Tag Archives: Red Rising

Deutscher Spiele Preis 2022 – Time to Vote

The best known award is probably the Spiel des Jahres: this year’s winners were announced yesterday. The Deutscher Spiele Preis, or German Game Prize, is slightly less well known, but arguably better reflects the slightly more advanced, “Gamers Games”, with the results usually more in line with Kennerspiel des Jahres category rather than the family Spiel des Jahres award, or “Red Pöppel”. Whereas the Spiel des Jahres awards are selected by a jury, the Deutscher Spiele Preis is selected by a general vote which is open to anyone, players, journalists and dealers alike.

– Image from
spiel-messe.com

Voters must include their name and address, so after removing any duplicates, all votes are treated the same with games placed first receiving five points, those placed second receiving four, and so on. The top ten games from the previous year are included in the ranking, so this year that’s games released in German since the end of July 2021. Thus anything new at Essen last year or the Spielwarenmesse (Nürnberg) this year, is eligible. So that includes games like Ark Nova, Cascadia, Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest, Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition, Red Rising and Creature Comforts.

– Image by boardGOATS

Voting is open until 31^st July; it’s not necessary to submit a full list, so why not take the opportunity to vote for your favourite release of the year?

26th August 2021 (Back at the Jockey!)

Following the test event at the Horse and Jockey and much discussion, we decided to try meeting in person once again. As the pub are not currently serving food on a Tuesday, we decided to move to Thursdays, at least in the short term, especially as times are so uncertain. This week, the “Feature Game” was Red Rising, a new card collecting game inspired by Fantasy Realms and themed round the books by Pierce Brown. The books are set in a dystopian future on Mars following low-born miner Darrow, a Red, as he infiltrates the ranks of the elite Golds.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the books, society follows a fourteen-colour caste system from Gold at the top to Red at the bottom. Red Rising the board game takes this colour hierarchy and adds elements of hand-management and card-combo building. The idea of the game is very simple: players start with a hand of five cards and on their turn, play one card onto the game board and pick up another. The aim is to improve the quality of their hand and with it, its value. Cards are played on one of four locations on the central game board and have an additional deployment action when played, the effect of which can be dependent on the location they are played in or the card they are played on top of.

– Image by boardGOATS

The card picked up must be the top card from another different location except where enabled by the played card. The location from which the card is collected dictates an additional bonus action: Move along the Fleet track, Collect helium, Increase one’s presence in the Institute, or Claim the Sovereign token. There are a couple of other options: play a card and then take a card blind from the Character deck and roll a die to decide what their bonus action will be. Alternatively, instead of playing a card, just draw a Character card from the deck and place it, then take the bonus action. In practice, these two options are relatively rare and only taken if there is nothing to pick up, or the player likes the hand they have.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game ends when either seven is reached in all three of the Fleet track, helium and the Institute, or one player has reached seven in two of them. At the end of the game, players sum their total score from each card, the scores from combining effects of cards, ten points if they finished with the Sovereign token, three points for each helium, their score for progressing along the Fleet track, and points for each of their tokens in the institute (four per token for the player with the most, two and one for less committed players). Anyone over the seven card hand-limit loses ten points per card over the limit.

– Image by boardGOATS

There is a large deck of cards of which only a relatively small number are seen in each game. The nature of the game changes dramatically depending on which cards come out. This time Blue, Pink, Burgundy and Pine made up one table while Ivory, Green, Black and Purple made the other, both playing with the Collector’s Edition. The first difficulty, was that although beautiful, some of the colours in the Collector’s Edition are difficult to tell apart. The Influence and Fleet tokens in blue and green, and pink and red, were a particular problem which was made worse in low light. This was not too much of a problem in practice, however, because influence tokens can be grouped together and we weren’t playing with the maximum number of players so could ditch the worst clashes.

– Image by boardGOATS

A bigger problem was the amount of text on the cards. Pine and Burgundy both had issues with this, which could be got round by passing cards if people wanted to read them. Additionally, the cards used in a game tend to circulate with one player playing it and another picking it up before playing it themselves. So the burden is not as heavy as it seems at first. Despite it not being complicated, the one table seemed to have a significant issue with rules. Pine struggled with whether the action was associated with the location a cards was played or the location it was collected from.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink, meanwhile, developed an inexplicable habit of taking the action at both locations. Adding insult to injury, Pink also repeatedly distracted Blue by complaining that he couldn’t see a way of increasing the number of cards in his hand and asking advice. On the next table, however, Green felt he was being got at. This is actually quite a normal state of affairs because we all love to pick on Green, but in this case that wasn’t what was happening. Green’s special power that meant he was able to place an Influence token in the institute every time he took the Sovereign token, but he had a card that meant he would lose points if he had the Sovereign token at the end of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

So, for this reason, Green concentrated on collecting red helium gems instead. Unfortunately, random draw meant that on this occasion the game had an awful lot of cards that penalised players with the most helium or a player of choice, which Green felt was mostly him. Worse, the nature of the game is that players play these cards then others pick them up and play them again, which can make it feel like there are more cards like this than there really are. Black’s influence dominated the Institute, while everyone competed for points on the Fleet track. It was an extremely close game with four points between first and third. Purple channelled her inner “Magic: The Gathering” player and with a lot of helium, sneaked ahead of Ivory to take second.

– Image by boardGOATS

Despite struggling to get Gold cards and feeling the game was against him, Green finished just ahead with two hundred and fifty two points. The other game was nowhere near as close and clearly played out very differently. Blue, also lost some helium thanks to Burgundy, but it only happened once, there was no real shortage of Gold cards, and the game seemed to take a lot longer. Part of this was because Pine spent a lot of time checking what he was doing and insisting it wasn’t his sort of game, yet he dominated both the Institute and the Fleet track.

– Image by boardGOATS

There were over a hundred points between first and last in this game, but the scores didn’t feel as disparate while playing. In spite of his complaints, it was Pine who came out on top with a massive three hundred and nine points. Overall, both games were a bit of a mixed bag with Burgundy saying it didn’t gel for him, Pine feeling bewildered (not withstanding his success), Green feeling “got at”, and even Pink (who had played it twice before) made a bit of a hash of things. Ivory, Pink and Blue had played it before, and all three had been unconvinced after the first game, but more positive after the second. So it is definitely a game that benefits from multiple plays, if people are prepared to give it a second chance…

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory, Green, Black and Purple finished first and, at the time it looked like the other group wouldn’t finish for ages. So after some discussion, they started another game and chose Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam. This is one of the “little” spin-off games based on the original Ticket to Ride. Themed round a city rather than a country or continent, these are smaller and quicker to play than the bigger games, but lots of fun. This one is based on the Dutch capital, but the game play is essentially the same as the other editions.

– Image by boardGOATS

On their turn, players either collect coloured cards from the market, or spend them to place plastic carts and score points. Players start the game with three tickets (of which they must keep at least two), which depict two locations. Players who can connect these locations score points at the end of the game; failure to do so leads to negative points. Each variant has a little tweak. So, in addition to scoring points from placing pieces and successfully completing tickets, in the Amsterdam edition, players can pick up goods cards when they complete a route marked with carts.

– Image by boardGOATS

The player with the most of these at the end of the game scores an extra eight points with other players scoring fewer with the amount depending on the number of players. This time, Purple built her routes through the middle of Amsterdam and to the north. Everyone else went for the potentially lucrative goods routes in the south, east and west. The problem with this was the competition, with Green the main casualty. Although Green managed to get three goods cards he failed to complete his second ticket.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory also went for two tickets and completed them, but managed to add five goods cards giving him the most and adding a valuable eight points to his score. Both Purple and Black largely eschewed goods cards (collecting just one) and concentrated on finishing their three tickets. In a tight game, which this was, those solitary tickets and the tie-breaker for them was critical. It was a tie for second between Black and Ivory, but it was Purple, who just edged in front, winning by a single point.

– Image by boardGOATS

While the others were playing with their ~~trains~~ carts, the second table had finally finished their game of Red Rising, so they picked up where they had left off last time with another game of the filler, Love Letter. This “micro game” consists of just sixteen cards. Players start with one, draw a second and play one of them doing the associated action. The player with the highest value card, or the last player standing is the winner of the round. The first player to win three rounds is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

Last time, it was all about Blue and Burgundy, with Poor Pine being knocked out every single round. This time it was a bit different, and it was all about Pine and Blue. Pink and Burgundy failed to take a single round, but it was tight between Pine and Blue. There was a bit of ebb and flow with one taking a round and then the other, but it was Pine who took his third round first and with it revenge for last time as he left Blue languishing with just two love tokens.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam and Love Letter finished at about the same time, Purple, Black, Green and Ivory all decided it was time to make a move. The others felt there was still time for one quick game of …Aber Bitter mit Sahne, a fun little game based on the simple “I divide, you choose” mechanism. On their turn as Master Baker, the active player constructs a “pie” from pieces drawn at random and divides it into portions, each consisting of several pieces. Starting with the player to the Baker’s left, each person takes a portion of their choice and decides which pieces to keep and which pieces of cake to eat.

– Image by boardGOATS

When all the cake has been distributed, the player with the most of each type scores the number shown on that type, while each piece that has been eaten scores for the number of blobs of cream, sahne. The clever part is that the number of cake pieces of each type in the game is the number shown on the pieces, thus the most common types are the most valuable, but also need the most pieces to score. Thus the aim of the game is to collect sets, but only the largest of each type scores, everything else is worthless unless it has been eaten.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players tend to wind up collecting different sets. This time, Pine won nine points for his gooseberry pie, Burgundy won seven for his blackberry flan and Pink took twenty-one points for his strawberry tart and chocolate gateaux. That was without counting the cream though. Pink thought he’d done enough, but was just beaten by Burgundy who, as well as a lot of cream, also shared the points for a lot of the lower scoring cakes. His final total of thirty-four was one more than Pink with Pine and Blue tied for third. And on that sweet note, it was home time.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: It will take a little time to get used to playing face-to-face again.

20th July 2021 (Online)

Since last time, there had been quite a bit of debate about returning to the Horse and Jockey, but there was a little hesitancy and with the extremely hot weather, staying at home this week turned out to be the right choice all round. As the decision had been just a little bit last-minute, we chose to keep the “Feature Game” simple and opted for the Skills Mini Expansion for Cartographers. We have played Cartographers several times and everyone has really enjoyed it. With the Spiel des Jahres winners announced this week, this was also the nearest we could get to playing a game to mark the occasion (it received a nomination for the Kennerspiel award last year).

– Image by boardGOATS

Cartographers is a “Roll and Write” type of game, but one with more of a “gamery” feel than most. It is based on Tetris, with shapes revealed on the flip of a card in a similar way to other games we’ve played this year like Second Chance and Patchwork Doodle. However, the thing that makes Cartographers more “gamery” than these is the addition of terrain and players usually have to make a choice, either of the shape or the terrain. The terrains are tied in with goal cards, four of which are revealed at the start of the game. Two goals are then scored at the end of each of the four seasons, in a similar way to another game we like, Isle of Skye.

– Image by boardGOATS

There are lots of other little aspects of the game that make it interesting—the presence of Ruins and Ambush Cards in the deck, for example, deliver a curved ball, just when players feel they are in control. Players can also build their income by surrounding mountain ranges and choosing to play certain shapes; this gives more points at the end of each round. The Skills expansion gives players a way to offset this income for special actions which potentially give players other ways of achieving their goals, further adding to the decision space.

– Image by boardGOATS

One of the most impressive things about Cartographers is the amount of variety that is built into the game, which means every play feels different and the game stays remarkably fresh. So, there are two different player maps and four of each type of goal card. This variety is carried through to the Skills expansion; there are eight cards of which three are chosen at random. This time we chose the B side of the map (with empty “wasteland” spaces marked) and drew the Greenbough, Mages Valley, Wildholds and Borderlands goal cards together with the Search, Negotiate and Concentrate skills cards. These skills cost anything from free (like Search) to three (like Concentrate), and each can be played multiple times per game although only one can be played each Season.

– Image by boardGOATS

We quickly realised that the expensive skills like Concentrate are only likely to be played in the final round, as the cost is in “income” and that income is generated at the end of every round. So, playing Concentrate at the start of the game will ultimately cost a player twelve points, while playing it in the final round will cost three just three points. For this reason, the free Search skill was always likely to be used by almost everyone in almost every season (and so it proved). Of course, the higher tariff reflects the increased power though: Search allows players to increase the size of the shape they are drawing by a single square; Negotiate (which costs one) allows players to draw a two-by-two shape, and Concentrate allows players to draw the shape a second time.

– Image by boardGOATS

As well as the skills which we had not played with before, several of the goal cards were new to us as well, including Greenbough (which rewards gives players one point per row and column with at least one Forest square in it) and Mages Valley (which gave points for each space next to a Mountain—two points for each Lake and one point for each Arable). We’d played with the Wildholds goal before though (which gives six points for each Village of six or more spaces) and, although Borderlands was new to us (which give points for each completed row or column), we’d played The Broken Road goal which is similar (giving points for completed diagonals).

– Image by boardGOATS

The game began much as usual, and Pink, who was watering the tomatoes in the “mini-market-garden”, commented that he could hear Burgundy muttering, sighing and generally sounding stressed from outside. Although we had played with “Wastelands” before, we had all focussed on how the fact some of the spaces were already full would help. We had all forgotten how much the Wastelands obstruct plans and generally make life considerably more difficult. Blue made a bit of using the ruins spaces to give her more flexibility later, but had forgotten that it would reduce the number of spaces she would be able to fill later in the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was clear after the first round that Ivory was going to be tough to beat, a feeling that was cemented after the second round. Unusually, Burgundy was the first to post a score, with a total of one hundred and forty-one. Although this was high enough to earn him second though, when Ivory’s score came through he was a massive twenty-five points ahead. Once again, it had been a very enjoyable game, and as we tidied up there was a little bit of chit-chat about the skills and what they added to the game. Since they are not compulsory, the consensus was that we should add them every time, though it was clear that they had been widely used because of the presence of the free Search skill, which everyone had used, and some in every round.

– Image by boardGOATS

With Cartographers over, we had a bit of a discussion about moving back to our much loved and greatly missed, Horse and Jockey. We’d conducted some anonymous surveys over the preceding week to try to gauge opinion trying to ensure that nobody felt under pressure to do anything they weren’t comfortable with. Some of the group had been back on occasional Thursdays, playing old favourites like The Settlers of Catan, Wingspan, and Roll for the Galaxy and new games like Red Rising, Mercado de Lisboa, Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam, Tapestry (with the Plans and Ploys expansion), Ginkgopolis, Everdell, and Draftosaurus (aka “Sushi Go with Dinosaurs”). Others, however, had not been to the pub for nearly eighteen months. After some discussion, we decided that we’d schedule a trial visit in ten days time, so that those who had not been out could see how they felt without committing, and those that went could report back to those that were feeling a little more reticent.

– Image by boardGOATS

After that, we moved onto Board Game Arena. It was a quiet night without both Pine and Lime, and once Green and Ivory had left as well, we were down to five which gave us a lot of options. Coloretto was one, but in the end we chose Niagara, a game we’ve all played quite a bit, but never online, and we were keen to see the new Board Game Arena implementation and whether losing the tactile moving river would leave the game lacking. A strong element of the game is the element of simultaneous play, however, and this was a large part of the appeal this time. Players simultaneously choose a Paddle Tile which dictates how far their canoe will move in the round. Then, in turn order, players move their canoe up or down the river, paying two movement points to pick up a gem from the bank (or drop one off).

– Image by BGG contributor El_Comandante
adapted by boardGOATS

The winner is the player to get four gems of the same colour, five gems of different colours, or any seven gems safely home and into the shallows. On the face of it, this is relatively simple, but the really clever part of the game is the movement of the river. In general, the river moves at the speed of the slowest boat—if the lowest numbered Paddle Tile is a two, then the river moves two spaces and all the boats move with it. However, one of the Paddle Tiles is a weather tile which enables players to increase or decrease the rate to make life harder or easier. Since everyone has to play all their Paddle Tiles before they can recycle them, the timing of their weather tile is critical: players who leave it to the end run the risk of the river running fast and losing boats over the cascade because they can’t do anything about it.

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

And it wasn’t long before that’s exactly what happened, when both Blue and Black got their timing wrong and lost boats over the falls, so had to pay hard earned gems to get new ones. Then, to add insult to injury, Pink sneakily crept up on Blue and stole another gem from her. Players can only steal if they land on the same space as another boat while travelling upstream, and even then it is a choice. There was much ill feeling especially from Blue, but she wasn’t the only one. And with that, the gloves came off and everyone tried to redress the balance and ensure that such bad behaviour would not go unpunished.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Pink was abreast of that though and had a plan. Knowing his bad behaviour would make him a target he collected gems in one boat letting others take them while he stole the gems he wanted and got them to shore quickly. Much to everyone’s disgust, he soon had five different gems and there was nothing anyone could do to stop him getting them home. Burgundy actually had more gems giving him a nominally higher score, but his set of six did not include five different colours and Blue’s set of five included three nuggets of amber. The victims of Pink’s grand larceny were unimpressed with his terrible behaviour, and as it was getting late, we decided to call it a night.

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

Learning Outcome: Theft is totally unforgivable.

16th March 2021 (Online)

Purple, Black, Pine and Green chatted while Blue reminded herself of the rules for the first game. Green showed everyone his new game, Fossilis, which comes with little plastic dinosaur bones, tweezers, and even a tiny plastic scorpion—one to play when we get back to the pub, along with the very newly released Red Rising, the Oceania Expansion for the really popular Wingspan, and a whole host of other games that we’ve been waiting over a year to play.

– Image by boardGOATS

And sadly, with the realisation that it was a year and a day since a very small group met at The Jockey for the last (unofficial) games night there, we moved on to playing the “Feature Game“, Das Labyrinth des Pharao. Das Labyrinth des Pharao is a tile laying game in a similar vein to Take it Easy! which we played a few weeks ago, or the Spiel des Jahres nominee, Karuba (which we last played about five years ago). In Das Labyrinth des Pharao though, players are exploring a pyramid and collecting treasure.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although we’ve not played it on a Tuesday, some of the group have played it before at the Didcot Games Club (November 2015 and September 2016). Like all the games that we’ve found that work well played online, Das Labyrinth des Pharao is quite simple to play, but it is a little bit “thinky” relying on planning and a little bit of luck. Everyone had the tiles and board that were delivered a few weeks back, and they had found their Tiny Towns cubes and a meeple from one of the special Christmas crackers we’ve had at one of the unChristmas Parties during happier times.

– Image by boardGOATS

The first thing to do was lay out the tiles around the board, in number order—some appear more than once, so these are stacked. Players then counted out five, four and three of their cubes as treasures. Once everything was set up, Blue explained that Pink would turn over one of the beautifully decorated number cards (each part of a polyptych), and everyone had to place the corresponding tile on their board.

– Image by boardGOATS

They can place the tile anywhere on their board, in any orientation. Some of the tiles have scarabs depicted on them—players can place treasures on these, but must start with the lowest value treasures first. So, only when all five one-point treasures had been used, could players move on to the four two-point treasures, and finally the three-point treasures (blue, green and red disks respectively, though we were playing with turquoise, yellow and red cubes).

– Image by boardGOATS

After the third round, players have to choose which of the six possible entrances they are going to start from and then progress their “explorer meeple” along the path as far as they can. In the rules, players mark the path at intervals so everyone else can see how far the explorers have travelled, but given the added difficulties associated with playing remotely and the fact that players could count their own path at any time, we omitted this.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game ends after twenty-five of the twenty-eight cards have been revealed and then people add up their scores. Firstly, they score one point for each quarter tile their tunnel extends along. Next they score points for each treasure chamber their tunnel passes, that is a chamber that contains one treasure surrounded by walls on all four sides. As usual, the player with the most points is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game was a bit of a tale of people missing cards and having to try to correct it, and for a change, it wasn’t just the usual suspects. As the game progressed, it became clear that most people had tried to follow Blacks advice and tried to place as many of their treasure tokens as they could. The problem with this is that they aren’t worth anything unless players have managed to enclose them in a chamber and ensure their route passes alongside.

– Image by boardGOATS

In fact, one of the biggest problems for some turned out to be connecting valuable parts of their tunnel to their chosen entrance to ensure their treasure hunter was able to explore the temple. Pine and Pink seemed particularly afflicted, and as the game drew to a close, Burgundy and Pink in particular were getting increasingly desperate for tile number fourteen. The final tile was number six, which did most of the job and with that, everyone had to work out their scores.

– Image by boardGOATS

As usual, Ivory posted his score first, setting a competitive target of fifty, made up of thirty-one from his path and nineteen in treasure. In general, the scores were quite close, with almost everyone scoring between forty and fifty. The longest path was thirty-seven and the most treasure collected was nineteen. In most cases, those that had a long path (like Blue and Burgundy) had few treasures, while those with a lot of treasure (like Pine and Green) had not explored as deep into the temple. The exception was Pink, who managed to do well at both and finished with a total of fifty-four.

– Image by boardGOATS

It had been a fairly short game, and as it was a while since we’d practised our colouring, we moved onto a quick game of “Roll and Write” Tetris, in the form of Second Chance. We’ve played this quite a bit since we first started playing online, but the last time was just before Christmas, so we decided to give it another go.

– Image by boardGOATS

The idea is that two shapes are revealed and players must draw them in their nine-by-nine grid. The shapes come in different sizes and the game rewards efficiency in packing. If a player is unable to play either shape, they get a second chance: one card all to themselves. If they can play that, then they can carry on, but if they are unable to play that as well, then they are eliminated.

– Image by boardGOATS

Unusually, being eliminated is not necessarily a guarantee of failure in this game: the winner is the player with the fewest unfilled spaces at the end, which is when the deck of cards runs out. So, in this game, a player can be knocked out, but still win. This time, there were a couple of people who threatened to need a second chance, but then suddenly in one round, nobody was able to place either shape and everyone needed a second chance.

– Image by boardGOATS

That round took out everyone but Green and Black, but as there were no cards left, it turned out to be the final round, and that was that. The scores varied from eleven to two, with a tie between Lilac and Blue for first. Pink suggested a vote based on the quality of the art-work, but nobody wanted to choose between them and a tie it remained.

– Image by boardGOATS

From there, Ivory and Lilac took an early night, while the rest of the group moved to Board Game Arena for a game of Saboteur. This hidden traitor game is one we’ve played a lot online over the last year. The idea is that players are either Good Dwarves or Evil Saboteurs, with the Dwarves trying to play cards to build a tunnel and find the treasure, while the Saboteurs try to stop them using blocking cards and by breaking the Dwarves’ tools.

– Image by boardGOATS

It is always extremely difficult for the Saboteurs to win, but we live in hope and everyone is always pleased to get the opportunity to try. The first round it was Blue’s and Black’s turn to try. With seven players, there can be two or three Saboteurs—with just two it was pretty much guaranteed to be gold for the Dwarves, and so it proved. The Dwarves headed straight for the gold, and despite a desperate rear-guard action the round was quickly over.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

The second round was much closer. The evil Pine, Pink and Green made life extremely difficult for the Dwarves very effectively blocking their first route to the gold and forcing them to go all around the houses before they found the gold. Early in the game, Pink caused chaos by disagreeing with Pine as to where the Gold was, and the ensuing confusion made it very close. The Saboteurs had a lot of cards that worked in their favour, but they still couldn’t quite stop Purple from finding the gold in the end. The third and final round was a different story though…

– Image by boardGOATS from
boardgamearena.com

Initially, the tunnels made good progress, but largely by chance, the tunnel headed towards the top card, when the treasure (it turned out) was at the bottom. Things were made worse for the Dwarves when paranoia meant they turned on each other early. There was more confusion about where the gold was and the Dwarves were in disarray. Eventually, Pine revealed his colours, and then Black, and finally Burgundy. For once, the cards went the Saboteurs’ way and they played them really well too. Despite a desperate effort, there was nothing the Dwarves could do against such wickedness, and after a year of trying, the Saboteurs took their first victory.

– Image by boardGOATS from
boardgamearena.com

Time was marching on and we were looking for one last game to play, something perhaps a little different from the usual 6 Nimmt!. After some discussion, Green and Black ducked out and everyone else played Draftosaurus—a game that Blue and Pink have very nearly picked up on several occasions, including Essen in 2019, just after it first came out and that Pine described as “Sushi Go! with dinosaurs”. With that description, nobody could resist giving it a go.

– Image by BGG contributor kalchio

By this, Pine meant the main mechanism is drafting. In Sushi Go! players have a hand of cards, then simultaneously, they choose one to keep and pass the rest on. In Sushi Go!, players are collecting sets of cards, but in Draftosaurus players are drafting little wooden dinosaur meeples and placing them in their dinosaur park, on their personal player board. The clever part, and what makes it different to Sushi Go!, is that the scoring is driven by the different park locations.

– Image by BGG contributor kalchio

Before each draft, a die is rolled that restricts where players can place their chosen dinosaur and the seven locations all score for different combinations of dinosaurs. This means that players can want the same dinosaurs for different reasons, or different dinosaurs for the same reasons. The game is played over two rounds, drafting six dinosaurs drawn at random from a bag, first clockwise and then anti-clockwise. In the Board Game Arena rendering, this is all done electronically and the tactile nature is lost, however, the graphics are charming.

– Image by boardGOATS from
boardgamearena.com

For those who were new to the game, it took a couple of turns to work out where the scoring opportunities are and how to make the best of them, and also to work out how the dinosaurs are passed round and how players could affect each other. Pine was the only one to have played before, and therefore had a better grasp of how things worked. Rather than use this experience to beat everyone else’s faces into the dirt, he helped keep everyone else straight and offered help and advice as required.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Draftosaurus rocks along at quite a pace, and it wasn’t long before the game was coming to an end. Burgundy and Pink had got to grips with the game best and quickest and there was only one point in it. Although they had mostly tried different approaches, both had also tried to collect different dinosaurs in the Meadow of Differences. Burgundy had the edge though, and took victory with thirty-eight points.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Everyone had really enjoyed it and fallen a little bit in love with the charming graphics, quick game play, and what’s not to like about building a dinosaur park?!?! This is definitely one to get and play once we can meet up properly again. And on that positive note, looking forward to playing together with tactile dino-meeples after a year of gaming from home, it was time for bed.

– Image by BGG contributor kalchio

Learning Outcome: Pharaohs and Dinosaurs, what’s not to like?