Tag Archives: Sushi Go!: Soy Sauce

21st February 2023

With this set to be our last meeting before The Horse and Jockey changed hands, a lot of people turned up early to enjoy the Thai special (a preview of the Thai Night the following day). As the last of the food was consumed the final couple of people arrived, and then it was all about deciding who was going to play what and how we were going to split up the group of thirteen. In the end, Ivory took a group of five to play the “Feature Game“, Verdant, while Pink and Lime led a group of four to play Cascadia, and Green gave his copy of Wingspan with all the expansions (Europe, Oceania and Asia) an outing.

– Image by boardGOATS

The “Feature Game“, Verdant is a card game where players are trying to match plants to rooms and grow luxurious foliage to give them the most points at the end of the game. The game is played over fourteen rounds with players taking it in turns to take cards from a central market. In a similar way to Cascadia where hexagonal tiles are paired in the market with animal tokens, in Verdant, the cards are paired with object tokens. However, where, in Cascadia players just have to choose which pair to take, in Verdant the decision is a little more complex. Instead of taking a card and it’s token, in Verdant each tokens is paired with two cards (a room and a plant) and players choose one card to take with the associated token.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players then add the card to their three by five array, with plants placed next to rooms and visa versa to form a chequerboard-type arrangement. Whenever a plant is placed next to a room with matching lighting conditions, it gets a verdancy token; plants which achieve target verdancy are completed and gain a fancy pot (some of which give bonus points) and then score points at the end of the game. Players then add and/or spend their object tokens. The objects come in two types, Furniture/Pets and Nurture tokens. Furniture/Pets are either added to a room or placed their one storage space. Nurture tokens are particularly useful as they can be spent to add extra verdancy to plants.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the end of the game, as well as scoring points for completed plants, players also score for each room with adjacent plants that match their type—one point for each plant, two for each if the room contains an object with a colour that matches the room. Finally, players are rewarded for any residual verdancy and receive bonus points for having a complete set of each plant type, for having a complete set of each room colour and an increasing number of bonus points based on how many unique Furniture/Pets they have in their home.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue started, and with no idea what she was doing, took a high verdancy plant and passed the problem on to Teal whose turn it was next. There was quite a lot of “try something and see what happens” going on in the early part of the game, but before long Pine voiced everyone else’s thoughts when he asked of Ivory, “How come you’ve got two pots already?” Then, as everyone shrugged, Pine added, “Oh, I see, you have cheap plants…” Ivory looked, if not exactly disgruntled, some way from being actually gruntled, and replied, “You make it sound like I got them from a garage on the way here!” And so the game continued with players taking cards and adding them to their arrays with as much verdancy as possible.

– Image by boardGOATS

About halfway through the game, Pine shared a new post on The Jockey Facebook page which said the current business owner would now be leaving in two weeks but Dan (the current manager) would be responsible for the pub for the next couple of months. So, while there’s still some uncertainty, it seems there WILL be a meeting in two weeks time. By this time, people were getting into their strides a little, though most people’s main strategy just seemed to be taking Nurture tokens whenever they had the chance, something which Pine and Indigo seemed to get a lot of and Blue didn’t have until her final tile (which she picked up with a Panda Plant, much to Pink’s delight from the next table).

– Image by boardGOATS

And that just left the scores. A bit of a point salad, it seemed like points came from everywhere. The bulk of everyone’s points came from completed plants though and rooms scored surprisingly well too. Most people thought Ivory was going to win, and so it proved, but much to her surprise, Blue was only a couple of points behind his seventy-nine, and took second. It was really tight for third with everyone else within a couple of points of each other, but it was Pine who just made it onto the podium ahead of the others. Although the game had taken quite a bit longer than expected and was more of a head-scratcher than its brother Cascadia, Verdant had been universally enjoyed and deserves another go.

– Image by boardGOATS

Speaking of Cascadia, Pink, Lime, Black and Jade were giving last year’s Spiel des Jahres Award winner another outing. In this game, similar to Verdant, on their turn, players take a terrain tile and animal token from the market and add them to their array. In this game however, players score points for their largest terrain of each type and also for animals in a specific arrangement. There is a lot of replayability in the game as each animal has several different scoring motifs on cards with one of each drawn at random at the start of each game. This time Bears scored for each group not surrounded by bears with larger groups scoring more; Salmon scored for long chains, and Elk scored for groups of one, two, three or four tiles in a particular layout.

– Image by boardGOATS

There was some discussion surrounding the scoring of Foxes, but they scored for each unique animal pairs surrounding them. The Hawk card was from the Tantrum House Promo Set and gave points for each Hawk that had a direct line of sight with both an Elk and a Fox. And this proved challenging for most people as Pink spent the first half of the game by taking all the Elks in what was later referred to as “The Great Elk Shortage”. The others soon got their revenge, however, when Pink was after Bears and everyone else took them just before he could. The game progressed quite quickly and before long, it was time to score.

– Image by boardGOATS

Despite the Elk and Bear based tussle, the scores for the Wildlife were very close with Jade just three points ahead of Black and Pink. In this game though players ignore the largest areas at their peril, but these need quite a lot of planning to make them work. With bonus points available to the player with the largest of each type of terrain, going heavily into one or two not only scored per tile, but also an extra three points. This tactic gave Pink eight more points than anyone else for his Habitats which ultimately gave him a comfortable victory, eight points clear of Black in second.

– Image by boardGOATS

Cascadia was the first game to finish and the group looked around for something quick to play that everyone knew, and quickly settled on Sushi Go!. This is the archetypal card drafting game, where players are dealt cards, keep one and then pass the hand to their neighbour. Played over three rounds, players are collecting different types of sushi. This game was closer than Cascadia and a bit rushed. There was a big debate as to whether players could play wasabi on top of wasabi and score nine points—the initial response was “that would be silly”, but it was confirmed with a rules check.

– Image by boardGOATS

The group played with the Soy Sauce Promo which gave points for having lots of different types of sushi, and variously pretty much everyone had a go at making them score. Almost everyone eschewed the Chopsticks, which allow players to take two cards instead of one later in the round, but that assumes there is an opportunity to use them later. Pink gave them a go, but without much real success. The final round had no Puddings, so there was a three-way tie for Desserts giving each player two points, except for Pink who missed out completely and lost six points. With a deficit of eight points in such a tight game that probably gave victory to Jade, who finished two points ahead of Pink in second and five ahead of Black in third.

/tr>

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the third table, a rather epic game of Wingspan was underway. This is one of the group’s favourite games and seems to be popular with almost everyone. The game is a kind of action based card-driven, engine-building game. Players take it in turns to take one of four actions: take food; take bird cards; pay food to place bird cards, or lay eggs on bird cards. Since we enjoy Wingspan and play it a lot, we have all the current expansions within the group, though none of the people playing this time had experienced Oceania or Asia (except solo), so the group decided to put in as much content as they could. This meant using all the bird cards available, creating three huge stacks.

– Image by boardGOATS

There were so many cards that they piled way up beyond the top of the card holder, and by the end of the game, they were still over the top! The group added the round bonus chits from the European and Oceania expansions to the base game ones, but ended up only pulling out one from Oceania (birds pointing left) and none from Europe. And of course the group used the nectar (replacing the original set of dice too), and lots of different coloured eggs from the different sets. The only parts of the expansions the group weren’t able to use were the two player components and the six/seven player components from Asia as there were four in the group, Green, Plum, Byzantium and Sapphire.

– Image by boardGOATS

The group only needed to refer to the rules a couple of times for clarification on how the birds interacted. Byzantium’s Snowy Owl, did not point left or right, so he could not count it towards the end of round goal, which meant he only tied with Sapphire for first place in round two. For most of the game there was little egg-laying, but the group managed to fill their boards with lots of birds (ten to thirteen each). Only Green and Sapphire went on an egg laying frenzy in the last couple of rounds, but they still only managed ten and thirteen in total respectively. Plum and Byzantium both managed to collect an almost unheard of total of four bonus cards each.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although this helped Byzantium towards an extra twelve points from the bonus cards, it was still shy of Sapphire’s thirteen from two cards (seven points of which he gained on his very last turn with a lucky bonus card draw). Plum, however, really made good with her bonus cards for a whopping total of twenty-five. This was to prove the clincher for her as she won the game with ninety-six points, some way ahead of Sapphire’s eighty-eight giving him second and Green five points behind in third. Of the expansions, everyone in the group used lots of Nectar (another aspect where Plum managed to outscore everyone else) and a good smattering of birds from each expansion, except for Asian birds.

– Image by boardGOATS

Only Sapphire placed an Asian bird card with the group using twenty base game birds, ten from the European expansion, fifteen from Oceania and the single Asian bird. Green did manage to get two “flitting” birds and regularly made use of them to flit between habitats. During the after game discussion, the group agreed that they really wanted to try the two player and the large group versions. Having played Wingspan with six last summer without the Asia adjustment, it was clear what needed tightening up, and that seemed to have been done. As a result, the group all agreed that they looked forward to a Mega-Wingspan game soon.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Some board games are prickly and others more succulent.

17th May 2022

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

20th April 2022

Meeting for the first time on a Wednesday, Pink and then Blue were the first to arrive, and like last time, played a game of Abandon all Artichokes (with the Rhubarb mini-expansion) while they waited for food to arrive. This is a very quick and simple “deck shredding” game: on their turn the active player takes a card from the face up market, adds it to their hand and then plays as many cards as they can before they discard the rest and draw five new cards. If this new hand contains no Artichoke cards, the player wins. Although it is very simple, it seems the function sequence is somehow challenging. Pink struggled last time, but seemed to have got the better of it as he won.

– Image by boardGOATS

As they were finishing, Pine turned up and, while Pink went to the bar, Blue explained the rules to him and then they played again. Pine also struggled a bit with which pile was the discard pile and which the draw pile, and where to take cards from and where they were going to. There is hope though as, despite the arrival of food in the middle, Pink won the second game too. Pink and Blue were just finishing their supper when Purple and Black arrived, soon followed by Green, Lime and Ivory.

– Image by boardGOATS

This week, the “Feature Game” was the new edition of Libertalia, Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest, a card driven game where players are admirals commanding a crew of sky pirates in search of adventure, treasure, and glory. Pine had watched the advertised play-through video and professed it “looked” fun, so was keen to give it a go. Ivory and Pink joined the party, while Green shouted across from the other end of the table that he would be happy either way as he knew nothing about it. In the end, after considerable debate, Ivory, Pink and Pine were joined by Blue and Purple, leaving Green, Black and Lime to find something else to play.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although Blue had read the rules, she had very deliberately not looked at the character cards, so Pine arguably knew most about Winds of Galecrest. It is a rejuvenated version of the older game, Libertalia, but with new, lighter artwork, additional characters and streamlining of some of the mechanisms. Very simply, each player starts with a deck of forty cards, of which six are drawn into their hand. The idea is that players have the same character cards to play, but can play them in different orders. Thus, one player (in our case Pink) shuffles their forty numbered cards and then draws six, which the the others find in their numbered and sorted decks.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is played over three voyages, the first of which takes four days, the second, five days, and the final voyage takes six days. Each day, players simultaneously choose a card to play, which when revealed are laid out in numerical order on the island. The are then played three times: first in ascending order (daytime), next in descending order (dusk) and finally simultaneous (night). Some cards only have actions that activate in one or two of the time-frames, but any characters still on the island, move back to that player’s ship and stay there till the end of the voyage. At the end of the voyage, players activate any loot and characters they have with end of voyage actions. Despite that being pretty much all there is to the game (and it being written clearly on the board), the group still managed to make a bit of a meal of it.

– Image by boardGOATS

The first hand consisted of six relatively uninteresting cards (or so it seemed at the time), which all had daytime actions. The first voyage, and to some extent the second too, players were feeling their way. Because the group failed to remove the Character cards from their ships at the end of the first voyage, that skewed things somewhat, especially as some players had the First Mate in their ship which in some cases scored twice giving points for the number of characters in their ship which was also artificially inflated. Ivory knew which cards he’d played and when, but others were unsure and some had built a strategy that relied on having certain Characters in their boat at the end of the second voyage. So rather than trying to back-track, ships were emptied for the first time at the end of the second round.

– Image by boardGOATS

It took the group a bit of time to understand when the actions for the loot happened—most occur at the end of the voyage, but some occur on the day they are collected, during the dusk phase. As a result, several players missed some of those dusk actions, the additional reputation gained from picking up a Barrel in particular. At the beginning of the second round, Blue, Pine, Ivory and Pink agreed they were all playing the “obvious card”. On revealing their cards they discovered they had differing ideas of what the obvious play was, which gave the first inkling that there was much more to the actions than had first appeared, but the players really got to grips with the planning aspects of the game in the final round.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory played his Carpenter, which reduced his funds by half, and immediately followed it with the Officer which increased his kitty to twelve doubloons. Then, because he is always a threat, he was targeted by Pine and then Blue, losing first his Carpenter and then his Gambler from his ship (both give money at the end of the round). Blue then assassinated Pink’s Carpenter and he took out her Gambler in revenge. Pink discovered that the Saber type loot was much more dangerous than he gave it credit for as yet another of his Characters on the island bit the dust. Meanwhile, Purple was building the contents of her treasure chest largely unmolested, mostly only suffering as collateral damage. Pine also made killing by playing his Bodyguard with perfect timing, simultaneously taking lots of gold for discarding all the Sabers and Hooks from the loot pile, and starving everyone else of treasure.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the final accounting Blue was the most successful pirate, though she was one of the beneficiaries of the “rules malfunction” at the end of the second voyage. Purple made an excellent second place though, picking up loads of gold from her loot while largely managing to avoid being caught in the cross-fire as the others attacked each other. Libertalia is a much more vicious game than those we usually play, even though it was a “Calm” game and supposedly “easy and friendly”—Heaven only knows what Stormy will be like! It was a lot of fun though, especially when the group started to get to grips with it properly during the final round. It’s clear the game could cause a lot of relationship trouble, but that won’t stop it getting another outing soon.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the next table things were much more peaceful with Green, Black and Lime laying carpets. No-one felt up to anything too taxing or long tonight, so after reviewing the selection of games available Black suggested they play Marrakech, which certainly fitted the bill. Marrakech, is an unusual little game, with fantastic little rugs made of fabric and coins made out of wood, where players take the role of a rug salesman who tries to outwit the competition. Each player starts with ten Dirhams and an equal number of carpets. On their turn, players may rotate Assam ninety degrees, then roll the die and move him forward as many spaces as shown (up to four).

– Image by boardGOATS

If Assam lands on another player’s carpet, the active player must pay one Dirham per contiguous carpet square of that colour. Finally, the active player then places one of their carpets orthogonally adjacent to Assam. The winner is the player with the most money after the last carpet has been laid. After a quick explanation to Lime (who hadn’t played it before), the group had to decide the Role of the Merchant. On Board Game Arena, there are two options: one where the player turns him himself before rolling the dice, and another where the player who just played gets to turn him at the end of their turn and before the next player.

– Image by boardGOATS

After a brief check of the rules, the group discovered that the first option was the original rule (move the merchant before rolling the dice) and so they went with that. As a result it took several turns before anyone landed on anyone else’s carpet, then Black landed on a single square of Lime’s. A couple more turns and landing on carpet became a regular activity. When Green landed on a five square of Black’s, it became apparent that Lime had been labouring under a false understanding about what counted as a paying patch of carpet. He had thought that players have to pay for all the carpet squares connected, by any means including other people’s carpets, but of course only the patch that the Merchant is stood on counts.

– Image by boardGOATS

At various points in the game everyone had a large patch of carpet posing a hazard to the other players: Green had a large area in one corner, Black a large squarish patch in the middle, and Lime managed to get a zig-zag line from one corner all the way to the opposite one. Mostly everyone managed to avoid landing on these until they were broken up, but that duck was broken when Green landed on a large Black area, shifting the coin balance heavily in Black’s favour. At the end of the game carpet value was added to coins, and although Green had the most carpet showing, Black had significantly more coins than the others and finished as the winner by five points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Libertalia was still ongoing, and Marrakech had served as an excellent aperitif, but it was now it was time to move on to something more substantial, and the game of choice was Niagara. This is fantastic family game, that won the Spiel des Jahres Award in 2005, but is still a lot of fun seventeen years later. The idea is that players have two canoes that they are using to navigate up and down the river while trying to collect gems and land them safely on shore. Players simultaneously choose a paddle card from their hand, which dictates the distance their canoes travel. Once everyone’s boat has travelled, the river moves and any canoes that are too close to the falls take the long drop and are turned to matchwood.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players are trying to land five gems of the same type (or seven different colours) and the first to do so is the winner. We last played this about nine months ago, online, through the medium of Board Game Arena. On that occasion, Pink had betrayed everyone’s trust and stole several people’s precious loot. The victims (in particular Burgundy), were vociferous in their grievance, and as a result, despite Pink being enthusiastic about playing again, nobody was keen to join him. With Pink tied up in a quite different loot battle, this was a good opportunity to play again as it was still quite early and it was also an opportunity to introduce Lime to an old classic.

– Image by boardGOATS

The first round played relatively gently and much the way it normally does with everyone holding their cloud paddle tile (which allows them to change the speed of the river) back for the last round. Going into the second round however, Black and Green conspired to shake things up a notch. After putting a canoe onto the river, Black then moved the cloud from the plus one space it had been left on at the end of first round, to the plus two space. However, Green had also thought this was a bold move and had planned to do the same, but unfortunately, he had to move the cloud and as plus two is the maximum, the only direction to go from plus two was back to plus one. The result was that everyone spent the rest of that round moving five steps forward and four back.

– Image by boardGOATS

The highest cards were not enough to get players’ boats off the river and each time they just got dragged back again, with the landing stage forever out of reach. Green tried to “go against the flow” using some lower cards earlier in the round and holding a bigger card for later, but apart from moving around on different river discs, the end result was still the same. Everyone ended up on the same disc a couple of times too, and Lime was unfortunate when he lost one of his boats over the rapids. At the beginning of the third round players got their boats off the river. By this point, Black had managed to collect four different coloured gems and only needed that elusive pink. Green also had four gems, but that included two purple ones. Lime had just two gems as he decided to trade one to get his second canoe back.

– Image by boardGOATS

Black tried to inch down the river, sometimes choosing not to move a canoe in order to arrive at that last spot to collect his game winning pink gem. However Lime slowed the river down to minus one, and this left Black’s canoes in the wrong place. In the meantime, Lime also collected another couple of gems and Green managed to pick up another two as well, one purple and one blue. This left Green needing just one gem to win with seven (the fact that a pink would give him one of each did not matter—there is no double win in this game). As the new round began, Green got on the river, collected the final purple gem and there was nothing the others could do to stop him landing it on his next turn. And with that, the paddling was over with Green the victor.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although it was not that late, Lime and Green left for their respective homes, leaving Black to watch the final few turns of Libertalia. When that wound up, Ivory headed home and there was still time left for something short. While everyone else discussed the options, Pink went to the bar for a “tot” of Dead Man’s Fingers Rum. In his absence, Bohnanza was eschewed as “not short” and 6 Nimmt! and Coloretto had both been played recently. Saboteur doesn’t play so well with smaller numbers so in the end, the game chosen was Sushi Go!. The first thing to do was to remove the promotional expansions for its big brother Sushi Go Party! (Sukeroku, Inari, Sake and Pickled Ginger; these can be played with the original version but other cards need to be removed), however the Soy Sauce promo cards included as usual.

– Image by Pine

The game is really simple: from their hand of cards, players simultaneously choose one to keep and pass the rest on before repeating until everyone has no cards. At the end of the round the different cards are scored according to their individual characteristics. After three rounds, puddings are evaluated and the winner is the player with the largest total number of points. This time there was a serious shortage of puddings in the first round and Blue seemed to have more than her fair share. It wasn’t clear whether it was because she was overly focused on deserts or whether it was just because she’s rubbish at the game, but her score was lower than everyone else except Pine.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine made up for it in the second and third rounds. In general, consistency is usually the winning factor in Sushi Go!, so Pink should have been in a good position, but both Black and Purple had a couple of really strong rounds, as indeed did Pine. As a result, it was a really close game. Pine was undone by the combination of his poor first round and the fact he was the only one with no puddings and lost six points as a result. In contrast, Blue’s score was boosted by six points as she had a clear majority. It was Purple and Black who were the ones to beat though, as they tied for the lead on thirty points and tied on the pudding tie break as well, so shared victory.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: If you are looking for job security, don’t become a pirate.

19th August 2021 – “Unofficial boardGOATS”

We’d had such fun at the “Post-Covid Test Event” at the Horse and Jockey and some were so disappointed to have missed it, that we decided to have another, this time “unofficial” meeting at the pub before our formal return. As we chattered away and waited for food to arrive, we told Lime what we’d played last time. He said he was sorry to have missed Sushi Go! as he really enjoyed it, and in a trice, a real, hardcopy of the game was out and cards were being shuffled and dealt. We’ve played Sushi Go! plenty of times both online and in person, but as usual, we had a very quick run-through of the rules.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players start with a hand of seven cards, and choose one to keep, passing the rest on to the player on their left. Players repeat this with the aim of the game being to end up with the set of cards that score the most points. The game is played over three rounds with the player with the highest total winning. The final round was coming to an end when pizza arrived, but we just had time to get to the end. It was close, but Blue made up for her disastrous showing earlier in the week online with a win, just a single point ahead of Pine (who had missed out completely on the previous game).

– Image by boardGOATS

Food was summarily dispatched and Ivory arrived, and after some discussion about what to play and whether to split into two groups, we all settled down together to play the dice-drafting game, Sagrada, with the 5-6 player expansion. This is another game that most of us are reasonably familiar with and we thought it would be a good game to play to help dust some more of the cobwebs off our gaming skills which had proven to be decidedly rusty at the “Test Event”. The base game is quite simple: the starting player draws dice from the bag and players take it in turns to take one and add it to their stained glass window.

– Image by boardGOATS

As well as following the restrictions given on the players’ window cards which specify colours and numbers for some spaces, players must place new dice next to already played dice while avoiding placing dice of the same colour or number in adjacent spaces. Depending on the difficulty of the player’s window card, players get a number of “cheat tokens” which are worth points at the end, or can be spent to use “Tools” to enable players to improve their move dice, change dice numbers and otherwise break the rules. This time the Tools cards drawn at random were the Eglomise Brush, the Copper Foil Burnisher and the Cork-backed Straightedge.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Eglomise Brush and the Copper Foil Burnisher allowed players to move dice ignoring any colour/number restrictions printed on their window card, while the Cork-backed Straightedge allowed players to place their chosen die in a location not adjacent to another die. The Tools are really useful as they allow players to improve their scores. These come from individual goal cards, and shared goal cards drawn at random. This time we drew one objective card rewarding dice of the same colour arranged diagonally and two that scored points for pairs of dice (ones and twos/threes and fours).

– Image by boardGOATS

The 5-6 player expansion, tweaks the rules a little. In the base game, in each round, the draft goes one way and then returns so that the first player gets to choose first and last with the last player taking two dice one after the other (similar to the initial settlement placement in The Settlers of Catan). With large numbers of players this can lead to a lot of down-time, partly because of the sheer number of decisions (which are taken sequentially), but also because there are more dice giving players a larger number of options to consider. To avoid this, players start the game with their own personal dice pool consisting of two of each colour, rolled to give random numbers. Players then take one die from the draft and one from their personal dice pool.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink began, drawing seven dice from the bag, but we were only a few rounds in when Lime thought he might have dropped one. This queued a mad session of dice counting as well as fond recollections of the time Pine dropped a No Thanks! token between the floor boards which is probably still there. Fortunately, the dice, though small, would not fit through the gap and it turned out nothing had been dropped anyhow. Meanwhile, Blue and Burgundy discussed how to interpret the “diagonals” in the objective card as it was unclear from the rules. We decided to use the generous interpretation and score for each diagonal line, counting dice multiple times, but checking online after proved this incorrect and each diagonally adjacent die of the same colour scores just once.

– Image by boardGOATS

Lime was first to use his cheat tokens, though almost everyone else soon joined him. The exception was Pine who, despite starting with one of the most difficult Window cards, still had all six cheat tokens left at the end. Ivory pointed out that Pink’s window seemed to have a lot of high scoring green dice, making it likely that green was his personal objective and giving him a high score that would be hard to beat. And so it proved, though Ivory scored only one less for his personal, purple objective. Scores for pairs of dice were mostly similar, though Ivory, who started out with a hatful of ones managed to pair these with five twos giving him ten points.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the end, Burgundy and Pink were both close with fifty-six and fifty-eight points, but Ivory was five points clear with sixty-three. Lime had a horrifically early morning so reduced the numbers to five, and giving the mess we’d made with Bohnanza last time, the rest of the group decided to give it another go. This is a fantastic trading game where players first plant beans from their hand, then draw two beans from the deck which can be planted or traded (and planted by the recipient) and finally harvest beans. The key point about the game is that cards in hand must not be rearranged.

– Image by boardGOATS

There are some really clever aspects to the game, for example, because the beans become money, the distribution of beans in the deck changes as the game progresses, but players can manipulate that by choosing when they harvest. Harvesting just before the deck is shuffled means more cards of that sort become available in the next round. With slightly fewer players, this becomes increasingly significant. This time, Burgundy’s shuffling got the blame when Blue started with a handful of green beans and then turned over more.

– Image by boardGOATS

Green beans continued to fall into her lap and punctuated by a full set of garden beans, some black-eyed beans and a small number of others, she harvested significantly more than the fourteen cards available. Pine managed to gather a full set of four cocoa beans, which felt all the more special as they often not in the game because they are removed for many player counts. Pink repeatedly demonstrated how he was unable count, trying to taking four cards to refill his hand each round instead of three. A couple of rounds in, Blue, bought herself a third bean field and nearly underpaid for that too (the cost varies depending on the number of players).

– Image by boardGOATS

As the game came to an end, players tried to maximise their final scores, and then started counting. Twelve was beaten by thirteen, which in turn was beaten by fourteen and then Ivory’s score of fifteen. But Blue was still counting, and counting—the green beans and her third bean field had done their job and she finished with a massive twenty-one. With that, Ivory left leaving four players and just enough time for a quick game of Love Letter, a game that is available online, but we’ve eschewed playing as it loses all it’s fun.

– Image by boardGOATS

One of the most successful of the micro-games, there are just sixteen cards. Each player starts with one card, draws a second from the deck and then plays one. The aim of the game is to end with the highest value card, or be the last player standing when the deck is exhausted. Some cards allow players to assassinate others if they correctly guess what they are holding, or if they compare cards and have the lower value. The game is played until one wins three rounds. Burgundy and Blue took the first and second rounds, before Pink took one round and Blue took another and with it, the lead.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine had been knocked out of every round and when Pink picked him again he protested that Blue would be a better target. His protests were in vain, however, with Pink correctly suggesting Pine was “The Princess”, he was knocked out once more. Pink’s comment, “Don’t worry, you’ll always be a princess to me,” received a disgruntled, “Eat my tiara!” in reply. When Burgundy eliminated Pink, that gave Blue the last card and she went for the jugular taking what was the final round and with it, the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Anyone can be a princess.

17th August 2021 (Online)

Although the test event at the Horse and Jockey was very successful last week, we decided to continue online for another week. So, after the usually chatter (mostly centred on the subject of revenge for the drubbing some of us got from Pine in playing the Heart of Africa expansion to Ticket to Ride), we moved on to the evening’s “Feature Game“. One of the more popular games that we have played online is the “Roar and Write” type game, Welcome to Dino World. We only played it once and then in “Lite Mode”, but there had been a lot of interest in the more exciting sounding “Danger Mode”, so we decided to give it a try this week.

– Image by boardGOATS

The basics of the game is that three dice are rolled giving a number of “pips” which players can spend on up to three actions. These actions are to: build paths; build a dinosaur pen (with generators), or build a facility. The relatively novel aspect of this is that as well as choosing actions to do, players can also combine two or more dice together and use the increased value to do fewer, more powerful actions. Thus a roll of one, three, and four can be used to do three separate actions of that level, or two actions of value, four say, or a single action of level eight.

– Image by boardGOATS

Playing the game with a large number of players (and remotely to boot), instead of players having goal cards that are scored at the end of each round, we use the variant where there are communal goal cards (called “Visitor Cards”) which are scored at the end of the game. The game lasts just eight rounds, after which everyone adds up their scores for visitors, facilities, unused generators and, of course, each dinosaur pen. This “Lite” version of the game is made considerably more complex when the game is played on the “Danger” board with the addition of Threat and Security Tracks and a modification to the way generators are built.

– Image by boardGOATS

The idea of the Threat Track is that every time a dinosaur pen is added the park, the threat level increases by one for a herbivore and two for a carnivore. Once per round, players can also increase their Security Level, by crossing off boxes on the Security Track. These boxes contain points, which if unused at the end of the game, are added to the player’s score. After the building phase is the malfunction phase when a single six-sided, (d6) “Threat Die” is rolled. The value of the Threat Die is added to each player’s Threat Level minus the Security Level to give the Danger Level. If the Danger Level is six or above, disaster strikes, generators malfunction, and dinosaurs start to rampage.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although both use 4 MW generators, they work slightly differently in the Danger and Lite Modes. In Lite Mode, each generator will supply a maximum of four pens (the ones sharing a side with the generator), so a pen that requires a total of 3 MW must be adjacent to three different generators. In Danger Mode, one generator can supply a maximum of 4 MW, but it can supply more than 1 MW to an individual adjacent pen indicated by a power line drawn between the two. Thus, the amount of power a generator supplies can change during the game—it is the generators that are working closer to full capacity that are most likely to fail…

– Image by boardGOATS

If the Danger Level in a park reaches six, any generators that are working at maximum capacity fail. It is a brief power-outage, but as a result, any pens that rely on these generators are affected and one square of these pens is lost (crossed out). The problem really comes, however, when the final square in a pen is lost and and the pen fails completely, because now the dinosaurs break out and cause damage to all the neighbouring pens causing a cascade reaction. And any pen that is destroyed completely no longer scores.

– Image by boardGOATS

Thus, the game is a matter of achieving a fine line between getting the most out of a limited number of generators with the minimum amount of security while still avoiding rampaging dinosaurs. The rules explanation took longer than expected as there was quite a bit more to Danger Mode, and worse, it was a while since we last played the game in Lite Mode, so we had to revise that too. Eventually we were going, however, only for a hiatus after the first round for a rules-check.

– Image by boardGOATS

Burgundy was right to point out that although the rules say players can carry out the three actions in any order, each one could only be carried out once per turn, in particular building dinosaur pens and building facilities. Around half the players had already built two pens in the first round, so we decided that any player that had not done so, could build a second pen in the second round if they chose, and thereafter we would adhere to the rules “as written”.

– Image by boardGOATS

As last time, the first couple of rounds were very slow as players tried to assimilate the Visitor cards and work out a plan to maximise the points they could get from them. This time they were:

≥3 Protoceratops pens (worth four points);
≥2 Different facilities touching orthogonally (worth four points);
≥1 Protoceratops pen, ≥1compsognathus pen, and ≥1 stegosaurus pen all within four paths of any entrance (worth six points);
≥1 T. rex pen and ≥1 brachiosaurus pen (worth six points);
≥4 Brachiosaurus pens (worth ten points);
≥2 Velociraptor pens and ≥3 herbivore pens (worth ten points).

The Facilities were the Viewing Platform and the Ranger Lookout which score points equal to the number of undamaged spaces in one neighbouring pen at the end of the game, and one point per pen visible orthogonally (respectively).

– Image by boardGOATS

In addition to the variety from the Visitor and Facility cards, there are also Research cards which are there to mitigate bad luck. In Lite Mode, Research is just six opportunities to adjust a die by ±1, but these are replaced by three cards, X, Y, and Z which players can use three times, twice and once respectively. This time, these were:

Calculated Risk: When building a carnivore pen, only add one to the threat track but add one damage to the pen (X);
Alternate Funding: Use one die as if it were any value (Y);
Docile Gene Editing: Do not increase the threat when building a pen this round (Z).

While minimising generators and security gives players more points at the end of the game, there is no benefit in not using their Research, so while most players kept some back in case of emergencies, others started using them from the very beginning.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although we were slow to get started and the first few rounds were also very slow, once we got going the rounds were much quicker. And then came the maths. Without Ivory to set an early (usually unbeatable) target, Pine stepped up with a score of one hundred and seven. This was soon topped by Burgundy with a hundred and twenty-seven, then by Black with a hundred and twenty-nine. However, on recount, Burgundy excitedly announced that he also had a hundred and twenty-nine, while Black sadly revised his score down to a hundred and twenty-seven. All was not lost as both players recounted again and Black’s score returned to one hundred and twenty-nine while Burgundy’s third and final count proved to be the lowest at a hundred and twenty-six, “Bah!”.

– Image by boardGOATS

At this point, Black and Burgundy gave in as Pink’s verified score was a hundred and thirty, and it was clear they were battling for the minor places. Pink, who thought he had won, however, was decidedly unimpressed when he was beaten by two points by Blue. There must have been something in the air, or maybe it was the fumes from the vast amount of Tipp-Ex that Blue had used. Pink’s check of Blue’s score initially increased her tally by six, only for him to reduce it again on a second recount, but the changes weren’t enough to give Pink victory.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine was suffering with screen-eyes so took an early night leaving six to move onto Board Game Arena. Six is an important number as a lot more games become available, but after some discussion where people expressed the desire to play something different yet light, we chose Go Nuts for Donuts!, which Pine had said he had been playing and had found light and entertaining. It was indeed very, very simple: each donut has a number and players simultaneously choose a card to “bid” for them. The catch is that a bit like Om Nom Nom, if more than one person chooses the same donut, it cannot be shared and nobody gets it.

– Image used with permission
of boardgamephotos

The different types of donuts score points in different ways and the player with the most points after all seventy cards in the deck have been exhausted is the winner. Some just give points, others score if you have more (or less) than a certain number of one type of cards, while others allow players to take cards from the deck or discard pile. The clever part is the simple decision, however: which card to choose. It is not as simple as it first seems. Sometimes a player wants the card that gives the most points, but then other players may want that, so perhaps it is better to choose something else, even a card someone else wants simply to stop them getting it. And which one is best if there is more than one donut of the same type?

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Go Nuts for Donuts! is quite a brutal game in that it is perfectly possible to end up with no cards much less cards you actually want. It is a lot of fun though, and would probably be even more fun in person when players get to see the whites of each other’s eyes and read their body-language. This time, although Purple got the most cards with eleven, it was only enough for second place. Burgundy’s six cards worked better together, and thanks largely to his fine set of four Boston Cream donuts, Burgundy’s score of eighteen just gave him victory by a single point.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

The appearance, style and set-collection nature of Go Nuts for Donuts! is very reminiscent of Sushi Go!, so with Green’s departure, the rest of the group settled down for one last food-related game. We’ve played Sushi Go! quite a bit, mostly because it is very quick and simple. The archetypal card drafting game, players start with a hand of cards and pass the rest on, trying to collect sets to give them the most points at the end of the game. Played over three rounds, we played with a widdershins draft in the second round, and included the Soy Sauce mini-expansion for extra flavour.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink took the first round largely thanks to a full set of three sashimi cards (which give ten points). Players always fight for the wasabi cards as these can give a significant points boost, multiplying the next nigiri by three, but Purple was the only one to get any and she couldn’t make the best use of it as she had to pair it with egg nigiri (only worth one point). The second round was pretty much a repeat of the first with Pink taking another sashimi trio and Blue scoring the egg nigiri with wasabi.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

With Pink well ahead with thirty-six, the final round was really about limiting losses. Purple took a full six for her puddings and Pink took six points for his maki rolls, but overall, the takings in the final round were pretty similar. The rest of the group were actually quite close together with Purple (again) the best of the rest, but despite losing three points for tying for the least puddings, Pink’s final total of forty-two was unbeatable.

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

Learning Outcome: If the fences of dinosaur pens lose power, things can go very wrong (though perhaps that was already well known).

10th Movember 2020 (Online)

With Blue and Pink otherwise engaged, the early arrivals were left to talk amongst themselves to begin with. Eventually, everyone joined the table talk and admired the new, very yellow arrival that was the Oceana Expansion for Wingspan. Sadly it will likely be a while before it gets an outing with the group, but it gives us something to look forward to.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once the yellow eggs had been put away, it was time to start the “Feature Game” which was to be HexRoller. This is another of the “Roll and Write” style games and is a relatively recent release. The game is quite simple in concept, though the scoring is quite involved and it is quite different to anything else we have played in this vein. The idea is that a handful of dice are rolled and “binned” into according to value. Players then choose two numbers rolled and write those numbers on their player board as many times as that number was rolled.

– Image by boardGOATS

This means if three and five are chosen and they appear once and twice respectively, the player will write three down once and five twice. The game is played on a pre-printed sheet with a play area made of hexagons (because they are the bestagons, obviously). Some of these have numbers written on them. Once a player has chosen a number, they start writing in a hexagon next to a number already on the board, with every subsequent number written next to the previous, making a chain.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once per turn, players can also use one of three special actions, each of which can only be used once per game. These allow players to write one of their chosen numbers an extra time; write a two anywhere, and choose a third set of dice from the pool. At the end of the game players score from a smorgasbord of opportunities. There are points for filling all seven hexagons in one of the coloured groups; for filling all the orange hexes in the central area; for connecting pairs of pre-printed numbers, and any left over, unused special actions.

– Image by boardGOATS

Additionally, every round a player picks two numbers and one is written in a box in the top row in the bottom left corner with the other written in the bottom row. At the end of the game, a “straight” starting from three, score points equating to the highest number in the straight. In other words, a set of two threes, a five, a four, a six, and a couple of eights would score six points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Explained, the game sounds extremely complex, however the scoring is outlined on the sheet and in practice, it is actually quite easy to play, though challenging to play well. That said, it is very different to any of the other games we’ve played and nobody really had much idea how it would pan out. There are two different boards and with different layouts. We started with the slightly more challenging, “seven dice” board, but only realised we were using eight dice after we’d already started, and that probably made it quite a bit easier.

– Image by boardGOATS

With only seven rounds, the game rocked along quite quickly and was over in about twenty-five minutes. Some people did better than others, but it was tight at the top with Green and Ivory tied for first place with sixty-seven and Burgundy just two points behind. Everyone had really enjoyed it though, and we were all very keen to play the second, “Eight Dice” layout. This layout is nominally the easier of the two, though we didn’t realise that before we started otherwise we’d have played it first.

– Image by boardGOATS

It has a larger central area, though, and is played over one extra round. Some of the scoring is also very slightly different, which some people didn’t notice until the end when they came to calculating their score which led to quite a lot of recalculations. Burgundy was third again, and Blue took second with fifty-seven. Although Pink was insistent that because he was unable use a single die in the final round, he had a “moral score” of seventy-three his total of fifty stands. That left Ivory the winner for the second time with a score of sixty-one.

– Image by boardGOATS

HexRoller is a really quick little game, and even playing it twice, there was still time for something else. As we had struggled a little with Tiny Towns last time, we had planned to give it another go, this time with a new set of buildings. The idea of the game is clever but quite simple: players place resources on the spaces on their four-by-four town grid, and then, when the have the right resources in the the correct arrangement, they can replace them with a building.

– Image by boardGOATS

Different buildings are built from different combinations of resources in different arrangements and, ultimately give different numbers of points. We play using the Town Hall Variant where two resources are drawn at random, and then players choose their own for every third. So, the key to the game is careful planning, but also keeping options open in case the required resources don’t come up. And luck also helps of course.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time we drew buildings from the alternative cards adding the Granary, Millstone, Bakery, Trading Post, Cloister and Almshouse to the Cottage. These change the game considerably. For example, the Granary feeds eight cottages (rather than the four of the Farm we used last time), but they must be in the eight surrounding spaces. Similarly, the Millstone is worth two points if next to a red or yellow building (in this case a Granary and the Bakery), rather than a single point for each adjacent cottage. The resources always take up more space than the buildings though and if players aren’t careful they can easily end up building on a space that makes it impossible to work with what’s left.

– Image by boardGOATS

Several players including Green, Blue and Pink picked up on the fact that the Cloister had the potential to be highly lucrative, scoring one point for each cloister in a corner. Blue explained (several times) that this meant that two Cloisters both in corners would score two points each, whereas if one were in a corner and the other were not they would score one point each. Pink decided that they were too difficult to build to get the most from them as they required four different resources, but Purple, Blue, Green and Lime were braver and decided to give it a go.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Pink and Burgundy went heavily for Almshouses. The larger the number of these, the more points they score, but while an odd number of these scores positively, an even number scores negatively. So this strategy was not without risk, although as players are not obliged to build buildings, they could always wait, and only build when they know they have a second ready to go.

– Image by boardGOATS

Lime was the first to be unable to do anything. One of the down sides of playing games like this remotely is that players can’t watch what other players are doing, so as players dropped out, nobody else knew how they had done until the scores started to come in. This time there was quite a spread with scores covering a range of nearly fifty points from minus fifteen upwards. Burgundy had managed to avoid the pitfalls of the Almshouse and finished with twenty-eight points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue, however, had made the Cloister strategy work building a total of six, including one in each corner. It was at this point that Green realised he could have built another two Cloisters, but had thought they wouldn’t score. Worse, he hadn’t realised the empty spaces would score negatively, leaving him some eight points worse off. He insisted that he wouldn’t concede, that there should be a recount as the rules hadn’t been clear, and that a lawsuit would clear it up…

– Image by boardGOATS

As in Pennsylvania, however, nobody listened to the litigant. It was getting late though, so Lime, Lilac and Ivory left everyone else to play For Sale. This is a great game for six players and the rendering of Board Game Arena is really good, making it really quick and fun to play. The game itself comes in two parts: buying properties and then selling them—the player who finishes with the most money wins.

– Image by boardGOATS

Everyone starts with $14,000 dollars and the bid must increase by at least $1,000 each time with players who pass taking the lowest numbered property available and getting half their stake returned. There are two ways to play this, with the money returned rounded up or down – this time we chose to give every player the maximum amount of money with their returns rounded up.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, all the high cards came out in the final round. This meant Burgundy paid just $1,000 for his castle (number twenty-eight) and Purple paid just $2,000 for the sky-scraper (number twenty-nine), although Green still paid $7,000 for the most valuable property (the space station). As a result, most people had acquired some nice properties for a very good price.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

It was a three-way tie between Black, Burgundy and Green for the player who managed to sell their properties for the most money, with all three taking $48,000. However, it is the total, including any money left from the starting funds. In this, Pink and Blue had only spent $3,000 so had $11,000 left. This enabled Blue to just beat Burgundy into second place and take victory with $53,000. At this point, Pine, who had been unable to join in earlier as he was staying with his poorly mother. Inevitably, the game of choice with seven, was 6 Nimmt!…

– Image by boardGOATS

6 Nimmt! is one of the group’s favourite games, and we really enjoy the additional madness that the “Professional Variant” gives. In the original game, players simultaneously choose a card from their hand and then, starting with the lowest value card, cards are added in order to one of the four rows of cards on the table. Each card is added to the row that finishes with the highest number that is lower than the number on the card. Placing the sixth card instead causes the player to take the five cards into their scoring pile.

– Image by boardGOATS

The “Professional Variant” allows players to add cards to the other end of the rows, as long as the difference is smaller. This has the effect of making otherwise be “safe” plays, decidedly “unsafe”, and makes low value cards much more interesting to play. It can have far more catastrophic effects on the game though, and this time was one of those games.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Purple was the first to pick up cards, immediately followed by Green. It wasn’t long before others joined in the race to the bottom. Purple was leading the pack, though when Burgundy picked up seventeen nimmts, shortly followed by another fifteen and several other smaller totals, he overtook her, finishing with a magnificent minus forty-two! The winner was largely incidental, but was Blue, who had only picked up fifteen in the whole game some twenty less than Pine, who always does well in this game, in second place.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

With that over, Green and Pink signed off, leaving five to continue, and the game of choice was Coloretto. This is a very simple set collecting game, that we played from time to time when we were at the Jockey, but has become one of our staples this year. The game is so simple and plays very quickly: players take a card from the deck and add it to a truck, or they take a truck and sit out until the end of the round.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players score points for their sets, with the three most lucrative sets scoring positively and any others scoring negatively. Last time we played, we used the “Difficult” scoring, but that hadn’t been as interesting as, say, the “Professional Variant” for 6 Nimmt!, so this time we used the standard scoring, according to the Triangular Number Series.

– Image by boardGOATS

With everyone very familiar with the game, it is often quite close and this was one of those games. Indeed Pine and Black tied for second place with twenty-five points, but were beaten by Burgundy who finished just two points clear. There was just time for one more game, and Sushi Go! has become one of our recent favourites in such circumstances, as it plays very quickly and the rendering on Board Game Arena is really good, though it would be really nice if they could add some of the extra options available in Sushi Go Party!.

– Image by boardGOATS

As it is, we played with the Soy Sauce mini expansion. The game is very simple and we find that a little bit of Soy does add a little extra flavour. The game is one of card drafting and set collecting, with players choosing one card from their hand to keep, passing the rest on. Some cards score for sets of two or three (Tempura and Sashimi), while the Nigiri score more if played after Wasabi for example. Soy goes well with everything, so scores if the player also has the most variety on their plate at the end of the round.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

The game changers Maki Rolls and the Puddings which give points for the player with the most at the end of the round and game respectively. The Puddings can be the real game-changers though as the player with the most gets six points and the player with the fewest loses six points. In a close game that can make all the difference.

– Image by boardGOATS from
boardgamearena.com

This time, Blue and Pine took an early lead at the end of the first round while the others built up their Pudding supply for the end of the game. Black took the lead after the second round though. Burgundy put in a storming final round taking the six points for the most desserts, but with a three-way tie for the fewest, the negative points were split between Blue, Pine and Black. Burgundy didn’t quite catch the leaders though, and he finished two points behind Pine and Black, who tied for first place. And, well fed, it was time for bed.

– Image by boardGOATS from
boardgamearena.com

Learning Outcome: Listening to the rules explanation usually gets you more points.

13th October 2020 (Online)

The evening began slowly, with people signing in and confirming they had their parcels and had not yet opened them. There was a bit of chatter about isolating, and about Green and Lilac’s new house (which had very similar decor to the previous one). Pink had acquired yet another Panda and proudly had it on display.

A Panda not crossing, with details of a Panda Crossing

– Image by boardGOATS

From there the conversation took a bizarre turn on to the subject of Panda Crossings, which really did exist (along with the other “Animal Crossings”), in the 1960s. It was no surprise they were phased out after just five years, though, given how complicated they were, and the fact that safe operation relied on the difference between a “Pulsating” Amber and a “Flashing” Amber…

– Image from cronkshawfoldfarm.co.uk

At 8pm, the Special Guest arrived; Elizabeth and some of her buddies from Cronkshaw Fold Farm in Lancashire joined the meeting. Elizabeth is very talented and has a particular penchant for yoga. So much so, in fact that she and her friends have been the subject of a half hour documentary filmed last summer. As Elizabeth and friends galloped about and showed us their delightful home, everyone sang “Happy Birthday” and then opened their boxes.

– Image by boardGOATS

The boxes were part of the celebration of our eighth birthday. As is now traditional, the “Feature Game” was Crappy Birthday, a silly little filler/party game that is great fun when played very occasionally (and about once a year is perfect). The idea is that each player takes it in turns to receive gifts from everyone else and then they choose the best and the worst; the players who gifted the selected presents get a point. So in this game players are aiming for extremes making it almost the opposite of games like Dixit or Just One where players are aiming for the centre-ground.

– Image by boardGOATS

With the current challenge of “remote gaming” we had to play Crappy Birthday a little differently this year. So, everyone “wrapped their parcels” last time we met and this time everyone took it in turns to unwrap them. While people ate their treats, names were drawn out of the Crappy Birthday box lid and everyone took it in turns to “open their gifts”, while everyone else ate their cake, biscuits and chocolate.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue went first to show those that hadn’t experienced a GOATS birthday party how to play. As always, it was a learning experience all round. This time, we learnt that Blue would quite like a trip to the middle east (complete with riding camels), but that Monopoly toilet paper might block her drain and everyone else was concerned about the possibility of paper cuts. Green and Lilac both dislike smoking and have been to a Star Wars wedding and Lilac would like a ferret. Black quite fancied unicycle lessons and Purple thought a giant fake bear rug would really add to the ambience in their living room. Although Black likes fish, a hundred pounds is a lot especially when raw, but as he could put it in the freezer, he decided that the persistence of his own Mariachi band would be worse.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory disliked the sound of “Organ Holiday by Ethel Smith”, and would not be swayed even by Pine’s hurt protest that it had pride of place in his collection. Then he saw the hideous living room tapestry, and although he loves the game (and had really enjoyed playing it with the Plans and Ploys Expansion and Pink and Blue recently), he said it was also not for him. Since the LP would be for just a year and the tapestry was permanent, the wall covering was therefore rejected as his least favourite.

– Image by boardGOATS

A lot of people seemed to think that Burgundy would really appreciate physical extreme sports but the one he rejected was bungee jumping. Unlike everyone else who seemed to reject any long term, life-changing experiences, his Burgundy’s preferred gift was a an eagle as a life-long companion, though Blue was concerned it might interfere with Games Night.

– Image by boardGOATS

Mulberry calling in from California fancied a fighter jet ride and rejected a bus ride to Florida, and not only because it was such a long way away. Meanwhile, animal gifts were quite popular and although Pine would have loved the opportunity to be licked by a giraffe or go on an African safari, those gifts were received by Violet, calling in from Aberystwyth. She accepted the safari, but, not being a child of the 70s, was unimpressed by the fluffy dice.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine’s wildlife gifts were in the form of hairless cat, a weekend with some monkeys in a hot spring and the chance to hunt and and clean his own Thanksgiving turkey. Having had a landlady with a cat with galloping alopecia, Pine spurned the unfortunate moggy. Then, despite the fact the turkey was the vegetarian’s obvious least favourite, that was Pine’s preferred choice as there was nothing to say he couldn’t give it it’s freedom once it’d had a wash.

– Image by boardGOATS

After some rude comments about his taste in clothing, Pink explained that being on the reality show “Can America Disco” was his idea of a nightmare and that he quite fancied an Easter Island moʻai statue for his front garden. And then, the last player, Lime, also rejected publicity in the form of his own personal paparazzi posting hourly updates on his doings. Like Pink, he also chose the garden ornament, as Lime wanted a new patio and thought a giant chess board would be just the job.

– Image by boardGOATS

And with that, all that was left was the scores. This time, we found that Team Greeny-Lilac and Pink were particularly good at this game, but it was Lime who seemed to take a point every time, taking seven out of a possible eleven points. That said, it was remarkable how many people gave gifts they thought people would like that ended up winning a point for being the most disliked. That’s half the fun though. With the birthday celebration dealt with, we then moved on to playing other games. We are getting better at this, though our repertoire is still quite limited. There had been a few requests to play Railroad Ink again, however, so we started with that.

– Image by boardGOATS

Railroad Ink is a very simple “Roll and Write” route planning game. The idea is that four dice are rolled and everybody adds all four to their map. Three of the dice show straight and curved sections and T-junctions for road and rail. The other, the fourth die shows stations connecting road to rail, and a fly-over (crossing, but not connecting). The game is played over seven rounds, after which players score points for their longest road segments, their longest rail segments, the number of locations on the edge of the board have been connected, and the number of spaced in the central grid that have been filled.

– Image by boardGOATS

Having played it before, it didn’t take too long to get going and there was a sort of focussed silence as everyone concentrated, punctuated by occasional moans when the dice didn’t give people what they wanted. Sadly, these games are very much “multiplayer solitaire”, and we really only found out how people did when adding up the scores. This time, it was really close with just five points separating the top six players. Initially it looked like it was a tie between Blue and Pink, but a recount pushed Blue into second just ahead of Green and then Pine.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory and Lime followed Mulberry taking their leave, and everyone else settled down to something quick and light in the form of Second Chance. This is a very simple Tetris-style game where two cards are revealed and players chose one of the two shapes to add to their tableau. Players can add shapes anywhere and in any orientation. If they can’t use either of the shapes they get a second chance—another card is revealed, but if they can’t add that shape either, then they are eliminated.

– Image by boardGOATS

The winner is the player with the fewest unused spaces, so the winner is not necessarily the player that stays in the longest. This and the fact that the game is not over-long means that player elimination is not a huge problem. This time, all the large and awkward shapes came out first which meant there was sudden and catastrophic collapse as almost everyone crashed out together. As a result, the scores were really close. Lilac’s beautiful colouring earned her a worthy second place and she was unfortunate to be beaten by the very jammy Pink, who sailed through with several second chances and finished with just three unfilled spaces.

– Image by boardGOATS

By this time, it was starting to get late and people drifted off leaving just five for our, now regular, game of 6 Nimmt! on Board Game Arena. It is very simple: simultaneously, players choose a card, then starting with the lowest value, these are added to one of the four rows. The player who adds the sixth card takes the other five and the player with the most “nimmts” at the end loses. It is very random, but somehow gives the illusion of control, right until the wheels drop off…

– Image by boardGOATS

We play this so much because it is light and great fun, with no downtime. And with the “Professional Variant” that we now use where cards are added to both ends of the rows, the game has had a new lease of life for us. It works really well with fewer players too. This time, Black was first and second to pick up, and it didn’t get much better as the game wore on and it wasn’t a surprise when he triggered the end of the game leaving Burgundy to taste victory, just ahead of Green.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Then, Green said good night leaving just four. Having enjoyed several games of Sushi Go! last time, we decided to give it another try, this time with the Soy Sauce mini expansion. This is one of the simplest of the card drafting games—players have hand of cards, keep one and pass the rest on. With Sushi Go!, players are collecting sets with a sushi theme and trying to collect the most points over three rounds.

– Image by boardGOATS

This was another close game. Burgundy and Blue tied the first round, one devoid of puddings, but Black and Purple weren’t far behind. The second round was much less even though and was taken by Blue with a massive eighteen points. She wasn’t able to keep it up for the final round which Black took with sixteen points. It wasn’t quite enough, to overtake Blue though and she finished with a total of forty-three, just two ahead of Black, in a game where there just wasn’t enough dessert to go round.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

There was just time for one more game, so after a brief discussion, the group opted for another set collecting game, Coloretto. This is another very simple game where players have the simple choice: Take a card and add it to a truck, or take a truck and add the cards to their collection. Players score positive points for their three top scoring sets, and negative points for all the others. Normally, the scoring is according to the Triangular Number Series, where more cards score increasingly more points (one, three, six, ten, fifteen and twenty-one).

– Image by boardGOATS

This time we decided to play with the alternative, “Difficult” scoring, where small sets score the most and their value peaks at eight points for three cards, falling gradually for larger sets. This changes the game significantly, as taking a fourth or fifth card has the same impact on a player’s score as starting another set. And everyone has fewer points to play with… It took a couple of rounds for people to realise the implications of this change to scoring. Then players started taking trucks when they were almost empty and when a “+2” card came up it was taken straight away.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

As a result, there were more rounds and the game became one of avoiding things going wrong. And for most people, once it started going wrong, things generally went from bad to worse. First was Purple, then Black, then just before the end, Blue was landed with pile of cards she didn’t want. So, it wasn’t a huge surprise that Burgundy, who had managed to avoid falling off the precipice, finished with the most points. Purple was by far the best of the rest though having been most successful at stemming the flood of unwanted cards. Then it was time for the last of the birthday boys and girls to go to bed.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Learning Outcome: A gift’s worth is in the eye of the recipient.

4th April 2017

As we we arrived, we were all a little thrown by the fact that we weren’t on our usual table. We coped though (just about) and, while we waited for our food, inspired by Red’s “smiley sushi” top, we felt there was only one suitable game, Sushi Go!. This is one of the simplest, “purest” card-drafting games. Card drafting is a mechanism that is the basis of a number of well-known and popular games including 7 Wonders and one of our favourites, Between Two Cities. It is also a useful mechanism for evening out the vagaries of dealing in other games. For example, a round of drafting is often added to the start of Agricola to ensure that nobody gets a particularly poor hand.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Basically, each player starts with a hand of cards, chooses one to keep and passes the rest onto their neighbour. Everyone receives a new hand of cards, and again chooses one and passes the rest on. This continues with the hands getting progressively smaller until all the cards have been chosen and there are no cards to pass on. In Sushi Go!, players are collecting sets of cards with the different sets scoring points in different ways, for example, a player who collects a pair of Tempura Prawns gets five points at the end of the game. In the first round Blue and Burgundy went for Sashimi – collecting three gives ten points; unfortunately there were only four in the round and both got two which failed to score. We were playing with the Soy Sauce expansion, and Burgundy made up for his lack of Sashimi by taking the Soy bonus, it was Pine who made a killing though taking the first round with a massive twenty-two points.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

The second round was very confused pizza arriving and hands losing cards somehow. Blue won the round with seventeen, but it was a much closer affair which left Pine in the driving seat going into the last round. As they only score points at the end of the game and since the player with the fewest losing six points, everyone went for Puddings. There were a lot in the round and Red managed to collect most of them, and the end of the game six point bonus with it. It was a sizeable catch and with Pine in line for the penalty, it looked like Red might just have enough to snatch victory. In the end, Pine shared the penalty with Burgundy, however, and that was just enough to give him the game, finishing three points ahead of Red.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

With food finished and our usual table now empty, we split into two groups with the first foursome moving back to our normal table to play the “Feature Game”, Viticulture. This is a worker placement game where players take on the roles of beneficiaries in rustic, pre-modern Tuscany who have inherited meager vineyards. Each player starts with a few plots of land, an old crushpad, a tiny cellar, and three workers. Using those workers and visitors, players can expand their vineyards by building structures, planting vines, and filling wine orders. At first glance, Viticulture appears very complicated with lots of possible actions, but in practice it is a much simpler game than it looks. Viticulture is broken down into years or rounds with each subdivided into seasons, each with a specific purpose. In the first round, Spring, players choose the turn order for the rest of the year. The start player picks first and can choose to go first and pick up a meager reward, or sacrifice position in the turn order for something more enticing, in the extreme case, going last and getting an extra worker.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Then, in the turn order decided in Spring, players take it in turn to choose an action and place a worker. All the action takes place in Summer and Winter and it is up to the players how they divide their workers between the two. Each action has three spaces, but only two are in use in the four player game. The first player to take an action gets an additional bonus while the second allows the basic level action only. Each player has a large worker, their “Grande”, which they can use as a normal worker, or to carry out any action, even if both spaces are already occupied. In Summer, players can add buildings to their estate; plant vines; show tourists round (to get money); collect vine cards, or play yellow Summer Visitor cards (which generally give a special action). In contrast, in Winter, players can harvest grapes from their vines; make wine; collect wine contract cards; fulfill contracts (which is the main way to get points), or play blue Winter Visitor cards. Sandwiched between Summer and Winter, is Autumn, where players get to take an extra Visitor card. Game end is triggered when one player gets to twenty points.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

We were very slow to start as only Ivory was familiar with the game. Pine in particular felt out of his depth and moaned about how this was not his sort of game. Despite this, Pine was the first to get points on the board and he retained his lead for more than half the game thanks to the Windmill that he built at the start. This gave a him a point each time he planted vines and, since that is an essential part of the game he was collecting points from the start where everyone else was concentrating on trying to build up the framework of their vineyard. As the game progressed, everyone else’s grapes began to mature yielding points and the chase began. We were into the final quarter of the game before Blue, then Ivory and eventually Green caught Pine though. Going into the final round it was clear it was going to be close as Ivory moved ahead of Green, Blue and Pine, and triggered the end game. Blue just managed to keep up and it finished in a tie, with both Ivory and Blue on twenty-four, four points clear of Green. Money is the tie breaker followed by left over wine, and since Blue had more of both she claimed the victory.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Meanwhile, at the other side of the room, Red, Purple, Black and Burgundy, had been playing Ulm. This is a game Purple and Black picked up from Essen last year and has had a couple of outings since. The game play in Ulm is simple enough. It is played over ten rounds, during each of which players get one turn in which they can do three actions that help them to gain points. Ultimately players are collecting cards, city coats of arms and descendants, all of which can give them points during the game or at the end. This, in combination with the position of their barge and the number of sparrow tokens owned give the end game score, and the player with highest score wins. The novel part of the game is the Cathedral – a three by three grid of action tiles. On their turn, the active player slides a new action tile, randomly drawn from the bag, from the outside into the grid sliding another tile out. That tile stays in its spot on the outside of the grid and no other player can use that row or column until the tile is removed. The three tiles left in that row or column (two old ones and the new one, just added), represent the active player’s three actions for their turn.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game play in Ulm is simple enough. It is played over ten rounds, during each of which players get one turn in which they can do three actions that help them to gain points. Ultimately players are collecting cards, city coats of arms and descendants, all of which can give them points during the game or at the end. This, in combination with the position of their barge and the number of sparrow tokens owned give the end game score, and the player with highest score wins. The cathedral area is a three by three grid of action tiles. On their turn, the active player slides a new action tile, randomly drawn from the bag, from the outside into the grid sliding another tile out. That tile stays in its spot on the outside of the grid and no other player can use that row or column until the tile is removed. The three tiles left in that row or column (two old ones and the new one, just added), represent the active player’s three actions for their turn.

– Image by boardGOATS

Thus, players get one random action (drawn from the bag) and choose the other two. There are five different actions represented by tiles in different colours. These are: clear tiles on one of the four sides of the cathedral area (making more options playable), place a Seal, buy or play a card, move the player’s barge, or take money. Points are scored during the game through Seals and Coats of Arms, and at the end of the game for any sparrows and for the position of their barge on the Danube. The largest source of points though is through cards. These can be acquired by exchanging tiles for cards or as a byproduct of buying Seals. When played, the active player can either discard the card for the card bonus which they can use during the game, or place the card in front of them, to obtain the points bonus at the end of the game. A set of three different trade cards gets a bonus of three points while three the same gives a six point bonus. Cathedral cards are the most profitable, however, with a complete set of three cathedral cards netting a massive eighteen points, but they can be correspondingly difficult to get.

– Image by boardGOATS

Red and Burgundy were new to the game so there were some blank faces during the explanation and they were totally over-awed by the two epic rules books. It wasn’t helped by the cluttered nature of the board, though everyone agreed that the Cathedral action grid movement is very clever. The downside of it though is that it regularly locks up leaving difficult choices, especially for Red who seemed to come off worst. Black commented that it was very busy with four and that meant the game was very different to the two-player experience. Purple moved furthest at first and picked up some early shields to give her a good start. Despite her difficulties with the action grid, Red also picked up quite a lot of shields and generated a huge number of sparrows gave her lots of bonuses and the lead during the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Burgundy is well known in the group for sighing and moaning about how badly the game is going, shortly before pulling a master stroke that gives him a massive number of points and usually, an unassailable lead. This game was no exception as he produced a massive eighteen points halfway through by trading lots of goods. As he pointed out later, however, it didn’t stop him from coming last this time though. In the event, it was quite close between first and second. Black who made his fortune as an art collector and scored the most from the his River position, demonstrated the value of experience, just pushing Red into second place. Finishing first, the group enjoyed a long postmortem and chit-chat, before the goings on with Viticulture piqued their interest and they wandered over to spectate and enjoy the drama of the final round.

– Image by boardGOATS

With an early start the next day, Black, Purple, Ivory and Green then headed off, leaving Blue, Red and Pine to have yet another go at wresting Burgundy’s “Splendor Crown” from him. Splendor is a really simple engine-building game that we’ve played a lot of late. The idea is that players collect chips and use them to buy cards. These cards can, in turn, be used to buy other cards and allow players to earn Nobles and victory points. People often claim the game is trivial and highly luck dependent, but there has to be more to it otherwise Burgundy would not be as seemingly unbeatable as he is. This time, there were relatively few ruby cards available in the early part of the game, and Red took those that were available. Similarly, Blue took all the emerald cards she could as these were needed for the Nobles. Given the lack of other cards, Burgundy just built his business on onyx and diamonds instead. The paucity of other cards slowed his progress and prevented Burgundy from taking any Nobles. It didn’t stop him taking yet another game though, finishing on fifteen, four ahead of Blue with eleven.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Learning Outcome: Board layout is very important – it can make an easy game appear complex or a difficult game seem straightforward.

17th May 2016

Red and Blue were late arriving, so while they fed on lamb burger and chips, everyone else settled down to a quick game of Sushi Go! (with added Soy Sauce). This is probably the quickest and simplest of the drafting games. Drafting is very simple mechanism: everyone begins with a hand of cards and simultaneously chooses one and passes the rest on. Once the cards have been revealed, players pick up the hand they’ve been given and again choose a card before passing the hand on. In this way the hands progressively get smaller with players adding cards to their display. It is a mechanism used to great effect in more complex games like 7 Wonders and Between Two Cities, where other mechanisms are added to give the game more substance (engine building and semi-cooperative tile laying in these two examples). In Sushi Go!, the aim of the game is to collect sets of cards, with points awarded for different achievements depending on the type of card. For example, the player to collect the most maki rolls scores six points while anyone who collects three sashimi gets ten and so on.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Everyone except Burgundy did reasonably well in the first round, with Green getting his nose in front thanks to some well-timed wasabi and a pair of tempura while Purple and Pine fought for the maki roll bonus. In the second round Burgundy managed reduce his deficit, and Green’s lead took a big dent. With Black as his main threat, however, Green felt sure he had the situation well under control as he was sat to Black’s left so was the one passing him cards in the last round. In the end, despite everything, it was a really tight game with almost everyone scoring thirty points before the puddings were evaluated. As the only one, Burgundy paid the full price for failing to pick up a single pudding card. In contrast, because of the seating order in the last round Green had been able to ensure that Black was unable to challenge him for the title of “Pudding King” leaving Green the winner by a healthy margin.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kladan

With the lamb burgers dealt with, we moved onto our “Feature Game” which was Cargo Noir. We had two copies, so decide to set them up side by side so we could all play. This game is nearly ten years old and hasn’t been as popular as other games by Days of Wonder, so most of us had not played it before. The exact reason for the lack of enthusiasm could be the artwork which is 1950s style and quite drab in colour, so is perhaps less appealing than, for example the highly successful Ticket to Ride and Small World. Perhaps more significant though is the game play which appears to have a bit of “Marmite Factor” with some people raving about it while others seem to loath it with equal passion. This is curious because at it’s heart, Cargo Noir is just an auction game, built around set collecting, but with a little bit of bite.

– Image by BGG contributor fabricefab

At the beginning of the game each player has three ships and at the start of their turn, each ship will be located at one of the harbours, in the casino and the black market. On their turn, the first evaluate the status of each of their ships and resolve any auctions; then they trade any sets of goods for cards (which are worth victory points at the end of the game), before finally repositioning any left over ships. So, like lots of games, Cargo Noir is basically about turning money into points. Aside from the starting handful of money, the only other source is the casino and ships placed there yield two coins (yes, it IS the only casino in the world that gives out money!). These can be used to bid for the goods available in the harbours.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor ronster0

Each ship can visit one harbour and takes with them a stack of money. If it is the only ship in the harbour at the start of the players next turn, then the player gets all the goods laid out in the harbour. If they are not alone, the player can either leave the ship there and add enough money to the stack to win the current bid, or remove the ship from the board taking nothing. Thus, the trick is to bid enough to keep others away, but not enough to risk bankruptcy. The final location ships can visit is the black market, which enables players to either trade one of their existing commodities for one on display, or to draw a free tile at random from the bag which can be very useful as it gives a tile without spending money. Players get “credits” (but no money) for sets goods where all the tiles are either all the same or all different. Since larger sets give more “credits”, the ability to trade a commodity can enable players to buy more valuable cards.

– Image by BGG contributor DaveyJJ

There are some serious limitations for players to consider, for example at the start of the game each player can only carry forward a maximum of six goods to the next round – everything else must be sold. Similarly, having three ships can be seriously restrictive. So, some of the victory cards yield fewer points at the end of the game, but give smugglers an edge during it, providing extra cargo ships for example, or giving them access to a warehouse to store extra goods enabling them to build up more credits and buy more valuable cards. Players who choose to buy a syndicate card can even get money from the bank when they withdraw from a bidding war, which has the potential to provide a nice little earner while damaging opponents, if used wisely. The game lasts a fixed number of rounds (depending on the number of players) and the player with the most points wins.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor duchamp

With two copies and seven of us (most of whom were unfamiliar with it), we decided to split into two groups both playing the same game. In the four player game, Pine (who started) got off to a flying start while everyone else struggled, getting caught in bidding wars. A few rounds in, Red briefly got her nose in front, but Pine was better positioned and galloped away. As the game came to a close, Blue fought her way back into the game quickly buying two extra ships and engaging in a “collect as much as possible and sell immediately” approach which sort of worked, but it was too little too late. Meanwhile, Green collected a massive amount of uranium together, but couldn’t quite make enough on the last round to make a big impact leaving Pine to win with a healthy margin despite finishing with just four ships.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor duchamp

The other game was very close with Purple doing her best to scupper the plans of Burgundy and Black, but doing more damage to herself in the process. The game finished with Burgundy taking it by just five points which was particularly galling for Black as he was one coin away from getting the additional five he needed for the draw. There was a lot of discussion as to whether we liked the game. Green was of the opinion that there was too much downtime and it was time you couldn’t do very much with as the previous player had the ability to completely upset any plans made in advance. Red also had misgivings, saying she quite liked it, but wouldn’t bother to go out and buy a copy; Blue commented that as she already had a copy the question was more whether it should be kept, and it would certainly stay for a while yet. Pine on the other hand, had really enjoyed it (despite the faces he pulled at the start), but in general, consensus seemed to be that it was “OK”, even “quite nice”, but not a “great game”. It was also perhaps better with three than four and the downtime would have been very significant if playing with five.

– Image by BGG contributor thornatron

Green decided to get an early night so the rest of us decided to finish with an older, large group game, Saboteur. This is a bit of an old favourite, and is one of the original hidden traitor/social deduction games. The idea is that each player is either a Dwarf or a Saboteur and players take it in turns to play cards with the Dwarves aiming to get 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 tunnels come in different shapes and must be played in the correct orientation, so Dwarves try to push the path in the right direction, while Saboteurs try to play disruptive cards while trying to look like they’ve done the best they can with the hand available. 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.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mikehulsebus

We usually play with a few house-rules. The rules suggest that the game should be played over three “rounds” with the winning team semi-randomly receiving “gold” cards; the overall winner is then the player whose gold cards depict the most gold pieces. Now, we find that the game can sometimes outstay its welcome and the addition of the gold at the end of the rounds feels like an attempt to make more out of the game, but in actuality just makes it more frustrating as there is a large amount of randomness in their allocation. So firstly we dispense with this aspect altogether and treat each round as a game in its own right. That way, we can play one or two games/rounds and then move on, or play extras if everyone is enjoying themselves or time dictates. Secondly, the teams are drawn from a pool cards so that there is an unknown number of Saboteurs around. Although it’s nice to have this additional uncertainty, we’ve always found (particularly with six players) that the minimum number of Saboteurs makes the game very easy for the Dwarves, so we tend to play with a fixed number of Saboteurs. This time, we debated whether to add the expansion, Saboteur 2, but decided against it as the characters seemed to be completely random draw and we didn’t really have time to think about the implications properly – maybe next time.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mothertruckin

The first “game” was very cagey with everyone looking very “saboteur-y” and everyone accusing everyone else of “saboteur behaviour”. In the event, it turned out that all the dwarves had poor hands, and it was fairly clear that the Saboteurs had won when first Pine and then Blue outed themselves to ensure that the Dwarves didn’t make it home. The accusations were already flying about as the cards were being dealt out with Pine commenting that it was highly unlikely that he would be a Saboteur twice in a row and even more unlikely that Blue would be too. This quickly degenerated into a discussion of probability and how the probability was actually exactly the same as last time as the two events were independent, even though the probability of the identical set of Saboteurs is relatively unlikely. Unlikely it may have been, but this time it happened. In an effort to do something different and in the hope that her behaviour would look different, Blue outed Pine as a Saboteur since everyone was already somehow suspicious. Nobody really fell for it however, and it was a fairly easy win for the Dwarves.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mikehulsebus

Since we’d had two games with the same Saboteurs, we decided to play a third. This time things were going reasonably well for the Saboteurs as the Dwarves were struggling with poor cards again. Red was already looking shifty, so when the Dwarves suddenly got it together and headed in the right direction quickly, nobody was terribly surprised when she outed herself because by playing a “rockfall” card. As she drowned under a hailstorm of “broken tool” cards, Red declared that the other Saboteur was going to have to pull their finger out or it would be all over. Black was sat to her left, but miscounted the distance to the gold and played a map card. This left Purple and Pine to finish the game and everyone question why Black hadn’t played his rockfall card, especially Red who was quite vehement in her criticism of Saboteurs who don’t pull their weight! With that, much hilarity ensued and eventually everyone headed home.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mothertruckin

Learning Outcome: If you are going to try to win, don’t leave it too late.

16th June 2015

Burgundy and Blue were just finishing their supper when they were joined by Cerise, Grey and Red and decided to play a short game until everyone else had arrived. They chose Sushi Go! which is a card drafting game similar to 7 Wonders, though without the complexity, so, all the players start with a hand of cards, simultaneously play one and pass the rest of the cards to the player on their left.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Since every player is doing the same thing, each player also receives a hand of cards from the player on their right, but each time the cards are passed the hand gets smaller. In this game players are collecting sets of cards with rewards varying depending on the card and the target. This time, we played with the Soy Sauce mini expansion which consists of four cards that reward players for getting more different colours encouraging more speculative play. The game is played over three rounds, with the middle one going in the opposite direction and the winner is the player with the most points.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kladan

Grey went for the unusual combination of dessert with soy sauce, but Blue topped the round by the judicious application of wasabi to a valuable squid nigiri. Burgundy won the second hand and Red close behind with a large pile of maki rolls, so, it was all to play for in the final round. It was a low scoring finale, with Grey the only really successful player, pulling off his best round when it counted. Unfortunately it wasn’t quite enough: although Blue’s scores had been steadily diminishing round on round, she just managed to hang on to win, just one point ahead of Grey. With Black and Purple having arrived, the group split into two, one playing the Feature Game and the other playing another new game, Om Nom Nom.

– Image by BGG contributor jancis

Om Nom Nom was a UK Games Expo special that Purple had been looking for since Essen last year. The game is quite quick and fairly simple with a lot of “double think”. The game simulates the hunter and prey relationship. There are three game boards each depicting a food chain: cat, mouse & cheese; wolf, rabbit & carrot; hedgehog, frog & fly. Each player has six cards representing the top two rungs of each ladder; at the start of a round a handful of dice are rolled that represent the lowest two rungs and are then placed on the appropriate section of the board.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor msaari

Game play is very simple: simultaneously, all players choose a card to play a predator. If their is enough prey to feed each hunter, then the player gets their card back with the prey and they score one point for each. If there is insufficient food available, the animal starves and they lose their card. Once the first card has been resolved they must play one of the remaining five cards. So, the clever bit is the middle rung of the food chain where there are both cards and dice, so a card played in the middle will get eaten by any played above. There are three rounds with everyone playing all six cards in each round, so trying to out-think everyone else is the name of the game. Purple had played Om Nom Nom before and used her extra experience to win the first round by a sizable margin. Grey made up for it in the second round as everyone began to get the hang of it, and Red took the final round, making it a close game. Her consistency made the difference though and Purple finished just two points ahead of Grey.

– Image by BGG contributor Jean_Leviathan

Next the group had a rummage through the bag and opted for another Essen/UK Games Expo acquisition, Steam Donkey; with such a cool name, we wanted to see if the game play matched. The game is set in 1897, a time when rival seaside resorts are competing to attract a visit from the Queen. So, players are trying to build a four by three grid of cards representing their seaside resort. The three rows represent the different parts of the resort: beach (yellow), town (pink) and park (green). Similarly, the four columns correspond to the different types of building: amusements, lodgings, monuments and transport. In order to place a feature, it must go in the correct location and must be paid for using cards of the same type, as such it has similarities with games like Race for the Galaxy and San Juan.

– Image by boardGOATS

As players build their resort, visitors arrive at the station and come to see the attractions. Each attraction can take a certain number of visitors, which are actually a row of face down cards that are used to replenish the cards in players’ hands. Thus, on their turn players first choose a colour and build as many attractions in that colour as they can/want paying with other cards from their hand. Next they choose a colour and start taking cards in that colour from the “station”, a row of face down cards. The colour of the visitor side of cards does not reflect the colour of the attraction on the other side, however, the type of attraction is indicated. Once there are no more visitors of the chosen colour, or there are no more spaces for the visitors to go, the active player adds the visitor cards to their hand and the station platform is refilled with four new visitors. There is a hand limit of twelve and this can actually be quite a serious impediment for players collecting cards to build the more valuable attractions.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the end of the game, points are scored for each unique attraction built as well as for fulfilling individual goals and bonuses depicted on players’ resort posters. Since this was the first time anyone in the group had played it and there are a couple of unclear points in the rule-book it might not have been played quite correctly, however, everyone seemed to enjoy it what was a very tight game and finished with Purple one point ahead of Red who was just one point ahead of Grey. Since Purple declared, “It’s a good ‘un!” it almost certainly won’t be long before it gets another outing.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, the other group were playing the Feature Game, Evolution, yet another game about food and eating! This is another Essen Special, and is a reimplementation of an earlier game, Evolution: The Origin of Species: the idea is that the game(s) simulate evolution and the “survival of the fittest” concept. Players start with a herbivore with no special characteristics, and a hand of cards. Like many games, the cards serve multiple purposes, in this case, they carry a “food supply” number, details of a trait and can also act as a sort of currency, At the start of the round, players simultaneously choose a card to place face down in the watering-hole, which will dictate how much food will be available later in the round.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Once this is done, players can begin to modify their species. This can be done in turn, but as it is slow and quite boring if you are relatively unfamiliar with the game, we played this part of the game simultaneously. There are three things players can do: they can add a trait to their species; spend a card to increase the body size or population of a species, or spend a card to start a new species. Cards are a valuable resource and players only get three cards at the start of each round, plus an extra one for each species they have. This means that traits must be played with care, but also that there is a strong argument for adding new species as early as possible. However, if there is insufficient food available, animals will starve and if they starve their population will fall, potentially to extinction.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

There are a wide range of traits that can be added to a species. For example if a species is “Fertile”, its population will automatically increase every round saving cards. Alternatively, if an animal has a “Long Neck” it will feed twice before everything else, allowing it to jump the queue. It is also possible, however, to make a species a carnivore, which means that instead of feeding from the communal watering-hole, they will only eat meat, feeding off other, smaller species round the table. Since there are carnivores, there are also traits that can be used to help protect species from being eaten, like the ability to climb, burrow or camouflage.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Traits are most powerful in combination, however. For example, a species which has the ability to cooperate will feed every time the animal to its right feeds. This means it will jump the queue if that species has a long neck. Similarly, an animal that can climb and camouflage can only be attacked by a climbing carnivore with good eye-sight. Since each species has a maximum of three traits, this carnivore would go hungry if the only animals smaller than itself give warning calls as it has no ability to ambush them. Trait cards are all played face down and revealed in turn order once everyone has finished playing cards and modifying their animals, so players have to try to work out what others might be doing and plan accordingly.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Once everyone has finished playing cards and the traits have been revealed, the amount of food available is revealed and the food numbers on the cards played at the start of the round added up. Players then each feed one of their hungry species in strict rotation (varied only where traits allow), starting with the start player. Each player can choose whether to feed one of their herbivores from the watering-hole or use a carnivore to attack another species. Tactics are important here because each species will need sufficient food for its population. Once nothing else can feed, any hungry animals will suffer population loss and anything that was completely unfed loses all it population and will become extinct. On the rare occasion that there is any food left in the watering-hole, it remains there until the next round. The round ends with each player putting all the food into their food bag which makes the bulk of the points at the end of the game, with extras for each surviving member of the population and any trait they may have.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Unusually there was plenty of food in the first few rounds and everyone quickly built up a pack of animals to try to ensure they got plenty of cards at the start of later rounds. Unfortunately, food shortages soon set in and one of Black’s animals went carnivorous. Burgundy suffered badly from the early loss of his alpha species and never really recovered. Cerise started off well, but was the first to lose a species to Black’s hungry hunter. Blue was the only player who had tried the game before and was able to use a combination of climbing, cooperation and a long neck to keep her animals fed, but still fell prey to Black and his savage carnivore. One by one, the animals developed traits to try to out-smart Black, as he added features in a race to avoid starvation. It was quite tight in the final count, but Blue finished five points clear of Black in second place.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Since the other group were still building their seaside resorts, so the group decided to try Om Nom Nom, and see what all the noise on the other table had been about. By the end of the first round, it was obvious and there were howls of laughter as everyone tried to second-guess everyone else and everyone’s best laid plans crumbled into dust. Blue and Burgundy managed to systematically stamp on each-others toes leaving Black and Cerise to fight it out for first place. Her superb first round turned out to be the deciding factor though and Cerise finished four points ahead of Black.

– Image by BGG contributor jancis

With time creeping on and Cerise and Grey leaving, we looked for a quick game to finish and decided to try another new game, called Skull which is based on an older bluffing game called Skull & Roses. The idea is that each player has four cards: three featuring flowers and one with a skull. Players take it in turns to play a card and declare what the card is. Alternatively, instead of playing a card, they can start bidding by declaring how many roses they can find around the table. Once every player has passed the winning challenger must attempt to locate the required number of roses, starting by turning over all the tiles in their own pile. If they find a skull before they complete their challenge, the lose a card; the winner is the first player to successfully complete two challenges.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor nad24

Blue started off showing everyone else how to lose a challenge, by unsuccessfully bluffing to lure others into over bidding. Black lost two challenges in quick succession, but Burgundy made an end of it by winning two out of two. Since Skull had finished so quickly, we all felt there was still time for that last game and with barely a mention of 6 Nimmt!, Purple was getting the cards out to play what is rapidly becoming one of our most popular games. It’s not obvious why we like it, but part of it is probably the fact that nobody really understands it. This time it was a three way competition for the most points as everyone dived to the bottom, leaving Blue to finish with just eleven, some thirty points better than the person in second place.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Food is important, both in life and in games, but especially on Alternate Tuesdays