Pine was the first to arrive and also the first to leave as he had just popped in to say “Hi!” while his baked potato was in the oven.  There were a few others missing as well, but still more than enough for two tables.  The “Feature Game” was Danger Circuit, an expansion for the card-driven bidding, racing, and betting game Downforce.  Downforce is based on the older game Top Race, which in turn is a reimplementation of several other games including Niki Lauda’s Formel 1. It is widely agreed to be one of the best car racing games, combining strategy and luck, especially when some of the expansion tracks are used.

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Downforce comes in three parts:  a car auction, the race, and betting.  The game starts with the car auction where players bid on the cars using the cards they will use to race later.  The cards show how far the cars shown on it will move.  So when a player plays a card on their turn, they then move all the cars on it in order.  Some cards show only one car while others move more, even all six.  Before the start of the game, players are dealt the hand of cards they will use during the race and therefore know which car or cars over which they will have most control.  Using this information, they then chose a card to bid on each car, getting the card back, but making a note of the amount they “paid” to buy it.

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On three occasions during the game, when the first car crosses a line, everyone makes a note of a secret bet—if the car they pick is placed in the top three, they win money.  This simultaneously makes and breaks the game, because it encourages players to help other players, however, it also means that if a player backs their own car and wins, they are almost guaranteed to finish with the most money.  For this reason, Blue was considering “House Ruling” the betting to use a variant, but as she wasn’t sure of the changes and had not printed the special betting forms, the group stuck with the rules as written.  The car auction is coupled with a Power auction.  The Powers allow players to break the rules of the game slightly to improve their chances.

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The Danger Circuit expansion adds two new tracks with dangerous spaces and crossover loops as well as drivers with new skills.  This time, because most people had not played the game before, players simply drew two cards blind from the deck and picked their favourite.  Lemon won the first auction taking pole position and “Cunning”, which allowed her to control the movement her own car every time (instead of the active player moving it).  Unfortunately, she completely forgot about this in the excitement of the race, so didn’t capitalise on it.  Teal was “Defensive” so could move an extra three spaces if his car wasn’t on the card he played and Lime “Ambitious” which meant it could move an extra couple of spaces when it crossed a betting line.  Lime thought this would guarantee him an extra six spaces, but it didn’t quite play out that way.

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Pink was “Experienced” which meant he was able to take advantage of slip-streaming and move a space forward whenever a car immediately in front of him moved, and Orange was “Tricky” and could move the cars in reverse order on his turn.  Blue was the last to take a car and ended up with “Reckless” as her special power which meant that if she ever squeezed through a tight space she would get to move an extra two spaces.  All of these special abilities except Tricky and Cunning were from the Danger Circuit expansion.  The group chose the Crosstown Speedway track for the race (also from the Danger Circuit expansion), which features two hazardous crossover loops and a couple of split areas of the track, where players must choose between the shorter single-lane section or the longer, more wide open section.

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Lemon got a good start from pole and took an early lead and Lime, in an effort to catch up, managed to overturn his car.  Although Lemon was the first to cross it, it was all quite tight at the first betting line.  From there on, everyone was committed and the race began in earnest.  Teal made good use of his special skill a couple of times and Orange used his to great effect as well.  The race was almost all over, however, when Lemon effectively declared her bidding by moving Blue’s red car into the lead and down the first single track shortcut section.  With everyone else either stuck in the bottle-neck of the two track section with a bit of a hairpin corner or stuck behind Blue’s red car, she was able to put a bit of a spurt on.

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Keeping her foot on the gas she was able to put clear distance between herself and everyone else along the back straight and make for the line.  She couldn’t do it on her own however, but as a couple of others had backed her to win early in the race, it wasn’t long before she crossed the line and the race was on for second.  That was a lot closer, but eventually Teal trundled home at the front of the pack with Lime coming in third.  The aim of Downforce isn’t to win the race, however; the aim is to finish with the most money when betting, winnings and outlay are all taken into account.

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Orange was the only one not to place a bet on Blue’s little red car at any point and with significant costs at the start, despite some excellent in race moves, he suffered as a result.  Everyone else was fairly close though, with just two million dollars between Lime and Pink in second and third place and the others not far behind.  Betting on one’s own car though, is unbeatable however, as long as it comes home first of course.  And in this case, Blue had backed her little red car throughout, so winning the race and betting on her own car gave her a huge payout.  With only one million outlay (it didn’t seem right for anyone to be able to set up a racing team for free), she finished with the maximum of twenty-nine million dollars.

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The game had been a lot of fun, but having played it a few times now it was becoming clear that the betting skews the game a little.  The alternative betting Blue had suggested at the start has the potential to alter that.  The problem is that with players simply getting a straight pay out for betting on the winner, the race can become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy:  in this case, because several people bet on the red car to win, they were invested in it and it won.  The variant betting winnings depend on the position the car is in the race at the time when the bet is placed.  In this way it increases both the risk and the reward.  Because this encourages more diversity in the betting, it can mix things up a little and, as such, is definitely something to try before too long.

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The neighbouring table were still playing, so although Teal and Lime decided to take an early night, the others continued with a game of Kingdomino.  This is a lovely light game that was the deserved winner of the Spiel des Jahres Award a few years ago and has been a staple within the group ever since.  Orange and Lemon were new to the game, however, so Blue and Pink explained the rules:  Players take a tile from “Today’s Market” and place their meeple on a tile of their choice in “Tomorrow’s Market”.  The clever part of the game is that the tiles are numbered with the highest numbers going to the most “valuable” tiles.

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Tiles starting are taken starting with the lowest value ones, which means players have to choose between taking a high value tile (and getting a late turn next time) or positioning themselves early in the turn order for the next round (by taking a low value tile).  When players take their tiles, they add them to their “Kingdom” making areas of different types of terrain.  At the end of the game, players score points for the size of each terrain multiplied by the number of crowns depicted in that terrain, with bonus points for completing a perfectly square Kingdom with their castle in the centre.

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This time, Orange went first followed by Lemon.  She started with a small woodland, which rapidly became a large woodland.  As it grew, she took the opportunity early and picked up lots of crowns.  This meant nobody else had any incentive to collect woodland tiles so she was able to pick more and make her woodland ever larger finishing with thirteen woodland spaces and five crowns giving her sixty-five points for that alone.  Nobody was very surprised when Lemon won, finishing with a massive ninety-three points, five more than Pink in second who had focused on pasture and arable.

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Although the bar had called last orders and the game on the next table was working through their final round, there was just time for a very quick game of No Thanks!.  This is a superb filler with almost zero setup time—just the kind of game the group loves in such circumstances.  The idea is super simple:  the top card of the deck is turned over and the active player has to choose whether to take the card or pay a chip to pass the problem on to the next person.  Eventually, someone weakens and takes the card and the chips.  At the end of the game, players add up the face value of the cards in front of them and subtract the number of chips they are left with to give their score: the lowest is the winner.

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There are two catches:  firstly, for any runs of consecutive cards, only the lowest value card counts.  Secondly, nine cards are removed from the thirty-two card deck at random and in secret before the game begins, making the decision to take or leave a card considerably more difficult.  No Thanks! is a simply great game to teach and so much fun for the time it takes, so is ideal for a game at the end of the evening.  This is another group “staple” and yet Lemon and Orange had somehow missed out.  That was quickly rectified, and like everyone else, the realisation of the simple considerations was apparent as the game developed.

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This time, Pink collected a lot of chips, while Orange and Blue collected a lot of cards.  Lemon almost ran out of chips at the end, but had also managed to avoid picking up any high value cards.  Lemon just managed to hold out finishing with thirty-nine points, eleven less than Pink, taking her second victory of the evening.  By this time, the bar was closed and the players on the next table were scrabbling to finish.  They had been playing Endeavor: Age of Sail, a game that was new to Plum, though Black, Purple, Green and Lilac had all played it before.  The game is relatively simple in concept, though one of those games where the interactions make the decisions challenging.

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The game is played over eight rounds, each consisting of four basic phases: Build, Populate, Payment and Action.  The four technology tracks roughly correspond to each phase and dictate what a player can do during that phase.  For example, how far along the building track a player is dictates what they can build: the further along they are, the more buildings they have to choose from.  Similarly, a player who is further along the population (or culture) track, can move more people into their harbour for use in the Action phase.  Payment also increases the number of people available as it moves population markers from the action spaces into the harbour.  More importantly, however, it makes the action spaces available again for use later in the round.

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The guts of the game, however, is the Action phase.  when players place population markers on their buildings to activate them and carry out one of the five actions:  Colonise, Ship, Attack, Plunder Assets, and Pay Workers.  These are generally based round the central board which is divided up into seven regions representing the seven continents.  Each continent comprises several cities, a shipping route and a deck of cards. At the start of the game there is a Trade token on each city and each shipping space, but also on many of the connections between cities (these are taken if a player occupies both cities either side).  Players cannot Colonise a city until they have a presence in a region, which they can do by Shipping, using two markers, one to activate their building that provides the shipping action and one to place on the shipping track.

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Players also need two population markers to Colonise (one for the action and one to occupy the city) and three if they are going to attack an already occupied city (one is collateral damage).  At the end of the game, after eight rounds, players score for occupied cities, connections and cards as well as points for progress on their technology tracks.  Although Green had been keen to include the last of his unplayed exploits from the Age of Expansion expansion, because Plum was new to the game, the group stuck to the base game. With hindsight that was a doubly good decision given the time constraint at the end and the table wasn’t really big enough for the extra boards anyhow.

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Black put out the board while Green pulled out all the bits that were needed, Lilac randomly selected the Level Five buildings (all of them were money action ones by chance) and Plum familiarised herself with the pieces and symbols.  Then everyone helped place all ninety-six tokens onto their spaces on the board.  When finished there were three empty spaces:  one missing token was elsewhere on the board not in a spot and one was found hiding in the corner of the bag, but the last one remained elusive.  The group hunted through the box, on the floor, but nothing. They were in the process of selecting a random cardboard token (the group were playing with the Kickstarter wooden tokens) when someone finally spotted the missing piece lurking in North America.

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So finally the game was set up and ready to play, just a quick run through of the rules primarily for the benefit of Plum, but also for everyone else as the game had not had an outing for a while.  The first couple of rounds were fairly quick and by the end of them everyone seemed to know what they were doing.  Throughout the game, Green found himself with more citizens than he could use, largely courtesy of going down a card route and claiming two of the Level One cards to give him extras.  Black seemed to be having the opposite problem as he proved to be the miser of the group and not able to pay his citizens enough.  Lilac was busy occupying Europe, while Plum and Purple were busy shipping and opening up India and Africa respectively.

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Later in the game Black and Plum were looking to be doing well and there had been very little attacking going on—a very friendly expansion.  It was then that the group realised that they were playing with the wrong side of the board:  they were using the 2/3/4 Player board when we should have been using the other side for 4/5 Players.  The rules described the side they were one as a “High Conflict Four Player Game”, which presumably made theirs a Very High Conflict Five player game!  So what is the difference? Both boards use the same number of tokens (ie all of them), but there are more shipping routes and fewer cities on the 4/5 Player board. On the 2/3/4 board there were also more tokens in the link spaces, so those occupying had a slight advantage.

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At this point the group realised they would all be needing more cannon.  Black was happy with that as he had recently acquired a Fortress Occupy/Attack.  Purple had one as well and had also managed to acquire a couple of blue Attack action tokens.  Green now realised he had boxed himself into a corner as he did not have any Occupy actions, only Shipping.  For one of his last buildings he grabbed a Fortress, as did Plum and Lilac.  The last round or two of the game involved a lot of to-ing and fro-ing as attack’s reigned down, particularly between Black and Purple as they traded blows over the America’s routes.  It was this that did for Black in the end:  looking like the player most likely to win, he became a target and lost a few points as a result.

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By now the group had to rush the end, take pictures and throwing everything back in the box to be sorted later. The scores were to be calculated later from the pictures, but leaving, the group thought it would be close between Black, Plum and Lilac, although Lilac was convinced she wouldn’t be in the mix at all.  The later review of the final scoring proved that it was indeed between those three, and quite close too, although Lilac with sixty-three had a significant enough lead over the other two.  Despite the errors made and the quick finish everyone really enjoyed the game and are keen to play it again soon, perhaps with those exploits from Age of Expansion, but it’ll need a bigger table and it would probably be wise to use the correct side of the board too…

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Learning outcome:  Backing yourself is sometimes a risk worth taking.