Tag Archives: Key to the City: London

20th September 2022

Blue and Pink were the first to arrive to the news that The Jockey was under new management. Pine soon followed and after a bit of chatter, the three of them settled down to the first “Royal Themed” game, Love Letter. This is a very quick little game played with a deck of just sixteen cards. The idea is that players have a hand of one card and, on their turn draw a second and choose which one to play. The cards each have a special action and a number—the actions allow players to eliminate each other and the player with the highest number at the end is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

Powerful cards can lead to early gains, but are risky as they make players targets, however, relying on weaker cards for too long will give a guaranteed loss. This time, Pink was taken out twice in consecutive rounds by Guard cards with Pine and Blue sharing the spoils. In the third round, it was down to Blue and Pine again and Pine ran out the winner. Although with three players the winner is usually the first to win five rounds, as Green and Lilac arrived with Orange and Lemon, the trio called it a halt there.

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Ivory, Black and Purple turned up as well and as they arrived, everyone remarked on the new smart table decor. We were only waiting for Lime, but when Pine suggested he might not be coming, his text enquiry was met with the response, “OMG, it’s Tuesday not Monday, will be there in twenty minutes!” So, while the group were waiting, they decided to start with the “Feature Game“. To mark the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, this was Corgi Dash, a re-theme of the 1986 Spiel des Jahres winner Heimlich & Co.. Corgi Dash was published as a “Jubilee Souvenir” earlier this year, by Tony Boydell; although we had a copy picked up at the UK Games Expo, as it was a special occasion we had enlarged the board to make it easier to play in a large group.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is very simple: on their turn, players roll a die and distribute the pips amongst the “corgis” to move them round the board. When one of the corgis reaches the throne (either in the Throne Room or the Kennels), each dog scores with the one that triggered the scoring getting nothing. The Throne then moves to the next location, and the corgis continue to dash towards the Throne. Each player secretly “owns” one of the dogs and after one dog reaches a score of thirty, everyone secretly guesses which dog belongs to which player. The game ends when one dog reaches forty points. Players then score for their dog and receive five additional points for each identity they guessed correctly.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue, Pink, Ivory, Purple and Pine got going first. In their game, the blue dog (well, meeple actually) got picked on early which marked it out as the dog with no owner. Unfortunately, the blue dog turned out to belong to Pine and it was the grey dog who had no owner, which became more apparent towards the end when everyone concentrated on their own hounds. The black dog was the first to get to thirty and then the only one to get to forty too. Ivory was the only one to guess more than one owner correctly, but it didn’t make any difference as the black dog’s score was twenty more than any other, making it’s owner, Pink, the clear winner.

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On the neighbouring table, Green (who had played Heimlich & Co. a very long time ago, explained the rules to Lilac, Orange, Lemon and Purple. They finished their game early, guessing after two scoring rounds and scoring after the third. Green’s dog did by far the best picking up thirty-two points, twelve more than any other hound. Orange did exceptionally well at guessing who had each dog, getting three right, but it wasn’t quite enough to take the lead and he finished two points behind Green, both some way clear of the field with Lemon a distant third.

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Corgi Dash was very quick to play leaving plenty of time for other games. With all the happenings around Buckingham Palace and Westminster over the last week, “London themed” games seemed appropriate, so while everyone else played Ticket to Ride: London, Ivory, Blue and Lime took themselves off to the other side of the room to squeeze in a game of Key to the City: London. This is a reimplementation of one of Blue’s favourite games, Keyflower. Lime, however, had not played either game, so Blue and Ivory had to explain the rules first.

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Like Keyflower, Key to the City: London is based on an a series of tile auctions where players bid with meeples. The rules for bidding are simple: players can bid on any tile, but if there is already a bid, they must follow with the same colour and increase the value. In addition to bidding for tiles, players can also activate a tile in their Borough, a tile in someone else’s Borough or even a tile that is currently up for auction. Again though, players must follow colour if the tile has already been activated or has an active bid, further, every time it is activated it costs one additional meeple.

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At the end of each round, all meeples in winning bids return to the bank and players take any tiles they’ve won and add them to their Borough. All meeples on tiles in a player’s Borough go back to that player, and any meeples used to activate tiles up for auction go to the winner of the tile. Tiles are worth points at the end of the game. Some are just worth points out-right while others are dependent on tiles they are connected to and all are worth more if they are upgraded. Connections are acquired by activating specific tiles; tiles are also upgraded by activating them and paying any associated cost.

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The winner is the player with the most points at the end of the game. While the mechanics of the game are fairly straight forward, like Keyflower the art of the game is combining them to score well. The Connections are the main difference between Key to the City and Keyflower, but there are several other smaller differences like the round endings, for example. In Keyflower, players bid for boat tiles which dictate how many meeples they get at the end of each round, but in Key to the City, when players choose to end their round place their boat in a position on the river. The earlier a player “checks out”, the earlier they can place their boat and the more meeples they can get—and meeples are scarce, very scarce, in both games.

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This time, Ivory with the Buckingham Palace player screen and start tile, went first. He began by winning Paddington Station which gave him telecoms (black) and electricity (grey) cable connections. He went on to couple this with St. Pancras, Kings Cross and the Royal Academy which gave points when connected with electricity cables and Marble Arch and Monument which gave points for telecoms cable connections. Lime understood the fundamentals, but was struggling with how to fit them into the game, so when he picked up Battersea Power Station which provided water (blue) and gas (yellow) pipe connections, he was encouraged to pick up the London Eye and Canary Wharf to go with it which ultimately proved good choices.

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Blue lost out in a couple of early bidding wars, so ended up with the Barbican instead, giving her underground tunnels (red) and waste pipe (brown) connectors and later Charing Cross (more underground tunnels and grey electricity cables). Maybe she’s spent too long with Pink, but she mostly chose to eschew sewage pipes and electricity pylons, instead focusing on trains, using them to make connections with the Royal Opera and the Globe Theatre. Unfortunately, there was a little “rules malfunction” in the early part of the game with a misunderstanding of one of the scoring icons. Instead of players scoring for connectors of the colour indicated connected directly or indirectly to a tile, players should only score for each tile connected to the scoring tile.

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The “rules malfunction” was spotted quite early, so although it added a little to Lime’s confusion, everyone had enough time to correct things before scoring took effect. In the final round, Ivory bid for the Natural History Museum which gave him points for monuments, and London Zoo giving him two points for each blue meeple he was left with at the end of the game. He then activated a few last tiles and set sail. Lime engaged in making lots of utilities connections, and bid for the British Museum and the Royal Festival Hall (giving two points for each tile won in the final round and three points for each tile connected by all six utilities respectively).

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Blue took the V & A Museum (giving points for sets of skills tiles) and the Science Museum (giving points for tiles with six connections). Then she made a mistake: with Ivory out and Lime running low on meeples, she had the opportunity to either out bid Ivory for London Zoo, or compete with Lime for the British Museum and in a fit of stupidity went for the latter. Blue’s error might have proved critical though as winning the zoo would not only have given her twelve points, but also taken twelve from Ivory. As it was, in the final count, Ivory took victory with a hundred and seventeen to Blue’s ninety-six and Lime’s seventy-eight.

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Meanwhile, on the other side of the room two games of Ticket to Ride: London were underway. Ticket to Ride is one of our current favourite games and the London variant, being one of our “local” editions is particularly popular. The game plays in the usual way with players taking cards from the market, using them to pay to place trains on the map and claim routes, or taking Tickets which give points at the end of the game if the two destinations are connected. Each map has an extra rules “tweak” and in case of the London edition players get bonus points if they visit all the places in a borough.

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When Pink asked Pine who the people were on the box there was a general aura of shock when he claimed not to recognise Emma Peel (though he did correctly identify Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II). Their game with Purple and Black started off very confrontationally in the centre of the board and carried on in much the same vein as the game developed from there. Pink took Pine’s dubious advice to take more tickets, but failed to score them. Pine got his comeuppance though when Black just pipped him to the line beating him into second place by a single point, while Purple took third.

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The other group managed to rattle through the game really quickly too as everyone knew what they were doing. Orange completed all his Tickets and triggered the end of the game. For everyone else it was a more frustrating game. Lilac was convinced she was going to lose as she had failed to complete one of her tickets finding herself blocked, but in the end finished second, significantly ahead of Green and Lemon. Green had tried the “gamers tactic” (espoused by Black on previous occasions) said all the best Ticket to Ride players do, namely collecting more tickets at the start of the game.

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This went OK until about half way through when he got blocked on his best route, then while trying to re-route got blocked again, forcing him to try a third option. This was blocked too and he was locked out of his key station, finishing with three incomplete Tickets. Lemon had tried the same strategy (collecting tickets first), but also ended up with a couple not completed. As a result, Orange wiped the floor with everyone else finishing with a score nearly three times that of his nearest competitor: a convincing victory.

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Key to the City: London was still underway, so, given Her late Majesty’s well known love of the gee-gees, the two groups got together to play Turf Horse Racing. It was a while since anyone in the group played it, so Green reminded everyone of the rules. The idea is very simple, players have three counters to use for betting, two small and one large, double weight one. In the first stage, players take it in turns to use these counters to bet on horses. In the second stage, players take it in turns to roll the die and move a horse to determine the outcome of the race.

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The game works because the die has three horses heads with one of each of the other icons, and each horse moves a different amount depending on what is rolled. Since each horse has to move before a horse can be moved again, players can choose to make a positive move for one of their own horses, or nobble someone else’s. Although the rules as written give the maximum number of players for Turf Horse Racing as six, the group thought it would stretch to more due to the way it is played. And given the hilarity that ensued, that seemed a really good decision.

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It was decided that due to there being so many players, perhaps three bets per player would create too many horses with multiple bets, so it was house-ruled to two bets only each: one big and one small. The extra bet tokens needed were taken from Ticket to Ride: a scoring disc and a bus. Pine was the sole “investor” in Roamin’ Emperor’s fortunes. Pink, trying to get his revenge for being misled in Ticket to Ride, cajoled everyone to choose this purple horse to move only one space, much to Pine’s annoyance. Pink got his way, but then got his comeuppance when someone made his chosen horse, Lagoon Lady, also move only one.

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After the first round it was Silver Blaze blazing a trail up front, closely followed by Mostown Boy and Raven Beauty. This theme kept repeating with Lagoon Lady and Roamin’ Emperor moving only one space a turn, until finally Pine struck gold and was able to shoot his horse forward by a massive fifteen spaces and get it into the leading group. It was a close race, and eventually Silver Blaze was overhauled and brought back into the pack. As the race entered it’s final furlongs Lagoon Lady was still languishing behind. Although it had made up some ground, Roamin’ Emperor was making better progress but also starting to fall back. One more “mega surge” would have been enough to put it within spitting distance of a win, however, that was not to be.

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In the end it was The Red Baron who crossed the line first, with Silver Blaze second and Desert Prince third. Adding up the betting totals, Lemon took home the biggest winnings with eight, with Lilac just one behind in second and Black a comparatively distant third. The conclusion was that Turf Horse Racing can definitely be played with eight, but maybe a little more tinkering is needed. Perhaps keeping the three bets, but with seven horses, the start player moved around the table very slowly—something to think on and investigate further perhaps.

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Learning Outcome: Her Majesty had a point—dogs and horses can be a lot of fun.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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!).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

Essen 2017

It is that time of year again when the gamers’ minds turn to Essen and – The Internationale Spieltage. To Gamers worldwide, Essen is synonymous with the largest games fair in Europe and, arguably, the world. 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. This year the first day will be this Thursday, 26^th October and games, publishers and their wares are all making their way to Germany for four days of fun and games.

– Image from merz-verlag-en.com

Last year several of the group went, and they came back with a lot of expansions for well-loved games like Istanbul, Colt Express, and Orléans and picked up some new games like Key to the City – London, Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails and Cottage Garden. This year, new games include Queendomino, Indian Summer, Altiplano and Keyper, with expansions to old favourites like Isle of Skye, Imhotep, Ticket to Ride, Terraforming Mars and Splendor as well. Once again, several locals are going and they are sure to bring back some interesting toys to play with over the coming months.

– Image used with permission of designer Richard Breese

16th May 2017

Since Red had been hankering after playing the “Feature Game” for a year or so, the first thing we had to do was work out who was going to play it. With Burgundy starting his pizza, and Red and Blue’s still to come, we decided to play something to keep Pine occupied while we waited to see who else was coming. We were just setting out Bokken Schieten (aka Ziegen Kriegen) when Purple and Black arrived closely followed by Green. Pine was sure Ivory wasn’t coming, so with two copies of the “Feature Game” to hand, we then began a debate about how to divide the group into two. At this point, the matter was sort of settled by Ivory’s arrival, so the four player comfortably ensconced at “the wrong table” continued setting up their “goaty game” while the others migrated back to our usual, now vacated table.

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Bokken Schieten (aka Ziegen Kriegen) is a simple little “push your luck” game, based on Blackjack (aka Pontoon or Vingt-et-Un), but with a moving target. Thus the idea is to collect cards up to a limit, but exceeding that limit yields a score of zero and the player is “bust”. So, players choose a card from their hand and play it face up in front of them – the person who plays the highest card takes the trick and with it all the cards played in the round a score equal to the total number of goats heads on the sides of the cards. Unfortunately, they get to lead again and worse, the player in last place gets to add a card to “Goat Island” and choose whether to contribute the larger or smaller number to the limit. Burgundy went bust first taking the first two hands, followed by Red. When Blue dumped a nice large card onto a trick Pine was winning he went out too, leaving Blue to take all the final trick. The only question was whether she had managed to stay within the limit, but finishing with twelve, and given a limit of twelve she just squeaked in to win.

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With that done, and the pizzas also taken care of, it was time for Keyflower, the “Feature Game”. This is one of the group’s favourite games, but has been someone neglected of late. On checking back, we found it was two years since we last played it, though we had played Keyflower’s little brother, Key to the City – London (released at Essen last year), more recently. Both games have the same general flow, using the same tile laying and auction mechanism, but with different tiles and resources used in different ways. The basic mechanism is quite simple, though the resultant game is much deeper. The game is played over four rounds or Seasons, with players taking it in turns to bid on a tile, carry out an action or pass. Once everyone has passed in succession, the round is over, and the tiles are are added to the winning players’ villages. After four rounds, the player with the most points wins.

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The clever part of the game is that the bidding and actions are both carried out with Keyples (which is what meeples are called in these games). So, on their turn, the active player can bid for one of the tiles. If that tile already has a bid against it, then the active player must follow suit by bidding with the same colour and with at least one additional Keyple, thus increasing the bid. Only winning bids are paid for at the end of the round, with loosing bids are returned to their owner, which is just as well because Keyples are scarce, very scarce. In fact, losing bids belong to their owner during the round too as players can move losing bids and use them elsewhere adding more Keyples if necessary. On their turn, players can also activate tiles by placing Keyples on the tile which gives a resource or an action. These resources are then placed on the tile or, in the case of skill tiles, placed behind their player screen. There are several different actions available, but one of the key things players will want to do during the game is upgrade tiles.

– Image by boardGOATS

Tiles are double-sided: when a tile is first added to a village, it has a corresponding action, but upgrading and turning it over will make it more useful. For example, the Workshop tile gives either one coal, one wood or one stone, but when upgraded gives one of each. Tiles can typically be activated three times each Season, but players must follow colour suit and the cost increases by one each time; tiles can hold a maximum of six Keyples. One of the more unusual things about Keyflower is that players can activate the tiles in other peoples’ Villages. This is interesting because the first player to activate a tile dictates the colour for the rest of the round, so if an opponent activates a tile with “the wrong colour” it can make life very difficult for the Village owner. On the other hand, since all Keyples working in the Villages return home and go behind the owners’ screens at the end of the Season, activating a tile in someone else’s Village is effectively giving them valuable Keyples. Perhaps one of the most interesting thing about the game is that strategies almost never turn out quite the way people plan. Other players can innocently make a tile too expensive or even completely unattainable by starting bidding with “the wrong colour”.

– Image by boardGOATS

Also, although the tiles are well balanced, depending on player count, some tiles are not introduced into the game which can make it difficult to get that resource that was essential to a that particular strategy. This means that players tend to do best by keeping their options open for as long as possible and then trying to bring it all together at the end. At the start of the game, each player is given some tiles for the final round, Winter and each player can choose which of these they want to make available to the highest bidder. They can choose as many as they like to introduce, though they must include at least one. This decision doesn’t have to be made until the start of the final round, so although they don’t direct players’ strategy exactly, they can give people a bit of a general steer. The first group of players were Green, Black, Purple and Ivory. Green, Black, and Purple have played Keyflower quite a bit over the years, and although Ivory was new to the game, he had played Key to the City – London, which has a lot of similarities. This made the group quite experienced, but that is certainly no guarantee of success in Keyflower. And how many points make success, was something Ivory asked before they started and received the reply from the other side of the room, “Over a hundred!”, to which, everybody laughed.

– Image by boardGOATS

Spring is the Season for resources, and Purple led the way by picking up the Key Mine, Key Wood and Keystone Quarry tiles providing coal, wood and stone. Although a strong start, sometimes it is easy to get carried away with bidding which can result in a shortage of Keyples for later rounds. On the other hand, if the tiles are particularly useful, they can prove a valuable source of Keyples when other players are tempted to activate them. Unfortunately for Purple, Ivory picked up the Workshop and quickly upgraded it making it a much more enticing tile. Purple’s cause was not helped by Green who was being particularly parsimonious with his Keyples as he had the Craftsmans’ Guild as one of his Winter tiles and was hoping to make it pay at the end of the game. Useful actions can be a double-edged sword however, as Black found out to his cost when everyone kept activating his tiles before he got the chance, and generally with colours that he did not have.

– Image by boardGOATS

Going into the final round, everyone’s plans were on a knife edge. Black’s plans fell apart when, after picking up the Stone Yard (which rewards players for getting stone), in a fit of enthusiasm he upgraded his mason tile. This meant that instead of turning skills tiles into stone, he could now turn them into gold, which is very nice, but was worth about half the number of points to him as well as being a lot more interesting to everyone else. As Winter progressed, the bidding got more determined and everybody had to fight their corner, but especially Green and Ivory. Ivory took the boat tile Green was after, but failed to stop Green winning the Craftsmans’ Guild. Ivory had been quietly collecting skills tiles and squirrelling them away behind his screen, and it was clear why when the Scribes tile appeared at the start of Winter. Green made his move early, putting in a large bid to try to stop him from getting it, but when Ivory countered, Green couldn’t afford to increase the bid further. In fact, it wouldn’t have helped if he’d been able to continue, because Ivory had a number of Keyples in reserve, just in case. And it was those reserve Keyples that clinched it, with Ivory winning with seventy-six points, twenty-one points ahead of Green in second.

– Image by boardGOATS

On the other table, things went a little differently. While Blue and Burgundy had played Keyflower a lot and it was one of their favourite games, Pine had only played Key to the City – London, and Red was completely new to the game, though she had been hankering after giving it a go for a ages. In this game, Pine started off very strongly and then proceeded to build a very nicely balanced little village coveted by both Blue and Burgundy. With both the Miner and the Gold Mine tiles as well as as the Smelter, Pine had access to coal and lots valuable gold and the others felt he only needed a couple of nice Winter tiles to top it off for a really high score. Burgundy picked up the Keystone Quarry giving him plenty of stone once he had upgraded it. As it was, Burgundy’s Workshop was in high demand for those who needed timber for upgrading their home tiles, but the almost complete lack of wood in any Village, became apparent when the Timberyard and Sawmill tiles both appeared in autumn and nobody had any wood to do anything with them. Burgundy’s problems were exacerbated by the shortage of tiles that would give points for stone.

– Image by boardGOATS

Having bid for a lot of tiles in the opening round, and won none Blue was left trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear and cobble together a score from the Apprentice Hall and the flotilla of boats she ended up with at the end of Spring. As she was completely new to the game, Red found herself a little overwhelmed by the amount the game gives players to think about. While the mechanics are fairly straightforward, there are a lot of considerations to take into account when bidding and, unlike the arguably slightly simpler Key to the City – London, getting resources to the right location can be challenging. Red started off with the Peddler tile in spring, which enabled her to swap yellow Keyples for special green Keyples. This gave her an early start going for the Key Market Winter tile that she had in her hand (which rewards players for the number of green Keyples they have at the end of the game) with the added bonus that she would be in a strong position to bid with green Keyples if she needed to.

– Image by boardGOATS

Despite having a fair idea what people had, somehow the Winter tiles were still a bit of a surprise and the scrap began as players tried to make they didn’t lose out. With the other game finishing first, the others came over to spectate and see how their game had compared. Burgundy got his Craftmans’ Guild tile and, tried to stop Blue picking up both the Key Guild and the Scholar, but with both in the game, it was odds on that Blue would get one. In the end she managed to take both and having a huge pile of skill tiles to go with them gave her a healthy number of points. Pine took the Keythedral and decided to fight for his choice of end game boat tile, taking the Keyflower tile giving him points for his transport abilities. As everyone was a little short on Keyples except Blue (largely thanks to having not spent any on bidding during the game) was also able to pick up the Village Hall (and score points for the large number of Red Keyples she had amassed) as well as picking up sixteen points for her sizeable river. These gave her a total just shy of that magic hundred, and thirty-seven points ahead of Pine who’s lovely little village gave him an excellent second place.

– Image by boardGOATS

With the other group not staying to watch the packing away, Pine, Burgundy, Blue and Red felt they needed something quite quick and fun to lighten the mood before bed, indeed a bit 6 Nimmt!-a-like. With that in mind, we went for 3 Sind Eine Zu Viel!, which has a similar run building and picking up cards element as 6 Nimmt!, but a little more strategy, or at least, an illusion of more strategy. The idea is that on their turn they play one card from their hand and add it to one of three rows, in its correct numerical order. If it is the fifth card added to the row (in any position) they have to pick up cards and add them to their collection. The cards they pick up depend on where the card was added however: if the new card is the last in the row, the player picks up the first card in that sequence, otherwise they take all cards higher in number. The cards come in seven different colours; at the end of the game one card of a colour will score one point while two cards will score five, but three will score minus three. Thus, players are ideally trying to collect two of each colour, but three is one too many…

– Image by boardGOATS

The first player to have at least one of each colour face up collects an intermediate bonus, which diminishes for players who achieve this feat later in the game. Players with six or seven different colours at the end of the game receive five or ten bonus points respectively. Each player starts with a hand of eight cards and a face down deck of twelve cards. When they have played their hand down to the last two cards, they can draw back up to eight. This introduces just a little bit of stress during the game, and prepares players for the inevitable stress at the end. And stress there was a plenty. Blue had played the game a few times with Pink and found it interesting, however, with four it has added spice, especially towards the end. Blue picked up the first intermediate swiftly followed by Pine and then Red.

– Image by boardGOATS

Burgundy is well known for his muttering, but this time he had Pine for company. In fact, Pine soon surpassed Burgundy, muttering about how nasty the game was. When it came to the end-game scoring it was clear that he had something to mutter about finishing with almost as many negative points as positive ones and he was only saved from the ignominy of a negative score by the intermediate bonus he had collected. Perhaps she was too tired to moan or maybe she didn’t feel the need, but Red quietly just got on with the game and, with perfect timing, took the full ten point bonus at the end of the round. With Burgundy doing the same, it was close at the tome, but Burgundy just sneaked in ahead of Red, finishing five points clear with forty-seven points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: It may be Nasty, but “The Nasty Game” is Good Fun!

15th Movember 2016

It was another very quiet night thanks to work commitments and illness, so we started late. Our numbers were bolstered by the return of Yellow, who visited back in July when he was in the area for work. Clearly we hadn’t frightened him too much last time and he made a return visit, bringing us up to a total of six. This gave us two possible options: split into two groups of three, or play something with six players. With six players, Keyflower is usually in the mix as it plays very well with that number, and indeed it had been part of the “possible plan” for the evening. However, the “Feature Game” was Key to the City – London which also plays six and is a slightly more streamlined re-implementation of Keyflower. Since everyone was keen to try it so we decided to give it a go with with the full complement.

– Image by boardGOATS

The basic structure of both Keyflower and Key to the City is actually fairly simple, but the strategy behind the games is much more complex. Both games are played over four rounds with players bidding for tiles to add to their village/borough. The bidding is particularly unusual as the currency is “Meeples” and, although bidding must increase and “follow suite”, it is free-form, i.e. all the tiles are auctioned simultaneously. So, players take it in turns to bid, but as the round progresses, players have to decide whether to “spend” Meeples on bidding for other tiles, or whether to keep an emergency supply in case someone tries to out-bid them on a tile they really want. Tiles are generally worth points at the end of the game, but most also provide some advantage when they are activated during the game. This could be the provision of a resource, or it could be the opportunity to convert one resource into another. Any tile in play can be activated by any player placing a Meeple on it. So players can get a benefit from tiles belonging to other players, or even tiles that are still being auctioned. Tiles can be activated many times, but each time, the cost goes up and the player must use an extra Meeple.

– Image by boardGOATS

When activating tiles, players also have to “follow suit”, so Meeples must be the same colour as any others already there, or, if the tiles is being auctioned, the colour should match any previous bids. At the end of the round, any Meeples used to activate a tile are returned to the owner of the tile, thus, player’s are effectively paying Meeples to activate other players’ tiles. And Meeples are valuable, very valuable. The disadvantage for the tile owner, however, is that once their tile has been activated, they may not have enough Meeples in the correct colour to use the action themselves. The round is over when every player has passed consecutively, at which point, all losing Meeple-bids are returned to their owner, all winning bids are placed back in the Meeple bag, all tiles are handed to the winner (or removed from the game if there were no bids) and any Meeples used to activate tiles go behind the owners player screen.

– Image by boardGOATS

Three of the players were familiar with Keyflower, but only one had played Key to the City before, as it was only released at Essen this year. Although the basic structure of the game is the same, it is slightly simpler and more streamlined. For example, in Keyflower, green Meeples are “special” and can only be acquired by activating certain tiles making them much rarer. Thus, players with green Meeples have a big advantage when bidding and activating as it is much harder for other players to follow suit. In Key to the City on the other hand, there are no green Meeples at all. Similarly, in Keyflower, tile placement is very important as resources must be located where they are to be used and can only be transported by road (which needs activation in itself). This is not a consideration for players of Key to the City, however, there is a different positional aspect to the game. The octagonal wooden resource cylinders that feature in Keyflower are replaced by wooden utility “connectors”. These are placed across the edge of a tiles and used to link tiles together. At the end of the game, tiles that are connected together can score points for players with the correct corresponding scoring tiles.

– Image by boardGOATS

Another significant difference between Keyflower and Key to the City is the way the rounds end. In Keyflower, players can continue taking it in turns to bid or activate tiles until everyone passes. In addition to the village tiles, players can also bid for boats which determine the turn order as well as the number and colour of Meeples they get in the next round. These are not present in Key to the City, instead, players have an additional, one-off option of “sailing”. When a player passes, they can, as in Keyflower, rejoin the bidding in later turns if they wish. In Key to the City, players can instead choose to sail, which finishes their round. This is potentially dangerous as it leaves the player without the option to counter-bid if someone else outbids them. However, there is an incentive to sail earlier as the first players to sail can choose to take the river tile (which give scoring opportunities) or start the next round, with the earliest adopters thereafter getting more Meeples to use in later rounds.

– Image by boardGOATS

With three players unfamiliar with both Keyflower and Key to the City we began with a rundown of the rules as well as highlighting the differences between the games for those who had played Keyflower. Once done, as everyone looked at their final round tiles, Ivory asked what a winning score might be. Simultaneously Blue and Yellow responded with “fifty” and “a hundred”! A quick look through the book showed, much to Yellow’s dismay, that the group’s winning scores for Keyflower have generally been above seventy-five. As everyone digested this and we began the first round rather tentatively as players were uncertain of the value of the different tiles. Blue and Yellow were keen to avoid over-paying as they had knew how valuable Meeples could be later in the game when they can get scarce, consequently, they refused to couter-bid beyond their comfort zone and finished the first round with almost nothing between them. Green, on the other hand, led the way and acquired a lot of tiles with Ivory, Magenta and Pine, all new to the game, following his lead. It was towards the end of the round that the great rules debate happened.

– Image by boardGOATS

Yellow and Green had both sailed and the question arose whether sailing counted as passing, because if so, everyone had passed, if not everyone else could continue bidding. Blue checked the rules which said, “If a player passes they can play again later, unless all the other players who have not already sailed also pass. If all the remaining players also pass then all players sail in the order that they passed.” Green was adamant that this could be read either way, and started checking on the BGG rules fora to see if there was discussion on the subject. By the time he had established that there wasn’t, everyone else had decided that bidding should continue, had done the bidding the wanted and the round was over. We muddled through the second round in a similar fashion with Yellow and Blue finally taking some tiles and strategies starting to emerge. Pine and Magenta struggled with the implications and wider objectives of the game, while Ivory (also new to it) purred quietly in the corner as he began to get his head round the game, collected tiles and started to build a strategy.

– Image by boardGOATS

Magenta started out enticed by the monument tiles while Yellow, struggling to win bids started collecting river tiles and began connecting them and taking tokens to exchange for upgrades. Ivory, still purring softly in the corner, managed to pick up tiles that required brown and red connectors as well as the Barbican which provided them. Blue was trying to connect her tiles, but didn’t have the tiles to provide the connectors as they had mostly come out in the first round when she had failed to pick up any tile at all. Pine was just starting to get his head round the iconography, but getting hold of connectors was proving challenging. Meanwhile, Green was ominously winning the bids for the buildings that provide Skill tiles, including the Bank of England and the Senate House and seemed to be trying to re-implement his favourite Keyflower strategy.

– Image by boardGOATS

As we went into the last round and the final tiles were revealed, everyone looked round and tried to decide what they might get and how far they could to push their luck to get a few extra points. With everyone trying to upgrade their buildings, the need for Skill tiles was great and, since Green had a most of them, he received a lot of Meeples in return, most of which were red. This inspired him to go for Lords Cricket ground which would give him two points for each one if he could secure it. Green commented how much he hated cricket at which point he realised that he was winning both the Oval and Lords. Blue took the Oval from him before Ivory went “all in” with a huge pile of red Meeples, with it taking about twenty points from her. With their own projects to complete, nobody obstructed Green in his plans and he finished with a massive thirteen red Meeples (and the scoring tile) as well as a very large pile of Skill tiles.

– Image by boardGOATS

With the final round over, players began to add up their points. Although six-player games can be epic, one of the disadvantages is that it can be very difficult to see what players at the opposite end of the table are doing. Thus, it was only at the end when we went through the scoring that players could really see what everyone else had been doing and where they were getting their points. Ivory, with his large pile of yellow Meeples, substantial sewage and underground systems finished with a very creditable sixty-six. This score was exactly matched by Blue who had a vast telecom’s network and had picked up a couple of monuments which she had managed to upgrade to get the full twelve points. It was Green however who finished with the highest score, nearly twenty points ahead of Yellow and Blue thanks largely to a massive twenty-six points for his pile of red Meeples and much the same again for his Skill tiles.

– Image by boardGOATS

As we packed up there was the inevitable postmortem. Magenta and Pine could both see how clever the game was and were keen to give it another try now they had a better understanding of its flow. Ivory had really enjoyed it too and was also keen to give it, or (Keyflower) another go. The others focused on the comparison between Key to the City and Keyflower. Green said he strongly preferred the artwork for Keyflower, while Blue felt that the axonometric projection and sharper style was better suited to the London theme. She also commented that if Key to the City had been released first, it would have received all the plaudits and Keyflower would have felt “more fiddly”, consequently, perhaps Key to the City was a better game to learn with. The overwhelming consensus though, was that a typical game collection didn’t really need both, but we’d happily play either. As Magenta and Ivory headed off, discussion moved on to the current KickStarter for Keyper, which it turned out, two of us had backed, but we won’t see more of that for another year.

– Image by boardGOATS

There was just time for a quick game to close with, and we settled on Isis & Osiris. This was a another game picked up at Essen and had got its first outing two weeks ago. Green was the only player who had been part of that game however, so we all needed a run-through of the rules, which were simple enough. At the start, players are dealt a pile of tiles, face down, and get a handful of octagonal wooden blocks in their colour. Game play is very simple: on their turn, the active player can either place a tile face down, first showing it to everyone else, or they can place a block. At the end of the game, all the tiles are turned face up and players score points for those tiles orthogonally adjacent to their blocks.

– Image by boardGOATS

As players played their wooden blocks, the following players turned over negative tiles and placed them next to them, ensuring lots of negative scores. As more and more negative tiles put in an appearance, we were all wondering what had happened to the positive ones. By about half-way through we were were certain they had to appear soon, but with four players, some of the tiles are removed from the game, and we were all coming to the conclusion that those tiles were all the high scoring ones. As it turned out, that wasn’t quite the case, though the balance of the tiles in the box was definitely on the positive side. Once all the spaces had been filled, we turned over the tiles and it became clear that one wooden block made all the difference. With three of us finishing with negative totals, it looked a lot like the score line from an episode of QI, but it was Pine that finished with a massive “plus seven QI points” to win the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Some games need to be played more than once.

Essen 2016

It is that time of year when, the leaves fall from the trees and gamers visit Germany. No, Oktoberfest isn’t the draw (that happens in September anyhow), this is an altogether different annual German “festival” – The Internationale Spieltage, which is held in Essen. To Gamers worldwide, Essen is synonymous with the largest games fair in Europe and, arguably, the world. The fair runs Thursday to Sunday in mid-October every year and is the one of the largest and most significant of all the boardgame conventions. As such, many of the manufacturers plan their biggest releases for October with their debut at the Fair.

– Image from merz-verlag.com

Last year there was a bit of a paucity of new games and it seemed to be all about expansions. This year, while there are still plenty of expansions for well-loved games like Istanbul, Colt Express, Orléans and Ca$h ‘n Guns etc., there are also a lot of new games based on old favourites. For example, there is Key to the City – London (which has a lot of elements of one of our favourite games, Keyflower), Jórvík (an update and re-theme of Die Speicherstadt), X Nimmt! (a variant on the popular but chaotic 6 Nimmt!), and the latest incarnation of the Ticket to Ride series, Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails. There will be plenty of other interesting original games too though, including The Oracle of Delphi, A Feast for Odin, Cottage Garden and The Colonists. Several members of the group are going this year, and they’ll no doubt bring back lots of exciting new toys to share with everyone.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Gonzaga