Tag Archives: Patchwork

2nd May 2023

Blue and Pink were the first to arrive and were just finishing their supper when Magenta walked in—sadly not to join in the games as she was there for a Scout meeting. After a quick chat, she left and as Blue recapped the rules for the “Feature Game“, Zoo Break, Teal arrived and then Purple and Black. The group had just decided to play Alles im Eimer (aka The Bucket King), when Ivory rocked up to make the full compliment of six. Purple explained the rules with help from Black. The idea is very simple: each player builds a pyramid of ten bucket tokens with two of each of five colours.

– Image by boardGOATS

One player starts, playing a coloured, numbered, animal card and each player has to follow with the same colour and a higher number before picking up a card. Players can play multiple cards to make the total, but they only ever receive a single replacement card. If they can’t, or choose not to follow, they lose a bucket of that colour, and any buckets above it. Worse, if they split their pile of buckets in two, they lose one part as players can only ever have one pile. On the plus-side, if a player can’t play (or chooses not to), they then lead with a free choice of colour and number. The last player with buckets still standing is the winner. With Purple shuffling, Ivory was the first to play.

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It turns out that there are two things that are really critical in this game. Firstly, how players stack their buckets—it is not as simple as playing to their hand strengths; the smart player also spreads the colours out a bit so they aren’t forced to take buckets from low down when the unexpected happens. Secondly, as Ivory pointed out, like 6 Nimmt!, it is all about timing, which is something players may not have control of. A few rounds in, Black spotted that Pink to his left still had a complete stack where bucket piles had been falling all over the place everywhere else. So, Black made it his business to make Pink’s life difficult. From there, it was gloves off and the buckets really started to tumble. Purple was the first player to kick the last of her buckets over which left Blue to do what she could to damage Ivory’s largely unscathed pile.

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Black, then Blue, then Teal, all fell, leaving just Pink and Ivory to fight it out. With Pink’s dwindling pile, it always looked an uphill task, and so it proved, with Ivory taking victory with five buckets still standing. By this time though, Lime and Green had arrived and with eight, the group split into two tables of four, the first for the “Feature Game“, Zoo Break. Pink was nearly lured away at the suggestion that the alternate might be Takenoko, but despite being very torn by his love of pandas, he stuck with his original panda driven choice and was joined by Blue, Lime and Black as Keepers at Bedlam Zoo.

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Zoo Break is an apparently light cooperative game where players are a team of zoo-keepers trying to prevent a mass break-out. The mechanism is quite simple: the active player rolls a die to decide how many Action Points they get, then they carry out actions, before drawing an Escape card and a Move card (to see what animals escape and move). The game ends when either a dangerous animal (tiger, elephant, or dangerous snake) escapes, or when the fifth cute animal (panda, Capuchin monkey, meerkat or harmless snake) exits the zoo, or when there are no animals roaming about and all the cages are locked up.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although the mechanism of Zoo Break is very straight-forward and the art-work implies it is a simple kiddies game, nothing could be further from the truth. The rule book is twenty pages long, and there are a lot of details regarding escaping and recapturing animals. For example, when an animal escapes, it doesn’t just move to the space immediately outside its Enclosure, it moves to the nearest “open” space. Also, different animals are recaptured using different tools which have to be acquired from the supply by the Keepers. For example, a Net can be used to capture meerkats or monkeys, while a Leash is required for pandas and elephants, and tigers need to be Tranquilised and Stretchered home (very carefully, obviously).

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Each Keeper has a different skill. This time, Blue had the ability to reveal snakes and capture animals from adjacent spaces (especially useful for dealing with snakes); Pink could run faster than anyone else, moving two spaces for each action point (instead of the usual one); Black, the Gardener, could move through and hide in bushes, and Lime could re-roll the die twice to try to get additional actions. From experience with games like Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert, the key is almost always to make good use of these special powers. So Blue suggested she made it her business to concentrate on dealing with the snakes since she could do so without being bitten.

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Pink with his Panda obsession, was always going to go after them, and everyone else was happy to let him get on with it. Before any of that could happen though, the Keepers needed Supplies. Pink started, and went straight to the Supply shed and started revealing tools. These are drawn from a face down pile, but Keepers only have space to carry four tools in their backpack, so can choose only to take the ones they want. This was probably the team’s first mistake: instead of the few players just searching the whole Supply pile and making a discerning choice while taking as much as they could carry, players grabbed a couple of items and headed off.

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This became a problem later in the game when the Keepers realised they didn’t have tools and were now on the other side of the board. Black who had drawn the meerkat enclosure key headed off to the far corner to lock it quickly. Lime captured the only roaming meerkat (which had been playing in the fountain) and Black was just about to lock the cage when another one escaped. As he didn’t have a Net, despite being in the same space as it, he was left chasing about trying to grab it unsuccessfully. And then more meerkats got out. So Lime, Keeper without portfolio (but with both a Net and a Leash), waged war on the disobedient meerkats, while occasionally taking time out to catch an elephant or a monkey.

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Pink, meanwhile, had his panda enclosure Key and a Leash and was trying to do something about them, but was inconvenienced by a pair of elephants, one of which knocked him flying necessitating a visit to the Medic. Lime captured the last of the Capuchin monkeys and Blue who was close at hand with the enclosure Key managed to slam the door shut before any more got out—just as well, as the snakes were beginning to get out of hand, and as for the meerkats, well, these little blighters were causing mayhem. Twice the Keepers had them under control before more escaped, and as they formed a long queue, the queue kept getting longer and longer as they marched inexorably towards the exit.

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Pink used the Barricade to delay the escape of a couple of pandas and the pair marauding elephants, but it failed to hold when the Broken Barricade Move card appeared. The rhino’s occasional charges weren’t much of an issue as they were very predictable, but once animals started to get close to the exit the rhino became more of a problem as players stayed out of its path wasting Action Points. By this time, the tigers were becoming a problem, but Pink and Black put their Tranquiliser darts to good effect and soon the zoo was littered with sleeping tigers. Lime had a Stretcher, but never actually used it, briefly loaning it to Blue for the only tiger returned to its enclosure (and left to peacefully sleep off the after-effects, as per one of the new variants).

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There was a bit of a debate over whether it was more important to work on the rogue pandas or let them and meerkats escape and focus on the dangerous animals (in particular tigers and elephants). Slowly but surely, however, the animals were taking over as there was a little procession of Keepers at the Medic’s tent, with only Lime avoiding injury. Black was the only player to make use of the Train, because it didn’t really go where people wanted it to and players dealt with the issues nearest to them. That was probably a good strategy; like it says in the advice, it is also important to lock stuff up early—the team didn’t. They dealt with the monkeys, but the only other enclosure they managed to lock was the pandas, just before two meerkats and a cobra made a run for it in a single turn.

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Although the mass escape had caused the zoo to be closed down and Pink hadn’t actually been cuddled by a panda, everyone had really enjoyed themselves. On reflection, working in pairs might have worked better (as with Flash Point and Escape), because then the team can do things much quicker, get on top of things and lock cages making life easier all round. Black was curious about the variants available. The group had played on “Standard” difficulty with two “Phew!” Escape cards (where nothing gets out), but thanks to a rules malfunction, had also included the blank cards in the Move deck which provided quite a bit of respite, so everyone had a good laugh at the idea of making the game harder.

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Despite the fact the group rarely plays cooperative games, everyone was keen to give Zoo Break another outing soon. Zoos were popular elsewhere too—the next table had been playing New York Zoo. This is a tile-laying game that got its first Tuesday outing only a few of weeks ago, but had been enjoyed by all. In this game, players add pens to their zoo, populating them with animals, and building attractions. Like Uwe Rosenberg‘s other similar games (including Cottage Garden, Spring Meadow, Indian Summer and Patchwork), it is Tetris-like but what makes this one unique and interesting is the Market.

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Players move the Marker Elephant one to four spaces round the Market, landing either on an Enclosure tile space (taking the top one and adding it to their zoo) or on an animal space (taking one or both of the animals depicted). Enclosure tiles can be placed anywhere in the player’s Zoo, then one or two identical Animals from elsewhere in their Zoo must be moved to occupy the Enclosure. Each Enclosure can only hold one type of Animal. When there are two or more Animals in an Enclosure together they breed when the Elephant passes the Market’s breeding spaces.

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When an Enclosure is full, all the animals are removed and the player takes an Attraction tile of their choice and adds it to their Zoo. Attraction tiles are useful because they fill additional spaces, and at its heart, New York Zoo is a race game—the winner is the first to fill all the spaces in their Zoo. Purple had played last time, and Green had played elsewhere, however, Ivory and Teal were new to the game and the rules needed explanation. That didn’t take long though, and the Elephant was soon touring the market and everyone was building their zoo and adding animals.

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Purple was quick to get going, as was Green. New York Zoo is really a tactical game, but there are a couple of broad strategies—fill the zoo with large Enclosures that are harder to fill, but occupy more space, or fill it with smaller Enclosures which are easier to fill with animals giving bonus Attraction tiles. Purple went for the latter approach, getting some of the large attractions early in the game. Teal however, opted for the former strategy, which is harder to get to work, but can be extremely effective, as indeed it was this time, making him the first to finish his zoo, and with no Attractions at all. Purple was the best of the rest with for spaces left to fill, with Green a little way behind.

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The Keepers in Bedlam Zoo on the next table were still trying to get the marauding beasts back in their pens (largely unsuccessfully) so the others had to decide what to play. Green decided to go home, and couldn’t be persuaded to stay by the opportunity to play Nidavellir despite having been very keen to play it previously. That left Purple, Ivory and Teal, who decided to play it anyhow. Nidavellir is a card set-collection and bidding game inspired by Norse myths. The game was created by French designer Serge Laget (who sadly passed away in January this year after a lifetime of producing some great games) and the striking black and white artwork by Jean-Marie Minguez which nicely contrasts with the coloured cardboard components.

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The story behind the game is that the kingdom of Nidavellir is under threat from the stirrings of the Dragon Fafnir and players are tasked by the King to recruit the best army to defeat it. Appropriately for our venue, the action takes places in three Dwarvish pubs where the players must use their coins to bid for the most skillful Dwarves (in a concealed auction), recruit the most prestigious Heroes, and build the best Battalion they can to defeat the Dragon. Players hire five different professions of Dwarves into their growing army – Warriors, Hunters, Miners, Blacksmiths and Explorers. Each player starts with five coins with the values: zero, two, three, four and five. Players place one of their coins against each pub space on their player mat. The coins are revealed and cards are taken from each pub starting with the highest bidder.

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Ties are broken in favour of the player with the the highest jewel token (randomised at the start) and then these players swap jewels so the losing player has an advantage next time there is a draw. Once the three pubs have been resolved, players take back their coins, and place their cards in their tableaux. At the game end, points are awarded in different ways for each group of Dwarves. For example, Hunters provide points based on the number of cards squared, Blacksmiths score according to the triangular sequence (as used in Coloretto), while the Navigators are simply a total of the number of points printed on the card, and so on. Each round of the game, random face-up dwarf cards are lined up by each pub (equal to the number of players) and players bid for their order of selection.

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If a player plays their “zero” coin, the values of the two unused coins are added together, the highest of the pair is discarded and a new coin of the same total is added to their stash from the Royal Treasure. Thus, players can gradually increase the value of their coins, which is useful for out-bidding others, but also adds value as the total coin hoard is added to their final score. Hero cards, which supply additional points bonuses in a variety of ways are awarded when a player manages to have five cards of different type and then each time a new set of five is achieved. Heroes are selected from, a separate deck which allows for further point scoring combinations. The start was a little slow as Purple and Ivory were both new to the game and had to figure out what to do.

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Teal and Ivory both started by upgrading their coins. Ivory was the first to get a set of five cards and claimed one of the Dwerg Brothers as his Hero giving him the target of collecting the other brothers which greatly crank up the points the more that are collected. Teal, who had played the game before, chose more complex Heroes. Half way through the game, Purple took the King’s Hand and the King’s Great Armourer Heroes for having the most Warrior and Blacksmith cards, while Teal took the Hunting Master and Crown Jeweler (for the most Hunters and Miners respectively), leaving Ivory just the Pioneer of the Kingdom (for the most Explorers).

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The second age (played with a new deck of cards), was similar to the first, with particular tight battles around getting cards to complete sets. Ivory had a slight advantage in this, having upgraded his coins more aggressively early in the game, and used this to get more of the Dwerg Brothers. In contrast, Purple and Teal focused on collecting Dwarves of one kind with Teal using his Heroes to add to their “count” in particular colours when completing a set. In the end, Purple and Teal scored best for Blacksmiths and Hunters, while Teal also took lots of points for his Miners—something he had focused on from the start.

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Ivory however, had more Warriors and having the majority of them meant he could add the value of his most valuable coin to his score. Despite that and over a hundred points for his Dwergs, Ivory finished just shy of Teal’s winning total of two-hundred and seventy-seven. The downside of his victory—the winner has to face the Dragon Fafnir! All agreed it was a good game, not overly complex, but with lots of decisions to make; a game that didn’t out stay its welcome finishing within the forty-five minutes advertised (even with two first-time players).

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Learning outcome: Always keep a close eye on your meerkats.

7th March 2023

Plum and Blue were first to arrive and, by the time they had finished their enormous rack of ribs (or given up and had a doggy bag made up), almost everyone else had arrived. There were a few people missing, but still enough for two games of four. The first was the “Feature Game“, but nobody really wanted to commit to that until they knew what the other game was going to be. As he had done the last couple of times, Green suggested Terraforming Mars. Unlike previously, this time Ivory, Plum and Teal felt up to it, leaving Blue, Black, Purple and Lime to play their preferred choice of New York Zoo.

– Image by boardGOATS

New York Zoo is a tile laying game by Uwe Rosenberg, designer of Agricola, Bohnanza, Patchwork and many other well-known games. The idea is that players are building pens in their zoo, populating them with animals, and building attractions. This is one of several polyomino, Tetris-like, tile-laying type games (including Cottage Garden, Spring Meadow, Indian Summer and Patchwork), but what makes this one unique and interesting is the Market. Players move the Marker Elephant one to four spaces round the Market, landing either on an Enclosure tile space (taking the top one and adding it to their zoo) or on an animal space (taking one or both of the animals depicted). Enclosure tiles can be placed anywhere in the player’s Zoo, then one or two identical Animals from elsewhere in their Zoo must be moved to occupy the Enclosure.

– Image by boardGOATS

Each Enclosure can only hold one type of Animal, meercats, snow-foxes, kangaroos, penguins or flamingos, but when moving Animals, no pen can be left empty. There is an advantage to pens having two or more Animals in them too—the Market also features breeding spaces, and when the Marker Elephant passes these, up to two pens containing two or more matching Animals get an extra one. When a player moves the Elephant onto an Animal space, they take one of either or both the Animals depicted into Enclosures containing matching Animals (moving another from Storage if they can), or into the Storage space. Moving animals is important, because when an Enclosure is completed the player removes all the animals putting one into Storage if they have space, and then takes an Attraction tile of their choice and adds it to their Zoo.

– Image by boardGOATS

Attraction tiles are useful because they fill additional spaces, and at its heart, New York Zoo is a race game—the winner is the first to fill all the spaces in their Zoo. Black and Purple had played this a few times, and once Black had explained the rules to Lime and Blue, Purple started. Black and Purple prioritised completing Enclosures to get Attractions. The Market is stacked so there are large tiles, heptominoes, on the top of each tile space, with hexominoes, then pentominoes and finally tetrominoes at the bottom of each pile. Black and Purple prioritised getting breeding pairs of animals and as the Market dwindled, getting smaller enclosures because small Enclosures are easier to complete than large ones.

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Blue, who had not played the game before, started off getting large Enclosures and fitting them tightly together. As the game progressed, however, she realised her mistake as everyone else’s Animals were breeding and she didn’t have pairs because she was taking one out every time she added another Enclosure. This had the additional consequence that she was starting to run out of Animals too, so she prioritised getting breeding pairs for a couple of rounds before continuing to take the biggest Enclosures she could get away with. It was a tight game—Purple seemed to take an early lead, but it looked like Black and Lime over-took her towards the end and were in a tussle to finish the game first.

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With everyone else concentrating on filling pens and taking Attractions, nobody was watching Blue. So they were taken by surprise when her kangaroos bred filling their pen and she took her first Attraction. That left one space which she promptly filled taking the only Enclosure that fitted, perfectly, and ended the game. With everyone else so close to finishing, however, the rest of the group played on to see who would place where. In the event, Black finished just ahead of Lime. The group were just dissecting the different strategies when Pine arrived, fresh from his meeting teaching “cubbish-sized scouts” about waste. Terraforming Mars was still going on, so the hunt was on for a five-player game, and the group settled on Kingdomino.

– Image by boardGOATS

Native, Kingdomino is a four player game, however, with the Age of Giants expansion, it plays five. The base game is simple enough, but it had been a while since most people last played it, so there was a quick run through of the rules. On their turn, players add a terrain domino to their Kingdom; each domino comprises two squares of terrain and when placed at least one end must be adjacent to the same terrain type. Like New York Zoo, the interesting and clever part of the game is the Market. In Kingdomino, there are two parts, current and future—when a player takes their domino from the current market, they choose their next domino by placing their marker on it.

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At the end of the game, players score each terrain region with points equal to the area of each region multiplied by the number of crowns on it. The clever part is the timing of the Market. The tiles are drawn at random from a set numbered from one to forty-eight. The low numbers generally being the less desirable ones, those without crowns or those for terrain types where crowns are more scarce. Since players take the tiles in numerical order (low to high), taking a low value tile in one round gives a better choice in the next. Similarly, taking a high value tile means there will be less (or maybe no) choice in the following round.

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The Age of Giants expansion firstly adds twelve extra tiles (enough for a fifth player), six labeled with letters A to F and six numbered forty-nine to fifty-four. These are ranked below one for the letters and after forty-eight for the high numbers, with the low ranking tiles featuring a Giant, and the high ranking ones featuring Footprints. Players taking dominoes with a Giant on them, also take a Giant-eeple and place it over a crown in their Kingdom so that it doesn’t score. Taking a Footprint domino allows the player to move a Giant from their Kingdom to a crown in someone else’s and this increase their score, making these tiles potentially very valuable.

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Unfortunately (especially for Lime and Blue who ended up with all the Giants), the Footprints seemed hard to come by in this game. The other part of the Age of Giants expansion are the Quests. The base game comes with two Quests, arrangement targets that give points. These are “Middle Kingdom” and “Harmony” which respectively give ten points for a castle in the centre of a player’s Kingdom and five points for a complete five-by-five territory with no discarded tiles. This time, the Quests drawn essentially at random were “Bleak King” and “Four Corners of the Kingdom”. The first of these gave five points for each five square of terrain with no crowns while the second gave players five points for placing cornfields on all four corners of the five-by-five grid that defines their Kingdom.

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Although the Quests had been included in game play several times before, the Giants have only had an outing once and didn’t go down all that well. Still, with five players all the extra tiles were needed and their values would have been unbalanced without including Giants, so the group thought they’d give it another try. This time Blue and Purple had a really hard time getting crowns and things were so bad for Blue that she resorted to picking up twenty points, more than half her total, from the “Bleak King” Quest. Black built a lot of sea and pasture, while Lime scored heavily for his mountains and Pine picked up lots of points for his large woodland.

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It was very close between the top three and both Lime and Pine scored forty-five points for their highest scoring terrain—Lime for nine crowns spread over five spaces, Pine for five crowns spread over nine spaces. There were just two points between Lime and Pine in the end, but Pine’s sixty-eight points just edged Lime into second with Black four points behind that. It had been a good game. However, the group felt that the Giants took a positive constructive game and added a negative aspect. Those that had been stuck with them hadn’t found that aspect particularly enjoyable, especially as it was easy to get lumbered largely through no fault of their own, so it is unlikely they’ll get another outing very soon.

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Meanwhile, on the next table, Green, Ivory, Plum and Teal were still playing Terraforming Mars. To speed up the game they played with the Prelude start cards and also removed the Corporation cards—that turned out to be a good choice as the game only just finished before the pub closed. In this game, players play corporations sponsored by the World Government working together in the terraforming process, but competing for victory points. These are awarded not only for their contribution to the terraforming, but also for advancing human infrastructure throughout the solar system, and doing other generally commendable things.

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The players acquire unique Project cards by buying them into their hand; these can represent anything from introducing plant life or animals, hurling asteroids at the surface, building cities, to mining the moons of Jupiter and establishing greenhouse gas industries to heat up the atmosphere. The Projects can give immediate bonuses, as well as increase production of different resources. Many cards also have requirements and become playable when the temperature, oxygen, or ocean coverage increases enough. Buying cards is costly, so there is a balance between buying cards (three MegaCredits per card) and actually playing them.

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The game ends after the terraforming is complete when the three global parameters, temperature, oxygen, ocean have all reached their goal. Players then score for their Terraform Rating with any other points they might have accrued. This time, Green made his presence felt on the surface of Mars in the early stages with his initial starting forest, which grew a little, and seeded the oceans. He was the only one for a while. Plum played a blue card which gave her a couple of extra Credits every time someone built a city. This one really paid for itself in the four-player game as everyone wanted to build more than one city. Green was first, but had mis-read the card and found himself colonizing Phobos instead.

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So, Teal was the first to actually build a city on the surface of Mars. He opted for the equator but on the other side from Green’s forests. Later he played a blue city bonus card that gave him a Credit production bonus for each one. Although several cities had already been built by then, several more followed and he was able to enjoy the benefit of extra cash in later rounds. Ivory meanwhile had made a different start to the game than his normal opening gambit (building a city), and completed the first Milestone: the Ecologist. However his cities did follow later as he extended down towards the south pole. Teal claimed the second milestone: the Specialist, helped on by his city Credit production bonus.

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Plum was the last to claim a Milestone: the Generalist, as she was able to pay to increase her production one step each round. She did not claim it straight away, but noticed it after Teal had claimed his, and thought she had better get in there quick. Green was not able to claim any milestones, but instead was the first to fund an Award. A quick check around the player boards suggested he should fund Celebrity as he had three high value cards to Teal’s two, but neither Plum or Ivory had any cards over the value of twenty Credits. Later on Teal funded the second award and went for Estate Dealer as he clearly had more tiles next to oceans at this point (having planted his forests northwards around the oceans.

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At the end of the game Green pulled out his wallet once more and funded Benefactor since he was ahead on the Terraform Rating track. Ivory was only one behind, but Green had a couple of options he could play on his last turn for a couple of extra Terraform Rating points. This prevented Ivory from funding the Dessert Settler award for which he had been building. Green decided to go for outworld domination and also built Deimos city. During the second half of the game Green realised he had forgotten his company bonus of a two MegaCredits reduction for each brown, Industrial tagged card. He had built three, so put six Credits aside to be used in the event of a tie, (although had he remembered to claim them at the time, he may have been able to play more and better cards).

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In the final scoring it was very close indeed, although during the game Mars was regularly bombarded with meteors and nuclear bombs, so it was a wonder any one survived at all! Ivory and Green tied for second with fifty-nine points. Even with his extra six Credits, Green still lost the tie to Ivory, who had more Credits left over from the final production. At this point, Green realised he again had misread a card thinking he would get one point per ocean tile in the game for his capital city, but that would have given him a guaranteed nine points and would have been way too powerful. In the end, it was Teal who triumphed, but only just, with sixty-one points, in well deserved victory.

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Learning Outcome: Mama’s taking us to the zoo tomorrow, zoo tomorrow, zoo tomorrow… We can stay all day!

UK Games Expo 2019 – Not as Hot as Last Year, but that’s a Good Thing…

Last weekend was the thirteenth UK Games Expo (sometimes known as UKGE, or simply Expo), the foremost games event. Every year it grows bigger, and this was no exception. Historically, Expo is focused on gamers playing games rather than publishers selling new games, however, the exhibition aspect has been growing, and this year there were two halls full of vendors selling games and demoing wares. Last year, there was an issue with the air conditioning on the Friday which, combined with the thousands of “hot water bottles” walking about looking at games, made it unbelievably hot. This year, working facilities and a little more space made it much, much more pleasant, although Saturday was busier than ever!

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This year the hot games included Wingspan, copies of which were flying off the slightly wobbly shelves following it’s recent Kennerspiel des Jahres nomination. Foothills, a two player Snowdonia game by UK designers Ben Bateson and Tony Boydell (designer of the original Snowdonia, Ivor the Engine and Guilds of London) was another extremely popular game. Foothills is produced by Lookout Spiele, but there were sixty copies available from the designer’s Surprised Stare stand, which sold out in less than forty minutes (though there were a small number of copies to be had elsewhere for those that kept their eyes peeled).

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Surprised Stare were also demoing Foothills and another Snowdonia-based game, Alubari, which is due for release later in the year (hopefully). There was a new Ticket to Ride game available (London) as well as another instalment in the Catan series (Rise of the Inkas); the new expansion for Endeavor: Age of Sail was also available to see (coming to KickStarter later in June) and “old” favourites like Echidna Shuffle were there to be played and bought too. There were some very good deals to be had from some of the third party sellers as well, including some of the Days of Wonder games for just £15.

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One of the reasons for attending conventions is the opportunity to see and play games that are not available elsewhere. One example was Horticulture Master, a cute little Taiwanese game with beautiful artwork, which combined card collecting elements from Splendor with Tetris-like tile laying from games like Patchwork and Bärenpark. Another cute little game was Titans of Quantitas from Gingerbread Games, a clever two player strategy game based round the old fashioned digital rendering of the number eighty-eight. What really made this game special though was the fact that the stall was guarded by a fiberglass goat! Not everything was quite as wholesome though, as one Games Master was thrown out and banned for life for including content in a role-playing game that allegedly involved sexual violence and played on the shock factor. This is definitely the exception rather than the rule, however, and UK Games Expo is a great place for family and friends to spend a weekend.

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Boardgames in the News: The Consequences of Losing Catan—The Demise of Mayfair

The dramatic growth of Asmodee has been the subject of much comment over the last few years, but more recently it appeared to have slowed a little. It would seem that perhaps the consequences are now beginning to kick in though. Nearly two years ago, Asmodee acquired the rights to the English Language edition of the Catan series of games from Mayfair Games. At the time there was some speculation as to the effect this would have on Mayfair as the Catan range had dominated their catalogue and provided a high proportion of their revenue. The loss of such a large part of their portfolio inevitably led to major restructuring particularly as the then CEO of Mayfair, Pete Fenlon, left to become the CEO of the new Asmodee owned “Catan Studio” taking a bunch of other people with him.

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Thus, Mayfair not only lost the Catan franchise, but also their entire development team and graphics department. Essentially, they were left with Alex Yeager as lead developer, head of acquisitions, and marketing manager and a catalogue of about a hundred games including some of the popular 18xx series, Martin Wallace’s Steam, Caverna: The Cave Farmers, Lords of Vegas and Nuns on the Run. Mayfair also had a controlling influence in the German company, Lookout Games which they had acquired back in 2013, and this partnership had produced games like Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King, Costa Rica and Patchwork. The Mayfair strategy was primarily to focus on the partnership with Lookout while continuing to support their existing catalogue, and then, once that was stable, further develop the Mayfair-exclusive products.

– Image from twitter.com

Questions were first asked when Mayfair didn’t exhibit at PAX West or PAX Unplugged, despite featuring in the exhibitor list, though they did present as usual at BGG.CON. At the beginning of November, however, Alex Yeager announced that he had left Mayfair, and this, together with the earlier departure of Julie Yeager and Chuck Rice indicated that the chairs were being shifted on the deck of the Titanic, and there were rumours that Mayfair was in trouble. Mayfair had not independently produced a new title since the loss of the Catan franchise, but they still had their controlling stake in Lookout Games and producing the English language version of the popular Lookout range of games seemed like the basis for a strong partnership.

– Image from lookout-spiele.de

Lookout Spiele was a highly successful German company responsible for developing games like Agricola, and more recently Bärenpark and Grand Austria Hotel. At Spiel in October, Mayfair and Lookout shared an extremely popular booth, and it seemed so successful that there were rumours that another merger was on the cards. Sadly however, this was not the case, and on Friday it was announced that Mayfair had sold its three remaining assets (their games inventory, the IP, and their 74% stake in Lookout GmbH) and was closing their doors after thirty-six years. Simultaneously, Asmodee acquired the remaining 26% of Lookout from the original owner, Hanno Girk and on Friday announced their take-over of Lookout. With that, one of the most productive and popular of the German board game companies joined the likes of Days of Wonder, Fantasy Flight Games, Space Cowboys, Z-man Games, Pearl Games, Ystari, Plaid Hat Games and of course Catan as yet another “Studio” in the great Asmodee Empire.

– Image from lookout-spiele.de

21st March 2017

As usual, we started with a debate about who would play what. Green picked out a load of games he fancied, including The Voyages of Marco Polo which he had only played the once before and fancied playing again. Blue commented that it was the sort of game that Ivory would probably enjoy and with Black having spent quite a bit of time playing it online, he joined the others to make a trio. The Voyages of Marco Polo, won the Deutscher Spiele Preis in 2015 and was designed by the same pairing that put together Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar, another game we have enjoyed recently and is a game we should play more often. The game is played over five rounds with players recreating Marco Polo’s journey to China via Jerusalem and Mesopotamia and over the “Silk Road”. Each player has a different character and special power in the game. Each round, the players roll their five personal dice and can perform use them to perform one action each per turn. The actions include: gathering resources, gathering camels, earning money, buying purchase orders and travelling. The game ends with players receiving victory points for arriving in Beijing, fulfilling the most purchase orders, and having visited the cities on secret city cards that each player gets at the start of the game.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Last time he played, Green had been very successful with Kubilai Khan. This time, after dice rolling to see who started, Green got to go first, but although he had the opportunity to take Kubilai Khan again, he decided to go for a different challenge. So this time Green went for Matteo Polo giving him the white dice and the extra contract every round. Ivory was next and went for Mercator ex Tabriz, a potentially powerful character which would give him an extra resource every time anyone else got one from the favour track or resource selection track. Black, having played often online, opted for Kubilai Khan and starting from Beijing with the immediate ten point bonus, but no other advantage. The fourth character that was rejected by all, was Wilhelm von Rubruk who allowed the player to place houses on cities they passed through without the need to stop (Black commented afterwards that this was a a very difficult character to be successful with). Next, each player received four destination cards from which to choose two. With many groans of dismay everyone quickly discarded one card they felt was all but impossible to complete and then had to choose the worst of the remaining cards for the second discard. No one felt very happy with their selections, but the cards dictated the strategies.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor jsper

For Green the strategy was simple, get as many contracts completed as possible and not worry too much about travelling. However, some of the contracts provided extra free movement on completion, so with minimal travelling some of the cities could be completed. For much of the game Green and Ivory laboured under the false understanding that only one contract could be completed per round. This meant that after he had secured the resources he needed for his one contract, Green was left with some “spare” actions, which he decided to use for travelling and money collection. It was only at the end of the penultimate round that Black corrected their misunderstanding and that although only one contract could be completed per turn, several could be done per round! It was all a little too late for Green though. The extra free contract he got in the last round was a doozy, giving him another new contract when completed, but only yielding three points. Unfortunately the new contract released was also low value at only two points (although it was then easy to complete).

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Meanwhile, Black quietly got on with his game, regularly choosing the six camel resource and buying black dice to travel slowly from Beijing, down the board, and releasing the three action city. He used this to good effect gaining lots of purple resource bundles for contracts. It was while activating one of these city actions he revealed that the number on the die used indicated the number of times it could used. Cries of foul play came from Green and Ivory. Green had used a four spot on the “coins for houses” action before and Ivory would have used his six die on it this round instead of the five coin action space. Black scurried to the rules and discovered that for this “coins for houses” action, it was the number of houses which could be claimed for by the die. In other words, he could use a die of two to claim only two houses even if he had three. A player would need a three spot die to claim for all. So in the end, nothing changed for Ivory and Green, though it was something to try to remember for next time.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Ivory decided that money was important and regularly placed his die in the purse and the “five coin” action. He was able to do because he was gaining so many resources from Black and Green’s actions, thanks to his special character. This kept his contracts ticking over and he managed to travel around the board and complete all but one of his cities and get to Beijing. This left him with with a dilemma in the final round: he needed a high value die and used his spare camels to provide a black, but only rolled a one. Green gave him another camel (thanks to his resource collection). So Ivory placed in the favour track for two more and bought another black die, this time rolled a three… In the end he decided to just take coins to try to get an extra point.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

It was moot in the end. Green managed seven contracts in all, one more than Ivory and two more than Black, so Green got the seven point bonus after all. With twenty-nine coins at the end he was one short of an extra bonus point, though it wouldn’t have been enough. Black had made a mistake in his travelling and not got the cities he meant to – he failed to get one of his cards and only built two houses. Despite this, his ten point bonus for Beijing and several high value contracts gave him second place. Ivory had had a great game though, picking up six contracts, taking second place in Beijing, completing one city card and taking a full 10 points from four cities in total. It was more than enough to give him a three point lead and win the game. Ivory decided that Blue was right, he had really enjoyed The Voyages of Marco Polo.

– Image used with permission of
BGG contributor bovbossi

On the neighbouring table, Blue, Burgundy, Purple and Pine had started off with the “Feature Game”, Habitats, This is a very light tile laying game, which comes with small ceramic animals instead of the more usual wooden player pieces. There are a lot of tile laying games available, but there are a couple of things that make this one a little different. Firstly, tiles selection: there is an array of tiles and on their turn, players move their ceramic animal one step forward, left or right and take the tile it would have landed on and add it to their park. Players can add their tile almost anywhere they want, so long as it borders at least one other tile. The second unusual aspect of the game is the scoring: tiles feature an animal and a terrain, but to score they most be surrounded by a set number of other given terrain tiles. The game is played over four rounds with bonuses after the first three and final scoring at the end of the game. Pine, with his orange Camel started out very strongly making him a bit of a target, however, although there is plenty of interaction, it is quite difficult to interfere with their plans a lot. Burgundy started a little slower, but soon got his “extremely correct little Zebra” picking up tiles he wanted (as Pine said, “All zebras have a Hitler mustache and pink ears, don’t they?”).

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Purple and her Penguin got a little trapped in the early stages, but got herself out of the mess quite quickly. The bonuses were for the most different landscape tiles in the first round, different numbers of areas in the second and for a small compact park in the third. They didn’t really seem to add much to the scores though, and with hindsight, some players might have done better ignore them completely as it is possible they were more of hindrance than a help since the most anyone got was five points (Pine and his orange Camel). That said, the final scores were quite tight, with Blue and her yellow Leopard finishing just five points ahead of Pine who took a solid second. On reflection, the difference was Blue’s effective use of Diagonal Tower tiles which allowed her to double score a lot of her animals. Interestingly, the most recent edition of Spielbox had had a review of Habitats and they had been decidedly unimpressed. While we agreed that it was quite a light game and certainly wasn’t long, the over-riding view was positive and Burgundy, summed it up when he commented, “Quite liked that”.

– Image by BGG contributor styren

The Voyages of Marco Polo was still underway on the next table, so the group decided there was time for something else. Pink had wanted to play Cottage Garden at the last Didcot Games Club meeting, but the number of players had been all wrong, so he had played it with Blue over the weekend. Since it was fresh in her memory, there was a good chance of getting the rules right. In any case, like Habitats, it is a fairly light tile-laying game, basically the boardgame equivalent of Tetris. Cottage Garden is similar to the earlier, two-player game, Patchwork, but with a slightly different front-end and scoring mechanism. The idea is that at on their turn, the active player chooses a tile from the appropriate row of the square “market garden”, and add it to one of their two flower beds. If they have completed one or both of their flower beds by the end of their turn, then they are scored.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Scoring is a little unusual: each flower bed (and some flower tiles) feature plant pots and cloches these are scored separately using players personal score tracks. Each track ends at twenty and each player has three cubes they can use for scoring. Placing tiles is facilitated by pussy-cats; each player starts with two sleeping moggy tiles which they can place at any point on their turn to fill up odd spaces and keep the game moving. The “market garden” is really quite interesting, though with four it can feel a little random. The gardener moves round the board so that players choose tiles from successive rows, the idea being that players try to take a tile and plan what they might get next time. This planning is quite difficult with four though as there is a high chance that a player’s next tile will have to be taken from a row diagonal or orthogonal to their previous one which means it is highly likely that someone will have taken what they want. So, for the most part, the game is quite simple, with a lot of depth. However, the final round is a little more tricky and jars a bit.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

To ensure that anyone who has just started new flower beds doesn’t have a large advantage (due to the number of extra moves they would otherwise get), any beds with two flower tiles or fewer is discarded, and from the start of the final round players painfully lose two points per turn until they finish their final bed. Again, Pine made the early running picking up two bonus beehive points for being the first player to get one of his markers to twenty points. Blue wasn’t far behind though and just pipped Purple and Burgundy to the other beehive bonus. One of the really nice things about this game is its rendition and we all had a good time playing with the little wheelbarrow. Although Purple had played Patchwork quite a bit, spacial awareness is not really her thing and she and Burgundy struggled a little. Blue on the other hand, works a lot with symmetry and with the extra experience she soon began to catch Pine and by the end of the game had pushed him into second place.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

The most recent edition of Spielbox had also included a review Cottage Garden which had received similar treatment to Habitats. Although we enjoyed the latter more, weconcluded that Cottage Garden wasn’t a bad game, but the penultimate round dragged a little and the final round felt a bit odd. There’s also no development of the game over it’s duration, i.e. each player is just trying to fill as many beds as possible doing the same thing over and over again, which can make it feel a little repetitive. That said, Blue felt she had enjoyed it more as a two-player game over the weekend as there is more scope for planning, so it is possible that four is too many players. Indeed, nearly 70% of voters on Boardgamegeek are of the opinion that the game is best with three, and that could be a fair conclusion.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

With The Voyages of Marco Polo coming to an end as well and lots of people quite tired, there was just time for Blue to have another go at beating Burgundy at Splendor. This has become and almost fortnightly grudge match, with Burgundy proving to be almost impregnable. This simple set collecting, engine builder is often derided as boring and trivial, yet it is the simplicity coupled with the subtitles that seem to make it so compelling. As is so often the way, Blue started off OK, but this time very quickly fell behind. Burgundy quickly picked up a noble, and although Blue took one as well, and had plans for picking up points, the writing was on the wall long before Burgundy took the third noble and announced he had fifteen points. Blue will have to bring her A-game if she is ever to beat her “Splendid Nemesis”.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Learning outcome: Spielbox isn’t always right.

Boardgames in the News: Mayfair Games – Is there a Future without Catan?

Mayfair Games began in 1981 as a small US games company based in Illinois. One of their first games was Empire Builder, their first and now the flagship of their “crayon-rails” series of games where players, using washable crayons, draw their train routes over a map of North America. Building on this success, Mayfair then went on to play a pivotal role in bringing Euro games to the US and wider English speaking markets.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Billythehut

In 1996, Mayfair Games picked up the license to produce an English edition of Die Siedler von Catan, The Settlers of Catan (now known simply as “Catan”). With the huge success of the game world-wide, over the next twenty years, Mayfair brought out multiple new editions of the base game modernising and updating it, English editions of all the expansions, variants and spin-offs. Mayfair (with Kosmos) were also behind the release of Star Trek: Catan in 2012, the first Catan game with a licensed theme. For many, Mayfair Games has become synonymous with Catan, in the English speaking world in any case. As such, the news yesterday that Asmodee has acquired the rights to produce the English language version of everything “Catan”, has left a lot of people wondering where that now leaves Mayfair Games.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

With the shear quantity and popularity of the Catan games it was inevitable that Catan would dominate the catalogue of Mayfair, but is this the beginning of the end for Mayfair Games? Well, it’s true that no company can take such a major amputation and come out unscathed, so the loss of this part of their portfolio has inevitably led to major restructuring. The former CEO of Mayfair, Pete Fenlon left to become the CEO of the new Asmodee owned “Catan Studio” taking a bunch of other people with him including the Director of Marketing,. This left a hole that will be filled by a the current President, Larry Roznai; the head of Acquisition & Development, Alex Yeager; and a lot of chair shuffling. Aside from that, shareholders received healthy payouts and there’s been a major contraction in the size of the company, to something similar to where it was in 2007-2008.

– Image by boardGOATS

It may be that the fact that Asmodee only took the rights to the Catan empire rather than buying the company out wholesale is indicative, and could be viewed as asset-stripping. In which case, there is probably little hope for what remains of Mayfair Games. If the whole-sale purchase scenario had played out, it is almost certain that the rest of the Mayfair catalogue would have been shelved and the company would have de facto become “Studio Catan” by another name. The fact that this has not come to pass suggests that the personnel remaining believe there is more to the Mayfair than just “Catan”.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Zoroastro

So, what is Mayfair left with? Well, there are a hundred odd games currently produced by Mayfair including some of the popular 18xx series, Martin Wallace’s Steam, the massive Caverna: The Cave Farmers and Nuns on the Run. In 2013 Mayfair also acquired a controlling interest in the German company, Lookout Games, who historically have produced some fantastic games (including Agricola). This partnership has already produced Grand Austria Hotel; Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King; and Patchwork. This suggests that where the “Old Mayfair” had stagnated a little, becoming somewhat dependent on the Catan franchise, the New Mayfair might be forced to change direction for the better, forming a leaner, more innovative company producing exciting new games. Perhaps the future is not so bleak for Mayfair after all, but only time will really tell.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Spiel des Jahres Nominations – 2015

Each year a jury of German-speaking board game critics (from Germany, Austria, Switzerland), review all the games released in Germany in the preceding twelve months. Their job is a really important one amongst gamers, because they award the coveted Spiel des Jahres, the German Game of the Year. There are also other awards including the Kinderspiel and Kennerspiel des Jahres (Childrens’ and Connoisseurs’ Games of the Year). These awards are highly lucrative for the winners as many German families look for the red logo when choosing games to buy at Christmas.

– Image from spieldesjahres.de

The criteria used by the judges include:

game concept (originality, playability, game value),
design (functionality, workmanship),
layout (box, board, rules),
rule structure (composition, clearness, comprehensibility).

The announcement of the Spiel and Kennerspiel des Jahres awards will be made early in July. Last year, the winner was Camel Up with Splendor as runner-up and Istanbul taking the Kennerspiel des Jahres award. The nominees for this year have just been announced and this year, unusually, we haven’t played any of them in the group yet. However, one of our more popular two-player games, Patchwork was included as a recommended game and we are planning to play one of the nominees, Machi Koro, this week.

10th March 2015

Since Blue was late ordering her pizza we were late starting our first game. It was a relatively quiet evening, but we began splitting into two groups, the first of which played the “Feature Game”, Dominion. This is a card drafting game where the players are monarchs, ruling a small pleasant kingdom of rivers and evergreens trying to build a bigger and more pleasant kingdom, with more rivers and a wider variety of trees – a Dominion in fact.

– Image by BGG contributor Filippos

Basically, each player starts with an identical, very small deck of cards from which they draw a hand of five. On their turn, players do three things: play an action card, buy cards, then discard any cards they have left and draw an new hand of five cards. The aim of the game is to have the most points at the end. Experience is clearly a big advantage, as the balance of the deck is critical to a player’s success. It was no surprise, therefore, that Burgundy and Green were fighting it out for first place. Green squeaked in ahead having picked up a lot of duchy cards in the last few rounds.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor garyjames

Meanwhile, Purple and Black played Patchwork. This is a cute little two-player game that was first played on a Tuesday in January. The idea is that players compete to build the most aesthetic (and high-scoring) patchwork quilt, buying Tetris-like patches with buttons. The last time Black won, so Purple was hoping to redress the balance, but sadly, it was not to be.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor greetingsfrombergen

Both games finished pretty much simultaneously, leaving us with the decision: play one six player game, or two three player games. There was only one real six player option and that was Keyflower. Green offered the decision to Grey who, much to Blue’s obvious delight, opted for the large group game. We’ve played Keyflower an awful lot (especially considering it is one of the heavier games that we play), but only once with the full six players. On that occasion, Blue had managed to squander a winning position when she misjudged Green’s strength – something she was determined not to do again.

– Image by boardGOATS

Winter tiles were handed out and Green announced that he was just going to play what came up rather than play to a strategy. Everyone else said that that was what they always did because there was always someone else who broke any strategy they had. And that is pretty much exactly what happened to most players this time too. Grey went for the Green Keyples in a big way and Black went for tiles. Purple tried to control the game with the start meeple while Burgundy ended up with a glut of yellow Keyples so decided to try to do something useful with them by turning them into more Keyples. Green meanwhile was struggling to do anything and Blue, who was the only person with any supply of iron, managed to pick up the Blacksmith to go with it and quietly began producing iron and moving it onto the Blacksmith tile.

– Image by boardGOATS

As we moved into winter, everyone was so mesmerised by Grey who managed to completely exhaust the supply of green Keyples and Burgundy who was amassing a huge number of points, that nobody spotted Blue and her Blacksmith or Black and his tile collecting. Eventually, Burgundy stopped pulling Keyples out of the bag and we moved into scoring, and it turned out to be a surprisingly close game. Blue’s iron meant she finished six points clear of Burgundy who took second place with Black and Grey close behind.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor ilogico

Learning Outcome: If you usually win, don’t be surprised if you lose when you change the way you play.

27th January 2015

We started off with our “Feature Game”, which was the card game, Saboteur. We’ve played it a few times before, but basically the idea is that the group is split into two teams: Dwarves and Saboteurs. The aim of the game for the Dwarves is to lay cards forming a tunnel that leads to the gold, whereas the Saboteurs job is to stop them. So players take it in turns to play cards. These cards could be tunnel cards, which are added to the play area and, although they generally extend the tunnel, there are also dead-ends which can be used by Saboteurs to upset the Good Little Dwarves’ plans. Alternatively, there are action cards, which come in several types. There are broken tool cards, which allow players to prevent other players from laying path cards (useful if you suspect there is a Saboteur about); mended tools which are used to repair broken tools (useful when a Saboteur has been trying to slow everyone down by smashing up their tools); map cards (useful when a nasty Saboteur has been misleading everyone telling them the gold is in the wrong place), and rock-fall cards which can be used to remove tunnel cards (useful when an evil Saboteur has been causing havoc). The round ends when the draw deck is depleted and gold cards are allocated to the winning side.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mikehulsebus

As people arrived, Blue explained the game to the people unfamiliar with it and pointed out that, despite his protestations, Green was always a Saboteur. At which point, in walked Green, commenting, “Whatever Blue may have said, I’m NOT always the Saboteur…!” Needless to say, it quickly became apparent that Green was very definitely a Saboteur, but despite his best efforts (assisted by Yellow and Cerise), the dwarves found the gold, though it was pretty close at the end, coming down to the last few cards. The second round was under-way with Burgundy indicating that the central target card was gold (a fact disputed by Grey) when Black and Purple arrived. Since they’d missed the start they began a game of Patchwork. This is a recently released two-player game where players compete to build the most aesthetic (and high-scoring) patchwork quilt, buying Tetris-like patches with buttons. The patches are laid out in a circle round the central time board, with a cotton reel marking the start. On their turn players can purchase one of the three patches immediately following the cotton reel; they then pay the cost in buttons shown on the patch, and then add it to their personal “quilt board”. In addition to the cost in buttons, the player must also advance their time token on the central time track: if the active player’s time token is behind or on top of the other player’s time token, then they take another turn, otherwise play passes to the opponent.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Percatron

Instead of purchasing a patch, players can also pass, in which case, they move their time token to the space immediately in front of their opponent’s time token and take one button from the bank for each space moved. Players can place their patches anywhere on their quilt so long as it doesn’t overlap any other patches. This is not the only way to get buttons; in addition to a button cost and a time cost, each patch also features 0-3 buttons. When a player moves their time token past a button marker on the time track, they sum the number of buttons on their quilt and get this number of buttons from the bank. The game ends when both players are in the centre of the time track. Each player then loses two buttons for each blank square on his game board and whoever has the most buttons wins.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor
greetingsfrombergen

Meanwhile, on the first table, the second and final (third) round of Saboteur had both finished with the Saboteurs making almost no impact on Dwarves’ ability to find the gold. When the teams are drawn, there is always one card more than there are players, so one card is always left out. The idea is that this introduces an element of ambiguity, however, we felt that this also unbalanced the teams. For example, with eight players, the teams go from five Dwarves and three Saboteurs to six Dwarves and two Saboteurs, making it almost impossible for even a vaguely competent team of Dwarves to lose. We discussed the options including whether it would be better to have a set-up phase where the everyone closes their eyes and the Saboteurs open them and look at each other (similar to Werewolf or The Resistance), but we felt this would give a large team of Saboteurs too much power. In the end, we decided it would be better to remove the spare card and ensure there was the maximum number of Saboteurs. Since Black and Purple were still going, we decided to play one extra round. This worked much better, and thanks to a horrid distribution of cards for the Dwarves and some brilliant play by the team of Saboteurs led by Burgundy, there was nothing the Dwarves could do. It was fitting therefore, that Burgundy finished one gold ahead of his closest competition. On reflection, we decided there were definitely a couple of House Rules we would implement next time we play. Firstly, we would remove the extra card when allocating players to teams, this definitely seemed to create a much more balanced game. Secondly, we would probably also play several separate rounds and not worry about allocating gold at the end of the game. This way, we could play one or two rounds and stop when the game had outstayed its welcome, rather than feeling that we should play to the end.

– Image by BGG contributor ckhiew

Patchwork was also coming to a close; scores there were quite close until the final scoring, when it turned out that Purple had more “gaps” in her quilt which lost her more points, leaving Black to take the victory. With both games finishing we had a slight shuffling of seats, with the first group playing Mascarade. This is a “micro” game, albeit with big cards. The idea is that each player begins the game with a character card, but after a brief spell with them face up, everyone turns them face down and that’s the way they remain for the rest of the game. So, the game is all about deducing which player everyone is, while trying to collect enough money to win the game.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

After some initial trading, on their turn, each player can do one of three things. Firstly, the active player can declare that they are a particular character, say, The King. If nobody objects they can then carry out the action associated with The King, unmolested (in this case, take three coins). On the other hand, another player may protest and claim that they are actually The King, in which case all players claiming to be The King must show their cards and whoever is correct, gets to take three coins from the bank, and all the others pay a fine of one gold coin. A player’s second option is to “swap” their card with that of another player; since the actual exchange is done under the table, it is possible that there is no swap at all, and only the active player will know either way (or not, since everyone always seems to immediately forget which card is which). The final option a player has, if all is complete confusion, is to look at their own card.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

It always takes a little while to get the hang of the characters in play, and with people unfamiliar with the game, it was slow to get going. Orange was happy to be The Queen and collect her two gold each round, as did The King. After a couple of turns, however, Red realised the power of The Witch and swapped her somewhat diminished fortune with that of Blue, who, as The King had managed to build a reasonably sized pile. Meanwhile, the fines had built up and then the Judge became of interest and suddenly, the game clicked with everyone around the table, and people tried to manipulate the card they got and call others on their declarations. Gradually, some of the piles started to get perilously close to the magic thirteen coins, especially since The Cheat was in play (if declared correctly, that player needs only to have ten coins to win). The game finished somewhat abruptly, when Red declared that she was The Bishop and, as everyone knew she was right, there was nothing we could do. And then it was home time for some.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor pan_satyros
and pelnapara.znadplanszy.pl

Meanwhile, the second game was still going. They were playing Colors of Kasane, one of our “Essen Specials”, but one we’ve not got round to playing until now. It is a Japon Brand game, and they have a bit of a reputation for creating little, yet interesting games: as Black commented, “They have a different way of thinking.” They also have a bit of a reputation for rules that are difficult to understand; even when they seem clear, it often turns out that they aren’t, and we’ve fallen foul of this one before, most noticeably with Secret Moon (the sequel to Love Letter). Colours of Kasane was no exception in this regard which may go some way to explaining why its taken so long to play it!

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Nevertheless, the game itself is reasonably simple and beautifully rendered with pretty little Japanese fabric buttons used as player markers, reflecting the theme of a festival held at the Emperor’s court for which the players must make their own beautiful robe. The game play is a mix of hand management and set collection. The idea is that players take one card from the four available, and then, from their hand the active player may lay cards. However, the cards can never be rearranged (similar to Bohnanza) and sets can only be laid from the most recent end (i.e. a “last in, first out” system) and may also include the last card laid. Any cards laid must meet the requirements shown on one of the target cards, which also indicate the amount scored: the more challenging the target, the more it is worth. These target or scoring cards allow players to place of groups of even numbered cards, groups of odd numbered cards, melds with the same number, ascending or descending sets of cards, cards summing to ten etc. etc.. The key thing is that once a specific combination has been played, a glass bead is placed on it and no other player can score it. This means it becomes increasingly difficult to play cards and score points, worse, someone else might claim something you have been building towards and render all the hard-work useless. This is one way that players can mess with each-other’s plans, another is when picking up cards: cards are laid out in columns so that players can see all the cards, but only the card at the bottom of each column is available to take. Since the cards laid must necessarily include the card just picked up, a player’s plans can easily be blown out of the water by an opponent who watches carefully. The winner is the player with the most points, with bonuses awarded for players who succeed in playing more than eight cards and either used a lot of different colours or who colour coordinated their “robe” and also for any players who managed to play all twelve of their cards.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

The game began with everyone groping their way through the the first round trying to get an idea of how the game played and how players and cards interacted and what strategies should be employed. By the time Blue joined to sneeze and spectate, it was clear that all the best plans had gone horribly awry. Black, who had brought the game and taught everyone the rules, was struggling, but he was not alone in that. Green and Purple were also finding other players obstructing their plans, and even Burgundy (the eventual winner) was having difficulty placing the cards he wanted. The challenges posed by the game were reflected in the fact that nobody got the bonus for playing all twelve cards: definitely a game that requires a second try.

– Image by BGG contributor matador

We finished with Istanbul, a game we’ve played a couple of times recently, so didn’t require too much in the way of rule revision. Since Burgundy was the only person who had not played it before and everyone else had previously played it with the “short track layout”, this time we used the “large number layout”. This puts all the Warehouses together and a long way from the Mosques, and puts the money making a long way from the Wainwright. Black started and went straight to the Post Office before expanding his cart with a trip to the Wainwright. Purple also made several visits to the Post Office, coupled with a few trips to the Warehouses while Burgundy and Blue attempted to improve their success rates with visits to the Mosques. Green on the other hand, paid several trips to the Caravansary to collect bonus cards in the hope that a few of these would help him out later on. It is unquestionably a more interesting game with five players and useful things further apart, but that didn’t stop Black delivering the rest of us a sound thrashing. All of a sudden, he ended the game as he collected his fifth gem when nobody else had more than two. On inspection, other players were closer than it seemed: Green collected his third gem on his final turn, Burgundy had loads of Lira and everyone else was well on the way to getting everything they needed, however, they needed several more turns to do it.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor duchamp

Learning Outcome: It’s true, Green always IS a Saboteur!