Tag Archives: Looot

22nd July 2025 (Report)

This being the summer, Lime brought LIttle Lime to join in the evening, but as there is a curfew for under-eighteens (due to licencing restrictions), the first game had to get off the mark quickly. Together with Pink and Plum, they quickly got going with the well known favourite and Spiel des Jahres winning game, Azul. This is known to everyone, so needed little clarification, though they group decided to use one of the alternate boards from the Crystal Mosaic expansion (the one with the cross pattern). The game is very simple with players taking tiles of one colour from a factory and putting the remains in the centre, or taking all the tiles of one colour from the central pool.

– Image by boardGOATS

In either case, players have to add them to their conveyor and if, at the end of the round the conveyor is full, one tile is slid across to be added to the mosaic and the rest disposed of. If the added tile is isolated it scores a single point, but if placed next to other tiles, then more points are scored with larger groups scoring more points. In this way, tiles grouped together keep scoring points. Thus, a player who starts well can build a lot of points, which both Little Lime and Plum managed to do. In the end, Big Lime ended the game, leaving Plum with a single point advantage—The moral of the story: Don’t end the game too early (as Big Lime commented regretfully).

– Image by boardGOATS

On something of a roll, the group moved on to one of Pink’s favourite quick fillers, For Sale. Dating from the end of the last century, this game is now nearly thirty years old, but isn’t really showing its age, despite that. The game comes in two halves: Buying Properties at Auction, then Selling Properties by Blind Bid. This game was really really close with a single point between Plum and Little Lime, but they were a a few points behind Big LIme who, as an accountant might be expected to perform well in a financial game. The winner, however, was Pink, who, despite it being one of his favourite games had never won, until now. And with that, it was time for Family Lime to head off.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, the rest of the group were engaged in the two tables of the “Feature Game“. To mark the recent announcement of the Spiel des Jahres winners, this was Looot. Although Loot was not actually one of the winners, it, along with Faraway, had recieved a nomination for the Kennerspiel des Jahres and, as it had proved popular within the group (also like Faraway) we decided to make it the Feature. Although its nomination was in the Expert or Connoisseur category, the game is not overly complex. The game is played over a series of rounds where each player places one of their Viking workers—the game ends when everyone has run out of Vikings.

– Image by boardGOATS

On their turn each player places one of their Vikings on the central playerboard. This is is made up of hexagons: the Viking must be placed on an empty space next to another Viking (of any colour). Each hexagon gives a resource which can be used to purchase Longships, and if the Viking fulfills certain conditions, it’s owner can capture a house, Watchtower or Castle. The player with the most points at the end of the game is the winner. This time there were two tables playing the same game, with Black leading the first table comprising Purple, Byzantium, and Cobalt.

– Image by boardGOATS

This game turned into a a bit of a battle for Castles between Byzantium and Cobalt. Cobalt did rather better in the end though thanks to his Long-ship bonuses. This was because Byzantium kept revealing them and everyone else eschewed them until it came to Cobalt who snapped them up. Byzantium’s frustration was increased somewhat because Cobalt was just before him in turn order so it looked like they miight make it round to him until they didn’t… quite… In the end, Cobalt’s were worth forty-two while Byzantium’s gave him just twenty-eight, despite the fact he actually had more.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was still close between them, but fairly inevitably, Cobalt had the edge finishing with one-hundred and twenty-eight, ten more than Byzantium in second place. This was a much higher scoring game than the second table, although that was much closer. Jade led this game with Mint, Sapphire, and Blue making up the group. The strategies were very varied, with Jade going for Castles, Mint for Watchtowers, Sapphire for Gold, and Blue who was new to the game, going for a balanced strategy so she could change her tactics as required.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the end, Blue’s “points from everything” approach just had the edge giving her victory with eighty-eight points, two more than Mint who had one more than Jade with Sapphire close behind. With the games of Looot coming to an end at the same time as For Sale and with Family Lime heading off, the rest of the group split into two. The first, larger group, consisted of Jade, Sapphire, Blue, Pink, Mint, Plum and Byzantium who decided to give a simple and supposedly quick little game called Tacta an outing. This is a sort of “card placing” game where players have a hand of cards and place them on the table to cover up spots on other players’ cards. At the end of the game, the player with the most spots visibleis the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

Unfortunately, game time is proportional to the number of players, so with the six players (Plum and Byzantium shared a hand and worked together), the game was always going to take twice as long as it would with three. Worse, this was one of those games where gamers take even longer as they want to make sure the find the best placement option and push the rules boundaries. It is a very clever little game though and a lot of fun, though perhaps playing with fewer cards or fewer players would avoid it outstaying its welcome.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was made worse by the fact that everyone helped everyone else and therefore, the victor was quite obvious from fairly early in the game Although Blue made a dash to come from zero to finish in a more respectable last place, nobody looked like they were seriously going to challenge the Byzantium-Plum team. Mint took second one point ahead of Pink who was one point ahead of Jade who was one point ahead of Sapphire. Definitely one to try again, but with fewer people next time. The supposed quick card game ended up finishing some time after the supposed longer game, Ticket to Ride: Paris that Black, Purple and Cobalt chose.

– Image by boardGOATS

One of the small, “City Editions” of the popular, Spiel des Jahres winning Ticket to Ride games, we’ve played Paris quite a bit since it was released last year. Following the same pattern as all its brethren, the game involves collecting coloured carriage cards and spending them to place metro carriage pieces on the board to connect regions of the city, while trying to also complete tickets. Each edition has its own extra little rule, and in the Paris edition, this is centred on the colours of the tricolor. When players build a red, white or blue route, they keep one of the cards, when they complete a set of three they discard the cards and claim bonus points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Purple started and game play was rapid. Before long, players were running out of pieces, with Blake miles ahead of the other two. But that was without the addition of scores for Tickets. Purple took got nine points for her three completed Tickets thanks to her misplaced bravery in picking up tickets at the end and not being able to complete her last one. Cobalt took sixteen points for completing all four of his Tickets, though that was with a bit of jiggery pokery (i.e. retaking his last turn) in order to complete one ticket when he realised he had actually failed to complete it. It was therefore perhaps fair that Black who only scored ten points for completing his pair of tickets just managed to keep his nose in front, taking victory by a single point.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: There is something for almost everyone in the Spiel des Jahres lists.

Next Meeting, 22nd July 2025

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 22^nd July 2025. As usual, we will start playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer. Following a recent change of hands, the pub has just started doing “basket meals”, so those that will be eating will be arriving from around 6.30pm.

This week, to mark the announcement of the Spiel des Jahres winners, the “Feature Game” will be Looot (rules, review, how-to-play video). This is a resource collection and management game where players take on the role of Vikings conquering new territory and building their village.

– Image by boardGOATS

And speaking of Vikings…

Jeff was working in a fancy-dress shop, so when he and his mates decided to form a disco pop band they each chose a costume. Jeff dressed up as Viking, Joe as a Caribbean pirate, Jim as a Mongol, Jon as a Bedouin raider, Jack as a Spanish conquistador.

The called themselves The Pillage People…

27th May 2025 (Report)

This week, Jade was proactive and quickly got a group together to play the “Feature Game“, which was to be Flip 7. This is a quick, push-your-luck card game along the lines of Blackjack and recently won a Golden Geek award and received a nomination for the Spiel des Jahres. The group have already played it a couple of times on a Tuesday, but we wanted to raise its profile and share it more widely amongst our people by making it the Feature Game. The idea is really simple: players turn over cards and gamble on not revealing the same number twice. Unlike Blackjack, the game is played turn-wise, so the the dealer starts by dealing one card to each player. Then players take it in turns to decide whether they want to “flip” or ” stick”.

– Image by boardGOATS

This mode of play is critical to the game’s popularity because it keeps everyone involved and the turns short. If players stick, they score the total of the face value of their cards. There are a couple of other things that make the game tick, in particular the fact that each numbered card appears in the deck that number of times (i.e there is one one, two twos and so on). Thus, the highest scoring cards are also the most risky. Further driving push to gample, flipping over seven cards in a row gives fifteen bonus points. There are also some action cards in the deck, “Flip Three”, “Freeze”, “Second Chance” and modifier cards which give extra points, all of which break the rhythm and add interest without adding significantly to the downtime.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game ends when players have reached the pre-agreed total (two hundred, according to the rules, though games can easily be made longer or shorter as desired). This time, the group played the game as written, to a total of two hundred, which took seven rounds. Sapphire and Flint managed to go bust five and six and seven rounds respectively, though Flint did manage to push his luck to get seventy—the most in a single round. Jade achieved a new low, however, failing to score at all. The front runner was Teal, but going bust in the sixth round left the door open to Ruby who had been matching him step for step, scoring in every round and triggering the end of the game with her unsurpassed two-hundred and thirteen.

– Image by boardGOATS

Everyone else was playing a longer game, so with six, that left the choice of another six player game or splitting into two groups of three. The party feel of Flip 7 had got everyone in the mood for playing in a larger group, leaving a fairly limited choice, though there are a couple of really good options. Bohnanza is one, but instead, the group chose Faraway—another game that received a Spiel des Jahres nomination this year, that we first played in the group over a year ago and has proved very popular since. This is another relatively simple game, this time with a market and a trick-taking type element, but with a really clever twist, and one that really messes with the head.

– Image by boardGOATS

The story is that players are exploring the mysterious land of Alula in search of its secrets, meeting its inhabitants and listing its wonders in order to gain more fame than everyone else. Players simultaneously chose one of the numbered cards from their hand to add to their tableau then, starting with the the player that played the lowest card (similar to 6 Nimmt! or Kingdomino), everyone takes it in turns to choose one from the market to add to their hand. Players then simultaneously choose another card to play, and again, choose one to add to their hand. The game ends after everyone has played a total of eight cards, and then everyone scores.

– Image by boardGOATS

The scoring is the really clever part, because although the cards are played into tableaux from left to right, the scoring is from right to left. At first glance, this looks like it makes things easy, because early in the game players find out what they need to get points and can then focus on getting the resources they need as the game progresses. However, the desire to play scoring cards early is tensioned against card choice (the player who placed the lowest numbered card goes first) and the ability to get Sanctuary bonus cards. Scoring cards are generally higher number and Sanctuary cards are gained when the card played has a higher value than the previous one in their tableau.

– Image by boardGOATS

It is always hard to see how players are doing with this game, because if a player has played a high value scoring card early it can be worth a lot, but if the player fails to gain the necessary resources it can be worthless. In the event, it was quite close with four of the six players scoring over sixty. The winner, however, was Pink who got lucky early when he played card number fifty-nine first to start a map strategy and finished with five of them. Sapphire was only two points behind in second though, and Teal two points behind that.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, Black and Purple were introducing Pine to Looot, another game that received a nomination, this time for Kennerspiel des Jahres, the “Expert” or “Connoisseur’s” game. This is a game where players gather resources and capture buildings to develop their fjord, fill their Long Ships and complete buildings to rack up victory points. The player with the most riches is crowned Jarl of the Vikings. The game is played over several rounds until each player has played all their Vikings, giving a maximum of thirteen turns. In each, a player first places their Viking on a Resource tile on the central board adjacent to another Viking of any colour and takes the Resource and place it on their personal board.

– Image by boardGOATS

If possible, they then capture a Building and place that on their board, take a Long Ship and also place it on their board, use a Shield, complete a Construction Site and finally grab a Trophy. At the end of the game, scoring is a bit of a point salad with points awarded for Castles, Watchtowers, Houses, Gold, Sheep, Trees, Construction Sites, any Trophies the player may have claimed and a five-point penalty for any unfilled Long Ships. Purple raked in points for her Houses, Construction Sites and Trophies, while Black did better for his Watchtowers and Gold, and Pine top-scored for Trees. The winner, however, was Purple whose total of ninety-one was five ahead of Black in second.

– Image by boardGOATS

The trio followed this with a shorter game, the Paris version of the 2004 Spiel des Jahres winner, Ticket to Ride (aka Zug um Zug). Like the original, game-play is very quick and simple: players take it in turns to take Cards from the market, or spend them to place Trains on the map with the aim of completing Tickets. Players score points for placing Trains and completing Tickets with penalties for any incomplete Tickets. Each game variant has its own special rules. In the case of Paris, when players score bonus points each time they complete a Tricolor: a set of blue, white, and red routes. This time it was a very close game. Pine had the most points collected during play (including Tricolors), but Black picked up more for his Tickets and edged it by a single point.

– Image by boardGOATS

The final game of the night took all evening and was the only one that that has not had a nomination for the Spiel des Jahres, Century: A New World. This is the final game in the Century Trilogy (preceded by Spice Road, Eastern Wonders), but as they all use some of the same components, Plum and Byzantium had managed to squeeze all three games into one box (with an extra set of cubes so two could be played at once). In A New World, players are exploring the Americas at the dawn of the 16th century trading with local inhabitants, recording their findings, and hunting and gathering to survive.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game uses the resource trading mechanisms (Collect, Upgrade and Exchange) found in the rest of the Century series, but instead of using cards as in Spice Road, this is combined with with a worker placement mechanism. On their turn, players can either Work (place Workers) or Rest (retrieve Workers). Workers can work at Locations that have neither an Exploration tile nor Workers of their own colour. If a Location is vacant, they can activate it by placing the number or workers depicted on the space; if it is occupied, the current occupants must be evicted and returned home by placing one extra Worker.

– Image by boardGOATS

There are four locations types, thee allow players to Collect, Upgrade and Exchange Resource cubes, while the fourth (Forts) allows them to use Resources to claim Points Cards and Bonus Tiles. Players can only have a limited total number of Bonus Tiles, and can only claim the Points Card associated with the particular Fort. These Cards are supposed to slide along a conveyor belt so that they move from one Location to another, but thanks to a rules malfunction, this time the didn’t until more than halfway through the game. The game finishes when one player has their eighth Points Card, so it can end quite suddenly, as players can pick up cards quit quickly due to special powers.

– Image by boardGOATS

These games are basically race games, and it felt like Byzantium had a good start with points from his Exploration tiles, the only one to have any. However, as Plum built her engine, she galloped up on the rail, ultimately taking the most points from her Cards. She also took the most points from Bonus Tiles. In such a tight game, left over resources were critical and they enabled Cobalt to leap-frog Byzantium into second. Plum was the winner, though by just two points. It had been fun, though Plum’s comment that she actually preferred the second of the trilogy meant Blue who had not played it would take the opportunity to grab a copy at the UK Games Expo Bring and Buy a couple of days later.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: The Spiel des Jahres Jury can spot a good game.

Spiel des Jahres Winners – 2025

Last weekend, this year’s Spiel des Jahres (German Game of the Year) winner was announced as Bomb Busters, by Hisashi Hayashi, the designer of Trains, MetroX (aka Voll Verplant), String Railway and Yokohama. Based on the earlier Bomb Squad by the same designer, this is a cooperative, card driven game, where players work together to try to defuse a bomb before it explodes. Players begin with a hand of numbered Wire cards (four each, numbered one to twelve) and then take turns pointing at each others’ wires and guessing their values. Correct guesses lead to wires being cut, incorrect guesses and the detonator advances…

– Adapted from image by BGG contributor spiritraw

The winners of the Kinderspiel des Jahres (Children’s Game) and the Kennerspiel des Jahres (“Expert” or “Connoisseur’s” Game) were announced at the same time. The Kinderspiel des Jahres went to Topp die Torte!, which is a tile laying game by Wolfgang Warsch—a previous winner of the Kennerspiel de Jahres in 2018 with Die Quacksalber von Quedlinburg (aka The Quacks of Quedlinburg) and designer of The Mind, Ganz Schön Clever and Quacks & Co., all of which have received recognition from the jury in recent years. This year, the Kennerspiel des Jahres award went to Endeavor: Deep Sea by New Zealand designers Carl de Visser and Jarratt Gray, a game where players explore the deep sea using the action mechanism from Endeavour: Age of Sail (and its predecessor Endeavor).

– Image from kickstarter.com

Endeavor: Deep Sea can be played competitively or cooperatively with up to five players (using the Deluxe edition). This means that as last year, both the “senior awards” have gone to cooperative games. Indeed, the last four Spiel des Jahres awards (Sky Team, Dorfromantic, MicroMacro and Just One) and three of the last five Kennerspiel awards (Paleo and The Crew as well as e-Mission/Daybreak) have gone to cooperative games. This style of game is clearly very popular with families (where arguments are often best avoided), but can be less so with more traditional gamers who prefer a bit of competition. As such, cooperative games very much have the “Marmite Factor”, but in such cases, the nominees and recommended lists cater for every taste, with games like Looot, Castle Combo, Faraway and Flip 7.

– Image from spiel-des-jahres.de

Spiel des Jahres Nominations 2025

The nominations for the 2025 Spiel des Jahres Awards have just been announced. Although there are now other lots of other awards (including the recently announced Golden Geek Awards), this is still the most prestigious award in board gaming and certainly the one that carries the most weight when it comes to casual gamers. There are three categories, the Kinderspiel (children’s game) , the Kennerspiel (“expert’s” game) and the most desirable of all, the family award, the Spiel des Jahres or “Red Poppel”. The nominees for this year’s awards have been announced as:

Kinderspiel des Jahres
Cascadia Junior by Fertessa Allyse & Randy Flynn
Die Mäusebande (aka Le Clan des Souris) by Christophe Lauras
Topp die Torte by Wolfgang Warsch

Kennerspiel des Jahres
Endeavor: Die Tiefsee (aka Endeavor: Deep Sea) by Carl de Vissser
& Laurent Escoffier
Faraway by Johannes Goupy & Corentin Lebrat
Neuland (aka Looot) by Charles Chevalier & Laurent Escoffier

Spiel des Jahres
Bomb Busters by Hisashi Hayashi
Flip 7 by Eric Olsen
Krakel Orakel by Die 7 Bazis

In recent years, there has been a shift in both the family and expert awards, away from traditional Euro-style board to lighter, more innovative games. Gone are the days of El Grande, Tikal and The Settlers of Catan (all winners from the 1990s) with recent winners including MicroMacro: Crime City (from 2021) Pictures (from 2020), Challengers! (from 2023). It may be that there has been a concerted effort to “freshen” the brand and subvert the conventional idea of what a board game is. Last year’s winners, were Sky Team and Daybreak which were unusual in that both are cooperative games with Sky Team also being a two-player game (unusual for a “family game”).

– Image by BGG Contributor JuiceNeutron

In addition to the nominees, there are always a number of recommendations, which in this year include Castle Combo and Cities. The Spiel des Jahres Awards are still the industry’s headline award and therefore are of great significance; it will be interesting to see which direction the awards go in this year when they are announced on Sunday 13^th July in Berlin.

– Image from spiel-des-jahres.de

23rd December 2024

Being an extraordinary Monday meeting and only two days before Christmas, we didn’t really know who or what to expect, so didn’t have a “Feature Game” planned. In the event, almost everyone expected turned up and we played some of our all-time favourite games. Pink was first out of the traps, and persuaded Black, Lime and Pine to join him in a game of his favourite race game, Downforce. This is a fun car racing game where players bet on cars as well as try to win the race. What makes it special is that players play cards, but, whereas in other race games players can only influence their own car, in Downforce, the cards can be used to play anything from only the player’s own card, to every car on the track (depending on the card).

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, the group played with the Aloha Sands track from the Wild Ride expansion which features water jumps. Cars can use these ramps if they are moving fast enough which lets players pass other cars and move more efficiently. Thus, hand management to take full advantage of the different speed cards is crucial. The game begins with an auction of cars. This is after players have been dealt their hand of cards, and this time, the blue car was popular and went to “determined” Lime, who outbid “cunning” Pink. With six cars on the grid, and four players, there is the possibility of some getting more than one vehicle—although one car (green) went unclaimed, Lime ended up with orange as a second.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Aloha Sands only has two betting lines, and the group chose to use the first two featuring on the betting variant score sheet. In this “odds” variant, players get better “odds” for a car that is at placed less well than one that is currently winning. The red car, owned by Pine took an early lead, but by the time the cars made it to the second (and final) betting line, it had dropped to third. Pink had a fist full of cards that favoured to the blue car, and although he had been outbid for it, he had decided to push it along anyhow and bet on it. As a result, with both Lime and Pink favouring it, the blue car moved through the field (aided by some double jumps) and crossed the finishing line first.

– Image by boardGOATS

Second place went to Black’s little black car with Pine’s red roadster completing the podium. Betting and car costs have a huge impact on the final scores though, as can the initial outlay for the vehicle. In this case, despite paying for two cars at the start, the fact that Lime owned the winning car and had also bet on it, meant he had an unassailable twenty-one million dollars, eight million more than Pink in second place. With the race over, the quartet chose to move onto a more festive game, Jokkmokk—a cute little set collecting game that went down really well when it got its first outing last year.

– Image by boardGOATS

In this game, players move one of their two family members, the one furthest back, to an empty space and claim the associated card before resoling its effect and refilling the empty space. Some cards score points in the middle, others only at the end, so the sets of cards used can really change the game. As this was the second game, the group chose to use the “Second Game” set, featuring the Fika (a Swedish custom of enjoying a coffee and a treat with friends), Aurora Borealis, Snowflake, Patchwork, Mystery Box decks. Of these, the Snowflake cards scored during the game giving Black and early lead with fifteen points, five more than Pine in second.

– Image by boardGOATS

The mid-game points were chicken-feed compared to the end game scoring, however, with lots of points available for Fika and Patchwork scoring and for the face value of the cards themselves. The winner was Pine with a total of one hundred and twenty-eight, eight more than Pink in second and eighteen more than Black in third. Everyone had enjoyed the game so much, that when Lime inevitably suggested playing again, everyone else agreed. This time the group used the “Gift of Giving” set of cards, including the Donation, Bell, Sparkler, Snowflake, Mystery Box and Presents decks.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game followed a similar pattern to the first, with Black and leading at the midpoint with Pine in second and Pine taking overall victory. This time, Lime was the runner-up, however, with Black taking third again. Meanwhile, on the next table, Blue, Plum, Byzantium and Purple were playing Blue’s favourite game, Keyflower. This is it’s second outing of the year, but Plum and Byzantium had missed out last time. They had played it before, but had felt that it didn’t shine with two players and were keen to see how it played with more.

– Image by boardGOATS

Keyflower is an auction and worker placement, with elements of set collection and even network building. Although everyone had played it before, Blue went through the rules. The idea is that players use meeples to bid on tiles, but can also use them to activate tiles to gain their benefit (usually Resources, Skill tiles or the ability to move resources around their Village). At the end of each of the four rounds players add the tiles they have won to their Village and get any meeples back that were used to activate tiles in their own village.

– Image by boardGOATS

One of the key aspects of the game is the colour of the meeples, as players have to “follow” when bidding or activating a tile. As a result controlling the number of blue, red and yellow meeples they have is a key part of the game. More, green meeples, which are special and can only be acquired by activating specific tiles, can be really valuable. Blue had a Winter tile that gave points for having green meeples at the end of the game, so started bidding on the Peddlar which came out in Spring. Byzantium had other ideas, however, and outbid Blue. In fact, that was just the start of a tight game where there was a lot of competition for many tiles.

– Image by boardGOATS

Keyflower is a game that typically rewards players who keep their options open, but this time, Blue found her options quickly narrowed and ended up going for sets of three Skills tiles. This can be lucrative, but can also be difficult to make work, so like many things in Keyflower is a bit of a gamble and with all her eggs in the one basket, she had no choice but to ensure she won the Scribes tile by ensuring she went first in the final round and had a large pile of red meeples to back it up. Tension mounted as players fought for the tiles they needed. The Keythedral changed hands several times, and the Jeweller, the Village Hall and the Watermill were all strongly contested.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the final scoring, it was clear that the Scribes tiles made all the difference, with Blue finishing with eighty-six points, fifteen more than Byzantium in second with Plum taking third. As the tiles were packed away, there was some discussion about the game, with Plum and Byzantium commenting that the balance of tiles is less swingy in four-player Keyflower than with two While they were packing up, the second of two games on the next table was coming to an end. In the first of these, Jade led Sapphire and Cobalt in the hot-off-the-press game, Fromage, a worker placement game about cheese-making in France.

– Image by boardGOATS

This is a clever game with a “time” element, similar in feel to Tzolk’in. In both these games, workers left on the board for longer give more valuable actions, however, in Tzolk’in, players place their workers and the options become better the longer they stay on the board with players making the decision as to what they get when they remove workers from the board. Players can also only place workers or remove them, not both. In Fromage, there is more flexibility, and the action is carried out when the workers are placed and then remain on the board for longer for the more valuable actions.

– Image by boardGOATS

Game play is simultaneous, with all players placing their workers at the same time working on their quarter of the board. Once everyone has finished, the board is rotated, and any workers who have finished their spell on the board are returned to their owner to be placed again in the next round. Workers can stay on the board for one, two or three turns, so a key part of the game is planning and with only three workers, making sure that players don’t end up with all of them stuck on the board. This was another tight game with players scoring fairly evenly in the four areas of the board, the Bistro, Festival, Fromagerie and Ville.

– Image by boardGOATS

Cobalt just edged it on Fruit and Orders, however, giving him a four-point victory over Jade in second with Sapphire not far behind. There was just time for one last game and the choice was another recent popular game, Looot. This is a clever management game, using a double placement mechanism where Vikings conquer territory on the central player board, allowing players to gain resources, buildings and objective tiles while they build their village on their personal board using tiles from the common board to gain victory points. This was another tight game, especially between first and second place.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was backwards and forwards between Cobalt and Jade and finished with just two points between them. Once again though, Cobalt just had the edge, his hundred and six points just pushing Jade into second again. It had been a good night though and a fitting end to the evening, and the last meeting of the year at the pub. As the last Christmas cards were handed out and final Season’s Greetings shared, people headed off into the darkness and with just two sleeps till the big day.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning outcome: You don’t have to play Festive games at Christmas to have fun.

23rd July 2024

Blue and Pink were still eating when everyone else rolled in and seemed quite content to chat. It took Blue two attempts to get the first game rolling, with Jade leading Cobalt, Crimson and Plum to the other side of the room. Pink moved to join Pine who wanted to play his new acquisition with Black and Purple, which left Blue and Lime to lead Byzantium, Sapphire and Cyan in the “Feature Game“, the Alpine expansion for Forest Shuffle. This is was chosen to mark the announcement of the Spiel des Jahres Awards, as Forest Shuffle, featured on the recommended list and has been popular with the group.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue made a bit of a meal of explaining the rules, but really they are very simple. On their turn, players either take two cards from the market and add them to their hand (with a hand limit of ten), or play a card from their hand into their tableau. There are three different types of cards. Tree cards are the central cards around which Critter cards are played. Then there is the first set of Critter cards which are divided into two, left and right with an animal on each half. Finally, there are Critter cards which are divided into two, the canopy at the top and the undergrowth at the bottom. The Critter cards are half-tucked under the Tree cards, so only one animal, flora or fauna is visible.

– Image by boardGOATS

The difficult part of the game is getting the cards to work together efficiently to give extra actions and, ultimately, points. The Alpine expansion doesn’t change the game significantly, just adding more variety to the cards, adding more opportunities for scoring. For example, it adds an extra Butterfly which give players more points if they have a complete the set. This time, Blue started with a hand full or Hares, making her initial strategy obvious. Sapphire was less fortunate, so Blue and Lime suggested that starting with Trees was always a good way to go as players can’t do anything without them. He also had some Butterflies, so that was where he went next.

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Lime built up a collection of Birds, and since he advertised his strategy to the group, everyone else was able to take cards he wanted. This is a key part of the game: some cards give points for the number of something you have, so having more of both multiplies the score. For example, Hares give one point for every Hare a player has. Thus, one Hare gives one point, but Blue’s seven Hares mean that first Hare scored seven points. More to the point, every other Hare also scored seven points giving her forty-nine points just for her Hares. Meanwhile, Byzantium was going Bats, and Cyan was experimenting with Deer.

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The game ends when the third Winter card is drawn from the deck, so after the second, everyone got very nervy as they tried to complete all their plans and play all the cards they wanted to. Each time someone drew a card from the deck, it was with bated breath. The final stage seemed to last forever, and although the third Winter card wasn’t the last card in the deck, it was close, and when it was drawn the game ended immediately. And then it was time for the scores: everyone assumed that Blue’s husk of Hares would give her victory, but it was actually quite much closer than they thought. Although Blue finished with a hundred and sixty-five, Byzantium was only twenty points behind.

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Byzantium was ready to leave, but for everyone else there was just time for something really quick. So as everyone else was still playing, the remaining four decided on a quick game of Coloretto. This is an old game, but one that was on the Spiel des Jahres Award “Recommended List” in 2003. Remarkably, Cyan and Sapphire were new to it, but it is a super easy and quick game to play, but with tactical decisions to make. It is also one that can essentially be taught as you go: either turn over the top Chameleon card and add it to one of the Trucks, or take one Truck. Each Truck can contain a maximum of three Chameleons and once everyone has taken a Truck, the round ends.

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At the end of the game, players score each group of coloured Chameleons, with the largest three groups giving positive points and any others scoring negatively. There are a small number of cards that just give straight points and balancing these with Chameleons is part of the challenge. The end is triggered when the end of game card is drawn and then the round is played to completion. This time, everyone kept their negative scores down, while Cyan went for the pure point cards, collecting fourteen points, more than half his score, by that route. The winner was Lime, however, who was imperious and won by some distance with a total of thirty-three.

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Meanwhile, on the next table Jade was teaching Cobalt, Crimson and Plum the Spiel des Jahres 2024 nominee, In the Footsteps of Darwin. The premise of this is that players are naturalists aboard the Beagle helping Charles Darwin finish his book On the Origin of Species, studying animals, carrying out cartographic surveys, publishing their findings, and developing theories. On their turn, players study an animal or take inspiration from a character by choosing one of the three tiles in the row or column marked by the Beagle, and placing it onto their naturalist’s Notebook. This may be an animal to study or a character from the Beagle’s previous journey and will give an immediate bonus or a scoring bonuses.

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After placing the tile, the Beagle is moved round the market, with the distance dependent on the tile chosen and a new tile is drawn to fill the empty space on the journey board. At the end of the game, the player who contributed the most to On the Origin of Species wins. At it’s heart, In the Footsteps of Darwin is a fairly simple set collection and “make the most of what’s available” game. Players obtain an additional scoring objective when they place a tile on top of a previous one, covering up any icons, so a key part of the game is the conflict between points being gained verses points being lost.

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There’s also quite a bit of luck invoiced, as a player may need one or two specific tiles that don’t come out, or that get taken by someone else before they have the opportunity to do so. The group found it was very quick to play, taking just forty minutes including teaching. Plum’s starting goal was points for tiles in the upper right quadrant, but in the absence of tiles that fitted that criteria she focused instead on collecting Charts and Compasses as these score points equal to the number of these multiplied together.

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One advantage of these is that once a Compass has been collected, the tile can be covered without loosing any points. Cobalt didn’t worry about that at all, covering loads of tiles to get more Theories banners which give points. Ultimately, everyone’s score was pretty similar at the end of the first game but Jade took victory as he was most effective with the Chart/Compass scoring. As it was so quick, the group decided to give it a second try—this the scores all improved. This time the victor was Crimson, who was again the most effective with the Charts/Compasses, but also scored well in other areas, as did Cobalt who came second again.

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From there, the group moved on to a game of Looot, which is too recent a release to have been acknowledged in the Spiel des Jahres awards. It has been popular amongst the members of the group that have played it so far, however, and may well get an award next year. In this game, players gain points by gathering resources and capturing buildings to try to develop their Fjord, fill their long ships and complete buildings. The winner is the player with the most riches and is crowned Jarl of the Vikings. The game is played over several rounds until each player has played all their Vikings, giving a maximum of thirteen turns, each with a simple structure.

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Players start by placing their Viking on a Resource tile on the central board adjacent to another Viking of any colour. They then take the associated Resource and place it on their personal board. If possible, they then use their Resources to capture a Building and place that on their board, take a Long Ship and also place it on their board, use a Shield, or complete a Construction Site and finally grab a Trophy. Looot is quite a light game, but with enough decision space to be interesting. Last time was a three-player game, but this time, with four, players get another map area, which the group arranged to give a wide play area.

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The board layout made it easier to get to more areas of the map relatively early in the game, but there was still plenty of competition for the Towers. Like last time, Plum decided not to worry about all the home tiles and focused on gold, which was good, but not enough on its own. Cobalt scored massively for Castles by getting plenty of them plus the equivalent Long Boats. Cobalt started on that strategy largely by accident, before he had got a real understanding of game-play and a full appreciation of how they increased the Castle scoring and matched the requirements he could fulfill.

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Crimson had a nice balance of increased score for Towers and Houses, while Jade built up a huge pile of Wood. Unlike last time, things didn’t just come together at the end for Plum, and nobody else could compete with Cobalt’s Castles and he took victory with one hundred and twenty-one, fourteen points ahead of Crimson in second. It had been a good game though, and as players become more experienced, they will be increasingly able to determine the best scoring opportunity from the start and how to optimise the mini game that is building their Fjord. With experienced players, this could be quite ruthless with players trying to block each other and prevent objectives.

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In the third group, meanwhile, Pine was introducing his new acquisition, the old game, Tonga Bonga, to Pink, Black and Purple. This is a sailing race game a bit like the 2008 Spiel des Jahres recommended Jamaica. In Tonga Bonga, players pilot their ship around the archipelago with the goal of visiting four of the five remote islands and returning to Tonga Bonga Bay. Each player has room for three sailors on their ship, each of which represented by dice and indicate how fat the ship will move. At the start of the round, players decide how much they are prepared to pay for the sailors who will serve as their captain and first mate that round (the Cabin Boy always works for nothing).

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Players then simultaneously roll their dice, and take it in turns assign their dice to the other players’ ships, in return for the money offered. In a mechanism vaguely reminiscent of that in the really rather vicious game, Vanuatu, if a player tries to place a higher value die where someone has already assigned a die, the lower value one is displaced and bumped to a lesser and usually less lucrative role. Thus, all things being equal, the ship offering the most money will get the highest value dice and the most moves, though of course, players can work together to disrupt this behaviour. One side of each die has a Seasick Sailor (effectively zero), so the maximum value dice are five.

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Once all the dice have been assigned, players move their ships racing to reach the islands, leaving one of their tokens there. Landing on an island, earns $25 from the bank, but the player has to pay $5 to each player who landed there ahead of them. Pine explained the rules and before long, everyone was sailing. Pink got a bit of a lead by using his winnings to buy more moves and visit more islands. He had been feeling that the game was maybe a bit “broken”, but as is usually the case when a game feels like that, it was all down to the “rules malfunction”, but it wasn’t until the final round that the rules were “clarified”.

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Instead of the winner being the player to cross the line first with any left over money used as a tie-breaker, once a player has visited four islands they return to Tonga Bonga Bay and trigger the game end—and whoever has the most money wins. Pink crossed the line and claimed the moral victory, as he was playing by the original rules. Everyone else was quite happy with the “updated rules” though, which left Pine the victor with Purple in second and Black just behind. Pink blamed “Evil Pine” for the mishap, but was eventually won round with a bottle of dubiously flavoured cider.

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Although the debate had been audible by the players at the neighbouring tables, ultimately it was all taken in good part and the game had been a lot of fun and showed its age less than Lifeboats that was played a few weeks back and was only five years older. From there though, the group moved on to a game of the 2021 Spiel des Jahres winner, Kingdomino. This is a clever little game where players are building a kingdom made out of double-headed, domino-like tiles. As in Dominoes, the ends of the tiles have to match, or at least it has to match with one tile tile already in the player’s kingdom.

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The really clever part of the game is the double market, where the tiles are taken in reverse order of value. The double market means that when a player takes the tile for the current round, they choose which tile they will get in the next round. Thus, taking the lowest value tile this round means they will have first choice next round. Players score for each contiguous area of Terrain—the number of points is equal to the number of squares multiplied by the number of Crowns featuring in it. This time, Pink concentrated on Wheat Fields and Sea, Pine focused on Sea and Meadow while Black concentrated on Woodland with a smattering of points from Marsh, Mountain and Wheat fields.

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In contrast, Purple prioritised her four contiguous areas forfeiting the “Harmony” and “Middle Kingdom” bonus points for using all the tiles to give a square kingdom with a central castle. Pine took victory with a massive seventy-three with Pink and Black tying for second with sixty points. This group wasn’t done by any means and swiftly moved on to a quick game of Sushi Go!. This is one of those games that takes a mechanism that is a relatively minor part of other games and distills it into its purest form in the game. Coloretto does the same for the central market mechanism used in the 2007 Spiel des Jahres winner, Zooloretto, and Sushi Go! does it for the card drafting mechanism in the 2011 Kennerspiel des Jahres winning game, 7 Wonders.

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In Sushi Go!, players start with a hand of cards, keep one and pass the rest on, repeating until all the cards have been distributed. As well as being a core mechanism in 7 Wonders, this “Card Drafting” is also often used to try to reduce the luck of the draw at the start of games like Terraforming Mars and Agricola (both also acknowledged by the Spiel des Jahres committee). In Sushi Go!, players are using the card drafting to collect sushi and, most importantly Pudding! The game is played over three rounds, with cards drafted to the left, then right and then left again, scoring points at the end of each round.

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This time, Pink and Black tied for the high-scoring first round, with Pine just behind. Pine made up for it on the second round by taking it convincingly, however, with everyone else scoring very badly. The third round was more even again, this time won by Black with Purple taking second. That resulted in a three-way tie between Black, Pink and Pine, but at the end of the game, the player with the most Pudding cards gains six points, with the one with the fewest losing six points. Unusually for Pink (as he has quite a sweet tooth), he had eschewed Puddings, while Black had the most giving him what ended up being a quite convincing victory.

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There was just time for a single round of Love Letter (a game from the 2014 Spiel des Jahres recommended list). This is a sixteen card game where players start with a card, draw a second and then play one. The idea is to try to be the last play in or the player with the highest value card when the deck runs out. The theme is all about getting as close as possible to the Princess card, which has the highest value. This led to a discussion about real princesses and how close people had been to them. It turns out that Purple has met a real one, Princess Nina who lives in a massive house in Cheltenham. During the game, Pink was the Princess, but was spotted and knocked out, leaving Black to take another win.

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Learning Outcome: The Spiel des Jahres committee may reward lighter games, but they are good games.

25th June 2024

To mark the upcoming General Election, the “Feature Game” was to be Lifeboats, an older game which features lots of voting (as well as boating…). Blue and Pink were still eating as the others arrived, so those that wanted to join them staked their claim and waited and the others took themselves off to play something else, but it wasn’t long before the voting and boating was underway. Lifeboats is a fairly simple, if savage game, where players are trying to get their sailors from the sinking wreck of the Santa Timea to shore. Unfortunately, the lifeboats are old and leaky and as the water comes in and the boats begin to sink, players vote to decide which boats to move and who to throw overboard.

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There are three phases to each round in Lifeboats: firstly one boat develops a leak, then one boat moves forwards, and then finally, one seaman in each boat jumps overboard and then climbs back into a different boat. In the first phase, players vote to decide which craft develops a leak and a blue wooden disk is placed in an empty spot in that boat—if there isn’t an empty space, the occupants vote to decide who is going over the side. Once that has been resolved, players vote again, this time to decide which boat is going to move; it’s only three spaces to reach land, but that can seem an awfully long way.

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In the final phase of the round, beginning with the start player, players take it in turns to take one of their seamen from a boat into the water and then in reverse order the swimmer climbs into a different boat. And it must be a different boat—if there isn’t a different boat with space, the unfortunate sailor drowns in the attempt. All that is quite straight forward, but there are a some little tweaks that add interest to the game. Firstly, each player has two Officers and a number of Sailors: deciding who is going to be thrown overboard, players have one vote per Sailor in the boat and two per Officer. Seamen that make it to land score points, but Officers score more, all this also makes them a target though.

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Even though the Santa Timea is headed for Davey Jones’ Locker, the Captain is still in command. So, during any vote, players may invoke his name to get their way by playing a Captain’s Hat card. Players only have three of these though, and they are single use so must be used with care. Worse, if more than one player plays a Captain’s Hat, they cancel out, and a bit like ties in Las Vegas all the tied players lose out, so they also have to be well timed to be effective. The winner is the player to score the most points by getting their seamen back to land before the last boat sinks (and the different islands give different numbers of points for Sailors and Officers).

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A key part of the game is the negotiation before votes, so the group played with “The Stick Variant” whereby the Start Player controls how long players have for debate. The other advantage of being the Start Player is they have the casting vote in the event of a tie. This time, Ivory went first and began with the Start Token. As he was playing white, to maintain the election theme, he was representing Independent candidates. Blue played with orange who were therefore the Liberal Democrats; Lime had purple UKIP pieces; Pine directed the Greens, Black Labour and Pink the SNP.

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Nobody was quite sure what to do at the start, but Ivory’s Independent boat was the first to spring a leak. Although players have no control over boats of their colour, they are a tie-break at the end of the game where players finish with equal points. In the second round, Black opined that there were too many boats and rather than share the leaks around, the group should concentrate on sinking one boat. Everyone else obligingly agreed and the vote was carried, so before long the Independent boat was heading to the bottom of the deep-blue sea. In contrast, the Liberal Democrat boat danced over the waves making it to shore first, carrying two Green Sailors, and one Sailor each for UKIP and the Independents, all led by one SNP and one Independent Officer.

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From there, things got more savage as the spaces in the boats became more scarce and everyone realised that the SNP (Pink) was on course for a landslide. Ivory “spoiled his ballot” when he chose to throw his own Sailor overboard, and Lime was sufficiently confused by proceedings that he wound up voting to move a candidate forward when it had already withdrawn (by sinking). The last boat to go down was Labour, but by that point, it was already clear that the Greens (in the guise of Pine) had the majority with a vote share of thirty-two, six more than the SNP (Pink) in second and twelve more than the third party, the Liberal Democrats (Blue).

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It had been a lot of fun, if quite nasty, and as such, is a game with an older feel to it, as befits a game that is thirty years old. It wasn’t the only thing that was showing it’s age, as the Blackadder quote got several outings too (“Lord Nelson has a vote…” “He has a BOAT, Baldrick…”). There had also been an large element of gerrymandering leading to Pine’s victory which, as he said, would not have happened if Lilac had been there as she would have really enjoyed drowning all his seamen. As it was, he was the only player to get all his men to safety, so deserved his term in Parliament.

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The other games were still underway, so the group played a couple of quick rounds of the old favourite, No Thanks!. This is a super-quick filler, where players choose to take the face-up card, or pay a chip to pass the problem on to the next player. At the end of the game, players score for the lowest card in each run, minus the number of chips they have left—the player with the lowest total is the winner. In the first game, Black top-scored with forty-eight and the winner was Lime with nine, pipping Blue by one. In the second game, Pine finished with the highest total (though it wasn’t a patch on Black’s). Blue thought she had this one when her total came to just three, but much to her chagrin, Lime finished with two, again beating her by a solitary point.

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Ivory took his leave, and the remaining five managed one more game, this time of The Game. This cooperative effort used to be a popular filler in the group, though it is a few years since it last got an outing. The team have a deck of cards numbered from two to ninety-nine (in our case, from a copy of The Game: Extreme, but ignoring the special symbols), and play each card on one of four piles, two ascending and two descending. There are just three rules: the active player can play as many cards as they like, 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”.

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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. The game ends when, either all the cards have been played onto the four piles, or a player cannot play a card. As is often the way, things started to go wrong from the start and pretty much kept going wrong. The game finally cam to an end when, shortly after depleting the draw deck several people said there wasn’t anything they could play, and after the last possible card had been played the group had seventeen cards left.

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Meanwhile, Jade, Plum and Byzantium had started out playing one of Jade’s acquisitions from the recent UK Games Expo. Middle Ages (a reimplementation of Majesty: For the Realm) is a quick little game where players are the head of a fiefdom. The idea is that players use their Lord-eeple (or perhaps that should be lord-muman) to take tiles, placing them on their player board and gain its rewards, which change depending on the type of the piece. The game is based around a market, similar to that in Kingdomino, where tiles are arranged in ascending order with players taking tiles in that order and placing their Lord-eeple on their chosen tile from the next row. Thus, the player has to choose between an early choice in the next round and a low value tile, or a high value tile, with less or no choice.

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Players then carry out the tile’s special effect and take the associated income. The payout increases payout the more tiles of the same type a player has. Every four rounds, there is an event and the game ends after the sixteenth round when players lose ten points for each type of tile they don’t have in their city and the person with the most points is the winner. This time, Byzantium went all in for Windmills (players with fewer Windmill tiles had to give him two Coins) while Jade built some Barracks. The Barracks enabled Jade to attack everyone with fewer Rampart tiles than he had Barracks tiles forcing them to give him money. Plum opted for a more balanced approach that allowed her to improve her income stream significantly due to the Churches and Palace buildings she played.

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Plum’s Church gave her a coin bonus which she placed on a Village, which enabled her to repair a broken building. There was some discussion about whether that was voluntary or not, but it didn’t seem to be written like it was a choice. Although not planning for it, Plum did well out of the third Event, “Restoration”, giving her coins for having three broken buildings. Jade, on the other hand, had interpreted the rule as compulsory and had therefore mended his broken building a turn earlier so wasn’t able to benefit from the Event. It was close between Jade and Byzantium with Jade just edging it. Someway ahead, however, was Plum, who finished with one hundred and thirty-one points.

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Middle Ages is a quick little game, and the trio then moved on to another UK Games Expo game, the slightly meatier Looot. This is a game where players gather resources and capture buildings to develop their fjord, fill their longships and complete buildings to rack up victory points. The player with the most riches is crowned Jarl of the Vikings. Like Middle Ages, this was new to both Plum and Byzantium, so after teaching the group got down to the serious pillaging. The game is played over several rounds until each player has played all their Vikings, giving a maximum of thirteen turns, each with a simple structure.

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First, a player places their Viking on a Resource tile on the central board adjacent to another Viking of any colour and take the Resource and place it on their personal board. If possible, they then capture a Building and place that on their board, take a Long Ship and also place it on their board, use a Shield, complete a Construction Site and finally grab a Trophy. Plum felt she wasn’t going to be able to complete all three of her initial goal hexes, but hedged her bets and left space, just in case. She used the “occupy the same space as another” option fairly early on to make sure she connected at least two Towers—Towers were the more difficult requirements for the two easier home hexes.

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Byzantium’s higher scoring home hex needed two Castles. He failed to complete one of his hexes, but did achieve the most difficult one giving him only slightly fewer points than the other two for this aspect. Jade thought the others were likely to take the spots he was aiming for a few times, but he needn’t have worried as a closer look at the others’ boards would no doubt have told him. Byzantium got quite a good engine going early game with optimal placements of his first four to five Long Ships, which give bonuses for Resources and Buildings on the player’s map. In order to complete a Long Ship it needs to be adjacent to three specific resources, however.

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Each Long Ship taken and left incomplete leads to a five point penalty, so it is important not to over commit, but equally players don’t want to leave prime location Long Ships for their opponents either. Byzantium’s Long Ships made great use of the Looot he had pillaged, but for some reason he lost his way a little and ended up with a lot of low scoring Looot at the end of the game. It felt really close, but Jade thought he would just sneak it as he had increased his Castle scoring to seven points per Castle and had he three of them. In the end though, Plum ended up winning by quite a significant margin, her hundred and eleven were eight points more than Jades total for second place.

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It was an evening for playing games from Expo, as Teal led Purple and Sapphire in a game of Photosynthesis. This game is a few years old now, but Teal had been really delighted to find a copy for a very good price in the “Bring and Buy”. In Photosynthesis, players collect light points based on the trees they have on the board and the direction of the sun gaining light points for any of their trees that aren’t in the shadow of another tree. By collecting light, players can grow and further their species’ dominance over the forest. Each round, the sun moves creating the direction of light for the round. Players begin by placing two small trees on the board.

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Small trees collect one light point and cast a shadow over one space. Players can then spend light points to grow a tree, plant a new seed, and eventually harvest a tree once it has reached full size. As well as a unique spacial puzzle, the game is quite beautiful with mechanics that fit the theme giving simple but meaningful choices. Like a lot of puzzle-games, Photosynthesis can be quite hard to get one’s head round on the first play. This time the game was really quite tight between Teal and and Sapphire, but Sapphire just had the edge, beating Teal by one point with final total of fifty-four.

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Lifeboats and Looot were still going, so Purple pulled out another Expo special, that first got a run-out last time, a game called Rome in a Day. This is a cute little “I divide, you choose” game, where players draw five land tiles at random and place two buildings on tiles one and two. They then divide the five tiles into two groups—a bigger and a smaller one (in any ratio) and add a crystal to the smaller land set before offering the choice to their neighbour. During the four rounds the game is played over this neighbour alternates, right, left, right, left. So, each round, players choose a set from their neighbour and these and the tiles they were left with are added to their domain.

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At the end of the game, any building that stands on or adjacent to land of its own colour will score for each tile in the group and then players score for the diamonds they have collected—the player with the most points is the winner. It was a really close game, in fact, it was a tie for second place between Purple and Teal who both scored twenty-seven points. Sapphire did rather better, however, finishing with thirty-five points having concentrated on yellow Wheat Fields and green Olive Groves to the complete exclusion of blue-purple Vineyards and red Towns.

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Learning outcome: Politics can be savage, but it is important everyone votes.