Tag Archives: Key Flow

13th January 2022

Blue and Pink were the first to arrive, soon joined by Black and Purple. Others quickly rolled up and before long, everyone was discussing what they’d been doing over the holiday. Teal produced a new “Roll and Write” game that everyone could play together, called Trek 12: Himalaya, a game where players are climbing a mountain. He gave a quick summary and demonstrated how he’d raided the stationary cupboard so everyone quickly agreed to give it a go.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game has some prima facie similarities to On Tour which we played remotely a couple of times, in that two dice are rolled and their results combined. In On Tour, the results are simply combined to make a two digit number, so a two and a three can make a twenty-three or a thirty-two. In Trex 12, the numbers are combined by addition, subtraction or multiplication and additionally players can pick either the larger or the smaller individually, with each option available a total of four times during the game.

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Players are trying to make chains of consecutive numbers and groups of the same number—runs and melds, which represent ropes and camps respectively. At the end of the game, players score for the highest number in the rope (or camp), plus one additional point for every other connected point (which must be connected when they are played). Additionally, players score bonus points for the longest rope they make, and the largest camp, and penalties for any isolated numbers that are not part of a rope or a camp.

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It took a couple of turns to get going, but thereafter it was quite quick. The game has a sort of legacy element with alternative maps and envelopes that can be opened once certain challenges have been met, but we played the Dunai map and without any complications. Teal pointed out that although the first number can go anywhere, thereafter numbers must be written next to other numbers so it was wise to keep options open. Pink therefore started at one end, immediately demonstrating how to make the game more challenging.

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Pine and Blue seemed to be working to very similar strategies with a long rope and a large “Four” camp in the middle, though Pine made a better fist of it and finished in second place with sixty-eight. Ivory was the overall winner though, with lots and lots of short bits of rope of high value and a final score of seventy-two, well clear of the total needed to beat the game. Trex 12 had been both quick and enjoyable, so after that aperitif everyone was ready to move on to something a little more filling, and the group split into two, the first playing the “Feature Game“, Streets.

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Streets is a tile laying game by the same people as the very enjoyable Villagers. It is, perhaps, a little lighter and, rather than developing the occupants of a village, players are building a city, transforming it street by street, from a small town into a centre of culture and commerce. The turn structure is similar to more familiar games like Carcassonne: On their turn, the active player chooses a building tile, adds it to the town, places an ownership marker on it and then scores any completed features, in this case, Streets.

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Although there are similarities, there are a lot of differences: players have a hand of three tiles all of which represent buildings; as well as ownership tokens, the active player also places people on the building, then there are the tile placement and scoring rules. The building tiles have a road at the bottom and sky at the top and can be placed such that a Street, a row of houses, is extended by adding the tile to it in the same orientation, or terminated so that the road is perpendicular forming a junction. When both ends of a Street finish in a junction, the Street is closed and scored.

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Different buildings score in different ways, for example some tiles give points for people in the Street and others for the number of building symbols in the Street. There are a few little niggly little rules. For example, when scoring a Street players include the symbols on the street itself, but also any on a tile that terminates the Street and points towards it. There are other ways of scoring buildings as well, for the number of adjacent tiles or copying another building of choice in the Street for example. In addition to the money won for the building itself, players also score for the number of people on the tile scored.

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When a building is scored, the active player moves the people on to different building in another, open Street. This encourages players to terminate Streets even though they might not score themselves, because they can move people onto their own buildings elsewhere which means they will score more later in the game. There are a few other things that contribute to the decision making dilemmas. For example, players only have five ownership tokens, and if they run out, they have to take them from another building without scoring it.

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The game ends when all the tiles have been played and any remaining Streets are scored, but for half points (similar to Carcassonne). The basic game is quite straight forward, but although most people got to grips with it, the combination of small text, symbols, a little confusion of terminology and general tiredness meant others struggled with planning effective moves. Black took what was obviously an early march when he played his micro-brewery tile to “copy” another high-scoring tile in the same street, but Purple, Blue and Pine had their moments too.

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In the end, Black won with a cricket score of a hundred and twenty (well, a score that would have beaten England in the recent Ashes series anyhow). Blue, Purple and Black quite enjoyed the game and could see the its potential for adding expansions too. Definitely one to be played again, though Pine might need some persuading. Meanwhile, on the next table, Ivory, Pink and Teal were getting to grips with a game of Key Flow (Lime having taken an early night after another very early morning).

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Ivory and Pink have played Key Flow and its big brother, Keyflower, many times before (including relatively recently in October), but Teal was new to the game though he’d heard good things. In both games, players are building villages and activating the buildings in their villages by playing meeples (or rather Keyples) to generate resources and score points. The games have a lot in common including the artwork, the iconography and the fact both take place over four rounds or seasons, but the underlying game mechanism is different. In Keyflower, players acquire tiles by auction where in Key flow players gain cards by drafting.

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Key Flow is surprisingly straightforward to play, though doing well is a completely different matter. Players who start with a hand of cards, choose one and pass the rest on, adding their chosen card to their village before they get their next, slightly smaller hand. There are three types of card: Village cards, Riverside cards and “Keyple” cards. Village cards are buildings that can be activated by playing Keyples above them, while Riverside cards provide instant resources and skill tiles.

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The cards have to be “connected” together and location can be important. Buildings for example are more productive if they have been upgraded, but upgrading needs resources and the resources need to be moved to the building being upgraded. Similarly, in autumn there are some buildings which score points for resources they are holding. Therefore, it is helpful if the building producing the resources is near to the one being upgraded or used for scoring as moving resources can be expensive and sometimes difficult.

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Simlar to the Keyples in Keyflower, the Keyple cards are used to activate buildings and produce resources. Some can be played either in a neighbour’s village or the player’s own village. Other cards can only be played in the village one side or cannot be played in one’s own village. This is why three players is arguably the sweet-spot for Key Flow—with more players there is at least one village players cannot use, adding a level of randomness that it is difficult to deal with. With three however, everything in play is accessible, though perhaps at a cost.

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At the start of the game players get some winter cards which can act as objectives to guide players’ strategies; at the start of the final round players get to keep one of these with the rest going into the draft. At the end of the game, players score for any autumn cards, any buildings with upgrades as appropriate, any winter cards and finally one point for any otherwise unused gold.

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This time, Pink went for a “Scholar Strategy”, but changed his mind at the last minute to go for the Ranch instead. Teal went for a gold strategy with the Jeweller to double his score, and picking up both the Gold Mine and the Smelter, the latter of which he upgraded so he could exchange one skill tile for three gold. Unfortunately, Pink found that useful too and therefore got in his way somewhat. Ivory didn’t appear to have a strategy early on, but made sure he had plenty of resources he hoped would be useful later in the game.

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In the final round, Pink got his Scholar anyhow then lucked out and got the Trader too, while Teal’s flotilla of boats gave him a lot of options, but somehow he struggled to convert them into points. Ivory who had been keeping all his options open with a scatter-gun approach, managed to finish with a smorgasbord of points from pigs, Keyples, travel, and of course resources.

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It was not a surprise Ivory won as he always does well in this game, but Pink was very pleased to have run him close finishing just five points behind. With that, people started to drift off, a few people hung about for a while, just chatting, amongst other things, discussing what “Cotton Clouds and White Cashmere” smells like and whether the new soap in the Ladies really did smell of it…

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Learning Outcome: “Roll and Write” games aren’t only the preserve of “Remote Gaming”.

6th October 2021

For the first time, the group were meeting on a Wednesday to avoid clashing with the Quiz on Thursday. As Blue and Pink waited for food they decided to squeeze in a quick game of NMBR9 to celebrate our ninth birthday. This is a quick little tile-laying game that has almost zero setup time, so is very appealing as a filler in this sort of situation. The tiles are poly-ominos roughly shaped like the numbers zero to nine and there is a deck of cards featuring each number, zero to nine, twice. Players take the appropriate number from the box following a flip of a card, and add it to their personal play-space.

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Tiles have to be placed in layers with tiles on higher layers being more valuable as the number on the tile is multiplied by the “storey” it is on. Tiles must be placed adjacent to another tile on the same layer and, when placing tiles on higher layers they must not be wholly over one other tile and must be completely supported (no bridging gaps or overhangs). This time, Pink managed to make it to four layers putting a seven on the top layer, his third “storey” to give twenty-one points. As a result he was sure he was going to win.

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Pink had fewer tiles on the second and, particularly third levels, though, where Blue had concentrated her efforts. The effect was very similar, so much so that there was only one point in it, but much to his disappointment, even several recounts couldn’t put the deficit in Pink’s favour. He was cheered up by the imminent arrival of his pizza though and they were still eating when Green, Lilac, and then Teal turned up. Since Green and Lilac had missed last time, they introduced themselves to Teal and there was some general chit-chat as everyone else turned up.

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Appropriately, as we were celebrating our ninth birthday, there were nine of us to play the traditional birthday “Feature Game“, Crappy Birthday, as we ate meeple decorated chocolate cupcakes. Crappy Birthday is a silly little party game but is a surprising amount of fun. As we explained the rules to Teal, we reminisced about last year, when we played it over two sessions (one wrapping our parcels and one giving them) in order to be able to play it online. Lime expressed his astonishment that it was a year ago, and everyone concurred that it didn’t feel like a year.

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Crappy Birthday doesn’t sound like much: the game is played over one “year” and each player takes it in turns to have their birthday, with everyone else choosing a card from their hand as a “gift”. The birthday boy or girl then chooses their favourite and least favourite gifts and the givers of these each get a point. As such, those gifting are trying to avoid the mediocre , in a similar way to Dixit, but “not as good” as Purple opined. While most people around the table would agree that Dixit is the better game, this group tend to get more fun out of Crappy Birthday because of the really silly gifts on the cards.

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The silliness of the gifts would get stale if we played the game more frequently, but we only play Crappy Birthday once a year and we usually only use around half the cards, so most cards only come out once every two years. It is a great way to find out about people though, so being new to the group, everyone thought Teal would be at quite a disadvantage. This year we found out that Pink was unimpressed by 100lb of raw fish, Lilac quite fancied a trying out a wingsuit and Blue would overcome the creepiness of 3am in the Paris catacombs as apparently they were hard to get to visit. Ivory, was torn between the opportunity to sing the National Anthem before a Major League Baseball game and getting his earlobes stretched, but went for the latter as his least favourite as it was more permanent.

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We discovered that Teal likes to keep his feet on the ground, so he eschewed a flight in a fighter jet, but really liked the idea of a Viking helmet. It was about this point that we were joined by one of the former bar staff who stuck about to help Pink with his gift selection. It seemed she didn’t really help a lot though as he completely failed to get any of his gifts picked as best or worst.

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From there, Purple nearly ended up instigating divorce proceedings when she received a set of camera scales from Black (a gift nobody else would have been prepared to give to anyone). Instead of fully justified revenge, however, Purple gave Black’s his favourite gift a campervan. Lime having just moved house eschewed recycled newspaper wallpaper, instead opting to decorate his new home with some modern art after some classes. DIY seemed to be in the air, as Green chose a house that needed renovation, though he volunteered Lilac to fix the roof.

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As usual, Lime’s amazing gift-giving skills meant he did well, but this time he was beaten into third place by Purple and, remarkably, Teal who tied for first place, with four—it seems Teal knows us all surprisingly well after just a couple of weeks! As people counted their scores and decided what to play next, the group put together a special selection of gifts for Pine who was running late thanks to a group of over-enthusiastic cubs whom he had been showing round his work. This special selection was tailor-made for a vegan who doesn’t like horses.

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From there, the group split into three, one led by Lilac who wanted to play Thurn und Taxis, one led by Ivory who wanted to play Key Flow and one led by Green to play with something short that Pine could join in with when he arrived. Thurn und Taxis is a slightly older, Spiel des Jahres winning game where players build postal routes connecting cities across Bavaria and surrounding regions. Routes are built city to city to city, so that each city is adjacent to the next city on the route and there is a road connecting these two cities.

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Players are building routes by collecting cards and playing them in front of them. Every turn, the active player takes a city card from the face-up display (or blind from the top of the deck) and then plays a card for a city connected to either end of their existing route. The card played, must connect to their route, otherwise they have to discard their route and start again. Then they can score their route if they choose, but each route must consist of at least three cities and players may build only one route at a time.

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If after adding to the route, the length of the route is at least three cities, the player may declare it finished and score it. Players start with a supply of twenty post offices in their colour, each of which is worth minus one at the end of the game. When they score a route, players place post offices in cities on the board, but they have a choice. Each city is in a region and each region has a colour, when a route is scored, the active player can either place one post office in one city in each of the region their route visits, or in all the cities on one of the regions their route goes to.

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When a route is scored, the active player can take a cart card. These give points, however, in the general case, the cart card must be one more than the previous one and the route must be longer than the cart number. Thus, if someone is scoring a six leg route, they can only take a level six card if their previous cart was a level five card. If they enlist the help of the Wainwright, however, if they have a level five card, they would be able to take a level six card with a route of only four legs. Once a route is scored, the city cards of that route are discarded, and the player begins a new route on their next turn.

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The Wainwright is not the only special character in the game: the Postman, Bailiff and Coachman are all there to offer help, allowing players to take a second card, refresh the card market and play a second card respectively. Players can only enlist aid once per turn though, so they must choose who they call on carefully. When a player exhausts their supply of post offices or acquires a value seven carriage, the end of the game is triggered with players continuing the round—the player with the most points wins.

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In addition to points for cart cards, there are also bonus points available for players to connect all the cities in a region or to have a post office in every outer region, as well as for players completing longer routes and for the player who triggers the end of the game. In general, bonuses score most for the first player to make the achievement with diminishing returns thereafter. This is therefore a consideration players must take into account, but the fact that players must add at least one city to their route each turn or lose the whole route is probably the most important aspect of planning in the game.

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Although Thurn und Taxis is an older game, Purple had not played it before, and it took her a while to get her head round it. She got to grips with it eventually, however, it was later in the game and Black and Lilac had already got a head start. It was very close between them though with the scores neck-a-neck until the last. Lilac triggered the end of the game by taking a level seven cart card and with it took what turned out to be the decisive bonus point, pipping Black with twenty-seven points to his twenty-six.

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On the next table, Teal had looked in the game bags and decided Azul was one he’d like to play. Green, Lime and Teal had just started without Pine when he inevitably arrived a couple of turns in. He politely eschewed their kind offers to start again, instead concentrating on his healthy supper of crisps and cake and choosing his gift. In Pine-like fashion, he chose to redefine the rules and decided his favourite gift was a hunting expedition as long as the subjects of the hunt were the people delivering the perkiness training in his other “choice” gift.

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We have played a lot of Azul and its derivatives (Stained Glass of Sintra and Summer Pavilion) over the last three years, but the original is probably still the favourite across the group. It is really very simple, and despite being an abstract game, the pieces are really nice. On their turn, the active player either takes all the tiles of one colour from one of the “markets” putting the rest in the centre, or they take all the tiles of one colour from the central pool. They then add the tiles to one of the rows on their player board. The catch is that all the tiles placed in any row must be the same colour and if they over-flow, they score negatively. Additionally, each colour can only score in each row once.

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Only complete rows are removed and scored, and then only at the end of the round (when all the tiles in the market and central pool have been taken). Thus if a player has a nearly complete row at the end of a round, they carry that through to the next round leaving them with less free space to work with. When a row is scored, one tile is moved to the player’s mosaic and scores for the number of tiles it forms a continuous row/column with. The game ends when one or more players complete two rows. This time it was a game of two halves, or rather two games. It had been a while since we played the original version (or any version for that matter), but it wasn’t long before Teal, Lime and Green were happily playing, filling their boards.

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Lime and Teal took an early lead and were soon well ahead of Green as he had concentrated on filling his grid from the bottom up, whereas they had been working from the top down. As the game progressed Green began to catch up. It was then that he realised that he’d forgotten what the game end trigger was. He’d thought it was when the markets could no-longer be refilled, but checked the rules to be sure. Only to find that two full completed rows had happened two turns earlier! The group decided to finish the round and make it the last. It was very close between Lime and Teal, with Lime just taking victory by three points. The other games were still going and it was not yet late, so the group decided to give it another go, and this time finish the game correctly.

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In the second game, Green built his grid from the top down and the scores remained fairly similar, until around half way through when Teal began to pull away. It was at about this point that Green noticed that one row had tiles of a colour he’d already scored for that row. No-one was quite sure how it had happened, but the mutual decision was that he’d move these tiles down to the next row. That turn didn’t go quite as expected, but at least it wasn’t a complete disaster. The following round, he discovered he’d done the same thing again. This time he worked out what he’d done: he’d had failed to clear the remaining tiles when he moved one across to the pattern board. So, on the previous turn, instead of moving tiles, he should have removed them. It didn’t really matter though as Teal won by a landslide.

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Meanwhile, Ivory, Blue and Pink had revised the rules, completed card set up for Key Flow, and had started playing. Key Flow is the card game of one of the group’s favourite games, Keyflower. In both games, players are building villages and activating the buildings in their villages by playing meeples (or rather Keyples) to generate resources and score points. The games have a lot in common including the artwork, the iconography and the fact both take place over four rounds or seasons. Fundamentally, the underlying game mechanism is different, however, with players acquiring tiles by auction in Keyflower and by card drafting in Key Flow.

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Once the card decks have been sorted out, Key Flow is quite straightforward to play, though doing well is a different matter. Players who start with a hand of cards, choose one and pass the rest on. They then add their chosen card to their village. There are three types of card: Village cards, Riverside cards and “Keyple” cards. Village cards are buildings that can be activated by playing Keyples above them, while Riverside cards provide instant resources and skill tiles.

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The cards have to be “connected” together and location can be important. Buildings for example are more productive if they have been upgraded, but upgrading needs resources and the resources need to be located on the building being upgraded. Similarly, in autumn there are some buildings which score points for resources they are holding. Therefore, it is helpful if the building producing the resources is near to the one being upgraded or used for scoring as moving resources can be expensive and sometimes difficult.

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At the start of both Keyflower and Key Flow players get some winter tiles/cards which can act as objectives to guide players’ strategies. Whereas in Keyflower these are just added to the tile draw, in Key Flow, players get to keep one of their winter cards with the rest going into the draft. At the end of the game, at the end of winter, players score for any autumn cards, any buildings with upgrades as appropriate, any winter cards and finally one point for any otherwise unused gold.

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One of the biggest differences between Key Flow and Keyflower is the way Keyples work. In Key Flow, they are cards and come in singletons and pairs. Each card has a small Keyple at the bottom of the card, and the number of Keyples needed to activate a building is one more than the number of small Keyples already there. So if there is one small Keeple already there, a pair would be needed to activate that building. Further, only one card is can be played each round, so if two small Keyples are already present, the Keyple card must be augmented with a Keyple token (obtained as a bonus with some cards or from some buildings).

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Further, the Keyple cards also feature arrows which indicate where they can be played. Some can be played either in a neighbour’s village or the player’s own village. Other cards can only be played on one side or cannot be played in their own village. This is why three players is arguably the sweet-spot for Key Flow—with more players there is at least one village players cannot use, adding a level of randomness that it is difficult to deal with. With three however, everything in play is accessible, though perhaps at a cost.

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It had been a while since Key Flow had been given an outing, so although game play is functionally straightforward, it took Blue, Ivory and Pink a while to remember the little features and how to make the game work for themselves. Pink started off early with an obvious strategy of generating stone, stone and even more stone from his Keystone Quarry. It was very clear, even to Pine who joined in to spectate about halfway through, that Pink had a winter card that would score for stone. And so it proved when he produced the Trader in the final round.

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Things were less clear-cut for Blue and Ivory, however. Blue started by just playing the cards in her hand, which meant she ended up with a lot of cows (just because). In summer, Ivory picked up a boat that allowed him to convert sheep into pigs and pigs into sheep, which went nicely with his animal scoring winter cards. Blue, on the other hand, very out of practice with this sort of game, just played tactically, and played for points. Her Workshop went well with the Mercer’s Guild she had in her winter cards, but the Well and Goldsmith, both fully upgraded gave her thirty-five points alone.

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Ivory had a bit of a nightmare and was unable to make the game work for him this time. This was made worse by a rule we only spotted towards the end which meant each Keyple card could only be used towards one goal and the fact he made a mess of things when he put a Riverside card in the middle of his village and had to make it work retrospectively. As he said sadly, although he had remembered how to play, he’d forgotten how to win. Pink, with his massive pile of stone thought he was in with a good chance, but they were actually only worth one and a half points each, so although he had a huge pile, it only gave him thirty-nine points and had taken a lot of work to get them.

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Pink was a little bit stymied by the fact he was banking on also getting a a sheep scoring card in winter, but Ivory took it before it got round to him. Blue on the other hand had lucked out when she picked up a lot of Keyple scoring cards that nobody else seemed interested in giving her over a hundred points and a comfortable victory. With that, Ivory left, as did Lime and Teal, leaving Green, Pink, Blue and Pine waiting for the conclusion of Thurn und Taxis, and time to play a couple of rounds of Love Letter. In the end, it really was just a couple of rounds and ended with a round a piece for Green and Pink, as the pub was closing and it was time to leave.

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Learning Outcome: While camera scales may seem like a good gift idea, in reality the giver will probably end up sleeping on the couch.

18th February 2020

Food was a little delayed, so we decided to start playing something. Food was clearly on our collective minds though, because we opted for a starter of Point Salad. This is a very simple set collecting game where players take cards from the market. The cards are double sided with brightly coloured vegetables on one side and scoring conditions on the other. The market consists of three piles of cards showing the scoring condition sides, and six cards showing the reverse, the vegetable side. The number of cards a player can take depends on where they take it from: one scoring card or two vegetable cards.

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Each pile of cards feeds one pair of vegetables. So, when a vegetable is taken, a scoring condition card is turned over to reveal its vegetable side, and that scoring condition is no longer available. Players can also, once per turn, turn over one of their scoring cards so it becomes a vegetable, but they may never turn over a vegetable to make it a scoring card. The game is over when all the cards have been distributed, and the scores have been totaled. One of the more unusual things about this game is that both vegetable and scoring cards can be used more than once. So, a player with a card giving points for sets of onion, cabbage and carrot (i.e. coleslaw), can score it as many times as they have sets. Furthermore, if they also have a card that scores for pairs of carrots and lettuces (i.e. rabbit food), they can reuse the carrot cards and count them a second time.

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Pine began collecting lettuces, an obsession with green things that ended up lasting the whole evening. Burgundy was more obsessed with red things, specifically tomatoes, so Mulberry, Black and Purple took great delight in snaffling them first, even when they didn’t help. Blue only needed mayonnaise for her coleslaw as she collected onions, cabbages and carrots and generally made a nuisance of herself with Mulberry, sat to her left. Food arrived before the game finished, and with people getting distracted by pizza and chips (always more appealing than salad) it is possible there were some missed opportunities. It was tight finish at the front with only six points between the winner and third place. Sadly, despite everyone else’s best efforts, Burgundy top-scored with fifty-six, ahead of Mulberry and then Blue.

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Once everyone had finished eating, it was time to decide who would play what. The “Feature Game” was The Isle of Cats, a tile-laying game where players are rescuing cats and packing them onto their ship. There were a lot of takers, none of which were keen to back down (even though Mulberry misunderstood and thought it was called “Pile of Cats” which, on reflection, does sound very exciting). The game is not terribly complicated though we did make a bit of a meal of it. It is played over five rounds, each of which starts with card drafting. Players are dealt seven cards and keep two passing the rest to their neighbour; this is repeated until they receive only one single card.

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The cards come in five different colours: blue, green, yellow, brown and purple. Blue cards are Lesson cards which are really just Objective cards, but these come in two types, personal and public. Yellow cards depict some combination of “Boots”, “Cat Baskets” and “Broken Baskets”. Boots are useful because they dictate where you come in the turn order, while Baskets are needed to used to “pay” to rescue Cats. Yellow cards are treasure cards, brown cards are special “Oshax” cat cards and purple cards are instant effect cards that can be played at any time.

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At the start of every round, each player receives twenty Fish which are used to pay for both cards and Cats. So, once the cards have been drafted, players choose which ones they want to buy. with prices varying from free to five Fish. The rest are discarded. It is imprudent to over-spend, as Fish are also needed later in the round to lure cats off the island and onto the players’ ships; some cats are easier to lure than others, with cats on one side of the island costing three Fish and others costing five Fish.

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Once everyone has paid for their cards, they must play any blue Lesson cards they kept in the round. Any Public Lessons are revealed while Private Lessons are kept to one side face down. Players then play their green cards—this is the guts of the game. Players do not have to play all their green cards straight away, some can be kept for later rounds. The number of Boots played are counted up, and the turn order is adjusted according to the number of Boots played so that the player with the most goes first and so on. Player then take it in turns to spend one of their baskets and the appropriate amount of Fish to take one of their Cats and place it on their ship.

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Each player starts the game with one “Permanent Basket” which they can use once per round, aside from this, the other Baskets usually come from the cards played or other Permanent Baskets acquired later in the game. The Cats come in five different colours and are depicted on polyomino tiles which are placed on the players’ Ship-player boards. At the end of the game players score points for grouping Cats of the same colour together in Families: the larger the Family the more points. So, a group of three Cats of the same colour will score eight points, while a Family of ten Cats scores a massive forty points. In addition, players lose one point for each rat they have failed to cover with a cat, and lose five points for each room they fail to fill.

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Thus, perfectly tessellating Cats is the aim of the game, but additional points are also available from the Lesson-objective cards. It would be quite a challenge to perfectly tessellate tiles while keeping cats of the same colour together and conforming to the arbitrary objectives given in the Lessons, however, there are a couple of things to help grease the wheels. Players who cover Scrolls on their Ships with a Cat of the same colour can add a Treasure tile to their ship for free—these are small tiles that are very useful for filling in holes. There are only five scrolls though, one of each colour.

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Additionally, however, once everyone has run out of Baskets, they can also play their Rare Treasure, yellow and brown cards. The yellow cards enable players to place more Treasure tiles while brown cards allow players to place the very rare Oshax Cats (or “Oh, shucks!” Cats as we mostly called them). These are very friendly Cats and will join any Cat Family of the player’s choice, though they have to pick the colour when they place it. The cards are quite rare and very expensive, but a couple of these can be a really good way to boost the size of a Family.

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In addition to Baskets on cards, each player starts with one Permanent Basket which they can use once per round. Blue started the game quickly, by playing two lesson cards followed by a special card which enabled her to swap them for a second Permanent Basket. Everyone looked on agog, envious of the advantage that would give, however, it had cost a lot of Fish, and she spent the rest of the game trying to recover. Mulberry struggled to get some useful cards, but eventually managed to get a Permanent Basket of her own while Burgundy managed to get a couple of his own and he concentrated on trying to make sure there were no gaps round the edge of his boat to fulfill Lesson 113 to give him twelve points.

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Pine meanwhile, continued his obsession with green and hogged all the green cats. Since cards are drafted most of the cards are seen by some of the other players, so when he said he wasn’t sure how one of his Lesson cards worked, Blue and Burgundy knew exactly what his problem was. The Lesson in question was Card 222 which gave ten points for each row of twelve containing at least twelve cats of the same colour. Green’s queries concerned whether the row had to be continuous or whether they could be broken up by treasure, and whether Oshax cats counted. We said they didn’t have to be continuous and Oshax cats counted so long as they were the right colour. As a result, Pine’s green car family continued to grow, now forming long rows, lots of them.

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It was in the final round that Mulberry turned nasty playing Public Lesson Card 235 which meant anyone who didn’t have seven treasures would lose five points, which inconvenienced Blue quite a bit. When it came to scoring, it turned out that we weren’t quite right with the rule for Card 222—the rows should have been continuous. That might have cost Pine ten or even twenty points, though of course had he known that, he would likely have been able to offset that a little. It wouldn’t have mattered anyhow as finished with ninety points and a huge lead. Over thirty points behind, it was close for second, but Burgundy, who just managed to ensure there were no gaps at the edge of his boat, pipped Blue, by two points.

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There are a number of really nice things about The Isle of Cats. Firstly the production quality is stellar and there are some really, really nice touches. The cat artwork is fantastic and the fancy screen-printed cat-eeples from the deluxe upgraded version are quite special. Unquestionably, we made a mistake playing with five the first time round—we were slow, with a lot of people spending a lot of time checking whether tiles would fit and that made the game even slower. Mulberry commented that she disliked variable turn order as a mechanism: it is common in lots of games, but tends to encourage a lot of pauses followed by queries about whose turn it is. The are other little things like the fact the purple and brown cards could have been more distinct. Overall, it definitely deserves another chance, but it might be hard to get some of the players from the first time to give it a second try.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the next table, Ivory, Black and Lime, started off with Key Flow. This was particularly sad for Blue to see, because Key Flow is a sort of card game of Keyflower, one of her favourites. That said, Key Flow had been played at our sister group, the Didcot Games Club, just a few days previously, so she consoled herself with the memory of that and concentrated on The Isle of Cats. Although Key Flow has a lot in common with Keyflower, it has a very different feel. Where Keyflower is really an auction game (using meeples as currency), Key Flow is a card drafting game. So, in Key Flow, players start with a handful of cards, simultaneously choose one and place it face down, passing the rest on.

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Players then simultaneously reveal their card and add it to their village before picking up the hand they’ve just been given, selecting another card and so on. Like Keyflower, the game is played over four seasons, and like Keyflower players receive some of the Winter offerings at the start of the game which they can then use to drive their strategies. The iconography is very similar too, so a player who is familiar with Keyflower generally feels at home with Key Flow. The cards come in three flavours: village buildings, riverside buildings and meeples. Village cards are placed in a player’s village, in a row extending either side of their starting home card. Riverside tiles are placed in a row below, slightly off-set.

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Meeple cards are used to activate Village cards by placing them above the relevant building. As in Keyflower, buildings provide resources, skill tiles, transport and upgrades. They also provide meeple tokens which can be used to increase the power of meeple cards or activate a player’s own buildings at the end of the round. Arguably the clever part is how the meeple cards work. At the centre of each card there are a number of meeples which dictate the power of the card. A single meeple card can be played on any empty building; a double meeple card can be played on an empty building or one where one other card has already been played.

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If two cards have already been played, a triple meeple card is required to activate it a third and final time. Alternatively, a lower power meeple card can be played with one of the meeple tokens, which upgrade a single meeple card to a triple meeple card. Double meeple cards can also be upgraded, but each building can only be activated a maximum of three times per round. The really clever part is that the meeple cards have arrows on them indicating where they can be played: in the player’s own village, in the neighbouring village to the right, the village to the left, or some combination.

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Black began the game by adding the Key Mine to his village which provided him with iron (wooden, black octagonal prisms). In summer he added the Smelter which added more iron producing capacity (converting skill tiles), but he quickly upgraded this to give gold instead as it is more versatile and can be used instead of any other resource and any left overs are worth a point each at the end of the game. Ivory also had resource providers in the shape of the Workshop which provided him with a wood, an iron and a stone every time it was activated. He then added an Apprentice Hall which generated skill tiles.

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Meanwhile, Lime built a village strong in gold production, with the Gold Mine and Brewer and potentially the Carpenter too if he could upgrade it. To his village, Black added a flock of sheep on his river bank while Ivory added a heard of pigs; Lime was more of a mixed farmer though with a bit of everything. As the game progressed into the scoring rounds, Ivory added a Truffle Orchard which gave him four points for each pig and skill tile pair, allowing him to put all his pigs to good use netting twenty-four points.

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Lime and Black pulled in similar points tallies with their Emporium (four points for each green meeple and gold pair) and Traveller’s Lodge (points for transport and boats) respectively. With similar points for their upgraded buildings as well, it was close and the smaller contributors became really important. Ivory’s Trader which scored him fifteen points for stone and axe skill tiles, while both Black and Lime scored ten points for their Autumn stores (Stone and Timber Yards respectively).

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Perhaps it was the points he got from the meeples (Winter Fair and Craftsmen’s Guild), but there was only two points between first and second in the end. Black finished with a total of seventy-one points, just enough for victory—a couple of points more than Ivory, with Lime not far behind. It had been a hard fought game, and Ivory was impressed how the Scribe, which in Keyflower he felt was always a winner, had little effect. For him, this made the game more interesting, though he had really enjoyed the last time the group played Keyflower with the Farmers expansion, as that had also mixed things up.

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Given the recent game with the Didcot group it was inevitable that a comparison was going to be made. This time Black won, but he scored fewer points than he had the previous week when he had come second. Perhaps the most marked difference was how much quicker the three player game of Key Flow had been than the six player game a few days earlier. Where the six player game had taken all evening, there was still time for something small, and with Lime taking an early bath, Ivory and Black chose to play a head-to-head of Ticket to Ride: London.

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Ticket to Ride is a train game with an inexplicable alure, which everyone in the group loves and we’ve found that the small versions of the game, New York and London make excellent fillers. The rules and game play are very similar to the full versions, but the take half the time, and with just two players, that makes it a very short game indeed. On their turn, players take coloured cards or spend them to place their pieces on the map. Points are awarded for completing tickets, but critically, failing to connect two locations marked on a ticket will score negative points. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

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This time, Ivory built a network connecting Brick Land and the Tower of London in the East with Hyde Park in the West, while Black joined Regent’s Park in the North with Waterloo and Elephant & Castle in the South. The crunch point came in the area around Covent Garden, but despite this, both players managed to complete all four of their tickets. This meant it was down to the length of the tickets and the number of pieces placed—Ivory had the edge on both of these. His revenge for the result in Key Flow was completed by a four point bonus for connecting all four in the St. Paul’s district resulting in a ten point victory. With that, Ivory headed home, leaving Back to watch the end of The Isle of Cats.

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Learning Outcome: Games take longer with more players.

10th December 2019

The evening started with people arriving in festive attire and snow, glitter and other detritus all over the table, as people pulled crackers and party poppers. While we waited for food everyone amused themselves writing “Secret GOAT Christmas Cards” and contemplating the voting possibilities for the Golden GOAT Awards (by far the most enjoyable poll of the week). In the interlude between courses, people completed and submitted their voting papers and Blue and Mulberry conducted the count. As the results came in, it was clear that there was only going to be one winner.

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Although Key Flow put in a very strong showing to come second, Wingspan, already winner of the Kennerspiel des Jahres and Deutscher Spiele Preis, took the most coveted award of the year, the coveted Golden GOAT. The GOAT Poo Prize was less clear cut – almost everyone said that for them there wasn’t a stand-out game deserving of the award. In the end it went to 7 Wonders, which is a bit of a Marmite game among the GOATS – some people are very fond of it, but nearly a third of the group nominated as the least enjoyable game of the year. Eventually, everyone finished dessert, but everyone was in festive mood and nobody seemed desperate keen on playing anything.

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Lime threatened to head off without playing anything as he had a long drive in the morning, but after some discussion about perhaps playing the Winter Edition of Carcassonne or repeating the snowy Nordic version of Ticket to Ride that we played last year, eventually, he joined Mulberry, Blue, Pink and Ivory to play the “Feature Game”, Christmas Penguins. This is a cute little game, with some interesting ideas, but proved to need more development and more complete, precise rules. The premise is that players are naughty penguins trying to steal gifts from under the Christmas Tree, while trying to avoid being captured by Santa.

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The rules for the second edition were only available in German and had been translated by Blue, so some aspects might have been missed, but the idea is that the round is started by Santa who rolls his die and moves accordingly, trying to catch one of the naughty Penguins. Then each Penguin takes their turn trying to get to the Christmas Tree to steal one of the presents under it. If they manage to steal a pressie, Santa moves the tree to another location. Penguins cannot pass through a space occupied by another Penguin, instead, playing a sort bumper-car game, they push the occupant onto an adjacent unoccupied space.

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If a Penguin lands on a space with an Event Stone, by design or because they were pushed onto it, they take the stone and keep it until they need it. Event Stones come in different colours which have different effects, but these primarily involve swapping places with other characters. To use an Event Stone, the player can call “Stop!” at any time and then carries out the action by spending the stone. Rolling a one, has the additional effect of invoking the Polar Bear, who moves one space at a time, but if he ends on a space with a Penguin it drops a parcel and runs away to an unoccupied adjacent space.

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One of the clever ideas is that when Santa captures a Penguin, the owner of the Penguin takes over the role of Santa and the player who had been Santa places their Penguin in Santa’s workshop. The turn order was a bit of a problem, however, and may have been one of the things that didn’t make it from the German translation, certainly it was one of the things that mean the game didn’t really gel for us. Another thing that our group found lacking was the fact that there was no mechanism for the Event Stones to return to play, which was a shame; perhaps we would house rule it that every time the Christmas tree was moved a stone would be left in its place.

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Ivory started out at Santa and we went at it with a will. Ivory quickly caught Lime, who looked most unimpressed. Unfortunately, thereafter, every time Santa caught a Penguin, the upset it caused to the turn order confused everyone. There was one other aspect of the game that we completely failed to use, which was the rivers—each player can place or remove one river piece per turn. These cannot be crossed by Penguins, Polar Bears, or even Santa himself and are clearly designed to add an element of strategy to the game. In practice though we just forgot they existed, only using them very occasionally.

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The game ends when the final parcel is taken from under the tree, in our case, by Blue, which just left the scoring. Even this was a little more complex than it needed to be: players get one point for each present they’ve stolen and bonus points are awarded in a Point Salad way to the player with the most parcels of each colour and the player with the most different colours. It is almost as if this game doesn’t know what it is meant to be, silly fun or strategic, which is a great shame because it feels like it should be a good seasonal game. So, over the Christmas period, we’ll have a go at house-ruling it to try to improve it for our group. This time, in the end, Blue and Ivory got a bit of a lead and Blue eventually put everyone out of their misery.

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It wasn’t clear how bonus points should be awarded in the event of a tie. In our first attempt, we decided that bonus points would only go to the person with more than anyone else, but this led to a three-way tie which was about as unsatisfying as the game. So we decided to try friendly ties, which did at least give us a winner, with Lime just sneaking into the lead. With that, Lime and Mulberry took themselves off leaving Ivory, Pink and Blue to play Christmas Lights, the game that was going to be the “Feature Game” until Pink had commented that he didn’t like it.

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Christmas Lights is a set collecting card game with a memory element. The idea is that players have a hand of cards that are “reversed” so players can see everyone else’s hand, but not their own, like Hanabi. Players are tying to make a string of lights by playing coloured light bulb cards in the correct order to match their cards. On their turn, the active player first trades a card of their choice with one from any other player. They then play one card, adding it to their string of lights. This can be the card they’ve just swapped, or one they’ve had in hand, but if it does not match their pattern card, they must discard it.

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Once they have played a card, the active player then turns over the top two cards and then either adds one to their string, or can trade one of the cards for the one-word answer to a question of their choosing. With just two players, it feels like the game plays itself, but with three or four players, its sweetspot, there is a more interesting interplay between planning, memory and navigating the event cards which can help or hinder. This time, Pink was first to complete his first target string, but found it difficult to play the plug card that he needed to connect his first string with his second. This was made worse by Blue, who stole his once he’d found one, and the fact that he had played a lot of broken bulb cards that needed replacing before he could continue.

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While Pink was struggling to sort out his plug, Ivory and Blue had both caught up and started work on their second string of lights. With two cards played per turn, it wasn’t long before all three were threatening the end of the game, but Blue got there first, just. Pink couldn’t quite finish his string and as Ivory had started first, he didn’t get another turn, leaving Blue to take victory without another tie-break. Meanwhile, on the next table, Green, Black, Purple and Pine were playing a slightly more conventional, tie-break free game in one of our old favourites, Snow Tails.

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Snow Tails is a husky sled-racing game where players have a deck of cards from which they draw a hand of five, playing one to three of these each turn so long as the cards played all have the same value. Each player also has a dog sled with two dogs and a brake. Forward movement is the sum of the dogs minus the value of the break, with a drift sideways of the difference between the two dog speeds (in the direction of the faster, stronger dog). Using this, players have to navigate the course avoiding colliding with obstacles including other sleds, saplings and, of course, the wall of the track.

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Corners are also a hazard, and players traveling too fast into them or hitting things they shouldn’t, pick up dent cards. These are added to the players’ hand and stay there for the rest of the game obstructing their planning and management reducing the number of cards they can draw. The track is modular and there is a “menu” players can choose from. This time, Lime, on the next table chose the board layout, and picked one of the two double hairpin tracks, albeit one without the sledge destroying saplings. It took us a couple of attempts to get the track right though, having to make sure there weren’t two red speed limit lines next to each other and adding a couple of saplings either side of the gorge to make it just a little more interesting.

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Using a random selection, Pine was in pole position, followed by Black, then Purple with Green starting last. There was a nice easy run to the first half bend, but those starting last had to make sure they did not crash into the back of the sledges in front. Within a couple of turns Green had nudged from last to be alongside Black and on the inside of the track so theoretically in the lead. Over the next few turns Green and Black vied for the lead while Pine and Purple were scrapping for third.

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Eventually, Green got a good position for the first hairpin and pulled into the lead. Although could have let the brake off at this point hurtle forward, he decided that the inevitable dents for breaking the speed limit would not be worth it, so instead slammed on the brake. This allowed Black to catch up, but his track position was not so good and soon found himself boxed in on the outside unable to get across the track fast enough, as a result picking up his first dent. At about the same time, Pine also found himself sliding too wide at the hairpin also taking a dent, while Purple was taking it slow and steady, avoiding damage.

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At the front Green used his inside track position to start to pull ahead of Black, and continue round the second hairpin, cutting in tight to the opposite half bend, for an easy dodge through the canyon and round the tree towards the finish line. Black in second place had to manage his damaged sledge through the last corners, but had a good lead on Pine and Purple and was able to easily slide home in second, taking one of the trees with him to the line.

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In the meantime, Pine found himself going too fast into the second hairpin and not only crossed the speed limit line too fast, he also crashed in the same accident black spot that had caused Black problems earlier. Pine’s sledge was so badly damaged that everyone else took pity on him and allowed him to only take a single dent card, although he insisted he should take the lot. At this point it looked like an easy third place for Purple, but she suddenly began to struggle as she didn’t have the right cards to do what she needed to do. As a result she was crawling along so slowly that Pine caught her up. It was looking like it might be rather tight for that third place, until Pine’s impossibly damaged sledge finally got the better of him and Purple crossed the line for third.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: GOATS love a good party!

Golden GOAT Award Winners – 2019

The second Golden GOAT Award was announced at the boardGOATS 2019 “Un-Christmas Dinner” on Tuesday. As last year, we also gave an award acknowledging our least favourite game of the year, known as the “GOAT Poo” prize. Only games played at a GOATS games night since the 2018 Un-Christmas Dinner could be nominated, and, in a slight change to the rules from last year, everyone had three points to hand out for the Golden GOAT Award (plus a bonus if wearing Festive Attire), and everyone could nominate up to two individual games for the GOAT Poo Prize.

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This year there were a number of popular nominees, including Gingerbread House, Lords of Vegas, Villagers and Tokaido, with Boom Boom Balloon getting several honourable mentions for being very silly, but a lot of fun. There was some surprise that Terraforming Mars, Keyflower and last year’s Golden GOAT winner, Altiplano, had all not been played (we must make sure we rectify that next year). This was perhaps a measure of how strong the field was, and many people commented that there wasn’t a stand-out “bad game” for them. Tapestry was a strong candidate for the unofficial “GOAT Marmite-factor” Award receiving nominations for both prizes and added controversy, with a suspicion that its nomination for the GOAT Poo Prize was based purely on the appearance of complexity rather than any actual experience.

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The winner of the “GOAT Poo” award was 7 Wonders, with nearly a third of the group nominating it; it is clearly another Marmite game though as there were plenty of people keen to jump to its defense. The clear winner of the Golden GOAT 2019, however, was Wingspan, with Key Flow an equally clear second (the Silver GOAT perhaps?). Both are excellent games and very deserving choices; we look forward to playing them more next year.

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Deutscher Spiele Preis 2019 – Time to Vote

Like every other sphere, boardgames also receive awards, the best known of which is probably the Spiel des Jahres. The Deutscher Spiele Preis, or German Game Prize, is slightly less well known, but arguably better reflects the slightly more advanced, “Gamers Games”. There is usually quite a lot of overlap with the recommendations, nominees and winners of the Spiel des Jahres Awards, but the Deutscher Spiele Preis typically rewards a slightly heavier game, often more in line with Kennerspiel des Jahres category. This is especially likely to be true this year as the family Spiel des Jahres award, or “Red Pöppel” nominees, are particularly light. The most recent winners of the Deutscher Spiele Preis include, Azul, Terraforming Mars, Mombasa, The Voyages of Marco Polo, Russian Railroads and Terra Mystica, with only Azul, last year’s winner, featuring strongly in the Spiel des Jahres awards (the first game to win both awards since Dominion in 2009).

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Game weight is not the only difference between the two awards: The Spiel des Jahres nominees and winners are selected by a committee with a clearly defined list of criteria, whereas the Deutscher Spiele Preis (which is awarded at the Internationale Spieltage, in Essen), is selected by a general vote which is open to anyone, players, journalists and dealers alike. The incoming votes are evaluated by an independent institute and only votes with details of the full name and address are valid (any duplicates are removed). All votes are treated the same with games placed first receiving five points, those placed second receiving four and so on.

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Only new games from the previous year are included in the ranking, so this year that’s games released since May 2018. Thus anything new at Essen last year or the Spielwarenmesse (Nürnberg) this year, is eligible. This includes Architects of the West Kingdom, Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra (the sequel to last year’s winner Azul), Dice Settlers, Endeavor: Age of Sail, Everdell, Key Flow, Newton, Reykholt, Solenia, and Teotihuacan: City of Gods, as well all the nominees and recommendations for the Spiel des Jahres award, like L.A.M.A., Wingspan and Carpe Diem.

– Image from spiel-messe.com

Voting is open until 31^st July and there are hundreds of free games and tickets for the International Gamedays at Essen to win. It’s not necessary to submit a full list, so why not take the opportunity to vote for your favourite release of the year?

5th March 2019

The evening started with lots of chit-chat including discussions about the smell of weed (the cheap stuff is called skunk for good reason apparently), a Czech bloke who was eaten by his illegally kept lion and the fact that Pine was feeling very poorly (which ultimately turned out to be a nasty case of cellulitis rather than man-flu). Meanwhile, lots of pancakes were eaten and there was a mix-up between Blue’s and Green’s leading to much hilarity. The return of Ivory after a a couple of months on “sabbatical” heralded the long awaited Key Flow, as the “Feature Game”. Key Flow is a card game version of one of our favourite games, Keyflower, and before Ivory left we promised we would save it for his return.

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Purple and Black quickly excused themselves from playing Key Flow, and with Blue, Burgundy and Green joining Ivory, the group divided into two with unusual alacrity. Blue and Burgundy explained the rules, which though related to Keyflower (and by extension, Key to the City: London) with familiar iconography and similarly played over four seasons, give the game a very different feel. Key Flow is a very smooth card drafting game, so players start with a hand of cards and choose to one to play and hand the rest on to the next player. The cards come in three flavours: village buildings, riverside buildings and meeples. Village cards are placed in a player’s village, in a row extending either side of their starting home card. Riverside tiles are placed in a row below, slightly off-set. Meeple cards are used to activate Village cards by placing them above the relevant building.

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As in Keyflower, buildings provide resources, skill tiles, transport and upgrades. They also provide meeple tokens which can be used to increase the power of meeple cards or activate a player’s own buildings at the end of the round. Arguably the clever part is how the meeple cards work. At the centre of each card there are a number of meeples which dictate the power of the card. A single meeple card can be played on any empty building; a double meeple card can be played on an empty building or one where one other card has already been played. If two cards have already been played, a triple meeple card is required to activate it a third and final time. Alternatively, a lower power meeple card can be played with one of the meeple tokens, which upgrade a single meeple card to a triple meeple card. Double meeple cards can also be upgraded, but each building can only be activated a maximum of three times per round.

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The really clever part is that the meeple cards have arrows on them indicating where they can be played: in the player’s own village, in the neighbouring village to the right, the village to the left, or some combination. In the four player game, this means everyone has access to the buildings in three of the villages, but not the fourth (located opposite). And in this game that was critical for Blue. As in Keyflower, players begin the game with a small number of winter scoring tiles (cards in Key Flow), which can be used to drive their strategy. In Key Flow, each player additionally chooses one at the start of the final round, so they know they are guaranteed to keep one of these and can invest more deeply in one strategy. As a result, Blue was caught in a difficult situation. As the game developed, Burgundy and Ivory both collected a lot of skill tiles; Blue was also interested as she had received the Scribe winter card at the start which gives seven points for every set of three different skill tiles.

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Unfortunately for Blue, she could only get pick-axe skill tiles and Green sat opposite, had the Hiring Fair which would have allowed her to change some of them, but the seating position meant she couldn’t use it. Ivory had other plans, however, and was busy picking up pigs and sheep. Burgundy was producing gold and Green was producing wood. Everyone was hampered by a paucity of coal as the Key Mine and miner cards were among those removed at random at the start of the game. The game progressed through the seasons, and the game is very smooth, with more restrictions on the decisions and less of the negative, obstructive bidding that often features in Keyflower, making it a bit quicker to boot, though the setup is a little tedious.

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Blue and Green were not in the running which was notable as they usually both do well with Keyflower, but both had struggled to get the cards or skill tiles they needed for their strategies. In truth, though the theme is similar and the iconography and some of the mechanisms are the same, the two games are really very different, so perhaps it was not so surprising after all. It was very, very close between Ivory and Burgundy at the front though, with just two points in it. Ivory had no points from autumn cards, but a lot of upgrades and lots of points from his winter tiles. In particular he scored well for his Truffle Orchard, which rewards players for having a lot of pigs and skill tiles, that he coupled with the marvelously named Mansfield Ark which allows pigs to be replaced with sheep. In contrast, Burgundy had fewer upgraded buildings, but a lot of autumn cards that scored points for him, especially his Stoneyard. It wasn’t enough though, and despite Green dumping his winter tile to try to limit Ivory’s scoring options, Ivory just beat Burgundy into second place—Welcome back Ivory!

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While Blue and Burgundy explained the rules to Key Flow and set up the decks of cards, the other debated what to play. Auf Teufel komm raus came out of the bag and then went back into the bag when Purple decided she didn’t want to play it, only for it come back out again in response to the chorus of protests, and this time make it onto the table. This is a game we played for the first time a few weeks ago and enjoyed though we struggled with constantly making change due to a shortage of poker chips that make up the currency. Thanks to the very kind people at Zoch Verlag, now furnished with a second pack of chips, it was time to play again. The game uses “push your luck” and bidding in combination to make a simple but fun game.

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Everyone simultaneously places bets on the maximum value of coal that will be drawn out of the fire by one player in the round. Players then take it in turns to draw coals, either stopping when they choose or going bust if they draw a piece.This time, despite her reluctance to play it, Purple started very quickly and held the lead for most of the game. Like last time, Mulberry skulked at the back, and abused this position to overtake Pine at the end by making a pact with the Devil. Black stayed hidden in the pack for the majority of the game and then, in the final round pushed the boat out and gambled big. In this game going large can lead to a spectacular win or equally spectacular loss. This time, the gamble paid off and Black raked in a massive three-hundred and eighty points taking him just ahead of Purple in the dying stages of the game.

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With Auf Teufel komm raus over and Key Flow still underway, Purple was able to choose a game she wanted to play, and picked Hare & Tortoise. This is an old game, the first winner of the Spiel des Jahres award, forty years ago. The game is a very clever racing game where players pay for their move with Carrots, but the further they move the more it costs. The icing on the cake are the Lettuces though: each player starts with a bunch of Carrots and three Lettuces—players cannot finish until they have got rid of all their Lettuces and nearly all of their Carrots. On their turn the active player pays Carrots to move their token along the track; each space has a different effect including enabling them to eat Lettuces, but each will only hold one player’s token at a time.

– Image by boardGOATS

Competition for these Lettuce spaces is always fierce, but that’s not the only stress, as efficiency is key, players who move too fast consume their Carrots too quickly and have to find a way to get more, which slows them down. The winner is the first player to cross the finishing line, but that’s only possible if they’ve eaten all their Lettuces and almost all of their Carrot cards. Last time we played Hare & Tortoise, it was six-player mayhem and a real scrabble as a result. This time with just four, it was still a scrabble, but not quite as intense. Black got his nose in front and managed his timing very effectively so was first to cross the line. Pine and Mulberry were close behind, the latter just two turns from crossing the line herself.

– Image by boardGOATS

Hare & Tortoise finished at about the same time as Key Flow; Pine had looked like death all night and Mulberry had an important meeting in the morning so both left early. Ivory, on the other hand, said he would stay for another game so long as it was short, so the rump of the group settled down to an old favourite, 6 Nimmt!. Everyone knew the how to play: players simultaneously choose a card, then simultaneously reveal them before playing them in ascending order placing each on the row ending with the highest card that is lower than the card being played. When the sixth card is added to a row, the first five are taken and the number of heads contributes to the player’s score, lowest score wins. We tend to play a variant over two rounds with half the deck in each round and not resetting the table in between.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, Blue continued her poor run of form and top-scored in the first round with twenty-six, closely followed by Purple with twenty-two. With a round to go, Burgundy, Ivory, Green and Black were all still in with a shout though. Unusually, the second round went very similarly to the first, with Purple top-scoring with thirty-one (giving her a grand-total of fifty-three), Burgundy and Ivory getting exactly the same score as they had in the first round, and Green finishing with a similarly low score. Only Black and Blue had significantly different scores, and while Black’s second round score destroyed his very competitive position from the first round, nothing was going to put Blue in with a chance of winning. It was Ivory, again, who was the winner though, with a perfect zero in both rounds—two games out of two on his return (while we are very pleased to see him back again, we’ll have to put a stop to this run!).

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory decided to quit while he was ahead, leaving five to play Sagrada with the expansion. Sagrada is a similar game to Azul, using dice instead of tiles and with a stained glass theme (which was slightly controversially also used in the recent Azul sequel, Stained Glass of Sintra). In Sagrada, each player has a grid representing a stained glass window. At the start of the round, a handful of dice are rolled, and players take it in turns to choose one and place it in their window. Once everyone has taken one die, everyone takes a second in reverse order (a la the initial building placement in Settlers of Catan). This leaves one die which is added to the Round Track—the game ends after ten rounds, i.e. when after the tenth die has been placed on the Round Track.

– Image by boardGOATS

When players place dice, they must obey the restrictions on the window pattern card selected at the start of the game. This time we played as well as two cards from the main decks (Gravitas for Purple and Firmitas for Black), we also used three promos: Vitraux (Blue), International Tabletop Day (Burgundy), and Game Boy Geek (Green; ironic as he’d never had a Game Boy in his life!). This doesn’t score any points they come from the objectives: public, which are shared and private which are personal. This time, the public objectives awarded points for columns with different colours, rows with different colours and columns with different numbers. The original game only included enough material for four players, but the recent expansion provided the additional pieces for the fifth and sixth, and four of the five private objectives came from there, giving those players the total face value of dice played in specific places.

– Image by boardGOATS

In addition to the private objectives, the group also decided to use the private dice pools. When these are used, players only take one die from the draft (instead of two), taking the second from a pool rolled at the start of the game. The final part of the game is the tool cards, three of which are drawn at random. These can be used by players to help manipulate dice after they’ve been rolled or placed. This time the tools were the Grinding Stone, Lens Cutter and Tap Wheel which enabled players to rotate dice to the opposite face, swap a drafted die with one from the Round Track and move two dice of the same colour that matches one of the dice on the Round Track. To use these Tools, players must pay in tokens that are allocated at the start of the game according to the difficulty of their window pattern card. Any of these left over at the end of the game is worth a point, but otherwise, points can only be scored by completing the objectives, and any dice that cannot be placed score negative points.

– Image by boardGOATS

The problem with this game is that it is extremely easy to get into a pickle and end up placing dice illegally. Blue, who was a bit all over the place due to a night shift on Monday thought she would be the culprit, but it was Black who fell foul of the rules, and several times too. Each mistake only cost him one point though, and in some respects it is better to have to remove dice than compromise plans. Although she didn’t make any mistakes, Purple was concentrating so hard on placing all her dice she completely forgot to work on the objectives. Misplaced dice tend to be indicative of other problems though and Blue was absolutely determined not break the rules this time, having made a complete pig’s ear of the game just over a year ago at New Year. As a result she concentrated so hard that she gave herself a headache.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the end, arguably it was worth the sore head as Blue not only avoided any illegal die placements, but also managed to get sets of different colours for all five columns in her window. Green managed four out of his five columns though and did well on some of the other objectives too. Burgundy hadn’t done so well on that objective, but had done better on others, especially his own private objective. It was very close for second, with Burgundy just one point behind Green’s sixty six, but Blue, headache and all was well in front with over eighty. As they packed up, the group discussed the inclusion of the private dice pools and the effect of the extra player. Blue felt the dice pools gave a better chance to plan, while Black felt they made the decision space more complex and slowed the game down. Certainly, with five there’s a lot of thinking time and it can be very frustrating to see others ahead in the turn order take all the “best” dice, something that seemed worse with more players.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: It’s great to welcome people back when they’ve been away!

Next Meeting – 5th March 2019

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 5^th March, at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale. As usual, we will be playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

This week the “Feature Game” will be Key Flow, a sort of card game version of one of our favourite games, Keyflower. In truth, though the theme is similar and the iconography and some of the mechanisms are the same, the two games are really very different. Key Flow is a card drafting game where players are adding cards to their village, and to the river that flows alongside.

– Image by boardGOATS

And speaking of rivers…

Jeff had just been handed his P45 and was feeling very, very down. He had loved his job and been proud of what he did and didn’t know how he was going to tell his friends and family. Walking home, he crossed a bridge high above the Thames. As he looked over the railing he contemplated his position and suddenly found himself standing on the top rail getting ready to jump. As he perched precariously, he happened to look down and saw a little man with no arms dancing on the river bank below.

Jeff thought, “My life isn’t so bad after all—at least I have both arms.” And with that he got off the railing. Filled with a strange feeling of relief, he then walked down to the river bank to thank the little man for saving his life.

“Excuse me…” Jeff said as he approached the little man. “I Just wanted to say thank-you. I was about to jump off that bridge and kill myself, but when I saw you dancing even though you have no arms, I changed my mind.”

“Dancing? I’m not dancing,” the armless man replied bitterly. “I’ve got an itch and I can’t scratch it!”

30th October 2018

The evening began with the inevitable post-Essen chit-chat and games-mule deliveries (though most of it hadn’t been unpacked so that’s something to look forward to next week too). Burgundy was very pleased with his substantial pile of Concordia expansion maps though (including the new Venus expansion and older Britania/Germania, Gallia/Corsica packs), and Pine was thrilled to hear there was a copy of Echidna Shuffle on its way for him too. With food delayed, and a lot of people already arrived, we decided to get going with the “Feature Game”. Prior to Essen, we had planned to play Key Flow, however, that was still packed and there hadn’t been time to learn the rules, so instead the “Feature Game” chosen was Peppers of the Caribbean. This is a cute little set collecting card game with a very loose pirate theme. Each card features a number, a colour and a type of food. The idea is that there is a face up market and on their turn, players can either take cards from the market, or play cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

To take cards from the market the active player must first discard a card and can then take all the cards of that colour or all the cards of that food type into their hand (discarding down to seven if necessary). Alternatively, they can play a set of three or four cards where all the cards have different colours and different food types. Of these, two cards are discarded and the remaining cards are kept for scoring. At the end of the game, players sum up the face value of the cards in their pile of kept cards, and the highest score is the winner. There are one or two fine details, for example, as well as “chilli cards” there are also rum cards which feature two colours and no food. These have a high value (six, compared with one to four for the chilli cards) and can help people make sets more quickly. However, as they have two colours, this means there can only be one rum card in a set and the maximum set size is then three, so only one card can be kept reducing the scoring opportunity. There are also bonus points cards which are drawn largely at random from a pile—some of these are end-game bonuses and others reward the first player to reach a goal (e.g. be the first player to have all four different food types in front of them).

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue and Pink had played the game a couple of times in their hotel bar at Essen and on the train home. They had found it a diverting little game with two players and had wondered how it would play with more people. Somehow it is one of those games that is slightly confusing at the start and things were made more challenging as we began with three players and ended up with five as more people arrived, meaning the rules got explained several times from different points. As a result there were slow starters and “fast twitch” players. It was close at the top though with Burgundy and Ivory some way ahead in a tight finish which Ivory took by just three points. Although everyone would probably play it again, it was clear that the game would be better with fewer players where there would be less fluctuation in the market and everyone would have more of a chance to get what they want. It only became clear some time later that there had been a mix-up somewhere along the line and although the side of the box said it was suitable for five, the bottom and the website indicated that the game was only intended to play a maximum of four anyhow…

– Image by boardGOATS

Just as the game was coming to an end, Black and Purple arrived in need of some R&R after what had been a trying day. They had also brought some of their Essen Loot (including a copy of Las Vegas for Red), and the Essen discussion began again. Black and Purple had been at the fair for the full four days and felt that a minimum of two was needed to see everything, but three days was a more realistic time. Blue and Pink had been there for just two days as they can’t cope with the crowds for more than that. Even they are considering a Thursday-Friday-Sunday strategy for next year though as there are now six halls (some very large indeed), and they felt they had missed a lot of things that they had wanted to see this year. That said, a lot of games sold out including the expansions for Altiplano and Great Western Trail (Altiplano: The Traveler and Great Western Trail: Rails to the North), Mini Rails (again!), Hanamikoji, Food Chain Magnate, Roll to the Top, Majolica, Spirit Island, Echidna Shuffle, Ceylon and headline releases Teotihuacan: City of Gods, Architects of the West Kingdom, Newton, The River and Everdell. Some of these went ridiculously fast, for example Everdell apparently sold out in six minutes on Saturday despite its not insubstantial price tag of €70.

– Image by boardGOATS

Purple and Black were particularly pleased with Solenia, which they had played at the fair and then managed to grab one of the last few copies available. A beautiful game with a totally over-produced large yellow airship and cards with a hole in the middle, it wasn’t long before it became clear that it was going to be one of the games to make it to the table. The pretext is that several millennia ago, the tiny planet Solenia lost its day-and-night cycle: its northern hemisphere was forever plunged into darkness, and its southern hemisphere was eternally bathed in bright sunlight. Players travel the world delivering the rarest gems and stones to the “Day People” and take wood and wheat to the “Night People” who need them to survive. In return players receive gold stars and the player with the most of these at the end of the game is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

In each round, players take it in turns to play one card from their hand onto an empty space on the five-by-five game board. Cards can be played either on a “Floating Island” or a “Floating City”. Cards played on Floating Islands will give as many resources as the value of the card played of the type corresponding to the City. Cards played on Floating Islands enable players to fulfil a delivery tile by delivering the resources depicted on it. Cards must be played adjacent to the airship in the centre of the playing area or adjacent to one of the players previously played cards. When someone plays a zero card, the airship advances one space along the modular board. At the end of that turn, the back piece of the game board is removed and players receive resources based on the cards they have on this strip of the playing area. This strip is then turned over (turning night to day / dawn to dusk or vice versa), and it is placed on the front edge of the game board, and thus the airship moves across the planet. This constantly changing board rolling from day to night and back to day again gives the game a unique feel.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although resources were far from scarce (unlike other resource management games), it still has quite a bit of resource management thanks to a strict resource limit on a players personal board. Thus, the real problem came in deciding which were the most important resources to keep, a little bit of area control/route planning, and a few paths to victory points. The constantly changing nature of the game doesn’t lend itself to a developing narrative though having played it before, Black and Purple had an edge over Green. This wasn’t helped when Green misunderstood one of the cards and tried to do something clever to multiply his points. The first attempt failed, but on the second try he thought he had achieved more points and then the misunderstanding came to light—the bonus points only applied to the card itself not to all types of terrain he had cards on. It would not have changed the placings though. It was very tight between Black and Purple until Black managed to gather together three pairs of day and night bonus chits, which hadn’t been looking likely until the last couple of turns. With that, he just sneaked his nose in front, winning by three points. Overall Solenia is a clever game that takes a run through to get a feel for how it works and then you then just want to play again—it certainly won’t be long before it gets another outing.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile the other four were giving Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra a try. This was another Essen release, and one that had generated a lot of “buzz” in advance as it was produced by the same team that originally published this year’s double award winner, Azul. Blue, Purple, Black and Pink had all tried it while in Germany and found the scoring sufficiently different and interesting that they had collectively come back with two copies. Initially the conversation centred around the clear plastic tiles that, largely dependent on age, reminded some people of Spangles (“The sweet way to go gay”) and others of “Tunes” (“Help you breath more easily” and thus “Book a second-class ticket to Nott-ing-ham”) . Once the subject had moved away from 1980s confectionery, attention focussed on the new game and its similarity and contrast with the original Azul. As in the original, players take all the tiles of one colour from a “factory” and put the rest in the middle, or they take all the tiles of one colour from the middle. Tile placement and scoring is rather different however. All the tiles taken in a turn are placed in a single column of the player’s personal player board. This board is modular with the double-sided strips laid out at random so everyone has a different starting setup.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Above the board each player has a figure, their Glazier, who marks one strip. Tiles must be placed in the strip immediately below the Glazier, or in a strip to the right of the Glazier. The Glazier gives players another option on their turn too, as players can choose to reset his position to the left most strip (instead of taking tiles). Scoring is very different, with players getting points when strips are completed. The number of points scored is the sum of the score depicted below the strip, plus the score for 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, reducing the players placement options. This provides a subtle catch-up mechanism that takes effect towards the end of the game. Any left over tiles that cannot be placed yield a penalty (as in the original Azul game), but this is also different. In addition to the positive score track, there is also a negative score track where the steps start off small and then get larger; penalties are accrued for left-over tiles and also for being first to take a tile from the middle (and with it the Start Player token). There are also end-game bonus points with two variants available, one colour dependent and the other rewarding completing adjacent strips. All in all, the game is definitely a step up in complexity, making it more of a challenge for those who have played Azul extensively.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

As most of the group fall into that category, we had high hopes that Stained Glass of Sintra would be a good fit. It certainly offers a new challenge, though it was clear that the fact Blue had played it before gave her a significant advantage. For example, the timing of repositioning the Glazier is very critical. It doesn’t necessarily prevent a player getting a load of tiles they don’t want (as everyone can reposition their Glazier and the problem will come back round), but players don’t want to be stuck with their Glazier far to the right at the start of a new round as that limits their choice when the options are at their best. Similarly, player don’t want to reposition their Glazier too frequently as this reduces the number of tiles they take and therefore affects their score. Behind Blue it was very tight for second place with just five points covering Pine, Burgundy and Ivory. It was Pine who got his nose in front though, by keeping his negative score down and concentrating on his end-game bonuses. Unfortunately, the game is not as nicely produced as the original: the broken glass tower is made of very thin card (more like thick paper) as is the score board. The “glass” pieces are also somehow not as nice as the resin tiles in the original and the colours are less distinct as well. These negatives are a real shame as they take the edge off what would otherwise be a excellent reimplementation of the superb original game.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Green and went home for an early night leaving five others plus Pine who wanted to play something “in about forty-five minutes”. Deciding what to play took so long that there nearly wasn’t time to play anything at all, but after three new games, everyone was in the mood for something “comfy”, and eventually Bohnanza appeared. Pink’s new “Fan Edition” was still packed, as was the Jokerbohnen mini-expansion that Blue had acquired. She had not brought her Spanish copy either, so it was the “boring” Rio Grande Games edition. Familiarity sometimes has its place though, and this was one of those times. Nobody needed a reminder of the rules (plant the first bean in hand; optionally plant the second; turn over two cards and plant or trade them; trade from hand, and draw cards placed at the back of the hand), but the setup varies for different numbers. It wasn’t long before we were underway, however, and Purple quickly began to amass a crazy number of Red Beans. It felt like nobody else could really compete although Black came very close finishing with thirteen coins, one behind Purple.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: New is very exciting, but that comfy pair of old slippers still has its place.

Essen 2018

Last week was The Internationale Spieltage, the largest games fair in Europe and, arguably, the world, known to Gamers worldwide simply as “Essen”. The fair runs Thursday to Sunday in mid/late-October every year and is the one of the biggest and most significant of all the boardgame conventions with many new releases and timed to coincide with the end of October.

– Image from spiel-messe.com

This year several of the group went, and despite a lot of games selling out really early, they came back with expansions for well-loved games like Kingdomino (Age of Giants), Isle of Skye (Druids) and Altiplano (The Traveler), some new games like Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra, Solenia and Key Flow, and some old classics like Mississippi Queen. It will be exciting to see how these new toys go down with the group over the coming months.

– Image used with permission of boargamephotos