Tag Archives: Sprawlopolis

25th March 2025

With a generally Japanesey theme planned for the evening to mark the official start of the Japanese Cherry Blossom Season, Blue and Pink, the early arrivals considered 5×5 Zoo, Songbirds and Honshū which were all abandoned variously because the rules were in Japanese, the game was too complex, or it didn’t natively play two. In the end, they settled on Sprawlopolis, which although very definitely not Japanese, did at least have a bit of a Japanese feel to it. The game is a simple quick cooperative micro-game where players take it in turns to at to their city by placing cards.

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Each card is quartered with each section showing one of the four different zones, green Parks, brown Residential, grey Industry and blue Offices. The players score a point for each piece in the largest region of each city zone minus the number of roads, plus scores for each objective. This time the objectives were “Master Planned”, “The Outskirts” and “Sprawlopolis” giving a points target of twenty-five. It was close and, as Blue and Pink weren’t quite on the same wavelength with their planning (communication is allowed without describing the cards in hand) it was didn’t look like they were going to make it, but in the end, they topped the target by two points.

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By this time, everyone else had arrived so the group split into three with the first group, a large group of six playing the “Feature Game” which was Habesuto (aka ハーベスト) which translates as “Harvest”. This is a quick game from Japan about building a farm, growing vegetables and distributing produce. On their turn players play a card onto the central board and then replenish their hand. Each player owns a field in the central play area; if that field is empty then players must play a card into their own field, thereafter, they can play anywhere. When a row of three or more cards is created, the cards are scored, with the cards, and therefore points, going to the owner of the field, but points can be positive or negative.

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There are special cards like the Tornado which removes cards and the wild Harvest card. There are three vegetable suits of cards (red, yellow and green) each with five denominations, ten, twenty, forty, and minus ten and minus twenty. At the end of the game, when everyone has run out of cards or is unable to play, players score the value of each card in their score pile. To this they add fifty points if their field is empty, but subtract fifty points for each special card left in their hand.The game is really quick and nasty. Initially everyone felt their way through and began playing nicely. The niceness was reflected in the scores which were very even—Teal was the winner with a hundred points, but it was a three-way tie for second between Sapphire, Ruby and Lime.

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Everyone had got the feel of the game and wanted to play again, but this time, the gloves were off. Second time round, Ruby was the victor with Teal increasing his score, but dropping down the rankings into second with a hundred and sixty. Jade came in third, twenty points behind. The third round was a bit more evenly balanced, with Lime taking first place with a hundred and thirty and Flint the only other player to make it into three figures. Teal went from hero to zero and finished the final game with minus ten. From there, the group decided to move away from Japan and into a world inhabited by cute animals with River Valley Glassworks, which got its first outing just a week ago.

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As River Valley Glassworks plays a maximum of five, Jade taught and acted as umpire. In this game, players take it in turns to play a piece from their inventory into the river. Each river tile can take only a specific shape, and players have to play into a space adjacent to where they want to draft from. After claiming their glass, the river shifts forward revealing new pieces. Glass is stored in players’ shops, and the scores depend on where the glass is placed with completed rows and columns giving bonus points. However, too many of one type gives negative points.

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The game process is simple enough: either place a piece of glass onto a river tile or draw exactly four pieces from the lake with the aim of collecting a rainbow of glass pieces but the challenge is getting the balance right. In the end, the group did a “Lime”, that is, played it once and then decided to give it another go. First time round, the battle was between Ruby, Sapphire and Teal with Ruby holding off Sapphire by four points who in turn, just pipped Teal by one. By the second time, Teal had got the hang of things and won by a bit of a land-slide, finishing with sixty-six, eighteen more than Lime in second.

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Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, Plum, Ivory, Byzantium and Blue settled down to play another Japanese game, which turned out to be something of a secret favourite amongst them: Yokohama. This is a sort of path building game, almost like a heavier version of the popular game, Istanbul. Players operate a Merchant who travels around building their business. They also have Assistants, Shops and Trading Houses. On their turn, players deploy one Assistant in three different areas or two Assistants in one area, then they move their Merchant. Merchants can move as far as they like, but can only travel through locations occupied by their Assistants and cannot finish in an area already occupied by another Merchant.

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Players then perform the action associated with their destination, with the level depending on the Power of that player at that location. The Power is the player’s presence in that location, i.e. the sum of the President (equal to one), any Assistants and any Buildings. The more Power, the better the resultant benefit. A Power of four or more enables the player to build a Shop or Trading house at the location which will earn additional points or other rewards as well as providing more Power on future visits. Any Assistants at the location are “used” and returned to the player to be placed on a later turn.

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As in Istanbul, the different locations provide different benefits. There are locations that provide resources (Tea, Copper, Silk and Fish), some that provide Order cards (Dock or Port) or Technology cards (Laboratory or Research centre) and others that enable players to get more Assistants, Shops or Trading Houses (Employment Agency), Money (Bank) or points (Church and Customs). Ivory started quickly, grabbing early points for the game focuses (lots of Tea) and getting some buildings placed, while Blue ended up with a pile of initially unwanted Fish and Plum spent some time tripping over everyone else. Byzantium, didn’t seem to be doing much but Plum rather ominously said that was the way he played the game, just before winning by a huge margin.

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Ivory made great headway getting the goods to give him twenty-two points from the Customs House, but just as the game came to a conclusion he ran out of steam having spent lots of turns playing only two Assistants as opposed to three. It was a close run thing in the end with barely ten points between first and last, indeed, Ivory finished a single coin away from getting the ten point Technology that would have given him the game. As it was, Plum’s prediction proved right and victory was taken by Byzantium who had quietly got on with his game, mostly unnoticed by everyone else. It wasn’t the landslide foretold though, as his hundred and six points was only three points ahead of Plum in second.

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The last group were Blue, Pine, Purple and Black who started off with a game of Ticket to Ride with the Japan expansion. This is played much like the original base game i.e. players take cards from the market or play cards to place trains; score points for placing trains and completing Tickets. Like all the expansion maps, the Japan map has its own set of additional features, in this case, these a mostly focused on the Bullet Train which runs through the centre of the long thin board. Once these routes have been claimed, they can be used by all players to complete destination tickets. Instead of scoring points for such routes, players progress along the Bullet Train track. Whoever has contributed most to this shared project at the end of the game receives the largest bonus, with the player who contributes least being penalised.

Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 7 – Japan & Italy

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Last time we played this game there was a rules malfunction associated with the Bullet Train, but this time, that wasn’t a problem. Much hilarity ensued when Purple place a single train route from Hiroshima to Okayama and entirely unintentionally prevented Pink from completing his four long Tickets costing him a total of fifty-two points leaving him with a final score of minus twenty-four. Pine found this so amusing that he went round the room telling everyone else. Besides this the minor aspect of the winner seemed immaterial, but that was Pine thanks mostly to his completed Tickets, double Black’s total which gave him second place.

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Once the dust had settled, Pine, Pink, Purple and Black rounded off the evening with a game of the Summer Pavilion version of our old favourite, Azul. This uses the same market mechanism as in the base game, but instead of taking square tiles and placing them straight away, players take lozenge shaped tiles and and put them to one side for the second phase when players place them on their player board. The pieces a positioned according to colour to form seven coloured “stars”. Each location is numbered according to the cost to play it—thus a space numbered five needs five pieces one of which is placed on the board while the others are discarded.

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Placing one gives a single point while placing a second next to the first scores two and so on until the placing the sixth scores six points. So a priority is placing tiles to expand groups, however, surrounding statues give bonus tiles. Additionally, played over six rounds, each colour takes its turn as wild, though at least one tile of the required colour has to be played. At the end of the game, players score a bonus for each of the seven stars that they’ve filled completely and bonuses for completing all seven spaces of value one, two, three or four.

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Pink couldn’t remember the rules, so summoned Blue to explain, but her brain wasn’t on the right page so Jade, who, by this time was just adjudicating, explained instead. The in-game scoring was quite close with just two points between Pine and Pink, and Purple and Black not far behind. So it all came down to the bonus points. Pine picked up points for completing his green star and all the seven spaces with the value one giving him twenty-two additional points. Pink’s fourteen points for completing his red star together with his twenty-four number bonus points more than off-set Pine’s small advantage, giving a modicum of revenge for the delight everyone got from his earlier misfortune in Ticket to Ride.

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Learning outcome: Bad things that happen can make good memories, for some people at least.

5th September 2023

The evening began with Green and Purple arriving to find Plum and Cobalt sitting outside the pub chatting. This was partly because the weather was warm, but also because someone else was sitting at our usual table and we had been relegated to another long table on the other side of the room. Pine arrived soon after and once introductions between Cobalt and those who had not been about last time were concluded, the group decided to play a short intro game while they waited for everyone else to arrive. The game settled on was Coloretto, which had only just begun when Ivory arrived, but he was happy to watch.

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Coloretto is a quick and simple game that is very popular with the group. Players either turn over the top card and add it to a “Truck”, or take a Truck and add it’s contents to their collection, sitting out until everyone else has taken a Truck. Players are collecting coloured sets of Chameleon cards, but the key is that only three sets score positive points, with the others scoring negatively. Thus players are trying to get as many cards in three colour suits, and as few as possible in each of the rest. This time, everyone started with a different colour, so there were no obvious clashes. As is usual for this game, it took a few turns for each players position to become clearer.

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By this time Plum was keeping the number of colour sets she had low with only two, but also had a couple of +2 bonus point cards and a Rainbow Chameleon (a wild) . Purple’s set was similar but with three colours. Green was making steady progress and Cobalt was low on any particular colour, but only had four sets and a Rainbow Chameleon, so was poised for a good score if the cards fell in his favour. Pine meanwhile seemed to be in the process of collecting at least one of each colour! By the end of the game, Plum had managed to collect Chameleons in just three colours and so scored no negatives, while Pine just seemed to have sets of everything. Purple had three extra colours, but with only one of each; her Rainbow Chameleon and +2 cards helped to give her a good score.

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Green managed only one negative point, but had no bonuses, while Cobalt had his cards fall right and ended with a couple of good colour sets and with it, victory. By the conclusion of Coloretto, Jade and Sapphire had arrived bringing with them the feature game, Vaalbara. In this game, each player is a clan leader trying to take over some territories with game-play which is vaguely reminiscent of Libertalia/Winds of Galecrest. Players all have the same deck of twelve cards representing the members of their tribe. Each turn, players choose secretly one card, then in the order of initiative of the revealed Characters, players activate their powers and take over one of the available Territories. Each type of Territory has its own way of scoring points (Collection, Pair, Diversity, Risk etc.).

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Thus the game is about timing and playing the best powers and the high initiatives at the most opportune moments. After nine rounds, the player with the most points wins. Jade and Sapphire had played Vaalbara about a dozen times together, and Green had played a similar number of games on Board Game Arena with reasonable success. Pine was entirely new to it the game and joined the other three. Jade and Pine took the Mountains in the first round, and then Jade managed to snatch the only one on offer in the second round. Green ended up with the final card in the first round—the All Rounder, so scored poorly with it.

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By the middle of the game Sapphire was going all out for Fields, Jade was on to his third Mountain and Pine was beginning to get the hang of things. Green was struggling with his all rounder strategy: all he could get was a River and several Forests and even after he’d swapped one of those for something else (he’d mixed up the cards and instead of swapping a card between first and second row, it was any card with the top card of the deck) it didn’t work out. Pine managed to complete his second Mountain, but Jade amazingly managed all four which catapulted his score. It was only then that Pine and Green realised that the fourth Mountain was twenty points on top of the ten for the first three (i.e. a very thirty in total from four cards).

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By the end of the game the Poppy Fields were coming out in profusion and started to really score a lot of points. Unfortunately for Green, Jade managed to nab the Field card ahead of him for a five type bonus and Green was still only on four terrain types. Once the dust had settled and the final scores were compiled, it was quite close with Jade and Pine were tied for first on seventy points, and Green only three points behind and just ahead of Sapphire. Pine joked that maybe the tie-break would be the player position on the last card back, thinking that would about as arbitrary as some of the other tie breaks had been recently. A quick check of the rules confirmed it and ultimately gave victory to Jade.

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From there, the quartet moved on to play an old favorite, Azul. In this game, players are tile-laying artists challenged to embellish the walls of the Royal Palace of Evora. On their turn, players draft colored tiles from the marketplace onto their player board. At the end of the round, players score points based on how they’ve placed their tiles to decorate the palace with wasted tiles scoring negative points. Bonuses are awarded at the end of the game for completing rows and columns and sets of the same colour, and then player with the most points is the winner. A pretty game, the group started with a short discussion about what colour one of the tiles really was.

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People wanted to call it blue, but there is already a fully blue tile, and this one was a little more turquoise with a white pattern—they did not come up with answer to the problem. The game played much as it always does with complaints about the tiles that were not coming out of the bag when needed and at one point there was one Marketplace with four tiles all the same colour (that colour that we could not quite pin a name on). Mid-way through the game no-one seemed to want the orange tiles, and it ended up with about eight of them in the middle of the table. It finally fell to Pine to take them, but he could not place any of them and they all had to go on his negative score line!

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The game was reluctantly brought to a conclusion by Sapphire, at the urging of everyone else. He did not want to complete his row, wanting to hold out and complete a different colour later, but if he hadn’t taken the tile he would have ended up with a larger negative score and it had already not been possible to fully populate market. After final scoring, Jade and Sapphire shared the lead with ninety-five points with Green, who’d had a much better game than he usually has in third. Tie break time again, but this time Sapphire won it because he was the only player to have completed a full row (the tile he hadn’t wanted to take).

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There was still time for something else, and the group settled on Nimalia, a new, interesting card-laying game where players are designing the best Animal Sanctuary. Each card has four “Biome” squares on it of potentially different terrain, and different animals. Players start each round with three cards and draft them, placing the chosen card partly (or wholly) on top the already laid cards in a simlar way to Sprawlopolis or Honshū. The Sanctuary must remain within a six by six grid made of the squares (not the cards). The game is played over a series of five rounds, where two or three different conditions are scored at the end of each drafting round. This time, the first round would score for the largest area of Savannah and for connected Polar Bears and in the second round the scoring switched to Polar Bears and Gorillas next to Water.

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In the third round it returned to the largest Savannah, but with the complication of scoring maximum for no Giraffes down to scoring nothing with three or more giraffes—of course giraffes live in the Savannah! Rounds four and five used both the Giraffes and the Gorillas to score while adding in the Savannahs in the fourth round and polar bears in the fifth. The nature of the scoring meant that any cards with Giraffes were quickly passed on leaving some players with a double giraffe card to lay as the last card on a giraffe scoring round. Since it wasn’t possible to lay a new card underneath an old one, those giraffes caused scores to tumble!

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In the first round Pine roared into the lead while everyone else stayed within a point or two of each other. After the second round, Sapphire was the one who lost out, with Pine retaining his significant advantage. During the third and fourth rounds Jade and Green managed to catch Pine, with Jade pulling into the lead. Sapphire managed a good score in the fourth round, but he had a lot of ground to make up and he’d left his charge to the finish a little too late. In the final scoring, Jade and Green pulled ahead in a tight battle, which Jade won by just two points with his total of eighty. Pine was third after flailing around in the final round and having been left with a double giraffe.

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While all that was on-going, the rest of the group, Plum, Ivory, Purple and Cobalt, opted for a club favourite, Wingspan, enhanced by the European Expansion. This is a card-driven engine-building game where players choose one of four possible actions (activating their Woodland, Grassland or Wetland areas or placing a bird card in one of those locations). Points come from each individual card end of round goals, and eggs left at the end. The game is all about building combinations of cards that work together efficiently, so the it took all night as everyone wanted to do their absolute best.

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Ivory as always was very good at this, but was also quite generous giving everyone food each time he activated his Woodland area. Cobalt was the first to get three bird cards in his Reserve, though Ivory ended up with the most valuable birds on his board, with Plum’s next highest. One of Plums birds moved at the end of each round though, which was very useful for saving costs and improving yields. It was Ivory and Cobalt who tended to come out best with the end of round goals. As is often the case Ivory continued to score well with a good haul of bonus card points too.

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Purple failed to complete any of her bonus cards, but did make sure all her birds laid purple eggs. Cobalt finished the game with the most eggs, however, inevitably followed by Ivory. As for cached food and cards, Plum got the most food, but Purple had the most Tucked cards. With all the scores added up, Ivory was the almost inevitable winner on ninety-three with Cobalt not far behind with eighty-three and Plum taking the battle for third by just three points in what was a hard-fought game.

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Learning outcome: Goats love playing with colours.

21st October 2021

The evening began with a little play-testing while people waited for their food to arrive. The two-player game currently goes by the name of Brain Grabbers and, though simpler, has a mechanistic similarity to Sprawlopolis or Honshū. The game was designed by one of Pink’s work colleagues, so Pink explained the rules, and then proceeded to lose, first to Blue, then to Pine, failing to take a single point to their combined total of fourteen. The consensus was that it could be successful as a family-level game, but we weren’t fans of Cthulhu, so spent the next ten minutes coming up with exciting ways to re-theme it.

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As people finished eating others began to arrive, though there was some question about whether Purple and Black would make it thanks to a serious accident on the A420. We were discussing the treacherous nature of the A420 and its accident black spots when Purple and Black rocked up, and Purple surprised everyone by joining Green, Ivory and Burgundy to play the “Feature Game“, Endeavor: Age of Sail with the extras from the new Age of Expansion. Endeavor is a game we have played quite a bit over the years, initially in it’s original form and, more recently, in the new edition. The expansion came out last year and, sadly, got lost in the mists of the endless “Roll and Write” games we were playing online.

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The original game is actually not terribly complicated and during play is almost completely luck-free—all the variation is in the set up. The game is played over eight rounds, each consisting of four basic phases: Build, Populate, Payment and Action. There are four technology tracks roughly corresponding to each phase, which dictate what a player can do during that phase. For example, how far along the building track a player is dictates what they can build: the further along they are, the more buildings they have to choose from.

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Similarly, a player who is further along the population (or culture) track, can move more people into their harbour for use in the Action phase. Payment also increases the number of people available as it moves population markers from the action spaces into the harbour. More importantly, however, it makes the action spaces available again for use later in the round. The first phase consists of passing round the tray of buildings rather like a box of chocolates although in truth, at this point of the game players have very little choice. Despite that, the decision is crucial to how players do.

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After the Building phase, the second and third phases (Population and Payment) are more or less carried out simultaneously. The guts of the game, however, is the Action phase, when players can place population markers on their buildings to activate them and carry out one of the five actions: Colonise, Ship, Attack, Plunder Assets, and Pay Workers. The actions are generally based round the central board which is divided up into seven regions representing the seven continents. Each continent comprises several cities, a shipping route and a deck of cards.

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At the start of the game there is a Trade token on each city and each shipping space, but also on many of the connections between cities (these are taken if a player occupies both cities either side). Players cannot Colonise a city until they have a presence in a region, which they can do by Shipping. In this case, they activate their building that provides the shipping action by placing one population marker on it, then place a second population marker on the shipping track. Thus, players need to have two markers available to be able to Ship.

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The second population marker is placed in the furthest unoccupied space from the deck of Asset cards in the region of their choice, and the player takes the Trade token on that space. Most trade tokens add to one of the four technology tracks, though a small number provide one off actions instead. Players also need two population markers to Colonise (one for the action and one to occupy the city) and three if they are going to attack an already occupied city (one is collateral damage). Once a player has a presence in a region they can take an Asset card, so long as the number of the top card is not higher than the number of population markers that player has in the region.

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After eight rounds, players add up scores for each track and for the cities they control and the player with the most points is the winner. The new Age of Expansion adds several new components that completely mix up the game. First there is a completely new set of buildings, many of which have actions as well as boosting the players’ economies while others have more choice. Similarly, the first, second and fifth cards in the region decks now have more powerful and unique cards. These are now more desirable creating more competition for them.

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The new buildings also introduce three new concepts: Trade, Fortify, and Conscription & Mobilisation. Trade allows players to swap one Trade token from their play area with one on the central board, while Fortify allows players to increase the protection in a city they occupy causing others to lose an extra casualty should they decide to attack. Conscription enables players to acquire extra population which can then only be Mobilised as part of an action that has been activated in the usual way (e.g. used as a casualty during an attack, or to Settle).

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Additionally, a single Prominence tile drawn at random can be added to the game. These provide players with new ways to gain presence in a more-competitive Europe and each one provides difference benefits and ways to score. This time the Prominence tile was “Changing Alliances” which allows players to set up an alliance, where players cannot attack each other within Europe, in exchange for points at the end of the game.

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The game took a little while to set up, and although everyone had played it before, we needed a refresher of the rules and run down of the new expansions. In addition to the new Age of Expansion updates, the group also included the Exploits from the original Age of Sail, the mini Charter Company buildings and two additional micro-expansions from Age of Expansion (Seize your Fate & Level 6 region cards), making it a mega-game. Overall, it took about an hour for set-up and rules explanations.

Endeavor: Age of Sail - Charter Companies

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The Seize your Fate Expansion provides each player with a unique starting set-up. Ivory was The Kingdom of France so started with a city in Europe; Purple was The Ottoman Empire, so started in the open sea of India; Green was The Kingdom of Spain so started with a city in South America; Burgundy was Great Britain and started in the open seas of North America and the Caribbean. Coincidentally, each player was sat near the part of the board where their starting places were, so that set the stage for players’ strategies.

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Ivory quickly started taking cities in Europe and was open to a Prominence Alliance. Green was taking Fleets in Europe so joined him. No-one else wanted to form any alliances leaving Ivory to dominate Europe with and Green (to a lesser extent). However, due to a rules malfunction, this was under the false impression that as part of the winning alliance they would score four points for each disc in the region when it was actually four points for each disc in the Alliance. Since he was concentrating on becoming the power house in Europe Ivory left his Seize the Fate actions for much later in the game, and only expanded out of Europe to the Far East and later on Africa.

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He did however make good use of the Dutch East India Company exploit (once it was open) to upgrade his seaside buildings. Meanwhile, Purple concentrated mostly on India and Africa, but suffered early on with not having enough population in her harbour or enough bricks to build better buildings. The game was long though, and she managed to Seize her Fate (Round the Cape). She also made use of the Dutch East India company in the latter rounds, and although scores weren’t calculated until the end of the game, she probably made up good ground with these latter stages.

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Elsewhere, Green was concentrating on the Caribbean, and making connections with his Fleets in Europe. He managed to amass a large population early on, but let it slip so that by the end of the game, Ivory and Burgundy had much more population to spare for attacks, even on fortified cities. Green kept an eye on Burgundy’s progress to keep a presence in South and North America. He was the first to Seize his Fate (Form the Great Armada) and used The Transit of Venus exploit, shipping up to Tahiti and using his money to increase his population.

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Burgundy concentrated on the America’s, and although he opened the Republic of the Pirates exploit, he never used it (and neither did Green who could also have done so). This was because he said he did not really understand it and it didn’t seem that useful. Which was a shame, as it meant the beautifully crafted big black plastic pirate ship didn’t make it onto the board. What Burgundy did do, however, was to make heavy use of Conscription buildings, which really helped him ship to almost everywhere. Unfortunately for him, in the final round of the game there was no shipping left and he discovered that he didn’t have enough other actions to make use of the population he had.

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In the end, after a re-evaluation of the scores due to the Alliance misunderstanding, Ivory was declared the winner with eighty-one. Burgundy was the runner-up with seventy-three, three points ahead of Green in what turned out reasonably close game. But what of all the expansions? The exploits can always be relied on to add an interesting dynamic (with a couple of duds) and it is likely these will continue to feature. The Charter companies seem to help in four and five-player games when Level five buildings have the potential to disappear quickly (especially with the Exploit we used this time), and apart from space around the board don’t intrude too much anyway.

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The Level six cards seem to be intended to be played with the Age of Expansion every time, as Slavery is Abolished on the Europe Level 6 card, whereas in the Age of Sail base game it is abolished on the Europe Level five card. This time, none of the Level six cards actually got played. Again, they don’t intrude, but give additional options, so are also worth playing with. The benefits of the “Seize your Fate” was perhaps less clear. Having different starting positions certainly helped the start and gave players a steer as to strategy. Remembering the actions were available was a problem and the extra scores were quite small (about four points for those who used them). Including this module would probably depend on the group.

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The new Conscription action seemed to open up more of the board, which counters a common complaint about the game, that in order to get a region open, players have to neglect a couple of other areas and can lose out if they made a start in them early in the game. However, the danger seems to be in overusing Conscription. In this game there was a lot of Fortification, and in many ways it seemed a little too much. The bonuses on the new cards were interesting and add variety to the main game, but the expansion certainly doesn’t make the Age of Sail options obsolete as they could be very valuable if a less competitive game was wanted.

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While Purple was exploring India and Africa, Black, Pine, Lime, Blue and Pink were exploring Japan with Tokaido. This is a highly tactical game, that straightens out the market mechanism at the heart of Glen More and makes it the centre of a set collecting game. During the game, players are travelling from the ancient capital Kyoto, to Edo (now Tokyo) via the Tōkaidō road. This was one of the five centrally administered routes, the Gokaidō, that connected the capital of Japan with the outer provinces during the Edo period (1603–1868).

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As players travel, they experience the wonders of Japan sampling food and scenery, talking to the colourful characters en route, buying souvenirs and giving thanks at the temples they pass. The game board consists of a long track with locations marked—each location can only be visited by one player. Players line up along the path and the player at the back goes first (in this case Pink). They move their piece to an empty space and carry out the associated action, before the next player at the rear takes their turn.

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In each case, the primary decision is simple: move to the space with the most interesting action to maximise points, or move to the first available space to get the most turns. In most cases, once that decision has been made, players simply take money or a card from the appropriate pile, the three panoramas, the hot springs, or Characters. Panoramas and Hot Springs simply give points while Characters give other bonuses. Stopping at a temple allows players to genuflect and pay tribute, while visiting a Village gives player the opportunity to buy souvenirs. Both of these cost money, however.

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Money is really tight and there are few chances to get more, and an important source of points is sampling the varied food, but food can be expensive. There are four stops to eat and players have to stop and wait at these. The first person to arrive gets to choose their meal from a handful of cards—they do not have to buy food, if they choose not to or cannot afford it, but each meal is worth six points at the end of the game. Food comes at different prices though, so arriving early means players get to choose a cheaper meal. Each meal a player takes must be different, however, so waiting to the end can end up being costly, either financially, or in points lost.

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At the end of the game, there are bonus points for almost everything: the player who donated most to the temples, the player who spent the most on food, the player who completed each of the panoramas first, and the players who visited the most Hot Springs, met the most visitors and bought the most souvenirs. The player with the most points at the end is deemed to have had the best journey and wins.

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Players start by choosing their character from a pair drawn at random. Blue was Kinto, Lime was Hirotata, Pink was Zen-emon, Pine was Mitsukuni and Black was Umegae. Each of these gave a special power, for example, picking Kinto meant Blue paid one Ryō less for food each time she stopped to eat. Similarly, every time Lime stopped to pay tribute at a temple, he was able to donate an extra Ryō, taking it from the main supply scoring an extra point straight way, and putting him in pole position for picking up the ten point bonus for being the most devout.

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The special powers aren’t all financial though—Mitsukuni gives an extra point at the end of the game for every end-game bonus the player wins. Most of them do involve money on some level though even if it is not directly. Zen-emon’s special power, for example, activated when Pink visited a Village to buy souvenirs. When buying souvenirs, the active player draws three souvenir cards and can choose to buy one, two or all three. Whenever Pink bought one souvenir, Zen-emon enabled him to buy one souvenir for one Ryō (regardless of its marked price) and as many others as he wished at full price.

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Souvenirs are a great way to get points. They come in different types and players are collecting mixed sets with the first card in a set being worth one point, but later being worth more—a full set gives sixteen points. The special powers give players a steer as to which strategies might be beneficial. To take advantage of Zen-emon’s special power, Pink needed to visit the Village as often as possible, however, there were two problems: firstly, souvenirs are expensive, and secondly Pine kept getting there first.

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Pine got extremely lucky on his card draws when he visited the Villages too, picking up lots of cheap souvenirs and getting lots of points in return. As if that wasn’t enough, Pine seemed to be able to harness his “inner Burgundy” and every time he visited the Hot Springs, he found monkeys and with them an extra point. To rub salt in Pink’s wounds, he ran out of cash and found he couldn’t afford to eat, and thus he haemorrhaged points.

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Meanwhile, Black as Umegae, kept meeting people and every time he did so he gained an extra point and a Ryō. This occasional top-up of cash meant he wasn’t as strapped as everyone else, but further, the New Encounter mini-expansion Cards were also included in the deck, and some of these are quite powerful. Pine picked up Itamae, the especially powerful itinerant cook (who cooked him an extra meal for just one Ryō), but Black took Takuhatsuso, for example, the old priest who gave him four points in exchange for just one Ryō.

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As the players approached Edo, Pine was way out in front, though Black and Blue (thanks to spending a lot of time admiring the views) were not far behind. There were a lot of points available from the bonuses though and it wasn’t a forgone conclusion by any means. Lime took the ten point temple bonus, but it wasn’t really enough. Black finished one point behind Blue, until the recount when Black finished one point ahead. That was just enough to give Black second place, but Pine picked up enough bonuses and with the extras provided by Mitsukuni he finished seven points clear.

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Pine and Lime went for an early night, but Endeavor was still going so Black had to wait for Purple which meant a game of Azul with Blue and Pink. We’ve played this a lot within the group, but having effectively had over a year off has rejuvenated many of our old favourites. The series of games use a very simple, but very clever market mechanic where players take all the tiles of one colour from a market and put the rest into a the centre, or take all the tiles of one colour from the centre. The three different games, Azul, Stained Glass of Sintra, and Summer Pavilion, all differ in what players do with the tiles once they’ve taken them.

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In the original Azul, as soon as they have taken the tiles, players add them to one of the rows on their player board. At the end of the round, one tile in each full row is moved into their mosaic. The game ends when one player completes one full row of their mosaic. Players score points when they add tiles to their mosaic (one point for each tile in the row and column it forms), and receive bonuses for completed rows, columns and any completed sets in their mosaic. The catch is that each feeder row can only contain one colour and and if there are left-overs when they add to it, these score negative points. Further, each row in a player’s mosaic can only have one tile of each colour.

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And that was where Pink got caught, first with seven negative points taking him to zero and then a massive eleven negative points. Black and Blue managed to avoid that pitfall though and the game was progressing well when suddenly, Blue brought it to an abrupt end by completing two rows. Black failed to spot it was on the cards because Blue’s finished rows, were the second and third, rather than the easier first row. Inevitably, having his game cut short stymied him somewhat, and Blue’s final score of a nice round hundred put her some way ahead of the others.

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Endeavor was coming to a close, but there was just time for one final quick game while they finished up. The game the trio settled on was Coloretto, the cute chameleon collecting game that provides the core mechanism that underpins the better known game, Zooloretto. This is really a really simple game: on their turn, players either draw the top chameleon card from the deck and add it to a truck, or take a truck. The aim of the game is to collect sets of one colour, but only the largest three sets give positive scores, while the others score negatively. The clever part is the set scoring, which uses the Triangular Number Series.

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Each additional card in a set is worth one more than the last card added with the first worth a single point, but the card that completes the set is worth six points. As usual, there was stiff competition for the multicoloured chameleon cards, but also for the bonus point cards. Blue went from “Azul Hero” to “Coloretto Zero” picking up too many cards of in too many different colours early on. It was closer between Pink and Black, though Pink’s large collection of orange cards made the difference giving him victory by eight points. And with Endeavor finally packed away, the evening came to a close.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Don’t spend all your money in the souvenir shop – food is important too.