with Blue mired in the mess she had made, Ivory galloped into the lead, but he still had the Colorado river to negotiate before he could get past fort Clatsop and make camp. For this he needed natives, but so did Blue. Unfortunately for Blue, the fact that Ivory was ahead of her in the turn order meant he was able recruit more natives and it wasn’t long before his expedition paddled past the finishing line, and, despite a large time penalty, made camp on the Oregon coast, a very worthy winner in what had been a very enjoyable game. Definitely one to play again.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Many native Americans have unpronounceable names.

Boardgames in the News: What is Asmodee’s Grand Plan?

Four years ago, Eurazeo bought a small French games company called Asmodee from the investment firm, Montefiore. Asmodee were a small company hitherto primarily known for a clever little kids game called Dobble. With the financial might of their parent company behind them, over the next few years, Asmodee proceeded to gobble up many larger, well-established companies, including Days of Wonder, Fantasy Flight Games, Z-man Games and most recently, Lookout Spiele. Those companies produced some of the best known modern games including Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, Pandemic, Agricola and Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game. Not content with that, they also acquired the rights to the English language version of the Settlers of Catan (now known simply as “Catan”) and all the related Catan games as well as gobbling up a number of smaller and/or newer companies like Space Cowboys (producers of Splendor and Black Fleet) and Plaid Hat Games (producers of Dead of Winter and Mice and Mystics) and entering into a distribution agreement with many others. There are now very few games companies of any substance that are not somehow tangled in the Asmodee web.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor adamfeldner

The last major purchase was F2Z Entertainment in 2016, and since then it has been relatively quiet. With the new year comes a new wave of acquisition, however, so at the end of January Asmodee announced that they were in exclusive negotiations with Rebel. Rebel is a relatively small, Polish company responsible for games like K2 as well as Polish editions of many popular games like 7 Wonders and Codenames. Perhaps more importantly, Rebel also produces the Polish language versions of many of the Asmodee games and is the largest distributor in Poland. And Poland is a big country, smaller than France or Germany, but bigger than Italy and the UK, globally Poland is the thirty-forth largest country by population. That is a lot of Poles and they do like playing board games in Poland.

– Image used with permission
of boardgamephotos

This announcement was almost immediately followed by the bombshell that Asmodee had acquired all the residual assets from Mayfair and with it, Lookout Spiele. Although this is by far the largest deal in recent months, Asmodee have not been resting on their laurels and there has been a lot going on behind the scenes. In December last year they announced that Esdevium was to be renamed “Asmodee UK” bringing them in line with the “Asmodee North America” and “Asmodee Canada” brands. At around the same time, Eurazeo announced that French publisher Purple Brain Créations would be joining the Asmodee Group. Furthermore, they have also been streamlining their distribution network in North America. Having reduced the number of distributors they deal with to five in 2015, in June last year Asmodee North America announced an exclusive distribution deal with Alliance Game Distributors, effectively creating a monopoly of supply within the USA. This coupled with their Minimum Advertised Price policy (or MAP) gives them a stranglehold on the US market in a way that would never be allowed in Europe. Whether they are planning to take that one step further and acquire Alliance themselves still remains to be seen, but that looks like a real possibility. Finally, they have been pushing in a new direction, developing electronic versions of some of the most popular games through their studio, “Asmodee Digital“.

– Image from
escapistmagazine.com

So what is Asmodee‘s Grand Plan? Where will it all end? Well, there are still a couple of other large manufacturers out there that are not yet part of Asmodee. Looking at the companies they have already absorbed there is a clear trend: they typically have one particular feature that Asmodee are interested in. In the case of Days of Wonder, that was the Ticket to Ride series, with Z-man Games it was Pandemic and Carcassonne, and with Rebel, it was probably their distribution network that caught the eye of the executives at Asmodee. Going forward, the most obvious targets are probably Rio Grande Games, Czech Games Edition, Queen Games, Hans im Glük and maybe 2F, or Pegasus Spiele (who have just announced a partnership with Frosted Games). For example, it would be surprising if Rio Grande Games have not been approached given the popularity of games like Dominion and Race/Roll for the Galaxy. Similarly, Czech Games Edition are a small company with some very juicy morsels including Galaxy Trucker, Dungeon Lords/Petz, and the hugely successful Spiel des Jahres winner, Codenames.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ultimately they may or may not add some or all of these to the Greater Asmodee Empire, but it is clear that at some point, eventually, there will be nothing left worth taking over and growth of the company will plateau, so what happens then? And this is the crux of the matter. Some have speculated that the aim is to add Hasbro to Asmodee’s ever growing dominion, but Hasbro has a market value of $11.9 billion—Asmodee are mere minnows in comparison. On the other hand, the parent company, Eurazeo are worth approximately $5.7 billion, which at least puts them in the same ball park, although even they are small by comparison. According to the “Vision” page on the Eurazeo website:

The purpose of Eurazeo is to identify, accelerate and enhance the transformation potential of the companies in which it invests, even long after its exit. An active and committed shareholder, Eurazeo assists its holdings in the long term – 5 to 7 years – with control over exit timing. An extensive role enabling it to combine business development and corporate social responsibility.

So, it would seem that Eurazeo is not looking to hold onto Asmodee for the long haul, instead they will be looking to maximise Asmodee’s growth and then make their exit, probably in the next two to five years. So the big question is, how are Eurazeo going to make their “controlled exit”? With this in mind it seems unlikely that acquiring Hasbro is on the agenda, but making Asmodee attractive to Hasbro just might be…

– Image from stickpng.com

21st April 2015

While Blue attacked her pizza, Red, Green, Burgundy, Black and Purple attacked a quick game of Coloretto. This is a great little little set collecting game that forms the basis of the well-known boardgame, Zooloretto. The idea of Coloretto is that players take it in turns to either draw a chameleon card and place it on a truck, or take a truck (after which they are out for the rest of the round). Each truck can hold a maximum of three chameleons and the round continues until every player has taken a truck. The chameleon cards come in seven different colours and players are collecting sets which score according to the triangular number sequence (one point for the first card, three points for two cards, six points for three cards etc.).

– Image by BGG contributor SergioMR

The clever part is that each player can only score three sets as positive, all the others are negative, and the highest score wins. Thus, there is an element of push your luck and players can make life difficult for each other by putting cards a cards someone wants with cards they don’t want. As usual, the game came down to a choice between taking the one or two safe wanted cards and waiting to see if a useful third card might be added to the set. With a five player game, however, there was always a high risk that someone else would take it, so Burgundy started off very cautiously and managed to quickly collect a lot of red chameleons and a few two point bonus cards making him the obvious front-runner. Green had also started out going for reds, but quickly realised he would have to broaden his horizons. Meanwhile, Red, who was new to the game began to realise what cards people might want and how to cause them problems. It was purple however, who finished with her nose in front with final total of thirty-one, thanks to the large number of cards she had managed to accrue.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Although Zooloretto is a more popular game (possibly helped by its cute animal theme), it is arguable that Coloretto is actually a better one. In Zooloretto, players are building a zoo and instead of simply collecting sets of cards, they are collecting sets of animal tiles and have to place them in pens. If you can’t place an animal, then it goes into the barn, where others can buy it or, if there space becomes available, it can be recovered and placed in a pen. The light nature of the game and cute animals make Zooloretto very accessible for families, but there are more bits and it does take longer to play. There is no question that the tile/card drawing and truck choosing mechanism is very clever and integrates well with the zoo theme, however, Coloretto is a simpler, “purer” game, which is short enough that it doesn’t risk outstaying its welcome.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Toynan

With the arrival of Grey, and Blue finally finishing her pizza, we decided to split into two groups. The first played the “Feature Game”, Black Fleet. This was one of the games brought back from Essen last year and is a beautiful game involving skulduggery on the high seas. The game is very simple. Each player commands a merchant vessel and a pirate ship. Players also have a hand of two “movement” cards and on their turn choose one to play. Each of these cards has movement values the player’s merchant and pirate ships, but also allows them to move one of the Navy frigates. As the ships move they can carry out various actions. For example, before, during, or after its movement, a player can sell their cargo at the indicated price (two or three doubloons per goods cube) at the port if their merchant is in a space adjacent to it. Alternatively, pirates can steal treasure or bury it safely on an island. Once per turn, players can spend their gold to activate their bonus cards. These are cards that are dealt out at the start of the game and once activated, remain active for the rest of the game with the player that has activated all their bonus cards winning. In the event that more than one player succeeds in activating their bonus cards, then ties are broken by the amount of gold held at the end.

– Image used with permission of BGG
contributor The_Blue_Meeple

After a short rules explanation, we set our ships afloat, each hoping to get to another port to trade our valuable cubes. It wasn’t long before the first pirate came relieved a merchant ship of one their goods cubes. Then, the gloves were off and the game became one of attack and counter attack. With four pirate ships sailing the seas it was rare that anyone managed to dock into port with any more than two cubes, and sometimes they only had one to sell. However the two navy ships mostly kept the pirates from burying their loot. Very soon players were paying for their bonus cards and beefing up their attack or trading capabilities. Purple was heading down the trading route, but misreading her cheapest bonus card, she left that to one side and plugged away at getting her more expensive ones. On a sea so full of marauding pirates (and the occasional back-stabbing navy ship and ruthless merchant), this proved to be a difficult strategy to make work.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Grey was trying a more balanced strategy, while Green and Burgundy were making their fleets the menace of the seas. The game seemed well balanced between Green, Burgundy and Grey until Burgundy turned over his penultimate bonus card and it became clear that he would earn enough on his next turn pay for his last card and finish the game. Green and Grey did what they could to attack Burgundy to prevent this from happening while also trying to turn over their last cards. Burgundy duly paid for his final card ending the game and giving Green and Grey one last turn. Green was able to turn one card over, however, although that would not be enough to tie with Burgundy, it would be enough to tie with Grey if Grey could be prevented from turning over his last card. Thus, Green abandoned his plans and instead in a ruthless pirate like manner turned the tables on Grey. This left Grey unable to pay for his final card and with less money remaining than Green, he finished in third place behind Burgundy and Green. As it turned out Grey would not have been able to buy his final card anyhow, which made Green’s last move look particularly vicious, but then if you insist in playing with a poker face, that’s what you get!

– Image by BGG contributor spielemitkinder

Although none of the players had played it before, on discussion with Blue and Black after the game, it is clear that Black Fleet is a much better game with four than three and everyone was keen to play it again. However, there was much discussion about the balance of the cards: since the bonus cards are drawn at random, some combinations end up being well balanced while others are less synergistic. For example, in this game, the cards definitely made it much harder for Purple to win, but easier for Green. We’ll have to play it again to see if this is something which detracts from the game, or makes it more of challenge!

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Meanwhile, Black, Red and Blue tried out a game that was new to the group, K2. This is a fairly straight forward hand management game, that can get quite brutal as players find the route up the mountain increasingly challenging. The idea is that each player has two climbers, two tents and a hand of cards. Simultaneously, everyone chooses which cards they are going to play and then players take it in turns to move their climbers up the mountain. There are two possible routes which are slightly different lengths and difficulties.

– Image by BGG contributor Oskarete

Some cards enable players to move along the paths and others help them to increase their levels of acclimatisation. The acclimatisation cards are essential, because going higher up the mountain, saps your energy. The weather also plays its part, both making it more difficult to climb and reducing players’ acclimatisation and if a climber’s acclimatisation drops to zero, they die. As inevitable when playing a new game, an important rule got missed out – in this case, we didn’t realise until we were more than half way through the game that the weather only affected certain parts of the mountain, thus we made it much more difficult for ourselves. The winner is the player who’s climbers get the furthest up the mountain without dying.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Blue took the slightly harder eastern ridge while Black and Red took the western pass. Fortunately, Black started off trying to get one climber to the top, leaving the other safe at the bottom, which meant the western pass didn’t get too congested. Red and Blue tried to get the two climbers to help each other, but quickly realised the wisdom of Black’s approach as their climbers suffered from exposure, especially Blue’s on the exposed ridge. Black’s first climber made it to the top, only to find his way down blocked by Red. This turned out to be fatal as the extreme effort proved too much. By this time, Blue’s first climber had realised she was in difficulty and headed back to the foothills, just making it in time thanks to a lull in the weather. Red had also made it as high as she dared having had her route blocked by Black which delayed her progress to the summit. In the meantime, Black’s well acclimatised second climber had made it to the top and was also heading back down to avoid the same fate as his companion. Blue’s second climber then made a dash for it and, with the path clear, made it to the peak just as the game drew to a close leaving Blue the winner. Definitely a game to try again, but perhaps with the correct rules next time…

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mothertruckin

Early starts in the morning left just Blue, Green and Burgundy, and they decided to give Blueprints another outing. We’ve played this a couple of times at the group and it always goes down well. Burgundy really struggled this time, but the game began as a closely fought battle between Green and Blue, enhanced by some really unlikely dice draws and rolls. In the first round, Green took first place in the general classification and an award, while Blue took second and the award for using dice with the same number. In the second round, positions were reversed with Blue taking first place and an award leaving it all to play for in the final round. However, Green finished the game three points ahead of Blue who lost out on tie-breakers to both Green and Burgundy in every category in the final round.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor bkunes

Learning Outcome: If you manage to get people to believe you are a threat, don’t be surprised when they attack you!