Tag Archives: Spring Meadow

2nd May 2023

Blue and Pink were the first to arrive and were just finishing their supper when Magenta walked in—sadly not to join in the games as she was there for a Scout meeting. After a quick chat, she left and as Blue recapped the rules for the “Feature Game“, Zoo Break, Teal arrived and then Purple and Black. The group had just decided to play Alles im Eimer (aka The Bucket King), when Ivory rocked up to make the full compliment of six. Purple explained the rules with help from Black. The idea is very simple: each player builds a pyramid of ten bucket tokens with two of each of five colours.

– Image by boardGOATS

One player starts, playing a coloured, numbered, animal card and each player has to follow with the same colour and a higher number before picking up a card. Players can play multiple cards to make the total, but they only ever receive a single replacement card. If they can’t, or choose not to follow, they lose a bucket of that colour, and any buckets above it. Worse, if they split their pile of buckets in two, they lose one part as players can only ever have one pile. On the plus-side, if a player can’t play (or chooses not to), they then lead with a free choice of colour and number. The last player with buckets still standing is the winner. With Purple shuffling, Ivory was the first to play.

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It turns out that there are two things that are really critical in this game. Firstly, how players stack their buckets—it is not as simple as playing to their hand strengths; the smart player also spreads the colours out a bit so they aren’t forced to take buckets from low down when the unexpected happens. Secondly, as Ivory pointed out, like 6 Nimmt!, it is all about timing, which is something players may not have control of. A few rounds in, Black spotted that Pink to his left still had a complete stack where bucket piles had been falling all over the place everywhere else. So, Black made it his business to make Pink’s life difficult. From there, it was gloves off and the buckets really started to tumble. Purple was the first player to kick the last of her buckets over which left Blue to do what she could to damage Ivory’s largely unscathed pile.

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Black, then Blue, then Teal, all fell, leaving just Pink and Ivory to fight it out. With Pink’s dwindling pile, it always looked an uphill task, and so it proved, with Ivory taking victory with five buckets still standing. By this time though, Lime and Green had arrived and with eight, the group split into two tables of four, the first for the “Feature Game“, Zoo Break. Pink was nearly lured away at the suggestion that the alternate might be Takenoko, but despite being very torn by his love of pandas, he stuck with his original panda driven choice and was joined by Blue, Lime and Black as Keepers at Bedlam Zoo.

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Zoo Break is an apparently light cooperative game where players are a team of zoo-keepers trying to prevent a mass break-out. The mechanism is quite simple: the active player rolls a die to decide how many Action Points they get, then they carry out actions, before drawing an Escape card and a Move card (to see what animals escape and move). The game ends when either a dangerous animal (tiger, elephant, or dangerous snake) escapes, or when the fifth cute animal (panda, Capuchin monkey, meerkat or harmless snake) exits the zoo, or when there are no animals roaming about and all the cages are locked up.

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Although the mechanism of Zoo Break is very straight-forward and the art-work implies it is a simple kiddies game, nothing could be further from the truth. The rule book is twenty pages long, and there are a lot of details regarding escaping and recapturing animals. For example, when an animal escapes, it doesn’t just move to the space immediately outside its Enclosure, it moves to the nearest “open” space. Also, different animals are recaptured using different tools which have to be acquired from the supply by the Keepers. For example, a Net can be used to capture meerkats or monkeys, while a Leash is required for pandas and elephants, and tigers need to be Tranquilised and Stretchered home (very carefully, obviously).

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Each Keeper has a different skill. This time, Blue had the ability to reveal snakes and capture animals from adjacent spaces (especially useful for dealing with snakes); Pink could run faster than anyone else, moving two spaces for each action point (instead of the usual one); Black, the Gardener, could move through and hide in bushes, and Lime could re-roll the die twice to try to get additional actions. From experience with games like Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert, the key is almost always to make good use of these special powers. So Blue suggested she made it her business to concentrate on dealing with the snakes since she could do so without being bitten.

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Pink with his Panda obsession, was always going to go after them, and everyone else was happy to let him get on with it. Before any of that could happen though, the Keepers needed Supplies. Pink started, and went straight to the Supply shed and started revealing tools. These are drawn from a face down pile, but Keepers only have space to carry four tools in their backpack, so can choose only to take the ones they want. This was probably the team’s first mistake: instead of the few players just searching the whole Supply pile and making a discerning choice while taking as much as they could carry, players grabbed a couple of items and headed off.

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This became a problem later in the game when the Keepers realised they didn’t have tools and were now on the other side of the board. Black who had drawn the meerkat enclosure key headed off to the far corner to lock it quickly. Lime captured the only roaming meerkat (which had been playing in the fountain) and Black was just about to lock the cage when another one escaped. As he didn’t have a Net, despite being in the same space as it, he was left chasing about trying to grab it unsuccessfully. And then more meerkats got out. So Lime, Keeper without portfolio (but with both a Net and a Leash), waged war on the disobedient meerkats, while occasionally taking time out to catch an elephant or a monkey.

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Pink, meanwhile, had his panda enclosure Key and a Leash and was trying to do something about them, but was inconvenienced by a pair of elephants, one of which knocked him flying necessitating a visit to the Medic. Lime captured the last of the Capuchin monkeys and Blue who was close at hand with the enclosure Key managed to slam the door shut before any more got out—just as well, as the snakes were beginning to get out of hand, and as for the meerkats, well, these little blighters were causing mayhem. Twice the Keepers had them under control before more escaped, and as they formed a long queue, the queue kept getting longer and longer as they marched inexorably towards the exit.

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Pink used the Barricade to delay the escape of a couple of pandas and the pair marauding elephants, but it failed to hold when the Broken Barricade Move card appeared. The rhino’s occasional charges weren’t much of an issue as they were very predictable, but once animals started to get close to the exit the rhino became more of a problem as players stayed out of its path wasting Action Points. By this time, the tigers were becoming a problem, but Pink and Black put their Tranquiliser darts to good effect and soon the zoo was littered with sleeping tigers. Lime had a Stretcher, but never actually used it, briefly loaning it to Blue for the only tiger returned to its enclosure (and left to peacefully sleep off the after-effects, as per one of the new variants).

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There was a bit of a debate over whether it was more important to work on the rogue pandas or let them and meerkats escape and focus on the dangerous animals (in particular tigers and elephants). Slowly but surely, however, the animals were taking over as there was a little procession of Keepers at the Medic’s tent, with only Lime avoiding injury. Black was the only player to make use of the Train, because it didn’t really go where people wanted it to and players dealt with the issues nearest to them. That was probably a good strategy; like it says in the advice, it is also important to lock stuff up early—the team didn’t. They dealt with the monkeys, but the only other enclosure they managed to lock was the pandas, just before two meerkats and a cobra made a run for it in a single turn.

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Although the mass escape had caused the zoo to be closed down and Pink hadn’t actually been cuddled by a panda, everyone had really enjoyed themselves. On reflection, working in pairs might have worked better (as with Flash Point and Escape), because then the team can do things much quicker, get on top of things and lock cages making life easier all round. Black was curious about the variants available. The group had played on “Standard” difficulty with two “Phew!” Escape cards (where nothing gets out), but thanks to a rules malfunction, had also included the blank cards in the Move deck which provided quite a bit of respite, so everyone had a good laugh at the idea of making the game harder.

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Despite the fact the group rarely plays cooperative games, everyone was keen to give Zoo Break another outing soon. Zoos were popular elsewhere too—the next table had been playing New York Zoo. This is a tile-laying game that got its first Tuesday outing only a few of weeks ago, but had been enjoyed by all. In this game, players add pens to their zoo, populating them with animals, and building attractions. Like Uwe Rosenberg‘s other similar games (including Cottage Garden, Spring Meadow, Indian Summer and Patchwork), it is Tetris-like but what makes this one unique and interesting is the Market.

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Players move the Marker Elephant one to four spaces round the Market, landing either on an Enclosure tile space (taking the top one and adding it to their zoo) or on an animal space (taking one or both of the animals depicted). Enclosure tiles can be placed anywhere in the player’s Zoo, then one or two identical Animals from elsewhere in their Zoo must be moved to occupy the Enclosure. Each Enclosure can only hold one type of Animal. When there are two or more Animals in an Enclosure together they breed when the Elephant passes the Market’s breeding spaces.

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When an Enclosure is full, all the animals are removed and the player takes an Attraction tile of their choice and adds it to their Zoo. Attraction tiles are useful because they fill additional spaces, and at its heart, New York Zoo is a race game—the winner is the first to fill all the spaces in their Zoo. Purple had played last time, and Green had played elsewhere, however, Ivory and Teal were new to the game and the rules needed explanation. That didn’t take long though, and the Elephant was soon touring the market and everyone was building their zoo and adding animals.

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Purple was quick to get going, as was Green. New York Zoo is really a tactical game, but there are a couple of broad strategies—fill the zoo with large Enclosures that are harder to fill, but occupy more space, or fill it with smaller Enclosures which are easier to fill with animals giving bonus Attraction tiles. Purple went for the latter approach, getting some of the large attractions early in the game. Teal however, opted for the former strategy, which is harder to get to work, but can be extremely effective, as indeed it was this time, making him the first to finish his zoo, and with no Attractions at all. Purple was the best of the rest with for spaces left to fill, with Green a little way behind.

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The Keepers in Bedlam Zoo on the next table were still trying to get the marauding beasts back in their pens (largely unsuccessfully) so the others had to decide what to play. Green decided to go home, and couldn’t be persuaded to stay by the opportunity to play Nidavellir despite having been very keen to play it previously. That left Purple, Ivory and Teal, who decided to play it anyhow. Nidavellir is a card set-collection and bidding game inspired by Norse myths. The game was created by French designer Serge Laget (who sadly passed away in January this year after a lifetime of producing some great games) and the striking black and white artwork by Jean-Marie Minguez which nicely contrasts with the coloured cardboard components.

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The story behind the game is that the kingdom of Nidavellir is under threat from the stirrings of the Dragon Fafnir and players are tasked by the King to recruit the best army to defeat it. Appropriately for our venue, the action takes places in three Dwarvish pubs where the players must use their coins to bid for the most skillful Dwarves (in a concealed auction), recruit the most prestigious Heroes, and build the best Battalion they can to defeat the Dragon. Players hire five different professions of Dwarves into their growing army – Warriors, Hunters, Miners, Blacksmiths and Explorers. Each player starts with five coins with the values: zero, two, three, four and five. Players place one of their coins against each pub space on their player mat. The coins are revealed and cards are taken from each pub starting with the highest bidder.

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Ties are broken in favour of the player with the the highest jewel token (randomised at the start) and then these players swap jewels so the losing player has an advantage next time there is a draw. Once the three pubs have been resolved, players take back their coins, and place their cards in their tableaux. At the game end, points are awarded in different ways for each group of Dwarves. For example, Hunters provide points based on the number of cards squared, Blacksmiths score according to the triangular sequence (as used in Coloretto), while the Navigators are simply a total of the number of points printed on the card, and so on. Each round of the game, random face-up dwarf cards are lined up by each pub (equal to the number of players) and players bid for their order of selection.

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If a player plays their “zero” coin, the values of the two unused coins are added together, the highest of the pair is discarded and a new coin of the same total is added to their stash from the Royal Treasure. Thus, players can gradually increase the value of their coins, which is useful for out-bidding others, but also adds value as the total coin hoard is added to their final score. Hero cards, which supply additional points bonuses in a variety of ways are awarded when a player manages to have five cards of different type and then each time a new set of five is achieved. Heroes are selected from, a separate deck which allows for further point scoring combinations. The start was a little slow as Purple and Ivory were both new to the game and had to figure out what to do.

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Teal and Ivory both started by upgrading their coins. Ivory was the first to get a set of five cards and claimed one of the Dwerg Brothers as his Hero giving him the target of collecting the other brothers which greatly crank up the points the more that are collected. Teal, who had played the game before, chose more complex Heroes. Half way through the game, Purple took the King’s Hand and the King’s Great Armourer Heroes for having the most Warrior and Blacksmith cards, while Teal took the Hunting Master and Crown Jeweler (for the most Hunters and Miners respectively), leaving Ivory just the Pioneer of the Kingdom (for the most Explorers).

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The second age (played with a new deck of cards), was similar to the first, with particular tight battles around getting cards to complete sets. Ivory had a slight advantage in this, having upgraded his coins more aggressively early in the game, and used this to get more of the Dwerg Brothers. In contrast, Purple and Teal focused on collecting Dwarves of one kind with Teal using his Heroes to add to their “count” in particular colours when completing a set. In the end, Purple and Teal scored best for Blacksmiths and Hunters, while Teal also took lots of points for his Miners—something he had focused on from the start.

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Ivory however, had more Warriors and having the majority of them meant he could add the value of his most valuable coin to his score. Despite that and over a hundred points for his Dwergs, Ivory finished just shy of Teal’s winning total of two-hundred and seventy-seven. The downside of his victory—the winner has to face the Dragon Fafnir! All agreed it was a good game, not overly complex, but with lots of decisions to make; a game that didn’t out stay its welcome finishing within the forty-five minutes advertised (even with two first-time players).

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Learning outcome: Always keep a close eye on your meerkats.

7th March 2023

Plum and Blue were first to arrive and, by the time they had finished their enormous rack of ribs (or given up and had a doggy bag made up), almost everyone else had arrived. There were a few people missing, but still enough for two games of four. The first was the “Feature Game“, but nobody really wanted to commit to that until they knew what the other game was going to be. As he had done the last couple of times, Green suggested Terraforming Mars. Unlike previously, this time Ivory, Plum and Teal felt up to it, leaving Blue, Black, Purple and Lime to play their preferred choice of New York Zoo.

– Image by boardGOATS

New York Zoo is a tile laying game by Uwe Rosenberg, designer of Agricola, Bohnanza, Patchwork and many other well-known games. The idea is that players are building pens in their zoo, populating them with animals, and building attractions. This is one of several polyomino, Tetris-like, tile-laying type games (including Cottage Garden, Spring Meadow, Indian Summer and Patchwork), but what makes this one unique and interesting is the Market. Players move the Marker Elephant one to four spaces round the Market, landing either on an Enclosure tile space (taking the top one and adding it to their zoo) or on an animal space (taking one or both of the animals depicted). Enclosure tiles can be placed anywhere in the player’s Zoo, then one or two identical Animals from elsewhere in their Zoo must be moved to occupy the Enclosure.

– Image by boardGOATS

Each Enclosure can only hold one type of Animal, meercats, snow-foxes, kangaroos, penguins or flamingos, but when moving Animals, no pen can be left empty. There is an advantage to pens having two or more Animals in them too—the Market also features breeding spaces, and when the Marker Elephant passes these, up to two pens containing two or more matching Animals get an extra one. When a player moves the Elephant onto an Animal space, they take one of either or both the Animals depicted into Enclosures containing matching Animals (moving another from Storage if they can), or into the Storage space. Moving animals is important, because when an Enclosure is completed the player removes all the animals putting one into Storage if they have space, and then takes an Attraction tile of their choice and adds it to their Zoo.

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Attraction tiles are useful because they fill additional spaces, and at its heart, New York Zoo is a race game—the winner is the first to fill all the spaces in their Zoo. Black and Purple had played this a few times, and once Black had explained the rules to Lime and Blue, Purple started. Black and Purple prioritised completing Enclosures to get Attractions. The Market is stacked so there are large tiles, heptominoes, on the top of each tile space, with hexominoes, then pentominoes and finally tetrominoes at the bottom of each pile. Black and Purple prioritised getting breeding pairs of animals and as the Market dwindled, getting smaller enclosures because small Enclosures are easier to complete than large ones.

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Blue, who had not played the game before, started off getting large Enclosures and fitting them tightly together. As the game progressed, however, she realised her mistake as everyone else’s Animals were breeding and she didn’t have pairs because she was taking one out every time she added another Enclosure. This had the additional consequence that she was starting to run out of Animals too, so she prioritised getting breeding pairs for a couple of rounds before continuing to take the biggest Enclosures she could get away with. It was a tight game—Purple seemed to take an early lead, but it looked like Black and Lime over-took her towards the end and were in a tussle to finish the game first.

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With everyone else concentrating on filling pens and taking Attractions, nobody was watching Blue. So they were taken by surprise when her kangaroos bred filling their pen and she took her first Attraction. That left one space which she promptly filled taking the only Enclosure that fitted, perfectly, and ended the game. With everyone else so close to finishing, however, the rest of the group played on to see who would place where. In the event, Black finished just ahead of Lime. The group were just dissecting the different strategies when Pine arrived, fresh from his meeting teaching “cubbish-sized scouts” about waste. Terraforming Mars was still going on, so the hunt was on for a five-player game, and the group settled on Kingdomino.

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Native, Kingdomino is a four player game, however, with the Age of Giants expansion, it plays five. The base game is simple enough, but it had been a while since most people last played it, so there was a quick run through of the rules. On their turn, players add a terrain domino to their Kingdom; each domino comprises two squares of terrain and when placed at least one end must be adjacent to the same terrain type. Like New York Zoo, the interesting and clever part of the game is the Market. In Kingdomino, there are two parts, current and future—when a player takes their domino from the current market, they choose their next domino by placing their marker on it.

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At the end of the game, players score each terrain region with points equal to the area of each region multiplied by the number of crowns on it. The clever part is the timing of the Market. The tiles are drawn at random from a set numbered from one to forty-eight. The low numbers generally being the less desirable ones, those without crowns or those for terrain types where crowns are more scarce. Since players take the tiles in numerical order (low to high), taking a low value tile in one round gives a better choice in the next. Similarly, taking a high value tile means there will be less (or maybe no) choice in the following round.

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The Age of Giants expansion firstly adds twelve extra tiles (enough for a fifth player), six labeled with letters A to F and six numbered forty-nine to fifty-four. These are ranked below one for the letters and after forty-eight for the high numbers, with the low ranking tiles featuring a Giant, and the high ranking ones featuring Footprints. Players taking dominoes with a Giant on them, also take a Giant-eeple and place it over a crown in their Kingdom so that it doesn’t score. Taking a Footprint domino allows the player to move a Giant from their Kingdom to a crown in someone else’s and this increase their score, making these tiles potentially very valuable.

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Unfortunately (especially for Lime and Blue who ended up with all the Giants), the Footprints seemed hard to come by in this game. The other part of the Age of Giants expansion are the Quests. The base game comes with two Quests, arrangement targets that give points. These are “Middle Kingdom” and “Harmony” which respectively give ten points for a castle in the centre of a player’s Kingdom and five points for a complete five-by-five territory with no discarded tiles. This time, the Quests drawn essentially at random were “Bleak King” and “Four Corners of the Kingdom”. The first of these gave five points for each five square of terrain with no crowns while the second gave players five points for placing cornfields on all four corners of the five-by-five grid that defines their Kingdom.

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Although the Quests had been included in game play several times before, the Giants have only had an outing once and didn’t go down all that well. Still, with five players all the extra tiles were needed and their values would have been unbalanced without including Giants, so the group thought they’d give it another try. This time Blue and Purple had a really hard time getting crowns and things were so bad for Blue that she resorted to picking up twenty points, more than half her total, from the “Bleak King” Quest. Black built a lot of sea and pasture, while Lime scored heavily for his mountains and Pine picked up lots of points for his large woodland.

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It was very close between the top three and both Lime and Pine scored forty-five points for their highest scoring terrain—Lime for nine crowns spread over five spaces, Pine for five crowns spread over nine spaces. There were just two points between Lime and Pine in the end, but Pine’s sixty-eight points just edged Lime into second with Black four points behind that. It had been a good game. However, the group felt that the Giants took a positive constructive game and added a negative aspect. Those that had been stuck with them hadn’t found that aspect particularly enjoyable, especially as it was easy to get lumbered largely through no fault of their own, so it is unlikely they’ll get another outing very soon.

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Meanwhile, on the next table, Green, Ivory, Plum and Teal were still playing Terraforming Mars. To speed up the game they played with the Prelude start cards and also removed the Corporation cards—that turned out to be a good choice as the game only just finished before the pub closed. In this game, players play corporations sponsored by the World Government working together in the terraforming process, but competing for victory points. These are awarded not only for their contribution to the terraforming, but also for advancing human infrastructure throughout the solar system, and doing other generally commendable things.

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The players acquire unique Project cards by buying them into their hand; these can represent anything from introducing plant life or animals, hurling asteroids at the surface, building cities, to mining the moons of Jupiter and establishing greenhouse gas industries to heat up the atmosphere. The Projects can give immediate bonuses, as well as increase production of different resources. Many cards also have requirements and become playable when the temperature, oxygen, or ocean coverage increases enough. Buying cards is costly, so there is a balance between buying cards (three MegaCredits per card) and actually playing them.

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The game ends after the terraforming is complete when the three global parameters, temperature, oxygen, ocean have all reached their goal. Players then score for their Terraform Rating with any other points they might have accrued. This time, Green made his presence felt on the surface of Mars in the early stages with his initial starting forest, which grew a little, and seeded the oceans. He was the only one for a while. Plum played a blue card which gave her a couple of extra Credits every time someone built a city. This one really paid for itself in the four-player game as everyone wanted to build more than one city. Green was first, but had mis-read the card and found himself colonizing Phobos instead.

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So, Teal was the first to actually build a city on the surface of Mars. He opted for the equator but on the other side from Green’s forests. Later he played a blue city bonus card that gave him a Credit production bonus for each one. Although several cities had already been built by then, several more followed and he was able to enjoy the benefit of extra cash in later rounds. Ivory meanwhile had made a different start to the game than his normal opening gambit (building a city), and completed the first Milestone: the Ecologist. However his cities did follow later as he extended down towards the south pole. Teal claimed the second milestone: the Specialist, helped on by his city Credit production bonus.

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Plum was the last to claim a Milestone: the Generalist, as she was able to pay to increase her production one step each round. She did not claim it straight away, but noticed it after Teal had claimed his, and thought she had better get in there quick. Green was not able to claim any milestones, but instead was the first to fund an Award. A quick check around the player boards suggested he should fund Celebrity as he had three high value cards to Teal’s two, but neither Plum or Ivory had any cards over the value of twenty Credits. Later on Teal funded the second award and went for Estate Dealer as he clearly had more tiles next to oceans at this point (having planted his forests northwards around the oceans.

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At the end of the game Green pulled out his wallet once more and funded Benefactor since he was ahead on the Terraform Rating track. Ivory was only one behind, but Green had a couple of options he could play on his last turn for a couple of extra Terraform Rating points. This prevented Ivory from funding the Dessert Settler award for which he had been building. Green decided to go for outworld domination and also built Deimos city. During the second half of the game Green realised he had forgotten his company bonus of a two MegaCredits reduction for each brown, Industrial tagged card. He had built three, so put six Credits aside to be used in the event of a tie, (although had he remembered to claim them at the time, he may have been able to play more and better cards).

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In the final scoring it was very close indeed, although during the game Mars was regularly bombarded with meteors and nuclear bombs, so it was a wonder any one survived at all! Ivory and Green tied for second with fifty-nine points. Even with his extra six Credits, Green still lost the tie to Ivory, who had more Credits left over from the final production. At this point, Green realised he again had misread a card thinking he would get one point per ocean tile in the game for his capital city, but that would have given him a guaranteed nine points and would have been way too powerful. In the end, it was Teal who triumphed, but only just, with sixty-one points, in well deserved victory.

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Learning Outcome: Mama’s taking us to the zoo tomorrow, zoo tomorrow, zoo tomorrow… We can stay all day!