Tag Archives: Kingdomino: Age of Giants

7th March 2023

Plum and Blue were first to arrive and, by the time they had finished their enormous rack of ribs (or given up and had a doggy bag made up), almost everyone else had arrived. There were a few people missing, but still enough for two games of four. The first was the “Feature Game“, but nobody really wanted to commit to that until they knew what the other game was going to be. As he had done the last couple of times, Green suggested Terraforming Mars. Unlike previously, this time Ivory, Plum and Teal felt up to it, leaving Blue, Black, Purple and Lime to play their preferred choice of New York Zoo.

– Image by boardGOATS

New York Zoo is a tile laying game by Uwe Rosenberg, designer of Agricola, Bohnanza, Patchwork and many other well-known games. The idea is that players are building pens in their zoo, populating them with animals, and building attractions. This is one of several polyomino, Tetris-like, tile-laying type games (including Cottage Garden, Spring Meadow, Indian Summer and Patchwork), but what makes this one unique and interesting is the Market. Players move the Marker Elephant one to four spaces round the Market, landing either on an Enclosure tile space (taking the top one and adding it to their zoo) or on an animal space (taking one or both of the animals depicted). Enclosure tiles can be placed anywhere in the player’s Zoo, then one or two identical Animals from elsewhere in their Zoo must be moved to occupy the Enclosure.

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Each Enclosure can only hold one type of Animal, meercats, snow-foxes, kangaroos, penguins or flamingos, but when moving Animals, no pen can be left empty. There is an advantage to pens having two or more Animals in them too—the Market also features breeding spaces, and when the Marker Elephant passes these, up to two pens containing two or more matching Animals get an extra one. When a player moves the Elephant onto an Animal space, they take one of either or both the Animals depicted into Enclosures containing matching Animals (moving another from Storage if they can), or into the Storage space. Moving animals is important, because when an Enclosure is completed the player removes all the animals putting one into Storage if they have space, and then takes an Attraction tile of their choice and adds it to their Zoo.

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Attraction tiles are useful because they fill additional spaces, and at its heart, New York Zoo is a race game—the winner is the first to fill all the spaces in their Zoo. Black and Purple had played this a few times, and once Black had explained the rules to Lime and Blue, Purple started. Black and Purple prioritised completing Enclosures to get Attractions. The Market is stacked so there are large tiles, heptominoes, on the top of each tile space, with hexominoes, then pentominoes and finally tetrominoes at the bottom of each pile. Black and Purple prioritised getting breeding pairs of animals and as the Market dwindled, getting smaller enclosures because small Enclosures are easier to complete than large ones.

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Blue, who had not played the game before, started off getting large Enclosures and fitting them tightly together. As the game progressed, however, she realised her mistake as everyone else’s Animals were breeding and she didn’t have pairs because she was taking one out every time she added another Enclosure. This had the additional consequence that she was starting to run out of Animals too, so she prioritised getting breeding pairs for a couple of rounds before continuing to take the biggest Enclosures she could get away with. It was a tight game—Purple seemed to take an early lead, but it looked like Black and Lime over-took her towards the end and were in a tussle to finish the game first.

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With everyone else concentrating on filling pens and taking Attractions, nobody was watching Blue. So they were taken by surprise when her kangaroos bred filling their pen and she took her first Attraction. That left one space which she promptly filled taking the only Enclosure that fitted, perfectly, and ended the game. With everyone else so close to finishing, however, the rest of the group played on to see who would place where. In the event, Black finished just ahead of Lime. The group were just dissecting the different strategies when Pine arrived, fresh from his meeting teaching “cubbish-sized scouts” about waste. Terraforming Mars was still going on, so the hunt was on for a five-player game, and the group settled on Kingdomino.

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Native, Kingdomino is a four player game, however, with the Age of Giants expansion, it plays five. The base game is simple enough, but it had been a while since most people last played it, so there was a quick run through of the rules. On their turn, players add a terrain domino to their Kingdom; each domino comprises two squares of terrain and when placed at least one end must be adjacent to the same terrain type. Like New York Zoo, the interesting and clever part of the game is the Market. In Kingdomino, there are two parts, current and future—when a player takes their domino from the current market, they choose their next domino by placing their marker on it.

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At the end of the game, players score each terrain region with points equal to the area of each region multiplied by the number of crowns on it. The clever part is the timing of the Market. The tiles are drawn at random from a set numbered from one to forty-eight. The low numbers generally being the less desirable ones, those without crowns or those for terrain types where crowns are more scarce. Since players take the tiles in numerical order (low to high), taking a low value tile in one round gives a better choice in the next. Similarly, taking a high value tile means there will be less (or maybe no) choice in the following round.

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The Age of Giants expansion firstly adds twelve extra tiles (enough for a fifth player), six labeled with letters A to F and six numbered forty-nine to fifty-four. These are ranked below one for the letters and after forty-eight for the high numbers, with the low ranking tiles featuring a Giant, and the high ranking ones featuring Footprints. Players taking dominoes with a Giant on them, also take a Giant-eeple and place it over a crown in their Kingdom so that it doesn’t score. Taking a Footprint domino allows the player to move a Giant from their Kingdom to a crown in someone else’s and this increase their score, making these tiles potentially very valuable.

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Unfortunately (especially for Lime and Blue who ended up with all the Giants), the Footprints seemed hard to come by in this game. The other part of the Age of Giants expansion are the Quests. The base game comes with two Quests, arrangement targets that give points. These are “Middle Kingdom” and “Harmony” which respectively give ten points for a castle in the centre of a player’s Kingdom and five points for a complete five-by-five territory with no discarded tiles. This time, the Quests drawn essentially at random were “Bleak King” and “Four Corners of the Kingdom”. The first of these gave five points for each five square of terrain with no crowns while the second gave players five points for placing cornfields on all four corners of the five-by-five grid that defines their Kingdom.

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Although the Quests had been included in game play several times before, the Giants have only had an outing once and didn’t go down all that well. Still, with five players all the extra tiles were needed and their values would have been unbalanced without including Giants, so the group thought they’d give it another try. This time Blue and Purple had a really hard time getting crowns and things were so bad for Blue that she resorted to picking up twenty points, more than half her total, from the “Bleak King” Quest. Black built a lot of sea and pasture, while Lime scored heavily for his mountains and Pine picked up lots of points for his large woodland.

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It was very close between the top three and both Lime and Pine scored forty-five points for their highest scoring terrain—Lime for nine crowns spread over five spaces, Pine for five crowns spread over nine spaces. There were just two points between Lime and Pine in the end, but Pine’s sixty-eight points just edged Lime into second with Black four points behind that. It had been a good game. However, the group felt that the Giants took a positive constructive game and added a negative aspect. Those that had been stuck with them hadn’t found that aspect particularly enjoyable, especially as it was easy to get lumbered largely through no fault of their own, so it is unlikely they’ll get another outing very soon.

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Meanwhile, on the next table, Green, Ivory, Plum and Teal were still playing Terraforming Mars. To speed up the game they played with the Prelude start cards and also removed the Corporation cards—that turned out to be a good choice as the game only just finished before the pub closed. In this game, players play corporations sponsored by the World Government working together in the terraforming process, but competing for victory points. These are awarded not only for their contribution to the terraforming, but also for advancing human infrastructure throughout the solar system, and doing other generally commendable things.

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The players acquire unique Project cards by buying them into their hand; these can represent anything from introducing plant life or animals, hurling asteroids at the surface, building cities, to mining the moons of Jupiter and establishing greenhouse gas industries to heat up the atmosphere. The Projects can give immediate bonuses, as well as increase production of different resources. Many cards also have requirements and become playable when the temperature, oxygen, or ocean coverage increases enough. Buying cards is costly, so there is a balance between buying cards (three MegaCredits per card) and actually playing them.

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The game ends after the terraforming is complete when the three global parameters, temperature, oxygen, ocean have all reached their goal. Players then score for their Terraform Rating with any other points they might have accrued. This time, Green made his presence felt on the surface of Mars in the early stages with his initial starting forest, which grew a little, and seeded the oceans. He was the only one for a while. Plum played a blue card which gave her a couple of extra Credits every time someone built a city. This one really paid for itself in the four-player game as everyone wanted to build more than one city. Green was first, but had mis-read the card and found himself colonizing Phobos instead.

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So, Teal was the first to actually build a city on the surface of Mars. He opted for the equator but on the other side from Green’s forests. Later he played a blue city bonus card that gave him a Credit production bonus for each one. Although several cities had already been built by then, several more followed and he was able to enjoy the benefit of extra cash in later rounds. Ivory meanwhile had made a different start to the game than his normal opening gambit (building a city), and completed the first Milestone: the Ecologist. However his cities did follow later as he extended down towards the south pole. Teal claimed the second milestone: the Specialist, helped on by his city Credit production bonus.

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Plum was the last to claim a Milestone: the Generalist, as she was able to pay to increase her production one step each round. She did not claim it straight away, but noticed it after Teal had claimed his, and thought she had better get in there quick. Green was not able to claim any milestones, but instead was the first to fund an Award. A quick check around the player boards suggested he should fund Celebrity as he had three high value cards to Teal’s two, but neither Plum or Ivory had any cards over the value of twenty Credits. Later on Teal funded the second award and went for Estate Dealer as he clearly had more tiles next to oceans at this point (having planted his forests northwards around the oceans.

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At the end of the game Green pulled out his wallet once more and funded Benefactor since he was ahead on the Terraform Rating track. Ivory was only one behind, but Green had a couple of options he could play on his last turn for a couple of extra Terraform Rating points. This prevented Ivory from funding the Dessert Settler award for which he had been building. Green decided to go for outworld domination and also built Deimos city. During the second half of the game Green realised he had forgotten his company bonus of a two MegaCredits reduction for each brown, Industrial tagged card. He had built three, so put six Credits aside to be used in the event of a tie, (although had he remembered to claim them at the time, he may have been able to play more and better cards).

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In the final scoring it was very close indeed, although during the game Mars was regularly bombarded with meteors and nuclear bombs, so it was a wonder any one survived at all! Ivory and Green tied for second with fifty-nine points. Even with his extra six Credits, Green still lost the tie to Ivory, who had more Credits left over from the final production. At this point, Green realised he again had misread a card thinking he would get one point per ocean tile in the game for his capital city, but that would have given him a guaranteed nine points and would have been way too powerful. In the end, it was Teal who triumphed, but only just, with sixty-one points, in well deserved victory.

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Learning Outcome: Mama’s taking us to the zoo tomorrow, zoo tomorrow, zoo tomorrow… We can stay all day!

31st May 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

15th October 2019

With food and Ivory both a little delayed, the “Feature Game”, Tapestry was starting to look a bit doubtful. Ivory and the food both arrived eventually though, and Burgundy made haste with his ham, egg and chips while everyone else decided what they were going to play. To fill in time while the eaters ate, everyone else decided to squeeze in a quick game of Ticket to Ride: London. This version of Ticket to Ride is reduced in size and is designed be quicker to play, which certainly proved to be the case. The game play is very similar, however, with players taking it turns to draw coloured cards or use them to place pieces, but in this version the Train pieces are replaced by Routemaster Buses.

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Although it is still high quality, the board is also smaller than in the full-sized versions, the players have fewer pieces and a maximum of four can participate. As usual, players also start with a selection of ticket cards and successfully fulfilling these give more points, but woe betide any player who fails to complete a ticket as the points become negative, which can be very costly indeed. In addition to these features, this new light version of the game also gives bonus points to players who manage to connect all the locations in an area. Not large numbers of points, but in a tight game it can make all the difference. And these games are often quite tight…

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Players started placing Buses very early in the game, and it wasn’t long before it became clear that everyone was trying to claim routes in the same “south of the river” area. Although Ivory eventually extended to the east, Lime broke ranks first and claimed a north west route. Pine completed his routes early and went for more tickets a couple of times. Then before we knew it, the game was over as Ivory placed his last bus. Placed Bus scores had Ivory way out in front as he had several of the long, four-bus routes, while Lime brought up the rear as he had been claiming mostly two-bus lengths routes.

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So it was looking like a bit of a “slam dunk” for Ivory. Everyone had managed to complete an area or two and pick up the associated bonuses, but Ivory had actually managed to get the four point area with all his long routes in the east. When the completed route scores were added in, Pine just pipped Green, but unfortunately for Lime he had failed complete his longest route causing him to lose eleven points. The clear winner was Ivory though, and managing to complete three high scoring routes just increased his already substantial lead giving him a dominant win.

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With food just about done and the first game coming to an end, there was some debate who would play the “Feature Game”, Tapestry. This is the hot new game from Jamie Stegmaier, designer of Scythe and producer of Wingspan, so everyone knew what they were getting – amazing production values in a very solid game. In this case, the game is quite simple in terms of the number of rules, however, they combine together to make a much more complex game. The idea is that on their turn, the active player simply either pay resources to progress their civilisation in one of the four directions (Science, Exploration, Military and Technology) and carries out the associate action, or they start a New Era for their people and collect Income. It is how these apparently simple options interact that leads to a complex and deep game however.

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The game is played over four Eras, with each player book-ending their game with an Income phase. Players choose when to take their own Income phases which has the unusual consequence that Civilisations can be in different Eras and even finish at very different times. Advancing their Civilisation can have a wide range of consequences because each step along the four tracks is different and, in general, the further along the tracks the more powerful the action is. For example, in the early stages of the game, a player taking the explore action might be able to place a tile on the central player board, which later may enable them to expand the are they control. Later in the game, however, a player who reaches the end of the Explore track can move away from terra firma and explore Space, which can be very lucrative.

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After the usual debate over who was going to play, Black joined the inevitable trio of Burgundy, Blue and Ivory. The game is asymmetric, so each player’s civilisation has a different special power. For example, Ivory’s civilisation, “Leaders”, were to allow him to progress along one of the tracks at the start of each Era. Black’s “Merrymakers” also granted a bonus at the start of each Era, but this time it’s according to three private progression tracks; the further up a track that the Merrymakers move, the more potent the benefit they receive. The bonus received by Burgundy’s “Chosen” would depend on his position on each of the four technology tracks at the start of each Era: where there were no players in front of him, he would pick up victory points equal to the number of other players in the game (three in this case).

– Image by boardGOATS

Not all civilisations give advantages during the income phase, however. For instance, Blue’s “Isolationists” gave her an advantage when colonising. The game features a central board which represents the colonies’ territories. At the start of the game, the colonies are well separated by unexplored land. The Explore action generally enables players to take tiles from the supply (though some are provided as part of the Income phase), and place hexes on the map next to territory they control. When carrying out a Military action, players can take control of a neighbouring, explored hex, by placing one of their coloured markers on it. If the tile is already occupied, it can be “attacked” with the second player simply placing one of their markers and tipping over the defeated player’s marker.

– Image by boardGOATS

Each hex can hold a maximum of two pieces, so there is no come-back. In general, players are also not able to place a second marker as a defense. This means that players are naturally reticent when it comes to expanding and controlling the border regions as expanding can leave their border regions vulnerable by providing a path for the opposition to attack. The Isolationists colony helps to prevent this by enabling the player to place a second marker on a small number of occasions. Occupying territory is one way of scoring points. Another is by improving a civilisation technologically. This is done by taking orange Technology cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

Technology cards give no immediate advantage, but they give a bonus when they are upgraded, either as part of the Income phase at the start of an Era or as an action. They also give points during the Income phase, but the number of points depends how developed their Capital is. Each player has a personal play area that includes a Capital City board as well as an area to place their Technology cards, a space at the top to store buildings and the Tapestry Cards that give the game its name. There are four types of buildings which start the game placed on four tracks that roughly correspond to the four types of advancement and yield resources: Markets (yellow), Houses (grey), Farms (brown) and Armourers (red).

– Image by boardGOATS

During the game, the buildings are moved to the players’ Capital Cities, revealing bonuses that the player will get during the forthcoming income phases. These bonuses include resources (money, people, mushrooms and power), but also victory points, additional terrain hexes, Tapestry cards and scoring multipliers. These multipliers are critical: players score points for the number of Technology cards, the size of the territory they control on the central map, and the number of completed rows and columns in their Capital. The more buildings a player moves to their Capital, the more of these multipliers are revealed and the more points a player gets.

– Image by boardGOATS

In addition to their personal buildings, players can also enhance their cities with large buildings which are awarded to to the first player to progress onto certain spaces on the development tracks. These special buildings are wonderfully over-produced and come pre-painted, really adding to the appearance and feel of the game. As they are only space fillers, there is no question – they could certainly be replaced with simple card tiles and would have been had the game been produced a few years ago. This is not a deluxe edition however; the added “bling” comes as standard and elevates the feel of the game above the ordinary (and unfortunately, elevates the price too). Unfortunately, these sculpts have very rounded corners which makes it a little hard to see what space they cover during play. They are really gorgeous though!

– Image by boardGOATS

The key to the game is probably the resources though as progressing along the four development tracks, Science, Exploration, Military and Technology need to be paid for. The price increases the further up the track the player gets as well, so running out of resources largely dictates when players will choose to start a New Era. That said, if a player moves into a New Era before their neighbours, they get additional resources which can be just enough to encourage players to move on early. Although it is clear that resources are important, the winner is likely to be the player that best leverages the advantages from their Civilisation. Like all good engine builders, however, there are always more things to do than resources available.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game started slowly, with Blue taking an early lead largely thanks to her Civilisation giving her points as she explored and expanded her territory. She was up against Ivory though, who was also progressing along the expansion track, though his progress was accelerated by his use of the Science development. In the early stages of this development track the action is to move one space along another track dictated by by a roll of the Science die, but without taking the action. This has the advantage of accelerating development (moving two spaces instead of one per turn), which increases the likelihood of obtaining the beautiful, big, special buildings and consequently makes filling rows and columns in the Capital easier.

– Image by boardGOATS

This is at the expense of increasing the cost of actions earlier in the game, on the other hand, the actions become more powerful and are therefore worth the price provided that the player can make the most of them. One additional consequence of Ivory making an early dart up the development tracks was the damage it did to Burgundy. Burgundy’s “Chosen” Civilisation gave him three victory points equal for every track he was ahead on. Ivory’s rapid progress, increased by the power of his “Leaders” Civilisation, essentially annulled Burgundy’s “advantage”. Burgundy’s game was further stymied by his struggle to get resources to move things along, a problem that only got worse as the game progressed.

– Image by boardGOATS

As a result, Burgundy turned to Technology cards, but it took a while to get this alternative approach going. Black meanwhile, kept things simple, concentrating on making the most of his Merrymakers and trying to expand to the centre of the map first. In this, his life was made difficult by being sandwiched between Blue and Ivory who squeezed his options. Blue made it to the middle first, and used her special power to prevent anyone else taking it from her and picking up the points for getting there second. Black made good use of his Trap cards which he initially kept in case he was attacked, but then used instead of Tapestry cards to give him points.

– Image by boardGOATS

He started slowly as he built his engine, but it wasn’t long before Ivory started to edge in front. By the third era, he really started to push forward, Blue gave chase, but she was always chasing and when Ivory launched his Civilisation into space, the writing was on the wall. He didn’t quite manage to lap the players at the back and so spared their blushes, but he wasn’t far off, finishing with a very creditable one hundred and eighty-five points. It is clearly a game that needs multiple plays to understand and get the best out of, and everyone could see its potential, although Burgundy felt some of the Civilisations were more powerful than others.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the neighbouring table, the others decided to play an old favourite, Jamaica. This was new to Lime and although Pine had played it once before, he couldn’t remember it. The game is a pirate-themed tactical race with beautiful artwork and quality pieces, where the winner is the player who best balances their position in the race with success at generally being a pirate doing piratical things. Each player always has a hand of three cards, and a personal board depicting the five “holds” of their ship, into which goods can be loaded during the game. Each round, one player is designated as “Captain” and rolls two dice, examines their cards, then announces which die will correspond to the “day” and which to the “night”.

– Image by BGG contributor verminose

Each player then simultaneously selects and places it face down in front of them. Each card has two symbols on it (corresponding to “day” and “night”). The symbols indicate either ship movement (forward or backward) or the loading of a type of goods. The cards are then revealed simultaneously and resolved clockwise one by one, starting with the Captain. When it is a player’s turn to resolve their card, first the “day” part, then the “night” part, multiplying the number of pips on the appropriate die by the icons on the card to either move forwards (or backwards) by a given amount, or to load goods.

– Image by BGG contributor verminos

When they take goods (gold, food or gunpowder), Players must have space to store them. If they do not, they must throw the contents of one hold (containing something different) overboard. When moving, players pay depending one the space they finish on: on a deep sea space the cost is food; in a port they must pay doubloons. At a pirate’s lair, the player can take a treasure token and draw a treasure card, (which can be good, or “stinky”, “cursed” treasure), and if they are sharing the space with another pirate ship, they must fight.

– Image by BGG contributor verminose

Battles are resolved with the attack die, but the attacker rolls first and adds to their total by discarding gunpowder. The defender then dies the same, though if either player rolls the special “star” it counts as a direct hit and that player wins outright and can take one holds worth of goods, a treasure card, or give away some “cursed” treasure. The game end is triggered when a player’s ship reaches the finish line, after completing one circuit of Jamaica when players receive different amounts of gold depending how far they were from the finish line when the race concluded. This is added to any gold gathered along the way and the player with the most total gold is declared the winner.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

The race started very slowly (as is often the case) as players stayed in Port Royal and stocked up, but then everyone started moving forwards (and backwards) and fights very quickly broke out. With Gold and food changing ships and ships moving forwards and backwards, or in Green’s case, backwards and forwards: he crossed the finish line from the wrong direction – but no, he couldn’t win that way! Pine was the first one to claim a treasure and then a second; the map card enabling him to have an extra card in his hand to choose from, not that seemed to help him: he still complained that he had poor choice of options. Lime was next, and then followed a period when everyone ended up attacking each other, so much that at least one player ended up in two battles during the same morning move.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Once players had got around the first corner of the island things began to speed up (again, as is usual for this game). Lime led the way and round this part of the island, Chris started to hoover up the treasures and found himself with an extra hold. It wasn’t all good though, as became clear when he defeated a sneaky attack from Purple and took the opportunity of foisting a “stinky”, cursed treasure onto her (and the associated negative points. As the flotilla rounded the final corner, Lime was still out in front with everyone else not far behind. While everyone had full holds, Purple’s ship looked more like a take-away van on a Saturday night, and no gold!

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Toynan

Lime rolled a five and then a six when he was only three spaces away from Port Royal, but he played a double move anyway and finished the game. The rest of the salty sea-dogs were able to make use of that following wind and bring themselves across the red line into at least point scoring positions, but still some way off Port Royal. The final scoring was looking quite good for Lime, but he insisted that he didn’t think he would win, as he knew he had a minus five point “stinky” treasure.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Ceryon

Pine and Green had finished just one space apart, had a lot of gold on ships and treasure cards. Pine had the plus seven, and Green had three scoring treasures, but one was a minus three, so the scores were very close indeed. Purple, unfortunately was almost lost at sea, only creeping across the line with no gold in her hold and only a negative treasure. Otherwise, it was really close, but Green just beat Pine into second place with Lime just a couple of points behind. Once again this proved how good a game Jamaica is, well balanced and extremely fun.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

With Tapestry still under way, the group moved onto another, this time more recent, favourite, Kingdomino, albeit one that we’ve not played for nearly a year. In this short game, players take a domino and add to the kingdom and then place a meeple on one of the dominoes on display for the next round. When placing the dominoes, one of the two ends must connect to terrain of the same type already in the kingdom, or connect directly to the start tile. Points are awarded at the end of the game by multiplying the number of tiles in an area of terrain by the number of crowns in the area. Although we have the Age of Giants expansion, this time the group used the base game so all dominoes must fit in a five-by-five space (or be discarded) and bonus points are awarded for successfully placing all tiles and finishing with the start tile in the centre.

– Image by boardGOATS

Sadly, Pine made an unfortunate placement decision partway through and thus created himself a single space gap which meant he was not complete a five-by-five kingdom with his castle in the middle. This was because hadn’t caught the rule that the whole kingdom needed to be square so he’d ended up choosing a tile which was not as good as he’d thought and thus created even more problems for himself. Everyone else completed their kingdoms so everyone got the full fifteen point bonus.

– Image by boardGOATS

Green went for a mixture of several smaller sections (including stone and sand), but none scored highly. Purple ended up with fewer, but slightly larger regions (wheat, water and forest) and a similar score to Green. Lime on the other hand, concentrated on a couple of larger regions, water and forest, each six or seven spaces and with three crowns each they gave a healthy score. On top of that Lime had a few low scoring space regions to top off a very good score and take the victory by twenty points. An excellent score, especially since it was the first time he’d played the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Game-play is very important, but component quality is important too.

27th Movember 2018

With the Festive Season now apparently upon us, the pub was once again packed and food was later than usual. For this reason, we started with a quick game of No Thanks!. This used to be one of our “go-to” filler games, but has been somewhat neglected of late, so was surprisingly unfamiliar to some people. It is very simple though and very easy to learn on the fly: everyone starts with eleven red chips and the first player turns over the top card—they can take it, or pay a chip for the privilege of passing the problem on to the next player. The player with the lowest summed card total when the deck expires is the winner.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor msaari

There are are two catches, firstly, where a player has a run of consecutive cards only the lowest is counted and secondly, a small number of cards are removed from the deck at random. Top scorer looked to be a toss up between Blue, Red and Mulberry, but Red took the dubious honour in the end, with forty. It was tight between Pine and Burgundy, however, both of whom had a large pile of chips and a substantial run of high cards (between them they had nearly forty of the fifty-five chips and the cards numbered twenty-eight to thirty-five). There were only two points in it in the end and it was Pine who took the honours.

– Image used with permission of
BGG contributor ronster0

The group had been just about to start playing when Black, Purple and Green had walked in. Since No Thanks! only plays five, so pre-empting a discussion of options, Blue chucked over a copy of Dodekka which the group obligingly settled down to play. This is another light set collecting game where the aim is to get the highest score possible from one of the five colour suits, while ideally scoring nothing in all the other suits. Gameplay is very simple: take the first card on display, or reveal a card from the deck and add it to the end of the row (thus “passing”). If the sum of the cards on display now totals more than twelve, the active player must pick up all of the cards on display. When the deck runs out, the winner is the player with the highest score (the total face value of one suit minus one for each other card). It was very close at the top, with only one point separating Black and Purple, and much to Purple’s chagrin, it was Black who came out on top.

– Image by boardGOATS

Just as No Thanks! was coming to an end, food arrived, along with Ivory. Dodekka was still going, so while some munched, those remaining decided to give The Game an outing (played with a copy of The Game: Extreme, but ignoring the special symbols). This is a surprisingly popular game within the group, which is remarkable because it is cooperative and we generally prefer competitive games. Another simple game, the idea is that the team have a deck of cards from two to ninety-nine and they must play each card on one of four piles: two where the card played must be higher than the top card, and two where it must be lower. There are just three rules: on their turn, the active player can play as many cards as they like (obeying the rules of the four piles), but must play at least two cards before replenishing their hand, and players can say anything they like but must not share “specific number information”. Finally, there is the so-called “Backwards Rule” where players can reverse a deck as long as the card they play is exactly ten above or below the previous card played on that pile.

– Image by boardGOATS

Red started and it quickly began to go wrong with with Pine holding a “nice mid-range hand”. With the help of everyone else he battled through though, and it wasn’t long before he had a “nice extreme hand” while all the piles were offering “nice mid-range options”. It perhaps wasn’t surprising with this that the group didn’t win (i.e. play all their cards onto the four decks), but given that they had such a poor run of luck, they did well to exhaust the draw deck and ultimately have only eight cards they were unable to play. Inevitably, Dodekka finished just after The Game started, so Black, Purple and Green killed time with a quick game of Love Letter. This is the original “micro game”, consisting of just sixteen cards. The idea is that each player starts with a single card, draws a second card and chooses one of the pair to play. The cards are numbered one to eight (with more of the lower numbers), and each number has an action associated with it. The aim is to eliminate all opponents, as the last man standing is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

Rounds only take a minute or two, so elimination is not a problem. This time, each player won a round. So with honours even and with the other game and food coming to an end, it was sudden death. This time it was Purple’s turn to come up trumps, taking the final hand and with it, the game. This started a big debate as to who was going to play what. As it was likely to be Ivory’s last chance for a meaty game for a few weeks (with Christmas and his impending arrival), the “Feature Game” was Ambition, the expansion to one of his favourite games, Roll for the Galaxy. With Burgundy fed-up with the feeling of confusion that Roll for the Galaxy always gave him and Black feeling that he’d played it a couple of times recently, for a while it looked like it was only going to be Blue and Ivory. Eventually Black saw sense, and Green joined in, despite the fact that he felt he’d not played the base game enough to appreciate the expansion.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Roll for the Galaxy is the dice game of the popular empire building card game, Race for the Galaxy. Both suffer from the same “iconography confusion”, but that aside, neither are actually complicated games. The idea builds on the Puerto Rico/San Juan idea of different phases or activities that only happen if or when players want them to. Roll for the Galaxy is almost a “worker placement” game where dice are the workers and have a say in what sort of work they do with players “spending” these dice to make actions happen. Each player starts with a dice in their cup which they roll and assign, in secret behind a screen. When dice are used they are placed into the player’s Citizenry and it costs a dollar to move them from the citizenry to back into the cup. Each face of the worker dice corresponds to one of the five different action phases: Explore, Develop, Settle, Produce, Ship. Each player uses one die, any die, to select a single phase that they want to “happen”. All the other dice are assigned to the Phase that corresponds to the face rolled. Any that do not correspond to the chosen phase can only be used if another player chooses those phases to happen. Any that are used move into the player’s Citizenry, any that are not used go back into the cup.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

As such everyone is reliant on other players to help them out and the player who best piggy-backs other players’ choices usually does well. It is not only about second-guessing what other players are going to do though: success also requires a good strategy, a complementary tiles (Worlds), an understanding of probability, the ability to effectively manipulate the dice rolled, and a modicum of luck. Luck is everywhere, but there are ways to mitigate its effect. For example, in Phase I (“Explore”), players draw tiles out of a bag. These are double-sided with one side being a Development World and the other a Production World. These are “Built” in Phases II & III (“Develop” and “Settle”) and the cost is paid in dice, anything from one to six (with expensive Development Worlds generally partnered with cheap Production Worlds). These tiles are drawn at random in Phase I and a side chosen and the Worlds added to the bottom of their personal Development or Settle pile as appropriate. The top World tile is the one that will be built first and if there is not enough to complete a building, that means there will be fewer dice available for the following rounds, until it is finished.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

This may seem very harsh, with players potentially getting stuck with a high value building and a shortage of dice so that they struggle to complete it in a timely fashion. However, clever use of the Explore Phase can ensure that this is not a problem, despite the luck involved. Players can discard as many tiles as they like, drawing one extra from the bag. Thus, an early round committing lots of dice to the Explore phase can enable lots of tiles to be recycled as better ones are drawn. Dice assigned to Phase IV (Produce) are moved to Production Worlds where they will stay until Phase V (ship) happens and that player has dice assigned to it. In this way, dice can get “stuck” in a similar fashion to dice involved in Developing or Settling. Thus dice management is one of the key skills to the game. Points come from building (a building that requires five dice is generally worth five points at the end of the game); from bonus points Development buildings which give points for some particular feature (e.g. one extra point for a particular type of Production World), and from victory points generated during Phase V (Shipping) by using the “Consume” option.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor dotKeller

The Ambition expansion doesn’t change the game very much, simply adding a very small number of Worlds, some extra Starting Worlds, some in game Objective tiles and replaces one of each player’s starting white dice with a black “Leader” die. The first player (and only the first player) to achieve each of the objectives receives “Talent” counters; these can be treated as single-use workers or as victory points at the end of the game. There are also orange “Entrepreneur” dice—these and the “Leader” dice have some faces with two symbols allowing players to choose which of these Phases to assign them to and giving them the magic power of automatically switching to the alternative Phase if the initial nomination does not happen. There are a couple of other little twists, for example on some faces the second symbol is a dollar sign signifying that if the die is used for its intended Phase then the die goes back into the Cup (not into the Citizenry) after use, making it effectively free to use.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Ivory was fastest out of the blocks with a large amount of liquidity from his “Doomed World” that gave him $8 start up. Furthermore, his “Alien Artefact Hunters” start-world gave him $2 each time he consumed Alien goods, and Victory points (from Consuming). For everyone else it looked like it was going to be over before it had begun when Ivory was the first to achieve an Objective, adding the associated Talents to his already growing pile of victory points. Although they were a little less obvious , everyone else’s Start Worlds were quite useful too however. Black for example received extra cash every time he developed, Green had the ability to reassign two of his white dice as Explorers or Settlers and Blue could reassign any two dice to explore. These special abilities were slower to take effect, but gradually, these, together with the lack of production on the “Doomed World” meant the group began to haul back Ivory’s rapid head-start.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Blue, and to a lesser extent Green, spent a lot of time Exploring (using their special abilities), carefully choosing which Worlds to build and stacking the deck to control the order, a tactic that paid dividends later in the game. In Blue’s case, she used the Objectives as a target and then used the Talents to finish off Worlds quickly enabling her to grab a couple from under Ivory’s nose. Green more or less ignored the Objectives as he was too busy trying to remember how to play the base game while fiddling with his phone. Black was less fortunate, and really struggled with the luck of the dice and found it difficult to make use of his special ability to get his engine going. Then suddenly it looked like Ivory might end the game as the Victory Point reserve rapidly depleted. He couldn’t make it on the first attempt though and there were a couple more things he wanted to do in any case. In the end it was Blue who ended it—building not only her twelfth World, but also an extra one giving her a massive forty points for that alone.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Although Blue had a couple of Victory Point chips and a handful of Talents left over, it paled into insignificance compared with the massive pile of chips in front of Ivory—the question was whether it would be enough though. It was very close, but Blue’s last round just tipped it in her favour and she won by five points. With that, Ivory and Green took their leave, leaving Black and Blue to consider their options. While they had been playing with their dice, the others had played a full four rounds of Saboteur and moved on to their next game. Saboteur is a fun little hidden traitor game where players are either Dwarves trying to find the treasure or Saboteurs trying to stop them. We’ve played it quite a bit and in truth it plays best with more than six players, as the number of Saboteurs varies and there is an element of doubt. With five their can be either one or two Saboteurs, and the odds are heavily stacked against a lone Saboteur, but in favour of a pair. Nevertheless, the group were keen to introduce Mulberry to it.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mothertruckin

It is another quite simple game: On their turn, players can play a tunnel card onto the grid in the centre, play a special card (a broken or fixed tools card on another player or a map card to look at the destination cards), or discard a card face down and then draw a replacement. If the Dwarves don’t get to the treasure before the cards run out, the Saboteurs win. In the first round, Burgundy was isolated as the Saboteur and despite his best efforts, he failed to disrupt an organised team of Dwarves. In the second round Burgundy was joined by Pine, and with two of them the odds were much better and the pair took the opportunity to prevent the Dwarf team from getting to the gold. As a group, we normally only play a couple of rounds, but everyone wanted to see if luck would deal Burgundy a Dwarf card. The immediate answer was no, and in the end it turned out that the third rounds was a direct replay of the second with Pine joining Burgundy on the Saboteur winning team.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mikehulsebus

By this time the group had decided they would keep playing until Burgundy wasn’t the Saboteur, and in the fourth round they finally got their way when Mulberry was a lone Saboteur. Inevitably she failed to break the will of the “gang of four” who easily found the treasure. Normally we don’t bother sharing out the “gold” scoring cards as it is very arbitrary who goes first and in a low number of rounds it is purely luck who wins overall which takes some of the fun out of the game. This time though, the group played the rules as written. With Burgundy and Pine winning two rounds and sharing the spoils two ways (instead of three) it was inevitable that they would score well. In the end it was Pine who did lightly better, thanks to the fact he had been on the winning Dwarf team in the first round. As Roll for the Galaxy was still going (and Red and Mulberry had gone home for an early night), the group looked round for something else to play and Purple’s beady eye lit on Steam Donkey.

– Image by boardGOATS

Steam Donkey is a card game that involves building a seaside resort consisting of a four by three grid of attraction cards. The three rows represent the different parts of the resort: beach (yellow), town (pink) and park (green). Similarly, the four columns correspond to the different types of building: amusements, lodgings, monuments and transport. In order to place a feature, it must go in the correct location and must be paid for using cards of the same type, as such it has similarities with games like Race for the Galaxy and San Juan. As players build their resort, visitors arrive at the station and come to see the attractions. Each attraction can take a certain number of visitors, which are actually a row of face down cards that are used to replenish the cards in players’ hands. Thus, on their turn players carry out one of the following actions: choose a colour and build as many attractions in that colour as they can/want paying with other cards from their hand; choose a colour and start taking cards in that colour from the “station” (a row of face down cards), or if there are no visitors of the chosen colour (or there are no spaces for the visitors to go), they can add visitor cards to their hand and refill the station platform with four new visitors.

– Image by boardGOATS

The colour of the visitor side of cards does not reflect the colour of the attraction on the other side, however, the type of attraction is indicated. There is a hand limit of twelve though and this can actually be quite a serious impediment for players collecting cards to build the more valuable attractions. At the end of the game, points are scored for each unique attraction built as well as for fulfilling individual goals and bonuses depicted on players’ resort posters. It was a long time since anyone in the group had played it, and Pine hadn’t played it at all, so it took a while to get going. It was close at the top with Burgundy and Pine scoring pretty evenly for their buildings and taking almost exactly the same number of bonus points too. Burgundy just had the edge however, and took the game by three points, with a grand total of seventy.

– Image by boardGOATS

When Roll for the Galaxy finally finished and Green and Ivory left Blue and Black alone it was clear that they were going to be waiting for a while, so they looked round for something that wasn’t too long and played well with two. In the end, they settled on Kingdomino, but decided to add the new Age of Giants expansion acquired at Essen. Kingdomino is a tile-laying game with a couple of clever mechanics. Players take it in turns to choose a “domino” and add it to their “Kingdom”. The clever part of the game is that the tiles are numbered with players who choose the high numbered (and therefore more valuable) dominoes taking their turns later in the next round. In the two player game, players get two turns per round, so their first turn can be used to try to set up the second turn. In the two-player game, each player is building kingdoms consisting of 7×7 arrays of “squares” rather than 5×5 arrays, which makes the game much more strategic.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game ends when there are no more tiles to place. Scoring is by multiplying the number of tiles in each terrain by the number of crowns in that terrain. Thus a moderate sized area with plenty of crowns is worth more than a large area with very few crowns. The Age of Giants expansion doesn’t change things as much as Queendomino, which we found managed to take all the fun out of the game and add a whole load of unnecessary complexity instead. This expansion adds a small number of tiles that feature either a Giant or a Giant’s footprints. When a Giant Tile is drawn, a large wooden giant meeple is placed on it. When this is taken, the Giant is taken too and is placed over one of the crowns anywhere on that player’s area. When a footprints tile is taken, a Giant of their choice moves from their Kingdom to another player’s Kingdom.

– Image by BGG contributor kalchio

There are two problems with this little addition, firstly, there is a rules tweak that means five tiles are drawn in the two player game and one is discarded. Blue and Black found that this meant they just chose not to take tiles with Giants on them except when forced to right at the end. Secondly, even when forced to take a Giant, there was almost always somewhere it could be poked that caused minimal damage, so it wasn’t really a big issue. This was a real shame as the Giants are lovely. As well as adding a fifth player there is also a a small pile of bonus-point tiles; both Blue and Black really liked these as they thought that they added a nice twist. This time, they ended up with bonus points for Sea tiles adjacent to the castle and Marsh land on the corners. Both players tried to accommodate these, though Black did a much better job than Blue.

– Image by boardGOATS

It may have been that Black was focussing too much on the bonuses however, as he ended up unable to place all his tiles. And although he scored well on the bonuses and for Sea and Pasture, he scored very little for Woodland, Marshland and Mountains. In contrast, while Blue completely failed to score for Pasture, she scored well in every other terrain and made a killing with her Wheat fields, giving her a total of two-hundred and thirty-three, some sixty more than Black. With that done and the epic game of Steam Donkey finally over, there was just time to arrange some of the details for the Christmas Party nest time before everyone went home.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: We like simple games: they can be quick to learn, but take time to master.

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