Tag Archives: No Thanks!

21st March 2023

Blue and Pink were just setting up Circle the Wagons when Lemon walked in. As Circle the Wagons is a two player filler game, they quickly packed it away and got out No Thanks! instead. Lemon hadn’t played it before (or perhaps had forgotten), so Blue gave her a quick rules explanation. It is a very simple (if clever) game, so it didn’t take long: the first player reveals the top card of the deck, then makes the choice, either to take it or pay a chip to pass the problem on to the next player. At the end of the game, the player adds up the face value of all their cards and the player with the lowest total is the winner.

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There are two catches, however. Firstly, if a player has a run of consecutive cards, only the lowest counts to a player’s final score, which encourages players to gamble a little. However, the second catch is that nine cards are removed from the deck at random before each game, which means the card a player is gambling on getting may not even be present in the deck. Blue and Pink were half way through their burgers and the trio were halfway through the game when Indigo and then Pine arrived. Indigo was also new to the game so as they finished the first game Blue explained the rules to her too.

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The first game was really close, but Lemon, got lucky and, although everyone scored relatively highly, she had three less than Pink to take victory. The game plays five well though, so Pine and Indigo joined the other three for a second round. This time, the top scorer was Indigo who finished just shy of fifty points. Everyone else was closer, but this time Blue was the winner with seventeen points, some five less then Pine. By this time, almost everyone else had arrived and the burgers had been dispatched, so it was time to decide who was going to play what. The “Feature Game” was to be the Visit from the Rhine Valley expansion for one of the group’s most popular games, Viticulture, and the questions were, who wanted to play that, and what would the rest play?

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Viticulture is one of Pink’s favourite games and Teal was very keen to play it too. Somewhat surprisingly, Ivory was open to other options, so eventually Indigo and and Green joined them to set that up. With five people left, Lemon loving Ticket to Ride, and Pine having just acquired Burgundy‘s copy of the Europe edition, it wasn’t really a great surprise when the group decided to give that an outing in his memory. The game is a very straight forward game of set collecting and network building with players either taking two cards on their turn, or paying sets of cards to place trains on the central map. Players score points for placing trains on the map (with longer routes giving more points).

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At the end of the game, players score extra points for any “completed tickets”, i.e. successfully connected the destinations on ticket cards dealt at the start of the game and perhaps collected during the game. There is a risk associated with tickets, however, as any that are incomplete, score negatively. Each version of Ticket to Ride has slightly different rules, so while everyone was very familiar with the basic game, the group had to remind themselves of the specifics of the Europe edition. The main difference between this version and others is the inclusion of Stations—players can add one of these to a city to enable them to use one line connected to it that someone else has built to help them to complete tickets.

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Ivory started and began the game and started on his first move by placing a single train from Bruxelles to Amsterdam. That caused panic amongst everyone else, and turned out to be completely justified as everyone except Pine got involved in a scrap for the space in central Europe. Largely as a result of that congestion Purple ended up forced to take tunnel routes. These are routes where players don’t know the actual cost before they build them, since three cards are turned over from the draw deck and if any match the colour of the track being constructed, these must be matched by the player building the track (or they fail to build it).

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This turned out to be costly for Purple who had a couple of attempts knocked back and some that costed considerably more than expected. Lemon did what she often does and seemly prioritised building tracks she liked the look of, connecting them together later if possible. Everyone else crossed their fingers and fought for the routes they wanted with most people interfering with somebody else’s plans somewhere along the way. Ivory claimed the long tunnel route from Stockholm to Petrograd, and much to Purple’s disgust, managed it first time. Lemon, who was after Pine in turn order kept trying to jump in front of him leading him to wonder whether he was invisible.

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Blue seemed to have lots of tickets that didn’t go where her trains were and life got worse and worse as the space became increasingly crowded. As the number of trains everyone had dwindled, everyone panicked about whether they were going to complete all their tickets. Then, as everyone else was struggling to complete their tickets, Purple surprised everyone by taking more, and got lucky and finished it the very next turn—just as well, because Ivory had ended the game. After the obligatory points recount (and a couple of very minor adjustments) the group started evaluating tickets.

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Ivory, Pine and Blue had a lot, but Ivory had got lucky with his ticket draws which all fitted together quite nicely. Blue had been less fortunate and only discovered that she was missing a connection for one of hers when it came to the final count. Pine and Blue both succeeded in completing eight tickets, but Ivory had the longest continuous connected line, with all but two of his trains conga-ing neatly across the map. Ivory, who had just been ahead throughout was the victor with a hundred and forty-seven points, twenty ahead of Blue in second and forty ahead of Pine in third. It had been a good game though, with lots of cut and thrust and everyone (especially Blue) had engaged their inner Burgundy at some point.

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Both Ivory and Pine wanted an early night, but there was still time for something else, so long as it wasn’t too long. Pine rejected Blue’s optimistic suggestion of Bohnanza as always taking too long, so in the end, the group settled on Coloretto. Lemon was new to this, but it’s a quick game to teach and an easy game to learn as you play too. Another set collection game, the idea is that players score points for collecting large sets of coloured chameleons. So, on their turn, players either turn over the top card of the deck and place the card in one of the trucks (each of which can contain a maximum of three cards), or take a truck.

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The reason this is clever is because while players score positively for the largest three colour groups, the others all give negative points. The triangular series gives many more points for the later cards, thus, the trick is to have one large set of cards rather than two or three smaller ones. The game plays well with five and there were lots of difficult tactical decisions with players trying to work out what everyone else would do and then force them to take cards they really didn’t want. In the end, it was an easy victory for Ivory though, with thirty-four, four points ahead of Blue in second. It was much tighter with a three way fight for bronze, that Purple just won.

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Meanwhile, on the next table, Teal, Pink, Ivory and Green were playing the “Feature Game“, the Visit from the Rhine Valley expansion for Viticulture. Although Viticulture is much more complex than the other games being played in the room, it is a relatively straight forward worker placement game where players are developing their vineyards by building buildings, planting vines, harvesting grapes, making wine and getting help from visitors. The game is typically a race with the winner being the player with the most points at the end of the round where a player exceeds a set number of points. The Rhine Valley expansion is very small, just a replacement deck of Visitor cards, but it has a reputation for changing the game quite significantly, making it more about wine making than just getting points.

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Viticulture is one of Pink’s favourite games and was quite well known to Green and Teal too thanks to them playing regularly on Board Game Arena. The Tuscany expansion was a new new variation to Green and Teal though and nobody had played with the new Rhine Valley Visitor cards. Indigo had never Viticulture at all, but Pink and Teal explained the rules, during which Indigo received some well meant general advice on best plays from the others. When Green suggested that five workers was probably optimum, both Teal and Pink were quick to disagree suggesting that more (maximum of six) was always better. Viticulture is always a slow burner for the first part of the game, and Pine kept looking across from the other table and remarking how the game had been going for ages, but there had only been a single point scored.

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As Pink, Teal and Indigo inched forward by a point or three, Green remained resolutely on zero for a long time, and then he sacrificed a point to go negative! As the game progressed the points started to come eventually. After drawing fulfillment card after fulfillment card, Pink realised he should have planted some higher value grapes rather than just the first ones that came along, which meant it took lots of turns to make them “ready for sale”. He was the first to complete a wine order though, with Teal just behind. Green eventually started to move forward and caught Indigo who was struggling a little to get her head around the game a little and with only three workers was really finding it difficult to get much done.

Viticulture: Visit from the Rhine Valley

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One of the interesting features of Tuscany is the additional buildings that can be constructed. Green found a Statue which was very expensive, but not only gave him an immediate point, but also an extra point each round. This, together with his other building, a Storehouse, he had an extra ageing step each round as well—his engine was beginning to build after a slow start. Green then played a winter Visitor combo, which allowed him to make some wines and fulfill a big six point order with an additional two points. With the end-game trigger at twenty-five, that was quite a haul in one go, indeed, Green, Teal and Pink were all quite close now.

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In spite of the sudden flood of points, with time running out, the group soon realised they would not be able to finish in time. Pink’s more traditional approach of planting, harvesting, making wine and fulfilling orders had kept him at the front of the points track, and would likely have got him over the twenty-five point line in the next round. However, the group decided that they really needed to finish, just when everyone’s engine was getting into their stride. Nobody will ever know whose would have been be the most successful and by the end of that round it was all very close on the score track. Pink had his nose in front though, followed by Green and then Teal, but there were still the “Stars” regions to score.

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This was an area which Teal had really gone for early on in the game. Green had placed a few few early on and then mostly ignored it. Pink came to the stars late in the game, but as was his usual strategy, made big plays when he did. In the end Teal narrowly scored most just edging Pink although he still had enough to retain his lead with twenty-one, two ahead of Teal and four ahead of Green. None of the group quite knew how the end of the evening had snuck up on them so suddenly, they had been so engrossed and it had seemed hardly any time at all—quite a recommendation for a game!

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Learning Outcome: If you go into the Wine Business, make sure you know what people want to buy before planting any grapes.

7th February 2023

Blue, Jade, Plum and Byzantium were first to arrive and started by ordering food and then settled down for a chat. Pine soon joined them, followed by Teal, Green, Black, Purple and Ivory. With Lime tucked up in bed fending off his lurgy, and Lilac away for work, it was just Pink who was trapped on the motorway system somewhere between The Jockey and the Frozen North. So, while food was being finished the others wanted a short game for the other end of the table. Teal had brought along The Lost Expedition and Cottage Garden. Both were apparently at least thirty minutes which probably meant nearly an hour, so we settled on a short one everyone knew, NMBR 9.

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This is a super-quick little game, but what really makes it special is that it has almost zero set-up time. The idea is that one player turns over cards, and these indicate which of ten tiles should be played on that turn. Players take the tiles straight from the box and add them to their tableau with players making sure edges touch and when placing tiles on higher layers, there must be no overhangs and tiles must cover at least two other tiles. Players score for the number on each tile multiplied by the “story” or “floor” (thus a nine placed on the third layer (second floor) scores eighteen points). The player with the largest total is the winner.

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Everything started reasonably well with some low numbers to start, including the zero, to help players build a base. The first nine came out in time for most people to have built a base to place it on, but it was after this that it all started to go wrong. Everyone seemed to struggle to fit the numbers coming out anywhere higher than the bottom layer, and even then players discovered they had blocked themselves from the best base places. Players were were struggling to get much on their second layer, let alone the third, so by the time the last two numbers were drawn (six and one), most people had barely managed a third layer.

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The one came out and was generally placed on top for a whopping three points for most and then the six could only go on the second layer. Everyone felt they just hadn’t managed things very that well this time—all except Black that is. He had been quietly getting on with things in the corner, building his third layer and a final fourth layer for his last number. The end result was that Black ended up with a score that was one of the group’s highest ever for this game and nearly twice that of second place Teal with Green not too far behind in third. With that done, it was time to decide who would play what.

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Most people seemed to want to give the “Feature Game“, Flamecraft a go. That was OK, as we had two copies of that available, but the question was what the third game might be. Green failed to find any takers for Terraforming Mars, so in the end Pine and Teal joined him giving the Pennsylvania map for Ticket to Ride a go. The Pennsylvania map is part of Map Collection Volume 5 and is the reverse side to the United Kingdom board. All the Ticket to Ride games are built round the same basic idea: on their turn, players either take carriage cards from the market or use carriage cards to pay to place trains on the map connecting cities together. Players score points for placing pieces on the map and for completing tickets (connecting two places on the board).

Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 5 – United Kingdom & Pennsylvania

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Each map has special rules and or mechanisms that are unique to it. In the case of the Pennsylvania map, this is the ability to acquire Shares. Each time a player completes a route, they claim a Share token for one of the companies depicted next to that route. At the end of the game, whoever holds the most Shares in each company receives points. The trio entered into the game without much thought of how it might be best played, so started out doing their best to complete tickets, with the Shares just an added bonus. Pine was the first to place a train, from Johnstown to Altoona, while Green and Teal continued to collect cards. Teal was second to place trains, a long route on the eastern side from New York to Philadelphia and Green was a little later in the north west.

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There wasn’t much else going on except card collecting, and there didn’t seem to be any Locomotive cards in the deck. When Pine extended his single train westwards to Pittsburg, there was a groan from Green—he had just been unable to get the colours he needed for the same track and now had to go the long way round. Adding to Green’s woes, Teal then took the three train route in from Towanda to Scranton, that he’d wanted for his two point ticket. Annoyingly, it didn’t have a specified colour, so he could have placed something there almost any time, but had been concentrating on getting the colours for the routes into Johnstown for his bigger value ticket.

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When Pine then claimed the final entry into Johnstown to completely block Green out, he was convinced his game was over, with two failed tickets before it was even half way. With a handful of train cards and no-where else to go, Green was the first to take new tickets, keeping just one. After placing trains along the northern edge of the state and into Canada, Green had another go at taking tickets, this time keeping two. With there being a big fifteen point bonus for the most completed tickets and no bonus for longest continuous string of train pieces, this version of Ticket to Ride encouraged everyone to place trains on almost any route.

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And this was without the Shares—everyone had been been quietly collecting them. Pine seemed to be going for a lot of the highest value, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, although that was mostly because he kept forgetting he had them. Teal was collecting a variety, but was the first to take Shares in a lot of the lower value companies (which had fewer Shares available). In fact he was so entranced with the share collecting, he was placing his trains on routes to collect shares and forgetting about his ticket completion, which was to be his downfall.

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Pine brought the game to a close with just two trains left leaving Green and Teal to place one more two train route each, though Pine was unable to place any more trains for one last Share. Not terribly surprisingly, Pine eschewed Teal’s suggestion of taking tickets. He’d taken some earlier and although in this game players get four tickets and only need to keep one, he still felt they looked awfully difficult to do. Plus with trains all over the board, it seemed very unlikely that a route may have already been completed, much more so than in some of the other versions of the game where it sometimes feels like it is worth a shot.

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The final scoring was to prove interesting: scores for just placing train pieces on the board were all relatively close. Everyone had to get their fingers and toes out to score the Shares, but in the end found the scores were all very close on these as well, even though everyone had had different approaches towards them. It was the tickets that were to be the deciding factor. As mentioned, Teal had largely forgotten about his routes, and although he had managed two of them, the last was incomplete and counted against him, giving him a ticket score in single digits. Pine had completed four tickets with most of them being good scorers. Green had also managed to complete four tickets, but this score was off-set by his two failures from the early part of the game.

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The tie for the most ticket bonus was “friendly” so they both scored it, but those failed tickets cost Green a total of around forty points, roughly Pine’s winning margin. As the group packed away, they discussed the Pennsylvania map and agreed it was quite good. Although the Shares score was fairly even, the fact that the bonus was for tickets and not the longest continuous set of trains, meant everyone tended to build all over the board rather than focusing on a connected set. The feeling was that playing again people might well go for even more of the short routes to gain more Shares, rather than the long high scoring routes—food for thought from a very worthy Ticket to Ride expansion.

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By this time it was nearly 10pm, but Teal wanted to try out the cooperative game, The Lost Expedition. The box suggested thirty to fifty minutes, but Teal assured the group that it was unlikely to take that long and everyone would probably die fairly quickly. He had played it solo a few times and always died, so was keen to try it with a team. The idea of the game is that they take the role of a team of three in search of the lost legendary explorer, Percy Fawcett. The game has really nice artwork a little reminiscent of Tin Tin style and large, easy to read cards. Teal explained the rules, but it wasn’t until play started that Green and Pine really understood how it worked and it wasn’t really that difficult.

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Each player started with a hand of four cards and took it in turns to lay one forming a route, with the numbered cards increasing in value. This was creating a path for the explorers to travel, with some loses and some benefits, and several cards which also allowed them to skip or swap other cards on the track. This meant that if there was a particularly bad card the players could try and place it after one that allowed following cards to be skipped, and therefore not have to deal with it at all. In the first “Morning” round, the group each played two cards from their hand. Once that was done, they then started down the path, deciding what to do with each one.

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There were usually several choices: some had compulsory things to do, others were optional. For example, for the Panther card the group had to decide on whether to use one of the three bullets the team start the expedition with (leading Pine to comment on how stupid it was to enter a several day jungle adventure with only three bullets!) in order to gain three food, or to lose a health token to skip over the card. Once the first path was completed, the group progressed onto the next part, the “evening”, building a path from the remaining cards in the order of placement (the face value on the card was irrelevant now).

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Fortunately, the group had a couple of skips and swaps (allowing them to switch the position of two cards on the path), and by the end they had taken several steps on the main route through the jungle towards their goal. The group had taken a few health hits along with the way, but their three characters still seemed to have at least two or three of their initial four health points remaining. The next day everyone again started with four cards and by the end of the morning phase the team were only two steps from the goal, but their health was beginning to look a little poor. With the evening placements the group somehow managed to make those final two steps with the first two cards of the path before anything bad happened.

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The team had beaten the game, however, it was with the easy setting which has only seven spaces on the main route through the jungle—the standard game has nine! Nevertheless, Teal was pleased to have finally beaten the game and Green and Pine had enjoyed it too. It is a clever little co-operative game that really encourages discussion and doesn’t let one player dominate. With the hand of cards it also provided an element of individual game play and decision making, further preventing the “alpha gamer” problem that often blights cooperative games. As a result, this game might well appeal to those who do not normally enjoy them and this one could well get another outing.

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Meanwhile, the other two tables were playing the “Feature Game“, Flamecraft. This is a game where players take the role of Flamekeepers, gathering items, placing dragons and casting enchantments to enhance the Shops of the town with the aim of finishing the game with the most Reputation points. A sort of worker-placement game, players take it in turns to firstly move their dragon to one of the Shops and then either Gather resources from it and optionally play a dragon into the Shop, or spend resources to Enchant or upgrade it so it provides more resources. This sounds very simple and not terribly exciting, but the interplay between the actions on the dragon cards and the large pile of available Shops is what makes the game interesting.

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When a player Gathers resources they can also activate or “Flame” one dragon and the special ability for the Shop (if it has one). In contrast, a player that Enchants a Shop, they can activate all the dragons in the Shop, but cannot activate any special ability associate with the store. There are six different types of Artisan Dragon and, although every card has a unique name and artwork, the actions are the same for any one type. For example, all Diamond Dragons allow the active player to take three gems from the supply, and all Bread Dragons allow them to take another Artisan Dragon card from the market or face down deck.

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Players get Reputation points for Enchanting Shops: they pay resources to buy one of the face up cards from the Enchantment market and add it to the Shop they are at which must match the Resource type. There are other ways of getting Reputation though. For example activating a Plant dragon allows a player to gift another person any resource and in return get two Reputation points. Some of the Shops also give Reputation points, but perhaps one of the best source is through Fancy Dragons. These are special dragons which are effectively Goal cards.

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Players start the game with two Fancy dragons and choose one to keep and add to their hand. These come in two types—day and night. Daytime Fancy dragons (marked with a sun) can be completed at any point during the player’s turn and give points in exchange for Resources or manipulating the game so certain conditions are met. In contrast, nighttime Fancy dragons are evaluated at the end of the game giving points, for example, for being the player with the most of one Resource or for each Resource of which you have an odd number.

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Both groups began with the slightly simpler, purple enchantment deck and without the special helper cards (which are an optional addition to the game that provide a one-time special ability to each player). Just as Byzantium, Ivory and Blue were about to start, Pink rocked up and joined the game so after the set up had been adjusted and the rules were explained they got going. Blue started by collecting Resources. On the first play, Flamecraft has a tendency to feel a little bit aimless, but as soon as the special (non-start) Shops started to come out, things get a little more interesting. Although there are only six different types of Artisan dragons, the interplay between them and the Shop powers is much more interesting than it seems at first glance.

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Ivory was quick to get a feel for things and soon scored some points, as was Byzantium, who was the only one around the first table that had played it before. Pink and Blue were a little slower to get off the ground, but soon started to improve their Reputation as well. There was a bit of a rules glitch towards the end when they realised they had forgotten to put out at least one new Shop, but otherwise play proceeded very smoothly to the end of the game. None of the Shops with the wild icon came out, but there was an awful lot of iron available from early in the game.

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There was also a bit of a general shortage of Bread dragons, which is significant as activating them allows players to take another Artisan dragon card, and the few that were played were moved all over the board by people playing Potion dragons. It was a close game though with lots of to-ing and fro-ing, but when Blue had the chance, she triggered the end of the game by taking the last of the Artisan dragons, giving everyone one last turn which they tried to use to their best advantage. Blue just got her nose in front with Ivory a point behind, but there were still nighttime Fancy dragons to add on and points from dragongeld too.

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Unfortunately for Ivory, his extras exactly matched Blue’s so her single point lead remained, with Byzantium taking third. The second Flamecraft group were slightly slower to get started and were still very much underway with both the Ticket to Ride/Lost Expedition and first Flamecraft groups finished. Pine, Teal and Ivory headed home, so while the second Flamecraft group finished and Byzantium watched, Pink, Green and Blue played a quick game of the filler, No Thanks!. This is one of our old favourites and is very simple with players either taking the face up card on their turn or paying a chip to pass the problem on to the next player.

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The player with the lowest face up total wins, so eyebrows were raised when Green started collecting cards in the thirties. If players get a run, only the lowest of the set count to their final score, but since nine of the thirty-four cards have been removed from the deck it is dangerous to bank on building long runs. Pink picked up the four as almost the first card of the game, and managed to build quite a long run over the course of the game. All was going well until he ran out of chips and was forced to take cards he didn’t want. This also screwed up Green’s plans as he wasn’t able to make the most of his high value cards and force Pink and Blue to give him chips.

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Worse, Pink took a couple of cards Green really wanted. Blue, who started collecting cards in the high teens extended her run into the low twenties. The final card she needed, the seventeen was the final card in the deck and she snaffled it at her first chance to end the game and give her a run from fifteen to twenty-one. After a couple of recounts, Pink and Green finished in a tie with a massive sixty-nine points, more than twice Blue’s winning score.

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The second game of Flamecraft was just coming to an end, but unfortunately, they had a slight rules malfunction and were playing that emptying either the Fancy dragon or Enchantment deck triggered the endgame, when it is the Artisan dragon or Enchantment deck according to the rules as written. Usually, it is Blue that makes these sort of rules errors, so despite having read the rules at least three times in the last few hours, she panicked and checked them yet again, just in case. The second group had a shortage of Bread dragons as well, though for a slightly different reason.

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The selection of Artisan dragons in the face up market was almost entirely “Toast” for most of the game—Black shuffled so they blamed him. This meant players spent most of the game taking Artisan dragons blind from the top of the face down draw deck. As a result, players didn’t have Bread dragons in hand, so only a couple of Bread dragons were placed in Shops and they just got pulled from pillar to post for the whole game. The Shop shuffling was slightly better though and there were some that came out that were new Plum and Jade (who had both played before), which was nice. The game was also close, with Jade taking victory by a single point from Plum with Purple taking third a few points behind.

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Learning outcome: Even dragons like a nice sandwich.

29th November 2022

Although the numbers were severely dented by holidays, work commitments and norovirus, there were still nine of us, and although everyone was late, timings were perfect and the whole group arrived within moments of each other. There was the usual chatter, as people bought drinks and shared stories of the week, then everyone finally settled down to play some games. The “Feature Game” was the shiny new Asia expansion to one of our favourite games, the multi-award-winning bird-themed card game, Wingspan. But first we had to decide who was playing what.

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Like last time (when there were also nine people), splitting the group into two or three was quite challenging, but eventually, we decided to go with two tables with Blue, Plum, Black and Ivory playing Wingspan with Pink and Pine leading the rest in a game of Downforce. Downforce has three parts: a car auction, a race, and betting on the race which occurs during the game. Downforce has had a couple of outings in the last year, and after last time we played, we concluded that the betting skewed the game a little. Essentially, when the first car crosses the first betting line which triggers players to place their bets, if several people bet on the same car that tends to lead to a runaway leader.

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After a little research, we found an alternative, “Odds Betting” variant that we thought might be worth a try and Pink was keen to give it a go. This scheme rewards riskier bets because a player’s winnings depends on the position of the car at the point in the race when the bet is made. Thus, if a player bets on the leading car at the first betting line and it comes in first, they will win three million dollars ($3,000,000 × 1), however, if they bet on the last car and it defies the odds, they will take eighteen million dollars ($3,000,000 × 6). Even if that last car comes in third, anyone betting on it will take six million dollars ($1,000,000 × 6)—twice that of betting on the leader if it wins.

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The track chosen was Switchback Pass from the Danger Circuit expansion. The race began and as the cars weaved around the track, players tried to muscle past each other. Purple made good use of her power, “Tough” (from the Danger Circuit expansion). This allowed her to move an extra two spaces every time she finished her move on a space adjacent to a “rumble strip” and she used that a lot, an awful lot. This was in contrast to Pink who didn’t use his “Determined” power at all. Despite using her power a lot, sadly, Purple wasn’t able to capitalise on it. “Ambitious” Lemon was the first to cross the line, shortly followed by “Unpredictable” Orange. However, the winner is the player with the most cash including income from bets, and in this case, that was Orange who had backed himself from the start.

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The consensus was that the “Odds Betting” variant was a definite improvement on the rules as written, though they made things significantly more complicated. As a result, they weren’t considered a perfect fix. There are other options still to try though: the “Simple Odds Betting” variant (where players only bet on the winner with the takings based on position at the time of the bet); the “All Bets are Off” variant (where the betting rules are as written but each player must bet on three different cars, none of which are owned by that player), and the “Three Bets” Variant (which just increases the number of cars everyone has an interest in).

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While the race was ongoing, the next table were playing Wingspan. This is one of the most popular games within the group, so we were keen to give the brand new Asia expansion an outing. The basic game is simple enough: on their turn, players either play a bird card in one of the three habitats, or activate one of those habitats and all the birds in it. The three habitats are Woodland, Grassland and Wetland giving food, eggs and bird cards respectively. Food and eggs are necessary for playing bird cards, as well as eggs being worth points in their own right at the end of the game. The European and Oceania expansions both added more cards and the latter also added nectar as a food source.

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Wingspan: Asia is a standalone two-player game that can also be added to the base game as providing new bird and goal cards. It also adds a new “flock” mode for playing with six or more players, but with only four players this time, the group decided to make the most of the Asia expansion. So Ivory, Plum and Black started by removing all the other expansion bird cards from the deck and shuffling in the new ones while Blue sorted out all the other bits needed to play. That all took longer than expected, but with everyone knowing the game well, there was no need to revise the rules before the game, with just a few edge cases that were checked during play.

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Ivory started the fastest, with more birds in his reserve than anyone else by the end of the first round. The goal at the end of that round was the rather cool “most birds facing right”, and although Ivory won it, everyone else was close behind. That wasn’t the case in the later rounds though, with somebody struggling to get points in each case, but Ivory taking the top bonus in every round. Some of the new birds offered a bit more, in particular, those that allowed players to cache food, but gave them a wider choice of options. Some allowed players to choose which food, and there was another that gave the option of caching food or tucking cards.

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Although some of the bonus cards were the same as those in the base game and the other expansions, there were also new ones. There was one that rewarded having different nest types in the trees. Ivory and Plum both got cards that gave points for playing birds in a given habitat that increased or decreased in value. Although these were a bit different and added variety, they didn’t fundamentally change the game. As Black pointed out, sometimes the bonuses are a bit too difficult and the other ways of accumulating points much easier. They are good to give a steer at the start of the game though, when the range of options can be overwhelming.

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With eggs worth one point each, the final turns involved the usual round of egg-laying. It felt like it was less of a frenzy than it sometimes is, probably because everyone had other things that they felt they needed to do that were more important. Towards the end of the game, Plum also picked up a couple of extra goal cards, but had to choose between them. Both gave points for having birds that increased or decreased in value in a Wetland or Woodland—she went for the Wetland as at least the values were increasing, decreasing values was not ideal at that stage of the game. Black also picked up a couple of extra goal cards during the game, but from Blue’s perspective, Ivory was where he always was, out in front with a formidable lead.

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That was not quite how it turned out in practice, however. Ivory said he thought Black might have it, and ultimately he was proved right. The differences in the scores were not quite as anybody expected however. As the scores came in, it became clear that Ivory had a lot of end of round bonus points (twenty-two in fact) and Black had a lot of points from the bonus cards (fourteen) while Blue had the most from her birds (thirty-eight) and Plum had the most cached food (nine). Of course it is the total that counts, and in the event, Black was some way ahead of the rest with a total of seventy-seven points.

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It was much closer for second than anyone expected as Blue had made an extremely slow start, but Ivory’s total of seventy-two pipped her by a single point. Everyone had enjoyed the game, but then we always do enjoy Wingspan. The Asia expansion didn’t change things very much, though it did feel a little different, mainly because of the new goal cards (e.g. the cards that reward placing birds in order of points and for playing birds with different types of nests). These were the biggest difference, though some of the bird card caching options were a little more flexible and players seemed to like that too. It is unlikely we’ll play Asia in quite this “Asia strong” way again as it will get mixed in with the other expansions, but it was a good way to introduce it to the group.

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Downforce never takes very long to play and the other group were still only half-way through Wingspan, but rather than something longer, the racing group decided to play something lighter and eventually settled on No Thanks!. This is a very simple game, but always a lot of fun. Players take it in turns to either take the card on display, or pay a chip to pass the problem on to the next player. At the end of the game, players sum up the total of their cards and subtract the number of chips they have left and the player with the lowest total is the winner.

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The catch is that if a player has a run of cards only the lowest counts, but some of the cards have been removed… This time, that rule was really critical. Lemon managed to collect cards thirty-two to thirty-five, but unfortunately, that still gave her lots of points. Orange did a bit better with his run from twenty-four to twenty-seven finishing with just thirteen points. Sadly however, Pine did slightly better and finished with an excellent eight. Points in the second game were much higher—Lemon’s twenty-six points gave her second place, but Pink just nicked it with twenty-three. And as Wingspan had finally finished, that was it for the night.

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Learning Outcome: Playing an expansion without other expansions makes its features more obvious.

1st November 2022

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.

Boardgames in the News: What are “Filler” Games?

To most people, games come in two types, board games and card games. Modern board gamer, however, have many other classifications. For example, board gamers make the distinction between Strategy Games and Family Games. Strategy Games typically are more complex than Family Games, which is not to say that Family Games don’t involve strategy, simply that the strategies are more involved. Typically, a “Light Family Game” will be relatively simple in concept and take around forty-five minutes to an hour to play, where “Heavy Strategy Games” tend to take at least a couple of hours and sometimes several or more.

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Examples of Family Games include Niagara, Downforce and Escape: The Curse of the Temple, while Altiplano, Keyflower and Concordia might be described as Strategy Games. There is a third category which, can be harder to describe, Filler Games. These are typically shorter games that often also fit the Family Game criteria, but have sufficient challenge that players of heavier Strategy Games enjoy playing them between other games. “Shorter” is obviously in the eye of the beholder—to people who often play games that last several hours, any game that lasts less than an hour and a half might be a “Filler game”.

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However, if a games night lasts around three hours, a Filler Game might be one that lasts no more than around thirty minutes or so. More importantly, and in order to save time, they have minimal setup time and are usually well known amongst gamers or at least are very quick to teach. Popular Filler Games include card games like No Thanks! and Love Letter, but also tile laying games like NMBR9 and board games like Tsuro and Draftosaurus. All these fit the basic criteria, but additionally are good fun and are great for warming up or down at the start or end of an evening, as well as for playing between games and while waiting for other games to finish.

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28th June 2022

When Blue, Pink, Orange and Lemon rolled in (late thanks to the delights of the Oxford traffic and garden watering), Plum was already there. A gamer with Gweeples in Didcot, Plum was a friend of Burgundy’s that members of the group first met at his funeral about six months ago. While she finished her tagliatelle, Blue and Pink waited for their supper to arrive, and everyone admired Pink’s Pornstar Martini, the group revisited Tsuro, which Orange and Lemon had enjoyed so much on their first visit, last time.

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While setting up, Pine arrived and needed a quick reminder of the rules, but that only took a moment: players have a hand of three tiles and, on their turn place one of them in front of their stone and extend it’s path, moving their stone (and any others) to the end of its path. Players are eliminated when their stone goes off the board or collides with another stone—the last player on the board is the winner. First blood went to Blue, who took out Lemon and Pine, but that was collateral damage as she had no choice and went off the board herself at the same time.

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Pink was next, being trapped and left with no option, and then just Plum and Orange remained to duel it out. There was very little space left on the board and the writing was already on the wall when Plum went off. That left Orange a worthy winner, especially as he had a tile to spare too. Teal arrived and while Blue and Pink fed, he led everyone else in a game of No Thanks!. This is a game we’ve played a lot in the group and is a very clever design but like all the cleverest games, has very simple rules. Played with a numbered deck of thirty-two cards, the idea is that on their turn, the active player can take the card in the middle or pay a chip to pass the problem on to the next person.

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The next person has the same decision: they can take the card and the chip, or pay a chip, and so on. At the end of the game, a player’s total score is the sum of the face value of the cards they took and the player with the lowest number wins. There are two key points that make the game, however. Firstly, if a player has consecutively numbered cards, only the lowest card in the run contributes to their total, which means cards have different values to different players. Secondly, nine cards are removed from the deck, which adds jeopardy on top. The game can play out in several different ways.

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The player or players with the most chips are always in control, until one player is left with so few chips or runs out completely, that they are forced to take cards even when they don’t want them. This can prevent players, even those with lots of chips, from getting the cards they need to close runs causing the strategy to back-fire, and leaving those with the most chips with the most points as well. This time, Orange and Teal amassed a huge pile of chips each, but both managed to avoid ending up with multiple high scoring runs. Then someone dropped a chip on the floor giving Pine the opportunity to recount the tale of how he dropped a chip between the floor boards and how it is still there despite everyone’s best efforts.

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This time, the dropped chip was recovered successfully and the game ended without further mishap. Orange and Teal took first and second respectively, giving Orange two in two games to match Lemon’s achievement at the start of last time. By this time, the feeders had finished feeding and everyone else had arrived, so it was time for the “Feature Game“. To mark the start of the Tour de France later in the week, this was to be the Peloton expansion for the cycling game, Flamme Rouge. Flamme Rouge is a fast-paced, tactical bike-racing game where each player controls a team of two riders: a Rouleur and a Sprinteur. The aim is to manage the first rider to cross the finish line.

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Each rider has a deck of cards, and Players move their riders one at a time, by drawing four cards from the rider’s deck, choosing one to play, and recycling the rest. Once every player has picked cards for both their riders, players simultaneously reveal their cards and, starting with the cyclist at the front, each rider is moved in turn. After all the riders have moved, slip-streaming takes effect, with groups that have exactly one space between them and the group in front moving forward to remove the gap. Finally, every rider that still has an empty space in front of them is deemed to be riding into the wind and takes an exhaustion card which goes into their deck—these are bad because they are slow cards and block up plays’ hands.

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At the start of the race, everyone’s Rouleurs have the same cards, and everyone’s Sprinteurs have the same cards. The Rouleurs have lots of cards with a similar face value, where the Sprinteurs have some cards that are faster and have a higher value, which are offset by others that are slower and have a lower value. Players have to balance how they manage their riders and make the most of the slip-streaming opportunities. The game is modular with the option to add hills to the base game. The Peloton expansion adds extra riders (so that the game plays up to six players), cobbled sections (aka “Pavé”), Feed Zones, and rules to set up a break-away.

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Unusually with so many people, rather than splitting in to three groups playing three different games, we split into just two with both playing the same game. Since the Grand Départ was due to take place in the essentially flat Denmark this year, both groups largely played without hills, but included cobbled sections (à la Stage 5, from Lille to Arenberg, a week later). Cobbled sections change width frequently and are generally narrower than normal road, but perhaps more importantly, riders can no-longer benefit from slipstreaming but still get exhaustion cards. The slightly larger group, led by Ivory and Teal also decided to start with a break-away.

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Their chosen route was Stage 11 of the stage race and took in three sections of Pavé. The first of these was shortly after the start, the second after the first hairpin and a short slight up-hill ramp, and the third was after a second hairpin and a little chicane. Teal and Lime made it into the breakaway and they stayed away for most of the game. Being at the front “pushing air out of the way” all the time is tiring though, and inevitably, they picked up a lot of exhaustion cards. That meant that as the Peloton was bearing down on them, just as the finish line was in sight, they didn’t have the energy fend them off.

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As a result, Black and Pink, who had been sheltering in the middle of the group slid across the line just ahead of the gallant breakaway, who were definitely candidates for the day’s combativity award. Black took first place, having spent most of the race doing as little as possible and saving it all for the final sprint. While saving energy is a good tactic, Purple took it to a different level picking up no exhaustion cards at all, though she wasn’t able to turn on the burners in time to take advantage of it.

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The smaller group, led by Blue and Plum rode a simpler route based on the Avenue Corso Paseo ride, with a cobbled section in the middle between the two hairpin bends. With most people in this group new to the game, they decided to keep things simple and eschewed the complexities of hills completely, sticking to a pan-flat course, and kept to the standard roll-out used in the base game. First Orange and then Lemon rode off the front while Pine and especially Blue were repeatedly under threat of being spat out of the back of the peloton. Most rounds seemed to end with Blue breathing a sigh of relief as she managed to hang on and Lemon laughing as she picked up yet another exhaustion card.

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Once the riders had passed the Pavé the speed picked up and Blue and Pine started to try to move forward in the field. Lemon who had led most of the way “bonked” and “hit the wall”, and as a result, was unceremoniously dropped. It was tight, but Pine’s Rouleur was first over the line just holding off Plum’s first rider who took second followed by Pine’s Sprinteur who took third. It had been a close and quite attritional race, but despite the fact there were fewer riders with a shorter parkour, the race finished at much the same time as the other one. So races were compared and there was a bit of chatter about other options as people packed away.

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Ivory took himself off for an early night, as did Teal, but those that were left were keen to play on, albeit not for long in some cases. Inevitably there was a lot of discussion about what to play, but when Ticket to Ride got a mention, Pine and Lime were keen to give the London version a run out, and were quickly joined by Pink and Purple. Ticket to Ride is one of our favourite games and we play a lot of different versions, short and long. They all have the same basic structure, but different layouts on different maps, and often with a little rules change. In summary, in the original game, players are connecting cities across the USA.

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They do this by collecting coloured cards and then spending those cards to place trains. Players score points for placing trains and also for completing “Tickets” by connecting two cities together by any chosen route—the further apart the cities, the more points they are worth. The game end is triggered when one player has only two train pieces left and at the end of the game, the player with the most points is the winner. The original game takes around an hour to play with the full compliment, but more recently, there have been a number of smaller, lighter versions available. They have the same rules, but players have fewer pieces and the maps are more congested, based on cities like New York, Amsterdam and later this year, San Francisco.

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This time, however, the version chosen was London. In this edition, players are placing buses to mark routes, and in addition to scoring points for claiming routes and Tickets, players also score points for connecting all the places in the same district. Pine won the “name the people on the front of the box” competition and went first. Lime crossed the city travelling from Baker Street to The Tower of London while both Purple and Pink did the same but from Buckingham Palace to Brick Lane, and via different routes. Pine had a northern route and a south route that looked like they would join up in the middle, but didn’t quite make it. He did manage to claim a district though, the only player to do so for a district of any significant size.

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It was very close between first and second, though there was a bit more distance to Pink in third. In the end, Lime just pipped Pine to victory by two points. Meanwhile, there had been some debate between the other five as to what they would play. Blue suggested introducing Orange and Lemon to one of our old stalwarts, 6 Nimmt!, but it wasn’t one of Plum’s favourite games. So instead, Blue and Black introduced everyone else to …Aber Bitte mit Sahne, a clever but simple little “I divide, you choose” game. The idea is that one player is The Baker who divides the cake into pieces and then everyone else takes it in turns to take a one of them.

– Image by boardGOATS

Each slice of cake has a type, a number on it and a some cream. When a player takes cake, they can choose to eat it or store it. For all eaten cake, players a point for each blob of cream. For stored cake, however, the player with the most of each type will score the number of points associated with that type. The clever part is that the number of points is equivalent to the number of slices of that type in the game, so the more common types which are harder to get a majority in are worth more, but they also have the most cream, tempting players to eat them straight away.

– Image by boardGOATS

It is always difficult for the first couple of players to take the role of Baker, but this is exacerbated with five players. Blue went first, then Black. It was only a couple of rounds in, that the twinkle appeared in Plum’s eye as she realised how clever the game was and expressed her approval. It was quite tight in the early stages with players staking their claims to different sorts of cake. There was competition for kiwi and redcurrent, but others went largely un-stored (and therefore eaten). After everyone had been the Baker it was time to see who had the most of each and add up the scores. Black got lucky with the chocolate as everyone else was greedy and ate theirs.

– Image by boardGOATS

Unfortunately, there was a rules misunderstanding and Orange thought he would get points for every slice he kept if he had the most of that type, so we’ll have to play it again soon so he can try again. This time though, Black who had been very abstemious and eaten none of his cake, ran out the clear winner with thirty-five points to Blue’s twenty-nine and Plum’s twenty-seven for second and third place respectively. Ticket to Ride: London was still underway on the next table, so as Orange and Lemon had not played it before, Blue got out Dobble. We’ve not played this in the group for years, but it is a fantastic little Snap-based filler.

– Image by boardGOATS

The idea is that every card has several pictures and each card shares exactly one match with every other card in the deck and using this principle, there are five possible Snap-based games. Black decided discretion was the better part of valor and opted to spectate while Plum had a significant drive so headed off, leaving just Blue, Orange and Lemon. They started with a pile of cards each and the winner the first to shed their pile onto the central one. The game was all very well, but there was a vocabulary check as, although Blue said they could play in Ukrainian, Orange and Lemon were game to give English a go. Once the items had been identified, the mania started.

– Image by boardGOATS

As it was a trial game, the piles weren’t carefully measured, but Orange quickly got the hang of it and in spite of the language differences, managed to shed his pile first for yet another victory. From there, the group did the reverse and started with one card and grabbed progressively matching cards from the middle. This can be quite savage, which is why Blue opted for the gentler game first. Still, everyone was well-behaved and nobody got scratched. The tension and concentration was palpable though and Ticket to Ride finished and Lime and Pine left with only a a cursory grunt from those playing Dobble, before Blue just edged it to win the final game of the night.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Tour de France coverage is available on ITV4.

1st December 2021

It was a relatively quiet night with no Burgundy, Lilac or Teal. However, that was slightly offset by the arrival of Lime who had missed the last few and Beige, who is much cuter in real life than on Teams. The first game of the evening, as Blue and Pink finished their supper, was No Thanks!. A very simple game where players take a card or pay a chip to pass the problem on, it is easy to play when attention is elsewhere.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the end of the game, players sum the face value of the cards they collect and the player with the lowest score wins. The clever part is that if players have a run of cards, they only score the lowest, and the fact that some cards are missing encourages players to gamble. This time, Blue “top scored” with a massive sixty-six having tried and failed to make a run out of high scoring cards. Green won with a careful game that gave him thirty points and Pink was took second place, four points behind.

– Image by boardGOATS

As people arrived, the group split into two with the one group playing the “Feature Game“, Draftosaurus. This is a very light drafting game, a bit like Sushi Go!, but with dinosaurs (because everyone, especially Beige, likes dinosaurs). We have played this quite a bit, but mostly online over the last year or so, but the tactile wooden dino-meeples add a lot to the experience. The basic idea is that players start with a handful of wooden dinosaurs, pick one to keep and then pass the rest on.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players then choose which pen to place the dinosaur in obeying the restrictions the pens have for example, each dinosaur placed in the Meadow of Differences must be different. Players also take it in turns to roll the Placement Die and have to additionally follow the conditions imposed it (e.g placing the dinosaur in an empty pen or a pen that does not contain a Tyrannosaurus rex). The game is played over two rounds and at the end of the game, when all the dino-meeples have been placed, players add up their scores.

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Each pen scores according to its specialism, with players scoring an extra point for each Tyrannosaurus rex they have have. Draftosaurus is a very quick and light game, but is also very enjoyable, and this time the scoring was very tight too with just five pints separating first and last places. Blue just managed to edge it though finishing one point ahead of Pine with Purple and Lime tied in third.

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With five players the options were a little limited, but Pink effectively made the decision as he was keen to play Fabled Fruit, a game we last played two and a half years ago. This is a game he’s very fond of because he likes the cute animal artwork and bright primary colours. It is a light card game, with the unusual feature that the game evolves and changes each time it is played. This “Legacy” style was made popular by Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock with Pandemic Legacy, a game that divided gamers as it required them to destroy components and write over the board, an anathema to people who are accustomed to looking after their games, sometimes to an extreme degree.

– Adapted from image by BGG contributor Muse23PT

Once Pandemic Legacy has been played out, the end product is a personalised copy of Pandemic which embodies the memories of the campaign. This further irritates some gamers because they feel they are left with a comparatively unplayable copy of the game or at least one that is less well be unbalanced and may have design flaws. Fabled Fruit is different from the Legacy games as the changes are not destructive, so the game can be reset and played again from the beginning, in this case by simply sorting the cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is quite simple—it starts with six decks of four cards in the central play area and on their turn players move their worker from one pile to another and either carry out the action associated with the cards, or buy a card. Each card has a cost in fruit and, when bought represents a fruit smoothy. When a player buys their third card (in the five player game) they trigger the end of the game and the player with the most smoothies at the end of the round wins.

– Image by boardGOATS

The starting decks include simple actions like “take two fruit cards from the deck” and “give one banana to any other player and get two fruits in exchange”. As the game evolves though, the actions become more interesting with the introduction of a fruit card market and more complex interactions. This time Blue got out of the blocks quickest and was the first to three with Pine and Purple tied for second. It was a very enjoyable game and people were just starting to get interested in how the actions were changing and what animal would be introduced next, so the group decided to play it a second time and see what happened.

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By the second round there was lots of talk about how the some fruit looked like hemorrhoids and from there the conversation deteriorated into a discussion of bum grapes and hairy nuts. This time, Lime was the victor with Pine taking second place. As it was packed away and Pink sorted the cards to reset it, the group lamented the “problem” with “Legacy-type” games. Sadly, they really shine with a small group like a family or household that play together frequently. The problem with a group like boardGOATS is that people play in different groups each time, so it isn’t really possible to work through a campaign properly.

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With that, Lime took his leave and there was just time for the remaining foursome (plus Beige) to play a quick game of Coloretto. This distills the essence of the, arguably, better known board game, Zooloretto, into a simple yet clever little card game. We’ve all played it a lot, so it needed little introduction: on their turn, players either turn a card and add it to a truck, or take one of the trucks. The aim is to collect sets, but only the three score positively, the others all score negative points with the player with the most winning. This time, Blue picked up a couple of full sets and won by a bit of a landslide with Pink in second.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the next table, Black, Green and Ivory were playing Brass: Birmingham, the Sequel to Brass (Lancashire). It is an economic strategy game that tells the story of competing entrepreneurs in Birmingham during the industrial revolution, 1770-1870. Each round, players take turns according to the turn order track, receiving two action points to perform any of the actions: Build, Network, Develop, Sell, Loan and Scout. The game is played over two halves: the canal era (years 1770-1830) and the rail era (years 1830-1870).

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The game is quite complex so Ivory’s explanation took a little while. Black had previously read the rules, but Green came in with no prior knowledge, so it was typical that the Start Player application chose Green to go first. He started the first, Canal part of the game building in the North West, while Ivory went for the Midlands and Black the Mid-South. Black and Ivory were soon linking their routes and connected up to the board edge trading towns. Ivory’s experience of the game meant he was first to use it and collect the Beer barrel.

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Green’s routes remained separate from the other two for a while, and although that gave him relatively uninterrupted growth in the region, he found himself limited to only one trade. Thus he pushed south to join up with the other two. At the halfway point, Ivory was narrowly in the lead over a surprised Green, with Black a few points behind. The board was then cleared and reset. Everyone had managed to build at least a couple of stage two buildings.

– Image by boardGOATS

As the second, Rail part of the game went on it became clear that everyone had switched places. Green was building up in the South East, and Ivory was working in the North and Black even further South. It took much longer to join up the routes so it wasn’t until the very end that players started to build and use resources that others had planned for. By the end of the game and after the final scoring, Ivory had romped away to a comfortable win, with Black leapfrogging Green into a comfortable second place.

– Image by boardGOATS

It had been enjoyable, though it was a bit of a rush at the end as time was pressing. Brass is an unusual game in the way that players can each use the others resources, which is an interesting twist. With many different options to planning, this makes for quite a thinky game which leaves players feeling they can do so much better the next time.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Beige is a lot smaller in real life.

17th Movember 2021 @ The Women’s Institute

Invited to introduce the Stanford-in-the-Vale Women’s Institute to the concept of modern board games, Blue and Pink took a pile of light games to the Village Hall. After the obligatory rendition of William Blake’s Jerusalem, in tables of four, people were introduced to No Thanks!, Coloretto, Tsuro, Indigo, Riff Raff, Second Chance, Aber Bitte mit Sahne… and Just One. Rather inevitably, the biggest success, however, was Boom Boom Balloon—it was quite a sight to see the middle aged ladies of the WI competing to make the biggest bang!

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7th October 2021 – boardGOATS do the Quiz

There were five of us for food, and after he’d had a vat of disappointingly watery tomato soup at home, Pine joined the group to make six. Once everyone had finished eating, there was a brief intermission while we discussed Cheddar Goats (“What, goats made out of cheese?!?!”), and we had a little over an hour before the Quiz was due to start. Blue and Burgundy were keen to play Bohnanza, but Pink and Pine fancied something different so Green suggested Pick Picknic a simple little “push your luck” game based on chickens eating corn.

– Image by boardGOATS

It has been a very long time since we’ve played Pick Picknic, but the rules are not difficult. At the start of each round, the six coloured farm yards are seeded with a random corn (worth one, two or three points). Players then simultaneously choose a card from their hand and play it. If their card is the only card of that colour and is a chicken, it gets all the corn. If there is more than one chicken of that colour, they can either come to an agreement to share the corn, or fight for it. If there is a fox amongst the chickens, the fox has a good feed and the corn remains till the next round. If someone plays a fox card and there are no chickens, the fox goes hungry.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pick Picknic is a game in a similar vein to the popular Om Nom Nom. Both games are based round the food chain with people playing animal cards in an attempt to feed their critters without them becoming food themselves. The principal difference between the games is that Om Nom Nom has three separate food chains, while Pick Picknic only involves foxes chickens and corn. However, effectively Pick Picknic has six separate chains as there are six different colours.

– Image by boardGOATS

Further, in Om Nom Nom, everyone has a complete set of cards at the start and everyone plays through their deck during the game, whereas in Pick Picknic players have a hand of five cards drawn at random from a larger deck. This makes the game slightly less deterministic, as players could hold any card in their hand. Also, as players’ hands are constantly being replenished and the farm-yards are constantly being reseeded, the game feels more like it is constantly rolling onwards, reaching a point where people know some animals will inevitably go hungry.

– Image by boardGOATS

The random nature of the cards certainly showed themselves this time. Pine had an endless string of foxes, most of which went hungry. Blue ended up with some very fat chickens who took a lot of corn, and Pink played a handful of foxes, all of which turned out to be fantastic at stealing chicken from Farmer Boggis. It didn’t take long to work through the bag of square corn, and then it was just the counting. Blue had a huge pile of corn, but the only chicken she had caught was a “fleet fowl” which was actually worth minus two.

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That almost made the difference, as Blue and Pink were well clear of the others, but there was only three points in it, with Pink proving to be a very fantastic Mr. Fox. There wasn’t long to think about it though as Charles came round early with the Quiz sheets. Indeed we were one chip into a game of No Thanks!, when the picture round arrived, and then group had something even more important to worry about when the questions started.

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It was clear we were very rusty as we had an awful first round. Things got much better from there though as we delightedly demonstrated out knowledge of as diverse subjects as Dr. Who, sport and what Angela Raynor allegedly called a Tory MP. As the Quiz progressed, we slowly crawled our way up the rankings from eighth out of nine to finish second, just one point behind the eventual winners “Buggle’s Buddies”. It was close and we were left to rue a couple of unfortunate errors. Still, there’s always next month.

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Learning Outcome: Nobody likes the team that wins the quiz.

9th September 2021

Burgundy, Pink, Blue, Green and Lilac arrived early for food, and while they were waiting squeezed in a very quick game of No Thanks!. Lilac was new to the game, but it didn’t take long to explain: take the card in the middle and any chips on it, or add a chip to the pile to pass the problem on to the next person. At the end of the game, players total up the face value of their cards and the winner is the player with the lowest score. The clever part is that any runs only score for the lowest card, but some cards are removed from the deck before the start.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue started off picking up cards, but unfortunately for her she continued picking up cards and was unable to connect them leaving her with a massive score of eighty two. Lilac finished a very creditable joint second with fourteen, tying with Burgundy. Green was the eventual winner though with only ten points for his cards and seven chips left over giving a final score of just three. As the game came to an end food arrived and as they tucked in, everyone else started to arrive too. It was about then that Pink got himself into a spot of bother, appearing to suggest that Blue should look more like Keira Knightley…

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Everyone was aghast, and as Pink tried to explain that he was referring to how organised she was in The Devil Wears Prada, until Burgundy commented, “When you reach the centre of the earth you should stop digging. It was only some considerable time afterwards that Pink realised that Ms Knightley wasn’t in Devil Wears Prada after all, but it was actually Anne Hathaway (she of cottage fame).

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After a bit of ribbing and some shenanigans with gnocchi and ice cream, the group split into two and settled down for the “Feature Game“, which was Fossilis. This is a game with an unusual theme where players are collecting dinosaur fossils for their museum. It uses an “action point” mechanism which is perhaps best known from the “Mask Trilogy” of games (Tikal, Java, Mexica), but has been widely used over the last twenty years in games as varied as Torres, Bus, Pandemic, Tawantinsuyu, Takenoko, Dinosaur Island and many more.

– Image by boardGOATS

It is a very simple idea: each action has a cost and players have a set number of “points” they can spend doing actions on their turn. In some games this mechanism is present, but hidden, while in others it is the main driver of the game; Fossilis falls into the latter category. Players have four action points to spend on their turn, using them to move stone, clay or sand (dig), collect plaster (for making fossils) or use tweezers to fish in a nearby pit (in a manner reminiscent of Operation) to find a hammer or use plaster to claim a fossilised bone. Once per turn, players can also trade eggs, resin and “footprints” for Tool or resource cards, and take a dinosaur card from the market and add it to their lab.

– Image by boardGOATS

The idea of the dinosaur cards is that they allow players to exchange fossilised bones for identified dinosaur bones which are more valuable. If a player manages to collect all the bones for a given dinosaur, they are more valuable still. At any point during their turn a player can claim a dinosaur from the market if they can complete it fully, otherwise, dinosaurs have to go via their lab. This is not the only way to score points though—dinosaurs also have three characteristics and at the end of the game, players who have more than three of a type score points for it.

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Players also score points for a full set of nine and having the majority of in a characteristic. The game uses an interesting timer, where a set amount of plaster is made available and when this has been used an event card is revealed. After the event has been resolved, the pool of plaster is replenished and the game continues. Once the third event has been revealed, there is one final pool and one last round before the final scoring. The player with the most points is the winner. This time we had two games running, one with Pine, Ivory, Green and Lilac, while Burgundy, Blue, Purple, Pink and Black played on the next table.

– Image by boardGOATS

On the first table, Ivory & Pine were new to the game. Pine said he had always been useless at Operation, but liked the dinosaur theme, while Ivory admitted to being initially sceptical about it. Ivory went through the game without any additional hammer bonuses instead concentrating on getting all nine of the dinosaur characteristics using the supplies to good effect. Pine took an early lead collecting artefacts for tools and supplies. Green obtained the Jack Hammer power tool and in the later part of the game used it to open up centre of the dig site only to destroy the first skull found in the game and mangle a hammer, thus making that square useless.

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Lilac had won her previous game of Fossilis (played against Green, Purple and Black a few days earlier) and tried the same strategy of gaining extra points for complete dinosaurs. Unfortunately she got the bonus too late in the game to make it work for her and with Pine and Green targeting the same dinosaur characteristics they ended up cancelling each other out. That left only one winner, Ivory, who trampled Pine as he passed leaving him in second place. Although the game clearly took longer than the advertised forty-five minutes the game moved along swiftly and finished well before the other table.

– Image by boardGOATS

Adding the fifth player clearly slowed things down for several reasons. Firstly, although people tried to plan their turn in advance, inevitably the game state changed meaning players had to start again. Worse, players struggled to see into the dig site to see what was available in the pits. This meant players often had to wait for their turn and have the dig site passed to them and plan from there. The length of the game was exacerbated when the Patronage event card appeared and everyone except Purple took six pieces of plaster. Purple and Black had played the game a few days before, but Burgundy, Pink and Blue were new to the game, though Burgundy had done some research online.

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Burgundy’s research suggested that the best strategy was not to focus on completing dinosaurs fully, but to concentrate on getting as many dinosaurs as possible. This leads to a loss of value for the dinosaurs when they are scored during the game, but can pay off at the end of the game when the bonuses for characteristics are scored. This is because each dinosaur has three characteristics each of which can score three times: once if the player has three, twice if they also have the most, and three times if they have a full set of nine. This can more than make up for points “lost” by failing to complete it fully.

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Pink had not done any research in advance so tried the opposite and focussed on completing his dinosaurs and took a skill tile that enabled him to pick up the top tool tile for free every time he did so. Blue took a skill tile which allowed her to move stone for one less action point while Black took a skill which allowed him to work on two dinosaurs in his lab at once. Purple could have done with a skill tile that would help her stay on the dig site or get back on for free, because people kept pushing he off, but unfortunately there wasn’t anything like that available.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the closing stages, Blue and Pink had a significant advantage, but Burgundy picked up a few more dinosaurs at the end of the game and then started raking in the bonus points. He finished some twenty points ahead of Blue and Pink who were separated by a single point and took second and third. There was quite a bit of chit chat about the game as they ended. Ivory said he liked it, much more than he was expecting and would definitely like to play it again. As for Pine, well, the game has dinosaurs and anything with dinosaurs gets his approval, even if some of them look like they’ve been drawn by that kids, playing that game where they drawing different parts and put them together at the end.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue was less impressed. The feeling on the other table was that the scoring was off a little and there wasn’t a strategy that would beat the “get as many dinosaurs as you can” plan. Certainly five players was too many and perhaps three would be a sweet-spot. Pink was keen to give it another go, but although everyone else on that table would play it again if someone else wanted to, they all said there were other games they would choose first. That said, it is a fantastic theme and very unusual and the deluxe edition of the game comes with a lot of expansions to add variety, and it is possible that they might add changes to the balance of scoring too.

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Green, Lilac, Ivory and Pine finished a long way ahead of the other table, and as Lilac had never played Love Letter, it got its third outing in as many sessions. They were a tired little group though and in the end, Lilac chose to sit it out and watch. The game is a really simple one where players start their turn with a card, then draw another and choose one to play. The aim of the game is to be the player with the highest card at the end of the round, or in practice, be the last player standing. The winner of each round gets a token and the first to a given number is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine started well, guessing Green’s card before he even had a chance to play. He went on to win the first two rounds. In the third round, Pine did it again to Green, but Ivory won the round. There was one more each to both Pine and Ivory and Green was beginning to wonder if he’d ever get a go. Green then promptly won two rounds on the trot; with three players, the winning line is five tokens, so suddenly Green thought he was in with a chance. Then Pine won two more rounds to complete his rout, winning his fifth token and with it, the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: The thigh bone is not necessarily still connected to the hip bone…