Tag Archives: Paris

6th August 2024

Blue and Pink were just finishing their supper when Pine arrived, soon followed by the rest of the posse. Despite missing Ivory, Teal and Cobalt, we still made it into double figures and everyone was particularly pleased to welcome back Green who has been missing in action for most of the year. Jade had declared an interest in giving the France map for Ticket to Ride a go. Ticket to Ride is always popular, so he quickly gathered Sapphire, Pine, Lime and Pink to make an enthusiastic group of five. He explained the rules differences, to comments of, “Lizen very carefully, I shall say zis only once!”

Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 6 – France & Old West

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Ticket to Ride is well known in the group and the basic rules needed no explanation (take cards from the market, or use them to claim routes while trying to complete Tickets). All the maps have their own little unique tweak to the rules. In the case of the France map, most of the tracks on the board start “uncoloured”. Whenever anyone draws cards, they take a colored tile that’s two to five train cars long, and place it onto an uncoloured track bed. After that, any player can claim that route in the usual way (by paying the appropriately coloured cards from their hand).

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Although anyone can claim a route “coloured” by another player, this time, in practice, most people didn’t build on tracks placed by others. This was partly because messing with someone else’s plans is usually at the expense of your own, but also because of the “mutually assured destruction” effect—that is to say, interfering with someone else is likely to encourage them to do the same in return. So on the one occasion when Pine DID “steal” a route that Sapphire had set up, everyone (especially Sapphire) was really shocked! Pine and Sapphire both picked up tickets in the very closing stages of the game and both got very lucky with the tickets matching the routes they had already built.

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The game was quite close and relatively high scoring, with all five finishing in a twenty point range, but that was before bonuses. With the France map, there are two bonuses: ten points for the longest continuous route and fifteen points for the player with the most completed tickets. With seven, Pine had the most tickets and leap-frogged Jade and Pink (who was playing with his pink “Cancer Awareness” train set), into third place. That left Lime and Sapphire, but with Sapphire taking the longest route bonus, he finished with a hundred and twenty-nine points, extending his lead over Lime to fifteen points to give him a comfortable victory. It had been a really enjoyable game, however, so much so that Jade and Sapphire added it the France map to their wish list.

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At the other end of the table, that left Blue, Plum, Green, Byzantium, Purple and Black. Nobody seemed keen to play the “Feature Game” (which was to be Montmartre), partly because that would have required splitting into two groups. Instead, inspired by the Olympics, the group opted for the Heptathlon variant of Reiner Knizia’s Decathlon. Decathlon is a print-and-play game consisting of a series of ten different, mostly push-your-luck, dice games loosely themed around the ten sports featuring in the Olympic event. The Heptathlon Variant is slightly shorter and is based on the women’s equivalent.

Reiner Knizia's Decathlon (Heptathlon Variant)

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Normally both variations are played with a maximum of four, but this time, the group played the “Championship Variant” where players play together and the winner of an event scores three points, the runner up gets two points and the person placing third gets one point. The rules say that tied players get the better rank, but the group used count-back to break ties in the first instance. Blue had brought an enormous pile of printouts and Las Vegas, from which the group got the dice, and started, slightly tentatively with the 100 m Hurdles. In this game, players have two sets of three dice and throw one until they are happy then throw the other with a total of seven tries. The catch is that each “one” that is re-rolled scores minus one.

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Green went first and achieved a total of twenty-three. By the time he had finished though, everyone had got bored watching someone else roll dice and had got on with their own. It was then that the group realised that, as the 100 m Hurdles was a race, rolling simultaneously was more in keeping with the theme. Blue crossed the line first (with twenty eight) followed by Byzantium and then Green. And it was on to the High Jump, a much simpler game where players rolled five dice together to achieve an ever increasing total (with three attempts at each height). Purple was the first out, failing to achieve eighteen, followed by Blue at the next height.

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The “springiest” was Plum, who sailed over twenty-two, but failed at twenty-four. She actually tied with Green, but beat him on count-back, with Byzantium taking third. Next was the Shot Put, where players roll eight dice, one at a time, with a one being a fault. Players can stick whenever the like, but because of a rules malfunction, the group only played with a maximum of six dice. The best score after three attempts was again Plum with Black in second and Blue in third. From here the games got a bit more complex, starting with the 200 m Sprint, which was played with eight dice rolled in a group of four dice, followed by two rolls of two. Players have a total of eight throws and sixes count negatively.

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Plum tripped over her own feet (or maybe Byzantium tied her laces together), but Green demonstrated a remarkable turn of speed to cross the line first, followed by Blue and then Purple. More than half-way through, it was a three-way tie between Blue, Green and Plum and others not far behind. So, the second day started with the Long Jump, a five dice game played in two parts. First there was the run-up, which dictates how many dice the player gets to use for the actual jump. For the run-up, players roll all five, freeze at least one and roll the rest, but if the total exceeds eight, it is a foot-fault. Then, for the jump itself, players use the frozen dice and roll all of them, again freezing at least one per throw.

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The best total after three attempted jumps was Byzantium’s twenty-seven. Green’s turn of speed obviously helped him as he came second while Blue and Plum tied for third, but Plum took the honours thanks to her second longest jump. Staying in the field, the next and penultimate event was the Javelin. This six dice game involved players freezing at least one die per turn, but this time only odd dice could be kept. Green’s first throw threatened to skewer one of the stewards, and things didn’t get much better from there. Black faulted on his first throw, but was consistent with his second and third taking third with twenty-two.

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First and second went to Purple and Byzantium (respectively), with both failing to improve on an excellent first attempt. So, going into the final event, the 800 m Race, most people were going for Gold, while everyone was in with a chance of a medal. This race was an eight dice game with players rolling two dice, then two dice and then the four remaining dice one at a time. Players have a total of eleven rolls (i.e. just five re-rolls) and the player with the highest total wins, but with the catch that sixes count negatively. It was a tight race, but Blue crossed the line first which put her in gold medal position, just until Green crossed the line in second and overtook her. Purple took third, but for her it was too little, too late.

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So, stood on top of the final podium with his gold medal round his neck, Blue with silver and Byzantium who took bronze just ahead of Plum and then Purple, stood either side. It had been a lot of fun though, and as people often say, it is the journey that counts. The games have a bit of a feel of Ganz Schön Clever/Doppelt So Clever/Clever Hoch Drei, but sort of stripped back to their raw essence. The individual events were quite simple and with a sheet each, players could keep their own score and recheck the rules as required. The questions, “Do I stick or keep going, what have other people done, and do I need to gamble to win?” in a large group add interest, and everyone enjoyed it so much that there was no difficulty getting people to take home the left-over sheets.

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From there, the group of six split into two groups of three and everyone moved from athletics themed games to Paris themed games. With the best will in the world, there wasn’t time to play Paris, so Blue promised to bring it again another time, and they opted instead to stick with “Roll and Write” type games in the form of Next Station: Paris. This is the latest variant on Next Station: London, a simple little route planning game with a really clever twist. The idea is that each station has one of five symbols; a card is turned over depicting one of these symbols and players must extend their route by connecting one end to a station with this symbol without crossing an existing track and following the grid shown on the map.

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At the end of each round, players score for the number of Districts visited multiplied by the number of Stations in the most visited District. At the end of the round players get bonus points for Interchange Stations (where two or more lines meet). However, like the Ticket to Ride maps, each each city comes with a slight variation to the rules as well as a different arrangement of stations. In London, players score points for crossing the Thames and for the total number of Visitor Attractions visited during the game. In Paris, these are replaced with scores for visiting Parisian Monuments at the end of each round and using the level crossings marked on the map.

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The clever part of the game is the fact it is played over four rounds, but each round is played with a different coloured pencil with players swapping pencils between rounds. This means that while everyone gets the same cards in the same order, they start in different places so are forced to do different things (unlike for example, NMBR 9, where players often play the first few rounds the same). The Paris version is supposed to be easier than the London variant, but as nobody had played it before, everyone struggled at the start. The trick though, is, for each line, players need to try to get the same number of Districts as Stations in the most visited District.

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This is similar to the mechanism in Orléans, where players receive victory points equal to their position on the Development Track multiplied by the number of Trading Stations they have on the map plus the number of Citizen Tiles they have collected. In both cases, players want these numbers to be as large as possible to give the biggest total. It is more important that both are significant, however, rather than having one large and one small. For example, a two times three gives more than one times four, thus it is important to concentrate on both parts equally and not neglect either one of them.

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Although nobody had played a “Next Station” game before, Blue explained the rules and had got her head round this element of the scoring, where it took the others a little time to get to grips with it. The game suited Plum’s puzzle brain and she liked trying to see where she might get to the level crossings and so on. By the third line, both she and Byzantium were beginning to get the hang of thing (or perhaps the cards just came out better) and then for the final round everyone found their space was more restricted. It was very close, but Blue’s consistency throughout just gave her the edge and victory by a mere five points.

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Meanwhile, Green, Black and Purple opted for a quick game of the Paris version of Ticket to Ride. This is the newest of the smaller, city versions of the game, and one that had not been played within the group hitherto. In general, these play exactly the same way as the bigger ones, but have fewer pieces and shorter tracks (so play a lot quicker) and have a little rules tweak to keep people interested. There had been a little bit of chat about it as people arrived and Blue, who had only read the rules was quite scathing about the new rule which felt very bolted on, and as there are now several of these little games, there were comments about the sound of barrels being scraped.

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The new rule is that when players claim a red, white, or blue track, they get a card, when they get all three colours they get four “Tricolore” bonus points—this didn’t feel terribly imaginative. After the game, however, Green commented that it was much better than it sounded. After he had completed his starting Tickets, he realised they only gave low points, so rather than taking more, he opted to go for Tricolore bonus points instead as the red, white and blue Routes are all short making them easy to get (one, two and one carriage long respectively). Simpler to achieve than extra Tickets they give an extra four points, though Green only got a total of two Tricolores.

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Black and Purple only took one Tricolore each as they were using it as a bonus rather than a target, so missed out on a few opportunities by laying trains on a colour they already had a card for. In the dying moments of the game, Purple took Tickets—of course she had no way of knowing that Green was about to trigger the final round, but even Black commented that it was a brave move. And Green ended the game on his very next turn, leaving poor Purple with a couple of uncompleted Tickets. That extra four point Tricolore bonus Green had taken made all the difference in the final scoring as that was the margin of his victory over Black.

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As Green went home (along with Jade, Sapphire, Byzantium and Plum), they passed the copy of Ticket to Ride: Paris along the table to Lime, Pine and Pink who also fancied giving it a go. They concurred that the Tricolore Bonus was much better in practice than it sounded. This game was also quite tight with six points between the first and last. Lime was particularly peeved however, as Pink edged him out by a single point. With that, and some residual chatter, it was time for home and everyone slowly drifted off.

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Learning Outcome: When you take away the sport, you still have France.

10th January 2023

One of the first to arrive was Yellow, and it was delightful to see him after such a long time. He was especially welcome as he was bringing a copy of Paris that he’d been looking after since UK Games Expo in August 2021. Before long though, there were eight all ready and lined up to play the “Feature Game“, Long Shot: The Dice Game, when two more arrived and a debate began to work out who would play what and where. As Long Shot was supposed to be quite short, eventually, Plum, Pine, Purple and Lime took themselves off to play Ticket to Ride: London, with Blue, Green, Yellow, Black, Ivory and Teal sticking around to play Long Shot: The Dice Game.

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Based on the party game Long Shot, Long Shot: The Dice Game is a light horse racing and betting game in a similar mould to that of Turf Horse Racing, that featured on several people’s lists of top games from 2022. As it is relatively quick to play, the idea was that it would leave plenty of time to play some of our other old favourites and Ticket to Ride: London was thought to be a good match in terms of length. Inevitably, that was not quite how things turned out, however. Long Shot (Dice) is quite simple, and Blue, assisted by Green, was explaining the necessary to the runners and riders. Ticket to Ride is well known within the group though and was therefore quicker to get started.

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The idea of Long Shot (Dice) is that the active player rolls two dice which dictate which horse moves and how far (one to three spaces). Everyone (including the active player) then chooses an action from their card, carries it out and crosses it off. The actions include: placing bets, buying a horse, buying a riding cap, buying a riding jersey, crossing a horse off the concession chart to get a bonus action once a row or column has been completed. In general, the action depends on the horse that has been rolled, i.e. if horse number two is rolled, players can bet on that horse, buy that horse, get a cap or jersey for that horse’s rider or cross that horse off the concession grid. However, each player has three “wilds” which are opportunities to choose any horse.

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At the end of the game, players score if they own or bet on a horse that is placed and for any cap/jersey combo for the same horse. This time, Green started and rolled the blue horse number three which moved three spaces. As did Teal. By the time it had moved on three out of four opportunities (and a total of nine spaces), it was starting to look like the dice were loaded and this did not appeal to everyone’s sense of fair play. The group more or less divided into those that wanted the blue horse wearing number three to win (because they had invested in it) and those who didn’t and preferred the red number one horse.

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As Ticket to Ride progressed, the route planners asked how the race was going, and the gamblers, felt it would not be long, given the progress the blue number three horse had made and the lead it had built up. After its early spurt, a few other horses managed to start to make a bit of ground and, with players starting fill out their bonus grid, players began to take bonus actions which leveled the course somewhat. The bonuses included taking a free $7 (quite a lot of money in this game); a free $3 bet; free riding cap/jersey, but by far the most interesting were the options to move horses.

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Each player has the following four bonuses: they can move one horse three spaces (once forwards and once back) and they can move two horses two spaces (also both forwards once and both backwards once). It was as the blue number three horse approached the three-quarters mark (after which players could no longer bet on it) that players showed their allegiance, moving it forwards, or backwards. And with six players, everyone had potentially several bites of the cherry. Just as it seemed that one horse had an unassailable lead, one or two players would upset the apple cart and push the leader back and something else forward. Even the the three-legged purple number eight horse looked like it might be in with a chance of placing at one point (albeit not for long).

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Ticket to Ride made more rapid progress. Although Purple succeeded in completing one of her tickets (for three points), she failed to finish her other two. That cost her ten points (effectively twenty, which is what she’d have got if she’d completed them), and she blamed Lime. Lime had troubles of his own though as he was in a very tight battle with Pine. Perhaps it was his comeuppance for the trouble he’d caused Purple (real or only perceived), but Pine pipped him to victory by a single point, gained when he completed one of the single carriage routes in the centre of the board in the dying moments of the game.

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It became a bit of a running joke that the Purple/Plum/Pine/Lime group playing with their train-set asked how things were doing when they finished, and again as they packed away, and again after they’d been to the bar, and again after they’d consumed their drinks and been to the bar again, and each time were told that it was nearly done. Eventually, Purple, Lime and Pine resorted to playing Love Letter to kill time, winning one round each. Although Long Shot (Dice) was great fun and everyone was quite amused by the shuffling of horses backwards and forwards, Pine had a point when he commented that when gamers play a light silly game they can play it to destruction—a bit like Echidna Shuffle, which we all adored though it outstayed its welcome when one game lasted two hours!

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As players ran out of bonuses, the Long Shot horses ran out of track, and eventually, the red horse number one crossed the line, followed by the blue horse number three and finally, the pink horse number four. Unlike in Downforce for example, however, although winning the race is useful, the betting has much, much more of an influence on the final result. For example, the two horses Ivory had bet on, numbers five and six, didn’t come in making a severe dent in his score. In spite of this, it was quite close—Green and Yellow tied for third with $109 while Teal took second place with $114. Blue claimed victory though, finishing with $122.

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It was only when Green and Pine pointed out that Teal hadn’t scored his horse which gave him $2 per horse he had a bet on, and in his case, an extra $12. Recalculating his final score, much to her chagrin, Teal just pipped Blue to victory. From there it was simply a case of tidying up and working out what people wanted to play next. Ivory had suggested Roll for the Galaxy at the start of the evening and there were lots of takers now, so he went off to set up with Teal, Green and Plum. Although Teal had played Race for the Galaxy online, Roll for the Galaxy was new to him so the group started with a quick rundown of the rules.

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The idea is that everyone starts with a couple of “Worlds” and some dice representing their population. Players roll their dice with the faces dictating different actions. In secret, players allocate their dice to the five different phases: Explore, Develop, Settle, Produce and Ship. Players choose one phase that they want to happen then everyone simultaneously reveals their choices. All the phases selected will happen, with dice that players have allocated to other phases returned to their cup and recycled. The game is a combination of “engine builder” and “population builder” (similar to games like Orléans), with players needing the right combination of Worlds to provide their engine, and then building the right combination of dice to make them work effectively.

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With the lighting being less than perfect, some of the dice colours were a little difficult to distinguish, particularly purple and brown. Plum came to the rescue though, with her new Christmas present: a portable folding lamp. The magic of the LED gave a good strong light, enough for everyone without taking up too much room on the table. Everyone was very impressed and many rapidly came round to the idea that it was a must have gamers’ accessory! After a faltering start for a couple of turns, Teal soon got the hang of how to select actions and where the dice should go.

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The first clarification needed was that players can only choose one action (though everyone’s choice will be activated), and the second was that the die used to select that action does not need to show a face that matches it. The rest of Teal’s game was one of learning: with his mining industry, he was able to ship goods for victory points while still gaining some credits, and gained a couple of useful purple die. Unfortunately being new to the game meant he was unable to mount a serious challenge for victory points. Plum, on the other hand, started out with a couple of red military dice and managed to obtain one more during the game along with the New Galactic Order tile which gave her a couple of extra points for those red dice.

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Plum also made good use of her Terraforming Robots which gave her an extra credit for each World she built and two extra if it was a brown world. She managed to get three brown Worlds. Ivory also managed to obtain the useful purple die, but his real bonus was from the Alien research ship which gave him a white and a yellow explore action whenever it was chosen. This meant he was able to keep his credits topped up and have plenty of new tiles on the go without the expenditure of a die. As a result he was able to concentrate on building worlds and shipping/trading.

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Green, meanwhile, quietly built his tableaux concentrating on blue worlds due to his Consumer Market which gave him an extra credit if at the end of the produce round he had goods on a blue world. He also obtained a green and a yellow world. His Galactic Recycler meant he gained a credit every time he managed to complete a tile. He was the first and only player to build all twelve tiles which gave him the largest score for Worlds. Combined with his Free Trade Association he scored extra points for his three blue worlds and with the victory points he’d collected along the way he finished with forty-four points and a healthy lead, ahead of Ivory’s thirty-eight, just ahead of Plum thanks to his two yellow and two green worlds.

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Meanwhile, at Purple’s request, everyone else was playing Saboteur. This is a hidden traitor game where players take it in turns to either place tunnel cards or to play action cards. The Good Dwarves are trying to find gold, while the Evil Saboteurs are trying to obstruct them. In the rules as written, the game is played over several rounds with gold handed out at the end of each round. The way the gold is distributed doesn’t really necessarily reflect the player who made the biggest contribution, so we play with the “House Rule” that each round is treated as an individual game, then we can play as many “games” as we like and/or time allows.

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This time, the group played three games. The first one began with lots of people suspiciously checking and double-checking where the treasure was buried by playing map cards. Purple was accused of being an Evil Saboteur, quickly followed by Black, Lime and Blue, all of which made no sense as there could only be a maximum of two. In the end apologies were required when Pine found the gold and Blue and Purple were revealed as the Actual Saboteurs. The second round followed a similar pattern, only this time pretty much everyone was accused of “Saboteury behaviour”.

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This time there was a Solitary Saboteur, which meant poor black had a really uphill battle and had really lost before he’d begun. Once again, Pine was the Dwarf that found the gold, with Lime setting him up. In the final round, things went a little differently though, particularly when Pine’s dubious behaviour signaled that he might not be trying to find the gold this time. When Blue distracted the Dwarves by causing a massive rock-fall, it was up to Lime to try and patch the tunnel. Things had just settled when Blue played another rock-fall and Lime patched that too. When Blue brought down a third and fourth tunnel collapse, Lime was able to patch them too.

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It took so much effort though, that when Pine pushed the tunnel past the gold card, although it only needed a couple of extra tunnel segments, the Dwarves couldn’t make it giving a rare victory for the Saboteurs. As Roll for the Galaxy was still going and there was a little time left till last orders, there was just time for a quick game of 6 Nimmt!, an old favourite. Blue commented that the name was one of the infamous German joke game titles, and Yellow added that “Nimmt” was the imperative of the German verb, nehmen, to take, thus when the sixth card is played on a row, that player takes the other cards. The player with the fewest bulls heads wins. We’ve played it quite a bit recently with the professional variant where cards can be added to the low or high end of the rows.

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This time, however, as time was pressing the group decided to stick with the simple maths. We play over two rounds with half the deck in each. Lime had a complete nightmare in the first round, with twenty-seven “nimmts” in the first round; Pine in contrast managed a clean sheet and Black only picked up two points, so it was all to play for, for some at least. Lime did much better in his second round giving him a total of thirty-three, only slightly more than Yellow, while Blue managed nearly that in the second round alone, top-scoring with a nice round fifty. Black picked up just five, but there wasn’t much anyone could do to compete with Pine, who picked up just one solitary point in the second round, his only one in the whole game.

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Learning Outcome: Betting can be a mugs game.