Tag Archives: Las Vegas

24th January 2023

Blue and Pink were first to put in an appearance and availed themselves of the burger offerings at the Jockey before everyone else began to arrive. Ivory turned up cradling his enormous copy of the Collectors’ Edition of Everdell, complete with its Bellfaire expansion (as well as pretty much everything else available). And from then on, it was a matter of deciding who was going to play what. As Ivory began building the Evertree, Green commented that he’d really enjoyed playing it last time and would like to play it again, but wanted to give everyone else the opportunity. Everyone else similarly followed this gentlemanly gesture, but in the end Ivory took first Teal, then Green and finally Purple to the end of the table and started the mammoth task of unpacking.

– Image by boardGOATS

As they began setting up, the other four began deciding what to play. After suggestions that largely fell on deaf ears, Blue eventually began unpacking World’s Fair 1893. This is a clever little game that integrates area majority and set collecting mechanics. The idea is that players choose a segment of the board and place a population marker in it before taking all the cards in that section. Three cards are then added to the board, with the first added to the section cards have just been taken from and one each added to the next two segments. Cards come in three types: Character Cards, Midway Tickets and Exhibit Cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

Character cards can be used to move cubes about or add extra cubes and are played by the active player between placing their token and taking the cards from that section. When the Ferris wheel car has travelled all the way round there is an interim scoring stage. Midway tickets are exchanged for one point, with the player who has the most earning bonus points. Exhibit Cards are exchanged for tokens: each of the five segments of the board are evaluated and the player with the most population tokens gains a couple of bonus points and the opportunity to trade up to three exhibit cards for matching coloured tokens. The player who comes second also gets points and can exchange fewer Exhibit Cards for tokens.

– Image by boardGOATS

The tokens are combined into sets at the end of the game with the larger sets worth more points; sets containing all five different coloured tokens are worth fifteen points, with sets of four worth ten, and three, two and one worth six, three and one point respectively. Played over the three rounds, the winner is the player with the most points at the end of the game. Blue didn’t do a great job of explaining the point of tokens, so in the first round, Lime focused on collecting Midway Tickets, lots and lots of Midway Tickets taking lots of points and the bonus too.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink, on the other hand, had played it before and better understood the relationship between Exhibit Cards, Tokens and points at the end of the game. That said, he seemed to have a bit of a mental block on how to use the his character cards (after placing a population token, but before taking cards). Bertha Palmer seemed to cause a particular problem and her function had to be explained at least three times before the message got through. Through the second and third round, Lime continued to collect Midway Tickets while Blue, Pink and Pine tried to manipulate the majorities in the areas for which they wanted tokens for.

– Image by boardGOATS

Lime kept doing well in the green Agricultural region, but was unable to get the cards to match. This is the catch with the game: in order to obtain tokens in a specific colour, players need the majority of population markers in that region, but also need to gain Exhibit cards to match, which quite likely are only available from other segments. Pine commented that he thought this game should be played with ties cancelling each other out like in Las Vegas—funny, that that would have left him in pole position in several key areas that he needed…

– Image by boardGOATS

As the game came to an end, the question was whether anyone would have enough sets of tokens to catch Lime with his huge pile of coins from his Midway Tickets. It looked like Pink might make it with his two sets of five giving him thirty points, but he fell two points short. Blue however did slightly better with sets of five, four, three and two and finished with sixty-two points, five more than Lime. When Pine asked how Pink collected so many tokens, Pink’s response was, “Never underestimate the value of coming second…”

– Image by boardGOATS

Everdell was very much still underway and although time was marching on, there was still time to play something else. So a decision was made very quickly as Blue got out Les Aventuriers du Rail Express. “Les Aventuriers du Rail” is the french name for Ticket to Ride, and this “Express” version originally released only in French and Italian, was a “light” version of the game, positioned somewhere between the “City” editions (like New York, London, Amsterdam etc.) and the full sized games. Thus it plays quicker than the full sized game, but is longer than the City editions, and has a maximum of four players like the smaller games

– Image by boardGOATS

The basic principle of all the games is the same however: on their turn players either take two coloured carriage cards from the market, pay sets of cards to claim a route and place plastic pieces on the map, or draw tickets giving cities that players need to connect to score points. Each edition has its own special rules and this one has a shared ticket: London to Istanbul. The first player to connect these cities gains twenty points with the second getting fifteen and so on.

– Image by boardGOATS

Additionally, instead of Locomotive (Wild) Cards being included in the Carriage Card market, they are always available from a separate face up deck with players taking one card on their turn instead of two). It didn’t take long before the group had checked they had the right number of trains and had identified the special rules for this version of the game. Blue went first, but Pine was the first to place trains on the map, at which point everyone else realised they were going to have to go hard and fast to compete.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue also placed an early train, but Pink opted for the “expert strategy” espoused by Black, to pick up tickets early. The idea is that knowing the destinations you need to connect early is an advantage, but this is offset of course, by the fact that it gives everyone else an extra turn to claim some of the routes you might need. This time, unbeknownst to the others, Pink got lucky with long overlapping routes and, as a result picked up another batch of tickets. Pine tried to follow the ticket strategy, but got less lucky.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue thought the London to Istanbul ticket was quite a good option as it was almost zero risk since it wouldn’t cost her if she failed to complete it, it was also relatively complementary to her starting tickets. This strategy meant she had to go through the middle of Europe and, as a result, got caught up in the three-way punch-up with Lime and Pine centred on Strasbourg. Pine came off worst, but unquestionably, Pink came off best as he eschewed central Europe, instead focusing on taking the route to Warsaw via Berlin which also included two slightly more lucrative five car connections.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue claimed the London to Istanbul route first and with it twenty points, followed by Lime who had completely forgotten about it in his tussle to make his other tickets. Blue was then left with a choice: pick up tickets or try to end the game quickly. Knowing Pink and Pine in particular had a lot of tickets to complete and with plastic trains beginning to run low, she opted for the latter. Unfortunately for her, Pink had already nearly finished his tickets and was able to complete his last one on his final turn. That just left the scoring, and it wasn’t really close with Pink finishing with eighty-two and Blue the best of the rest some fifteen points behind.

– Image by boardGOATS

On the next table, Ivory, Green, Teal and Purple played the “Feature Game“, the Bellfaire expansion to Everdell, the winner of the Golden GOAT just before Christmas. Everdell is a fairly simple game in principle, with players either placing a worker to collect resources or then using the resources to pay to play cards from their hand into their tableau. The game is very smooth to play, well balanced and has beautiful artwork. One of the things that makes it different to many other games is that when a player runs out of actions (or earlier if they choose), they can end their season and reclaim all workers and start again. This is important because some of the action spaces can only be occupied by one critter at any one time.

– Image by boardGOATS

The cards come in different types, but one of the key aspects is that critter cards can be played by paying their cost or as a bonus for playing the associated construction card. For example, if a player builds a Courthouse, they can play the Judge at the same time if they have it in their hand. Cards give players special powers, extra resources, actions and points at the end of the game. Each player’s tableau can only hold a maximum of fifteen cards; when a player cannot perform any more actions (or does not wish to) they pass and their tableau is completed. Everyone else carries on playing and the game continues until everyone has passed with the winner being the player with the most points.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Bellfaire expansion adds a little bit of variety to the game, in particular the Market, a Bonus for one of each card category, and a randomly selected Beauty Bonus for the most purple flower cards. The group also included the Extra! Extra! and Legends cards with the Corrin Evertail cards (from the Mistwood expansion). One of the joys of Everdell is selecting playing pieces. With sixteen different creature meeples to choose from there is something for everyone. Ivory was quick to nab the purple coloured Platypus, Teal selected grey Hedgehogs, Purple chose red Squirrels and Green wanted the green Lizards.

– Image by boardGOATS

On pulling out all the Lizards from the Box, Green declared that one of his meeples was disabled. It was missing the bottom half, its legs and its tail, poor thing! To give this one an easy ride green selected it for later use as part of the Autumn cache. As expected Ivory got off to a flying start. While Purple was the first to leave winter and head into spring, Green and Teal were not far behind. Ivory, however, seemed to be able to keep going in Winter for many turns after everyone else had left. He had been quite lucky with the card draw and was able to pair critters with his buildings to a much greater extent than everyone else.

– Image by boardGOATS

Teal noticed that Ivory had completed all the card categories and could claim the bonus tile, but he kept quiet and instead was the first to claim a bonus tile: for having three forest tags. A short while later Green also noticed that Ivory could claim the bonus, but he, perhaps due to silliness or perhaps innate honesty, did not keep quiet. Ivory had not noticed, so promptly claimed it on his next turn. No-one else was able to fulfill that requirement for quite some turns.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Bellfaire Market allows players to choose to either gain resources, or to trade them. When gaining resources, players choose one token, gain the resources and cards, then move that token to the “trade” side of the market. When trading, players pay resources and discard cards to gain three points and any two resources, before moving the token back to the “gain” side. This time, players used the market to collect initial resources, but once they had all been used, no-one seemed to show much interest in trading to bring them back into play. Trading did happen a couple of times later in the game, but no-one could really see the benefit of the trading versus collecting resources outright, especially since two of the randomly drawn extra forest spaces included the ability to trade cards or wood for “any” resource.

– Image by boardGOATS

The pattern of Purple going into the next season first and Ivory going last remained all the way through Spring and Summer. Ivory did slow down somewhat though, and did not enter Autumn much later than Teal and Green. By this time, most the group had managed to play at least one of their Legends cards and were beginning to use them to good effect. Green’s Ranger Strey Softpaw which enabled him to use two already used forest action spaces for one worker was generally remarked as a very useful legend card. Maybe that was how he was able to catch up a little, but one of the key challenges he struggled with was being able to get the Critter and Construction pairs.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once Autumn came round, it was time for the poor disabled lizard to play a part on Green’s behalf. That part was, to cries of being cruel, to go straight to the Cemetery so he could select a card to play for free—unfortunate critter! Although Ivory kept going longer than anyone, he already had all fifteen cards played, and found himself unable to do much else, even though he still had workers left. Purple finished early with a similar problem, although she was unable to afford any more cards even with gathering from her last worker.

– Image by boardGOATS

Eventually, everyone finished their final season and in the final scoring, Ivory scored big on the card totals. Green did quite well and finished a few points ahead of Teal, though Purple suffered as she had not been able to play as many cards. Ivory also scored well on other bonuses and Teal and Green were similarly matched with several bonuses, except that Teal managed to accrue more coins and score Journey points. As a result, Teal took second, though Ivory was way ahead of everyone else.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning outcome: We’ll have to brush up the Everdell skills if we ever want a chance of beating Ivory in future.

31st December 2022

Pine was the first to arrive and, as a result, was landed with the task of setting up the “Feature Game”, the gorgeous, dexterity car-racing game, PitchCar. Black, Purple and Lemon arrived soon after to give him a hand, while Pink got drinks and Blue carried on messing about in the kitchen. Once an annual event, there has been a bit of a hiatus in the New Year PitchCar game over the last couple of years, and it turned out the lack of practice meant everyone had forgotten how to set up the bridge from the first extension. Blue was summoned from the kitchen to explain, and then the track-builders continued their construction work.

– Image by boardGOATS

Aside from the bridge and a few chicanes, the track was kept to a simple figure-of-eight, eschewing the multi-level tracks, jumps, potholes, crossroads and loop of the more recent extensions. Before long, the track was complete, and then Lime arrived. Starting order was decided by arrival time, so the first to flick-off was Pine. The game is very simple: starting with the car at the front of the pack, players take it in turns to flick (not push) their puck along the track. Cars can jump as long as they don’t cut corners, land on the track “rubber-side down”, and don’t knock anyone else off the track in the process.

– Image by boardGOATS

There were the usual ooos, ahhhhs, howls of delight, and cheers, as there were near misses, total misses, bumps and amazing somersaults. First to cross the line was Lime after some amazingly spectacular long distance flicks, followed by Pink and then Lemon taking a podium spot on her debut. Before we started, Pine had commented that he wondered how his skills would have deteriorated over the three years since we’d last played, so he was initially surprised to find that he’d improved. That feeling didn’t last however, as he eventually followed everyone else over the line.

– Image by boardGOATS

Supper wasn’t quite ready, so Pink suggested a shortened course running the length of the table, replacing one of the straights with a second finishing line and ignoring the return under the bridge. This time, pole was decided as the reverse order that players crossed the line in the first race, so Pine went first. Unfortunately, he repeatedly rolled his car going over the bridge and it took some dozen or more attempts to cross it. With the shortened course, he didn’t have time to make his way back up the field (indeed the race was over before he crossed the bridge), though he did improve his final position slightly compared to the first race.

– Image by boardGOATS

With the short course, it was always likely to come down to who got a good start and made it over the bridge first. Black got a storming start and led the field down the track before running out of gas as he approached the chequered flag. That was OK though, as Lemon rear-ended him at speed and shot him across the line. Lemon followed him onto the podium with Pink taking bronze. With that, supper was pretty much ready, so it was all hands to the deck to dismantle the track in time for the arrival of home-made pie with veg.

– Image by boardGOATS

There was much chatter over supper, then, while everyone else pondered what game to play, Lime gave Pink a hand with the washing-up. Eventually, Pine went upstairs and returned with Las Vegas and a panda, and with only snacks remaining on the table, he began setting up while Blue and Black explained the game to Lemon. This is an old favourite that we’ve not played for a long time. It truth, it is a simple enough game, albeit one that is quite clever. The idea is that each player bets in the six numbered casinos using their dice.

– Image by boardGOATS

On their turn, each player rolls all their dice and must choose a number and place all the dice with that face value in the casino of that number. The player with the most dice in that casino at the end of the round wins the money. There are a couple of catches, however. Firstly, all the dice of the chosen number must be placed, even if this is not to the player’s advantage. Secondly, and this is why the first catch is so critical, if two players tie, neither gets any money and the winner is the next inline (who is not involved in a tie).

– Image by boardGOATS

Finally, at the start of each round, money cards are dealt at random to each casino giving them a set value; the winner only takes one of these with the others going to the players in the lower placings. This means that some casinos might have several small denomination cards up for grabs, while others might have only one high value card to fight over. The combination of these features make this a great little game. We also tend to add some components from the Boulevard expansion. There are lots of modules, but we usually only use “The Bigun”, the extra high value money cards, The Slot Machine, and extra dice for additional players.

– Image by boardGOATS

“The Biggun” replaces one die for each player with a bigger one that is worth two smaller dice. The Slot Machine is a bit different though. Like the casinos, players can add dice on several turns, however, unlike the casinos, each number can only be added to the Slot Machine once. Then, although the winner is still the player with the most dice, ties are broken by the number of pips on all the dice placed. The game is played over three rounds and the wealthiest player at the end of the game is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

Black went first and started the dice rolling fest. Everyone took some money in the first round, but the beginnings of the rivalries began, between Purple and Pine, between Pine and Lime and between Lime and Purple. The second round was filled with high-value cards which entrenched the rivalries and ensured a few new ones were started with Pink, Black and Blue encouraging everyone else’s misbehaviour leaving Lime coming out of the second round without any winnings.

– Image by boardGOATS

After a brief sojourn to view the midnight fireworks in the village and to toast absent friends and the New Year, we started the final round. This was very cut-throat: Blue and Pine got into a very silly battle for the Four casino which Blue was winning with seven dice until the final roll by Pine which gave a tie knocking them both out leaving $100,000 to Lime with his lone die. If Pine had won, that would have given him victory, but as it was, it was close between Black and Pink, with Pink taking victory by $10,000 with his total of $340,000.

– Image by boardGOATS

By this time it was 1am, and although everyone was tired, people lingered, first to talk about the robustness of Ikea furniture and then the status of the Jockey. With Monday being the last day for the current Managers/Chefs it is unclear what the situation will be in ten days time when we are next due to meet. We talked over other options, but all that really did was highlight how lucky we have been with The Jockey. And with that, everyone drifted home leaving Blue and Pink to find their beds.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Parties are great fun.

26th July 2022

Blue and Pink were first to arrive and were just finishing their supper when Ivory joined them soon followed by Pine. Ivory and Pink were keen to play Ark Nova which is longer than our usual fare and therefore needed a quick and early start. So, when Black and Purple arrived, they grabbed Black and headed over to the other side of the room. Everyone else conformed to more typical hesitant behaviour and were a lot slower to get going. This wasn’t helped by Blue who was explaining how Pink had managed to find the “Only Panda Themed Village in Cornwall” and when Lemon and Orange queried it, she felt the need to find the photos to prove it.

– Image by boardGOATS

Eventually, the group split into two with Purple, Blue, Pine and Teal playing the “Feature Game“, the Spiel des Jahres nominee, SCOUT. Although this has a nominal and very tenuous “circus theme”, it really is well hidden and “pasted on” to what is otherwise a relatively traditional, though clever little Rummy-esque card game with a Bohnanza-type twist—players cannot change the order of the cards in their hand. The idea is that players have a hand of cards and on their turn takes an action: they play a run or a meld (set of cards of the same value à la Rummy), or take a card from the active set (the previously played set). The first of these actions is called “Show” and players can only Show the set they want to play beats the previously played set (called the Active Set). A set wins if it has more cards or the same number, but a higher value, and a meld always beats a run.

– Image by boardGOATS

When Showing, the cards played must be consecutive in the player’s hand, so a player can, for example, take a four, five and six from the beginning, middle or end of their hand. It must beat the current Active Set, and it then becomes the new Active Set with the old one turned face down and added to its owner’s scoring pile. In this way, the quality of the the Active Set is ever increasing—this mechanism makes SCOUT a ladder-climbing game, of which Tichu and Haggis are probably the best known. The problem is that of course it will become progressively difficult to play cards (especially with the consecutive constraint), so players can also use the Scout action and take a card from the Active Set, for which it’s owner gets a Scout token as a reward.

– Image by boardGOATS

When Scouting, players can only take a card from the end of the Active Set, ensuring that runs retain their integrity and just become shorter and maybe of lower value. A card that has been Scouted goes into the player’s hand, anywhere they like, so they can use this to connect two cards in a run, or enhance an already existing meld for example. The really clever part of the game is that the cards have two values, and which value they take depends on which way up the cards are. This is clever because it adds just enough flexibility to make the game work, while not making things trivial.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the start of the game, players are dealt a hand of cards and choose which way up the hand goes—not the individual cards, the whole hand. From this point on, the hand stays the same way up, but when cards are added to a player’s hand (and only then), the added card can be rotated. The game ends when either, one player runs out of cards, or when it gets to a player’s turn and they were the last person to Show. In addition to Scout and Show, once during the game, players can also “Scout & Show” which is often used to bring about or prevent the game coming to an end. Players then add up the number of scoring cards and tokens and subtract the number of cards in the their hand and the player with the most is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is one of those games that is a bit odd to understand at first, so Purple (who started), began tentatively, but it wasn’t long before people were Scouting and Showing happily. There was a bit of confusion when it came to Teal’s turn and he Scouted one of his own cards—a rules check didn’t answer the question of whether he should get a token (we called them Cadbury’s Chocolate Bars because of their colour) or not, so we decided not. It was only later that we realised that of course players could not Scout from their own set, as a round of Scouting triggers the end of the game. Pine was the clear winner with fourteen points, more than twice Blue in second, and in spite of forgetting he could Scout & Show which would have given him victory earlier.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game can be played in campaign mode where players get scoring tokens and add up the total after several rounds, however, we tend to prefer to play games like this as single, short, one-off games. And this time, everyone wanted to “do a Lime” and give it a second go now they understood what they were doing. It was about this time that Pine checked his phone for the first time and reported that the England versus Sweden semi-final in the Women’s European football championships was goalless, but that “Sweden were playing well”. There was a general slightly pessimistic noise around the table and Teal began the second round.

– Image by boardGOATS

A cheer from the bar prompted Pine to check his phone again and everyone relaxed a little when he reported that England had scored their first goal. This second game of SCOUT was much closer than the first with scores of eleven, twelve, thirteen and fourteen, with Blue the victor, just ahead of Teal. It had been a lot of fun and everyone really appreciated the cleverness of such a simple little game and found it had really grown on them from the two rounds they’d played. There were other games people fancied playing, however, so the group moved on to Trek 12: Himalaya, a Roll and Write game we first enjoyed playing a few months ago and was given a “Recommendation” by the Spiel des Jahres Award committee.

– Image by boardGOATS

Trek 12 is similar to On Tour which we played several times online, but is a little more complex. In On Tour, two d10 dice are rolled and players combine them to make a two digit number, so a five and a four can be combined to make a forty-five and a fifty-four, one of which is then written in a location on the map. Locations are connected by “roads” and players are aiming to make the longest continuous route of numbers that only increase. Trek 12 does something similar in that two dice are rolled and the numbers combined to give one, but as the sum, difference, or product, alternatively players may choose one single die (either the larger or the smaller).

– Image by boardGOATS

The catch is that each of these operations can only be used just four times each during the game. The resultant number is then written on the map, but the theme is trekking so chains of ascending or descending numbers represent ropes while groups of the same number represent camps. Another difference is that in On Tour player can write their numbers anywhere on their map, whereas in Trek 12 numbers have to be added next each other. This means that it is advisable to start in the centre and work out, advice that Pink eschewed at his cost last time we played. Scoring is more complex as well, since players score for the highest value in each rope/camp plus one for each other number in the rope/camp with bonuses for the longest rope/largest camp and negative points for any isolated numbers.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time the group used the Kagkot map, rather than the Dunai map used last time. Teal, Purple and Pine all started at much the same place putting a five in the middle, but from there things quickly diverged despite the plague of fives that were rolled. Blue decided to do something different and started with a zero in the middle. Everyone got themselves into a bit of a tangle, but Purple struggled the most. Part of the reason might have been distraction caused by the updates on the football as, during the second half of the match, there was a second goal, then a third. Everyone was still digesting the third which was described as “Outrageous” when a fourth went in just eight minutes later to leave the final score four-nil to England.

– Image by boardGOATS

Teal gambled on getting the high dice rolls he wanted, and jammily got them. However, the game was won by Blue who put together lots and lots of very short ropes and small camps to give her high base scores, with one long rope to give a decent bonus and a final total just above the target set for the map in campaign mode. While all this was going on, Lilac and Green were introducing Orange and Lemon to Carcassonne, an older, now classic Euro game that won the Spiel des Jahres award over twenty years ago. The game is perhaps one of the best known tile-laying games and was the inspiration for the term “Meeple“.

– Image by boardGOATS

On their turn, players draw a tile and add it to the central map. The tiles feature some combination of Roads, Cloisters, City and Fields. Once the tile has been placed, the player can then add a single Meeple from their supply to the tile placing it on one of the features so it becomes a Thief, Monk, Knight or Farmer (respectively). Finally, any features that are completed are scored and the players gets their Meeples back. In this context, completed means Roads that end with a junction at both ends, Cloisters that are completely surrounded by other tiles, and Cities without gaps where the wall is closed). Fields or Farms are only scored at the end of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

In this way, players score one point for each tile in a completed Road, nine points for a completed Cloister and two points for each tile in a completed city (plus two for any Pennants). Although players can’t add a Meeple to a feature that is already occupied, it is possible to end up with shared features. This happens when two separately owned Roads (say) are joined together. In this situation, the player with the most Meeples scores the points, or, if there is a tie, both players get the points. And this is really the crux of the game—players can play nicely or nastily, working together to build big Cities, or muscling in and stealing them from other players just before they score, or even playing tiles to make Features difficult to complete.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the end of the game, Farms and any still incomplete Features are scored (though they only give only one point for each tile and Pennant in a city and one point for each tile in a Cloister array). A Farm is a continuous Field, i.e. a green space that a Meeple could “walk” around that might be bordered by Roads, City walls, River or the edge of the map. Each Farm then scores three points for each City that it “feeds”, i.e. that borders the Farm. Since Farms can be very high scoring, early Farmers in the right place can be very valuable as they mean other players have to work hard to join fields together if they want to share the points. On the other hand, an early farmer can be cut off and left scoring very few points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Additionally, since they are not recovered during the game, Farmers placed early are not scoring points during the game, so part of the skill of the game is timing when to place Farmers to maximise their value. Scores are kept on a track, and the player with the most points at the end is the winner. This time, although there were a number of expansions available, with Lemon and Orange were new to the game, the group only added the River expansion, which consists of a small number of tiles played at the start and helps to prevent the formation of one massive Field. Lilac explained the rules: although it is mostly a simple game, the Farmers always cause a little confusion, in particular where the edges of the Fields were and how you might end up with more than one Farmer in a field.

– Image by boardGOATS

Lilac placed the second river tile and with little other option available to her placed the first Farmer. For the next few turns of placing River tiles, the question of when another player could place a farmer was often repeated, until Orange was able to get one with a road and bridge tile. The River started running along the length of the table, expecting the board to develop more in the that direction than to the edges of the table. Unfortunately, fairly early on the river shifted sideways and the whole board developed across the table rather than along, so they had to shift the tiles a couple of times to make room (this was not meant to be the Discworld!).

– Image by boardGOATS

Lilac took an early commanding lead on the score board, with Orange next to start scoring. It seemed to take ages before Lemon got her first points and even longer for Green to get going. However, Lilac’s lead soon disappeared as Green, Lemon and Orange shared the points for one enormous city—they thought they would never complete it, but with three people after one particular tile, it was almost inevitable really. Lilac meanwhile was after the single bend road tile to complete a roundabout with her Meeple on it. Everyone else got that tile, everyone except Lilac of course. It looked like it would never happen, but in the dying moments of the game, she finally got the tile she needed. It was only worth four points, but it gave her a spare Meeple.

– Image by boardGOATS

With the Farmers now understood, with his last tile, Orange was able to complete a City and then place a Meeple on the field part of that tile to be sole farmer for one complete city. It was only three points, but more than the couple he could have scored by using the tile to complete a Road. Having spotted this useful use of a final Meeple, Lemon and then Lilac both did the same. In the mêlée of farmers, Orange came out on top, managing to knock out Lilac’s and Green’s farmers, and Lemon scored a few too. The end result was a victory for Orange, a close second for Lemon, with the veterans of Green and Lilac well behind. Perhaps they did not play quite as aggressively as they could have done, but mostly they just didn’t get the right tiles and were simply out-played.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, Black, Pink and Ivory were playing Ark Nova, but as it was showing no sign of finishing soon, with both Carcassonne and Trek 12 finished, the two groups had a decision to make: play two games (maybe with a quick game of Musical Chairs first) or play one large game. Las Vegas was suggested as a possible large game (it plays eight with the Boulevard Expansion), and Living Forest (winner of the Kennerspiel des Jahres this year) was an option if breaking into two groups. Time marched on, and nobody in the group is very good at decision making and before long it was too late to play Living Forest and Las Vegas can take a while to play. So in the end, the group decided to introduce Orange and Lemon to an old favourite, 6 Nimmt!.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although 6 Nimmt! didn’t win the Spiel des Jahres Award, we certainly think it should have done; it did get a recommendation from the Jury though and of course it won the Golden GOAT in 2020 (a very difficult year for everyone). Teal had to play taxi for his family, so headed off leaving seven to play. The game is very simple: players simultaneously choose a card from their hand and play it face down in front of them. Once everyone has chosen a card, the cards are revealed and played in order from lowest to highest. The cards are added to one of the four rows on the table—they are added to the row that ends with the highest number that is lower than the card itself.

– Image by boardGOATS

If the card added would have been the sixth card, instead the player takes the cards in the row and their card becomes the start of the new row. If the card is lower than all the cards at the end of the rows, instead the player chooses a row and their card replaces that row. At the end of the game, players sum the total of Bull’s heads or “Nimmts” shown on the cards in their scoring pile and the player with the least is the winner. There are a hundred and four cards in the deck, and we play a variant where the game is played over two rounds, each with half the cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

The delicious thing about 6 Nimmt! is that everyone feels that they are in control, until the moment when they aren’t. Some people argue that it is a random game, but as the same players (like Burgundy) often seem to do well, it can’t be. That said, and it is especially true for those that often do well (like Burgundy), when it goes wrong it can go catastrophically and spectacularly wrong. As a result the suspense is murder and the game is loads of fun yet never seems to outstay its welcome. Orange quickly got to grips with it and clearly quickly appreciated the jeopardy.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time we played without the “Professional Variant” that had become so popular online, partly because it would not be fair on the people new to it, but mostly because everyone was tired and nobody was up to the mathematical gymnastics it required. This time the first round was unusual, because everyone had similar scores. Usually, at least one player manages to keep a clean or cleanish sheet and at least one player picks up lots of pretty coloured cards, but the range of scores at half way were between seven and thirteen. That meant it was all to play for in the second half.

– Image by boardGOATS

The second half was a little more varied with Green only collecting four Nimmts and Blue and Lilac collecting sixteen, but the net effect largely offset the differences in the first round. Blue top-scored with twenty-seven, Pine was just behind with twenty-six and Lilac after him with twenty-three (she really is going to have to try harder if she is going to compete with the really high scorers). The winner though was Purple with fifteen, one Nimmt less than the runner up, Green, in what had been a tight game, but a lot of fun, as always.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ark Nova was still on-going, so Orange, Lemon and Lilac killed a few minutes with a quick round of Dobble. This Snap-a-Like game is simple, but a lot of fun. This time, players started with a single card and called a match with the central pile and grabbed a card. Despite playing in English which is not his first language, Orange is remarkably good at this game, taking twenty-two cards, beating Lemon into second place. From there, that side of the room just deteriorated into random chatter about random pub-type things (including the Voice of Jack and the demise of Frosts at Millets) as people ran out of steam and waited for Ark Nova to finish.

– Image by boardGOATS

By this time, Black, Pink and Ivory were rapidly running out of time as last orders had been called some time ago. Ark Nova is a much longer game than we usually play with an advertised playing time of upwards of two hours and reputedly considerably more with inexperienced players and setup time included. It is all about planning and designing a modern, scientifically managed zoo—when this was first mentioned at the start of the evening, Pine looked all interested in the theme, but was quickly put off when Ivory added it was “a bit like Terraforming Mars with animals”. That said, although it is quite complex, functionally it is not difficult to play on a turn by turn basis, though there is quite a lot to manage and keep a track of.

– Image by boardGOATS

On their turn, players take one of six possible actions: activating one of the five action cards (Cards, Build, Animals, Association and Sponsor) with a strength equal to the number above the card, or move a card back to the first space and take a cross token instead. When activating a card players perform the action based on its power level. The power level is dictated by its position in the row, with the level one power to the left and the level five to the right. Once a card has been played, it is moved the first space in the player’s five card row (i.e.to the lowest power position on the left) moving the other cards to the right to replace the card removed, effectively incrementing their power by one. During the game, players can upgrade and turn over the action cards to a more powerful second side using various bonuses.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Cards action is the simplest action, which lets players draw cards from the deck (the number depending on strength) then advance the marker two spaces along the break track which defines when the round ends. The Build action allows players to pay to construct one building on their zoo map. Players can build basic enclosures with a size of one to five, but they can also build a petting zoo for animal storage or pavilions and kiosks (which give players appeal and money respectively based on adjacent filled enclosures). With the upgraded build action, players can build multiple different buildings and have access to the large bird aviary and reptile house which allow the storage of multiple animals.

– Image by boardGOATS

There’s no point of having enclosures without animals, and that’s where the animals action comes in: it allows players to add animals into enclosures in their zoo. Some animals have a special requirement and need a symbol in their tableau and/or the upgraded animal card. Adding an animal to an enclosure has a cost, and then the player turns over the empty enclosure of at least the size needed or places the listed cubes into a special enclosure (an aviary or a reptile house). The player then adds the animal card to their tableau and resolves the abilities on it and receives ticket sales along with possibly conservation points and reputation.

– Image by boardGOATS

The association action allows players to take one task on the association board with different tasks available based on their power level. This allows people to gain reputation points, acquire a partner zoo they don’t already own, gain a partner university, or support a conservation. Finally the sponsor action allows players to play exactly one sponsor from their hand which offer ongoing abilities. They can allow players to place unique tiles in their zoo and offer end game conservation point opportunities. Some Sponsor cards have conditions on their play similar to the animal cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players take it in turns to take actions, resetting every time a break occurs, until the end game has been triggered. There are two tracks, Appeal (Tickets) and Conservation that follow the same course, but in opposite directions. The game end is triggered when one player’s pair of scoring markers cross, after which, everyone gets one more turn and then the end-game cards are scored. The player with the largest overlap between their Conservation and Appeal values is the winner. A player’s tokens can meet and pass at any point, but Conservation points are much harder to get than Appeal, so to compensate, each step on the early part of the Conservation track is equivalent to two Tickets on the Appeal track, while each Conservation step is worth three Tickets.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink started hard and fast with a simple animal strategy concentrating on upgrading his action cards to get the more powerful actions and getting extra workers. In contrast, Ivory and Black started a little slower and focused on getting larger (Size five) pens, like the reptile house and the aviary. These are more difficult to get, but are also more valuable. Ivory then added a Stork and a Condor, while Black collected a Horse and engaged the services of a European Hobbit-like Expert. The game was about half-way through when the other table heard a howl of delight from all three of them: The Panda card had come out. From this point forward, Pink’s primary aim was to get the Panda and find it a nice, cosy, bamboo-filled space in his zoo where he could love it and hug it at leisure.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although Pink got a lot of Tickets early, his Conservation was very low which made him look like he wasn’t a threat. Maybe Ivory and Black took their eye off him because of this, as they seemed surprised when Pink suddenly got ten Conservation points very quickly using the Association action which triggered the end of the game quite abruptly. In a similar way to the recent game of Viticulture where Teal did the same thing, this meant everyone else had to make the best of things. It was probably for the best, however, as by this time it was a real race against the clock.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the end game scoring, Ivory also managed to get his Appeal and Conservation pieces to cross over, but Black was less fortunate finishing with a negative score. It was close between Pink and Ivory, but Ivory scored more in the end-game scoring and took victory by a single point. Even though it finished in a bit of a rush, they had all really enjoyed the game; Black commented that rather than being like Terraforming Mars, to him it felt more like Wingspan, which was probably just as well as he’s not very fond of Terraforming Mars. As they rushed to pack the game away, Pink gave his Panda one last hug before putting him back in the box and going home.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Pink Likes Pandas.

30th March 2021 (Online)

The pandemic is hardly something to celebrate, but it has had such a huge impact on the group and life in general over the last year, that we couldn’t let the first anniversary of moving games night online pass without marking the occasion. That and the close proximity of Easter meant the Easter Bunny had made some early deliveries. Before we were able to open them though, there was another attack of The Gremlins…

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, the unfortunate victims were Lime and Little Lime. When they first arrived things seemed to be working, but then there were briefly two Limes and although we got rid of one, it seemed to take their sound with it. There was much hilarity when Lime asked questions and obviously got no answer despite lots of us shouting at him… In the end, we resorted to communicating with scribbled notes, but even turning it off and on again failed to work and he ended up joining us using his work computer. Then the boxes of eggs, cake, and festive iced meeple biscuits were opened and we started the “Feature Game“, Las Vegas.

– Image by boardGOATS

Las Vegas is a dice chucking, betting, and push your luck game that we love and used to play a lot before we were forced to move game nights online. It was the first game we played online a year ago and although other games work better with the current restrictions, we thought it was appropriate to play it again to mark a year of remote gaming. Like a lot of the best games, the game itself is very simple: players start with a handful of dice and take it in turns to roll them and place some of them on one of the six casinos. The player with the most dice in a casino wins the money at the end of the round. The player with the most money after three rounds (“House Ruled” from four) is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

So, each casino has a number, one to six, and on their turn, players can only place dice with that number on the corresponding casino. They must place all the dice they have of that number and can only place dice in one casino on each turn. Players thus take it in turns to roll their ever diminishing number of dice and place them on the casinos until they have nothing left to roll. As usual, we played with the Big Dice from the Boulevard Expansion—these have double weight and count the same as two smaller dice giving people an additional decision to make.

– Image by boardGOATS

We also used the Slot Machine, which is like a seventh casino, but works a little differently. Instead of having a number, each die number can be placed just once in the round (though with more than one dice if appropriate). The winner of the pot is the one with the most dice, with the total number of pips and then the highest numbered dice as tie-breakers. Like the casinos, the pot is dealt out from a pile of money cards until it holds more than the minimum threshold—the winner then takes the highest value card, the runner up taking the second and so on.

– Image by boardGOATS

The clever part of the game, the really, really clever part, the bit that makes it fun, is that at the end of the round, all ties are removed (except for those on the Slots of course). This gives players a reason to stay involved, even after they have run out of their own dice. It leads to players egging each-other on and trying to persuade other players what to do with their dice, even when the most sensible move is obvious to everyone.

– Image by boardGOATS

In order to reduce down-time between turns, the couples played in Teams, this led to inevitable debates and more barracking. Blue and Pink ended up in conflict over Blue’s tendency to put her money on the Slots and while there was some debate between Green and Lilac, while Black also disagreed with Purple occasionally from his position under the patio. It was good fun though, slower and more difficult to play than some of the “Roll and Write” games we’ve played more of recently, but it made a nice change.

– Image by boardGOATS

There was lots of chatter and lots of hilarity, especially when Team Pinky-Blue rolled four fours and used them to take out Team Greeny-Lilac. Then, with Ivory threatening to get involved in the same casino, instead he rolled three threes with his last dice and could do nothing useful with them. It was a game for mulitples—in the next round Pine rolled five fives and Team Greeny-Lilac rolled six twos.

– Image by boardGOATS

There was lots of smutty responses to Green’s comment, “I have a big one…” along the lines of, “So you keep saying…”. And from there, every time someone rolled a one with their large dice, the comment got another airing, though fortunately it didn’t happen too often. It almost didn’t matter who won; Team Greeny-Lilac made a march in the final round picking up $160,000, but it was only enough to push Team Purpley-Black into fourth place, just $10,000 ahead of Ivory.

– Image by boardGOATS

Burgundy took second place with $340,000, but it was Team Pinky-Blue who, despite their bickering managed to steal first place with $370,000. It had been fun, but everyone was in agreement in the hope that next time we play Las Vegas, it will be face to face. With that, Ivory and Lime took their leave and everyone else moved onto Board Game Arena for a game of another old favourite, No Thanks!.

– Image by boardGOATS

No Thanks! is a really simple game too and one we played quite a lot prior to last year, and has recently had a bit of a resurgence thanks to the new implementation on Board Game Arena. This is the new version which plays seven (rather than the original five), but works in exactly the same way: the active player has a simple choice, they can take the revealed card or pay a chip to pass the problem on to the next person who then has to make the same decision.

– Image by boardGOATS

Taking the card doesn’t solve the problem though as the next card is revealed and the active player has to make the decision all over again. At the end of the game, the player with the lowest total wins, however, there are two catches. Firstly, if a player has consecutive cards, they only count the lowest number, and secondly, some of the cards are removed from the deck before the start of the game. And it is the interplay of these two rules that make the game work as they change the dynamic, so that some players want high value cards that everyone else rejects.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

This time Black, Blue and Green all managed to pick up over forty points thanks to all of them taking cards each other wanted. Purple came off worse though, getting landed with all the cards between thirty-one and thirty-five, except thirty-three… Pine and Burgundy both finished with five chips and two scoring cards, but Burgundy just edged it, finishing with seventeen points to Pine’s twenty-one.

– Image by boardGOATS

There really was only one way to finish the evening, and that was with the 2020 winner of the Golden Goat Award, 6 Nimmt!. This is so simple and we have played the spots off it this year. The idea is that everyone simultaneously chooses a card from their hand and these are added in turn to the four rows. Adding the sixth card to a row causes the owner to pick up the other five, giving them points or “nimmts”. In the Board Game Arena implementation, everyone starts with sixty-six points and the game ends when one player reaches zero and the winner is the player with the most points remaining.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

This time the game was unusually close amongst almost everyone except Black who brought the game to a sudden and slightly unexpected end when he reached exactly zero. More than half of the group were still battling away in the forties when the game came to an end, with Green at the top of the tree with forty-nine. Much to his chagrin, however, Blue was some way ahead of him and finished with fifty-eight. And with that, we decided we’d had enough of the first anniversary of playing games online, and it was time for bed.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: A year is a long time when you can only play games online.

Remote Gaming: Some Learning Outcomes

With the advent of Covid-19, boardGOATS, like many other groups were left with the choice of meeting online or not meeting at all. So, like many other groups, boardGOATS chose to try to continue with meetings. While some groups have struggled, dwindled, and eventually given up, so far, boardGOATS has managed to keep going with almost everyone still attending regularly. We decided that we would put together this summary of some of the reasons we think we are still meeting, and a resource companion in case anyone else is in the same boat.

– Image by boardGOATS

The first, and by far the most important factor is that everyone has been extremely patient and very tolerant of the limitations. Everyone is fundamentally appreciative of the interaction meeting online offers and have been amazingly understanding of the current issues. This is essential. Secondly, we meet once a fortnight: boardGOATS meetings have always been alternate weeks, but this is actually quite key when meeting online. If meetings are too frequent everyone can get very frustrated quite quickly, but too infrequent and people lose the routine. As it is, fortnightly means everyone makes a date to make it happen as otherwise the next one would be a month away.

– Image by boardGOATS

Finally, there’s planning and organisation. Having a plan is vital if things are to run smoothly, and smooth is essential to avoid people becoming frustrated. The group has always had a “Feature Game“, because we’ve always been a group that takes ages to decide what to play; having a starting option helps us to get going a bit quicker. With remote meetings, however, the “Feature Game” has become essential. It is also important that someone takes the lead to teach if necessary, and keep things moving to stop games dragging, but also allows the all important banter to flow when possible as well.

– Image by boardGOATS

The group have broadly used three different approaches to remote gaming, all underpinned by Microsoft Teams. This choice of platform is largely immaterial, but our decision was made early on because of possible security issues with alternatives and the hardware that some of the group were using. Either way, this provides sound and, where required, visuals. We always start the meeting early and then leave a place holder in front of the game camera so everyone knows which screen to pin in advance. In our case we usually use a stuffed panda doing something humourous, but a game box would suffice too.

The three different approaches to remote gaming we have used have been:

A real-life game hosted at one location, shared through Teams.
This works well, but really only for relatively simple games like Second Chance, HexRoller or Noch Mal!, though we’ve played Cartographers and Troyes Dice as well. It turns out that “Roll and Write” type games work exceptionally well, but other games are possible too. The most complicated game we’ve played using this method is Las Vegas/Las Vegas Royale, which is one of the group’s favourites, but this is right on the limit of what is possible. The key is that players need to be able to see the whole game layout with all the information. For this, the resolution of the camera is important, but also that of the screen used for displaying it at the other end. Video compression by the platform feeding the data can also be an issue. Lighting is absolutely critical too—good lighting makes all the difference.
Main Advantage: We’ve found this feels most like playing a “real” game.
Main Disadvantages: One person/location does most of the manipulation, and there is a complexity limitation.
A virtual game on Tabletop Simulator manipulated by a small number of people , shared with everyone else through Teams.
Some people can’t install software on their computers and for others sand-box type environments like Tabletop Simulator are too complex. Piping a virtual game through Teams is a sort of half-way house. To make this work, the person “hosting” has to set the game up with the camera view set to “overhead” with everything in view, and leave it there. Then they share this screen through their meeting platform (in our case, Microsoft Teams). Again, this means there is a limit on the complexity of the game: the most complex games we’ve played using this method are Camel Up and Finstere Flure (aka Fearsome Floors). These have worked quite well, but it’s a bit more impersonal and relies on a small number of people operating the Simulator to make the game work. Downtime is a bit of an issue too for turn based games. For these reasons, this has been the least popular method for our group.
Main Advantage: We can modify and play slightly more complex games to our own house-rules.
Main Disadvantages: People need to be comfortable with the software and there are limitations caused by the stability of the platform as well as there being a steep learning curve for those who are not used to playing computer games.
An online game played on a website (e.g. Board Game Arena) with audio provided by Teams.
These are great because they allow players to do things like draw cards from a shared deck and keep them hidden until they play them. This is a fairly fundamental aspect of many games and enables games like Saboteur which would not otherwise be possible. There is a limited range of games available though, and there is no scope for modifying the game either (adding extra players or altering the end-game conditions, for example). On the other hand, the software does a lot of the up-keep and can make even quite advanced things possible. For example, without Board Game Arena to do the maths, we would never have discovered the delightful madness that is the “Professional Variant” of 6 Nimmt! (which recently won the 2020 Golden GOAT at our annual GOAT Awards). It does feel very much like playing a computer game though.
Main Advantages: Very low maintenance and higher complexity games are possible including those with “hidden information”.
Main Disadvantages: Everyone needs to have an account on the platform and a device, and the games are restricted to those that are available and the rules as implemented, in particular, player counts.

Each of the different modes has their limitations, but we’ve found that by mixing them up we avoid getting fed up with any specific issue.

One of the biggest challenges boardGOATS has is that we have been playing as a group of up to ten. This is because we are all friends, even though many of us only know each other through the fortnightly meetings. If the group were to break into two or more parts it would likely be along the lines of game “weight”, which would mean some people would never play together and it could be divisive. This only works because those who prefer more complex games are extremely patient and understanding. Ultimately, as a group, we feel the social aspect is the most important thing at the moment, much more important than the quality of the gaming. We’ll definitely make sure we play lots of more complex games when we finally return to our beloved Horse and Jockey though.

– Image by boardGOATS

23rd June 2020 (Online)

Maybe it was the really hot weather, or perhaps it was the prospect of playing something we all know and love, but people seemed in a slightly brighter mood this week. Pine commented that every time Purple moved her head he could see the swastika on the box for Escape from Colditz behind her and he was finding it disconcerting. After she had shuffled her seat, Purple commented that it was hers and Black’s fifteenth wedding anniversary, leading to a chorus of “Happy Anniversary” from everyone.

– Image by boardGOATS

From there the conversation inevitably moved on to the news that pubs will reopen on 4^th July, and specifically the fantastic news that the Horse and Jockey will be one of them. Clearly there is a long way to go before we can return to playing games there, but it has to be good news for our friends whose livelihoods depend on the place. There was a lot of concern at the suggestion that people will have to leave their personal details in pubs and what other purposes these may be put to; this was followed by the suggestion that there might be an awful lot of visits to the pub by “Dominic Cummings”… With that, it was 8pm and everyone had arrived, so we started with an explanation of the differences between Las Vegas Royale and our old favourite, Las Vegas.

– Image by boardGOATS

The underlying game is much the same, in that people roll dice and choose which of six, numbered casinos to place them on. As usual, the active player must place all the dice of one number on the casino of that number and when all dice have been placed, any ties are removed and the winnings are awarded to the owners of the remaining dice, with the largest money card going to the player with the most dice. In the new Royale version, the casinos are arranged in a circle which is quite nice, but more importantly for us, there is no Slot Machine. This is a shame, but in the event, we didn’t really miss it. The new game is played with the “Biggun” from the Boulevard expansion, as standard, which suits us as we always include it when we play.

– Image by boardGOATS

Aside from the new artwork and layout, there is a subtle change to the setup for Las Vegas Royal. In the original, the money cards, each with a value of $10,000 to $100,000 are distributed so that each casino has a minimum fund (dependant on the number of players). This means some will have many winners and others only a single jackpot. In the new version, each casino has just two cards, each with a value between $30,000 and $100,000. We thought this might have a large impact on game play, and although it changed things, it wasn’t worse, just different.

– Image by BGG contributor kalchio

The biggest differences though, were the inclusion of “jetons” and the additional effects associated with some of the casinos. The jetons are tokens that players can use to pass during the game, when their dice roll is unhelpful. The additional actions are added to three of the casinos and usually take effect when a player places dice in that casino. We chose to start with “Lucky Punch” on Miracle Casino (Casino 1), “Prime Time” on Kings Casino (Casino 2) and “High Five” on Marina Casino (Casino 3).

– Image by BGG contributor kalchio

It is possible to add extra actions to all six casinos, but for our first play, we decided to stick to the rules and add them to three only. One area which were we weren’t able to follow the rules in, however, was the player count: the new version, specifies two to five players and there were ten of us. This change is likely because the new features lengthen the game, so additionally, the number of rounds is reduced from four to three. We usually play just three rounds, so we played with two teams of two and decided to make a decision as to how many rounds we would play at the end of the first round. Blue and Pink had set the game up in advance and, like our first remote game back in March, Las Vegas, everyone else followed using Microsoft Teams.

– Image by boardGOATS

Lime started, followed by Burgundy, who rolled five threes and placed them on the Marina Casino activating the “High Five”. This has a token worth “$100,000” on it to be claimed when someone places their fifth die on that casino, and Burgundy duly claimed it. Purple went for the Miracle Casino (1) and the “Lucky Punch” action at the first opportunity. With this action, the active player takes one, two or three tokens into their hand and the next player (in this case Team Greeny-Lilac) have to guess how many tokens they have in their hand. An incorrect guess would give Purple two jetons, $30,000 or $40,000 depending on how many tokens she was holding.

– Image by boardGOATS

So, Purple turned on her camera and held out her paw in such a way that nobody could see it until Black pointed out that the camera was over the other screen. Maybe that was just enough information for Team Greeny-Lilac or maybe they were just lucky, but they successfully guessed Purple had two dice in her hand and, as a result, she won nothing. Burgundy was the next to have a go at the “Lucky Punch”, and it was Purple’s turn to guess.

– Image by boardGOATS

Purple guessed three and Burgundy’s simple reply of “Bugger” told the whole story—this was especially funny since he didn’t have a camera and we were all trusting him to be honest! The “Lucky Punch” proved really popular: Pine was next to have a go and Pink (playing as a team with Blue) had to guess. Although Pine was holding out his hand, Pink couldn’t see the screen from where he was sitting so just guessed three and Pine’s response was just as clear as Burgundy’s. With three out of three failures, people began to wonder whether if we were all psychic.

– Image by boardGOATS

Burgundy was the first to be successful at the “Lucky Punch”, adding $30,000 to his $100,000 from the “High Five”. That wasn’t the opening of the flood-gates though and Ivory’s attempt was blocked by Black and then Black’s was blocked by Lime. Purple was eventually successful, taking $30,000 and Ivory also managed to sneak a couple of jetons, though Pine’s attempt at palming a tree-eeple and a duck-eeple (from Christmas crackers at previous unChristmas Dinners) were spotted by Team Bluey-Pink.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Team Bluey-Pink were the first to use a jeton, followed soon after by Lime. Egged on by everyone else and much to Ivory’s disgust, Black engaged in a battle for Cleopatra Casino (5), eventually leaving Pine to take the $80,000 with just one die. Lime won the Kings Casino, but his “Prime Time” bonus meant he could roll two dice and place them if he wished, though unfortunately they had no impact. The clear winner of the round was Burgundy, however, largely thanks to his $130,000 of bonuses. Time was marching on, so the group decided that there would only be one more round.

– Image by BGG contributor kalchio

Normally, all the additional actions are swapped, however, there were a lot to choose from and swapping them all would have been a significant task. The group decided to swap out “High Five” though, and after rejecting “Bad Luck” as “very evil”, the group opted for “Block It!”. This action enables players to mess with others by placing cubes on casinos where they would be scored in the usual way, but act as an inanimate player. Pine went first in the second round but was immediately obstructed by Team Bluey-Pink who were the first to try the “Block It!” action. First, they moved three neutral dice into the Kings Casino (2) pushing Pine into second place. On their next turn they start moved more neutral dice onto the Sunset Casino, and with Team Greeny-Lilac’s help, made Ivory’s life more difficult and effectively scuppered Burgundy’s plans.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine eventually won $40,000 on the “Lucky Punch”, but Black was not so lucky when Lime correctly called him holding two tokens. Team Greeny-Lilac took $30,000, Black took $40,000, and then Purple did too. It looked like people had worked out how to escape the jinx until Team Greeny-Lilac tried again and Pine guessed correctly. The odds were certainly moving towards the expected two out of three though, especially as Purple and Pine picked up $30,000 each towards the end of the game and Team Bluey-Pink picked up a couple of extra jetons.

– Image by BGG contributor kalchio

Those extra jetons that Blue and Pink had acquired nearly proved very useful when Green and Lilac placed their fifth dice on the Marina Casino (3) leading to a tie for first place. Unfortunately for both, despite several re-rolls, the tie remained and both pairs missed out on both first and second place ($80,000 and $90,000). Green got his just desserts when he ended up in another tie for Miracle Casino (1), this time with the unfortunate Pine who got caught in the cross-fire.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the final tally, the winner was Burgundy, largely thanks to that $100,000 bonus for the “High Five” at the start. Team Greeny-Lilac weren’t far behind though and neither were Pine and Purple who tied for third place. Though it could all have been so different, had Burgundy not picked up that obvious windfall so early, everyone else might not have worked so hard to spoil things in the second round and he may well have picked up more money by other means.

– Image by BGG contributor kalchio

As usual, we had a great time with this fantastic game. The changes to the payout distribution were neither good nor bad, just different. The group had mixed feelings about the new additional actions, though on balance, they were positive. We had a load of fun with the “Lucky Punch” and online it was even more fun somehow. In our game “Prime Time” had little effect and didn’t really influence players, but was very quick to implement and may have more impact at lower player counts. “Block It!” affected the game more, and certainly influenced the game in the second round. “High Five” was the huge game-changer though, certainly in this game.

– Image by boardGOATS

The rules are not completely clear on how this should be used, saying, “When you place your fifth die … in this casino, take the token”. It is not entirely clear whether the $100,000 is available to everyone who places five dice in the casino, or if the first person is the only one who can claim it. Before the game, we had decided to go with the latter and Burgundy’s freaky first roll of five threes effectively ended the competition for the Marina Casino (3) in the first turn. Had the values for the payouts been different and if Burgundy hadn’t rolled all five in one go, this might have played very differently.

– Image by boardGOATS

On reflection, however, there is another way to play this which might have worked better increasing competition, and may have be the designer’s intention too. If each subsequent player to reach five dice were to take the token from the current holder it would increase competition and add a nasty edge to the game. This could also make it a target for using the jetons which otherwise got a bit of mixed reception.

– Image by BGG contributor kalchio

At the end of the game everyone seemed to have too many jetons left and decided to spend them adding a lot of time to the game, mostly for little reward. Several suggestions about how to improve it were made, including forcing players to exchange them for cash at the end of the round, and/or topping people up to a maximum of two at the start of a new rounds, or maybe giving players one or even none at the start of each round thus making any gained from the “Lucky Fist” that bit more precious.

– Image by boardGOATS

The combination of the extra actions, the large number of players and the effect of playing online meant the game had taken a long time, so Lime, Ivory, Green and Lilac took their leave. Although it was late in the UK, it wasn’t in California where Mulberry joined us from her balcony at 38 °C in the mid-afternoon for a game of our old favourite, 6 Nimmt!.

– Image by boardGOATS

6 Nimmt! is such a simple game which keeps everyone involved throughout and the Board Game Arena implementation is so good, that it is often a fall-back for when nobody can be bothered to think. Players simply choose one card simultaneously, then, starting with the lowest value card, they add them to one of the four rows. If the card is the sixth card to be added, the player takes the five cards and the new card becomes the new first card in the row.

– Image by boardGOATS

As always, people complained about the cards they had, though Blue felt she was particularly hard done by this time with one, two and three in consecutive hands and almost nothing above fifty for most of the game. Given that, she didn’t do too badly in the end. There was no beating Pine though. After the game, Pine left and everyone else made it their business to investigate how many games Pine had played on Board Game Arena. There were over a thousand, of which nearly a hundred had been 6 Nimmt!, winning around 30% of games against all comers! And with that, it was time for bed.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Learning Outcome: If voting Donald for US President, many people would prefer the Duck!

14th April 2020 (Online)

Social contact is really important for mental health and board games are a great medium for that. Unfortunately, physical proximity isn’t an option at the moment, so we’ve moved our games nights online. Despite the limitations experienced last time, the overwhelming response from the group was that we should persist with online meetings. With this in mind, and the recent special offer for Tabletop Simulator on the Steam platform, we’d had a couple of trial runs to see if that would work for the group. Tabletop Simulator is a “sandbox” environment, which provides an electronic rendering of the game and tools to move things around.

– Image from steampowered.com

The strength of Tabletop Simulator, but also its weakness, is that people have to do everything themselves. Everything. This is good because it means the game can be played according to any rules people want, however, it also means there is a substantial overhead, which is just that bit too much for players not used to computer gaming. Additional hurdles included installing software (a problem on some work laptops) and the intricacies of actually getting it running which required an hour or so tutorial to get going. Unfortunately, these were just too large for us, especially for a group meeting only once a fortnight.

– Image by boardGOATS from Tabletop Simulator on Steam

Last time, we had played a simple physical game that we knew well, Las Vegas using cameras. Seeing the “table” had been difficult though, limited by the resolution of the cameras and lighting. So to improve things and get others involved, we decided to go with a compromise: some people would run the game on Tabletop Simulator (providing a better visual experience), but the game would then be “streamed” to the group through Microsoft Teams, using the technology everyone was already familiar with. This time, we were more ambitious: the “Feature Game“, Camel Up has more moving parts and lots of people hadn’t played it before. It still fits the two key requirements, however, lots of people can play (especially with the Supercup expansion), and it has minimal “hidden information”, so it would still work with a couple of minor tweaks.

– Image by boardGOATS

Camel Up is a simple enough family game, so teaching, even online, wasn’t too difficult. It is a race game, where people are betting on racing camels and the player with the most money at the end of the race is the winner. On their turn players have four options. Firstly, they can roll dice to move a camel. In the physical game, this is done with a special pyramid dice shaker that holds a die for each of the five camels and spits them out one at a time. We found using the online rendering of this very difficult, and wanted to involve the players more, so we used the real shaker to deliver dictate the number and players rolled their own dice at home to see how far they moved.

– Image by boardGOATS

Alternatively, players could place a tile on the track which would earn them money whenever anything landed on it and move those camels forwards or backwards one space (depending which way up the tile had been placed). The other two options involved betting: players could bet on the winner of the leg (i.e. after all the dice had been rolled once) or the eventual winner or loser of the overall race. A simple roll and move would not make betting very interesting, but in Camel Up, when a camel lands on the same space as another camel, it is placed on top of the other piece. Then, if the lower camel moves before the top one does, it gets a free ride.

– Image by boardGOATS

Betting on the winner of a leg was easy to implement—each player had a space on the simulator and betting tiles (and pyramid tiles showing players had rolled dice) were moved to that area. Betting on the eventual winner/loser was more difficult. In the physical game, players have five cards which they play onto the winner or loser pile. At the end of the game, these are evaluated with the first player to bet correctly getting the most money, continuing on a sliding scale, with those who bet incorrectly losing their stake. Obviously, this wasn’t going to work for us, so instead, one person made a note of who placed bets and people kept track of their own choices (as well as their money), and we just tallied up at the end.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue, Pink, and Mulberry started setting up from around 7pm. We used the expanded board from the expansion to make the race a little longer, but decided that any of the other modules would just make it too complicated this time. This was a very hard decision, because the game can become very random with lots of players and the expansions do a lot to mitigate that. We had already increased the complexity considerably compared with last time, and that would have been a step too far this time.

– Image by boardGOATS

As people joined the “meeting”, people chatted, mostly about nothing, largely because not a lot had happened for most people. Blue commented on the lovely large rainbow image in the window at Lime’s house (drawn by Little Lime), and Pine commented on how nice it was to be home now his caring duties were over. Green was the last to join the party, and he immediately asked when Pine was going to get back which led to much hilarity as the previous conversation was reprised. The procession of soft toys reappeared: Mulberry showed off her Pony, apparently called Macaroni (after Yankee Doodle), and Pine introduced us to his Gremlin, who apparently wants to join us at The Jockey when it re-opens and would like to be known as “Beige”.

– Image by Beige’s “Wrangler”

Having already set the game up for eight, Green and Lilac decided to play as a team, especially as they were still to eat their supper. Blue was about half way through the rules explanation, when, much to everyone’s delight, Burgundy arrived. He didn’t have a microphone, though he could hear everything people said. This created a weird juxtaposition of speaking and reading replies, which occasionally became typing (especially for Blue) when confusion set in. Playing would have been quite difficult as well as needing more set up, but it was lovely to have Burgundy back as we’d all missed him last time, and people couldn’t resist chatting on the text channel in the background. We will definitely sort out a microphone for him for next time though.

– Image by boardGOATS

From there on, it was disorganised chaos mediated by camels. Pine decided to share his packet of Tangy Cheese Doritos with everyone, and the disembodied crunching and rustling was quite something. He blamed it on Beige, but no-one was fooled. This was followed by someone (possibly Black) making a strange bonging noise that to Pink sounded like a bell from a traditional, mechanical signal box. He does have a bit of a thing about trains though. Meanwhile, on the chat, there were discussions about shopping and Pine’s burping camel impersonations. Clearly the Doritos were working their magic.

– From Peter Jordan on youtube.com

The game was something of a side-show to all this “excitement”. In the first round, aside from a couple of people placing oasis/mirage tiles, everyone just moved camels. Having seen how the race worked though, the betting really got going on the second round. The tech, though not perfect, worked well enough, thanks largely to Mulberry’s efficiency. And although the game wasn’t a “meaty”, “manly” game, being together doing something a little different was the most important thing.

– Image by boardGOATS from Tabletop Simulator on Steam

The betting on the end game really told the story of the race. Mulberry was the first to bet on a win, quickly followed by Pine, Black, Purple, Pink and Blue, with everyone gambling on the green or white camel making it over the line first. Pine was the first to have another shot, but still didn’t get it right. Betting on the loser, on the other hand, was started early by Lime and quickly followed by Pink, Black, Blue and Mulberry all of whom bet on the yellow camel to stay at the back of the pack. That camel seemed to have three legs, or maybe a pulling rider, or perhaps it had eaten too many of Green’s sausages. Whatever, it was definitely not a contender, and everyone agreed with Purple who commented that it should retire to a camel sanctuary.

– Image by boardGOATS from Tabletop Simulator on Steam

The front of the race was much tighter, and as the probability field gradually whittled down the likely order of finishers as it became clear that the game was coming to an end. The order of movement was all important and players jumped in with their final bets on who would win the race, but the final leg. Lime was the first to bet on the eventual winner, giving him eight Egyptian pounds, followed by Blue, and Pine with diminishing returns. Green realised that betting on the winner of the leg was more lucrative by this point than betting on the end of the race, and Pink followed suit, leaving Mulberry to finish the race.

– Image by boardGOATS from Tabletop Simulator on Steam

A quick run-down of the final finances showed that Pink was a single pound ahead of Green who who posted an initial, competitive total winnings of twenty Egyptian pounds. Lime, the first to successfully predict both the overall winner and loser finished some way ahead though, with takings of twenty-eight pounds. Pine excused his particularly poor showing by saying he thought camel racing was cruel. From there, the evening mostly descended into verbal and text chatter as people discovered and shared emojis (Pine was the first to find camels, but only in camel colour) and stickers, and then soft toys… again.

– Image by Mulberry

Mulberry suggested that when The Jockey re-opens we should have a “BYOB” party and “Bring Your Own Buddy”. Burgundy apparently misheard and there was more hilarity when the sad message appeared on the chat, “no bunny”. Green saw Mulberry’s Pikachu and said Pokemon Go was a problem in the current climate. That’s not the case for Mulberry apparently, who commented that she has a “Pokey-stop” outside her house. For those who were not familiar with the game Pokemon Go, that just sounded very smutty. Mulberry shared a “Let Me Google That For You” link, but it didn’t seem to help, and things only got worse when she tried to explained what she did with her “Pokey-balls”…

– Image from yucata.de

Time was getting on, and meeting on line is surprisingly tiring so eventually, people sadly departed, leaving Pink, Blue, Black and Purple to continue the seemingly eternal game of Snowdonia they had started two weeks earlier, on Yucata.de. Snowdonia is a worker placement game that we’ve played quite a bit as a group, where players are building the rack-railway up the famous mountain. The basic idea is that each player has two workers and they take it in turns to place these on one of the seven options: gather resources; remove rubble; convert resources; lay track; build part of a station; pick up a contract card, and move their surveyor.

– Image by boardGOATS from yucata.de

Each of these actions have a different number of available spaces, so for example, only three workers can lay track in any given round. During the game, the weather changes, increasing and decreasing the work-rate so that players can build that track faster, or slower, or if it is foggy, not at all. Contract cards give players points for successfully completing certain tasks, but can also be used to give an enhanced action instead. The game ends when all the track has been built to the summit, Yr Wyddfa.

– Image by boardGOATS from yucata.de

This game was started after the last games night, so it was only fitting that is should be finished on a games night too. It had started quite slowly – Yucata is quite different to Tabletop Simulator because it is much less flexible, but does ensure players follow the rules and can play turns for them when they have no decision to make. This can help speed things along, but can also be confusing at times when the game state changes more than expected between turns.

– Image by boardGOATS from yucata.de

Playing a strategy game over such a long time period proved difficult for those not used to it. This is mainly because players lost the thread of the “narrative”, and ended up playing tactically for the short term rather than following a long-term plan. Unsurprisingly, Black, who plays quite a lot of games asynchronously on Yucata, struggled least with this. He was also must familiar with the environment and got off to a flying start. Blue prioritised getting a train, but discovered that it didn’t do quite what she had in mind when she tried to use it a day or two later.

– Image by boardGOATS from yucata.de

Pink was the first to move his surveyor, but then completely forgot about it. He only realised it had been passed by everyone else’s about half-way up the mountain in the final round, by which time it was too late to do anything about it and the others were all at the summit. Blue had been horribly inefficient in places due to losing the thread of the game and additionally couldn’t quite build the track she needed to fulfil her most lucrative contract. According to Black, Purple was “playing online like she plays in real life”, but she was definitely doing something right as she put a spurt on at the end laying track.

– Image by boardGOATS from yucata.de

Black started fastest, took the lead and then stayed there, but contracts can be a big game changer in Snowdonia. This time though, Black completed two contracts adding a total of forty-six points to his twenty-one for getting his surveyor to the top of the mountain and forty-five points collected for building during the game. The total made him a run-away winner with a total of a hundred and twenty-one, miles ahead of Purple who sneaked into second place a couple of points in front of Blue. And with that it was time for the long walk to bed.

– Image by boardGOATS from yucata.de

Learning Outcome: A simulator can still be used even when most people don’t have access.

31st March 2020 (Online)

It is at times like this that we need social contact more than ever, and board games are a great medium for that, a fact recognised by both the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the British government. With everyone confined to barracks for the foreseeable, we felt it was important to give online meetings a go. There are several online gaming alternatives, but they all either cost or are horribly slow thanks to the fact that everyone else is trying to do the same. For this reason, we decided to try to play a real game using the medium of Microsoft Teams with a camera pointed at the board and everyone else giving instructions.

– Image by boardGOATS

Our game of choice, and therefore our “Feature Game” for the day, was Las Vegas. This was because everyone knows it (minimising explanations), lots of people can play (this was intended to be a social event, so that meant lots of people could be involved); it has no hidden information (a necessity for this sort of thing). Blue and Pink began setting up at about 6pm, after the long walk home from work. They used two laptops: one was perched on some place mats and a pile of sturdy game boxes (specifically Tapestry, In the Hall of the Mountain King and Teotihuacan) with the reverse camera pointing at the table and the game, the second laptop was then used to see what everyone else could see.

– Image by boardGOATS

Black and Purple (in Abingdon), were the first guinea pigs and struggled to get the link to work. Eventually, with some discussion over the phone and the inevitable microphones and speakers on/off issues, they were successful. While Pink popped out to fetch fish and chips from Darren Pryde and his itinerant chip van (which were truly excellent), Mullberry (in Wantage) became the next guinea pig and signed in with little difficulty. After Blue sent out the link to everyone else at 7.30pm, there was a steady precession of gamers joining the party. There were a few things we learnt from this first experience:

As the sun set, the natural light from the window faded and the camera really struggled—lighting really is critical.
MS Teams worked OK with people joining through a link via a web browser, but it is important that the “game camera” has an active microphone. If it does not, Teams decides it is not active and it disappears for anyone viewing on a browser.
MS Teams thinks that feeds where the image changes a lot are the most active and therefore the most important focuses on these. This is a particular problem for those using a browser rather than the application; turning off cameras when inactive can help.
During setup, it helps to have something really obvious for people to focus on.
Maybe it’s the stress of the current climate, but there are an alarming number of soft toys in close proximity of people’s web cameras, most of which seemed to be pandas.

By about ten minutes to eight, most people had “arrived” and everyone was chatting about their new normal and sharing what they were drinking and stories of shopping—for a moment, it was almost like we were at The Jockey. A couple of minutes before the scheduled start, Green, the last to join, signed in. As Blue began dealing out the cards, Green’s opening comment was that it didn’t feel like a games night because we hadn’t spent half an hour chatting! That produced much hilarity, and more chit-chat, before we eventually started.

– Image by boardGOATS

Las Vegas is a very simple game, which is, of course, why we picked it. Players have a handful of dice and take it in turns to roll them and then place all the dice of one number on the casino of their choice. When nobody has any dice left, the player with the most dice in each cassino wins the jackpot. There are a couple of clever twists that make this a really great game though. Firstly, the prize fund for each casino is dealt out in money cards. Some cards are as high as $100,000, while others are only $10,000—the winner takes the largest denomination for that casino, the jackpot, leaving the player in second place to take the second largest, and so on.

– Image by boardGOATS

Secondly, and perhaps most cleverly, all ties, cancel each other out. This is absolutely key to the game: the vagaries of dice mean that a well-positioned player could roll one die and end up with nothing, and much hilarity follows. We also add the Slot Machine from the Boulevard expansion, which works in a slightly different way with dice of each number being added a maximum of once. We also use the “Biggun” from the expansion, so each player has on large die that counts as two.

– Image by boardGOATS

Mulberry began. One of the reasons we picked this game was that we thought most people might have dice of their own at home and could roll them themselves. Mulberry was the only one who didn’t, so being a true Millennial to the core, she opted for an electronic solution using an online dice roller. Otherwise, it was very satisfying to hear the rattle of dice as people took their turns. Although chatting was quite difficult over the network, that didn’t prevent a lot of smutty comments and requests for him to stop bragging when Green announced that he had “got a big one”. Even more entertaining was when the conversation moved onto Iceland’s entry for Eurovision and links were shared through the chat feature which resulted in Pink pressing play by mistake and drowning out everything else.

– From Eurovision Song Contest on youtube.com

It was not an ideal way to play any game and with our group Las Vegas is not quick at the best of times, but the combination of people reading out their dice roll so that Blue and Pink could display them, dodgy internet connections, people sounding like Miss Othmar (the teacher from the Peanuts cartoons), and trying to keep eight people on-message, definitely slowed things down. At the moment though, these things are unavoidable and we managed. It was nearly 9pm before the first round finished and people were happy enough with the result to play a second, if not our usual third.

– From Corgi Adventures on youtube.com

Black made hay with his singleton on Casino Three, when Mulberry’s and Lime’s piles of dice cancelled each other out. Green just pipped Blue to take $100,000 on the Slot Machine, leaving her with just $20,000 for the round, and poor Lime with nothing at all. Purple, Black, Pink, Green and Pine all had good totals in the range of $100,000-$150,000, so it was all to play for going into the second round.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time it was Casino Two that was a knife-fight in a phone box. Pink, Blue and Pine all had four dice in the mix with Green in second place (and therefore winning the jackpot) with two. The final roll of the game was Green’s “Biggun”, so when he rolled a two, nobody could believe his misfortune. Just before he placed it though, he realised he had another option—the oft-forgotten Slot Machine. At which point Pink realised the jackpot could have been his if he had done the same on his previous turn.

– Image by boardGOATS

Nobody really cared about the scores, but Mulberry, Lime and Blue all did better in the second round, though it was too little, too late. The winner was Green with total winnings of $280,000 with Purple in second with $230,000 and Pink and Black just behind. The real loser of the evening was Covid though: it wasn’t a great game, but for a couple of hours, we’d all had a bit of fun chucking dice about, forgetting reality for a while. And with that, Green, Lime, and Pine (signing in from Stoke of all places), left the meeting.

– Image by boardGOATS

Those remaining, decided to give yukata.de a go, and after a bit of discussion, decided to opt for Port Royal. It took a while to get going with Blue and Black trying to remember how to play and explain it to Mulberry. The game itself is simple enough though, and yukata.de, though old-school, keeps everyone honest.

– Image by boardGOATS from yucata.de

Port Royal is a fairly simple, push-your-luck game. On their turn the active player turns over cards until they either find one they want (and can afford) or go bust. There are four different types of card: Characters, Ships, Expedition and Taxes. Ships are free and give money, Characters give victory points and special powers, while Expeditions give opportunities to trade Characters for more points, and Taxes give people behind in the game a little windfall. Once the active player has taken their card, everyone else gets the chance to take/buy a card in turn order, paying the active player for the privilege.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink started well, but Blue eventually got her act together and initially made inroads into his lead before taking it from him. When there was a succession of people going bust, her Jester gave Blue lots of cash enabling her to cement her position at the front. It wasn’t long before her advantage was eroded though, first by Black, adding a Jester to his Admirals, and then by Purple, claiming an expedition.

– Image by boardGOATS from yucata.de

It was all very tight towards the end, but Purple was the first to our chosen end of twelve points, with a score of thirteen points. Unfortunately, due to a rules misunderstanding, everyone was expecting one final round, but sadly, it was not to be. Purple was the last player in the round, and once everyone had taken cards from her leavings, Yukata decided that was it, Game Over. In truth, it probably wouldn’t have made much difference, and Purple deserved her victory though the other platings might have been different if there had been another round.

– Image by boardGOATS from yucata.de

It had been a slow and trying game, though not quite as bad as attempts to play synchronously at the end of last week when the website had repeatedly failed to record moves. Mulberry was looking very tired and it was getting very late, so she signed off, leaving Blue, Pink, Black and Purple to start what will probably be a long, asynchronous game of Snowdonia. That’s another story though, especially as it could take a fortnight or longer to play!

– Image from yucata.de

Learning Outcome: Playing remotely is not as good as playing round a table together, but it is definitely better than nothing at the moment.

26th Movember 2019

There were lots of people feeding and with a bit of a queue, so the non-eaters, Ivory, Mulberry and Lime, decided to play something while they waited. There were lots of options, but it was a long time since we’d played The Game and it ticked all the boxes, so unusually, a decision was made really quickly. This is a simple cooperative card game (in our case, played with a copy of The Game: Extreme, but ignoring the special symbols), but new to Mulberry and Lime. 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.

– Image by boardGOATS

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. This time, it went a bit wrong early on, but the trio managed to pull it back. Lime got stuck with fifty-six and sixty-four that he couldn’t play, and eventually the game came to a halt with six cards still to play.

– Image by boardGOATS

By the time The Game was over, the eaters had just about finished as well and the group split into two, one five to play the “Feature Game”, Mississippi Queen. This is an older game that won the Spiel des Jahres award in 1997, but has recently been re-released in a new edition having been out of print for many years. In this game, players race their paddle steamers down the Mississippi, picking up passengers along the way. Onboard, coal supplies are limited, so each ship’s acceleration and manoeuvrers must be carefully planned. The key to the game are the cool little plastic paddle steamers which have two numbered paddle wheels – one to track coal and the other to record the speed.

– Image by boardGOATS

The five riverboats start at jetties and then set sail along the river, which is made up of a hexagonal grid. At the start of their turn, the active player can adjust their speed by one and then move that number of hexagonal spaces, turning a maximum of once before, during or after the move. The player can increase or decrease their speed by more or make extra turns by burning coal. Everyone starts with just six coal though and there is no source of coal during the game, so when it’s gone it’s gone.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game has a lot in common with Powerships, a mad spaceship racing game we played about six months ago, but there are a couple of key differences. Firstly, each player has to pick up two passengers from the islands during the race, which means they must arrive at a jetty at a speed of one. There is a more subtle difference which is nevertheless important to the way the game plays. In Powerships, the map is modular, but is set out before the start of the game, where it is built as play progresses in Mississippi Queen.

– Image by boardGOATS

In Mississippi Queen, after the first turn, play proceeds according to position in the race (like PitchCar). The advantage of this is that players at the front don’t obstruct players moving up from behind, however, it can lead to a run-away leader problem instead. In Mississippi Queen though, the river is “built” as the game progresses; when the leader moves onto the final space, they draw a new river tile and roll the die to determine placement (left, right or straight ahead). The fact that the player in the lead has less time to plan has the additional effect of off-setting the advantage of less obstruction, helping to prevent the leader running away with the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, Lime stormed into the lead, but overshot the first island allowing Blue to sneak in behind him and grab a passenger. There are plenty of islands though, so Lime had plenty of other opportunities. Unfortunately, he overshot the second island as well as he was going too fast. By the third island, Lime was starting to get desperate, but hadn’t got his speed and position right and ended up burning almost all his coal and doing a full circuit of the island to rectify things. This, and almost sinking gave everyone else a chance to catch up and Blue managed to snatch another passenger putting her in a position to make a run for the finish.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although she was able to move into the lead, Blue was hampered by an inability to plan and was forced to burn some of her carefully hoarded pile of coal. Mulberry wasn’t far behind, and had the advantage of being able to see slightly further down the river so was better able to plan and could therefore carry more speed. Purple and Pine got into a tangle over picking up a beautiful lady, delaying them both as Blue and Mulberry puffed off into the distance. Lime bravely fought his way back, but it was between Blue and Mulberry with Mulberry rapidly eating into Blue’s lead. Blue just managed to make it to the jetty burning the last of her coal to drift in gently, just ahead of Mulberry. Lime limped in next, leading the others in. Meanwhile, on the next table, everyone else was playing one of the archetypal card-drafting games 7 Wonders.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Players start each round with a hand of cards, and everyone simultaneously chooses one and plays it. The remains of the hands are then passed on to the next player who chooses a card and plays it. Play continues like this until each player has two cards at which point one is discarded. The game is distinguished from simpler card-drafting games like Sushi Go! by the civilisation and engine building aspects. In 7 Wonders, the players are the leader of one of the seven great cities of the Ancient World. They use the cards to gather resources, develop commercial routes, and affirm their military supremacy. Some cards have immediate effects, while others provide bonuses or upgrades later in the game. Some cards provide discounts on future purchases, some provide military strength to overpower your neighbors and others give nothing but victory points.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

After three rounds (or Ages), the player with the most points has the most advanced city and is the winner. The player boards are chosen at random at the start of the game. In this case, Green got Halicarnassus, and chose Side B so would be looking to build extra cards from the discard deck in the second and third rounds. Black got Ephesus and also went with Side B and so was only going for victory points and extra money. Ivory got Babylon and again Side B was favoured, giving him the second tier bonus of being able to build both his final two cards. Red received Alexandria and was also going to use Side B which would provide her extra resources and victory points.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Green’s game was one of building resources in order to build the pyramid enabling him to build the extra cards. He started building up his military, and although he was joined at the same level by both his neighbours (Ivory and Black), he began to pull ahead of Ivory after the second round and by the end of the third round had amassed an unassailable army. In the process though, he had neglected green science cards and purple guilds. Building extra cards from the discard pile is perhaps not as helpful as it might seem as the cards in the discard pile are there because they are the least useful cards. Maybe with more players there would be more to choose from and this bonus would work more favourably, on thee other hand, it might just end up with more duplicates.

– Image used with permission of
BGG contributor punkin312

On the opposite side of the table was Red. She, in contrast (and not under threat from the growing armies of Green) mostly ignore the fighting, but still managed to win one battle. With the extra resources available from her pyramid she did not need as many resource cards and decided to concentrate on the other cards. She invested heavily in the yellow bonus cards and also managed to get a full complete set of science cards. These she managed to combine with the purple guild which gave her an extra science symbol of her choice. She also managed to build a second purple guild, which gave her extra points for all brown, grey and purple cards. She also managed to acquire a very large pile of money which netted a fair few points too.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Ivory’s game was built around trying to get to the second pyramid level quickly, so initially he took a lot of resource cards. Unfortunately he didn’t get to the second level until the end of the second round, but having looked at the card he then decided the extra money would be more useful. He managed to build both his last cards in the final round, but like Green found, that extra card is not always that useful. He did manage to collect some high scoring blue cards, but although he tried, he failed to get a full set of science cards. He did get a couple of purple guilds though with one scoring the yellow cards belonging to neighbours, Red and Green who had both gone quite heavily into those. The other gave him points for every battle lost by his neighbours. He got nothing from Green for this, but scored quite nicely from Red. His resource heavy early game meant that he was left trying to catch up on the other later cards and abandoned his attempts to build a strong army and just took the beating.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Black’s game was concentrated on the blue victory point cards and his pyramid build. A smattering of yellow bonus cards aided his end game score because he scored for all the brown cards built by both himself and his neighbours (Green and Red). He collected some science, but not a complete set. Although beaten by Green in the final battle, he avoided defeat in the first two and took a clean sweep of victories over Red. So although everyone had had a strong game in one area, these were more than offset by less strong elements elsewhere. It turned out that the strongest games were had by Black and Ivory who finished level on fifty-one, some way ahead of Red in third. The tie break was won by Black who had the more money at the end of the game.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Mississippi Queen was still going, but coming to an end so something quick was needed and Ticket to Ride: London hit the spot. This is one of the new, smaller versions of the popular route-building game, Ticket to Ride. These are reduced in size and designed be quicker to play although the game play is very similar. Players take it turns to draw coloured cards or use them to place pieces, but in this version the Train pieces are replaced by Routemaster Buses. 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.

– Image by boardGOATS

The action started around central London, (Covent Garden, Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar square) as Red, then Black and Ivory laid buses around the area, all concerned that the other may block their paths. Green went further out to Kings Cross and Regents Park. As the game progressed, Ivory, Red and Black continued to challenge each other around central, East and Southern London. Green happily laid his buses round to the East unopposed.

– Image by boardGOATS

Black, who had only kept one ticket, was the first to complete his ticket and go for more. He was closely followed by Red (who had also only kept the one), and then Ivory (who had kept two). Green never took new tickets, concentrating on his two and connecting all the stations in the five point district. Black, Red and Ivory continued to take new tickets, but it looked like Green might end the game as he was soon down to only three buses. Ivory checked around the table to see who had buses and how many cards they had left and decided that he had time. Even though he had missed the fact that Green had only a single card in hand, he still managed to lay his last buses first; one turn too early for Green who had to settle for a two length route instead of the three he was aiming for (and close to getting).

– Image by boardGOATS

Black placed one last bus, but Red decided to gamble on new tickets as she had nothing she could claim. Ivory still had one final turn, but with no more buses to lay, he decided against the ticket gamble. In the final scoring, Ivory was way ahead of everyone else, due to claiming four “long” routes (threes and fours) and completing some high scoring tickets. Red, Black and Green were all within two points of each other. Red’s final ticket gamble failed and cost her a clear second place, and Green’s gamble on connecting all the stations in the five point district (and the stations in the two point district as well) did not pay off either.

– Image by boardGOATS

Some left for an early night and those that were left decided to play one last quick game. Pine was adamant that Bohnanza and Las Vegas weren’t “quick” so in the end, 6 Nimmt! got the nod. This is one of our most popular games, and frequently gets played in circumstances like this. It is very simple and there is something almost magical about playing well: simultaneously everyone chooses a card from their hand and places it face down in front of them. Once everyone has picked a card, they are all revealed and, starting with the lowest card, the cards are added to one of the four row, the row where the end card has the highest value that is lower than their card. The point is that the row a card is played on changes as players place cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

The player who places the sixth card, takes the five cards and scores the number of bulls’ heads shown. The winner is the player with the fewest bulls’ heads. We play the game in two rounds, and this time the first round was mostly pretty even with everyone taking twelve to fifteen Nimmts except Blue who somehow scraped a clear round. This meant it was all to play for in the second round, especially with the tendency for a good round to be followed by a bad one. Unusually, nobody had a terrible game: Pine top scored with forty, followed by Purple with thirty-one, and everyone else was quite closely grouped. Blue’s clear first round gave her a head-start and she finished with fourteen, just two ahead of Ivory and three ahead of Black in what was an unusually close game. And with that, it was home-time.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Neglect end game bonuses at your peril.

1st October 2019

It was a bitty start with lots of chit-chat and eating, including Blue’s fantastic pizza with mushrooms growing out of it. A little bit of singing to celebrate the fact it was the eve of our seventh birthday was immediately followed by special meeple cakes. Eventually, when everyone had finally finished sucking the icing off their wooden meeples, we finally settled down to the now traditional birthday “Feature Game”, Crappy Birthday.

– Image by boardGOATS

Crappy Birthday is a very silly party game that most of the group would normally turn their noses up at, but love to play once a year. The idea is that each person has a hand of cards featuring silly things and chooses one to give to the active player as a birthday present. The Birthday Boy/Girl then chooses the best and worst gifts which score the giver a point. Players take it in turns to receive gifts and after everyone has had one go, the player with the most points is the winner. It is very simple, but the best part is really when the recipient has to sit and sort through all their gifts and justify their choices. It seems a really silly game, and indeed it is, but it encourages people to get to know each other a little better and in a different way too.

– Image by boardGOATS

This year, we discovered that Black would like a trip to the North Pole, Pine fancied two weeks in a swamp and Purple fancied a course on Mime Art. In contrast, Burgundy was not keen on getting his earlobes stretched, Blue wasn’t keen on a GPS (with or without an annoying voice) and Lime eschewed some “garden manikins”. Perhaps the most surprising thing we discovered was just how great Ivory would be as a day-time quiz host. Amongst the fun, the scores were largely incidental, but everyone picked up just one or two points except for Purple who scored three points and Black who just pipped her to the post, with four points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Since Blue and Ivory had both brought Roll for the Galaxy, it was clear that they were keen to give it a go and when Green said he’d play it, the only real question was which copy would get played. Since it can be quite a long game, Blue and Ivory got going quickly and left the others to sort themselves out. Although Ivory was keen to give the new Rivalry expansion a go, as it has been a while since we last played (and Green wasn’t totally familiar with it either), the trio decided to leave that for another day. Although a lot of the group seem to get in a bit of a mess with Roll for the Galaxy, it is not actually a complicated game. It is a “pool building” game, similar to deck builders like Dominion or bag builders like Orléans or Altiplano, except with dice.

– Image by boardGOATS

The idea is that at the start of the round, everyone simultaneously rolls all their dice in their cup and, depending on what faces are shown, secretly allocate the dice to the five possible phases of the game: Explore, Develop, Settle, Produce & Ship. One of the dice can be used to select which phase that player wants to “nominate”, i.e. guarantee will happen. Any die can be used for this, it does not have to match the chosen phase. Once everyone has assigned all their dice and chosen their phase to nominate, all dice are revealed and the active phases are revealed. The clever part is the element of double think that players have to use: a player can only nominate a single phase, so if they want to Produce and Ship they have to rely on someone else to nominate the other one. Guess right and both phases will happen, guess wrong and they will only get one of them, and if that relies on something else happening, they may find they end up doing neither.

– Image by boardGOATS

Thus, while there are a lot of other moving parts, fundamentally, a successful player must piggy-back on other players because it will give them more actions. Dice that are used then go into the players’ Citizenries, and unused dice go back into the players’ cups. Dice are extracted from the Citizenries and returned to the cups on payment of $1 per die, once all the actions have been carried out. Thus, the player with the most appropriate dice can turn the handle on their engine most efficiently. The aim of the game is to finish with the most points, which are obtained from settling and developing worlds and shipping goods to give points.

– Image by boardGOATS

So, the first action is Explore, which is taking world tiles from a bag. These are double-sided with a development on one side and a production or settlement world on the other. They go into either the Development or Settlement piles so that dice are placed on top of these during the Develop and Settle phases: when the cost has been matched by the number of dice, the world is added to the player’s tableau and they can use whatever special power it provides. Some of the worlds are production worlds which typically provide more, exciting dice to add to the system. In addition to extra, coloured dice, Production worlds also house dice played during the Produce phase. These can then be consumed for victory points or traded for cash, enabling more dice to be transferred from the player’s citizenry to their cup.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game ends at the end of the round when either, a player Settles/Develops their twelfth world or when the stock of victory point chips run out. The winner is the player with the highest score from their combined victory points and worlds. There are a couple of other minor rules (for example players can pay one die to effectively change the face of one other die), but essentially, that is all there is to it. Players start with a double tile comprising a complimentary pair of settlement and development worlds and a start world, together with a couple of tiles to add to their Development/Settlement piles. For the first game it is recommended that players choose the Development and World with the lowest cost to add to their piles, because that is easier to play. For later games, however, players can choose, which gave Blue a really tough decision.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the end she decided to go for it, and chose to start with the “Galactic Federation”, “6+” development world in her building pile. This would give her an extra one third of her development points at the end of the game, but more importantly two of the dice used for every development would bypass her citizenry, going straight into her cup. Green started with no fewer than three of the red, “Military” dice, which coupled with his “Space Piracy” starting development, gave him really a good source of finance. He looked very unimpressed with this combination, but Ivory and Blue felt it was a really nice combination of starting tiles. Ivory’s start tiles were also nice, but didn’t have quite the same degree of complimentarity, but he did get a nice purple, “Consumption” die. The starting tiles are only the beginning though; the game is all about building an engine made up of dice, Production Worlds, and Developments and then using it efficiently.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the case of Blue, her starting tiles led her towards a Development strategy, so she spent a lot of the early part of the game Exploring to try to find nice Development tiles to enhance that approach. Green and Ivory had a more conventional, “build the finances and the dice pool then Produce and Consume” strategy. The problem with this was they both frequently wanted the same phases, but ended up with either both of them choosing to, say, Produce, or both choosing Ship, when what they both really wanted was to maximise their dice by Producing and then Shipping. Blue, on the other hand, could mostly be fairly sure that neither Ivory or Green were going to what she wanted, so was able to focus on her own plan, and just piggy-back the actions of the others. Although the game has a reputation of being slow (with our group at least), this time, the game got going quite quickly and it wasn’t long before Ivory started his Production engine, Shipping his produce for victory points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Green soon followed, while Blue kept building her Developments and occasionally taking advantage of the “Produce/Consume” strategies of the others to provide enough finance to move her dice out of her Citizenry. Blue felt her game was really boring since all she did was Develop, but in the end, it was probably the fact that Blue was doing something different that was key. Blue triggered the end of the game placing her twelfth Development/World tile, which gave her the most points from building, slightly more than Green. Ivory Consumed the most victory points, with Green not far behind, and Blue not really troubling the scorer in that department. It therefore all came down to bonuses from the “6+” Developments, which is where Blue made up for other deficiencies taking fifteen points giving her a total of fifty-seven points, five more than Green who was just a couple ahead of Ivory.

– Image by boardGOATS

It had been a lot of fun, and next time we’ll have to give one of the modules form the Rivalry expansion a try. On the next table, their game was coming to an end too. Having been abandoned to sort themselves out, someone mentioned Ticket to Ride, and with everyone having a good idea how to play, that turned out to be most popular. The game is very simple and everyone has played it, in most cases, quite a lot, so we often play with expansion maps. This time, the Team Asia/Legendary Asia expansion was an option, but as we usually play with the Europe version of the game, the group decided to play with original USA map with the addition of the USA 1910 additional route cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

The basics of the game is that players start with a handful of train pieces and place them on the board to connect cities, paying with cards. Thus, on their turn a player can take two coloured train cards from the market (either the face up cards or blind from the deck) or play sets of cards of a single colour that matches both the number and colour of one of the tracks on the board. Players score points for the number of trains they place, but also for tickets. Players choose from a handful of these at the start of the game and can take more tickets on their turn instead of placing trains or taking train cards. These are risky though, because although they are a source of points, any tickets that are not completed at the end of the game give negative points.

– Image by boardGOATS

The original version of Ticket to Ride (with the USA map) is much less forgiving than the Europe edition that we more usually play. This is partly thanks to the layout of the tracks, but also due to the absence of Stations which can help alleviate some of the stress associated with failure to complete tickets. With five, it was always going to be a really hard game and likely to end up with a bit of a train-wreck for someone, and so it turned out. The eastern states were rough, really, really rough with Burgundy, Lime, Pine and Purple all fighting for routes in the same space. As a result, Black benefited from mostly staying out of the scrap.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine, Lime and Purple managed to complete the most tickets, five each, but remarkable, all three were a long way behind Burgundy and Black who only completed three and four tickets respectively. This was partly due to negative points, but was mostly caused by the fact that the longer tracks give disproportionately more points and Black for example was able to pick up two of the long tracks around Salt Lake City relatively unopposed as he was mostly alone working in the west. Similarly, Burgundy did well in the north. As a result, it all came down to the longest route bonus, ten points, but with Black and Burgundy both in the running it gave a twenty point swing to Burgundy giving him a total of one hundred and thirty-five points, nearly twenty more than Black in second place.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ticket to Ride and Roll for the Galaxy finished simultaneously and only Green decided he needed an early night, leaving everyone else to play one of the group’s favourite game, Las Vegas. This is a simple game of dice rolling and gambling, where players use their dice to bet in one of the six numbered casinos. Each casino has one or more money cards and at the end of the round, the player with the most dice in that casino takes the highest value money card. The player who comes second takes the next highest value card and so on. When betting, players must place dice in one of the numbered casinos. The first catch is that they must place all the dice they roll that depict that number in the matching casino. The second catch is that any dice involved in a tie at the end of the round are removed, and it is this that makes it a great game.

– Image by boardGOATS

We have the original version of the game rather than the new edition, Las Vegas Royale, though we added elements from the Las Vegas Boulevard expansion, including the double weight “Big” dice and the Slot Machine. We also house-rule to only play three rounds instead of the four in the rules as written. This time, Ivory stole a march in the first round, when he was forced to place his last die as a losing singleton in “Casino Five”, only for Purple to roll a five with her final roll and take out both herself and the hitherto winner, Pine. As a result Ivory took the jackpot of $90,000 to go with his other winnings.

– Image by boardGOATS

It is not a game to give up on though, as anything can happen. The second round was relatively uneventful, but the deal for the final round left the last three casinos each with a single card of $100,000. This is highly unusual, but we decided to play on and see what happened. In the end, it had a bit of an “all or nothing” feel about it, with players going in early and in big. It was probably no coincidence that the three big jackpots were taken by the three highest scoring players. Pine thought he had come off worst, Black, who had done so well in the other two games took the wooden spoon. It was Ivory’s flying start that was key though, and together with his strong finish, his total takings were a massive $430,000, $40,000 more than Blue in second.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Party games can be great when everyone is in a party mood.