Tag Archives: PitchCar Extension

31st December 2022

Pine was the first to arrive and, as a result, was landed with the task of setting up the “Feature Game”, the gorgeous, dexterity car-racing game, PitchCar. Black, Purple and Lemon arrived soon after to give him a hand, while Pink got drinks and Blue carried on messing about in the kitchen. Once an annual event, there has been a bit of a hiatus in the New Year PitchCar game over the last couple of years, and it turned out the lack of practice meant everyone had forgotten how to set up the bridge from the first extension. Blue was summoned from the kitchen to explain, and then the track-builders continued their construction work.

– Image by boardGOATS

Aside from the bridge and a few chicanes, the track was kept to a simple figure-of-eight, eschewing the multi-level tracks, jumps, potholes, crossroads and loop of the more recent extensions. Before long, the track was complete, and then Lime arrived. Starting order was decided by arrival time, so the first to flick-off was Pine. The game is very simple: starting with the car at the front of the pack, players take it in turns to flick (not push) their puck along the track. Cars can jump as long as they don’t cut corners, land on the track “rubber-side down”, and don’t knock anyone else off the track in the process.

– Image by boardGOATS

There were the usual ooos, ahhhhs, howls of delight, and cheers, as there were near misses, total misses, bumps and amazing somersaults. First to cross the line was Lime after some amazingly spectacular long distance flicks, followed by Pink and then Lemon taking a podium spot on her debut. Before we started, Pine had commented that he wondered how his skills would have deteriorated over the three years since we’d last played, so he was initially surprised to find that he’d improved. That feeling didn’t last however, as he eventually followed everyone else over the line.

– Image by boardGOATS

Supper wasn’t quite ready, so Pink suggested a shortened course running the length of the table, replacing one of the straights with a second finishing line and ignoring the return under the bridge. This time, pole was decided as the reverse order that players crossed the line in the first race, so Pine went first. Unfortunately, he repeatedly rolled his car going over the bridge and it took some dozen or more attempts to cross it. With the shortened course, he didn’t have time to make his way back up the field (indeed the race was over before he crossed the bridge), though he did improve his final position slightly compared to the first race.

– Image by boardGOATS

With the short course, it was always likely to come down to who got a good start and made it over the bridge first. Black got a storming start and led the field down the track before running out of gas as he approached the chequered flag. That was OK though, as Lemon rear-ended him at speed and shot him across the line. Lemon followed him onto the podium with Pink taking bronze. With that, supper was pretty much ready, so it was all hands to the deck to dismantle the track in time for the arrival of home-made pie with veg.

– Image by boardGOATS

There was much chatter over supper, then, while everyone else pondered what game to play, Lime gave Pink a hand with the washing-up. Eventually, Pine went upstairs and returned with Las Vegas and a panda, and with only snacks remaining on the table, he began setting up while Blue and Black explained the game to Lemon. This is an old favourite that we’ve not played for a long time. It truth, it is a simple enough game, albeit one that is quite clever. The idea is that each player bets in the six numbered casinos using their dice.

– Image by boardGOATS

On their turn, each player rolls all their dice and must choose a number and place all the dice with that face value in the casino of that number. The player with the most dice in that casino at the end of the round wins the money. There are a couple of catches, however. Firstly, all the dice of the chosen number must be placed, even if this is not to the player’s advantage. Secondly, and this is why the first catch is so critical, if two players tie, neither gets any money and the winner is the next inline (who is not involved in a tie).

– Image by boardGOATS

Finally, at the start of each round, money cards are dealt at random to each casino giving them a set value; the winner only takes one of these with the others going to the players in the lower placings. This means that some casinos might have several small denomination cards up for grabs, while others might have only one high value card to fight over. The combination of these features make this a great little game. We also tend to add some components from the Boulevard expansion. There are lots of modules, but we usually only use “The Bigun”, the extra high value money cards, The Slot Machine, and extra dice for additional players.

– Image by boardGOATS

“The Biggun” replaces one die for each player with a bigger one that is worth two smaller dice. The Slot Machine is a bit different though. Like the casinos, players can add dice on several turns, however, unlike the casinos, each number can only be added to the Slot Machine once. Then, although the winner is still the player with the most dice, ties are broken by the number of pips on all the dice placed. The game is played over three rounds and the wealthiest player at the end of the game is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

Black went first and started the dice rolling fest. Everyone took some money in the first round, but the beginnings of the rivalries began, between Purple and Pine, between Pine and Lime and between Lime and Purple. The second round was filled with high-value cards which entrenched the rivalries and ensured a few new ones were started with Pink, Black and Blue encouraging everyone else’s misbehaviour leaving Lime coming out of the second round without any winnings.

– Image by boardGOATS

After a brief sojourn to view the midnight fireworks in the village and to toast absent friends and the New Year, we started the final round. This was very cut-throat: Blue and Pine got into a very silly battle for the Four casino which Blue was winning with seven dice until the final roll by Pine which gave a tie knocking them both out leaving $100,000 to Lime with his lone die. If Pine had won, that would have given him victory, but as it was, it was close between Black and Pink, with Pink taking victory by $10,000 with his total of $340,000.

– Image by boardGOATS

By this time it was 1am, and although everyone was tired, people lingered, first to talk about the robustness of Ikea furniture and then the status of the Jockey. With Monday being the last day for the current Managers/Chefs it is unclear what the situation will be in ten days time when we are next due to meet. We talked over other options, but all that really did was highlight how lucky we have been with The Jockey. And with that, everyone drifted home leaving Blue and Pink to find their beds.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Parties are great fun.

31st December 2019

Burgundy was the first to arrive and he was quickly joined by Purple, Black and Lime. As the first to arrive, together, they began to set up the “Feature Game“, the now traditional, car-racing game, PitchCar. When Pine joined the party, discussion turned to the “Monster Games” session which featured Bus, Ecos: First Continent and the very silly Happy Salmon, all of which had been very enjoyable in their own way and most of which will come out again soon. Before long, an exciting-looking racing track was set up around an obstacle course of snacks and drinks.

– Image by boardGOATS

As we’ve done a few times recently, instead of a circuit, we set up a single section track with separate start and finish lines. This year we included the new Loop (which got it’s first outing at Pink’s sPecial Party in October) and Upsilon expansions as well as the bridge from the first expansion. As usual, much fun was had by all concerned, especially with the new challenge that the Loop added. There is clearly a knack with this: it is essential to hit the puck hard and in the middle, but some have the skill naturally, while others apparently just don’t. Lime is one who clearly does, and as a result, his car traveled the furthest in the “flick-off”, so started at the front of the grid and finished way out in front too.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine, Pink and Purple, clearly don’t have the knack, and we never really found out about Burgundy either, as someone helped him largely avoid it, resulting in him to taking second place. Elsewhere, having successfully escaped from the Loop, Black shot round the chicane and made the bridge look easy, inspiring Pink to comment that we always used to get stuck at the bridge, but now we have the Loop, the bridge is easy! That said, stopping over the line without falling off the end of the track proved to be quite challenging. So much so, that after half a dozen mini-flicks, Black was in danger of getting caught by Pine, who eventually made it round in fourth place.

– Image by boardGOATS

That just left Pink and Purple, taking it in turns to try to get round the Loop. Eventually, Purple hit the sweet spot and started off towards the finish. Unfortunately, after a superb single shot that took her round the ring, she ended up pointing in the wrong direction and tried to go round the Loop backwards. Pink meanwhile was still stuck and thanks to the way the track looped back on itself creating an intersection, managed to very effectively obstruct Purple in her quest to get to the end.

– Image by boardGOATS

As Purple’s and Pine’s antics entertained, everyone else consumed crudites, Devils on horsebacks, stuffed mini peppers, and large quantities of pigs in blankets (Lime commented that he now knew why JD Wetherspoon had a shortage). When Purple and Pink finally crossed the line, it was time for supper – spicy vegetable chili, beef chili, rice and corn on the cob. As people finished dinner we realised we’d forgotten the crackers and Christmas pressies. Unusually, this year there was desert too, so Black was given a special rolling-pin shaped knife to “cut” it, leaving everyone to wonder, before Pink delivered a Christmas pudding-shaped chocolate piñata.

– Image by boardGOATS

The “Pud” resisted all Black’s initial blows, until he decided a side-swipe might have more effect. Eventually a dent became a crack and the crack became a hole revealing the sweets inside. As everyone picked at the chocolate, we decided to start another game, Ca$h ‘n Guns, because there’s nothing better at Christmas than pointing foam guns at each other. This is a very simple, but very fun party game where players are gangsters dividing up their loot by a sort of controlled Russian Roulette.

– Image by boardGOATS

Each player starts the round by loading their gun with one bullet from their deck of eight bullet cards, or “clip”. Each bullet can be used only once during the game, and three are live, while the other five are blanks. Once everyone has chosen their bullet card, the Godfather counts to three and everyone points their weapon at someone. The Godfather can then use his privilege to ask one player to point their gun away from him (there was some discussion as to whether a real gangster would use “please”), then there is a second count of three. This time, players can back out, which means they won’t get shot, but they also won’t get any loot.

– Image by boardGOATS

All the remaining players then reveal their bullet cards and anyone who is shot picks up a plaster and also won’t get any loot at the end of the round. This leaves a hard-core of gangsters to take it in turns to collect cards from the loot pool that was revealed at the start of the round. In each round, all the loot cards are taken, so when it is a particularly brutal round, players can take several cards. The loot includes diamonds, artworks and cash, as well as the occasional medipack or additional bullet and the opportunity to become the Godfather. Unusually, this final option was taken several times so the Godfather changed hands quite frequently, with Burgundy, Pink, Lime, Blue, and Pine all taking the role at some point.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue was Boris, so Pink suggested that she should be the target. This is fairly usual in this game, so Blue rarely wins. However, it seems people didn’t like being told what to do by Pink, even if he was the Godfather, so remarkably, she survived the first round. After a couple more rounds she’d still only picked up one plaster, while Pine, had acquired two so a third would put him out of the game. As he had pointed out at the start, an injury tends to make you a target, but somehow, Pine managed to get himself a medipack. Burgundy and Purple, however, were not so lucky and bought it in round six.

– Image by boardGOATS

Going into the final round, Black commented on how many painting cards Blue had picked up—the first is worth $4,000, but these score an ever increasing amount so a player with ten scores $500,000. At that point, Blue didn’t feel she had enough, but as Pine’s final bullet proved to be a blank, she was able to stay in for the final round and pick up a couple more. It surprised even her when she counted up and found she had seven paintings giving a total of $250,000 when her cash was added in. Black took the $60,000 bonus for the most diamonds and with it, second place with $133,000, and not a scratch, just ahead of Pink ($110,000) who was also unharmed.

– Image by boardGOATS

With midnight fast approaching, we replaced the guns with glasses to toast the New Year and watch the fireworks (in both London and the village). And then we had the very important decision to make: what to play for the first game of 2020. In the end, we decided to go for our old favourite, 6 Nimmt!. Everyone knows how to play this by now: players simultaneously choose a card from their hand and then, starting with the player that revealed the lowest value card, players add their cards to one of the four rows. The player who adds the sixth card to a row, instead takes the first five into his scoring pile, where the number of bulls’ heads indicates the score. The winner is the player with the fewest “nimmts”.

– Image by boardGOATS

We played with our usual variant where a game takes two rounds, each played with one half of the deck. In the first round, Pine top-scored with twenty-two closely followed by Lime with eighteen, while Pink kept a clean sheet and Purple remarkably (especially for her), had only the one card with just a single “nimmt”. So, going into the second half, it was all to play for. As is usually the case, those that do well in the first round typically do badly in the second. That was exactly the way it panned out for Pink who picked up the most “nimmts” in the second round with twenty-five, almost catching up with Pine and Lime. Purple, however, managed to buck the trend, and pulled out a clear round giving her a final total of just one and with it, clear victory—the first of the new year.

– Image by boardGOATS

Lime suggested a second game, and as the only other game being suggested was Bohnanza, apathy from everyone else meant we played 6 Nimmt! again. Again, Pink ended the first round with “zip”, followed by Black and Burgundy with five; again Pine had the highest score of twenty-four. Also again, Pink failed in the second round, taking more than anyone else and finishing with a total of twenty. Blue managed a zero in the second round, but had picked up too many points in the first to do better than second place. It was consistency that won the game though, and Burgundy, the only one to say in single figures for both rounds, finished with thirteen and took first place.

– Image by boardGOATS

By this time was well gone 1am, and there was some chatter before Lime decided that it was past his bedtime and left everyone else to it. With six, there were slightly more options, and when Pink appeared with For Sale, nobody objected. This is an older game, that we haven’t played in the group since it was the “Feature Game” nearly seven years ago, but it is a bit of an “ever-green” game that still pops up on recommendation lists from time to time.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is very simple: players buy properties in the first part of the game and then sell them in the second half, and the player who has the most money at the end wins. Buying properties is through auction. Players start with $14,000 to last the whole game and take it in turns to bid for one of the property cards available on the table. These have a nominal rating of one to thirty with fantastic pictures that reflect their value. In each round, the bidding is continuous with players either increasing the bid by at least $1,000 or passing. When a player passes, they take the lowest value property card and pay half their bid. Thus, the winning player gets the highest value card, but has to pay the full amount bid.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the second part of the game, cheque cards with a value of $2,000 to $15,000 (or void) are revealed and players simultaneously select a card to play and then reveal. The property card with the lowest numerical value takes the cheque with the smallest value. This time, the property cards came out in bunches so it was mostly a case of players trying to avoid getting the real rubbish, and some inevitably failing. It was such a long time since we had played the game, that it took a couple of rounds for players to really get the feel of valuing the properties and the best way to bid, by which time, in some cases, the damage had already been done.

– Image by boardGOATS

It also took a round or two to get the hang of selling properties as we weren’t sure exactly how the money on the cheques was distributed. In addition, the cheques came out with low values first, then high values and finally, both voids in the last round. This meant that although Blue took the maximum return for her Space Station, she didn’t take out any of the other high value buildings. It also meant that Burgundy and Pink got saddled with the voids in the final round.

– Image by boardGOATS

Despite this, it was a very close game. In the final accounting, Black won with a total of $50,000, just ahead of Burgundy in second with $47,000, the void possibly making all the difference. By this time, it was gone 2am and although nobody was keen to leave, it was definitely pumpkin-o’clock. So everyone headed home to bed for the first time in 2020.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Thick chocolate is surprisingly hard to break.

31st December 2018

The evening began with Pine’s arrival, and he helped Pink rearrange the furniture for PitchCar while Blue added the finishing touches to supper. PitchCar is a brilliantly simple, dexterity car racing game—players take it in turns to flick their wooden cars, and the first one to get round the track three times is the winner. Before long Burgundy, Purple and Black had arrived and pieces from the base game and five of the first six expansions were all over the place and everyone was diving in trying to make an interesting looking track. There was a problem though, the problem we always have, which is a shortage of straight sections. It was then that Blue produced another expansion from under the sofa: the “Long Straights“. These are exactly what they sound like, two, very long, plank-like, straight sections that are a pain to store and difficult to transport, so rarely get used. They have the potential to add a very fast section to the track though, so this time we used both with a tight hairpin in between them to add interest.

– Image by boardGOATS

Like last year, instead of making a circuit, we made a single long race track weaving around plates of crudites, mugs of tea, and trays of “pigs in blankets”. There was a big debate whether to use The Cross as a cross-roads or back-to-back corners. In the end, the double corners won, the track was complete and we had a push off to see who would start at the front of the grid. Black won with a magnificent flick, followed closely by Purple. Blue stalled on the grid and the only one to come off worst was Burgundy who came off the track and defaulted to the back of the grid. The race began: Black and Purple continued strongly and everyone else shuffled about in the middle order with Burgundy bringing up the rear. Then Burgundy adjusted is driving style slightly and gradually began to work his way through the field. Meanwhile the wheels dropped off for Purple who had briefly taken the lead, but suddenly seemed to lose the knack of flicking, and gradually, the rest of the pack overtook her one by one.

– Image by boardGOATS

Almost everyone had trouble going over the bridge, but particularly Blue, Pink and Purple. Eventually they made it over though and shot down the rail to the hairpin some failed to make the corner, but the long straights added a bit of speed and excitement. The tunnel ended up being a relay race with Black getting stuck under the bridge, only to be pushed out by Blue, who in turn also got stuck and was freed by Pink. Similarly, he was freed by Burgundy and Burgundy was liberated by Pine. And that order was maintained all the way to the finishing line, despite Blue needing several shots at crossing it without overshooting. Green and his lady-friend, Lilac, had been held up though were expected any second; food wasn’t quite ready either so we ran the race in reverse starting with Purple, the last player to cross the line in the first race.

– Image by boardGOATS

Inevitably, we’d only just started when Green and Lilac arrived, so they just joined in. In fact by this time, Blue had actually managed to go backwards and was further behind the line than others were in front of it. With the larger pack, this time round the race was even more eventful with Black managing to park his car in a plate of crudites just missing a bowl of salsa and Pink repeatedly bouncing off the edge of the mouth of the tunnel obstructing everyone else behind him. Bizarrely, although the tunnel caused mayhem, the bridge was much less of a problem this time though with Pine leading the way by deftly bunny-hopping over it and almost everyone else just following his example. Leading over the bridge was a huge advantage, and though Blue threatened to catch him, he maintained his position to the finish. With food ready and waiting, the track was progressively dismantled as those bringing up the rear made their way to the finish line. Although it only gets an outing two or three times a year, PitchCar is always great fun and the seventh expansion, “The Loop” which is due in the new year, looks like it will add even more madness to the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

With PitchCar over and the track in a heap in the corner, food swiftly appeared in the guise of enchiladas with corn on the cob, nachos and some strange yellow, habanero salsa that reminded Pine of wallpaper paste. Supper was accompanied by more special crackers, little parcels, Herb Alpert and the Tujuana Brass, and finished with ice cream, and then it was on with the games; after a little debate first up was Ca$h ‘n Guns. This is push your luck game with a gangster theme played over a series of eight multi-player duels over their ill-gotten spoils. The player with the largest haul after eight rounds is the winner, as long as they are still alive of course. Each player has a character standee, a foam gun, and a clip of three bullet cards and eight blank cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the start of each round, everyone simultaneously chooses a whether to “load” their gun with a bullet or a blank, and on the count of three, points it at one of the other players. On a second count of three, they choose whether to remain in, or withdraw taking their shot with them. Anyone whose target is still standing reveals whether their gun was loaded with a live bullet or a blank. Anyone who received a shot takes a plaster signifying their wound and is out of the rest of the round; three wounds and they are eliminated from the game. All players remaining then take it in turns to take a loot card from the centre of the table—there are eight cards, so the number of cards each player gets depends on how many players have survived the “duel”.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game can be quite brutal, and this was no exception, indeed, Black was out in the second round and Green quickly followed. Pine pointed out that everyone on his side of the table had been injured while Blue, Pink and Burgundy were all uninjured. Purple decided to fix that and faced off with Burgundy, both ending up injured as a result. Lilac proved a dangerous adversary as she collected extra bullets from the loot and ended up with a full set going into the final rounds. Blue injured Burgundy and coped a bullet in return. After Black’s and Green’s dismissal, everyone was more circumspect and didn’t gamble as readily with their lives, so all the other players survived to the end of the game. That just left the small matter of the scores.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine and Purple had both been collecting gems, but had finished up with the same number so neither picked up the $60,000 bonus for having the most. Blue had started out collecting artwork, but there wasn’t much available. It became clear why, when the loot for the final round was revealed: almost all of it was art. It was tough in the final round; Blue was taken out by Burgundy, which effectively removed her from the running. Pink had been doing well as the Godfather, but had taken a couple of hits in the latter stages and was also taken out of the final round. Pink finished with $110,000 and second place. The final round was attritional and there were few people left to share the swag. Most of the artwork ended up going to Pine and with it first place overall thanks to a final total of $123,000 worth of loot.

– Image by boardGOATS

There was still time till midnight, and it was a toss-up between two of our favourite light games, 6 Nimmt! and Las Vegas, in the end we went for dice over cards and played Las Vegas. This is a very simple game, but a lot of fun. The play area is made up of six casinos, each numbered one to six with a jackpot drawn at random from a deck of money cards. With eight players, each jackpot totals at least $90,000 and comprises one or more notes. On their turn, players must use all the dice of one number to bet on the casino of that number by placing them on that casino tile. Once everyone has placed all their dice the player who placed the most dice on a casino takes the highest value currency card. The player with the most money after four rounds is the winner. The snag is that before any money is handed out, any dice leading to a draw are removed. It is this rule that makes the game interesting, raising the decisions above the trivial.

– Image by boardGOATS

We usually play with a few “House Rules”: we replace one of each player’s dice with a big, “double weight” die from the Las Vegas Boulevard expansion; we include the Slot Machine, and only play three rounds. The Slot Machine is a little different to the Casinos as players place all their dice of one number on the tile, but each number can only be placed once. Unlike the Casinos, if there is a draw, then the player with the total number of pips wins, and if it’s still a tie, then the player with the highest value die wins. The game is very robust to interruptions which is just as well as we took a break at midnight for toasts to the new year and to Ivory’s new arrival (we are looking forward to his return in March). Prosecco and sparkling apple juice were accompanied by the village fireworks, an exceptional panettone and mince pies and eventually everyone made it back to the table and the game resumed.

– Image by boardGOATS

Perhaps it was the interruptions, but Black’s game went almost as badly as it had in Ca$h ‘n Guns, and he won nothing at all in the first two rounds and not much in the third. It turned out that Purple and Burgundy didn’t do any better as all three finished with just $100,000. That was better than Green however, who made a paltry $20,000. Pink started off really well, but at the start of the second round we realised he was using one more die than anyone else. After paying a $10,000 penalty, he finished with $240,000, $10,000 more than Blue. Lilac, on the other hand, took more in the first round than Blue or Pink took in the whole game and finished with $410,000.

– Image by boardGOATS

Normally $410,000 would be more than enough to guarantee a win, but Pine, who took three $70,000 notes in the final round alone finished with a massive $510,000, a personal and probably group record. With the game over, Green took Lilac home to nurse her sore throat and everyone else finished their drinks and chatted for a while, watching Pink and Pine demolish a bottle of Bavarian whisky picked up in Essen during the Spiel. Everyone who had been there commented how much they had enjoyed The Gallerist at the ninth “Monster Game” session a few days earlier. Although it had taken ages and was very complex, it wasn’t a real brain-burner and everything had been done well. The rule book was good, the board was clearly laid out, the player-aids were helpful, the pieces were great and the box was really top quality—in fact, it was almost the complete opposite of Agra, which struggled through at the previous “Monster Games” event. The second game, Reef, had also gone down well, but everyone was particularly keen to give The Gallerist another go.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: GOATS enjoy a good party just as much as the next ruminant.

31st December 2017

Green and Burgundy were the first to arrive, and were stood on the doorstep at 7pm on the dot. This was possibly just because they were punctual, but may have been because they knew the first people to arrive would get the chance to set up the track for the evening’s “Feature Game”, the gorgeous, dexterity car-racing game, PitchCar. Everyone had played it before except Azure, so he had a quick run of the track while Blue put out snacks and Pink sorted everyone out with drinks. Like last year, Green and Burgundy designed a single, long, winding path with the idea being that it was a simple sprint to the finish rather than several circuits.

– Image by boardGOATS

Building the track is always a challenge, but Green and Burgundy had decided to maximise the difficulty by trying to use every piece of expansion in the box, including both crosses and the new double jump. This made the track really quite complex, featuring a wide bridge/tunnel and a couple of jumps (for those brave enough to give them a go). Rather than the usual “flying lap” to see who starts, each player had a single flick with the longest going first. Blue took pole, but didn’t make it as far on her second attempt and within a few turns was in the lower half of the placings. Similarly, Purple who had started second on the grid quickly began to move backwards too. In contrast, Pink and Green who had started at the back of the grid, began a rapid rise through the field. There were some really spectacular flicks, some that were successful, others that were almost successful, and a few that were horrific failures and received suitable opprobrium.

– Image used with permission of
BGG contributor kilroy_locke

The final bridge proved to be one of the greatest sticking points though as it was built from pieces that weren’t really intended to be used in that way, making joins quite difficult to traverse. Blue, who had gone from the front to the back and back to the front, was the first to get stuck, but was forced to watch as Pine cruised past her showing her how to do it. She proved a slow learner, however, as Green and Pink followed a couple of rounds later, while she struggled to make it over the step. With the bridge so close to the finishing line, it turned out to be the discriminating factor in the race, and Pine finished the clear winner, with Green finishing a short nose ahead of Pink. Meanwhile, the rest of the field passed Blue who by now had finally made it onto the bridge, but who seemed to have run out of fuel and limped home in last place, a couple of flicks behind Burgundy, who had been convinced no-one would be challenging him for the wooden spoon.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor garyjames

While everyone else participated in the game of cooperative Tetris that is packing the track back into its case, Blue put the finishing touches to the supper of Cheesy Pasta Bake with fresh vegetables and a side order of Christmas trimmings. These included “Pigs in Blankets” (or rather “Boars in Duvets”), “Devils on Horseback” and home made crackers that went off spectacularly and sent a shower of tiny pieces all over the room. With food finished, there was a quick game of “Musical Chairs” before everyone settled into two groups for the next round of games. The first group, Green, Pine, Purple and Burgundy, fancied a bit of piratin’ and went for Black Fleet, a fairly simple, but thematic game. The idea is that each player has a fleet consisting of a Merchant ship and a Pirate ship; there are also two Naval ships which players also control. So, on their turn, players choose one action card which enables them to move their two ships round the archipelago depicted on the large and sumptuous board.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Before, during or after moving, ships can carry out an action. Merchant ships can can load or sell goods at an appropriate port, while Pirate ships may attack an opposing Merchant vessel in a neighbouring space and steal one cube of cargo (earning two Doubloons for its trouble) or bury some cargo they’ve stolen. Ships can only carryout one action on their turn, so Pirates can only steal or bury on their turn, not both. And they must avoid the Navy frigates as they do it because they can sink Pirate ships (also earning two Doubloons). In addition to the Action cards, players can also play as many fortune cards as they like; these break the other rules of the game and and make play a little more unpredictable. Finally, there are the Development cards, which both give players extra powers and act as the game timer, with the game finishing when one player has paid to activate all their Development cards.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

There was much piratin’, tradin’ and policin’ of the ocean waves. Purple was an unfortunate early target simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Green tried to target Burgundy, but a wily Merchant, he maintained his distance. Initially a lot of action took place on the western side of the board, and while Green began to bring in the money, Pine and Purple struggled to gain traction. Green was the first to activate a Development card, but he was followed by Burgundy on the next turn. By now Purple and Pine were complaining loudly that they were being picked upon, but that’s the trouble with this game, it tends to reward the leaders. Green and Burgundy activated their second cards in the same turn, but Green’s was of a higher value, meaning that he then activated his third card (the one with the lowest value) the following turn.

– Image by BGG contributor spielemitkinder

By now the action had shifted to the east, Purple and Pine had finally managed to earn enough to activate a card, but by this time they were so far behind their chances of winning were almost zero and so their tactics changed to “get Green and Burgundy”. Unfortunately for Burgundy his ships were closer to Purple and Pine than Green’s were so he bore the brunt of their attack. His merchant ship was attacked and raided by both their pirates in the same turn and his path was blocked. Burgundy abandoned his plans to move it and opted to becalm his ship instead taking compensation for his lack of movement. Green and Burgundy activated their fourth cards in the same turn, but Green had eight Doubloons left while Burgundy only had two. The next turn played out as expected with Green landing a load, activating his final card with four Doubloons left. Burgundy could gain nothing on his final turn, so couldn’t activate his final Development card. Unfortunately, the reward mechanism of gives bonuses to those who activate their Development cards first, which often leads to a runaway winner that the others are unable to catch. That said, it is a fun game and doesn’t last overlong, so is a good game when players are in the mood.

– Image used with permission of BGG
contributor The_Blue_Meeple

Meanwhile on the nearby table Black, Pink, Blue and Azure we trying out a new game, Sagrada. This is a relatively new game, that we’ve only played once in the group before, as part of a “Monster Games” session some months ago. A bit like Terraforming Mars, it is a game that has proved very popular, but was produced by a very small company who did not have the infrastructure or commercial clout to satisfy the demand which vastly exceeded expectation. In the case of Sagrada, however, the game is one of those games with simple rules, but lots of complexity. Players build a stained glass window by building up a grid of dice on their player board. Each board has some restrictions on which colour or shade (value) of die can be placed there and players take it in turns to take dice from a pool and add them to their window. Depending on the difficulty of the starting grid, players start with a small number of favour tokens which act as “get out of jail free” options and allow them to use special tools to rearrange some of the dice, either during “drafting”, or sometimes those already in their window.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Points are awarded for fulfilling certain criteria, depicted on cards drawn at random at the start of the game. Although completing the window can be challenging in its own right if the dice don’t roll well, it is the objective cards that are the key to the game. Each player has their own private objective which scores for the number of pips displayed on dice of a given colour in that player’s window. The public objectives are much more complex though. In this case, the three objectives were: six points for every row with all five colours; two points for every pair of dice showing one and two; four points for every set of five different colours in the final window. Black quickly spotted the synergy between two of the objectives, noting that each row that contained all five different colours would score a massive ten points. Meanwhile, Blue had drawn starting grid cards that were very challenging and was forced to make the best of it, and Pink and Azure, struggled to get to grips what they could and couldn’t do.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Each round, players draw two dice from the pool in “Settlers starting order” (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 3, 2, 1). This was something we really struggled with for no very good reason, and things weren’t helped by Blue who got herself into a mess, aggravated by the fact that she kept knocking the dice in her window with her sleeve. Through it all, Black sailed serenely, finishing with a perfect set of five rows, each with five different coloured dice giving him a massive starting score of fifty which he went on to top up to a final total of sixty three. Nobody was going to catch him, but Azure finished in second place with a highly creditable fifty-six, some way clear of Blue and Pink. Both games finished almost simultaneously, and just in time to toast the New Year in and admire the spectacular fireworks in the general direction of our erstwhile gaming home, The Jockey pub.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

With the festivities over, it was time to choose our first game of 2018, and we picked Ca$h ‘n Guns. This is a great party game, that we’ve played at the last couple of New Year parties. This game combines gambling with a little chance and a dash of strategy, based round the theme of gangsters divvying up their ill-gotten gains by playing a sort of multi-player Russian Roulette. Although we used some of the standees from the Expansion, this time we didn’t use the special powers and stuck to the game play of the base game. This is very simple: on the count of three, each player points their foam gun at one other player; the Godfather can then ask one player to change their choice before there is a second count of three giving players a chance to withdraw from the confrontation.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

At this point, everyone still in the round who has a target who has not backed out, reveals whether they chose to load their gun with a blank or a bullet. The game is played over eight rounds and each player starts with three bullets and five blanks, all of which cannot be reused. Anyone who gets shot is out of the round and anyone who receives three wounds is eliminated from the game. We were all quite cagey at the start, so the loot was shared out among the whole group. This didn’t last of course, and it was amid much hilarity that Azure decided to brave the three guns pointed at him only to take three bullets and retire from the game. It was a few more rounds before the next casualty expired, when Black took his third shot and gracefully slid down the curtain to join the choir invisible. Meanwhile, Green and Blue were somewhat hampered by being repeatedly targeted, leaving Pink to collect a large pile of artwork and Purple a huge pile of diamonds. The only real question which of the two was worth the most.

– Image used with permission of
BGG contributor punkin312

Despite picking up the bonus for the most jewels, giving her a total of $122,000, Purple had to settle for second place behind Pink who finished with a fortune of $175,000. Pink, highly satisfied with his success decided to do some washing up, and Green who had to prepare a roast for the next day decided it was time for him to go to leave. Nobody else wanted to go though, so it was only a question of what we would play. It was gone 1am, and nobody was in the mood for anything deep, so we decided it was a good time to introduce Azure to 6 Nimmt!, one of our favourite light, filller games. A very simple “Cards with Numbers” game, 6 Nimmt! gives players the illusion of control while everything is going well, and shatters that illusion when it all goes wrong. We usually play the game over two rounds and it is remarkable how differently they can go. In this case, Azure and Blue came off worst in the first round, however, Purple and Black did particularly badly in the second round, so Azure finished joint second with Burgundy, just two points behind the winner, Pine. By this time, the rain was pouring down, but it was definitely “late”; it had been a great way to say goodbye to 2017 and welcome in 2018.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: It is a great way to start the year, with a foam gun in hand and a group of friends to point it at.

31st December 2016

As is now traditional, we started our New Year’s Eve Party with the gorgeous, dexterity car-racing game, PitchCar, our “Feature Game”. Everyone had played it before except Pine, and, as one of the first to arrive, he got the job of building the track. Never having played it before, the track ended up as a single winding path rather than a circuit, but that didn’t matter, especially as there was a really short space after the chequered flag and we instigated a rule that players had to stop before they ran off the end or they would lose flick and distance in the usual way. The track itself was really quite complex, including the bridge from the first extension, the cross roads from the fifth extension, and the new narrow bend and jump features from the latest extension.

– Image by boardGOATS

Rather than the usual “flying lap” to see who starts, each player had a single flick with the longest going first. Black went the furthest so started in pole position, but promptly caused a log-jam due to the narrow curve at the start that created a bit of a bottle-neck. Once everyone else had got stuck, he took the opportunity on his second turn to make his get away and he did it very effectively quickly building up a commanding lead. Things were a bit tighter in the middle of the field, but it wasn’t long before everyone had spread out a bit and it became a battle between pairs of players for individual places rather than for the race as a whole. The arrival snacks in the form of crisps with dip and that 1970s stable cheese and pineapple on sticks, failed to distract Black who continued to lead the way, and finished well ahead of the rest despite taking a couple of shots at the finish to make sure he didn’t over-shoot. He was followed by Green and Pink who had tussled for position briefly before settling into a steady pattern they maintained to the end.

– Image by BGG contributor visard

With the race over, everyone passed the pieces to Blue who packed them in the case before they crammed themselves round the table for supper of red lentil lasagne, accompanied by salad, home-made bread (onion & cheese and tomato & chorizo), pigs in blankets and devils on horse-back. Once everyone had eaten their fill, we decided to play a second large group game and since Pink had been keen to play it again all Christmas, we went for Ca$h ‘n Guns. This is a simple party game that always goes with a bang. The idea is that each player has a small deck of cards with three bullets and five blanks. After choosing a card, players simultaneously point foam guns at each other. On the count of three players have the opportunity to withdraw, before any “bullet” cards for guns pointing at people are revealed. Anyone still “in” and not shot, then gets a share of the loot. The player with the highest value loot at the end of the game wins.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

This is where the game gets just a little tactical: there are several different types of loot. There is cash – always good; jewelry – valuable, and the player with the most gets a $60,000 bonus, and paintings – the first isn’t worth much but the average value increases if the player acquires more. Players can also choose to take the Godfather role (i.e. first player to choose if they are still “in”), medipacks (useful if you have picked up a bullet wound) and extra bullet cards. There are lots of other options, but although we had extra guns and characters to choose from, with so many people, we decided to stick to the purest form of the game, not even using the character cards (which give special powers).

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

There is something about pointing foam guns at each other that is just intrinsically funny and it brings out all sorts of peculiar traits. The first was that from the start, everyone took the opportunity to have a go at Green which mean that he was knocked out by the end of the third round. Purple started collecting Jewels while Pine, Magenta and Pink began working on their fine-art collections. In the end, the battle for second place was very close with Blue taking it with $91,000, just ahead of Magenta. Pink, however, was miles out in front with more than double the takings of anyone else, finishing with a total of $201,000. Once Pink had finished counting his huge pile, we extricated everyone from the space they were wedged in, moved the table back and got out the second, folding table to give players a little more space. Purple was keen to play Ulm, a game she and Black had played at Essen and liked so much they had brought a copy back with them.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game play in Ulm is simple enough. It is played over ten rounds, during each of which players get one turn in which they can do three actions that help them to gain points. Ultimately players are collecting cards, city coats of arms and descendants, all of which can give them points during the game or at the end. This, in combination with the position of their barge and the number of sparrow tokens owned give the end game score, and the player with highest score wins. The cathedral area is a three by three grid of action tiles. On their turn, the active player slides a new action tile, randomly drawn from the bag, from the outside into the grid sliding another tile out. That tile stays in its spot on the outside of the grid and no other player can use that row or column until the tile is removed. The three tiles left in that row or column (two old ones and the new one, just added), represent the active player’s three actions for their turn.

– Image by boardGOATS

Thus one of the actions is drawn randomly from the bag, though sparrow tokens acquired during the game enable players to exchange their random tile with one currently on the loading docks. This is an area on the board where five actions tiles are constantly displayed and where players can get get extra tiles, or exchange tiles. There are five different actions represented by tiles in different colours. These are: clear tiles on one of the four sides of the cathedral area (making more options playable), place a Seal, buy or play a card, move their barge, or take money. Every time the active player carries out a Seal action, they place one of their Seals in a city quarter and immediately obtain a specific privilege as a bonus. These privileges vary from quarter to quarter. The river Danube divides the city and the game board north and south. If a player wants to carry out the Seal action, they can choose either the southern northern city quarter, adjacent to where their barge is. The river is navigable only in one direction and a river space can’t contain more than one barge, so other players’ barges are jumped over. This means players can move a surprisingly long way for just one step, if it is timed right.

– Image by boardGOATS

Cards can be acquired by exchanging tiles for cards or as a byproduct of buying seals at the Town Hall or Goose Tower quarter. When played, the active player can either discard the card for the card bonus which they can use during the game, or place the card in front of them, to obtain the points bonus at the end of the game. Points are scored during the game through cards, Seals and Coats of Arms, but also at the end of the game for any sparrows and for the position of their barge on the Danube. Perhaps the largest number of points are available for cards with three points per card, but it is the bonus points that are really key. A set of three different trade cards gets a bonus of three points while three the same gives a six point bonus. Cathedral cards are the most profitable, however, with a complete set of three cathedral cards netting a eighteen points, but they can also be difficult to get.

– Image by boardGOATS

Carrying out a Seal action in the Oath House quarter gives players a Descendant who provides a special ability. Purple was the only one not to get a Descendant with Black taking the Merchant (allowing him to exchange one of his action tiles for one from the docks) and Pine getting the Councilman (giving him more control over the cards he bought). Violet on the other hand took the City Guard who yielded two points for manipulating the action tiles in the cathedral area such that at least one new line of three in one color is formed in the inner grid of the Cathedral area. This sound potentially very lucrative, but is actually quite hard to get to work, especially without compromising other scoring opportunities. To some degree the Descendants dictated the strategies used. Black tried to build sets of cards but was unlucky and they just didn’t fall for him. Purple tried to capitalise on the shields and Violet went for Seals. It was Pine who was the most successful however, very effectively coupling his Councilman with a card strategy with ultimately gave him eight more points than Purple in second place.

– Image by boardGOATS

The down side of the random draw component is that the action grid changes constantly with players sliding new action tiles in and sliding old ones out, which makes planning very difficult. This might explain why Black thought the game shouldn’t take too long, but was still going when midnight struck. Cue Blue on the next table opening a bottle of fizz and covering the herself and the floor with it. After watching other villagers setting off fireworks, Ulm continued, as did Tzolk’in on the other table. They had begun by reminding themselves of the rules. One of our longer, more complicated games, but one we’ve played a few times, Tzolk’in is a worker placement game built round a sumptuous system of gears. The idea is that there is a central wheel dictating time, and five others providing actions. On their turn, players can place workers on the action wheels and at the end of the round, the central wheel turns, moving all the workers round one step making a new action available. In general, the longer a worker is on a wheel, the better the actions available to the player. The really key part of the game, however, is the worker placement and removal: on their turn, players can either take workers and carry out the associated actions, or place workers, but never both.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor bkunes

There is a cost associated with placing workers: the first worker is free, but after that, the cost rises considerably the more workers a player places. Workers can be placed on any of the four wheels, but must be placed in the lowest available space. Placing on the “zero” space of any wheel is free, but if this is occupied, players can place in the next space. Since placing in higher spaces yields better rewards or saves time, for every extra space here is an additional fee, which is paid in the currency of the game, corn. The five wheels, each named after ancient ruined Mayan cities, all provide different actions. Palenque provides corn and wood while the mountain city of Yaxchilan provides corn, wood, stone, gold and crystal skulls. Uxmal, an ancient commercial centre, provides opportunities for players to hire additional workers , interchange corn and resources, as well as enabling them to carry out certain other actions, like build, and pay with corn (when normally specific resources would be required).

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke

Tikal, the ancient centre of architectural and technological development, provides players with opportunities to build monuments and buildings. It also enables players to enhance the abilities of their workers using technology tracks. There are four technology tracks, each one giving a bonus when players carry out certain actions. For example, the Agriculture Technology provides extra corn or wood when a worker carries out an action that provides these items. To move along a technology track, players typically have to carry out the appropriate action on the Tikal wheel and pay resource cubes (wood, stone or gold). The benefits are cumulative, so further along the track a player is, the more advantage they have, but the more it costs to get there.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

The final wheel, named after the mythical tollan Chichen Itza (known to us as chicken pizza), is a temple where players are supposed to leave crystal skulls (first obtained by visiting Yaxchilan), in return for which players get points and climb steps in the temples. There are three temples, and the higher up the temple players are at the more points they get at the end of the ages. The other main source of points at the end of the game are Monuments and Buildings. At the start of the game a handful of Monument tiles and Buildings tiles are revealed. Monuments are generally very expensive and typically provide points directly, or conditional on some other factor (e.g. the number of workers a player has) at the end of the game. Monuments are not replaced when someone takes and builds them, though a new set is put out at the end of the first age (i.e. half way through the game). Buildings, on the other hand, provide an advantage for use during the game or indirect points, are replaced once someone has taken the tile and are generally single use. Although Farms are a type of building, they are multi-use and provide corn every food day, which can be invaluable.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke

Food days occur at the end of every age and again at the half-way point. They can be crippling as players have to feed all their workers two corn each. For this reason, a large part of the the first half-age is often spent acquiring corn to make sure nobody starves: starving workers equals lost points. In addition to food days, at the beginning of each round, every player must have three corn, if they don’t, they anger the gods which means they have to drop a step on one of the temples. For this reason, and so that we don’t have to remember to check, we usually just put three corn to one side at the start of the game and then forget about it until the end. In any case, corn is usually in high demand. At the end of each round we place a “corn on the cog” to be taken when someone takes the start player. This is an extra chance to get corn, and one that is usually a bit of a last resort, which means players are always tempted to wait as long as possible before they decide to take it, inevitably leaving someone disappointed.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor bkunes

Unfortunately, we made a mess of the rules. Firstly, we forgot to change the Monuments at the start of the second age, only remembering at about half way through. This was unfortunate and may have inconvenienced Burgundy, but wasn’t the real game-breaker. We had all played the game before, so it really shouldn’t have happened, but when we were setting up the game, Blue placed the skulls around the wheel in the action spaces. At the time she wondered why there were so few crystal skulls in the general supply, but with so many other things going on she didn’t question it further. This meant that instead of getting a skull from Yaxchilan and then taking it to Chichen Itza, players just went to Chichen Itza and got skulls. At some point Pink asked what the skulls were for, but at the end of the game any left overs are worth three points so that was what we said. It was only after we had run out of skulls and Green asked whether there was any point in Pink placing his workers on the Chichen Itza and whether the spaces could be re-used that we realised our error.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor jsper

This rules error undoubtedly skewed the game giving the early adopters of the Chichen Itza wheel early success. Pink and Burgundy were the first to go for this strategy and Blue quickly realised how effective it was and joined them. Everyone had the opportunity to capitalise on the rules error, however, Green eschewed the chance and focused on climbing up the temples, but suffered as a result. Blue managed to pick up a monument that rewarded wood tiles taken from Palenque and netted her thirty-two points for that alone at the end of the game. Despite being awash with corn throughout the game she hadn’t been able to make the most of it. Blue finished five points behind Pink and Burgundy (in spite of having almost no corn throughout) who tied for first place with eighty points.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor aleacarv

Learning Outcome: Even when you think you know the game, check the rules when things don’t seem right.

31st December 2015

As people arrived, we began setting up the “Feature Game”. This, as has become traditional at these New Year events, was the gorgeous, dexterity car-racing game, PitchCar. Burgundy and Pink built a fantastic figure-of-eight track that made good use of the ⅛ turns from the second expansion and made a really fast compact circuit. Before long, Black and Purple had arrived and had introduced themselves to the furry host, followed by Grey and Cerise who were armed with Champagne and Polish delicacies.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is quite simple, players take it in turns to flick their small wooden cars once, starting with the player at the front of the pack. If the car leaves the track or rolls over, the player forfeits stroke and distance (though any collateral gains by other players stand). We usually have a single solo lap to determine the order on the start grid and to allow new players to get their eye in, before racing two laps of the track. While Blue and Pink occupied themselves in the kitchen, everyone else began their practice run.

– Image used with permission of
BGG contributor kilroy_locke

Cerise went first and set a very competitive bench-mark of ten flicks mastering the bridge from the first expansion on her second attempt. Asked whether she’d played it before, she replied, not since she was tiny, playing with bottle-tops. It turned out that Grey had also had a similarly mis-spent childhood and this with his competitiveness made him a formidable opponent. Black and Burgundy gave them a run for their money, but Grey took the lead and held off the competition to take first place, with Cerise close behind, a worthy second.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor garyjames

With pizza already over-cooked, everyone helped to quickly pack up and then sat down for dinner. Once everyone had eaten their fill, Pink began tidying while everyone else began the next game, Ca$h ‘n Guns. This game combines gambling with a little chance and a dash of strategy, based round the theme of gangsters divvying up their ill-gotten gains by playing a sort of multi-player Russian Roulette. For some reason, setting up degenerated into a discussion about the offensive weapons act and Tony Martin and the debate was still going by the time Pink had finished what he was doing, so he joined in.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Black, (playing “The Hustler”), chose to enact his special power by trading a bullet card for one of Blue’s blanks, much to her delight. Then, Pink (playing “The Doctor”), started as the Godfather, so acted as caller. So, once everyone had “loaded” their weapon with blanks or bullets, on, the count of three, everyone pointed their foam gun at someone. Pink chose to invoke the Godfather’s Prerogative and decided Purple looked most threatening, so directed her to point her gun at Burgundy. The Godfather then counted to three to give everyone a reasonable chance to withdraw from “The Game”, but also relinquish their claim to a share of the loot for that round.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Throughout, everyone was feeling quite brave, but it was Burgundy (“The Cute”) who had a particularly strong incentive to stay in, as his special power allowed him to take $5,000 before anyone else got a look in. It was a power he used to great effect taking an early obvious lead. Meanwhile, Blue (“The Vulture”) was the first to draw blood, defending her property against Grey (“The Greedy”). Like The Vulture she was, when Grey picked up a second wound, Blue finished him off and took two pictures from his still warm, lifeless hands. With, Burgundy clearly in the lead, Blue had help taking him down, and Pink got caught in the cross-fire.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Picking the pockets of two corpses in the same round made her something of a target and in the next round she found the staring down all three remaining barrels which effectively put her out of the game. Purple (“The Collector”), began collecting diamonds, but, it was Cerise (“The Lucky Man”)’ who picked up the $60,000 for getting the most diamonds. As “The Collector”, Purple managed to score a staggering five pictures netting her $100,000 giving her a cool $156,000, $6,000 ahead of Black in second place, with Cerise a close third with $146,000.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

With seven of us, we’d normally split into two groups, but the party atmosphere had got to us a little, and with limited table space we were keen to stick together. With the majority of Blue and Pink’s not inconsiderable game collection at our disposal, we eschewed the usual go-to seven player game, Bohnanza, and decided to play play Between Two Cities. We played this a few weeks ago, but in essence, it is a draughting game, but one that has the depth of 7 Wonders, but with the simplicity of Sushi Go!. As before, we didn’t use any of the seating randomisers, but since we were all sat in different places and three players were new to it, this didn’t matter.

– Image by boardGOATS

Burgundy and Black began to build up a large number of factories and thought they were in with a chance of scoring heavily with them, but didn’t notice that Grey and Pink, had more, as did Blue and Pink. Blue and Black began with a complete row of shops, and followed it with extensive white collar employment opportunities, but were unable to expand the park as much as they wanted.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Grey and Cerise had developed a retail outlet centre with no fewer than seven shops and a number of conveniently situated houses and office blocks. Cerise’s other city, shared with Purple began as a paradise with parks and entertainments, until they added a factory to increase the value of their housing stock. Parks had been popular at the start of two other cities too, with Purple starting her other city the same way with Burgundy, and Blue and Pink doing something very similar.

– Image by boardGOATS

After three rounds we began the complicated matter of the scores. It was quite close, but Blue and Pink’s City was disproportionately ahead, a problem that was rectified with a quick recount that left two cities jointly leading on sixty. In the normal way, the winning city can only ever be important as a tie-breaker since it is the city with the fewer points that makes each players’ score. In this case, however, Pink owned both, with Blue and Grey. Since Blue’s other city (shared with Black) had fifty-nine points, that put her a close second.

– Image by boardGOATS

A quick interlude followed for non-alcoholic Champagne, alcoholic Prosecco, white chocolate, pistachio and Diaquiri fudge, with the chimes of Big Ben and fireworks. Once the New Year greetings were complete, it was onto the important matter of what to play next. Such a large number of players meant the choices were limited, so we went with a couple of old favourites. Tsuro was first, a quick fun game that we all know well and that featured on our list of ten great games to play with the family at Christmas.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke

A game that anyone can play, in Tsuro each player has a “stone” dragon and on their turn places a tile in front of it and moves the dragon along the path. As the board becomes increasingly crowded, the tiles form a maze of paths that the stones must navigate, staying on the board without colliding with anyone else while trying to eliminate everyone else. Grey and Cerise were the first to go out by collision, followed by Burgundy who was ejected from the board by Purple. Black eliminated both Pink and Blue with one tile, before winning the game by dealing with the only remaining competitor, Purple.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor zombiegod

With that over, there was just time for another of our favourite games of 2015, 6 Nimmt!. For a reason none of us understand, this mixture of barely controlled chaos is strangely compelling, so it is a game we keep coming back to again and again. Despite the number of times we’ve played it as a group, somehow Grey had missed out, so we had a quick summary of the rules: players simultaneously choose a card, then starting with the lowest value card the players take it in turns to add their card to the four rows on the table in ascending order. The player who adds a sixth card, instead takes the first five cards to score and the sixth becomes the first card in the new row. As well as the face value of the cards, they also have a number of bulls’ heads (Nimmts) mostly one or two, but some as many as five or even seven.

– Image by boardGOATS

The aim is to minimise the number of Nimmts picked up, so things went horribly wrong from the start, with everyone picking up plenty in the first round, though it remained close aside from Purple who picked up nearly twice what anyone else took. The second round was made especially difficult by the fact that three of the four rows were effectively out of commission. Blue struggled with four cards with a value below ten as well as the highest card in the deck. Purple managed to exceed her score in the first round, giving her a near record- breaking fifty-one. Grey and Burgundy both managed a clean sheet in the second round, so it was Burgundy’s better score of just seven, that gave him the win. So with 2016 started in fine style, we decided it was time for bed.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning outcome: Although seven is a difficult player count, there are some excellent games available when everyone is in the right mood.

Boardgames in the News: Ten Great Games to Play with the Family at Christmas

With the nights drawing in and the weather becoming increasingly wet and wintery, what could be nicer than an afternoon playing board games in front of the fire? If you are new to the hobby, here are ten great modern boardgames to play over the Christmas holidays. These are all readily available online and/or in dedicated boardgame shops.

PitchCar – This superb car racing game is guaranteed to get kids of all ages playing together; the winner is the person who manages to flick their car round the track first. The game plays six people, but you can get more cars from the Ferti website and play a pursuit type game which is also good fun. You can also get expansion packs to make your track longer and more interesting if you really like it.
Target Audience: Families & parties; ages 2 to 102…
Game Time: From half an hour tailor-able to the group, plus time to build the track.
Price: Approximately £45 from amazon.co.uk for the base game (also available in a slightly cheaper mini-version for those without a large table).

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor garyjames
Tsuro – Players take it in turns to build a path for their “dragon”, creating a maze for everyone else at the same time. The game lasts just fifteen to twenty minutes and plays up to eight people. It combines just enough strategy and luck that if you get knocked out early, there is always time to try again. Don’t be tempted to get Tsuro of the Seas though, it takes all the really good things about Tsuro and makes them slightly less good.
Target Audience: Friends & Families with ages 8+
Game Time: 15-20 mins with almost no set up time.
Price: £20-25 from amazon.co.uk.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor aleacarv
Bohnanza – This one sounds really uninspiring on reading the rules: players have to trade beans to make the most money from the biggest and best bean fields. Despite the unpromising sound, you only need to play it once with a couple of other people and before you’ve gone far you will agree it is one of the best games ever made – never has bean farming been so much fun!
Target Audience: Older children and adults; ages 10+
Game Time: 45-60 mins
Price: Readily available for around £15-20.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor spearjr
Dobble – With five games in the tin, this Snap-inspired game is excellent value. Since it relies on reactions, it is also one of those games where children are often genuinely better than adults. And it is so quick to play that it is an ideal game to squeeze in while the kettle is boiling or tea is brewing.
Target Audience: 3 and up
Game Time: 2 mins per round
Price: Readily available for around £10 or less.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor msaari
Escape: The Curse of the Temple – While most Euro Games don’t use dice, in this game players have five each. This is a team game that is played against the clock, so has the advantage that everyone wins or loses together. The team of five players simultaneously roll dice to explore the temple and activate gemstones and then try to escape together before the temple collapses around their ears. This is also ideal for children to play with adults as they can work in pairs or groups learning communication and team working skills. If the game seems too difficult for the group, it can also be made a little easier by reducing the number of gems the group have to activate.
Target Audience: age 5+ as long as there are understanding adults playing
Game Time: 10 mins per game plus a few minutes setting up
Price: approximately £25-30 from amazon.co.uk.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mikehulsebus
Survive: Escape from Atlantis! – This is good fun and really, really nasty. Not quite so easy to learn, but really not that difficult either and great fun with four people who have a competitive streak. Each player has a number of pieces that they are trying to get from the central island to the mainland. Players take it in turns to move a person or boat, then they take a piece from the island, finally they roll a die to move a whale, shark or sea-monster, with potentially devastating consequences…
Target Audience: Teenagers; not recommended for children under 12 or people who can’t take getting picked on
Game Time: 40-60 mins
Price: Approximately £25-30 from amazon.co.uk; a 5-6 player expansion is also available which makes things even nastier…

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor ckirkman
Dixit – This is a great game to play with the mums and grannies in the family. Players take it in turns to be the “story teller” who chooses a card from their hand and gives a clue that everyone else tries to match. Everyone then has to guess which card belonged to the story teller, with points awarded for good guesses as well as cards that mislead other players. The original base game plays six well, but Dixit: Odyssey plays up to twelve with a slight tweak to the rules. Extra decks of cards are also available.
Target Audience: Friendly groups and parties.
Game Time: 30-45 mins
Price: Approximately £15-30 from amazon.co.uk, depending on the version.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor lacxox
Colt Express – For older children and younger adults, this game is a glorious mixture of controlled chaos. Players are bandits attacking and looting a fantastic 3D train. Rounds are broken into two parts, first players take it in turns to choose the cards they will play placing them in a communal pile the centre of the table. Then, once everyone has chosen, players carry out the action on each card in turn. The problem is by the time they get to the end, the plans they had at the start have gone terribly awry… A similar feel can be got from the pirate themed Walk the Plank! which is a cheaper, smaller, easier game that packs a lot of fun into a shorter playing time.
Target Audience: Young, and not-so-young adults.
Game Time: 30-60 mins
Price: Approximately £25 from amazon.co.uk; Walk the Plank! is available for £15-20.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman
Ticket to Ride: Europe – Players are collecting coloured cards and spending them to place plastic trains on map/board with the aim of trying to build routes across Europe. This game has been around a little while now and is available in several different flavours: for the typical UK family, the Europe edition is probably best (plays up to five players), but for a couple, the Nordic edition with its gorgeous festive artwork might be more appropriate (only two to three players though). If it is popular, there are also a number of expansion maps available.
Target Audience: Age 10+.
Game Time: 30-60 mins
Price: Readily available for available for £25-40 depending on the version and vendor.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke
No Thanks! – A quick and simple little betting game anyone can play. The game consists of a deck of cards and some red plastic chips. The first can take the top card, or pay a chip and pass the problem onto the next player. The aim of the game is to finish with the lowest total face value of the cards, but if woe-betide anyone who runs out of chips as they will be left at the mercy of everyone else.
Target Audience: Friends and families; children aged 8+.
Game Time: 10-15 mins
Price: Readily available for approximately £10.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor ckirkman

31st December 2014

The first challenge of the evening was to set up a track for our “Feature Game”, the gorgeous, dexterity car-racing game, PitchCar. We started with getting pieces out of the box, then we decided the table needed to be expanded, then we struggled to make the ends of the track meet! After a bit of pantomime, we eventually resorted to one of the suggested tracks, including chicanes and the bridge/tunnel from the first expansion.

Once the track is set up, the game itself is very straight-forward, with players taking it in turns to flick their little wooden “cars”, and the winner the first to complete (in our case) two laps of the track. The rules are simple: a flick must be a flick (not a push), and cars must end their turn the right way up on the track. Leaving the track is allowed, but cars must not fly more than two track sections or touch the table. The leading player always plays first in each round. Anyone who violates the rules forfeits stroke and distance, but any consequential moves to cars that stay on the track are valid.

Blue missed out on the practice lap as she was preparing food, so started from the back of the grid. Black got off to a flying start and led round the first couple of corners before the rest of the pack caught up. Blue and Pink had caught up by the bridge, but Black held them off through the chicanes before they finally passed going into the bridge. It was short-lived however, with Black retaking the lead before Pink passed and took a commanding lead going into the second lap with a disputed two wheels off the track. Even with an eventually agreed penalty of a missed turn, his position turned out to be unbeatable. Meanwhile, Blue and Black tussled before Blue got stuck on the bridge on her second pass and Black romped away, finishing second. That left Blue and Purple to fight it out for the honour of the wooden spoon. This was a competition they both seemed determined to win, with a series of miss-flicks, and over-flicks, but Blue eventually made it across the line first, with a cloud of smoke.

While tea was cooking, we played a couple of quick games of Belisha. This is a Rummy-based game with cards that depict a trip from London to Oban. The game was a Christmas present and appears to be an original 1937 edition which probably makes it the oldest game we’ve played. The cards run one to thirteen in four colour suits, but each card also has a road sign. Like Rummy, players first draw a card from the face down draw deck or the face up discard pile. They then play any runs or melds they want, with the difference being that the melds can be in numbers or road signs. Turns end when the active player discards a card. The game itself is fairly straight forward, though we still managed to play it wrong! When laying runs of cards, we were playing any cards in sequence, whereas they are (of course) supposed to be the same colour/suit. With this game it is usual to play several rounds and the game ends when a player to reaches a pre-agreed total, however, as we were only filling time, we just played a couple of hands with honours going to Black and Pink.

After we’d eaten, we decided to play CO₂. This was the Feature Game two weeks ago, but we didn’t get round to playing it. As only two people had played it before (and that was a long time ago), we spent quite a long time reminding ourselves of the rules, to say nothing of punching out all the pieces! The game itself is quite an unusual one as it is cooperative, but also competitive. The idea is that players have to cooperate to save the planet, but the player who is the most successful wins. Alternatively, if players don’t cooperate, then the greenhouse effect will overpower the planet and everybody loses.

Each player is the CEO of an energy company responding to government requests for new, environmentally friendly power plants. There are three stages to building a power plant: proposing a project; installing the infrastructure for a project, and building the power plant. Proposing a plant is rewarded by the local government grants (money, technical resource cubes or scientific sponsorship). On the other hand, installing infrastructure has an environmental cost: at the start of the game, each region starts with a certain number of Carbon Emissions Permits (CEPs, granted by the United Nations). These CEPs are spent whenever the region needs to install the energy infrastructure for a project. Building a power plant earns victory points, but also has a cost associated with it which is paid in money and technical resource cubes. This cost varies depending on the nature of the plant and also changes throughout the game.

The game is played over five decades and each decade comprises three rounds. In these three rounds, the players need to try to satisfy the energy demand of the different continents. At the beginning of each new decade, the energy demand of each region is evaluated and if they don’t have enough power plants, they have to build a fossil fuel plant to supply the deficit. These are drawn at random from a pile and correspond to gas, coal and oil. Each of these cost the region one CEP, but more importantly, they contribute to the burden of CO₂ in the environment. When the level of CO₂ reaches 350 ppm, the world starts to suffer environmental disasters and at 500 ppm, the game is over and everyone loses.

At the beginning of each decade, money is awarded to each company based on their scientific expertise. Each company starts with a scientist, though they can get more if they choose when proposing a new project. The CEO of the company can assign their scientists to project, which earns them expertise in one of the associated scientific technologies each turn. When a power plant is built, if there is a scientist working on the project they get the opportunity to do what scientists like to do best: travel to a conference to present their work. When the conference has its full compliment of scientists, more expertise is awarded and they all return to the company. Thus, through the scientists, the companies gain wealth which can be used for building power plants, however, they also need a given level of scientific expertise in each technology before they can build power plants of that type.

The game is quite fiddly and there are a lot of things to consider. For example, a player may propose a solar power station or install its infrastructure, but they cannot build one unless they have sufficient scientific expertise. Similarly, the location of solar power plants is also restricted to certain continents, so a solar project can only be proposed in certain regions. The player who builds the most different power plants in a region gains control of that region and (more importantly) its CEPs. CEPs are used when building the infrastructure to build a power plant, but are also worth points at the end of the game. CEPs can be bought and sold on a market, and their price fluctuates throughout the game, with the final value affecting the number of victory points they are worth. Points are also awarded to players who successfully complete their company’s personal goal (which is depicted on cards handed out at the start), or for achieving goals set out by the UN (which are cards laid out near the board and are available to players throughout the game).

We were very, very lucky with the set up. Each region gets one fossil fuel power plant drawn at random and the total CO₂ sets the initial CO₂ level in the environment. In our case, we had a lot of gas-fired power stations which are relatively environmentally friendly, so we started off well. Purple started building in Oceania and Black in North America. Meanwhile Blue started building up her expertise in solar and Pink just looked puzzled. Although were were unable to satisfy the worlds power demands, for the first couple of decades, we continued to be lucky and avoid the most highly polluting fossil fuel plants, which gave us a chance to start to get a feel for the game.

After a brief break to admire everyone else’s fireworks and sharing a bottle of dodgy rosé champagne, we continued playing. Pink was now somehow in the lead, despite having to be woken up for his turn each round. Blue suddenly realised that she’d proposed a couple of nuclear fusion projects that weren’t allowed in those regions, but everyone just shrugged and carried on with Black commenting that it “was that sort of game”. Eventually, the CO₂ level reached critical and disaster struck North America. As Blue was the only player without a power plant in the region, she had to pay the price (a valuable technical resource cube).

It was then that Black claimed a UN goal card, to choruses of, “Oooo! What did you do there? What does that do!?!?” as Black surged along the score track taking the lead. Inevitably, everyone suddenly looked to see what power plants they had built and tried to match them to the cards that had been sat quietly beside the board for the whole game, totally ignored. Then there was a flurry of people claiming them as the game came to an end. It was only then that Pink noticed how many CEPs Blue had amassed – with her company goal card giving her extra points for each CEP she had in hand. Black’s company goal on the other hand, gave him points for achieving UN goal cards, which explained how he knew what they did and had paid so more attention to them than anyone else. As the people reading the rules, Black and Blue had a better grasp of the game and it was not surprising that they finished fighting it out for the lead, but in the end it was Blue who took the first win of 2015, albeit having mess-up in the middle.

Learning Outcome: Late at night is not the best time to learn to play long and complicated games…

31st December 2013

The evening started with a quick two player game of “extend the table and try to find space for it”. Just as we were finishing, one of our regulars arrived with his family, including his dinosaur-pyjama-clad four year old – unquestionably the youngest GOAT to date!

As planned, we started off with our “Feature Game”, the gorgeous, dexterity car-race, PitchCar. The idea of this game is that, starting with the player at the front of the field in each round, players take it in turns to flick their small wooden car round the custom-made circuit. Since the game was new to so many of the players, we started out with a simple track with just one jump (from the first expansion) and smooth corners (from the second expansion). Despite their tender years, Black and Yellow demonstrated a remarkable aptitude, and Black ran in the easy winner.

The first game was such a hit that when three more people arrived, we built a second, slightly more complex track while pizzas were “prepped”. In this game, Blue (played by one of the new arrivals), quickly got half a lap ahead and managed to maintain his lead until the end. This was followed by a game of “hunt for enough chairs” by which time, the first of the pizzas were ready. By this time, despite it being two hours past his bedtime, “dinoGOAT” was still keen to play on, however, we managed to persuade him (with the aid of a mince pie) that it was bedtime and we’d play Dinosaur Race another time.

That left us with just enough people to give the first of our “Christmas Games” an outing. Waldschattenspiel is not, as you might think, a game about what bears do in the woods. It is actually a really unusual game, played in the dark, where one player (the designated adult!) operates a candle and the others are little dwarf meeples with felt hats. The idea is that that wooden trees cast shadows, and the dwarves, who start the game hiding in the woods, have to meet up together behind the same tree. The snag is that when they move, they must do so without being illuminated by the candle. Any photophobic dwarves caught in the light become “frozen” and are unable to move until they are rescued by other dwarves. The dwarves started out badly when Green got trapped, and then frozen, very early on. The rest of the dwarves managed to meet up, but in a failure of strategy, tried to rescue Green as a group. When they all got trapped and only Red was able to escape, the writing was on the wall and the Candle scored a win on the next move.

Next up was the second of our Christmas Games, 7 Wonders. This is a card drafting game, where each person picks one card from their hand to play, then passes their remaining cards on to the next player. The aim of the game is to build your civilisation by developing your science and technology and building one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. We played the ‘A’ side and with seven players, most of whom had never played it before, there was a lot of chaos, and the game was a bit of a mystery to a lot of us. However, the game was won by one of the new players, who, as well as successfully building the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, also had a strong army and had a well developed civilisation.

A couple more players left and the rest of us played with the tower from Amerigo while we decided what the next game should be. Enticing though it was, it only played four, so, after much deliberation, we decided to play Dixit.

This is a clever, light card game, where the “active player” secretly chooses a card and uses a sound, word, phrase or sentence to describe it. The other players all choose the best card from their hand to match the sentence and secretly hand them to the active player who shuffles the cards and displays them to everyone. The players then try to guess which card was played by the active player with points being awarded for choosing correctly, having your card chosen by another player, and, as the active player, for being ambiguous enough to ensure that some players, but not all, chose their card. The artwork by Marie Cardouat is wonderfully surreal and the game produced some equally peculiar clues in what ended up as a close game. Blue took an early lead, but it couldn’t last and, everyone else closed, pausing for just a brief interlude to sing Auld Lang Syne and watch fireworks (it was raining, so we “wimped out” of setting off our own and just admired everyone else’s from the warm; one group were especially obliging and set off some very nice ones just outside the window!). White snuck ahead of Blue with the last point of the game, and took the first win of 2014 adding it to her last win of 2013. This was in contrast to Red who lost both the last game of 2013 and the first game of 2014!

Learning Outcome: Cold pizza isn’t that bad after all!

27th December 2012

With Christmas day and New Years day both falling on a Tuesday (and players valuing playing games with their family more than with other GOATS – can’t imagine why!) we decided to have an extraordinary meeting on the Thursday.

This week there were six of us, including two new people. However, although we didn’t start until 8pm (as burgers and chips had to be dealt with), we still managed to squeeze in four games.

With Christmas so recent, everyone had new games to play, and the first one up was a Santa Special – Mundus Novus. This is a card game where players are seventeenth century Spanish ship owners, travelling to the New World and making their fortune. It took us a while to get started, but once we got the hang of it, everyone started to rack up dubloons at a steady rate. We were pretty much neck-a-neck when the game came to a bit of a shuddering halt because one of us played the equivalent of a Royal Flush, which wins the game outright.

Next we played the “Feature Game” which was PitchCar, a gorgeous, dexterity car-racing game. This game was also a Christmas Special and included the first expansion which has shicanes and jumps/bridges. For this game we used one of the standard layouts making full use of the special features.

Once everyone had completed their qualifying lap, we were off. Yellow, who won the qualifying, stalled on the grid, so Pink led into the first corner and got in everyone else’s way. Meanwhile, Black went for a pitstop and came out Orange. After about half a lap, Green had got his nose in front and despite the best efforts of Blue and White (who came from the back of the grid to finish second), this proved an unassailable lead.

Next up was The Resistance: Avalon. This game is a little different with players dividing into two teams, the Loyal Servants of Arthur and the Minions of Mordred, to go on a series of quests. Arthur’s team want the quests to be successful, whereas Mordred’s team want them to fail. The catch is, the Loyal Servants of Arthur don’t know who Mordred’s men are and players vote for teams to go on each quest. The first two quests were successful, before the Minions managed to sneak in a failure. After winning the fourth quest, the Loyal servants snatched defeat from the jaws of victory when Merlin was named correctly and assassinated.

The last game of the evening was an old favourite, Dobble and we played several chaotic rounds in different styles before we went home.

Learning Outcome: A little research before preparing your Christmas list goes a long way!