Tag Archives: Sheep & Thief

6th March 2018

Food had been ordered by those who intended to eat, but there seemed to be a bit of wait so we decided to play our “Feature Game”, Plague & Pestilence. This game had been chosen as it was Purple’s birthday and she had enjoyed playing it in the past. A fairly simple card game, everyone felt it wouldn’t be too difficult to play around when food arrived, added to which, there weren’t many other options available that would play six in a short time. The game is played in two phases, the first is the “Prosperity Phase” and the second is the “Plague Phase”, but both are played the same way. During their turn, the active player rolls a pair of purple six-sided dice which indicate how much their population increases by, and takes population cards accordingly. The active player then draws Prosperity cards to refill their hand and plays one, which allow players to attack others and build their own protections for later in the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

A special Death Ship card is shuffled into the Prosperity deck and when it appears, it triggers the start of the second phase, the “Plague Phase”. This is played exactly the same as the first phase, but now the dice rolls indicate how much the active player’s population decreases by. As the game progresses, the plague ravages the populations and players are eliminated; the last player standing is the winner. The game started fairly benignly as most players either built improvements or had bumper harvests. There was the odd pestilence played and a Mongol raid, however, Green upped the ante when he played the mass migration card and gained five citizens off every other player. This released the inevitable retribution when he then found himself beset with wars, famines and pestilence. With two Pied Pipers up his sleeve (metaphorically of course) he was then able to pick on Ivory, and did so twice since Ivory had twice hit Green hard with a major war, and had also caught Pine with Viking raids. Meanwhile, Burgundy tried to build defences, and but they fell to earthquakes and other attacks before he could actually make use of their benefits.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game had not seemed to be going on long when Green drew the Death Ship and the game entered the Plague Phase. A quick run round the table while everyone tried to bolster their dwindling populations and then food started to arrive. After a brief interlude, play resumed with Black and his seemingly never-ending stream of Trade Centres. Before long, a fatal blow was dealt to Burgundy when Purple started a war between him and Green. With three ties in a row, both suffered heavy losses. Although Burgundy did eventually win the war, he suffered some poor dice rolls and soon found himself to be the first without citizens. By now, Green was struggling and Black’s own mass migration had put both him and Pine on the edge as well. The inevitable backlash against Black gave Green and Pine a reprieve, but it was short lived and both toppled very quickly.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was looking like a fight between Ivory and Black as Purple’s pile of people was also looking decidedly dodgy, but then Black tried to start a war between the other two. Ivory brought out his “Negotiated Peace” card though and all was well. It was a race of attrition that Purple couldn’t win and she was the next to drop out with an empty city. In the end there was still little Ivory could do and he finally bowed out leaving Black the winner. It was then that Black revealed his hand to have several military advantages that he never used as he was the only one who had not been at war; everyone else had been wondering where those tactical advantages had disappeared to as they really needed them! With the death and destruction over, we quickly decided to split into two threes. As it was Purple’s birthday and she wanted to play Cat Lady, Pine and Black joined her.

– Image used with permission of
BGG contributor HedgeWizzard

Cat Lady is a card drafting game, similar in feel to Sushi Go!, though the drafting mechanism is very different. At the start of the game nine cards from the cat deck are laid out in a three by three array. On their turn, the active player takes all thee cards in one row or one column and then replaces the cards from the draw deck marking the row they took with a kitty meeple so the next player knows they can’t take that row. Any cat cards go in front of the owner (or should that be staff?) and these must be fed by the end of the game or they score minus two. Any food cards give cubes which can then be placed on the face-up cat cards to show they are being fed. Similar to Sushi Go!, there are also cards that score for the player with the most cards (cat “costumes”) and give players with the fewest negative points and sets that players can collect (toys). Players can also collect catnip cards which score minus two if the player only has one at the end of the game, or one or two points per cat if they have more. There are also lost cat cards, and discarding a pair allows players take a two victory point token or one of the three stray cat cards which are particularly useful because they have special powers.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor HedgeWizzard

The tricky part is making sure that the food a player gets matches the cards, because cats are fussy creatures and some like tuna, while others will only eat chicken… At the end of the game, players score points for each happy well-fed cat and for their toy collection with extras if they have the most cat costumes. Unfed cats, having the fewest costumes, and the largest surplus of food will give players negative points. The game began with Purple going for costumes and toys while Black and Pine tried to get catnip to add extra points for their fed cats. Perhaps Purple concentrated too much on the accoutrements for her pets because she ended up with so many cats that should couldn’t feed them all. In her defence, it wasn’t that she had no food, it was that her cats were fussy eaters and turned their noses up at the fresh chicken, preferring to starve. Unfortunately, this meant she lost points for having unfed cats, but also for having the largest surplus of food. In contrast, the others had well fed cats and were level in almost every department, finishing with only three points between them, and Pine just a whisker in front of Black.

– Edited from video on youtube.com

Meanwhile, on the next table, Burgundy, Green and Ivory opted for NMBR 9. Only Burgundy had played it before, but the rules are simple enough so didn’t take long to explain. The idea is that players will play a total of twenty tiles, numbered zero to nine, with each one appearing twice. One player turns over a card and calls the number and players each take one tile of that number and add it to their tableau. Tiles must be placed such that at least one edge touches a previous tile. Tiles can be placed on top of other tiles as long as there are no overhanging parts, and the tile sits squarely on more than one other tile. At the end of the game the number tiles are multiplied by the level they sit on minus one. So, a five on the third level scores ten points (5 x (3-1)). This time, Ivory and Green matched each other for several turns before making a slight different placement which then ballooned into big differences.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Ivory and Green were quite pleased early on when they were able to place the eight on the, then highest level when Burgundy had to be content with adding it to his “ground floor”. In the end, Burgundy proved cannier than the others, however, and even managed to get a fourth level by the end of the game, while both Ivory and Green could only manage three tiers. In the final scores, it was Burgundy’s experience that showed through and his score dwarfed that of Ivory and Green, who finished with only a point between them. Chatting about the game afterwards, everyone was surprised how quick it had been and how easy it was to learn (helped by the zero setup time). So much so in fact, that even though the game was not to everyone’s taste, everyone felt it made a very handy little filler game and with a nice little bit of challenge. Having played it once though, both Ivory and Green felt they had a better understanding of the challenges and were more familiar with the tessellation possibilities and looked forward to doing better next time.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

On the other table, Cat Lady was still underway, so the Green, Ivory and Burgundy opted for another of the hits from Essen 2017, Azul. Despite the number of times we have now played this in the group, Ivory had somehow missed out. The idea of the game is that players are tile laying artists decorating a wall in the Palace of Evora with “azulejos”. On their turn, the active player can either take all the tiles of one colour from one of the factory displays (putting the rest in the central market) or take all the tiles of one colour from the market in the centre of the table. They then place the tiles in one of the five rows on their player board. The catch is that each player only has five rows, each with a set number of spaces (up to five). Players can add tiles to a row later in the round, but once a row is full, any left-overs go into the negative scoring row. Once all the tiles have been picked up, players evaluate their board, and, starting with the shortest row, one of the tiles from each full row is added to the player’s mosaic and scored.

– Image by BGG contributor JackyTheRipper

Players score just one point for a tile that is not placed adjacent to any other tile, whereas tiles added to rows or columns score the same number of points as there are tiles in the completed row (or column). The game continues with players choosing tiles from the factory displays and then adding them to rows, the catch is that as the mosaic fills up, it is harder to fill the rows as each row can only take each colour once. At the end of the game, players score bonus points for completed columns, completed rows and complete sets of five of the same colour. The game is actually much more complex to explain than to actually play and Ivory appeared to pick it up very quickly, successfully completing a column and two full coloured sets. Green, on the other hand, had managed only one column and one colour set as he had got stuck with a single blue on the bottom row for at least two turns as there weren’t enough of that colour drawn from the bag which stopped him placing the colours he really wanted to. It was Burgundy who romped home in the lead though, with two full columns and two complete colour sets and ninety-eight points, just three ahead of Ivory.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

While Azul was going on, Cat Lady had finished and the group also fancied playing Azul. Unfortunately, we only had one copy between us so they settled on Sheep & Thief instead. This is another light abstract that has proven quite popular in the group. Each player has a board divided into a four by four grid, and starts with their home card and two sheep in the top left hand corner. Each round is played in two halves: first players draft cards then they play them, taking it turns to place one card per turn. It is a strange little “point salad” of a game with players trying to connect their home card to the other three corners while also trying to keep their sheep safe and trying to catch other players sheep with their fox as well as attempting to navigate their black sheep to the town in the bottom right corner of their board.

– Image by boardGOATS

With points for sheep captured, sheep retained, long rivers, connecting the home card to the other corners of the board as well as for moving their black sheep as far from home as possible, it is hard to see who has the most points and get an idea of who is in the lead and it is astonishingly hard to do well at everything. During this game, there almost seemed to be a lack of sheep and not much movement around the fields either. The black sheep only moved a space or two and the foxes mostly sat and watched. Everyone managed to connect their home card to at least one town, but it was Black who managed to collected a huge number of points when he managed to mastermind a huge river system giving him a completely unassailable lead.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Azul was over, but as Sheep & Thief wouldn’t be long, Green, Ivory and Burgundy settled on a quick game of Love Letter with Green’s home printed Hobbit cards. It is a while since we last played Love Letter, but nobody had forgotten how as it is simple enough: draw a second card and chose one to play then action it trying to knock everyone else out—last player standing is the winner. This time, Burgundy was caught out first as he had been forced to discard the Elvenking, leaving Green with a fifty/fifty guess at Beorn or the Great Eagle (the mutterings on placing the Elvenking suggested he wasn’t Smaug). Although he guessed right, Ivory played a Troll to compare hands and Green could not match Ivory’s eagle. In the second round, history repeated itself for Burgundy as the first card he played was an Elvenking and the Great Eagle guess proved correct. It was Green’s Troll card that forced the compare this time and took out Ivory.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the third round, Green started off by keeping himself out of harms way with Elrond, but he drew Smaug as his next card and knew that the writing would be on the wall—it’s very hard to keep that quiet for long. The inevitable happened when Ivory forced Green to reveal his card, but it didn’t do Ivory much good as Burgundy was then able to beat him on another comparison. With one golden ring apiece and Sheep & Thief being scored on the next table, it was all or nothing on the final round. Burgundy was knocked out first, but Green and Ivory took it to the final cards, a compare hands. Much to the dismay of Green who had accused Ivory of being Smaug earlier in the round, Ivory had subsequently drawn the dragon card, and with it took the game. It wasn’t all that late, but nobody really wanted to start anything else. With Green and Ivory making for home, Black, Burgundy and Pine waited on the birthday girl’s decision, but she also wanted to head off—she’d had a busy day.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Don’t be a fussy pussy or it could be fatal!

3rd October 2017

The evening started with a quick hand of Love Letter between Blue and Burgundy while they waited for their “Fave” pizzas to arrive. The game only lasted a handful of turns and Blue took it with the Princess when she played a Baron to force a comparison. As Burgundy said, with that combination of cards lined up against him, his poor Baron didn’t stand a chance. There wasn’t time for him to get his revenge, however, as food arrived, along with a Happy Birthday text from Pink (who wasn’t able to come). With the arrival of Red and Magenta, Blue and Red talked about work for a few minutes before Ivory and Pine joined the party and everyone settled down to a quick game of 6 Nimmt!—a quick game that could be played while eating pizza.

– Image by boardGOATS

Bizarrely, Ivory had somehow managed to avoid playing 6 Nimmt! despite it being one of our most frequently played games. So, there was a quick run-down of the rules before we could start. The game starts with four cards face up on the table, the beginning of four rows. Each player starts with a hand of cards and players simultaneously choose one and place it face-down before a simultaneous reveal. Cards are then played in ascending order, with players placing their card on the highest card that is lower than the card being played. When the sixth card is added to a row, the first five are taken by the active player and the number of heads contribute to that player’s score; lowest score wins. We tend to play two rounds, each using half of the deck of one-hundred and four cards. The thing that makes the game so compelling is that players begin to feel they have control over their destiny, but any grip they may have is incredibly tenuous and once things start to go wrong the problems tend to escalate horribly.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, things started to go wrong early for Red and Blue, but Pine outstripped them by miles and finished the first round with twenty three “nimmts”—as he commented, enough for a whole dairy heard. Burgundy and Magenta were doing much better with one nimmt and none respectively. Given his excellent performance in the first round, everyone expected Burgundy to start collecting cards with enthusiasm in the second round, and so it proved. His efforts paled into insignificance compared with some of the others though, in particular Ivory and especially Blue, who finished with a massive top score of forty-four. The winner was unambiguously Magenta, however, who added a second clear round to her first and managed to end the game without picking up a single bull’s head, a real achievement.

– Image by boardGOATS

With everyone now arrived and pizzas all consumed it was time for the party to really start, with the “Feature Game”, Crappy Birthday accompanied by a marvellous blue Meeple Cake supplied by Georgie from The Jockey. Everyone sang Happy Birthday and Blue and Green as the originators of the group blew out the candles then Red took the knife and started to carve while Magenta began dealing cards for the game. With everyone eating cake (including the people at the pub who couldn’t believe we’d been going for five years), attention turned to Crappy Birthday. This is funny little party game which we played for the first time last year to celebrate our fourth anniversary. The premise of the game is that it is one player’s birthday and every one gives them a “present” chosen from the cards in their hand. The birthday boy or girl then has to choose the best present and worst present and then returns these cards to the person who gave them. At the end of the game players count up the number of pressies they have had returned and the one with the most (i.e. the one who gave the fewest mediocre presents) is the winner. The game has a lot in common with Dixit, but is a lot simpler. In the same way though, the production quality of the cards is really key to making the game work, though the emotions are very different: in Dixit everyone marvels at the beauty of the art, in Crappy Birthday everyone laughs at the stupidity or brilliance of the gifts.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time we discovered that Black wanted a Viking helmet for his birthday, Red wanted to go on the first trip to Mars, Burgunday fancied a course in Sumo wrestling and a drive across the Sahara was on Ivory’s “Bucket List”. There were many amusing gifts that didn’t actually score points including the Gnome ABBA Tribute Band (singing, “Gnoming me, Gnoming you” perhaps?) and a dead rat to hang on the front door at New Year. We also discovered that Pine hates heights and horses (especially those that are trying to throw you off), so the session of rodeo riding was thrown straight back in disgust. Red returned a Porta-Potty (she’s seen plenty in the last year apparently); Blue threw back comedy lessons (she hates being on stage); Black sent back a chair because it was boring and Red decided she couldn’t cope with a 150lb burger and claimed it would make her sick. Everyone clearly thought that physical exertion was not Burgundy’s thing, but it was the tight rope walking that he was least keen on while Ivory had a fit of shyness and turned down the kind offer of a session skinny-dipping. Purple rejected the idea of her very own personal roller-coaster, though it was close between that and snake charming lessons. Pine commented that he would have combined the snake charming with the five chihuahua puppies as the latter would have provided an excellent food supply for the snakes. This did not go down well with Purple who had chosen the chihuahua’s as her favourite gift and didn’t want them eaten…

– Image by boardGOATS

It didn’t really matter who was the winner because everyone had fun and everyone got their moment in the spotlight as they had to explain their decisions. And while they listened everyone else got sticky eating the meeple cake which was soon nibbled away to leave just a bit of head and a foot. After one round we counted up who had the most returned cards and Ivory who had five cards was the winner by miles with Green and Burgundy in a distant, joint second place. Party games aren’t really the Group’s “thing”, but everyone enjoyed this one (particularly accompanied by cake) and the consensus seemed to be that once a year was about probably right, especially as it gave everyone time to forget the silly things on the cards. With the birthday cards collected in and the cake mostly gone it was time to decide what to play. Nobody was quick to decide and things were complicated by those planning to leave early. In the end we decided to stick together as a group (it was a party after all) and play a round of Saboteur.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mothertruckin

The idea of Saboteur is that each player is either a Dwarf or a Saboteur and players take it in turns to play a card from their hand. The Dwarves aim is to extend the tunnel to the treasure, while the Saboteurs try to stop them. There are two types of cards that can be played: tunnels and special cards. The cards with tunnel fragments shown must be played in the correct orientation, though the tunnel depicted can include junctions, bends, and even dead-ends. While the Dwarves try to push the path towards the gold, Saboteurs try to play disruptive cards while trying not to look like it. Meanwhile, special cards include “rockfall” cards which can be played to remove a tunnel card already played, and maps which can be used to see where the gold is hidden. Most importantly, however are “broken tool” cards which can be played on another player to prevent them building tunnel cards until they (or another kind-hearted soul) plays a matching “fixed tool” card to remove it. The game is supposed to be played over several round with the winning team sharing out a pile of gold cards, but we tend to play it as a team game and stick to one round at a time.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mikehulsebus

The game began quite carefully with everyone doing their best to look like dwarves, that didn’t stop the accusations though and it wasn’t long before someone decided that Black and Green were looking shifty. Green had almost all the map cards and unsportingly decided to stick to the rules and refused to share them. Then Pine roused suspicions when his use of a map card led to a disagreement with Green clearly identifying one of them as a Saboteur. Before long Ivory had joined the fray and nobody knew what was going on, except that the tunnels kept moving forward. Eventually, Blue left nobody in any doubt when she gleefully diverted the tunnel away from the only possible remaining gold. With the last card in the draw deck gone, it went down to the wire, but all the sabotage from Blue, Pine and Ivory was to no avail. Cards continued to be played and it took a whole extra round, but the Dwarves just managed to make it to the treasure.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mikehulsebus

With time ticking on, Red and Magenta left for an early night and the residue of the group split into two parts, the first of which played Sheep & Thief. This game has had a couple of outings recently, in particular on a Tuesday two weeks ago. Sheep & Thief is a curious little tile/card drafting and laying game with elements of pick up and deliver mechanisms added for good measure. Each player has a board divided into a four by four grid, and starts with their home card and two sheep in the top left hand corner. Each round is played in two halves: first players draft cards then they play them, taking it turns to place one card per turn. Players are trying to connect their home card to the other three corners while trying to keep their sheep safe and trying to catch other players sheep with their fox, meanwhile, they are also attempting to navigate their black sheep to the bottom left right corner of their board. With points for all sorts of things including sheep captured, sheep retained, long rivers, connecting the home card to the other corners of the board as well as for moving their black sheep as far from home as possible, it is a veritable “point salad”, but one where it is actually very difficult to do well.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine, with his love of sheep was always going to do do well, despite this being his first try at the game. Everyone else had played it several times before and therefore knew what they were letting themselves in for. The strategies were very varied though, for example, Purple prioritised getting her road from her home card to the opposite corner of her board and picked up fifteen points for doing so. Green prioritised getting his black sheep as far as he could in the hope that he might get points for his road in the process. Unfortunately, although Green’s sheep netted him fifteen points, he was not able to connect his home card to any other corner and therefore failed to get any extra points as a result. In contrast, Black tried to do a bit of everything which really isn’t a strategy that works for this game. As a result he really struggled. It was a very close game, and on the re-count finished in a tie between Green and Pine who both scored thirty-one points with Purple just behind. Since the tie-breaker is the number of sheep and and both Green and Pine finished with the same number of sheep the victory was shared.

– Image by boardGOATS

On the next table, Ivory, Burgundy and Blue were being indecisive. In the end after looking longingly at the “Deluxified” Yokohama, they reluctantly decided that it would probably take too long and decided to give Dice Forge a go instead. This game was new to everyone except Ivory who gave his assurance that it would not be a long and complicated game. And he was right – the whole thing took less than an hour and a half including teaching. The game is a dice building game, with a lot in common with the deck building games like Dominion and bag building games like Orléans, or cup building games like Roll for the Galaxy, where the aim is to try to mitigate the effects of luck by stacking the deck, bag, cup or in this case dice, to improve the odds. In the case of Dice Forge, it is the dice themselves that players are modifying. Each player starts with two dice, similar to those in some of the Lego games, where the faces can be removed and changed.

– Image by boardGOATS

Beyond this, the game is actually quite simple. On the active player’s turn, everyone rolls both their dice and adds the result to their accounting tracks. On their turn, the active player can then also spend some of their gains to either upgrade dice, or to move their pawn from their central “Starting Portals” to one of the “Islands” on the board and take a “Heroic Feat” card. Each upgrade has a cost, with the best upgrades having the highest costs. The cards also have costs and the most powerful cards are the most expensive. When upgrading, players can choose which faces to replace and what to replace them with. In contrast, most of the cards have a single use special action or bonus, but some also have a perpetual action. With the game restricted to only ten rounds, however, these have to be bought early if they are to prove game winners. Once everyone had had the full ten rounds, each player adds up their points and the player with the most is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

There are several sources of points: firstly, some dice faces give points, but this is not a particularly efficient way of scoring unless there are some cards that can be used to increase the acquisition speed. Cards can be more effective, but only if the means to buy them can be accumulated quickly and efficiently. Blue started off trying to get some nice dice faces to improve the probability of a good roll. She quickly realised the really clever part of the game: what is the best way to upgrade the dice and how should the faces be distributed? For example, is it better to put all the good faces on one die and guarantee one good roll, or is it better to spread them across both and hope to roll more good rolls than bad ones? She opted for the latter, but wasn’t sure whether that was the right choice or not.

– Image by boardGOATS

While Blue was faffing about with where to put her dice, Burgundy had a much bigger problem as he was struggling to roll what he wanted in order to upgrade his. This had the knock-on consequence that by the time he got what he wanted, invariably, Blue or Ivory had pinched what he wanted. Ivory, having played the game before clearly had a much better idea of what he was trying to do, but although he managed some exceptional rolls, he struggled from time to time too. In the end, Burgundy more or less gave up on dice and started to collect cards. Somehow he managed to accrue a seventy-two cards—a massive number compared with compared with the forty-two/forty-six that Ivory and Blue had gathered together. It almost worked as well, since he netted a fantastic ninety-eight points, remarkable considering his very slow start. In the end Burgundy finished just two points behind Blue who top-scored with a nice round hundred. Everyone had enjoyed it though, despite the frustrations, and everyone was quite keen to give it another go, though not straight away as it was definitely home time.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Time flies when you are playing boardgames!

19th September 2017

After more discussion that it really warranted, we started the evening with a quick game of Bokken Schieten (aka Ziegen Kriegen). Given the choice of this, No Thanks! or 6 Nimmt!, Red chose “the Goat Game”, but was disappointed to find it wasn’t what she was expecting. Bokken Schieten is a very simple trick-taking game based on Blackjack. Players choose a card from their hand and play it face up in front of them – the person who plays the highest card takes the trick and with it all the cards played in the round. The player who plays the lowest card draws a Goat Island card and places the goat-meeple on one end, choosing which end will start Goat Island and the value of the number to contribute to the limit. The game continues with players playing cards and winning tricks, and the player who plays the lowest numbered card adding to Goat Island, choosing whether to add a large or small amount to the total. At the end of the game players count the number of goat heads on their cards and the winner is the player with the highest total that does not exceed the limit given by the sum of the numbers on Goat Island.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine was the player who had most recently seen a goat, so he went first. It quickly became apparent that several players were struggling: Burgundy had all the low cards, while Magenta had only one card below twenty-four and consequently went bust quite quickly. Blue also had few low cards, but was so paranoid about going bust she ended up winning no tricks at all. Goat Island finished with a value of fifteen which immediately put two players out of the running and with Blue taking no tricks it was between Burgundy and Pine. It turned out that having so many low value cards gave Burgundy the edge as he finished with eleven goat heads, four more than Pine. It was about this point that Red pointed out that Green, Black and Purple were pariahs because they were the only ones who weren’t wearing blue. Everyone looked a bit mystified until Red explained that she was celebrating Dublin beating Mayo in the final of the All Ireland Gaelic Football Chamionship, and Dublin played in blue. Green and Purple quickly demonstrated they did have something blue on (socks and scarf respectively), which just left Black. He looked shifty and commented that he was also wearing blue, but didn’t think anyone really wanted him to prove it…

– Image by boardGOATS

The silliness continued as Pine commented that he’d received an email with the subject line, “Show us your knickers”. Apparently this was something to do with recycling and they wanted new undies or “slightly used bras”. Pine’s well-endowed colleague had commented that none of her bras were “slightly used” and Pine looked to the girls round the gaming table for opinions precipitating a discussion as to what constituted a “slightly used bra”. With the nonsense continuing into the discussion of games, there were only two games people were keen to play. Some of the group had played Roll for the Galaxy a few weeks earlier and felt it needed to be played more so everyone could get to grips with it better. Green was particularly keen to give it another go, and Black and Purple were happy to join him, leaving place for one more. Burgundy actively rejected it and Red was keen to play the “Feature Game”, Battle Kittens which left three people to sort themselves out. In the end, we went with seating positions and Pine, although he was a little skeptical and hadn’t played it before, joined the Roll for the Galaxy group leaving Blue and Magenta play Battle Kittens with Red and Burgundy.

– Image by boardGOATS

Battle Kittens is a quick-playing card drafting game with a ninja-cat theme. The idea is that each player is one of the Cat King’s Royal Cat Herders, who starts with seven cat cards, taking one passing the rest on. As each player receives a new hand, they take another card and keep passing the ever-diminishing hands on until there are no cards left to circulate. Once this drafting phase has been completed, players divide up their packs of kittens into three groups which will contest the three different battle arenas. Each arena will be contested on the basis of one of the four traits: cuteness, strength, wisdom, and agility. The squads with the three highest point totals in a battlefield are awarded a number of fish tokens in accordance with that particular battlefield’s allotment for first, second and third place. The key thing is that some kittens have special powers allowing players to pick up “King” cards or add points to other cat cards. King cards are mostly good, but the King can be fickle sometimes takes out his ill-temper on an unsuspecting squad of kittens. The game is played over three rounds and the winner is the player with the most fish at the end of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

It took everyone a round to really appreciate what they were trying to do, but by the second round, the gloves were off and the ninja kittens were attacking with everything they had. It was a hard fought close series of battles as the piles of fish gradually grew and grew. With the game quickly all done bar the counting, which was very close, but Blue’s Brave Moggies took first place, two fish ahead of Burgundy in second place. The other table were still underway, so with time for something else, there was another decision to be made. With time now a factor, there were fewer options and it wasn’t long before a decision was made and players were getting out Sheep & Thief.

– Image by boardGOATS

Sheep & Thief is a strange little “point salad” of a game. Each player has a board divided into a four by four grid, and starts with their home card and two sheep in the top left hand corner. Each round is played in two halves: first players draft cards then they play them, taking it turns to place one card per turn. There are lots of different elements to the game: players are trying to connect their home card to the other three corners while trying to keep their sheep safe and trying to catch other players sheep with their fox, meanwhile, they are also attempting to navigate their black sheep to the bottom right corner of their board. With points for sheep captured, sheep retained, long rivers, connecting the home card to the other corners of the board as well as for moving their black sheep as far from home as possible, it is hard to see who has the most points and get an idea of who is in the lead. Blue and Burgundy had both played the game before and both said it was very hard to do everything.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue didn’t have many sheep and most of them got stolen by Burgundy and particularly Red who really engaged with the thief aspect of the game. Meanwhile, Magenta didn’t quite follow the rules surrounding the rivers so we had to re-write things a bit to work round it. Although Blue had almost no sheep and her black sheep got itself sent back to the start right at the end so scored nothing, Blue did manage to pick up lots of points for a long river and and connecting her home to the other corners, giving her a quite respectable score of twenty-eight. In contrast, Burgundy hadn’t managed to build a route to any of the corners and only had a short river. With all the sheep he had stolen and his travelling black sheep (who nearly made it all the way to the far corner), he also scored twenty-eight. It was quite a surprise when Magenta, who had lots of sheep, but was a little low in the other areas, also scored exactly twenty-eight points. With a three-way tie, it was with bated breath that everyone waited while Blue added up the scores, but sadly, Red had only managed twenty-three. This seemed a little low to Red, however, and on the recount, it turned out she had, not twenty-eight, but thirty-three, making her the winner and the best sheep thief!

– Image by boardGOATS

With Red and Magenta heading off and the other game still going on, there was just time for Blue and Burgundy to play something short. It was hard to decide what, as Splendor was the obvious choice, but last time Blue and Burgundy had played, Blue had finally won after two years of trying and was reluctant to start another losing streak. The game is a simple one of chip collecting and engine-building with a very loose gemstone theme. Basically, on their turn, players can take gemstone poker chips, or use chips to buy a card. Some cards have points on them and all can be used like the poker chips to buy cards (but without having to return them). The cards also give players access to “Noble tiles” which also give points. The winner is the player with the most points after someone reaches fifteen points. This time, although Blue started well, Burgundy soon wore her down eventually finishing with seventeen points to Blue’s eleven by take two points and a Noble to end the game.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Meanwhile, on the next table a tight fought battle was underway in Roll for the Galaxy. Black, Purple and Green had all played it before several times and relatively recently too, so it was only Pine who needed a detailed rules explanation. In summary, players roll the dice in their cup in secret, behind their player screen. They then distribute the dice according to their symbols, matching them up to each of the five phases, Explore, Develop, Settle, Produce and Ship. Players then, still in secret, re-position one of their dice to use it to choose one action they would like to activate. Players can also put a die to one side for a turn to “Dictate” the symbol on another die, i.e. reassign it to a different phase. Once everyone has positioned all their dice, the player screens are removed and players simultaneously carry out the phases that have been chosen in order. In general, if a phase is chosen by anyone, it will happen for everyone. Thus, players can look at what others are doing and try to decide whether someone else will activate a particular phase and then they can activate another.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Each die is used to carry out an action once, so if a player has multiple dice assigned to the same phase, the action may be carried out several times. Any dice that were not used because the phase did not happen or because the player chose not to use them are returned to the players’ cups. Dice that have been “spent” to carry out an action must be placed in the player’s “Citizenry” and must be transferred back into the player’s dice cup at a cost of $1, before they can be used again. The aim of the game is to get points which come through Trading goods and Settling and Developing Worlds. These actions have corresponding phases which players must choose during the game. Worlds broadly come in two different types: Production and Development. Production Worlds come with extra dice in different colours and as the different colours have different distributions of symbols, they have different advantages and disadvantages. The dice can be “spent” in exchange for victory points or money; all dice have the same value when used to get victory points, but different values when acquiring money. Development Worlds do not provide dice, but instead give special powers and/or extra points at the end of the game.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Players draw World tiles from a bag during the Explore phase and one of the key parts of the game is controlling these piles and manipulating the worlds built in order to steer a particular strategy. Another important part of the game is controlling which dice that go into the player’s cup. In this sense, the game could be compared with deck building games like Dominion or bag-building games like Orléans, where players build the contents of their deck/bag in an effort to control luck. Perhaps the most important part of the game is choosing which Worlds to build and trying to get a synergy between them. This is quite hard to get to grips with on the first try as it’s not always easy to identify which Worlds are god ones to keep. That said, players essentially draw one tile from the bag at a time, so the only decision to be made is which side to use. On the other hand, one of the options is throwing tiles out, in which case, several tiles may be drawn from the bag simultaneously which is more powerful, but makes the decision much harder. The game end is triggered when one player has built twelve worlds or the pile of victory point chips is consumed. It is a game that takes a bit of getting used to and everyone usually struggles a bit at the start, which is what Black and Green were so keen to try it again quickly after they last played. This time everyone seemed to build their strategies round slightly different approaches.

– Image by BGG contributor haslo

Green started with a green “Genes” World which is valuable when Trading, however, he was able to he was able to pair it with a Development world that gave him a Production bonus making it very lucrative. With this and a couple of other Production Worlds he was able to engage in a lot of Shipping. Black began with a red, Military die which has a distribution that encourages Settling and Developing. It wasn’t until right at the end of the game though that he was able to Develop some of his most valuable Worlds. Pine began quite tentatively as it was his first time, but quickly got the hang of Producing and Settling and managed to Develop Worlds that gave him bonuses which eased things along. Purple, on the other hand, struggled to get to grips with the game, largely thanks to the worlds she picked up at the start. In the end, she just built as much as she could and triggered the end of the game when she built her twelfth world. The others weren’t far behind her though and their better combination of Worlds gave them more points. It was the victory points from Shipping that really made the difference however, but it was very close at the top with just two points in it. Had Green ended the game a round earlier (as he’d had the chance to do) he might just have kept his nose in front. As it was, allowing Black to Develop in the final round was a crucial error and gave him the victory by just two points.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

The evening was nearly over, but after a quick update on Richard Branson and Hurricane Irma, there was just time for a little bit more “Trash Talk” – quite literally as it happens, as the conversation moved onto the subject of “drive-through litter-bins” on motorways. This is now apparently a thing, which led to a discussion with everyone expressing their disgust at the laziness of people who seem incapable of taking their littler home with them and recycling it. It was in response to one such comment on this subject from Blue that Pine, much to everyone’s astonishment pronounced, “That is because you’re intelligent…” And on that note, it was definitely time for home!

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Learning Outcome: Black wears blue underwear and Pine thinks Blue is “intelligent” (well, sometimes).