Tag Archives: Root

Boardgames in the News: Is there a Hidden Cost of Board Gaming?

A recent report about falling fertility rates and increasing childlessness from the BBC has created some discussion online. The controversy centres on the headline image which shows a young man in front of his games collection. These include games of some significance including Scythe, Root, Brass and the Suburbia Collector’s Edition, and none of which are cheap. The implication in the discussion is that he can’t afford to have children because he spends too much on games. Of course, they may not be his games and nobody has the right to criticise how someone else chooses to spend their money anyhow. It is often observed, however, that the cost of everything has increased significantly—board games are no exception—and our hobby-spending unquestionably affects our other choices in life.

– Image from bbc.co.uk

Jogo do Ana Nominations 2024

Although the Jogo do Ano, the Portuguese Game of the Year Award is less well known than its German counterpart, the Spiel des Jahres, it is perhaps more relevant to experienced gamers as it recognises heavier games, or “gamers’ games”. Starting in 2006, it is chosen by members of Spiel Portugal with each choosing ten games of their choice. The five nominees of the year are then played again and are evaluated according to defined parameters, namely: production (15%); theme (10%); mechanics (10%); replayability (10%); interaction (5%); time/fun (50%).

– Image from spielportugal.org

Previous winners include Barrage, Root, Lisboa, Great Western Trail, Mombasa, La Granja, Keyflower, Agricola and Brass. Last year the winner was Carnegie, a game inspired by the life of nineteenth century Scottish-American benefactor and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. This year, the nominees are:

Evacuation by Vladimír Suchý
Hegemony: Lead your Class to Victory by Vangelis Bagiartakis and Varnavas Timotheou
Horseless Carriage by Jeroen Doumen and Joris Wiersinga
Nucleum by Simone Luciani and Dávid Turczi
Scholars of the South Tigris by Shem Phillips and S. J. Macdonald

The winner will be announced in October.

– Image from spielportugal.org

23rd January 2024

Despite missing a few people, we were still well into double figures, and more than enough for two groups to play the “Feature Game“, the Kittens module from the Kittens + Beasts expansion to The Isle of Cats. The Isle of Cats is a tile laying game where players are trying to rescue Cats and place them on their Ship while scoring points for completing Lessons (aka end of game goals). The game is played over five rounds, with each round starting with players getting twenty Fish and a hand of seven Cards. These Cards are drafted two at a time, that is to say, players keep two Cards and pass the rest to their neighbour and repeat until they have none left. Players then choose which Cards they want to use, paying their cost in Fish and discarding the rest.

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There are five different types of Card: blue bordered Lessons; green bordered Rescue Cards; yellow bordered Treasure Cards, brown bordered Oshax Cards and purple edged “Anytime” Cards (which can be played at anytime). Lesson Cards are objective cards and come in two types, Private and Public, with Private Lessons being secret, personal objectives and Public Lessons being revealed and available for everyone. These are revealed before anything else happens. Next players decide which Rescue Cards they are going to play—unlike the Lesson Cards, these can be held over for later rounds. Rescue Cards feature either “Boots”, or “Baskets” or a combination of both.

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Boots dictate player order, whereas Baskets allow players to rescue more Cats; players start the game with one permanent Basket which can be used once per round to rescue one Cat, but these can be augmented by temporary Baskets from the Rescue Cards. Once the Rescue Cards have been played, then, starting with the player at the top of the mountain (the one who played the most Boots), players start to rescue Cats. The Cat Tiles are drawn at random from a bag before the start of the round, placing Cats on both the left and right sides of the island. Players then take it in turns to use Fish to lure Cats into their Baskets and relocate them on their Ship.

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The first Cat can be placed anywhere on the player’s Ship, but thereafter, new Cats must be placed next to another Cat. At the end of the game, players score points for groups of adjacent Cats of the same breed (colour), with negative points for each room on their Ship which hasn’t been filled and any Rats on the deck which haven’t been covered. Finally, once everyone has rescued all the cats they can, players then take it in turns to play any Rare Finds Cards they choose from their hand—these are brown edged Oshax Cards and yellow bordered Treasure Cards. Oshax are friendly Cat-like creatures that are added to the player’s Ship and adopt the colour of a breed of the player’s choice.

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The Kittens module from the Kittens + Beasts expansion adds cute little Kitties that the fastest player (the one who played the most Boots), can rescue instead of fully grown cats. Being smaller they are are more flexible when it comes to placing them on the player’s boat and two can be rescued at a time, using only one basket. At the end of the game, they behave just like full-sized Cats for scoring and therefore can be highly lucrative, while adding little complexity to the game. Players also score for their completed Lessons and the player with the most points after the five rounds of the game is the winner.

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The first thing everyone had to do was decide who was going to play what and where. In an effort to separate couples who usually play together, Blue led one game with Sapphire, Ivory, Pine and Yellow (on his first visit), while Pink was persuaded to join Jade on the other side of the room along with Purple, Plum and Lime. That left Black, Byzantium, Cobalt and Teal who took themselves off to a third table. The first game (led by Blue) got going quite quickly, while the second (led by Jade) quickly realised that discretion is sometimes the better part of valour, and decided to skip the Kittens expansion and stick to playing the base game.

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Blue began by eschewing Boots and sitting repeatedly at the bottom of the hill, hoping to save them all for one large push later in the game. This was a plan reinforced by one of her Lessons which would give her extra points if she finished the game as the first player. Pine, Yellow and Ivory all had a shot at collecting Kittens, while Yellow and Ivory got lucky getting several Oshax cards in the deal which they prioritised buying and playing. It is always difficult to get a feel for who is winning in this game, but going into the final stages, it all felt quite tight. Blue played all her Boots and a load of baskets in the final round, but was trampled by Sapphire who played a massive fourteen Boots to take the lead and much to his delight, costing Blue a massive Cat Carrier full of points.

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Her problems were made worse by the fact she didn’t realise her Lesson giving her a two points for each visible rat at the end of the game was in addition to rather than instead of the negative point they usually accrue. In a close game, such loses are costly, and this was quite close with only twenty points between between first and last place and only three points separating third and fifth. There was more of a gap to Pine with seventy-five points in second, but the winner on his first game with the group was Yellow, thanks to a large clowder of blue Cats and only one room on his boat unfilled. The game on the next table was considerably less close, however.

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Teaching had taken quite a bit longer and the group also played more slowly, so as a result, as round three came to a close with no end in sight, the group chose to finish the game after four rounds instead of five. For some, this was not a huge problem as they were able to modify their game plan so they could complete their Lessons. For example, Plum wouldn’t have fulfilled more of her Lessons with more time, but successfully completed her five-by-five grid of purely green Cats (though she had one too many touching the central one for her “five Cats touching one” Lesson to score. In the final scoring, the difference between first and last was a massive sixty-five points, probably not helped by shortening the game, though that wasn’t the only cause.

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Jade had concentrated on teaching and trying to keep the game on track while Purple had struggled reading the cards without her glasses. Plum who singularly failed in her duty of of providing residents for the box lids took third some way behind Pink in second. The runniest of runaway winners, despite never having played before, was Lime thanks to a huge number of successfully completed Private Lessons. These considerably more than offset his negative points from Rats and unfilled rooms on his Ship. It was a slow game that led to some to comment that there was a lot to be said for the lighter, more streamlined, roll and write version of the game, Isle of Cats: Explore & Draw.

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Meanwhile, Teal had found three people who were prepared to give the epic game, Root, a go—something he’d been keen to play with the group for a long time, but had not happened due to its reputation as a long game. With Cobalt being familiar with the game too and Byzantium and Black keep to play as well, the group decided to give it a try. Root is a board game of competitive area control in a fictional woodland setting. Players adopt the role of one of four asymmetric factions (increased to ten in expansions) – roughly split between area control and insurgency play-styles. In our game we used the four factions from the base set.

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The Eyrie Dynasties are aristocratic Birds of the old regime (think Greece in decline following Roman expansion), the faction of the Marquise de Cat control the whole board with an empire of Cats at the start but are thinly spread (like the height of the Roman Empire on the brink of collapse). The Woodland Alliance are like a Peasant’s revolt faction, reacting to mistreatment by their rulers with outrage and sometimes acts of extreme violence. The Vagabond is a solo actor represented by a single piece, out for themselves—a mix of Robin Hood, folk hero, mercenary for hire and outlaw just doing their own thing.

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The basic rules of movement, combat (and gaining points for destroying opponent tokens and buildings), use of cards for crafting items for points and bonuses and ruling the twelve settlements connected by paths are common to all. The game immediately ends when one player achieves thirty victory points. Each faction has a unique play-style, breaks the standard rules in their own way and has their unique process of gaining victory points. One of the challenges of playing asymmetric games is that players need to not only learn their own unique rules, but also have to understand their opponents’ strategies and abilities to effectively counter them. Cobalt and Teal jointly taught the game to Black and Byzantium, which was helped by the clear player boards which take a step-by-step approach to what a player can do on their turn.

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The Marquise de Cat gains points each time they construct a building even if these are re-builds after they have been destroyed. In the early stages of the game, Byzantium with the Cats shored up his defenses by retreating to a front-line which he could hold against bird incursion. The Cats then focused on a steady building programme, starting with Sawmills to generate timber tokens to enable even more building. Each time a Workshop, Recruiting Post and Sawmill is built on the map board and removed from the player board it reveals a point value of increasing value. With the production engine in place Byzantium steadily increased the Cats’ building construction rate and the points flowed in.

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The Eyrie gain their points by the number or Nests which they have on the board at the end of each round. The Birds of the Eyrie, under guidance of Black steamrollered around the board with a massed horde, dominating clearings and building Nests. At one point this ended up in a massive ongoing siege with the Cats into which both players poured Warriors. The Eyrie have to add cards to it’s decree each turn locking it into committing to a certain number of moves, battles, recruitments and builds in the allocated clearings. Failure to complete any of these orders each turn immediately results in the Eyrie government going into Turmoil and concomitant loss of points and a new flavour of Leader (with unique abilities) being selected.

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The Eyrie eventually suffered one great Turmoil, like a playing card pyramid toppling after becoming too unstable. But Black quickly managed to use the refresh of the decree cards to their advantage by choosing cards which provided greater flexibility of actions and was nearly able to catch the Cat’s tail. The Woodland Alliance gain points by uprisings of popular support across the board expressed by placing of Sympathy tokens. The Alliance under the control of Cobalt steadily built up support in a corner of the board gradually establishing rebel bases for more control—these grant wipe-out of all other pieces in a clearing when established and unlock new abilities for the faction including recruiting Warriors, battling and converting Warriors into Sympathy tokens.

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The more Sympathy tokens placed in clearings, the more points they generate. The Woodland Alliance eventually managed to build all three bases and also to place eight Sympathy tokens (the eighth now generating four victory points). To move into areas with Sympathy tokens the Cats and Eyrie had to pay a card tax (Outrage) to Cobalt, who could then use these cards as “Followers” to produce more Sympathy for points. This snowballing engine of points was just getting into gear promising to pay dividends when the Cats building rate pushed into the lead.

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The Vagabond earns points by exploring ruins for items, fulfilling mini-missions (by exhausting items tokens in their Satchel) and trading with other players. Teal as The Vagabond, spent the early game exploring ruins to locate useful items and trading cards for crafted items from other players—being a friend to all and posing no threat. Vagabond trading gradually upped their status with the Eyrie so that they had become an ally meaning that each time a card trade resulted in two points. All was set to for a strategy of fulfilling missions to generate cards, to gift to the Eyre and gain points, when the Cats won!

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Byzantium, The Marquis de Cat achieved the thirty points he needed to win with Black as the Eryie taking second with twenty-seven and Cobalt and the Woodland Alliance pipping The Vagabond, Teal to third by one point. In spite of the game being new to two people, the turns passed fairly quickly and momentum gathered with point-scoring as the game progressed. When the game concluded all were happy to have completed the game with time to spare before the pub closing bell. It had been a successful teach and timely play of a game which has a reputation for being difficult to introduce to new players for a one-off session without prior preparation. Hats off to the quick learners and to the group as a whole for resisting analysis paralysis in the interests of game-play.

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Learning Outcome: Every game should come with “Cat Setup” instructions.

17th May 2022

Black and Purple were first to arrive this week, but Pink and Blue were not far behind, and once food had been ordered, there was just time for a quick game of Love Letter to commemorate its recent tenth anniversary. We used to play this quick little filler game quite a bit, but that fell victim to the global pandemic and, as a result, it’d been a while since anyone round the table had played it. Played with just sixteen cards, the game is really simple, but is a great way to kill a few minutes. The idea is that each player starts with one card, and on their turn draw a second from the deck and play one of the two.

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Each card has a number and an action or effect. The actions range from number one, the Guard, which allows the player to guess what character card a player is holding and “assassinate” them if correct, to number eight, the Princess, who will win the game for the player holding it at the end, but lose it for them if they are forced to discard it before then. There was just time for three rounds before food arrived. Black took the first round and Pink the second. Pink then recused himself as he went to chat to some of the locals about Jubilee plans leaving Black, Purple and Blue to fight it out with Blue taking the final point.

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With the arrival of Pine and Lime, the group went on to play Moneybags, which had been the “Feature Game” a couple of weeks ago. The idea of this is that, on their turn, players have to decide whether to rob another player’s hessian sack of gold or not. Critically, however, they must not be too greedy. This is because the victim can challenge the thief, and if the thief is found to have more than the victim, the victim takes the lot, but that makes them more of a target as now everyone else knows how much they have…

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This time, the game did not go according to plan. Black played the Godfather and divvied up the loot. Purple robbed Pine, who promptly challenged and won a huge pile of gold. As it was his turn next, after lots of advice from everyone else, he closed his bag and stepped out. Then Blue challenged Black and won, knocking him out too. Although it was close between Pine and Blue, much closer than most people thought it would be, Pine’s huge stash won out. The moral of this story is to rob someone before you in the turn order otherwise, if they challenge and win, they can kill the game by closing their bag.

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This week, the “Feature Game” was the Arts and Architecture expansion to Tapestry, which is something that Ivory in particular, had been waiting ages to play. We wanted to give others an opportunity to play the base game first and then the (slightly less complex) Plans and Ploys expansion, which got an outing a few weeks ago. That was enjoyed by everyone involved, so it was now time to add the second expansion. The base game is simple in terms of what you do, but playing well is much more difficult. The idea is that there are four advancement tracks: Science, Technology, Exploration and Military, and on their turn, the active player progresses along one of these taking the actions for the space they land on.

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In general, players must pay resources to carry out actions and, in some cases, may pay more to carry out a bonus action. The first player to progress along each of the tracks receives a building as they pass landmark spaces, which those players then add to their city. Filling rows and columns of their city gives additional resources and as these are scarce, the extras can be invaluable. Players can focus on a specific track or take a more balanced approach, but this decision is often driven by starting Civilisations which give players a special and unique ability. Coupling the Civilisation with the right strategy is often the difference between success and failure.

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When players run out of resources, they can instead take income which means players move on to the next round at different times. The Arts and Architecture expansion provides more civilizations, tapestry cards, technology cards and capital city plans. The biggest change, however, is the addition of a new advancement track featuring new Art or Masterpiece cards and tiles and, of course, associated Landmark miniatures. Each Income phase, players can activate their masterpiece power and get the benefit shown, typically resources or points allowing players to prolong their turns further, but like the Technologies, they are really a long term investment.

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Green and Teal joined Ivory in what was a Tapestry rematch of the last game and, in addition to the Arts and Architecture expansion also included the Plans & Ploys expansion. Each player received a standard capital city and an expansion capital city, but everyone decided to try the new ones to add variety to the game. For the Civilisations, in an effort to ensure things were balanced, the up-to-date starting adjustments were used, and players chose:

Craftsmen (Ivory), which gave him a new board to place his income buildings on for extra bonuses;
Historians (Teal), which enabled him to choose a player each round, and when that player placed a special building, Teal would gain extra resources;
Architects (Green), which gave his income rows double points scoring under certain conditions.

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Green’s Civilisation did not last beyond his first income phase, however, as he played the Plague Tapestry card which allowed him to draw a new one. This new one, Entertainers, gave him an extra bonus track to follow each income phase. Ivory made his intentions clear by moving up the new purple Arts track and gained a couple of special Arts cards. Green followed him, but also spread a bit more onto the Technology track for a Technology card. It was Ivory who was first to take an income phase, but as he had not explored the Technology track he did not have a Technology to upgrade on his first income. Ivory did have a couple of Arts cards to provide him with a nice little bonus though.

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Teal went a different route and travelled up the Explore track and expanded his island. The resources he gained on the way enabled him to take his first income much later than the others. This pattern of Teal taking income last remained in play to the end of the game. Green took the second income first, and Ivory switched back to first for the third income. It was Ivory who took his final income first, closely followed by Green leaving Teal to play on his own at the end. By this time, Ivory had collected all the Arts buildings, completed both the Arts and Science tracks and expanded his empire by three more hexes.

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Ivory had also collected three Arts cards and replaced two of his income scoring tracks. He had only placed two income buildings on his Civilisation card, but had mostly completed his capital city (including a massive seven special buildings), but had only one, solitary technology card. Teal had completed the Explore track, although two of his space hexes were very poor scoring for him, and had not progressed at all on the Arts track. His empire was seven hexes in size, including the one in the centre of the territory. He had also collected six special buildings on his way, but no Technology at all.

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Green managed to complete the Arts and Technology track, choosing to travel up the Arts again for his technology completion bonus. He did not expand his empire at all, although he had grown the islands a little. He finished with four Arts cards and three Technology cards, but only five special buildings. In the final scoring Green finished with a personal best of two hundred and ninety-three points, beating the hitherto invincible Ivory who “only” managed two hundred and fifty-one, some way ahead of Teal. Part of the reason for this was that Teal did not place his last player cube choice from his civilisation on his penultimate income.

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This was because the game ended in a bit of a rush because time was getting on and Teal unfortunately didn’t thought the others wouldn’t get any more buildings. As a result he missed out on a few free resources in the final round and even a few resources can make a huge difference. As ever it is difficult to find the right balance in Tapestry as players need to both specialise and be a Jack of all trades, which is very hard to do. Although the game took longer as a result of the expansions, all three liked the added enhancements and would be keen to play again with all the extras.

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Meanwhile, on the the other side of the room, Lime was introducing Black, Lilac and Pine to Die Wandelnden Türme, a recently released, curious little family game. The idea is that players start with a handful of Wizards placed on top of the little Towers around the board, and a hand of three cards. On their turn, the active player plays a card which allows them to move one of their Wizards a set number of spaces forward, or move a tower a set number of spaces. When Towers move, they take any resident Wizards with them but can also land on top of another Tower and trap any pieces that were on the roof. A player that catches other pieces in this way gets to fill a Potion Flask. They can then spend the Potions to cast spells.

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In the base game the spells available are “move a Wizard one space forward” or “move a Tower two spaces forward”, but others are available and change the feel of the game a little. Players are trying to land all their Wizards in the black, Raven Castle and fill all their Potion Flasks—when someone succeeds, that triggers the end of the game. It is a fun and entertaining game where players Wizards get variously trapped and if they have a bad memory, can find they lose them in the circus of dancing towers. And that is exactly what happened to poor Pine. His Wizards disappeared and every time he uncovered where he thought they were, he discovered they weren’t.

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In the end it was a tie between Lime and Black, but it had been a lot of fun, and Pink in particular was watching with envious eyes from the next table as he’d read about the game in the Spielbox magazine and fancied giving it a go. While eying up the Wizards, Pink was playing Calico with Purple and Blue. This is another game that is new to the group, although it was released a couple of years ago. It has a similar feel to Patchwork, the popular two-player tile-laying game about designing quilts, though the games are by different designers. The most obvious difference is that Patchwork is a Tetris-like game with polyomino tiles, where all the tiles in Calico are regular hexagons.

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On their turn, the active player chooses a patch tile from their hand of two, and sews it into their quilt, before replenishing their hand. If they complete a colour group with that tile, they can add a button to their quilt; if they create a pattern group that is attractive to a cat, it will come over and sit on their quilt. At the end of the game, when the quilt is finished, players score for buttons, cats, and their own personal target. In reality, the theme is a bit “pasted on”, but the pieces are nice, and make what is otherwise a bit of a brain-burny abstract a little more accessible. Purple and Pink struggled with the puzzly nature of the game at the beginning, where Blue got a better start.

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Achieving the personal targets is difficult—these specify the number of different tiles that should surround a particular tile. For example, the goal tile AA-BB-CC scores when surrounded by three different colours, or three different patterns, with two matching tiles in each colour/pattern. Successfully fulfilling a target with both the colour and the pattern scores more points, but is significantly more difficult. Despite explaining this to Purple in her rules outline and saying she had decided to give up on the extras, Blue somehow got lucky and was able to fulfill two of private goals with both the colour and the pattern. With lots of buttons and cats, it was a bit of a runaway victory for Blue, but it was very close for second, with Pink just edging it.

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Die Wandelnden Türme finished first, so the foursome scratched about for something else to play and settled on The Game. This is a simple cooperative game that was one of Burgundy‘s favourites. The team have a deck of cards numbered from two to ninety-nine (in our case, from a copy of The Game: Extreme, but ignoring the special symbols), and they must play each card on one of four piles. For two piles where the card played must be higher than the top card, and for two it must be lower. There are just three rules: on their turn, the active player can play as many cards as they like (obeying the rules of the four piles), but must play at least two cards before replenishing their hand, and players can say anything they like but must not share “specific number information”.

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Finally, there is the so-called “Backwards Rule” where players can reverse a deck as long as the card they play is exactly ten above or below the previous card played on that pile. The game ends when, either all the cards have been played onto the four piles, or a player cannot play a card. This time, things went wrong from the start and unusually, kept going wrong, so much so that there were still two cards left in the deck when the group could no-longer play. Lilac ducked out and Pine, Lime and Black gave it a second try, but the end result was not much better. Clearly the group keenly felt the loss of Burgundy’s special skills.

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While they played their second game of The Game, Calico came to an end, and Lilac joined Purple, Pink and Blue for a game of Sushi Go!, the archetypal “card drafting” game. Players start with a hand of seven cards, and choose one to keep, passing the rest on to the player on their left. Players repeat this with the aim of the game being to end up with the set of cards that score the most points. The game is played over three rounds with the player with the highest total winning. This time, the game was interrupted by an arrival, one some people had been waiting all evening for. The “special guest” was the new resident at the pub, a gorgeous black Labrador puppy by the name of Winston.

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The game decidedly played second fiddle when cuddles were on offer. Despite the distraction of Winston, or perhaps because of his help, Blue, who is usually appalling at this game, somehow managed to make two solid rounds. Pink did the same in the first and third rounds, while Purple and Lilac were more consistent over the three rounds. Purple finished with the most puddings, and Pink and Lilac shared the penalty for having the least. Those penalty points made all the difference as Blue pipped Pink to the post. And as Tapestry had also finished and Pink had finished admiring Teal’s copy of Root, it was time for all little puppies to go to bed.

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Learning Outcome: It’s hard to specialise and be a “Jack of all trades” simultaneously.