Tag Archives: On Tour

26th July 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Learning Outcome: Pink Likes Pandas.

13th January 2022

Blue and Pink were the first to arrive, soon joined by Black and Purple. Others quickly rolled up and before long, everyone was discussing what they’d been doing over the holiday. Teal produced a new “Roll and Write” game that everyone could play together, called Trek 12: Himalaya, a game where players are climbing a mountain. He gave a quick summary and demonstrated how he’d raided the stationary cupboard so everyone quickly agreed to give it a go.

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The game has some prima facie similarities to On Tour which we played remotely a couple of times, in that two dice are rolled and their results combined. In On Tour, the results are simply combined to make a two digit number, so a two and a three can make a twenty-three or a thirty-two. In Trex 12, the numbers are combined by addition, subtraction or multiplication and additionally players can pick either the larger or the smaller individually, with each option available a total of four times during the game.

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Players are trying to make chains of consecutive numbers and groups of the same number—runs and melds, which represent ropes and camps respectively. At the end of the game, players score for the highest number in the rope (or camp), plus one additional point for every other connected point (which must be connected when they are played). Additionally, players score bonus points for the longest rope they make, and the largest camp, and penalties for any isolated numbers that are not part of a rope or a camp.

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It took a couple of turns to get going, but thereafter it was quite quick. The game has a sort of legacy element with alternative maps and envelopes that can be opened once certain challenges have been met, but we played the Dunai map and without any complications. Teal pointed out that although the first number can go anywhere, thereafter numbers must be written next to other numbers so it was wise to keep options open. Pink therefore started at one end, immediately demonstrating how to make the game more challenging.

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Pine and Blue seemed to be working to very similar strategies with a long rope and a large “Four” camp in the middle, though Pine made a better fist of it and finished in second place with sixty-eight. Ivory was the overall winner though, with lots and lots of short bits of rope of high value and a final score of seventy-two, well clear of the total needed to beat the game. Trex 12 had been both quick and enjoyable, so after that aperitif everyone was ready to move on to something a little more filling, and the group split into two, the first playing the “Feature Game“, Streets.

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Streets is a tile laying game by the same people as the very enjoyable Villagers. It is, perhaps, a little lighter and, rather than developing the occupants of a village, players are building a city, transforming it street by street, from a small town into a centre of culture and commerce. The turn structure is similar to more familiar games like Carcassonne: On their turn, the active player chooses a building tile, adds it to the town, places an ownership marker on it and then scores any completed features, in this case, Streets.

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Although there are similarities, there are a lot of differences: players have a hand of three tiles all of which represent buildings; as well as ownership tokens, the active player also places people on the building, then there are the tile placement and scoring rules. The building tiles have a road at the bottom and sky at the top and can be placed such that a Street, a row of houses, is extended by adding the tile to it in the same orientation, or terminated so that the road is perpendicular forming a junction. When both ends of a Street finish in a junction, the Street is closed and scored.

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Different buildings score in different ways, for example some tiles give points for people in the Street and others for the number of building symbols in the Street. There are a few little niggly little rules. For example, when scoring a Street players include the symbols on the street itself, but also any on a tile that terminates the Street and points towards it. There are other ways of scoring buildings as well, for the number of adjacent tiles or copying another building of choice in the Street for example. In addition to the money won for the building itself, players also score for the number of people on the tile scored.

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When a building is scored, the active player moves the people on to different building in another, open Street. This encourages players to terminate Streets even though they might not score themselves, because they can move people onto their own buildings elsewhere which means they will score more later in the game. There are a few other things that contribute to the decision making dilemmas. For example, players only have five ownership tokens, and if they run out, they have to take them from another building without scoring it.

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The game ends when all the tiles have been played and any remaining Streets are scored, but for half points (similar to Carcassonne). The basic game is quite straight forward, but although most people got to grips with it, the combination of small text, symbols, a little confusion of terminology and general tiredness meant others struggled with planning effective moves. Black took what was obviously an early march when he played his micro-brewery tile to “copy” another high-scoring tile in the same street, but Purple, Blue and Pine had their moments too.

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In the end, Black won with a cricket score of a hundred and twenty (well, a score that would have beaten England in the recent Ashes series anyhow). Blue, Purple and Black quite enjoyed the game and could see the its potential for adding expansions too. Definitely one to be played again, though Pine might need some persuading. Meanwhile, on the next table, Ivory, Pink and Teal were getting to grips with a game of Key Flow (Lime having taken an early night after another very early morning).

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Ivory and Pink have played Key Flow and its big brother, Keyflower, many times before (including relatively recently in October), but Teal was new to the game though he’d heard good things. In both games, players are building villages and activating the buildings in their villages by playing meeples (or rather Keyples) to generate resources and score points. The games have a lot in common including the artwork, the iconography and the fact both take place over four rounds or seasons, but the underlying game mechanism is different. In Keyflower, players acquire tiles by auction where in Key flow players gain cards by drafting.

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Key Flow is surprisingly straightforward to play, though doing well is a completely different matter. Players who start with a hand of cards, choose one and pass the rest on, adding their chosen card to their village before they get their next, slightly smaller hand. There are three types of card: Village cards, Riverside cards and “Keyple” cards. Village cards are buildings that can be activated by playing Keyples above them, while Riverside cards provide instant resources and skill tiles.

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The cards have to be “connected” together and location can be important. Buildings for example are more productive if they have been upgraded, but upgrading needs resources and the resources need to be moved to the building being upgraded. Similarly, in autumn there are some buildings which score points for resources they are holding. Therefore, it is helpful if the building producing the resources is near to the one being upgraded or used for scoring as moving resources can be expensive and sometimes difficult.

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Simlar to the Keyples in Keyflower, the Keyple cards are used to activate buildings and produce resources. Some can be played either in a neighbour’s village or the player’s own village. Other cards can only be played in the village one side or cannot be played in one’s own village. This is why three players is arguably the sweet-spot for Key Flow—with more players there is at least one village players cannot use, adding a level of randomness that it is difficult to deal with. With three however, everything in play is accessible, though perhaps at a cost.

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At the start of the game players get some winter cards which can act as objectives to guide players’ strategies; at the start of the final round players get to keep one of these with the rest going into the draft. At the end of the game, players score for any autumn cards, any buildings with upgrades as appropriate, any winter cards and finally one point for any otherwise unused gold.

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This time, Pink went for a “Scholar Strategy”, but changed his mind at the last minute to go for the Ranch instead. Teal went for a gold strategy with the Jeweller to double his score, and picking up both the Gold Mine and the Smelter, the latter of which he upgraded so he could exchange one skill tile for three gold. Unfortunately, Pink found that useful too and therefore got in his way somewhat. Ivory didn’t appear to have a strategy early on, but made sure he had plenty of resources he hoped would be useful later in the game.

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In the final round, Pink got his Scholar anyhow then lucked out and got the Trader too, while Teal’s flotilla of boats gave him a lot of options, but somehow he struggled to convert them into points. Ivory who had been keeping all his options open with a scatter-gun approach, managed to finish with a smorgasbord of points from pigs, Keyples, travel, and of course resources.

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It was not a surprise Ivory won as he always does well in this game, but Pink was very pleased to have run him close finishing just five points behind. With that, people started to drift off, a few people hung about for a while, just chatting, amongst other things, discussing what “Cotton Clouds and White Cashmere” smells like and whether the new soap in the Ladies really did smell of it…

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Learning Outcome: “Roll and Write” games aren’t only the preserve of “Remote Gaming”.

27th April 2021 (Online)

The evening started with Beige protesting about the lack of Dinosaurs. This had to be explained to everyone else: Pink had dropped round paperwork for Welcome to Dino World on Monday, only for Blue to realise that she’d got confused. This meant that everyone now wanted Dinosaurs and felt they’d missed out on something they hadn’t known wasn’t going to happen…

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In order to mark the start of “Golden Week” on Thursday, the “Feature Game” was the MetroX expansion, Sendai & Hakata & Nagoya. “Golden Week” encompasses four of Japan’s national holidays, celebrating the Japanese Constitution (May 3^rd), Children’s day (May 5^th), Emperor Hirohito’s birthday (April 29^th) and his love of plants (May 4^th, also known as Star Wars Day). Blue’s confusion with dates meant she had thought it was the end of May, not the start. Still, it meant people have something “up-roar-us” to look forward to in a month or so, and in the meantime, they had trains to play with.

– Image by boardGOATS

MetroX is a game we played a few months ago and was provided by Blue’s very lovely BGG Secret Santa. Somehow, although it is not complicated, it is a rather difficult game to get your head round. In summary, the game is a variant on the “Roll and Write” games where a card is turned over and players write on their train map. They assign the number on the card to a line and “build” that number of stations along the line (marking them with an open circle). When a player completes a line, they score points with the first player (or players) scoring more points than those to finish the line in later rounds (similar to the scoring for columns in Noch Mal! and Noch Mal So Gut!).

– Image by boardGOATS

There are four different types of card, but the most common are plain numbers which allow players to just build stations and these are numbered two to six, with fewer of the high numbers. Each line must be extended from the start end (the end with the “Indicator Boxes”, marked in red on our paperwork). This means that although stations can be built in the middle of the line because they are part of another line, stations cannot be added beyond this point (where the lines diverge) unless all the earlier stations have been completed.

– Image by boardGOATS

Normal number cards cannot “skip” completed stations. In other words, in a line where the first two stations have not been completed, but the third has, if a “Six” is used to build the first two, the third cannot be jumped, and the remaining four are wasted. So efficiency is the name of the game. There are a small number of special cards with a circle round the number that allow players to skip completed stations, but these are few and far between and are only low numbers. There is also a wild that allows players to fill in one station anywhere on the board without filling in an indicator box.

– Image by boardGOATS

In addition to scoring points for completed lines, players can also score a lot of points for intersections. In the deck of just twenty cards, there are three “Star Cards”. These allow players to build just one station at the cost of one Indicator Box, but instead of writing a zero in the box, they write a number that corresponds to twice the number of lines that go through the station—this is the number of points they score at the end of the game. With some stations forming the intersection of four or five lines, these can be very lucrative, but the timing of these cards is really critical.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time the early cards were not helpful with a circle card coming out first, when there was no opportunity to take advantage of their special ability. The second card produced even more moans and groans as it was a “Star”, when there was only one place that would give more than two points and some people had already used that with the first card. There was a bit of confusion as well with some of the colours looking a bit similar as a result, Purple was quick off the mark and was the first to claim a line, but others thought it wasn’t possible given the number of cards we’d had; it turned out the line was longer than she thought.

– Image by boardGOATS

Several people got in a bit of a mess, but Pine got into such a tangle that he retired early as fixing his problems was too difficult. We got all the way through the deck on the first pass, as the “six” (and shuffle the deck) card was the very last in the deck. Which meant we had the full quota of low numbers (and high numbers too), and as we’d had some useful cards at the start everyone struggled at times. Despite the issues, it didn’t really take long to play. So, while everyone else was still counting up Ivory was the first to post with a massive, and what proved unbeatable score of twenty-eight, helped by being able to put one of his “stars” on the one highest scoring space, giving him a eight points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Burgundy claimed a “moral score” of twenty-six, which would have given him second place, though in reality he was just off the podium behind Green with twenty-three and Black with twenty-two. With that, Lime took an early night and Pine joined the group again for the lighter, travelling band, route planning game, On Tour. We first played this back in January, but a few people missed out. Those that had been there had really enjoyed it though, and we were keen to give it another go.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is really, really simple: two d10 dice are rolled to give two numbers. These are combined to give two, two-digit numbers. Players have a map with a network of circles, and write these two numbers in two of the circles somewhere on their map. At the end of the game, they have to plot a route through the numbers along the provided connections such that the route connects adjacent points starting with a low number and never decreasing. Players get one point for each circle they manage to visit.

– Image by boardGOATS

There is a restriction provided by cards which indicate the area of the map numbers can be placed in on each turn. These also provide a specific location, such that players who place a number in that circle score a bonus if their route goes through it. There are two maps available: USA and Europe, so being a group full of Europhiles, this time, we chose Europe.

– Image by boardGOATS

The dice were particularly challenging this time though and despite both Blue and Pink trying, neither managed to roll a five, or a two, and there were an awful lot of nines. There were the inevitable complaints when people didn’t get what they wanted, and these increased in number as things became increasingly critical as the end approached. Pink possibly came off the worst claiming a “moral score” of thirty-seven, though his actual score was only twenty-five.

– Image by boardGOATS

Green managed the highest score, with thirty-eight with a route going from Ireland to Norway via Italy and Bulgaria. Blue and Black made up the podium four and eight points behind respectively. Time was marching on, but there was still time for our now traditional end-of-evening trip to Board Game Arena and after everyone had enthusiastically eschewed Dingo’s Dreams, we went for our old favourite, 6 Nimmt! (with the Professional Variant).

– Image by boardGOATS

6 Nimmt! is so simple and so much fun, and we’ve played a lot of it online in the last year. The simultaneous card selection means the downtime is minimal, and the balance between strategy and luck means it is the perfect game for our large group at the end of the evening. Starting with the card with the lowest face value, they are added to the end of row that ends with the highest number that is lower than the card in question.

– Image by boardGOATS

If the card is the sixth card, the player picks up all the other cards, and that is exactly what happened to Blue on just the second turn. This game is one of those where once it goes wrong it goes very wrong, and from there, things just went from bad to worse for her as she picked up again on the third turn too. She wasn’t the only one to get unlucky of course. For example, Pink managed to pick up on the first turn of one round when four of the other six other players played cards between ninety-one and a hundred, leaving him to place the next card and pick up a pile of cards.

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

Fairly inevitably, Blue ended the game, though it was closer than it might have been with Burgundy finishing with just one point left from his starting sixty-six. At the other end, Pine (who always does well in this game), lost just ten points giving him a massive win, with twenty-five points more than anyone else. After a vote on Vevox to decide what to play, we went for the easy option and decided to play 6 Nimmt! again.

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

This time, Pine did not do quite so well and Pink was the one who managed finish with the most points, fifteen points clear of second place, which this time went to Blue. Remarkably, Burgundy managed the whole of the final round with just one point and on the last card, Purple pipped him to the post and ended the game. Green had spent a large portion of the second game talking to himself when his sound went down, so decided that was his queue to finish. Another online vote confirmed things and everyone went to bed.

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

Learning Outcome: Every country should have a “Golden Week”.

2nd February 2021 (Online)

There was a bit of chit-chat as people turned up clutching their brown, manilla envelopes, delivered over the previous few days by Purple Packet-force or Pink Parcel Post. At 8pm, everyone opened their envelope to find the bits and pieces for two games: the “Feature Game” Take it Easy!, and Das Labyrinth des Pharao (with the Sphinx und Triamide expansion boards) which we will play in a month or so. There was also a little chocolate, so as people munched, Blue explained the rules to Take it Easy!.

– Image by boardGOATS

Take it Easy! is a tile laying game where players have a pile of hexagonal tiles which they place on their hexagon player board (because hexagons are simply the bestagons). Each tile has three pipes crossing it, in three different colours. There are a total of nine different coloured pipes, three in each different direction. Tiles are drawn from a stack one at a time, and each player adds them to their personal player board. The rules are simple: the tiles can be placed anywhere on the board but must be placed so the numbers are the right way up so that the directions of the nine different coloured pipes are fixed.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players score points for any pipes that contain only the one colour, and the number of points is dependent on the colour of the pipe (the number on the pipe) and the number of tiles in the pipe. Thus, a yellow pipe, five tiles long going straight down the middle scores forty-five points, while a black pipe, along the edge, just three tiles long would only score three points. There are a maximum of fifteen pipes, but it is almost impossible to complete all successfully, especially as there are some tiles that are not used, so there is an element of chance as well as hedging bets. Blue and Pink drew tiles and displayed them for everyone to see.

– Image by boardGOATS

The pieces the players used had been modified with the addition of letters to make it slightly easier for players to uniquely identify the individual tiles. We were about three or four tiles in, when someone’s comment suddenly made Green realise that he’d started with the wrong tile. Having form with this sort of thing, Green got a certain amount of stick for “cheating”, but having found it early, he corrected his mistake and we carried on. As the game drew towards a conclusion, the number of spaces players had left progressively decreased, and increasingly, players needed specific colours and then specific tiles to complete their pipes.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink was particularly desperate, but inevitably didn’t get the yellow pipe he so desperately wanted, which ultimately cost him thirty-six points. As everyone else was still taking off their shoes and socks to add up their scores, Ivory gave his total as one hundred and ninety-four, to howls of distress from everyone else, who clearly felt they were nowhere close. Indeed, the closest score was a hundred and eighty-two from Green in second with Blue four points behind him. Although everyone believed Ivory’s score, they were keen to see how he’d done it so we looked at the photo he’d sent in and admired his layout and looked sadly at their own.

– Image by boardGOATS

Take it Easy! hadn’t taken very long to play, indeed it was only quarter to nine. Everyone had really enjoyed it and now they felt they understood the game a little better, they all fancied another chance to see if they could catch Ivory on the second attempt. So, this time everyone had their plan and they were keen to get going. As the tiles were drawn there were variously coos of delight when a desired tile came out and teeth sucking when the tile was difficult to place. Again, as the game progressed, the teeth sucking and pleas for particular tiles got more desperate.

– Image by boardGOATS

When the last tile was drawn the stress was released and everyone settled down to count. Ivory was first to finish his arithmetic, and when he commented that he’d done better than last time, everyone else’s hearts sank. Ivory set a new target of two hundred and two, but aside from him, almost everyone else failed to improve on their first score (Lime’s excuse was that he was missing the help of his assistant). Lilac was the most improved though, increasing her score by sixty to take an excellent second place with one hundred and ninety-six, with nobody else coming close.

– Image by boardGOATS

We had all really enjoyed Take it Easy! and we’ll definitely give the game another outing, but in the meantime it was still quite early, so although Lime took an early night, everyone else was keen to play Cartographers. This is a game we’ve been trying to get to the table since before Christmas, but have been unsuccessful thanks to the IT gremlins last time, and On Tour and electing the Golden GOAT taking longer than expected. However, even two plays through of Take it Easy! had not taken over-long and with everyone familiar with the rules, we thought there was time to squeeze it in.

– Image by boardGOATS

That was before the gremlins returned, this time to kybosh Ivory’s printer. It looked like plans would have to be revised, but after a bit of poking he persuaded it to cooperate and everyone settled down to concentrate on their artwork. Cartographers is a “Roll and Write” type game or perhaps more accurately a “Flip and Colour”, as the game is driven by cards instead of dice and players are colouring terrain blocks, fitting shapes together in a Tetris-style. This is similar to other games like Second Chance and Patchwork Doodle, but is definitely a step up thanks to goal cards revealed at the start of the game. There are four goals two of which are scored at the end of each round in a way reminiscent of the scoring in another game that is popular with the group, the 2016 Kennerspiel des Jahres winner, Isle of Skye.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time the four goal cards were Stoneside Forest (three points for each mountain terrain connected to another with forest), Shoreside Expanse (three points for each lake or arable that is not adjacent to water, farmland or the edge of the map), Great City (one point for each space in a player’s second largest city) and The Cauldrons (one point for each single, empty space completely surrounded; the only goal card that was different to when we played the game back in September). Goals A and B are scored at the end of the first round, Goals B and C at the end of the second and so on. The game proceeds with players drawing their choice of shape and terrain from the card revealed, trying to score as effectively as possible for the current round, but also with an eye to scoring in later rounds.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is made more interesting in that cards give players a choice of terrain or shape and sometimes both, increasing the decision space over games like Second Chance and Patchwork Doodle. Additionally there are Ruins cards which restrict where players can play for a turn, and Ambush cards which force players to put negatively scoring shapes on their board. In the past, we have used the house-rule that instead of introducing one Ambush every round we only add them from the second round onwards to give people a chance to settle into the game. Additionally, because we are playing remotely, we play the Ambush cards using the solo player rules.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although we like the spice the Ambush cards add, they can swing the game quite a bit and add a bit of randomness. Part of the driving-force to play Cartographers was the desire to try out the alternative, “Wastelands” map, so because of the additional challenge we thought this would add, we again used the house-rule, and only added three Ambush cards during the game. The “Wastelands” are an area of the map that is inaccessible to the map-makers and as such is terrain already filled in, but is space that cannot be used. It quickly became apparent that this meant players filled up their maps much more quickly so it became harder to place the bigger shapes from a much earlier point in the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

For some, this was an advantage when it came to the Ambush cards later in the game, as it meant there wasn’t sufficient space to add them to the player board. The first round was full of Water and Farmland, which was useful for the Shoreside Expanse goal (at the end of the first and second rounds), but keeping them separate with the additional obstacle of the Wasteland was difficult. Worse, this caused obstructions for players trying to score for connecting their Mountains using forest (Stoneside Forrest, scoring in the first and final rounds).

– Image by boardGOATS

There was also a lot of Settlement early on, with Woodland relatively scarce. There weren’t any Ruins until later either and with the first Ambush card only appearing in the third round, players could mostly do what they wanted in the early part of the game. When the Ruins came towards the end, some players had no choice where to place them while others benefited from being unable to place them at all. The same was true for the Ambush cards with some players being unable to play them at all and therefore not picking up negative points at the end of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

When everyone was feeling the pinch the Marshlands card appeared, which is one of the biggest shapes. Purple’s distressed cry of, “It won’t fit, I can’t get it in!”, was followed by Black’s dry response, “It’s too big…” which had everyone else in stitches. From there it wasn’t long before the game came to an end. Ivory was once again the first to report his score, posting a massive total of one hundred and eight, which most people felt would not be surpassed. Indeed, that was the way it stayed with nobody else exceeding a hundred (after Black’s goblin-related recount), until Pink, giving his score last, sneaked into the lead with one hundred and twelve.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was quite late, so Ivory headed off to bed as did Lilac, but there was still time for the rest to play a game of our current end of evening favourite, the Professional Variant of 6 Nimmt! on Board Game Arena. This is so simple yet so much fun: players simultaneously choose a card from their hand and then add them to one of the four rows in order. The fast play, lack of down time, and the illusion of control together with the sudden disasters that befall people who are doing well, just hits the spot for the group.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, Burgundy started the race to the bottom, but was quickly joined by Purple. Her efforts were outstripped by Burgundy though who had high cards when he wanted low ones and low cards when he wanted high ones. As a result, he finished with a very impressive minus twenty-seven. At the other end, Green, Pink, Pine and Blue were neck-and-neck, until Green started collecting nimmts. Pine, who always does well in 6 Nimmt! held the lead for most of the game, but with the end in sight, it all went wrong for him leaving Blue to take the glory just ahead of Pink. Thanks to Burgundy’s prowess at collecting nimmts there was still time for one last game.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

There was a lot of discussion about options, but when someone pointed out that No Thanks! had had been added to the list of games (albeit in beta), everyone was keen to give it a go. As Blue set up the game, Pine asked whether there was a “drop a token between the floorboards option” in reference to a memorable evening that had ended with a round of Hunt the Game Piece only to find that it had dropped seamlessly through the gap to nestle in the dust under the floor of The Jockey. That sort of diversion aside, we all know the rules and the game is (usually) quick to play, so we thought we’d give it a go.

– Image by boardGOATS

No Thanks! is an extremely simple game: the top card from the deck is revealed and the first player has a simple choice, take the card or pay a chip to pass the decision on to the next player. When a player takes a card, they also take any chips and then turn over the next card and start again. The cards have a face value between three and thirty-five, but nine cards are removed at random. When the deck is depleted, players sum the face value of their cards and subtract this total from the number of chips they have to give their final score—the player with the most positive score is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

The really clever part of the game is that players who have a run, only count the lowest card. This means cards have different values to different players and there-in lies the tension and the fun. Further, since the number of chips players have is kept secret, players have to decide whether the card they want will still be available when their next turn comes. The version of the game we usually play, nominally only plays a maximum of five people. The more recent version plays up to seven, as does the Board Game Arena implementation.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

The first thing we discovered was that the “Spend a Chip” button was perilously close to the top of the cards which meant it was very easy to “sausage-finger” and accidentally take a card without meaning to. Black was the first to fall foul of this, but he was not the only one. The second thing was that somehow, playing online somehow took away some of the tension, perhaps partly due to the automatic bidding, possibly contributed to by the fact we were playing with six, but probably mostly due to the fact that players cannot see the angst of their opponents as they try to make the simple decision.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Success in this game is always achieving a rare positive score. This time, Pink hogged all the chips finishing with nearly half the total in the game. This put pressure on everyone else and even the winner finished in the red, albeit with a lot more than the minus sixty-four scored by the player at the bottom. The winner was Pine, with minus six, some nine points ahead of Burgundy in second place. Although we all enjoyed playing, somehow it didn’t have quite the same effect as 6 Nimmt!, so the search to find another game we can play at the end of the evening continues.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Never assume the name of a game is a guide on how to play it.

5th January 2021 (Online)

It was a very quiet night: Pine was late arriving due to another meeting; Lime had gone to bed early; Green and Lilac eschewed games in favour of the telly. So it was just six that settled down to the “Feature Game“. This was On Tour, a “Roll & Write” game where players are managing a band going on tour. The idea is that players have to plan the band’s route and schedule their stops visiting as many places as possible as shown on their map. Blue was having one of her dopey nights and made a bit of a pig’s ear of explaining the rules, but fortunately, they weren’t overly complicated and Burgundy was on the ball and filled in the gaps where necessary.

– Image by boardGOATS

The map is divided into six sections: a horizontal border dividing the North and South and two vertical borders separating East, West and Central giving six areas. At the start of each round, three cards are revealed from the deck. Each card features one of the possible stops and a region: North, South, East, West or Central. Two d10 dice, are also rolled, each individually giving a number between zero and nine, which when combined, give two two digit numbers, i.e. five and three give 35 and 53. These two numbers must both be written on each player’s map in two of the three regions shown on the cards. At the end of the game, players draw a route from location to location following the marked paths, with each location visited having the same number or higher than the previous one.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although this is almost all there is to the game, there are a couple of little niggles. Firstly, if a double is rolled, instead of two numbers, players draw one star in one of the regions shown on the cards. Similarly, if all three cards reveal the same region, then players again draw one star in that region. Finally, if a player can write a number (or star) in the state/country shown on the one of the cards, they draw a circle round it, signifying that it is worth double if it is included in the band’s tour. Players thus score points for each location visited and an extra point for each location visited that has been circled. The player with the most point is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

There is a little bit of setup, where the dice are rolled twice (to give four numbers) and four cards are revealed. Everyone writes these numbers in in the same locations and circles them, which basically helps to stop everyone from placing on the low numbers on one side and all the high ones on the other. The first rolls were 09, 90, 38 and 83, placed in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Louisiana and Minnesota respectively. This put low and high numbers in the east, which was not a good start, but things got worse when the following dice rolls were repeatedly high/low numbers rather than mid range.

– Image by boardGOATS

About half way through, Pine popped in having escaped from his meeting, to see how things were going. As he hadn’t eaten yet, he popped out again and returned later with his grub, just in time to see the last couple of rounds. The game was full of muttering and this just seemed to increase towards the end, as people had one or two critical numbers they needed to make their tour work. There was a big cheer from both Burgundy and Ivory when the penultimate roll gave them a 60. This made a huge difference to them almost doubling their scores, giving Burgundy the winning score of forty-one, three ahead of Ivory on thirty-eight.

– Image by boardGOATS

We’d really enjoyed the first try and everyone was keen to give the European map a go too, especially Pine, who liked the idea of planning a music tour. The starting numbers of 12, 21, 08 and 80 weren’t too bad, even though they were mostly located in the south west of Europe (Montenegro, Austria, Serbia and Estonia respectively). These were quickly followed by lots more low numbers causing Pine to comment that his Tour was in lockdown and going no-where. Burgundy muttered about a blockage in central Europe and added that for him Turkey was out of the question, to which Blue queried whether he’d over-indulged at Christmas…

– Image by boardGOATS

Eventually, Burgundy announced that he’d cleared his blockage, to which Pine answered that was possibly something that had to happen a lot on tour buses given the diet often enjoyed by roadies. Meanwhile, the muttering returned as people increasingly needed specific numbers to make things work and gambled on dice rolls making their tour segments connect. Everyone seemed to get more or less what they needed and most people seemed to decide Ireland and Portugal weren’t worth visiting, dumping difficult numbers there. Pine started in Turkey and almost ended up back there.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue who last time played safe and added almost nothing to her score in the second half of the game, learned from Ivory and Burgundy and managed to stitch three sections together in the last couple of rounds. Somehow, players appeared to have more options this time and everyone seemed to spend a lot of time trying to optimise their final routes to get the best scores possible. This time Burgundy and Ivory again did well, but Pine just beat them to second place, with Blue producing the highest scoring tour, going from Bulgaria to Ireland via a meander through central Europe and the Baltic states.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game had been quite enjoyable, but had taken quite a lot longer than expected (although part of that was because we’d played it twice). There was still time to move to Board Game Arena for a couple of games though. Ivory took his leave, but after some discussion, everyone else settled down to a game of Saboteur, a game we are all very familiar with and have played quite a bit both in real life and, more recently, online with Board Game Arena.

– Image by boardGOATS

We all know the game well so it was quick to get started. Each player has a hand of cards and takes it in turn to either play a tunnel card, or play an action card. The aim of the game is to help the team build a tunnel to whichever of the three terminal cards holds the gold, unless you are a Saboteur of course, in which case, your aim is to hinder the efforts made by everyone else. With just six players there are either one or two Evil Saboteurs, and the rest are Lovely Dwarves.

– Image by boardGOATS

This makes it hard for the Saboteur team and they have to get their act together quickly to make the most of what little time they have. We usually play with the “House Rule” that we treat each round as an independent game, but on Board Game Arena, the game is played over three rounds (as per the rules as written). Purple started the first round and by chance headed south where Blue soon alleged that gold was to be found. Burgundy confirmed it, but Pink claimed Blue was fibbing and broke her trolley making life especially difficult for her as she only had tunnel cards to play.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

When Black said the bottom card was not gold, that really put the cat amongst the pigeons. Something about Burgundy’s behaviour clearly made Pine suspicious as he broke Burgundy’s pick for him and Pink then broke Black’s trolley too. The tunnelling had somewhat stalled, but once Pine repaired Blue’s tools the digging resumed. From there it wasn’t long before Pine reached the gold and Pink and Burgundy were revealed as treacherous Saboteurs, the first time ever for Pink. It was at this point that everyone realised that Black had looked at the bottom card and claimed it wasn’t gold. When questioned about it, he said it was just to add a bit of interest…

– Image by boardGOATS

Purple started the second round as well, and Blue again was quick to take a peek at the bottom target card—this time she claimed it was coal. Pink said he didn’t believe her, but Blue pointed out how unreliable he was after last time. For everyone else, the jury was still out. Purple looked at the top card and said it was gold. Pink confirmed that the bottom card was coal and then Pine’s repeated discarding of cards roused Purple’s suspicions and she smashed his lamp for him. Black returned the favour, breaking Purple’s lamp.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Meanwhile, the tunnel continued progressing slowly. Then Pine showed his true colours and triggered a rockfall in a critical location. The gap was quickly plugged by Pink suggesting that perhaps he wasn’t evil this time. Burgundy broke another of Pine’s tools, but he was quickly able to repair that. Blue didn’t have any cards that would take her to the top card that Purple claimed was gold, but could make it to the middle card, so rather than discard, confirmed it was coal. When Black discarded yet another card, it was too much for Burgundy who called him out for the traitor he was and smashed up his trolley. Then it was only a couple of turns before Purple made it to the gold for the lovely Dwarves.

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

Pink was first to play in the final round and the tunnel made rapid progress towards the middle target card. The dwarves were nearly half way there when Purple checked the middle card and said it was coal. Blue immediately checked the bottom card and said it was also coal and the tunnel swiftly turned north and Pine confirmed that was where the gold was. Purple smashed Black’s lamp—a very suspicious move, and then Pink played a tunnel card pointing away from the agreed target—he pleaded stupidity, but everyone else thought that was also a suspicious move.

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

Blue was able to fix the problem caused by Pink, but a couple of turns later he confirmed his treachery when he played a rockfall and regressed the tunnel. Fortunately, he could have played it in a worse place and Burgundy was quickly able to repair the damage. A couple of turns later, after a brief hailstorm of broken tools, Purple also confirmed her status as an evil saboteur. Fortunately it was too little, too late and Burgundy and Pine were able to extend the tunnel to the gold.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

It was the second time Pine had made it home, and unusually, despite the fact he had failed as as saboteur in the second round, he took overall victory. Although time was marching on, there was still enough for a game of our favourite, the 2020 Golden GOAT, 6 Nimmt!. The game is so simple, yet so much fun, it is the perfect end-of-the-evening game. It sounds so unpromising: players simultaneously choose a card, then starting with the lowest value card played they add them to one of the four rows. If the card is the sixth card, instead they pick up the cards and add them to their scoring pile with the the card they played forming the start of a new row.

– Image by boardGOATS

It is as simple as that. On Board Game Arena, players start with sixty-six points (or “nimmts”) and the player with the most points when one player falls below zero is the winner. We usually now play with the “Professional Variant”, so cards can be added to either end of the rows which adds to the madness. This time, Pink was the first to pick up cards while Purple continued in what feels like her New Year’s resolution, not to be the first into the red.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

With Purple recusing herself from the race to the bottom, Pink, Blue and, unusually, Pine, took her place. Eventually Blue got left behind and Pink and Pine duked it out. Remarkably, it was Pine, who nearly always does well in 6 Nimmt!, reached the bottom first, suddenly picking up fourteen bulls’s heads, just before the end of the round bringing the game to an abrupt end. There was some ribbing about how he was just doing to prove that he didn’t always do well—still, with a little practice before next time, he will no doubt return to his usual position.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

The winner in this game is always largely incidental, but this time Black was the one who finished with the most points, nine more than Burgundy in second. There was a bit of chit-chat about school and Christmas before we left. Pine explained how he was at primary school with Anthea Turner (or perhaps it was her sister Wendy). Blue told how her mum and uncle were at school with Pam Ayres and her sister Jean, who still lives in Stanford. When Purple explained about the time that her nephew had reached into Black’s stocking and pulled out his old nuts, we all knew it was time for bed.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Ohhhhh, so THAT’S where South Dakota is!