Tag Archives: Kingdomino

15th September 2020 (Online)

Green and Lilac were first to roll up, with pizzas and a large basket full of wild mushrooms. While they finished their supper, everyone else rolled in and joined the largely aimless chit-chat before Blue started to explain the rules for the “Feature Game“, Patchwork Doodle. This is another “Roll and Write” style game in the “communal colouring in” vein. As such it is quite similar to the Second Chance (which we played last time), but with different scoring and a little more planning.

– Image by boardGOATS

Both games are based on the Tetris idea where shapes depicted on cards are drawn in a grid. In Second Chance, the cards are revealed two at a time and players choose one to draw on their grid. If they can’t add either, they get one card just for themselves; if it fits they stay in, if they still can’t draw it, they are out. When the last card is turned over or the final player has been eliminated, the winner is the player with the fewest empty spaces.

– Image by boardGOATS

In Patchwork Doodle, eight cards are revealed at the start, so everyone can see all the cards that will come out in the round. The chief seamstress then rolls a d3 die to move the factory foreman, and players all draw the shape he lands on. The round ends after six of the eight shapes have been used. After each round there is a scoring phase and, the final score is the sum of the three totals minus the number of empty spaces.

– Image by boardGOATS

In addition to the change in scoring, everyone has three special actions: they can use a shape either side instead of the one selected, make a single cut and draw one of the two resultant shapes, or fill a single one-by-one square. Additionally, there is a fourth action which allows everyone to use one of the other three actions a second time.

– Image by boardGOATS

The interesting, and indeed difficult bit to understand, is the scoring. Players score the number of squares in (usually) their largest square, plus one point for each row or column it is extended. Thus a five-by-three rectangle will score eleven points (nine for the three-by-three square, and two points for the extra two rows). Usually the largest continuous rectangle will give the most points, but sometimes that is not the case and players have to work out what will give them the biggest points haul.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once everyone had got to grips with the scoring and asked all their questions, Pink rolled the die and silence descended as everyone concentrated on their colouring in. At the end of the first round, Pine, Lilac and Ivory had their noses in front achieving a five-by-five square while others were struggling to get much less. By the second round, people were getting the hang of things and it was clear that Ivory was the one to beat, although Green had a bet on Lilac as she was doing a lot better than he was.

– Image by boardGOATS

By the final round, there was a peaceful calm as people engaged their inner toddler. The scores were a little bit incidental as Mulberry won the prize for “The most inventive work with just two colours” and Lilac just pipped Black and Pine for the neatest and “staying within the lines”. Pink stumbled at the end going for artistic impression over scoring, putting the penultimate shape in the corner instead of filling the hole in the middle. Blue top scored with one hundred and twenty, just beating Ivory, largely thanks to the fact she had only one unfilled space.

– Animation by boardGOATS

Mulberry commented that the communal colouring in was very calming, and Lime said that although he had really enjoyed it, the next game looked too complicated given that he had been up since 4am, and was finding it hard to focus. The next game, Cartographers, certainly was a step up, so despite having done really well in Patchwork Doodle, Lilac also decided to duck out. Cartographers is another “Roll and Write” game, but has slightly more of a “boardgame feel” to it. In fact, part of the reason it we chose it was to celebrate the fact that it had just been announced that Cartographers was runner-up in the 2020 Deutscher Spiele Pries.

– Adapted from image by BGG contributor
Johnny Dangerously

The game is played over four seasons during which cards are revealed showing Tetris-like shapes which players draw on their player board. The difference is that this time, the cards show options giving players an element of choice, either between two different shapes or in the colour to be used. The colours represent different terrain types, and there are mountain spaces and ruins spaces also pre-printed on the map.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the beginning of the game, goal cards are identified for each season; a selection are available which gives games a lot of variety. Two of these are scored at the end of each round in a similar way to Isle of Skye, another game that is quite popular with the group, but of course one that we can’t really play at the moment. These scoring cards are really the driving force of the game, essentially creating a set of criteria that players try to follow when adding pieces to the map.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time the scoring cards were “Stoneside Forest”, “Shoreside Expanse”, “Great City” and “Lost Barony”. These can be really quite variable, for example, the first of thesegave players points for each mountain space connected to another solely by forest. In contrast, the “Shoreside Expanse” rewarded players for each block of farmland not adjacent water and for each block of lake not adjacent to arable, or the edge of the map. The Great City, however gave points for each square in players’ largest cities and the lost Barony was reminiscent of Patchwork Doodle giving points for the largest completed area in a square.

– Image by boardGOATS

The other interesting addition is the “Ambush” cards. In the “Rules as Written”, one of these is added at the start of each round and when they appear, players pass their map to their neighbour who adds the shape in the most inconvenient place they can. These then give players negative points for each empty adjacent space. This doesn’t work well with remote gaming, so we play these using the solo rules where the shape starts in one corner and and moves stars following the edge, progressively spiralling towards the centre until it finds a space that it fits in.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although we played Cartographers a few weeks back, quite a lot of people missed out, so we decided to add the “House Rule” that we wouldn’t add Ambush cards for the first round to give players a chance to get started. This works nicely, however, because they are removed from the deck once they have appeared, adding one less makes their appearance much less likely. For this reason, in future we would probably just add two at the start of the second round as they certainly add quite a lot to the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once the edge case rules had been clarified, Blue started revealing cards. Each card has a time counter in the top left corner where the number is roughly based on the number of spaces the shape fills. This helps to control the rate the board fills at and maintains the level of tension throughout the game. This time, the first round included quite a few large pieces, one of which was forest which enabled those who spotted it to connect two mountain squares and score a quick six points. Otherwise, the first round was all about players trying to find good places to place lots of fields and water ensuring they didn’t touch and starting a large city to set up the next round.

– Image by boardGOATS

The next round was all about the first Ambush card: the Gnoll Raid. Pink had a near perfect place to put it, tucked neatly round the Rift Lands space he’d placed on his ruins in the previous round. As he looked pleased with himself, others applied the complicated Ambush rule and variously sounded please or unimpressed depending on how much work it had left them with and how many negative points they had to mitigate.

– Image by boardGOATS

The third round was fairly quiet as there was no Ambush, increasing the chance of one appearing in the final round. The last round started very slowly and gently with lots of very “low time” cards appearing and everyone sounding initially unimpressed, then quite pleased as they discovered pleasing ways of filling spaces to help satisfy the “Lost Barony” scoring card. Then, just when everyone was nearly nearly home safe and sound, we were ambushed by the penultimate card of the game: the Bugbear Assault.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Bugbear Assault is two one-by-two columns with a gap down the middle, making it quite hard to place at the end of the game. Mulberry was unable to place it and therefore got away unscathed, but others like Burgundy, Purple and Black found they were suddenly four or five points worse off than they had been a moment earlier. The final piece was also difficult to place being large and awkward, and then it was just the final scores.

– Animation by boardGOATS

It was really tight at the top, with Pine and Pink taking second and third respectively, separated by just a single point. Ivory, however, who had lost out by four points to Blue in Patchwork Doodle, managed to take victory by the same margin, winning with the same total of one hundred and twenty points. With that, Ivory departed for the night, and Pine and Green said they would follow. Before he went, however, Green shared an image of kookaburra which looked a bit like a goat provided you mistook it’s beak for an ear…

– Image by boardGOATS

The chit-chat moved on to the Jockey and what it was like there now. Black, Purple, Blue and Pink had enjoyed a meal and a distanced game of Wingspan there and Ivory had joined Blue and Pink for games of Everdell and the new mini Ticket to Ride, Amsterdam. In both cases the pub had been quite quiet, but had felt very safe, partly because there was so much space and partly because the staff had done an excellent job of cleaning. The pizzas were just as good as always, and it was really good to see the staff again.

– Image by boardGOATS

Green commented that he was now quite bored with “colouring in”, so Pine’s parting shot was “Blue’s doing a great job”. Blue agreed that there had been “colouring in” for two weeks running, but that it would be different next time when they would likely be playing Welcome To…, and sadly, there wasn’t really that much alternative to “Roll and Write” that we hadn’t already tried. Burgundy added that nobody could play what they wanted all the time anyhow, especially at the moment. And with that, there were five left to accommodate, who switched to play something more interactive on Board Game Arena.

– Image by boardGOATS

After a bit of discussion and general ambivalence, those left eventually opted for Coloretto. This is a very light and simple set collecting game that we all know the rules for: turn over a card and place it on a truck, or take a truck. Despite the simplicity of the rules, the game itself is very clever and can be played positively, or aggressively taking cards others want. The winner is almost always the player who best balances these two elements.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, the three of the first four cards to be drawn were Rainbow coloured Jokers. These are such valuable cards that first Black, then Blue, then Purple took them on their own leaving Burgundy and Pink without a look-in. From there, Burgundy started collecting sets of blue and brown chameleons, while Pink started work on collecting a rainbow—totally not the point of the game. Black took a cart that Blue wanted, so she took one that Burgundy wanted and the tit-for-tat rippled through the group.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

It was quite tight at the end, and by that point almost everyone had joined Pink with five different colours. Not that it did him much harm as he finished with a very creditable twenty-four to give him second place, just behind Burgundy who finished with twenty-eight. With that, he decided it was bedtime and that left four…

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

After a bit of debate, the now dwindling group settled down to a game of Kingdomino. We have all played this game a lot, so it was remarkable that we managed to make such a meal of it. The game is very simple, but punches above its weight in terms of depth. The key part is the domino market. There are are two rows sorted by value; on their turn, the player takes their tile from the first row and moves their meeple to their chosen tile in the second row. Since tiles are taken in order from least to most valuable, players are trading value for turn order and thus, choice in the next round.

– Image by boardGOATS

In other words, if a player chooses the least valuable tile, on their next turn they will play first and therefore have first choice and can pick from four tiles. Alternatively, if they choose the most valuable tile, they will play last in the next round and will have Hobson’s choice. The dominoes are placed in the players’ kingdoms with players scoring points for each terrain type, where the number of points is the number of crown features multiplied by the number of squares in the area.

– Image by boardGOATS

Unfortunately, Blue, who set up the table chose the rules and picked the seven-by-seven variant, and the bonuses for completing the kingdom and for placing the starting tile in the centre. Sadly, as the expansion has not yet been implemented on Board Game Arena, the seven-by-seven variant is only available for the two-player game. There is no warning about this, and Blue was slow to realise, screwing up one tile placement and then was unable to complete her kingdom or get her castle in the middle.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Just as Blue was realising and the extent of her problems, and failing to put them right, Burgundy was busy building a very fine kingdom that would rival “Far Far Away” and when everyone else was unimpressed with the tile draw commented, “Well, all those are good for me.” The immediate response was, “Just as well, since you don’t have a choice…”

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

Meanwhile, Black put a tile in the wrong place and made a wonderful growling noise, something between a cross dog and an angry bear. Then discovered the cancel button and cheered, only to discover that the piece he wanted wouldn’t fit after all and howled with disgust. The Silent One definitely wasn’t silent this time! In fact, he thought he would have beaten the winner, Burgundy, if he hadn’t placed a single tile the wrong way round, so we decided to play again.

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

This time, Black started going for lakes but had competition from Purple who was also after lakes, but augmented them with forest. Burgundy went for marshland and Blue actually managed to complete her kingdom and get her castle in the middle this time. It was much closer, and all the kingdoms were much more mixed. The winner was Purple though, who just edged Black. Everyone was really pleased, especially when the Board Game Arena presented her with a trophy for her first win at Kingdomino. And that seemed like a good way to end the evening.

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

Learning Outcome: Colouring in nicely is an important board gaming skill.

7th July 2020 (Online)

The evening started with a round of “Swap Shop” as Lime tried to get rid of a couple of aquarium snails that were surplus to requirements (the other occupants of the tank having recently expired), and Purple offering a size ten frock. Once the snails had been re-homed with Magenta in Wantage, we’d discussed the reopening of the Horse and Jockey, and everyone had compared their colouring tools, Blue explained the rules for the “Feature Game“, the cross between communal colouring and Tetris that is Second Chance.

– Image by boardGOATS

This is a really, really, simple “Roll and Write” type game, similar in style and feel to Noch Mal! which we played a few weeks back over Microsoft Teams and really enjoyed. In that game, players were rolling dice, whereas Second Chance is card driven. Each player starts with piece of paper with a nine-by-nine array of squares which they colour in depending on what is revealed on the cards. Two cards are turned over at a time, each displaying a shape; players choose one to add to their player area.

– Image by boardGOATS

The shape can go anywhere in the array as long as it doesn’t overlap anything else or extend out of the area. More than one player can choose each shape and once drawn, its position is final. If a player is unable to use either shape they get another card specially for them—their second chance. If they are still unable to go, they are out, otherwise, they live to fight another day. The game ends when one player fills their grid, everyone is out or the deck of cards is depleted. The player with the fewest uncovered spaces at the end is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players start with their own individual first tile which they must place over the central square. Although the game only officially plays six, fortunately there are enough of these in the box for everyone to have a different start, even though there were ten of us playing. It wasn’t long before there was a contented silence as everyone got on with their colouring projects.

– Image by boardGOATS

As Pink turned over the cards, there were grunts of disgust and sighs of delight in almost equal measure. Little Lime seemed greatly entertained by the whole thing and Pine commented that he could just imagine her telling all her chums that “My Daddy does colouring in with his friends online…” The general consensus was that the game felt a lot like being back at primary school, though Pine commented that it was also like watching landscape architects. He explained that he worked with some and they spent a lot of time colouring in and have amazing boxes of pencils but only ever use green and brown.

– Image by boardGOATS

As the game continued, people enjoyed their colouring, but variously struggled with artistic impression. Pine commented that his looked like a work of Jackson Pollock’s, and Green felt would make rhyming slang for his… Despite Little Lime’s assistance Lime was the first to need a second chance and when he was unlucky in his draw, he was the first out. Little Lime explained that he could do better next time if he bought an effective rubber. Purple also needed a second chance, but grabbed hers with both hands and managed to stay in for the rest of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

More people gradually dropped out, a couple every round, and it wasn’t long before we got to the last two cards. At the end, Lilac, Green and Purple were all still in, and remarkably, so was Burgundy despite having struggled for the last six or seven rounds. It’s not lasting the longest that is key in this game though, it is most efficiently packed grid. Of course, staying in longer usually means more and possibly better opportunities, however. This time, two of the podium places went to the group of survivors, and Purple finished with nine empty spaces, just pipped by Burgundy with eight.

– Image by Burgundy

Second Chance had been a lot of fun, but with remote gaming likely to continue for a while and a lot of “Roll and Write” games on the horizon, after some discussion, we decided to give Saboteur a go. This is a fun hidden traitor game that we’ve played quite a bit and works really well on Board Game Arena. The idea is really simple: players are divided into two teams (Dwarves and Saboteurs), and take it in turns to place tunnel cards with the aim of either tunneling to the gold (Dwarves) or preventing the tunnel reaching the treasure (Saboteurs). The catch is that nobody knows who else is on their team.

– Image by boardGOATS

In addition to tunnel cards, players can also play action cards, breaking other players’ tools (and thus preventing them from extending the tunnel network), fixing other players’ broken tools, causing a tunnel collapse and using a map to look at one of the three target cards to see whether it is gold or coal. Players start with four cards in hand, and draw a replacement each time they play, or discard a card. Since the game ends when the deck is depleted and everyone has played their last card, it is critical that every player gets as much as possible from their cards.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Blue went first, but claimed she had a hand with three broken tool cards and one tunnel dead-end card , so said she had no option but to discarded a card—A Very Saboteury Move. Burgundy and Pink played map cards and checked the middle and top target cards respectively, and both said they saw coal. Pine was suspicious and double checked Pink and concurred. When Black checked the bottom card and confirmed it was gold, things were looking promising, but very little progress had been made on the tunnel and strangely a lot of cards had been discarded with everyone claiming that they didn’t have useful tunnel cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue said she had a Saboteur’s Hand, which was a shame since she wasn’t one. Pink asked whether that was a medical condition and wondered whether there was treatment available for it on the NHS. The bickering stopped abruptly when Purple suddenly “lamped” Team Greeny-Lilac smashing their lantern and leaving them unable to dig. Blue then got in on the act and pulled the wheels of Ivory’s trolley. Purple really had it in for Green and smashed his trolly before Pine joined in and broke shaft of Team Greeny-Lilac’s axe—it seemed they really had it in for them.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

With everyone apparently having no tunnel cards, people were asking for help in how to spend their actions cards: whose tools should they break or repair? When Ivory repeatedly pleaded with Lime to repair his ruin of a trolley, Pink said he’d seen more convincing arguments written on the side of a bus! At this point, the Dwarves were in complete disarray and in serious trouble. It is quite unusual for the Saboteurs to win, but half way through the deck, the Dwarves had made very little progress on the tunnel and were still confused about who the Saboteurs were.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

In the end, it turned out to be a win for the Evil Saboteurs, Black, Burgundy and Purple; despite appearances, Pine, Pink and Green were all actually innocent—this time. It had been a very bruising round though, and everyone took a minute to calm down while the Saboteurs savoured their victory. Board Game Arena had other ideas, however, and the second round was underway before we could blink.

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

This was much quicker—the tunnel quickly stretched forward towards the middle target even though Greeny-Lilac said it was coal. Purple double-checked and agreed that it was coal and when Blue peeked at the bottom card and said that was coal, everyone knew where they were going. That was until Lime said the top card was also coal…

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

This gave the Dwarves a dilemma: logic dictated that either both Greeny-Lilac and Purple were Saboteurs (the second time in a row for Purple), or one of Blue or Lime were telling porkies. The Valiant Dwarves hedged their bets with two tunnels one headed north and one headed south. All doubts were abruptly put to bed when Lime revealed his true colours by playing a rock-fall card, earning a broken pick-axe from Pine in return.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

It was too little too late though, and with just two Saboteurs they were always going to struggle. It wasn’t long before the Dwarves, in this case Team Greeny-Lilac, found the gold and put the round to bed. The final round was possibly even shorter, certainly the path was more direct. Blue once again played a map card and called the bottom card coal while Black played a map on the middle and called that gold.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

In the absence of any other information, Ivory, Burgundy and Greeny-Lilac headed towards the middle and it was all looking very easy when Purple dropped her bomb-shell, playing a dead-end card leaving the Dwarves with a diversion. Pink then lent his support to Purple (a Saboteur for the third time!), blocking the alternative route. Much to her disgust, Pine accused Blue of “Boris Johnson Logic” and then exacerbated his bad behaviour by breaking Blue’s pick-axe. Blue retaliated by breaking Pink’s pick and Ivory joined in by breaking Purple’s.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

With a maximum of three Saboteurs possible all three were revealed and when Burgundy smashed Pine’s lantern they were all disabled too. At least they were unable to dig, but they could still cause mischief. Fortunately for the Dwarves, they didn’t have the cards to cause too much trouble. Every time someone repaired a tool, a Dwarf stepped in and broke another one, keeping the evil Saboteurs pinned down.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Greeny-Lilac played a rockfall on the dead-end and Lime, Black and Ivory finished the job off. That only left the scores. These are bit strange and depend on treasure cards that are shared out amongst the winners, so luck is a big factor. This time is was a tie for first place though, with honours shared between Black and Ivory.

– Image by boardGOATS

With that, Ivory and Team Greeny-Lilac called it an night and everyone else decided to close the evening with a game of our old favourite, 6 Nimmt!. There was some discussion about playing with one of the variants. Normally, players choose a card and then starting with the lowest, they are added one at a time to one of the four rows with the player who places the sixth card picking up. One of the options is that cards can go at either end, being added to whichever row is closest.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue was keen to give the variant a go, but Pine had played it before and said he didn’t really understand what it did, but it felt very random. With such a large number of people it seemed wise to leave it for another day, so we stuck to the usual game. This time, Blue picked up six Nimmts on her first turn and had a terrible first round. Purple didn’t do much better either picking up fifteen in one turn, and it all looked like it was going to be over quite quickly.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

With Blue and Purple leading the way to the bottom, the only real question was which of the others would be left behind at the end. It was very tight, and since Blue and Purple fought a valiant rear-guard action the game went on longer than initially expected; Purple in particular hung on for ages with just one point. In fact, she managed to hold on to that single point until the end of the game as it was Blue who went into the red and brought it to a stop.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

The game finished with tie for first place between Lime and Pink on forty-four with Burgundy a little way behind in third with thirty-six. With that, Lime and Pink bade everyone else good night leaving five to carry on. There were several options, but the group went for one of the easiest and picked Coloretto. This is a game that everyone is familiar with and has very simple “point decisions” to make: turn over a coloured card and add it to a truck, or take the cards on one truck and bow out for the rest of the round.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although the decision is very simple, there is a surprising amount of depth, because even though trucks only hold three cards, the colours are critical. Players are collecting different coloured cards and the more cards the more points they deliver, with points awarded according to the Triangular Number Series. This means that up to the maximum of six, adding just one more card, increases the number of points by around fifty percent. The key part is that the largest three sets score positively, while the rest are negative, so players want three large sets and everything else to be as small as possible.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game started with Blue getting lucky with a couple of early yellow chameleons while Purple and picked up a couple of wild cards. These are really useful because they are added to a set at the end of the game to give the maximum number of points possible. Black, Burgundy and Pine all started collecting the 1970s sets (orange and brown cards), with the competition making it more difficult for all of them.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Meanwhile, Blue, finding competition for the yellow cards moved to collecting grey and soon had a full set of six. With this, a large set of yellows and almost no negative points, it looked like she had an unassailable lead. And so it proved: when the end of the game was triggered there was nothing anyone could do. While it was quite tight for second place with Burgundy’s twenty-four points sneaking ahead of Black, Blue was some way clear with thirty-five points.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Clearly that was unsatisfactory, and Black and Burgundy were keen to rectify matters, so they twisted Pine’s arm and persuaded him to join in a re-match. Things didn’t go quite according to plan, however. Purple’s starting colour of green proved challenging when five of the first ten cards drawn were green and everyone else contrived to ensure they all went into different carts making sure everyone ended with at least one.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

The next round didn’t look as if it was going to be much better for poor Purple when the first card drawn was also green, but she grabbed it early. Blue made an early error enabling Burgundy to pick up a nice pair of blue cards. It was really tight though, with most players matching each other blow for blow and everyone finishing rounds dead level, first with five points then nine points, then fourteen.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

It was only at the end of the fourth round that the gaps started to show with Burgundy and Purple edging ahead by a couple of points. Going into the final round it was close, but although it was tight, Burgundy had control of the situation and finished three points clear of the field with twenty seven points. It was a tie for second between Blue and Purple, who had somehow managed to collect five green cards and a wild with no negative points.

– Image by boardGOATS

The numbers were dwindling, but there was still a hard-core of hardened gamers who were reluctant to retire to bed, though nobody wanted to start something difficult or long. The options were limited so it wasn’t long before someone suggested the simle tile-laying game Kingdomino and everyone else quickly agreed.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although the pieces are all the same size and shape (two by one rectangles), Kingdomino has a lot of the Tetris-like aspects of Second Chance, in that the aim is to fit everything together as efficiently as possible. The really clever aspect of the game is the market. This consists of two columns of four tiles drawn at random, but placed in ranking order from low to high. Each player begins with a marker on one tile in the left column and starting with the lowest value tile, the player takes the tile adds it to their Kingdom and then places their marker on the tile of their choice in the second column. In this way, the player with the least valuable tiles gets to choose first in the next round.

– Image by boardGOATS

Points are scored for the number of crowns in an area multiplied by the number of tiles in that area. Thus an area of five squares with three crowns in it would score fifteen points. In this case though, we also included two scoring bonus: five points if there were no discarded tiles and ten points for finishing with their castle in the centre of their kingdom. At the start of the game, four tiles are revealed and players choose which they take in turn without knowing what will turn up in the next round.

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

Purple went first and took went for two crowns on pasture. Black went next and made the same choice, but ended up with the fourth tile, meaning he would get Hobson’s choice in the next round. Burgundy went third and took the second tile leaving Blue began with a tile that gave her sea and cornfield with a crown. As this was the lowest value, Blue went first, so had first choice from the next selection and was able to choose another tile giving her more sea and cornfield. This was also a low value tiles so also gave her first choice and in turn, this meant she was able to choose more corn and go first then and then more sea.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Meanwhile, Black was building his pasture, Burgundy was starting trying to focus on the valuable tiles (with more crowns) and Purple was hedging her bets with a bit of everything. Blue continued with her ever-growing cornfield adding crowns whenever she had the chance, while Black and Burgundy got into a bit of a tussle for marshland and mountain terrain.

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

The marshland and mountain tiles being high rated were often last to be played, which meant that these players were often last to play giving them the left-overs from the next selection. Blue, on the other hand, continued to play a “low rent” game, always taking the cheap tiles, as a result, she ended up with a very large cornfield of eleven spaces and four out of the five available crown giving her forty-four points for that alone. Purple scored well for her forests and lakes, while Black focussed on grasslands and swamps, but even their two terrains didn’t match the total for Blue’s massive cornfield.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Everyone got their both bonuses and with that and a substantial lake, Blue finished with a winning score over seventy. It was second place that was more interesting, however, which was a tie between Purple and Black with sixty-one points each. What nobody hitherto knew, was that there was a tie-breaker: the size of the biggest territory multiplied by a hundred added to the total number of crowns in the kingdom. With that, Purple took great delight in second place. And then it was time for bed for even the most dedicated of board gamers.

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

Learning Outcome: Once in a while, everyone really enjoys releasing their inner toddler.

Boardgames in the News: Gaming at a Distance

With so many people tucked up at home there has been some debate as to whether this will encourage people to play games more. Among gamers, there has been a lot of discussion about solo games where players compete against the game, but this loses the social aspect. Online gaming is also an option; this can enable playing with real people, but loses the tactile element of gaming that so many people love. In most cases though, people are not “home alone”, they are with family, so perhaps this is an opportunity to play games with them?

– Image by boardGOATS

The occasional board game column in The Guardian has published a list of twenty family games including some modern family classics like, Ticket to Ride: London, Splendor, Kingdomino, Dobble and (inevitably) Pandemic. It also includes a few, more recent games, like Wingspan, and Just One, as well as some less well known games like Patchwork Express, Legacy of Dragonholt and Blue Lagoon.

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There has some suggestion that there has been a flurry of buying games to play with their families, but is there any real evidence of this? Anecdotally, there have been comments that prices of games have increased on Amazon.co.uk which could indicate an increase in sales. The website camelcamelcamel.co.uk tracks prices on Amazon, and it seems to indicate that prices for many popular light games have increased in the last week.

Ticket to Ride: Europe on camelcamelcamel.co.uk (23/03/20)

– Image by boardGOATS from camelcamelcamel.co.uk

There is another possible reason though: Amazon has suspended warehouse services (storage and shipping) of non-medical supplies and “high-demand” products for third party sellers. This would have the effect of pushing prices up. A lot of Friendly Local Games Shops sell online though, and many of these have sales on at the moment, so why not support one of the small businesses that are struggling at the moment, and leave Amazon to deal with toilet rolls and hand sanitiser?

21st January 2020

Over the last three years we’ve spent a lot of Tuesday evenings discussing Brexit and following events in the House of Commons as they occured. Since this was going to be the last games night with the UK in the EU, and as a predominantly pro-EU group, we wanted to mark the occasion and show our support for our European friends and all those who have campaigned against Brexit so valiantly. For this reason, we decided to make the “Feature Game” “European Ticket to Ride“, in other words, European editions of one of our favourite games, i.e. the Italy, France, Germany, Poland, Netherlands and of course, Europe games/expansions. Unfortunately, Blue (and therefore most of the maps) was late arriving, and then, nobody could decide what they wanted to play; the only one who expressed any strong opinion was Lime who wanted to play the France map.

Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 6 – France & Old West

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With nine players, three groups of three looked good, but the debate as to who would play what rivaled the Brexit negotiations, not helped by the number of people who were enticed by the Japan map on the reverse of the Italy map. In the end, Ivory and Green took themselves off to play the new Poland map, and, after a lot of discussion, Lime, the only one who had a strong opinion ended up forgoing his choice of France and joined the Poles to even up the numbers. With Black, Purple and Pine starting on France, that just left Blue, Burgundy and Mulberry to decide, and eventually they decided to play the Italy map using the Germany base game components.

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Ticket to Ride is a very well-known, well-loved game that has now become something of a “gateway game”, that is, a game that starts people unfamiliar with modern boardgames along the slippery slope. The game is popular with casual gamers because it is simple to play, with few options and a little bit of luck, but not too much. The game is played on a map with cities connected by train routes each made up of anything from one to nine spaces (depending on the map). On their turn, the active player can do one of a small handful of things: firstly, they can take train cards from the market or use the train cards to place plastic trains on the map and score points. To place trains on the map, players spend coloured cards to match the route they are claiming. As well as coloured train cards, there are also multi-coloured locomotive cards which are wild; a face up Locomotive can only be drawn as the first card and ends the turn, making them more expensive as well as useful.

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Most cities have only a single route between them, but some are double or even triple, though these can only be used with higher player counts. Instead of taking train cards or placing trains on the map, players can also draw tickets. These are a sort of personal objective that give players points for connecting two cities—the further apart, the more points the ticket is worth, but the larger the risk, as failure gives negative points. Players start the game with a handful of these and can choose which ones to keep. They can also draw more during the game, keeping some and discarding others, but the specific conditions depend on the map used.

Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 7 – Japan & Italy

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This is the basics of the original 2004, Spiel des Jahres winning game, with a USA map, Ticket to Ride, but each variant provides a different map and some slight modifications to the rules. For example, Ticket to Ride: Europe adds Ferry routes which require a certain number of locomotive cards to be played in addition to the coloured train cards. It also adds Stations, which can used to help players complete tickets where a route has been blocked. For some different maps players get different numbers of trains, Poland is one of the smaller maps, with only thirty-five trains, compared with the forty-five in the Europe and US versions or the three German editions (Germany, Deutschland and Märklin).

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The other thing that makes the Poland expansion map stand out (aside from the fact that it is Map Collection Volume “6½” and goes by the name of “Wsiąść do Pociągu: Polska”) is that routes that connect to the countries bordering Poland give points directly. Unusually, the routes that cross the border include some triple routes and even a quadruple route, all of which can be used regardless of the number of players. Each country then also has a small deck of three or four cards, each card giving a different number of points. The first player to connect to two countries through Poland takes the cards with the highest value, the next takes the next most lucrative and so on. Adding more countries to a player’s network adds more cards and more points for that player.

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Green was particularly keen to play the Polish expansion because of the “Czech connection”, and Ivory also wanted to try it as it was a new map for him; Lime went along to make up the numbers. They were quick to get going and started off laying out routes without interfering with each other very much at all. Ivory was first to link two countries (Czechia and Slovakia), which was annoying to Green as he joined the the same countries on the very next turn. However, Green got his own back by getting in Ivory’s way and linking Germany into his network first. Lime was late to join the country network party, but concentrated on the Poland’s eastern borders. Ivory and Lime started taking new tickets about midway through the game, but Green instead continued to concentrate on linking more countries into his network.

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It was only in the last couple of turns that Green finally turned to tickets when it looked difficult to add any more countries to his already substantial, four country network. While Ivory and Green had been fighting over routes, Lime had quietly travelled the entire width of Poland and also linked several countries into his network, rivalling Green. In the final scoring it was Lime who had charged ahead, scoring well with tickets and country cards, finishing with ninety-six points—deserved since he gave up his preferred choice of the France map. It was very close for second though, with Green just three points ahead of Ivory with seventy-nine. Meanwhile, on the next table, Black, Purple and Pine were setting up the game Lime had missed; a much longer game, that had barely started as the Poles were finishing.

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France is one of the more complex expansions as the map mostly only depicts the track-bed, and players choose what colour a line will be. So, every time a player takes carriage cards, they also take a coloured tile of their choice and place it somewhere on the board. Thereafter, any player can claim that route by spending the appropriately coloured cards and placing the correct number of train pieces. Some of these track-beds overlap, but once a tile has placed any track-beds under it are no-longer available.

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At the start, nobody really knew how to play with the track-bed tiles: placing them somewhere near one’s own route telegraphed probable plans, potentially giving others an opportunity to obstruct. On the other hand, progress could not be made at all until tiles had been placed. The map is very, very large so to begin with everyone could get on with their own thing. Purple monopolised the Loire, Auvergne and Burgundy regions while Pine occupied the north coast and eastern borders. Pine had competition from Black in the Normandy, Picardy and Champagne regions, but other than that, Black took himself off to the west and south and everyone got on with their own thing.

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Ultimately, the game was very lopsided. Pine kept drawing tickets and kept getting lucky; he repeatedly got tickets along similar routes so needed minimal addition to his already substantial network. As a result, he not only took the longest route bonus, but also the Globetrotter points for the player with the most successful tickets, with eight. Had Black been successful with all his, things would have been closer, but failing two meant it was a tie for second place with both Black and Purple finishing with eighty, exactly half Pine’s massive victory.

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Meanwhile, further down the table Burgundy eschewed Netherlands, so the group went instead for Italy, played with the Germany base game, in which the pieces have an unusual colour set. This gave Blue a slight quandary as to which she should play with, as blue wasn’t available. Instead Blue opted for purple, only for Purple on the next table to offer to swap pieces as she had chosen blue because purple wasn’t available. Sadly there was already enough confusion of pieces with Pine, Black and Purple playing with Burgundy’s base game and Blue’s France expansion so swapping pieces just seemed likely to make the chances of all the bits going back into the right boxes that bit smaller. So in the end, both suffered with the “wrong colour”.

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The Italy map is a more conventional expansion than France, with the only significant differences being a tweak to the Ferry rules and a new bonus scoring opportunity. Instead of needing Locomotive cards, these Ferry routes include some carriages with a round wave-icon on them. These can be satisfied either using special Ferry cards, or Locomotive cards. The special Ferry cards are in a separate deck and one of these can be taken instead of drawing train cards, up to a limit of two at any one time. Each of these special Ferry cards then count as two “wave” cards. This makes them better value than Locomotive cards drawn face up from the market, but less versatile.

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The bonus is potentially extremely lucrative, giving points for having a network that connects different regions of Italy. This starts with one point for five connected regions and increments according to the “Lazy Caterer’s Sequence” to give a massive fifty-six points for a network connecting fifteen or more regions. The layout of the map itself has a lot in common with the Nordic map in that it is quite long and thin with what feel like a lot of north/south routes running the length of the country, in the middle of the board and a lot of short, east/west routes available in the north and the south.

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Blue kept all her starting tickets and Burgundy jettisoned just the one, but in contrast, Mulberry kept the minimum she could. As a result, it wasn’t long before Mulberry was picking up more tickets, and then more and then even more, much to Burgundy’s and Blue’s horror. When questioned, Mulberry said, “Just Nickels and Dimes, Nickels and Dimes…” This didn’t calm Burgundy and Blue in the slightest, as they were still struggling to complete their starting tickets. Eventually though, they also took more tickets, with Burgundy keeping a lot of his, while Blue was less fortunate. Burgundy supplemented his tickets with a couple of very long Ferry routes netting him eighteen points each.

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As the game came to an end, Blue was still struggling to get the yellow carriage cards she needed to complete her final ticket. So when Burgundy brutally ended the game it cost Blue some forty points, though in truth she was a couple of turns away from getting them even if she had somehow managed to get that one final yellow card. It was clear that unless Burgundy had a lot of incomplete tickets, he would probably be able to defend his already substantial lead. Mulberry’s tickets may have been “Nickels and Dimes”, but she had an awful lot of them; as the phrase goes, “Take care of the pennies and the pounds take care of themselves.” With just regional bonus to add, Burgundy was out of sight and although Blue and Mulberry made a dent in the gap it wasn’t enough. It was close for second place though, but in the end a couple of extra regions gave it to Blue.

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The Poland game was finished first and with France only just started and Italy only halfway through the Poles toyed with the idea of trying another European Ticket to Ride Map, but instead opted for a quick game of the 2017 Spiel des Jares Winner Kingdomino. This is a light little game with a very clever market mechanic. The idea is that players take it in turns to take a tile from the market and add it to their kingdom. Each tile comprises two “squares” (like a domino), each showing a terrain. At the end of the game, players score points for each area of terrain in their kingdom gaining points equal to the number of “squares” multiplied by the number of crowns in that region.

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The clever part of the game is the market which consists of two columns of tiles, each tile having a rank reflecting their value based on scarcity of the terrain(s) it depicts and the number of crowns. The tiles in each row are placed, and taken, in descending order. When a player takes their tile from the current column, they choose which tile they want from the next column, thus a player taking a less valuable tile gets a wider choice on the next round. Unfortunately, as each column has to have the same number of tiles as players, the game can be a bit unbalanced with three, because some of the tiles are removed at random.

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As well as scoring for terrain, players also score bonus points for placing all their tiles in a five-by-five array with their castle in the centre. This time, Ivory managed a full kingdom with his castle in the centre, and a large wheat field with a healthy number of crowns. His score was also assisted by a not inconsiderable lake (although with only a couple of crowns) and a small but valuable mountain. Lime, fresh from his stunning Polska victory, realised too late that his castle was not central in his kingdom and his last couple of tiles were unplaceable. Green managed a complete kingdom with his castle in the middle, though his was made up largely of forest. Pasture, wheat and sand also featured and gave what was a winning score of sixty-three, some ten points ahead of Ivory in second.

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With the Italian map players just finishing, the group decided to join them and see what else was on offer. There were three options: For Sale (best with it’s a maximum of six), Century: Spice Road (plays a maximum of five) and World’s Fair 1893 (maximum of four). Mulberry decided to get an early night, leaving five players and Century: Spice Road. This is a resource management game with deck building at it’s core. Neither Lime nor Green had played it before so there was a quick run down of the rules first. These are simple enough though. The central area consists of two markets: one for action cards and one for contracts.

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On their turn, the active player can take an action card from the market, if they take the card at the end of the row (the one that has been there longest), it is free, otherwise they have to pay resources dependent on the card’s position. This card goes into the player’s hand where, on a later turn, they can use it to get spices, upgrade spices or convert spices into other spices. When used, a card is placed on the player’s personal discard pile, and they can also spend a turn picking up all their discarded cards. The spices, turmeric, saffron, cardamom and cinnamon are then used to fulfill contracts, giving points.

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The contract cards that have been around for longest get a bonus, in this case a coin is worth one or three points at the end of the game. The challenge, or at least part of the challenge is storing the spices: each player has a caravan card which will hold a maximum of ten spice cubes, so converting cubes into other cubes and buying contracts has to be done efficiently otherwise spices are wasted. The game end is triggered when one player has five contract cards. There are a couple of minor details, like the number of cards in the markets and the values of the coins, but Burgundy clearly knew these without needing to check the rules.

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The engine-building nature of this game has a lot in common with Splendor and as Burgundy is invincible at that the writing was on the wall before the group even started. It was no surprise therefore that when Ivory picked up the first contract, Burgundy was immediately behind him. Green, new to the game, wasn’t far behind either. Blue had a complete nightmare, but Lime, after a slow start suddenly seemed to get the hang of it and then made rapid progress. It wasn’t long before Ivory took his final card though. Taking the maximum number of cards is always key, and when he said he had sixty-seven points it looked like he might have been successful, however, Burgundy, managed to take one last card in that final round as he was the last to play, and ultimately, he managed to take first place by just three points.

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Learning Outcome: Europe has a very extensive (and exciting) rail network.

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).

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

24th July 2018

It was a quiet night, and the atmosphere was slightly subdued as our thoughts were with Green who had had a very rough day and therefore wasn’t with us. Burgundy and Blue were still eating, so Pine, Red and Ivory began punching out Pine’s brand-spanking, new copy of the “Feature Game”, Azul. This week, Azul won the Spiel des Jahres Award, but despite the fact that it only came out at Essen last year, and has been difficult to get hold of for much of the time, we’ve still managed to play it a lot. Even so, Red seemed to have managed to miss out, so an explanation of the rules was in order. It is quite simple to play, if a little abstract. The idea is that players are tile laying artists decorating a wall in the Palace of Evora with “azulejos”. On their turn, the active player can either take all the tiles of one colour from one of the factory displays (putting the rest in the central market) or take all the tiles of one colour from the market in the centre of the table. They then place the tiles in one of the five rows on their player board.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor JackyTheRipper

Each row can only contain one colour, but players may have more than one row with any given colour. The catch is that each player only has five rows, each with a set number of spaces, one to five. Players can add tiles to a row later in the round, but once a row is full, any left-overs go into the negative scoring row. Once all the tiles have been picked up, players evaluate their board, and, starting with the shortest row, one of the tiles from each full row is added to the player’s mosaic and scored. Players score one point for a tile that is not placed adjacent to any other tile, whereas tiles added to rows or columns score the same number of points as there are tiles in the completed row (or column). The game continues with players choosing tiles from the factory displays and then adding them to rows, the catch is that as the mosaic fills up, it is harder to fill the rows as each row can only take each colour once.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

End game bonuses, keep everyone guessing right up to the end which adds interest and occasionally it can be really nasty when someone ends up with a pile of tiles they can’t use. Red, Ivory and Pine got going quickly, and once Burgundy and Blue had finished with their supper, they moved to a table near the door to make the most of the draught and started a second game with Black and Purple. Having played the game quite a bit, nobody pulled their punches: It was only the second round when Blue had to pick up ten yellow tiles netting her fourteen negative points. She was fortunate that she didn’t have fourteen to lose, but when Black picked up seven yellow tiles a couple of rounds later he was less lucky. On the next table Ivory was being nasty to Pine, leaving him with Hobson’s Choice and minus ten points either way. Playing “dirty” clearly worked for Ivory as he won the first game, though there was some confusion of the scoring, which Pine blamed on his over-hot head.

– Image by BGG contributor JackyTheRipper

In the other game, there had been a lot negative points and a lot of bonuses, it was all surprisingly close. In the last round, Purple took the tiles she needed for a full set of reds and Blue had scotched a ten point bonus for Burgundy. Despite that, Burgundy still picked up a massive twenty-seven points in end-game bonuses, but much to everyone’s surprise he didn’t quite manage to catch Black who finished with a eighty-five. It had been quite a stressful game, but as usual, we’d all enjoyed it, and discussion moved on to the new release coming in October: Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra, which we are all looking forward to, as long as it doesn’t “do a Queendomino“.^*

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Toynan

Red, Pine and Ivory had started their game first, and with only three players compared with four on the other table, it was no surprise that that also finished first. As they were looking round for something to play, Red spied Yardmaster, one of her favourite games, in Blue’s bag. Neither Pine nor Ivory had played it before, but it wasn’t difficult for Red to persuade them to give it a go. Unlike most other train games, in Yardmaster, players are building a locomotive rather than routes. On their turn players can do two from the three possible actions: draw a cargo card (either blind or from the face up discard pile); buy a railcar card from the four face up cards in the middle, or swap their “Exchange Token” with any other one around the table. To buy a railcar, players pay using sets of cargo cards, so a yellow number three railcar will cost three yellow “oil” cards. The exchange tokens allow players to use other cargo cards at a rate of two-to-one, however, if a player only had two yellow oil cards but also had two blue “coal” cards and the blue exchange token, they would still be able to buy the yellow number three railcar.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor joeincolorado

When buying a railcar, if the number or colour match the previous car, then it must be added to the end of their locomotive. If not, then players can park it in their personal sorting yard and add it later, when another railcar is being bought and added to the locomotive. This is the clever part of the game as it allows players to “stack” points in their personal train yard enabling them both to take some risks and strategically remove railcars from the grasping hands of their opponents. Players score is the total of the numbers of the on the railcars making up their locomotive at the end of the game. Ivory started out with a really clever move, using a discarded “extra move” cargo card to take another “extra move” card and Pine and Red thought it was all over before it had begun. It wasn’t though, and despite it being a very short game, Ivory quickly got bogged down trying to buy a high value, “Purple Four”, which gave both Red and Pine the chance to get past him. Although he was new to the game, it was clearly one that made sense to Pine who finished four points ahead of Red.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor moonblogger

As both games finished Blue, Burgundy, Black and Purple moved back to the group’s usual table and the options were discussed. With seven players and Red present, Bohnanza was always a possibility, but with the heat sapping everyone’s strength, nobody fancied playing anything too strenuous and the deal was sealed. Everyone is very familiar with this, even Ivory who has played it the least, so as Burgundy shuffled the deck and removed the cocoa and garden beans, everyone else reminded each other of the rules: must plant the first card in hand, may plant the second as well; turn over two cards from the deck which must be planted before any other deals can be finalised; trading can only be with the active player; draw four cards at the end of a turn; two coins for a third bean field; fields with only one card can’t be ploughed in unless they all have only one card, and don’t forget – you can’t rearrange your hand!

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor spearjr

As usual with a large number of players, it was a tight game and everyone spent most of it telling people not to trade with everyone else as they were winning. Three times through the deck doesn’t take long and people don’t get many turns, but it was Blue, Black and Purple who stood on the podium at the end with everyone else within a point of each other. It was Blue who made up for her dire showing in Azul though, beating Black into second place by a massive two points. There was still time to play something else, but the heat had clearly got to everyone as the conversation degenerated into a discussion about everyone’s favourite childhood cartoons and how many had inspired boardgames. The late, great Peter Firmin‘s Ivor the Engine and Noggin the Nog both got a mention, but then age and nationality created a bit of a divide, and the evening ended with Pine crowing, “My name’s Pig and I like cream cakes!” His head was definitely over-hot.

– Image taken from youtube.com

Learning Outcome: Children’s TV programs were very weird in the 1970s.

^* Queendomino is the follow-on to the 2017 Spiel des Jahres winner, Kingdomino. When the group played it, we found the new game replaced the smooth elegance of the original with a more clunky, complex, long-winded game that was no where near as good as the games it was trying to compete with (much like Tsuro of the Seas a couple of years before).

17th April 2018

With Burgundy and Blue waiting for food, they decided to entertain Red with a quick game of NMBR 9, making it’s appearance at four consecutive games nights and starting three, something of a record. Somehow despite this extended run, Red had managed to avoid playing it, so after a very quick run-down of the rules, we started. The game is really very simple indeed, with players simultaneously drawing tiles and adding them to their tableau. Tiles can be placed on top of other layers as long as they don’t overhang and overlap more than one tile. Each tile depicts a number and the more tiles it sits on, the more points it scores. The whole game is typically over in about ten to fifteen minutes, and in this case it was quite tight between Blue and Burgundy, though Blue finished on ahead thanks to a lot of high-scoring tiles on her third level.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although it has proved to be a highly popular filler thanks to it’s simplicity and minimal set up time, Red was not so impressed because she felt it had seemed to offer more when she had watched everyone else playing. She struggled to explain what she meant, but it was clear that she was a little disappointed though that was probably largely due to her expectations. By this time, food had been dealt with and everyone else was arriving, and as the “Feature Game” was to be be Mini Park, another quick filler, we got on with deciding who would play it. When Ivory’s comment, “I’ll play that, but it depends on what else is on offer really…” was challenged, he added, “Well, if the alternative is Kingdomino, I’d rather try Mini Park!” Since Black had chosen that moment to wave Kingdomino around, that pretty much settled them as the two games and uncharacteristically, almost everyone jumped on the Mini Park band-waggon, leaving Black and Purple to play Kingdomino alone.

– Image by boardGOATS

The group doesn’t usually go for two-player games and as Black and Purple get lots of opportunity to play games like this together, normally someone would join them. However, in this case, both games were short and Kingdomino can be a bit variable with three due to the tiles that are left out, so we just got on with it. Kingdomino was the Spiel des Jahres in 2017 and has been very popular within the group as a light filler, so has hit the table quite a bit in the last year. The game is quite simple in that 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.

– Image by boardGOATS

Unfortunately, Black and Purple forgot about the other key difference when playing a two player game: instead of 5×5 arrays, each player is building kingdoms consisting of 7×7 arrays of “squares”. They suddenly noticed they had more tiles left than they had spaces and realised their error, so decided to carry on playing anyhow. Purple concentrated on getting corn fields and then sea and finally forests, while Black just tried to build areas of everything and make sure he was able to place all his tiles. It was very, very close, but despite the fact that she had to forfeit some tiles and failed to pick up her bonus for completing her grid, Purple just pinched it by a single point.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the neighbouring table, everyone else was learning the “Feature Game”, Mini Park, another quick-playing, tile-laying game. On the face of it, this has a lot in common with Carcassonne, played with two face up tiles to choose from. In contrast, however, the tiles are hexagonal which gives a little more variability and once during the game, players choose one character which dictates the end game scoring. We played the “advanced” game which has slight changes to the scoring and pairs each scoring character at random with a second character. In our game, for example, the Black Man in the Smart Hat was paired with the Yellow Fish, so the player who chose the Man (Ivory), got half the points that the player who chose the Fish got for that character (Blue). It was felt that this would add an interesting dynamic to the game as it would take on some aspects of a semi-cooperative game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Unfortunately, nobody realised at the start just how powerful (or not) each of the characters were and in that game it turned out that some were really very powerful indeed. For example, at the start of the game everyone was encouraged to place fish next to other fish, as this was the only way to make them pay when they were being placed. However, this left a large fish pond with lots of fish and when Blue (who was the first to get to the Yellow Fish Marker) and then Ivory added to it, it yielded a massive twenty-four points. Although this was the most lucrative character, the Green Man on a Bicycle (claimed by Pine) was not far behind with eighteen points. This was thanks largely to the fact that Pine and Blue (who had the Bicycle as her subsidiary character) kept drawing road tiles and extending the road the Bicycle was on, trying to scupper Ivory’s plans to build roads with benches.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although Burgundy picked up the most points for tile placement, the majority of the points come at the end of the game and, as he was last to pick his character, Burgundy was penalised when he ended up with the relatively low scoring White Bird (ironically partnered with the Orange Cat that also failed to score highly). Pine scored well for his Green Cyclist, but did not pick up enough subsidiary points from the White Bird. Ivory’s subsidiary scored highly (Yellow Fish), but much to his chagrin the scoring for his Black Man in a Smart Hat was severely restricted by Pine and Blue’s tactics. Blue, however, did well on both her primary goal (Yellow Fish) and her subsidiary (Green Cyclist), giving her more than enough compensate for a poor score on the tile placement, and she finished some way in front. If everyone had realised the implications of how the scoring worked, it was quite likely that they would have played differently and it would not have been such a landslide, and chatting afterwards, it was obvious that that aspect coloured people’s opinion of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

The fact that everyone had only one shot at a character was meant it felt that all a player’s eggs were in one basket. This was made worse by the fact that with only one shot, the challenge was when to choose a character: too early and everyone else would be able to obstruct, too late and only the dross is left with not enough time to improve the situation. That said, it was not a long game and with only three players it would be very different as each player gets two opportunities to take character cards. Furthermore, it seems the rules are still being developed, for example, the latest version of the online rules state that the subsidiary character cards are placed face down and thus kept secret until the end of the game and the tile placement scoring has been simplified too. Given that it is such a short game, we should certainly give this one another go sometime, perhaps with the new rules-set.

– Image by boardGOATS

Kingdomino and Mini Park finished at much the same time, which meant i was possible to re-balance the number of players a little, but not before the usual shenanigans regarding who wanted to play what. Although neither mentioned it by name, Burgundy and Ivory clearly had an eye on giving Yokohama another go. Time was marching on though and Yokohama isn’t a short game, and even without any rules explanation there is a lot to setup. The 10^th Anniversary Edition of Puerto Rico was also available though, and there was just time to squeeze in a game provided it started straight away. So as Ivory had somehow managed to avoid playing it thus-far, we felt it was essential that we rectified the situation and Burgundy and Ivory started setting it up. With Blue joining Burgundy and Ivory, that left four people looking for something interesting to play, so Blue suggested Bärenpark. This another fairly light tile laying game, this time set in a bear park.

– Image by boardGOATS

Each player starts with a plot that will become their park, and the idea of the game is that on their turn, players place a tile from their personal supply on this plot. Each starting plot has a different array of symbols on some of the spaces, indicating different types of tiles. When these symbols are built over, the player takes more of the appropriate tiles from the general supply to add to their personal holdings. Some of these are small animal houses, some are larger enclosures and some are very small amenities like toilets and children’s play areas. Each tile also has a Construction Crew and a Pit providing the foundations for a Bear Statue. The Construction Crew allows the player to take an expansion board for their park, providing a new plot which they place next to their park.

– Image by boardGOATS

In contrast to the rest of the spaces, the Pit cannot be built upon in the usual way and is the last space to be covered in each plot; once every other space in a plot is covered, the owner can claim a statue from the display and place it over the Pit. These statues provide points, with the statues providing a diminishing number as the game progresses. Other sources of points include the animal houses and enclosures, but the number of these are limited and again, the earlier tiles are worth more. The small amenity tiles do not score points, but they allow players to fill in those awkward, difficult-to-fill, small gaps, enabling them to finish a plot and build a statue. Even these are limited, though to a lesser extent, so players need to be on the watch in case they are caught out. The game ends when one player fills all of their four plots and then everyone adds up their scores.

– Image by boardGOATS

After a little grumbling about koalas not being bears (the rules explain that “people like koalas, so we will be including them in our park!”), and a brief explanation from Blue, everyone started building. It was a fairly close game, but Black finishing with eighty-eight, seven points ahead of Pine in second place. Asked what he thought of it, Black’s comment was that it was a very simple game, but the group had been playing the basic game. The “Expert Variant” has achievement tiles which provide another source of points and make the game far more interesting for experienced gamers. Red, on the other hand, enjoyed the game much more, somehow finding in it the tessellation building thing that she had struggled to describe, but she had felt was missing in NMBR 9.

– Image by boardGOATS

Puerto Rico was still going, so the group moved on to one of Purple’s current favourites, Cat Lady. This is a light card game that got an outing last month as well. The game is a very simple a card drafting game, similar in feel to Sushi Go!, though with a very different drafting mechanism. On their turn, the active player takes all thee cards from one row or column in the three by three grid, marking the row they took with a kitty meeple. The cards are replaced from the draw deck and the next player then takes a different row or column. Cat cards go in front of the owner who must feed them before the end of the game or they score negative points. Any food cards yield cubes which can then be placed on the face-up cat cards to show they are being fed. Similar to Sushi Go!, there are also cards that score for the player with the most cards (cat “costumes”) and give players with the fewest negative points and sets that players can collect (toys).

– Image by boardGOATS

Players can also collect catnip cards which score minus two if the player only has one at the end of the game, or one or two points per cat if they have more. There are also lost cat cards, and discarding a pair allows players take a two victory point token or one of the three stray cat cards which are particularly useful because they have special powers. The tricky part is making sure that the food a player gets matches the cards, because cats are fussy creatures and some like tuna, while others will only eat chicken… At the end of the game, players score points for each happy well-fed cat and for their toy collection with extras if they have the most cat costumes. Unfed cats, having the fewest costumes, and the largest surplus of food will give players negative points.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time everyone went for different approaches with differing degrees of success. For example, Purple went for costumes and Pine went for toys; Black and Red both went for lots of cats and catnip, but Black failed get enough catnip to score, and actually ended up with negative points. It was very close between Pine and Red in the end, but Pine who had fewer cats (but very contented ones thanks to all the toys they had to play with), just beat Red with her larger number of cats that were all high on catnip. Time was getting on and Puerto Rico was just coming to an end giving them just enough time to watch the last few rounds.

– Image by boardGOATS

Puerto Rico was the number one rated game on the BoardGameGeek website for over five years and still commands a lot of respect though it has significant flaws. The problem is that there is very little randomness in the game which is great, but when a game like that is played a lot people become “experts” and there is a perception that there are right and wrong moves. In Puerto Rico, this point is exacerbated because of the way the game is played. In each round, beginning with the Governor, players take it in turns to chooses an action. Every player carries out the action, but the player that chose it gets a “privilege”, i.e. a bonus. The catch is that players that players need to watch what everyone else is doing in order not to give an advantage to an opponent, or worse, give one opponent an advantage while making life difficult for someone else (also known as “King making”).

– Image by boardGOATS

In Puerto Rico, players are plantation owners in seventeenth century Puerto Rico growing up to five different kind of crops: corn, indigo, sugar, tobacco, and coffee. Each plantation owner must try to run their business more efficiently than their competitors. First they must grow their crops then they must store them efficiently. Finally, players must sell their crops at the right time or ship their goods back to Europe for maximum benefit. In order to do this most effectively, the plantation owners must make optimal use of the arriving colonists and develop the capital city, San Juan, building useful amenities. Thus, the aim of the game is to get victory points which are awarded for buildings and for shipping goods. However, to build, players need money, and before they can ship goods, players need to be able to produce the goods with a plantation, and where necessary process them in the appropriate building.

– Image by boardGOATS

As Ivory had not played the game before, Burgundy was Governor for the first round and Blue went second, giving him a little thinking time before he had to choose an action. This has consequences for the setup, with Blue and Burgundy starting with an indigo plantation and and Ivory starting with a corn field. At first, Ivory couldn’t see why corn might be useful as selling it doesn’t give any money, however, he quickly realised that it doesn’t need a production building and therefore is quicker and easier to produce, making it ideal for shipping. Blue joined him and the pair were soon filling boats as often as they could. Burgundy meanwhile, had gone for the high value coffee. This took him a little while to get going, but once he had a coffee roaster he was able to sell his first batch of coffee and for a short while looked like he was going to storm ahead as he added sugar to his portfolio. Unfortunately, for him, once he had spent his coffee profits, Burgundy got a little stuck as Blue and Ivory worked together very efficiently to make life difficult for him.

– Image by boardGOATS

To begin with, Burgundy was able to ship his coffee, but as it is a high value produce, he really wanted to sell it and use the profits to build. That wasn’t possible though as the Trading House already had a coffee crate in it and until there were four different commodities there, no more coffee could be sold. Burgundy had been able to commandeer a ship for coffee, but once that was full, Burgundy was in an even worse position, because between them, Blue and Ivory were able to make it very difficult for Burgundy to ship two different goods types. The reason why this caused him problems was because of the Boston Tea Party Rule: after shipping, players are only able to keep one crate and anything else is lost over the side. Thus, to begin with, Burgundy was forced to ship when he didn’t want to, and then lost valuable stock when he couldn’t ship. And all the while, Blue and Ivory were collecting victory points for shipping their corn and a little sugar or indigo.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory had got off the mark quite quickly buying a Hacienda early on. It wasn’t till much later in the game when Blue bought a second that we realised we’d been playing it wrong and instead of choosing which extra plantation tile he got, he should have been drawing them blind. This had two consequences: firstly it gave Ivory a small, but potentially significant advantage, and secondly, it meant we didn’t run out of plantation tiles quite as quickly as we would otherwise have done. It couldn’t be fixed though, so we just carried on and as long their strategies were aligned, Blue and Ivory were worked well together. It wasn’t long before Ivory moved on to the next stage of his development and first built a Factory and then started raking in the cash every time he produced. Blue then built herself a Warehouse and upped her shipping rate and starting raking in the victory points.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game was coming to a close when the Big Question came up: Burgundy asked whether players were allowed to buy more than one large building. Both Burgundy and Blue had a vague recollection of the rule, but it couldn’t be found in the booklet. Ivory graciously switched his strategy and did something else, though checking later proved that was wholly unnecessary. The game came to a close as we ran out of on victory point chips and colonists (something that would have happened a lot earlier had we realised there should always be a minimum number arriving on the Colonists Ship), and all that was left was to tally up the scores and it was very tight indeed. Although he had lots of buildings, Burgundy’s shipping had been effectively stymied by Blue and Ivory and the shortage of colonists had also made things a lot more difficult for him than it should have been, despite all that though, he wasn’t far behind Blue and Ivory. In the end, Ivory won by a single point. There was no need to re-count as he would have undoubtedly won by far more if he had built that second large building, though perhaps that off-set some of the advantage he had received early on with his Hacienda.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Sometimes it is best to play the “basic” game to get a feel for it before trying the advanced rules, but other times, it just feels trivial.

3rd April 2018

Blue and Pink arrived first and, as they were early, they decided to get in a quick game of NMBR 9, while they waited for food and more people. This is a game which is rapidly becoming one of our go-to fillers primarily thanks to it’s almost non-existent setup time. This time, Blue turned over the cards, and Pink scratched his head a lot as he tried to work out what to do with his tiles. Once a few tiles have been placed to form a base layer, then tiles can be placed on top of other tiles as long as there are no overhanging parts, and the tile sits squarely on more than one other tile. This is essential as the higher the tiles are placed the more they score. Unfortunately, the rule Pink forgot about was that tiles must be placed such that at least one edge touches a previous tile on that level. “Cheating” didn’t do him much good though, as Blue won by more than thirty finishing with a massive eighty-one thanks largely to placing a seven on the fourth tier.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Although a few of our regulars were missing (Green, Red and Ivory), they were ably replaced by a couple of our irregulars in Pink and Turquoise. So while we made sure there were no more stragglers and Burgundy finished his inch thick slice of ham, we played another quick filler game, this time of 6 Nimmt!. This has long been a favourite in the group, thanks to the fact that it plays a lot of people coupled with the hilarious way that a tenuous control of the game can catastrophically turn into chaos. It is one of those games that is more difficult to explain than to play, but essentially each player has a hand of cards and simultaneously everyone chooses one to play. Simultaneously, everyone then reveals their card and each card is added in turn to the end of one of the four rows of cards on the table. Beginning with the lowest each card is added to the row with the highest number that is still lower than the active card. The snag is, if anyone’s card is the sixth to be placed in a row, the first five are “won” and and the card becomes a new starting card.

– Image by boardGOATS

As well as a face value (one to a hundred and four), each card also has a “nimmt” value: most are one, but there are some as high as seven. The player with the fewest nimmts at the end is the winner. It has been somewhat neglected of late though, and has only been played once this year by the group, and then only just (it was the early hours of New Year’s Day), so it was definitely time for another outing. Normally we play two rounds, dealing out approximately half the deck each time, but with so many of us all wanting to play, we decided to go for a single round and deal ten cards each. This time Black and Purple were fighting it out for the unofficial wooden spoon, but that honour was reserved for Turquoise with a quite fantastic thirty-one. At the other end, both Burgundy and Blue thought they might have got it with just three and one respectively, but it was Pink with a nice round zero who pipped them to it.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once the food and the nimmts had been dealt with and it was clear that no-one else was coming, the inevitable squabble began over who wanted to play the “Feature Game”. This week it was Fabled Fruit, a very light worker-placement and set collecting card game with a “Legacy” element to it. As such, the game is very simple, but develops as you play. The idea is that the game starts with six “Locations”, each of which is formed by a deck of four cards. On their turn the active player moves their meeple to one of the locations and either carries out the action shown on the cards in the deck or buys one card for the amount shown. The locations provide access to “fruit cards”, which are the currency in the game and are used to buy the location cards. Each location has a different action, for example, the first location enables the active player to draw two cards from the top of the fruit deck.

– Image by boardGOATS

On the other hand, Location Five allows the active player to draw cards until they have a hand of three—useful if they started with no cards, but not so helpful if they had a handful. At Location Six, the active player can turn over as many cards as they like, keeping all the unique cards they turn over, but go bust in a Port Royal sort of way if they turn over a duplicate card. Since there are five different fruits, this action quickly becomes increasingly risky. There are other actions, some of which add a bit more interaction, like giving a player a banana card and getting two cards in return or drawing one card from the fruit deck and then exchanging three fruit cards with another player. A little more interaction comes from the fact that visiting an occupied location costs a fruit card: since location cards typically cost four or five fruit cards, this is expensive, especially with low player counts, but playing with the full complement makes this almost unavoidable from time to time. Aside from this though, there is very little interaction and the actions for the starting locations are quite mild.

– Image by boardGOATS

The interesting part is how the game develops, since a new card is added to the game every time a location card is bought. Each location holds just four cards, so for every cards that are bought, a new location is introduced, and once all the cards for one location have been bought, that location and therefore that action is no longer available. The really clever part of the game is the “Legacy” element: the end game condition, becomes the start condition for the next game. For this reason, we decided to play the game three times so we could see and appreciate how it evolves. The rules were easy enough to explain and Turquoise, Magenta and Burgundy were keen to give it a go, so they joined Blue and Pink leaving Black, Purple and Pine to find something else to play. It wasn’t long before the Fabled Fruit players were happily collecting fruit cards and occasionally turning them into juice by buying location cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

It is a game of very fine margins, though and it wasn’t long before almost everyone had two Location cards tucked away and were fighting for one more to win. In truth it wasn’t a long fight as Pink made his experience with the game tell and took the first round. Then instead of resetting the game, we checked we still had the right number of cards out, and started again with the new set up. So this time, we started with the market which had been introduced during the first round. This is a face up display of five cards that players can interact with. The Locations that were available allowed players to trade cards with the market, but also trade one strawberry, for any three non-strawberry fruit cards in the market. This hugely increased the value of strawberries and, with the high value of pineapples (which could be traded for five from the deck) and bananas (which could be used to take cards off another player), it meant that players were holding more and more cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

This all changed in the third round, however, when Location Ten appeared which allowed the active player to take two fruits from the player with the most cards. Nobody liked falling victim to that one very much, but everyone took advantage where they could. With just Pink taking the second round as well as the first, it was all about trying to stop him taking a clean sweep. In the end it was really tight. Everyone gets the same number of turns, so when it was clear that Pink was once again in a position to trigger the end by purchasing his third card, it was a question of whether anyone could stop him. Although Turquoise who started the round had been steadily improving, there was nothing she could do, nor Burgundy who went next. As Pink then played his master-move and picked up third Location card, the question changed to whether Blue and Magenta would be able to join him. Both had enough cards, but but Magenta, was unfortunately standing on the only card she could buy, so in the end, the final round was shared by Blue and Pink.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the next table, Black, Purple and Pine had started off with Azul. This, like NMBR 9, has been an immensely popular game since it first appeared on the group’s radar at Essen last year. The game is almost entirely abstract, with a very loose “artists decorating a wall in the Palace of Evora” theme, but somehow, that doesn’t seem to matter as the game play is good and the production values very high. In summary, the active player can either take all the tiles of one colour from one of the factory displays (putting the rest in the central market) or take all the tiles of one colour from the market in the centre of the table. They then place the tiles they took in one of the five rows on their player board. The catch is that although they can add more tiles to a row later in the round, once a row is full, any left-overs go into the negative scoring row. The round ends when all the tiles have been picked up, and one tile from each full row is added to the player’s mosaic and scored.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Tiles placed singly score just one point, but if they become part of a row or column, they pick up points for each tile in the row or column, so clever players can make tiles score over and over again. The game ends when one player gets a complete row, so it takes at least five rounds, and then bonus points are awarded for completed columns or rows and full sets of five of a colour. Purple wasn’t concentrating, so failed to get any bonus points, while Black and Pine picked up a few negative points. Pin had a disastrous final round when he was forced to pick up six red tiles but could only place two of them meaning the rest all scored negative points, a total of minus thirteen for that round. It didn’t do him too much damage though as he finished with thirty-eight, ten points clear of the others who were in a battle for second that Black won by a single point.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Toynan

Next the trio moved on to Sagrada. This is another popular “game of the moment”, with very similar feel to Azul, but this time using dice and players are building a stained glass window by placing dice on a grid of dice on their player board. Each board has some restrictions on where certain coloured or numbered dice can be placed there and players take it in turns to take dice from a pool and add them to their window. Depending on the difficulty of the starting grid, players start with a small number of favour tokens which act as “get out of jail free” options and allow them to use special tools to manipulate some of the dice, either during the “drafting” phase, or sometimes those already in their “window”. Points are awarded for fulfilling certain criteria, depicted on cards drawn at random at the start of the game. Although completing the window can be challenging in its own right if the dice don’t roll well, it is the objective cards that are the key to the game.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Each player has their own private objective which scores for the number of pips displayed on dice of a given colour in that player’s window. There are also three public objectives which everyone can use to score points; this time these gave points for complete sets of all five different colours, complete sets of all six numbers, and for columns that contained different numbers. The game starts with each player choosing a window from two double-sided cards dealt at random. The hard ones come with a lot of favour tokens and these can be critical as they can be used to move and re-roll dice or other special actions depending on what special tools are available. This time they were particularly important, as everyone kept rolling sixes which wasn’t what they really needed. Purple in particular made full use of all her favour tokens which helped keep her in the game. When it came to scoring, it was quite close, with players taking similar scores on the separate public objectives. The small differences added up, however, and Pine finished in front with a nice round fifty, a handful of points ahead of Black in second place.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Fabled Fruit still hadn’t finished, but was well into its third round, so Purple, Black and Pine, looked round for something familiar and quick to play, and their collective eye fell on Kingdomino. The rules didn’t need much recap: 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. 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 used with permission of boardgamephotos

It is a very clever little game, and tile placement is clearly critical, but one of the most important aspects is the trade off between turn order and tile value. Each domino has a numerical value and they are set out and taken, from low to high, so players going for the more valuable tiles are trading this value against their position in the turn order. This was key for Pine who failed to get the crowns he needed and when he did couldn’t add them to the terrain he wanted. This was exacerbated by the fact that with only three players, some tiles never appear which can upset the balance of the game. All in all, Pine had a complete “mare” of a game, crowned by the fact that he failed to place all his tiles and didn’t get his castle in the centre of the kingdom either. It was a game he wanted to forget, but was close between Black and Purple. Black had the edge though and finished with a grand total of seventy.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Nobody wanted a late night, but everyone fancied finishing with something light, and with so many people Las Vegas is always a good option. This light dice game is really easy to play and doesn’t require much in the way of concentration, so is great to wind down with. On their turn, each player begins by rolling their dice, then assigning some of them to one of the six casinos. Each casino is numbered one to six and has a jackpot drawn at random from a deck of money; the catch is that to place a “bet”, the player must use all the dice of one number that number. Once everyone has placed all their dice the player who placed the most dice on a casino takes the highest value currency card. The really clever bit is that before any money is handed out, any “draws” are removed, which leads to a lot of barracking.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor joeincolorado

We also always add the Slot Machine from the 2015 Brettspiel Advent Calendar, which is like a seventh casino, except that it can hold dice of any number, but each number can only be added once (though a player must add all the dice they have of that number). We also add some elements from the Boulevard expansion, including extra high value money cards, the “biggun” (which replaces one die per person with a larger, double weight die worth two of the little ones) and extra dice so more people can play. Finally, we always house rule the game so we only play three rounds instead of four—although we love it, with four rounds it can outstay it’s welcome for those who feel they can’t catch up.

– Image by boardGOATS

It’s never easy to tell how people are doing as the money is stored face down and the denominations vary from $10,000 to $100,000, so someone with a large pile may be very rich or just have a lot of “notes”. And Purple certainly had a lot of notes as she popped out to the conveniences and came back to find a massive money pile. Everyone was so impressed that several others optimistically tried the same trick, but unfortunately they didn’t quite have the knack. It was an exciting game though; with so many people playing there were a lot of draws and lots of bids ended up cancelling out others, often with three people involved and a fourth very lucky “loser” picking up the spoils. In the final counting, Pink proved that while he was good at collecting fruit, he was rubbish at collecting money. At the other end of the scale meanwhile, Black and Purple were again fighting it out for first place, but a tie on $340,000 each was eventually resolved in Purple’s favour.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor ckirkman

Learning Outcome: Aesop doesn’t have a monopoly on Fables.