Ivory, always excitable when it comes to Christmas, was first to arrive, shortly followed by Blue and Pink, with armfuls of crackers, parcels, party poppers and Golden GOAT voting forms. It was our first visit to The Jockey since the retirement of the Charles and Anna, but Michelle and John made us very welcome on their first full day, and were very understanding of the noise mess we inevitably made.

– Image by boardGOATS

We started with the crackers, frantically chasing dice, chocolates, and meeples all over the place, and then suffering the flock of appalling goaty jokes with which they were filled. As people munched the chocolates from their crackers they filled in their Golden GOAT voting forms, then Pine and Pink collated the results.  There were lots of nominations for GOAT Poo, but the runaway winner was Dingo’s Dreams.  This is probably quite a clever game that we would normally enjoy, but we played it online with lots of people, none of whom had any idea what they were trying to do.  As a result, the complete chaos made for a very un-fun experience all round.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Discussion surrounding the Moment of the Year included reminiscences of the time Lime accidentally joined an online game of 6 Nimmt! with a bunch of Frenchmen, but that was last year and therefore not eligible this time round.  Pine and Pink fondly remembered the pasting they gave to Burgundy and Blue when they played Ticket to Ride: Heart of Africa, but the winner was the online game of Niagara when Pink won by stealing gems from everyone else—an event that still lingers in the the memory of those who were robbed and are even now dreaming of revenge.

– Adapted by boardGOATS from image by BGG Contributor El_Comandante

With all the online gaming, there was less competition than usual for the Golden GOAT award.  Indeed, the 2019 winner, Wingspan, was very nearly the first game to win the Golden GOAT award twice, but much to Green’s obvious delight, it was just pipped to victory by Praga Caput Regni – quite an achievement given that only four people in the group had even played it.  We spent our winnings from the quiz on appetizers and with some having a full three-course dinner, we weren’t finished till quite late.  There was just time for a game or two though…

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine was keen to play Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries, but after the Heart of Africa experience nobody else was enthusiastic to join him.  Ivory was keen to play  the “Feature Game” which was Santa’s Workshop, so Pink, Blue and Burgundy joined him.  This is a medium-light weight worker placement game, similar to Stone Age, Lords of Waterdeep or Viticulture, but with a festive theme.  Players operate teams of elves making presents for Santa to deliver on Christmas Eve.

– Image by boardGOATS

On their turn, players can send elves to collect wish-list items, mine for coal, visit the metal, wood, fabric, plastic and assembly workshops, or train their elves so they work more efficiently.  Players earn Cookies for every gift they make, and every three days, Santa carries out an inspection and the teams that have made the most gifts get more Cookies.  The elves can also visit the Reindeer Stables to get help and more Cookies—the player whose team of elves has earned the most Cookies by the end of Christmas Eve is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is played over the nine days before Christmas, appropriately from 16^th December (the date of our “Un-Christmas Dinner”) up to and including Christmas Eve.  Each gift card shows what it is made of and how much assembly it will need, as well as how many Cookies it will earn when it is completed.  One of the things that makes this game a little different to other worker placement games is that players are unable to store resources:  elves must first acquire the gift card, then the materials to make the gift (wood, plastic, fabric and metal), and only then can the elves assemble the gift.

– Image by boardGOATS

The idea is that the elf is taking the pieces to the assembly room and making it there, so timing is everything.  If a player visits receives five pieces of wood, but can only use three, the other two go to waste. Players can improve their situation by getting some of their elves trained—this costs a turn, but a visit to the School Room means they can use this additional skill to produce more material or assemble things more efficiently.  The question is whether this is worth the effort as the game is played over just nine days with only three turns per day (or four at lower player counts).

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue and Burgundy started fast and took the bonus Cookies for the most productive team at the end of the 18^th December, but by the end of the Christmas Eve, Ivory and Pink were getting the most Cookies for being the most productive while Blue and Burgundy’s attentions were elsewhere. Ivory started out making a lovely wooden music box, but then moved rapidly into making plastic tat.  Selling coal to Santa was also highly lucrative (Santa always needs coal to give to naughty children).

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Blue did the reverse, starting by making Lego bricks with lots of plastic and then moving on to making dressing up clothes and a lovely teddy bear which she failed to assemble.  Burgundy also struggled with his assembly and spent quite a lot of time visiting the stable and petting Comet (to take the first player marker) or Donna (to obtain the assistance of Zelf to get extra material).  Pink similarly struggled and felt it was important to prioritise being the first player at certain points during the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was a very close game and the final few turns were really critical as players tried to make sure they completed everything they could and most realised they couldn’t finish  what they wanted to.  Ivory thought he might just make it and gambled on getting enough visits to the assembly room to do what he needed.  In contrast, Blue pragmatically took the Cookies from Dasher’s stable and gave up all hope that she might be able to assemble her gifts.  And that made the difference, giving Blue victory, finishing ten Cookies ahead of Ivory, with Pink just behind in third.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although not an exceptional game, Santa’s Workshop is unquestionably one of the best festive games we’ve played—all the more so as it has a genuine Christmas theme rather than simply being “snowy”.  Sadly, the pieces lack a little something, especially Santa, but we made up for that by stealing the bits from Christmas Penguins, which we played a couple of years ago and had great bits, but lacked something in the game-play.  The game itself was purchased in a couple of years ago and sent on by a friend in Australia, but first got caught in the bush fires there and then playing it was delayed by Covid when last year’s Christmas Event was online; the verdict was that it was worth the wait though.

– Image by boardGOATS

On the next table, the rest of the group settled down to play Carcassonne: Winter Edition.  This is essentially the same as the original “blue box version” of the tile playing game, Carcassonne, but with a pretty snowy scheme, which everyone agreed they preferred to the usual version.  So, as with the original, the game play is very simple:  on their turn, the active player plays a tile, adding it to the map (ensuring all the edges agree) and then optionally place a meeple on the tile before scoring any completed features.

– Image by boardGOATS

The features on the tiles include city segments, roads and cloisters.  Players score two points for each tile in a city or road they own if it is completed during the game, or one point at the end if incomplete.  Similarly, Cloisters score nine points when completely surrounded or one point for the central tiles and each surrounding it at the end of the game.  The clever part of the game is that while players cannot add a meeple to a feature that is already owned by another player, these can be joined together and then shared so that both players score.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, the group also included the the Lebkuchenmann expansion.  This consists of additional Gingerbread Man tiles mixed in with the base game; when drawn, the player moves the brown Gingerbread Meeple to an unfinished city of their choice.  Before he is moved, however, the current city containing the Gingerbread Man is scored.   Each player receives points for the number of meeples they have in the city multiplied by the number of tiles in the city.  Thus, even players that only one meeple in the city when their opponents have more get a few points.

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The Gingerbread Man also leaves the current city when someone adds the tile that completes it and the Gingerbread Man is scored just before the normal scoring.  This means it is sometimes desirable to finish someone else’s city, in order to move the Gingerbread Man or to make them earn fewer points for it.  The clever part about the Lebkuchenmann expansion is that it can be played in both a friendly and a spiteful way.

– Image by boardGOATS

Very early in the game, Green, Purple and Lilac all found themselves with cities which looked all but impossible to close out.  Black went for an early “Farmer”, making snow angels and Green followed suit.  “Farmers” only score at the end of the game, giving points for the number of cities the field supplies, but they tie up the meeples for the rest of the game and, if placed early can end up being cut off yielding a poor score.  So, only time would tell whether this would prove to be a master move or a waste of a good meeple.

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Lilac was building herself a nice big city, obtained the first Gingerbread Man and placed it into her growing metropolis.  This attracted the attention of Pine who set up camp in a small city across the open divide.  On his next turn he got exactly the tile he needed (a city tile with two opposite open ends), and joined the two together.  When the city was completed shortly after, both Pine and Lilac scored, not just for the city, but for the Gingerbread Man too. This put them both out into a commanding lead on the score board, with Pine half a dozen points ahead—a lead he would not relinquish for the rest of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the meantime, the rest of the group kept drawing road tiles.  The Gingerbread Meeple was very handy to get some of the awkward, incomplete cities to score at least something, as he hopped around the board giving out gifts.  As the snowy scene expanded and grew, more farmers were placed, more cities were completed, and roads wiggled their way round the landscape joining areas previously separated.  As one of his last moves, Green found the one tile that would fit into the gap next to his first city to complete it. This did something else, too, that would have a game-changing impact, though nobody realised it until scoring.

– Image by boardGOATS

With the last tile placed everyone scored their uncompleted cities, roads and cloisters.  At this point Pine was still in front, with Lilac not too far behind in second—the Farmers were going to be key.  Black and Green had managed to maneuver two Farmers each into the same massive field, but sadly Purple’s lone farmer got booted out.  Lilac had a couple of farmers on the other side of the board, one gave her two cities and the other gave her three, just enough to push her ahead of Pine (who had eschewed the whole farming in the snow business as being too cold for him).

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Green’s and Black’s Farmers had amassed a total of huge total of ten cities for their shared field, which brought them right into contention.  Scores were just about to be added to the board when Black pointed out that his (and Green’s) field went further round and actually swallowed Lilac’s farmer with three cities due to the tile placed by Green to complete that city.  So Lilac lost nine of her points and Green’s and Black’s new field total was for thirteen cities giving them thirty-nine points each.  This leapfrogged both of them ahead of Pine and Lilac, with Green coming out a few points on top.  A close game, everyone enjoyed.  This edition is a worthy edition with the Lebkuchenmann expansion a perfect little festive addition too.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome:  ‘Elf and Safety is everyone’s business.