Tag Archives: Kavango

Essen 2025

Today is the conclusion of the largest annual gathering of gamers in Europe. The Internationale Spieltage is known to gamers worldwide simply as “SPIEL” or “Essen” and is a four day fair with lots of new releases scheduled to coincide with the event, just in time for Christmas sales. This year, there have been lots of exciting new games available to be seen including Galactic Cruise, Brick Like This!, Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor, Waddle, Orloj: The Prague Astronomical Clock (which was sold out before the end of the first day) and Origin Story (which was sold out by Friday).

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In addition to new games, the rise of crowd funding has had a large impact, and increasingly there are stands presenting current live projects in the hope of seccuring additional backers. Examples of this included, Eldertide: A Thousand Lights, the Lodges expansion to Kavango, Cascadia: Alpine Lakes, AstroNavigators, and the re-release of Nippon to name just a few. There have been a lot of really good deals to be had too, and there will be even more on the final day today. It was with sadness though that the Snowdonia spin-off, Alubari was found at a discounter for €15, as this was a great game released with much fanfare a few years ago.

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Old favourites typically often get a new lease of life with the release of expansions. This year, relatively recent releases like SETI (which was confirmed as the winner of the Deutscher Spiele Preis), Faraway, Castle Combo and Windmill Valley recieved new additions, but older games like Underwater Cities and Wingspan also got some love (with the new Data Era expansion and the fan-designed promo packs). As well as new games and expansions, there were also a number of re-releases of old favourites including Ra, Bohnanza (with Dahlia artwork) and Botswana, and even Ticket to Ride which has had a bit of a face-lift with new artwork.

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For those that were prepared to stay late on Friday, there was a world record attempt for the most people playing The Settlers of Catan together. This was achieved with CATAN-Connect, which is a new version of the game designed for large parties that has large groups playing around single islands with elements of simultaneous play and everyone working to one electronic dice roll and a timer. The record had been set at Essen in 2015 with one thousand and forty, only for Rotterdam to set a new record two years later with one thousand and ninety-six. At SPIEL, one thousand, one hundred and seventy players joined in the game (watched by a few more who were just curous), successfully bringing the world record back to Germany where it arguably belongs.

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UK Games Expo 2025

Friday was the first day of the eighteenth UK Games Expo at the NEC in Birmingham. It is bigger than ever, and it is rumoured that it is fifty percent bigger than last year. In truth, though it is difficult to tell, as the organisers had to move out of Hall 1 (apparently to accommodate Tesla who then cancelled), putting all the stands on a single level spread over a large, more or less continuous space. So this year, it just feels, very… large. Additionally, There are the now regular attendance of the Vikings and Romans camping by the lake, but fewer cosplayers, or maybe they are just more spread out…

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Although there are some new releases, the focus of UK Games Expo this year, as always, is the current games and open gaming (both in the halls and at the nearby Hilton). There are also organised play-testing and tournaments, with plenty of game-related geek-fare, like puzzles, furniture, clothing, jewelry, nick-nacks and other sundries. Indeed, there are more cool dice available to see and buy than most “normal” people would ever believe!

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Most games companies have a stand at UKGE, some with sales, some just demoing and many with both. A new innovation this year is the collectable pin badges. A variant of these is the live-action Catan game, where attendees can acquire a starter set of resource button badges to trade. Collecting a full set of five, enables the owners to claim a sixth from the stand. This game was remarkably evocative of a real game of Settlers, with players desperate to find wood for their large pile of sheep!

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There are lots of opportunities to play demo games, both old and new. New games include The Hanging Gardens and Critter Kitchen while slightly older games on display include Panda Panda, River Valley Glassworks and Harmonies. There are also expansions and variants of old favourites, including the Grand Tour expansion for Snowdonia, the upcoming expansion for Shackleton Base, the award winning Heavy Rain expansion for Heat, the Athena expansion to Akroplolis, the new Lodges expansion for Kavango, and the Correspondence expansion for In the Footsteps of Darwin.

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This year, about half of the boardGOATS are making the trip to the NEC in Birmingham, some for one day some for more, with others working on stands or at the Play Testing. The event is so vast now though that you can no-longer guarantee accidentally bumping into people you know, but SMS is a great way to communicate onsite. The event is great fun and well worth a visit. UK Games Expo continues at the NEC in Birmingham until 4pm Sunday 1^st June.

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18th February 2025

Blue and Pink began the evening, while they waited for their supper to arrive, messing about with a little card game called Rollecate which is about a historic steam locomotive built in 1967 by a famous Dutch engineer. The idea of this little game is that players take it in turns to play Track cards to extend Rollecate’s line by placing cards. They can play as many cards as they want, as long as they all have the same number. When laying new track, the difference between the numbers on the last card and the first new card placed must not have a difference of two (thus one cannot be followed by three and four cannot be followed by two etc.). Cards must not overlap when played and cannot force impossible play.

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Once the Track cards have been played, the active player rolls dice equal to the sum of all numbers on the cards they played, and Rollecate moves forward one step for each Wheel rolled on the dice. Thus, if a player places two threes, they roll six dice. If Rollecate reaches the end of the track, she hits the brakes. For every step she’s short, the player take one card from behind the train places them on their penalty pile one by one in any order they want. Any time the card placed matches the number of the top card on the pile, both are removed from the deck. At the end of the game the everyone adds up the face value of their cards and the player with the lowest total wins.

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By the time Blue had explained the rules to Pink, their food had arrived, and by the time they had finished their supper, Cobalt had joined them. Blue was just finishing explaining the rules when Pine joined them and eventually they all finally managed to play the game. There were a few “teething issues”, but before long the delightful little metal miniature was progressing along the track. Blue and Pink got unlucky and picked up a lot of cards, some high scoring, and weren’t able to remove them. Cobalt and Pin did rather better with Pine finishing with five penalty points and Cobalt with four.

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By this time, almost everyone had arrived, and Pink began to set up the “Feature Game” which was to be Viticulture World, the cooperative expansion to the popular wine-producing worker placement game, Viticulture. This is one of Pink’s and Teal’s favourite games, but also very popular with other members of the group. No-one had played the cooperative expansion, however, but despite some apprehension that the changes might spoil a favourite, there were a lot of interested parties. In the end, Pink was joined by Teal, Ivory, Plum and Cobalt, all of whom were very familiar with the base game.

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There isn’t really anything particularly special about the base game, it is just a worker-placement game where players are growing grapes and making and selling wine. However, it is just done very, very well. In general, there are two types of worker spaces—restricted, that only a limited number of workers can use per round, and open spaces which can be used by as many workers as players want. Each player also has one Grande worker who can be placed anywhere, even on fully occupied spaces. The cooperative game is essentially much the same as the original Viticulture, with some small rules changes and a different target: players have six years to goal: each player must reach twenty-five victory points and the shared influence token must reach the end of the influence track.

Viticulture World: Cooperative Expansion

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There are seven different packs of cards and the group began this time with the easiest, Green Gully, which as advertised, is a very good introduction to Viticulture World. This is designed to make sure everyone is successful on their first time out (though it may be easier with more players). Each player has four workers plus one Grande and unlike the original, there is no mechanism to get more. Two of these workers have yellow hats to indicate they are summer workers and two have blue hats and these can only operate in winter, training however, allows them to remove their hat and play in other seasons. There was a little concern prior to play that as only certain types of workers are able to claim certain bonuses it might make the game a touch fiddly, but this was not the case.

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As the game progresses, there are Event cards which give special action and also increase the number of workers that can be placed on some locations. There was some confusion at the start of the game as to whether the Grande worker could be used to claim the special actions. It was felt this would make the game way too easy though, because if everyone was able to take advantage of the bonus with their Grande this would make the game too easy; a quick online check confirmed that this was not allowed. The group found the game fairly straight-forward, though everyone was quit experienced and therefore knew where the areas of tension were, in particular making wine, harvesting grapes and fulfilling orders, so made a point of upgrading these early.

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The group had a lot of fun, and as is not uncommon with this game, there were lots of “getting my cock out now” comments (especially from Ivory), when it came to claiming the turn-order. Ivory was the first to achieve his required twenty-five points, but he went on to get thirty in order to claim an extra influence point for the team. Cobalt was next to make his target and everyone else followed the next round. Despite the initial reservations, everyone enjoyed the game and would be keen to try some of the more challenging regions on another occasion in the not too distant future.

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While the oenophiles were playing Viticulture, the other four were revisiting Kavango. This is a medium weight card drafting and tableau building game which has something of the feel of Wingspan. This was the “Feature Game” last September, when it went down well with those that played it, one of whom was Pine. It had a second outing two weeks ago, when Blue promised Pine and others it would come back. Pine was keen to give it another go, and this time they were joined by Purple and Black. The game is fairly straightforward to play, though a monumental table-hog, so the group started by moving to a larger table on the other side of the room. Blue outlined the rules: Players start with a hand of twelve cards and choose one before putting the rest to one side.

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This card is then either added to the player’s tableau if it is an animal card, or activated if it is an action card. Once the card has been played, players have the opportunity to invest in protection or claim rewards (money and points) for completing targets. In the early part of the game, the cards that are dealt are mostly from the bottom of the food chain, what the game refers to as “Producers”, rodents and the like. As the game progresses, the creatures get bigger and require the presence of other animal types or terrain as food and protection (Habitat, Poaching and Climate). This time, Blue (who was playing the game for the third time) stole a bit of a march, picking up more points during the game than anyone else.

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Pine who was on his second play, did a god job of collecting valuable animals and finished with a massive one hundred and twenty-six points, but failed to pick up the bonuses for the protection. Purple didn’t do so well with her animals, but had every type and picked up all the bonus points available for protection too, while Black didn’t take any points for that, but did well on his personal objectives. The winner, (unsurprisingly given her extra experience) was Blue followed by Pine with Purple in third. The consensus from Purple and Black was that the game (like Wingspan) felt a too random, though Blue and Pine commented that it felt less so after multiple plays.

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Learning outcome: Making wine is just as much fun as a team.

4th February 2025

Blue and Pink were just finishing their supper when not one, but three copies of Ark Nova walked in, escorted by Ivory, Cobalt and Green. This was because the “Feature Game” was to be its Marine Worlds expansion and, as Ark Nova is a substantial game that doesn’t get as many outings as it deserves, everyone was keen to give their copy a bit of an airing. The game is much longer than those we usually play on a Tuesday so everyone who was keen to play was early and started setting up promptly. Given the length, we also erred on the lower end of the player count, with just Ivory, Cobalt and Green playing. The game is all about planning and designing a modern, scientifically managed zoo, but the game-play is more like Terraforming Mars with animals, than Zoo Break or Zooloretto.

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Although it is quite a complex game, functionally it is not difficult to play on a turn by turn basis, though there is quite a lot to manage and keep a track of. On their turn, players take one of six possible actions: activating one of the five action cards (Cards, Build, Animals, Association and Sponsor) with a strength equal to the number above the card. When activating a card players perform the action based on its power level which is dictated by its position in the row. During the game, players can upgrade and turn over the action cards to a more powerful second side using various Bonuses. The Marine Worlds expansion introduces several new elements to the game.

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Firstly, there are sea animals that have to be played in new special enclosures that must be built adjacent to water. Roughly half the sea animals are reef dwellers, and whenever a player adds a reef dweller to their zoo, they trigger the ability of all reef dwellers in that zoo. To deal with the dilution of the deck (caused by adding more cards), all sea cards feature a wave icon, and whenever it is revealed in the display, you discard the first card in the row, then replace it. For each of the five Action cards there are four alternate versions with a little twist. Players draft these action cards at the start of play, replacing two of their standard action cards with these new ones, increasing the asymmetry in the game.

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A new fourth University option is also available on the Association board. If a player takes it, they claim one of six special Universities from the Reserve that feature one Research icon and one of six animal icons. When a player takes this, they reveal Cards from the top of the deck and keep the first revealed card with an animal icon that matches their chosen University. There are also new bonus tiles and other little bits and pieces to smooth out the game play. Although the Marine Worlds expansion comes is modular, the group chose to play with all the components (Marine animals, asymmetric maps and drafted action cards).

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Ivory took a Sponsor Card that gave him extra money for breaks and an Association Card that gave him the ability to hire workers. This coupled with the lake map which gave extra money for building around the lake meant Ivory had access to lots of cash as the game developed. Both Cobalt and Green took a Sponsor and an Animal Card, with Cobalt taking a map that allowed him to discard cards for money while Green had the map with the park restaurant. While Cobalt was also able to build up a lot of cash, Green spent most of the game playing the poor relation, just scraping by. The game started slowly, with initial conservation projects devoted to Australian animals, Birds, and African Animals.

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Both Green and Ivory wound up spending all their early money, trying to get Animals out, whereas Cobalt focused on the Association board and playing Sponsor cards. After struggling with money for the first couple of rounds, Ivory managed to get two Australian animals, allowing him to put a token on the conservation card, giving an additional Zoo Dollars at each break/income step and from then on, money wasn’t too much of an issue for him. Green however, struggled for money for most of the game, where Cobalt continued to focus on Sponsor Cards and Association Actions, and as a result, he took an early lead on the Research track which gave him a much greater card choice. Cobalt did build an early aquarium, however, and started filling it up with fish.

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After a quick start, both on the conservation track and appeal track, Ivory’s game slowed down significantly—he was too focused on animals, compared to Green and Cobalt. They had both spent time taking Association actions, leading them to Upgrade cards and progress up the Reputation track. Cobalt was able to significantly move up the Conservation track in the middle game using his Sponsor Cards, whereas Green focused on one big move by having lots of birds in his zoo. Much to Pink’s disgust, although the panda was an option at one point in the game, the “wave” added by expansion pushed it on, so nobody got the Panda. Instead, by the end of the game, Ivory had quite a collection of monkeys, Green had a few some birds and Cobalt had a lot of fish.

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Going into the end game, Cobalt some way ahead on the Conservation track, followed by Green, while Green and Ivory were fairly similar in Appeal. Cobalt then started playing lots of animals in his zoo and managed to completely fill it moving rapidly along the Appeal track. It was clear he was soon going to bring the game to a close, due in part to both his (and Green’s) ability to make donations by upgrading the Association card. Green was also moving forwards on both tracks while Ivory was lagging behind albeit with three conservation cards in hand. Fortunately, Ivory had lots of “x tokens”, allowing him to play all his conservation cards (and gain the additional worker he needed, shooting up the conservation track, though sadly, it was too little too late. From there, It wasn’t long before Cobalt’s Tokens to crossed, ending the game.

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Everyone had made some mistakes reading their cards and/or abilities which cost a little bit, but was probably fairly balanced out. Everyone managed to get the full four Conservation points on their personal scoring cards, but Green picked up quite a few extra points from the Sponsorship cards leaving him level with Cobalt. Inevitably, this led to a hunt for tie-breakers—the rules state that the tied player who supported the most Conservation Projects wins the game. As Green and Cobalt had also supported the same number of Conservation projects the rules dictated they should share the victory. That said, Green magnanimously said he felt Cobalt had the edge by virtue of having way more coin at the end of the game.

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On the next table, Blue, Pink and Mint had finally got underway playing Kavango. This is a conservation, card-drafting game. A bit like games like Sushi Go! and 7 Wonders, players draft cards to build their Reserve. Like games like Terraforming Mars, however, cards can only be added to a player’s Reserve if they have its requirements. These might be the food supply, or enough protection (environmental, poaching or climate). Climate protection is unique because, as in real life, players have to work on that together. At the end of the game, after three rounds, players add up the value of their animals, and any bonuses together with any points scored during the game for Research, and the player with the most points is the winner.

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Pine joined them briefly and expressed an interest in playing another time, but decided this week he would take himself home to better acquaint himself with his C-vitamins and avoid unnecessarily sharing his bugs. Mint was the nominal first player, though mostly the game is played simultaneously. Blue started hard and fast building up lots of income, however, she was forced to invest heavily in Climate protection—honourable, but not necessarily lucrative. Pink and Mint were a little slower to start, but made good progress. Both got caught out by a very minor rules malfunction that had a significant impact: Cards not used at the end of the round are supposed to go into a discard pile, but instead were returned to their decks.

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Towards the end of the game, this suddenly became significant as some types of card are not available in the final rounds. So, those that needed, for example, termites (like Mint), were unable to get them. Pink and Mint were most obviously affected, though everyone got caught in some way or another. The card draw hindered Blue as she struggled to find any migratory animals at all and had to abandon her personal objective as unachievable. In contrast, Mint and Pink both did really well with theirs (birds and toxic creatures respectively), making the result much closer than it would otherwise have been with Blue the victor with a hundred and seventy-one, a single point more than Mint.

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Meanwhile, Plum and Byzantium had kindly agreed to take Lime to the other side of the room to play the Golden GOAT Award 2024 Winner, Stamp Swap. Somehow, despite the flurry of outings it received towards the end of last year, Lime had missed out on playing it. This is also a drafting-type game, but this time with stamps (mostly). The game takes place over three rounds, each split into two parts: Firstly players take it in turns to choose from a central pool, then players divide their pile into two and the first player chooses one pile from another player to take, who keeps their other pile and chooses one from another play—and thus the piles of stamps are swapped.

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On previous outings, Byzantium had managed to annoy Blue by just beating her. It had been his birthday at the weekend, so the question was whether he would get another, albeit slightly belated, birthday gift in the form of another victory. Sadly for Byzantium, it was not to be though. Plum took ten more points than him during the game and another ten more in the end game scoring between them, giving poor Lime quite a trampling on his first game. Stamp Swap wasn’t the only popular new game to get an outing this evening. On the next table, Jade and Sapphire were introducing Purple and Black to Fromage, a sort of cheesy worker placement game with simultaneous play and a time component, not completely unlike Tzolk’in.

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The actions are tied up in four “mini-games” which players take it in turns to participate in. It has proven quite a popular little game because once everyone knows how to play, there is relatively little down time and despite playing different areas at different times, quite a lot of interaction. Players simultaneously choose where to place their workers, in their quadrant of the board, and once everyone is done, the board is turned and then players retrieve any workers they can and then place workers on their next quadrant. Players score points for occupying tables in the Bistro quadrant, holding the majority in regions in the Villes quadrant, filling different tables in the Fromagerie quadrant, occupying contiguous areas in the Festival quadrant, and for fulfilling Orders.

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This time, Purple and Jade made a bit of a killing in the bistro taking nearly thirty points each, while Sapphire took twenty-two points in the Villes. Black’s strategy was somewhat different, picking up points more evenly across the board and focusing particularly on fruit. In the end, despite the differences in approaches, the scores were very similar, with only three points covering second to fourth. The winner was Jade, however, some twenty points clear of Sapphire, who just nicked second, but a single point. The game had been well received, and the group ended up “Doing a Lime” and playing it a second time.

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The second game was also tight, although everyone was much more even in where they scored their points. Sapphire just edged it though, again by a single point, again from Black, pushing Jade into third. There was still time after the second game for something else, something new, something quick—Flip 7. This is a really simple “Push your Luck” game reminiscent of Port Royal, where players simply turn over cards and gamble on not revealing the same number twice. The catch is that each numbered card appears in the deck that number of times (i.e there is one one, two twos and so on). Flipping over seven in a row gives fifteen bonus points.

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There are also some action cards in the deck, “Flip Three”, “Freeze”, “Second Chance” and modifier cards which give extra points. Players take it in turns to decide whether they want to “flip” or ” stick”. The game ends when players have reached the pre-agreed total (two hundred, according to the rules, though games can easily be made longer or shorter as desired). In the first round, three players scored well, but the rest of the game did not go so well. In fact, the only player who managed to score in every round was Black with a fairly consistent total around thirty. It was no surprise that he was the first to pass two hundred and was therefore the winner, ahead of Sapphire and Purple, who were joint second with a hundred and seventy-six.

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Learning Outcome: Zoos are even more fun with sea creatures.

10th December 2024

Everyone had already arrived and was waiting in anticipation when Blue and Pink arrived with piles of gamers crackers, Christmas tree decorations, party poppers, paper parcels, mince pies, festive cakes (with carrot meeples on top) and GOAT Award voting forms. Food quickly followed along with a volley of noise as people tried to pull their crackers and party poppers first so the contents didn’t land in their supper. As people munched, there was some discussion about the games played and voting forms were filled in. In the absence of Green, Pine kindly offered to act as returning officer and collate the statistics.

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While cake and mince meat parcels were shared round, toasts were offered by Lime to the organisers, and in the memory of Burgundy. He is much missed and will never be forgotten, but we always make a special point of remembering at this time of year, especially as the Un-Christmas Dinner was his last games night with us. The GOAT Awards were then announced. Moment of the Year was when Pine got the end game rule wrong for Tonga Bonga, so that Pink thought he’d won, but then didn’t. The GOAT Poo Prize for the least popular game of the year went to Ca$h ‘n Guns—not a game the group plays often and its only outing over the last year was at the New Year Party.

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Then it was time for the Golden GOAT. Previous winners were ruled out, but other contenders included Akropolis, Kavango, Flamme Rouge and Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails. The clear winner of the 2024 Golden GOAT Award, however, was Stamp Swap. There was much discussion about how this was the third winner from Stonemaier Games (after Tapestry last year and Wingspan in 2019) and how we should invite Jamey Stegmaier, to collect the award in person. Email correspondence over the following few days suggested that while it was unlikely he would be able to come to GOATS, he will be in the UK next year and just might make it as far as Oxford. In the meantime, he has highlighted the award on his website.

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With the festive business over, the group broke into three to play some games. Pink, Blue, Black and Jade began with the “Feature Game“, Courses De Rennes (aka Reindeer Races), a fun little game where players control a team of four reindeer, racing along four different tracks to try to get the highest-scoring tiles. On their turn, each player can either draw two cards (with a hand limit of seven) or play as many cards of the same type as they can to move one reindeer along one of the tracks. The cards are numbered and have suit that corresponds to one of the tracks (or are Elfy, and “wild”). If two and a three of Gifts is played, the player may move one of its reindeer along the Gift track.

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If a reindeer lands on the same space as another reindeer, it slides forward a space. If that is occupied too, it continues to slide. If, however, the owner cries “Thump!” as it lands, the reindeer slithers an extra space forward. The first reindeer to arrive at the end of a track claims the highest value token. The game ends when two of the tracks have run out of tokens. Pink too the first points, and with it a strong early lead. A few rounds later, Jade took the last token from one of the tracks and with it ended the game. He got very unimpressed looks from Black and Blue as he gifted victory to Pink, so once this was pointed out, Jade revised his move and play carried on.

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Ultimately, however, it didn’t really change things as Pink still took victory with twenty-two points. He was long way clear of Jade who won the tight fight for second with fifteen just one point ahead of Black who, in turn, took third by a single point. Everyone else was still playing, so the group looked for something else to play. Black had won a copy of Ticket to Ride: Paris in the raffle and, although it wasn’t very festive, it seemed appropriate to give it an outing. Some of the GOATS had played this mini-city variant of the popular train game earlier in the year when we marked the Olympics with sport and France themed games. However, none of the current quartet had been part of that group.

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The rules are much the same as all the others (take two cards from the market; play cards to place pieces on the map; collect Ticket cards to score points at the end), but like all the variants, Paris has a special rule. When players claim a red, white, or blue track, they get a card, when they get all three colours they get four “Tricolore” bonus points. When the game first came out, there had been comments about how this felt very bolted on, but in practice, it was much more interesting than it sounded. This time, the in game scoring was quite tight, though Blue, with her trains across the city centre got her nose in front and led by six points. Tickets can make a huge difference to scores though, as they can give a lot of points, both positive and negative.

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Black, Pink and Jade all picked up similar points for their completed Tickets (ten, eleven and eight respectively), though Jade was unlucky and unable to complete his last one. Blue, however, made good use of concurrent routes and scored a massive twenty-four points for hers giving her something of a landslide victory with a total of forty-six. It was much closer for second which went to Pink who finished with twenty-nine, two points ahead of Black. Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, Purple was leading Ivory, Plum and Byzantium in one of her favourite Christmas themed games, Christmas Tree.

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This is a fairly simple little card-drafting game played over thee rounds, where players are “decorating their Christmas Tree” with diamond-shaped cards, where players score points for the Objective cards everyone contributed to a central pool at the start of the round. This time, the group played from the advanced set of Objective cards (including all three levels) although the first round, the cards were all levels one and two. These gave one point for each blue or “nobbly” ornament, four points for each pair of ornaments of the same colour and shape arranged in a vertical pair and six points for three specific shapes in a given arrangement.

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The first round started off slowly with everyone looking to fulfill some of the Objectives—everyone was successful, but Plum and Byzantium got off to a better start. Plum placed her first Gingerbread man and then concentrated on placing vertical pairs although she only managed that once. In the second round the Objectives were from the more complicated sets, including six points for three specific colours in a given arrangement, six points for the same three shapes or colours in a set pattern, or eight points for four ornaments with the same point value arranged in two set formations. This time, Byzantium significantly out scored everyone with multiple objectives scored multiple times and, as a result, built a big lead.

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Plum used one of her Biscuits to move baubles around to make a row of four contain the three colours of glass bauble.and thus scored well, whereas Ivory was focusing on picking up high value Sweets and surrounding his Gingerbread men. The final set of Objectives included six points for a set arrangement of certain point values, eight points for four ornaments with the same point value arranged in a particular arrangement and five points for each row in which the total points of the glass were above the given amount. Finally, there were two points for each Gingerbread man, with bonuses of six and three points for the player with the most/second most Gingerbread men.

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In the third and final round, Byzantium again out scored everyone, scoring multiple times for the set arrangement of certain point values. At this point, Ivory was full committed to Sweets and Gingerbread men, especially knowing he was putting in the Gingerbread man Objective, which he scored well for. Plum and Purple also scored well in the final round, with Plum following a strategy similar to Byzantium, whereas was Purple was collecting sweets like Ivory. It looked like Byzantium was going to win by a large amount, as he was fifty points ahead of everyone else and was scoring more than anyone else for Lights and Baubles too.

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Ivory’s focus on surrounding his Gingerbread men gave him over fifty points and with more than thirty for his sweets he finished with one hundred and seventy one points, pipping Byzantium to victory by just two, with Plume in third some twenty points adrift. The puzzly nature of the the game had gone down well and with the Christmas theme everyone had enjoyed playing Christmas Tree. On the next table, the festive link was much more tenuous, however. Teal, Pine, Sapphire and Indigo had chosen 6 Nimmt!, because there was a twelve in it, representing the Twelve Days of Christmas (or perhaps they had just wanted to play the game and if you can’t play a daft party game at Christmas, when can you?).

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6 Nimmt! is a popular game with the group at any time of year, though it is usually played with more than four people. Either way, the game is very simple to play, though tough to play well. Some say this is because there is a lot of chance in the game, but they are usually the people who do badly… The idea is that players simultaneously choose a card to play and these are then added, in order, to the rows of cards on the table. The player adding the sixth card, instead, takes the first five cards into their scoring pile. Usually, we deal out half the cards for the first round and the rest for the second and the winner is the player with the fewest “nimmts” (or points), at the end of the two rounds.

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This time, however, the group decided to play the multiple-hand variant where each hand has ten cards, and the game ends when someone’s score passes sixty-six. And that was Sapphire, who finished with an exceptional total of ninety-five. The winner was Teal with forty-four, however, who was just two points better off than Pine. The other games were still ongoing, but there was still time for one last game for this group (who were joined by Navy) before everyone went home warmed by the Christmas Gaming Spirit—and their choice of game was Coloretto (apparently this is a festive game because it includes red, green and gold Chameleons).

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This is another simple filler game, where players either take a card and add it to a truck, or take a truck. Each truck can take a maximum of three Chameleons, with players collecting coloured sets. The largest three sets score positive points (according to the Triangular Number Series), while all the others score negative points. In this way, the bigger the series the more additional cards will score, so the aim is to collect three large sets and ensure the others are as small as possible. This game was really tight, with Sapphire claiming victory with twenty-seven and Teal and Indigo tying for second on twenty-four. And with that, people began to drift off, many not to be seen until 2025.

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Learning outcome: GOATS love a Cracker!

Golden GOAT Award Winners – 2024

This week was the annual boardGOATS Un-Christmas Dinner including the voting to decide the winners of the GOAT Awards. There are two main awards: the Golden GOAT for our favourite game played during the year and the GOAT Poo Prize for our least favourite. Everyone had the usual three points to hand out for the Golden GOAT Award (plus a bonus if wearing Festive Attire), though a maximum of two points could be given to any individual game. Everyone could also nominate up to two individual games for the GOAT Poo Prize.

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This year, the unofficial “Marmite Award” went to Viticulture—something many people seemed to find quite a surprise as it is generally not a divisive game and one that few would usually take offense at. There had been a lot of fun throughout the year, but one of the more memorable moments was Pine getting the end game rule wrong for Tonga Bonga, so that Pink thought he’d won, but then didn’t. There were several nominations for the GOAT Poo Prize, including King of Tokyo, Rolling Realms and Ark Nova, but the winner was another surprise: Ca$h ‘n Guns—not a game the group plays often, indeed it doesn’t get played at all at the pub (for obvious reasons), so its only outing over the last year was at the New Year Party. It can be a lot of fun, but it is also easy to see how some might not like the game.

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Then finally, there was the Golden GOAT Award for the best game played in the year. Previous winners were ruled out, but there were plenty of other great games to choose from. The most popular of these were Akropolis, Kavango, Flamme Rouge and Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails. However, the clear winner was Stamp Swap. This is a new game, only released in September, but was an immediate hit, largely thanks to its silky-smooth game play. As one person commented, “I wouldn’t have thought a game about stamp collecting would be up my street, and yet…”

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Perhaps more remarkably, this is the third winner from Stonemaier Games after Tapestry last year and Wingspan in 2019—three very different games. This led to the perhaps slightly tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the group should invite Jamey Stegmaier to visit so we could present him with the actual Golden GOAT in the manner of the Jules Rimet Trophy…

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3rd September 2024

By the time Blue, Purple and Pine arrived, Cobalt was already half-way through a solo game of Isle of Cats: Explore & Draw, a “roll and write” version of the card-drafting, polyomino cat-tile-placing game, Isle of Cats. In Explore & Draw, instead of drafting cards before choosing tiles, players choose a set of cards each turn and then draw their “discoveries” on their boats. In this version of the game, players simultaneously choose a column from the Island (the central market) and action all three cards in it in order. These could be three cards from the Cat deck, two Cat cards and one Lesson card, or two Lesson cards and card from the Cat deck.

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Cat cards are polyomino cards, Lesson cards are scoring cards and special Oshax and Treasure cards can be found in both decks. Cats, Oshax and Treasures are all drawn directly on the boat on the worksheet, while lessons are ticked off and scored at the end of the game. In the solo game, Cobalt was playing against his “Sister” who reveals a Cat Colour and a Lesson, every round and at the end of the game scores for the different Colours in that order and then the Lessons in turn. This time cobalt made mincemeat of the Automa beating it by seventy-one points to forty-three.

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With everyone arrived by this time, it was just the “simple” matter of deciding who was going to play what. Blue started off leading the “Feature Game“, which was Kavango. This is a card drafting game where players are building an animal reserve by collecting tags and adding animals to their tableau. As such, it takes familiar elements from games like Sushi Go!, 7 Wonders, Wingspan, Meadow, Ark Nova and Terraforming Mars, but has a different feel to all of them. In each round players draft and play ten cards (from an initial hand of twelve), that is to say they choose a card and pass the rest of the cards on to the next player.

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After each card has been chosen, it is added to the player’s tableau. Then players have the option of claiming money for achieving Research Goals and/or spending money on Poaching, Habitat and Climate protections. These are required for some of the animals especially the more interesting and lucrative ones. The clever part about the game is the way the decks progress. In the first round, the deck is mostly made up of Producers (Grassland, Trees, Invertebrates and Fish) and small animals while the second has mostly medium, but some small and some larger sized animals. The third and final deck contains almost exclusively larger animals like Zebras, Lions, and Elephants.

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This makes it harder to get Producers in the final round (though it is still possible by paying for Rewilding), but players can often just play cards directly as they already have prerequisites that they acquired earlier in the game. Throughout, the rules and mechanisms are rooted in reality. For example, players are responsible for their own Poaching and Habitat protections, but Climate protection is everyone’s concern and players have to work on that together. Similarly, before a player can have a Puff Adder, for example, they have to have enough small mammals and birds to feed it. Likewise, if a player wants a White Rhino or an Elephant, they need sufficient Grassland and/or Trees to support them.

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Each round, there are four Research Goals, each with several levels. The Goals can each only be claimed once, so players generally have the choice of claiming Goals early to get money they can spend straight away, or waiting and getting more money, which may delay progress. These Research Goals also progress during the game, so early on, they tend to reward players with lots of Producers and Small Mammals etc., while later in the game they reward players with lots of Protections and bigger animals. At the end of the game, players add bonus points for Biodiversity, Climate Protection and Habitat and Poaching Protection, to the points they got for each animal in their Reserve and the points they acquired during the game for achieving their Research Goals; the player with the most points is the winner.

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Nobody had played the game before, but Indigo had done her homework and had watched the “how-to-play” video, and Blue had done a decent job of reading the rules for a change. The fact that the rules all made sense helped too, and for the most part everyone had a reasonable handle on what they were trying to do. The first challenge was to try to get all four of the player boards on the table with the score-track/Research board and Climate in the middle. The boards were so huge that it wasn’t actually possible, so the side of Indigo’s and Navy’s boards were hanging off the edge of the table, and Pines and Blue’s corners were all overlapping or had a flying free-hold. Still, everyone could just about see what they needed to and could place the cards they had to, and it was all stable so long as nobody moved…

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Pine (the Ecologist), started off really well adding a lot of Small Mammals to his Reserve and achieved early Research Goals as a result. Early in the game, Indigo (the Investor) started contributing to Climate protection. Navy (the Botanist) and then Blue (the Researcher) helped her out later in the game, though Pine never had enough money to contribute enough to gain the Climate Protection bonus. Blue took an early lead in Research Goal points, but Navy soon caught up and by the end of the third round, he had an eight point lead with Indigo holding a three point lead from Pine. That is only a very small proportion of the points available in the game.

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The Lion’s share of the points come from the animals, including Lions, of course (which Navy had one of). Pine really struggled in the latter part of the game since he had loads of Small Mammals, but not a lot else. His problems had begun in the second round when he struggled to generate any money as none of the Research Goals fitted after his highly effective first round. Even so, he still got a over a hundred points for his menagerie and was one measly bird of prey short of getting the Biodiversity Award. Indigo had a slightly more valuable Reserve, while Blue and Navy tied for the most animal points.

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Indigo, Blue and Navy all picked up the bonus points for Climate Protection, Poacher/Habitat Protection and Biodiversity, which meant that Navy took victory by virtue of his eight point lead from the Research Goal points. It had been a very enjoyable game though and there was much discussion as the group carefully dismantled the precariously balanced player boards. Pine took an interest in the other animals in the deck, and there was much hilarity when he found the Sausage Tree—Google convinced him that it was not related to the infamous Spaghetti Tree, and was in fact real. Nobody could convince him that the fruit wasn’t ideally suited to coaxing Trouser Snakes out of their lair’s though.

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On the next table, Black and Pink were leading a rather ill-fated game of Wyrmspan. This is a variant of Wingspan with Dragons instead of Birds. So, like the original, players are playing cards from their hand onto a player board, and activating the habitats in turn. The differences are more than simply cosmetic, however. Firstly, before a Dragon card can be played, it is necessary to explore the cave it will be played in, which involves playing a card (and claiming a Bonus). In Wingspan, if a player needs a resource, they activate their Woodland habitat and visit the Birdfeeder, claiming the resource they want and a couple of extras, whereas in Wyrmspan, players only get resources one at a time so they don’t have any extras.

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This is critical as “Planting Dragons” requires a lot of Resources and can be difficult to do, so it is important that the Dragon planted is then exploited as much as possible. Players also need to make the most of the new Dragon Guild. A step around this Rondel typically gives a Resource as a reward, with a more valuable bonus half-way round and after a full circle. The distribution of cards is different too: in Wingspan, the majority of the cards have an effect when the terrain is activate, but in Wyrmspan, these are in the minority with most card effects happening when played or at the end of the round/game. In Wyrmspan, the rounds are also different.

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Players get a set number of coins at the start of each and an action typically costs one coin. Some cost more however, and occasionally players can pickup extra coins, which can lead to variable length rounds. Thus, although Wyrmspan is very definitely Wingspan at its core there are lots of differences. Blue suggested the group played it, as she had played it with Black and Pink a few months back and they had found it played easily given that they all knew how to play Wingspan. Thinking Purple, Teal and Lime were also very familiar with Wingspan, Blue rashly assumed it would work, but she underestimated how different it was, how long it was since that last game, and how much longer the game would take with five.

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So, Black patiently explained the rules, while Pink tried to help others muddle through. Teal focused on simply achieving the end of round goals and “planted” his Dragons accordingly while working on the top row of caves to generate resources—the equivalent of the “woodland”, which works for both Wingspan and for Wyrmspan. After fighting through one round though, the group agreed to curtail the game after the second round. In such a short game, the scoring was always going to be skewed, but ultimately the player with the most valuable Dragons, Pink, was the victor, with Teal taking second thanks to him taking the points for winning both the end of round goals.

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Across the other side of the room, the final game was Tapestry, with the Plans and Ploys expansion. On the surface, Tapestry has simple mechanisms, but they combine to make a complex game. On their turn, players move one step along one of the four Civilisation tracks around the board: Science, Exploration, Military, Technology and carry out the action (or actions) associated with it. Each space requires payment of resources, and the further along the track, the more expensive the spaces become. If a player cannot afford to pay (or chooses not to), then they instead take income, which gives them more resources. They also gain points and play a tapestry card, which usually provides a power for the next round.

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So, at its heart, Tapestry is an engine building and resource management game: players carry out actions and get resources so they can get more resources and ultimately, points. The Plans and Ploys expansion mostly just adds more of the same with new Civilisations, Tapestry Cards and space tiles. The biggest difference is the addition of Landmark Cards which are designed to give each player a personal short-term goal in the first part of the game, in the form of buildings that only they can claim. Everyone was familiar with the game, so the rules explanation was minimal. Byzantium started (Spies/Grassland) and there was an initial general rush towards the Technology track,

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Ivory (Islanders/Forest), always one for doing something different, instead went in for Exploration as this linked in with his Civilization. As the first round went on, Byzantium and Cobalt (Aliens/Tropical) stuck to Technology, whereas Plum (Riverfolk/Wetland) diversified slightly into Science and Exploration. Her primary plan was to exploit her Civilisation and then try to get to six island hexes to trigger her personal bonus Landmark. Byzantium was first to move to the Income phase, closely followed by Plum and then Cobalt. Ominously, Ivory did what he usually did and managed to stretch my first era out, putting himself in a good position to grab the first Exploration Landmark and also making progress on Military.

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Byzantium went for Technocracy as his first Tapestry card, sticking with his technology theme. He also managed to grab the first Technology Landmark and completed his Architecture card (appropriately the Game Shop). Plum also went for a Tapestry card, Terraforming, that linked her with her strategy, giving her five points for building on impassable plots, something her Riverfolk Civilization wanted her to do and gave her additional resources of. Although her alternative Civilisation had looked more interesting, it involved knowing what other people’s options were so she had chosen the simpler Riverfolk and made good use of it. She was also still fairly diverse in her track focus. Cobalt went for Socialism, to keep pace with Byzantium on the Technology track.

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Cobalt also gained Landmarks from his Technology cards, helping him build his Skyscraper Architecture card. Having only taken his Income whilst everyone else was half way through their second Era, Ivory could see Cobalt was focusing on Technology, so he used the State Marriage Tapestry card to gain befits on this track whenever Cobalt did. Having the Military track to himself and a good head start on Exploration, Ivory managed to grab a couple of Landmarks quite quickly. Everyone was also getting Income from buildings on their mats too. Again, Byzantium Plum and Cobalt all moved into their third Era in quick succession, leaving Ivory half way through his second Era.

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Cobalt managed to grab the third Era Technology Landmark, but he struggled to fit it on his Capital board and it had to overhang. At this point, Plum used the Dictator Tapestry Card (with associated comments from Byzantium) to move up the Technology track while restricting everyone else’s progress on the same track for one turn. Byzantium had been plotting a move as he was next in line for a Landmark, but Plum’s Dictatorial behaviour only slightly delayed him getting it. This, plus the State Marriage benefited Ivory and competition with Byzantium meant Cobalt used the Militarism Tapestry card to switch his focus to Exploration and Military.

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Although Cobalt had changed tack to avoid competition with Byzantium, Ivory had a health head-start on both of these tracks, grabbing the Landmarks as he went and also conquering the centre island just before Cobalt could. To add insult to injury, when Cobalt tried to conquer the island and topple Ivory, he was ready with a Trap card, foiling his plan. Cobalt quickly got revenge paying Ivory back in kind when he tried to do the same thing to one of his territories. However, that wasn’t going to discourage Ivory, and with the Military track encouraging him to conquer, he got the final word in, conquering one of Cobalt’s territories and gaining a double topple bonus.

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Moving into the final era, again, Ivory was characteristically some way behind everyone else. Byzantium picked up extra resources from the “Age of Wonder” and used these to good effect being the first to reach the end of a track. Plum, hosted the Olympic Games with her final Tapestry card (and presumably moved to Paris to do so). This gave her ten points in exchange for a Worker Resource, and additionally a bonus building if any other player took up the offer of doing the same. Byzantium was the only one who did, as Cobalt wasn’t able to and Ivory had other plans.

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Cobalt and Plum were both still fairly diverse in their track focus, although Plum had made good progress on the Science track, which was mostly ignored by everyone else. Byzantium also switched focus to some of the other tracks now he had completed the Technology track. Ivory stuck to Military and Exploration, completing the former (although there was not enough time to gain the second Civilization). He was sorely tempted by one of his favourite strategies, sending his Meeples into Space by completing the Exploration track, but instead, Ivory switched focus to the other tracks to get as many income buildings in his Capital as possible to maximize the final scoring.

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Again, everyone finished in quick succession except Ivory, who, as usual, had about five or six turns to go after everyone else had finished. Plum started with an additional thirty-five points at the beginning of the game thanks to her Riverfolk which gave her points for each territory in her City that had at least two unpassable spaces, but everyone caught up throughout the game. In the end, in Ivory’s final Income round scored him well over fifty points, overtaking everyone and winning and giving him victory. It had been a good game, enjoyed by all, and although he’d won Ivory hadn’t given everyone as much of a trouncing as he had in the past. Cobalt felt that the advantages of going first were not mitigated for those going last, so maybe next time that could be used as a slight handicap for Ivory.

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Learning Outcome: Animal games are a lot of fun—And that’s not Lion!