Tag Archives: Tapestry

13th December 2022

With this being the annual GOATS UnChristmas Dinner, almost everyone was present for a festival of food and fun, when Blue and Pink arrived with a small car full of party. There were lots of volunteers to help bring everything in and before long, pizza boxes were being handed round along with crackers stuffed full of bling and GOAT Award voting forms. The glittery Wingspan eggs from the crackers were especially popular, partly because so many people have a copy, everyone liked the idea of adding them to their game. As the last of the pizza boxes were being passed around, people started to think about this year’s GOAT awards.

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There was lots of umming and ahhhing as people tried to remember which game was which, but eventually the votes were in and people chatted while the returning officers (Pink and Green) did their counting thing. Then Green announced the winners. The GOAT Poo prize for the worst game of the year went to Villainous – The Worst takes it All and the Golden GOAT went to Everdell. Three epic games, one of Viticulture, one of Tapestry and one of Turf Horse Racing were nominated for “Moment of the Year”, but that somewhat poignantly went to the 2021 UnChristmas Dinner which was the last meeting attended by Burgundy, and the last game he played with us, Santa’s Workshop.

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Eventually, we all started thinking about playing games. Ivory and Indigo were keen to play the “Feature Game“, Merry Madness: The Nightmare Before Christmas, while Jade had specially requested a game of Gingerbread House. Eventually, largely due to logistics and lethargy (perhaps caused by too much pizza), everyone stayed pretty much where they were and played something with the people they were sat next to. First underway was Green, Lilac, Pine, Teal and Lime, largely because they were playing a game they were all familiar with, Carcassonne, albeit the Winter Edition.

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The Winter Edition is essentially the same game as the original “Blue-box” Carcassonne, but with snowy art work. Thus, players take it in turns to draw and place a tile, add a meeple if desired/possible and then remove any meeples that are ready to score. As in the original, the features on the tiles include city segments, roads and cloisters. Players score two points for each tile in a city or road they own if it is completed during the game, or one point at the end if incomplete. Similarly, Cloisters score nine points when completely surrounded or one point for the central tile and each surrounding it at the end of the game.

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The clever part of the game is that while players cannot add a meeple to a feature that is already owned by another player, features can be joined together and then shared so that both players score. Green and Lilac had played the same game last year at Christmas, with Der Lebkuchenman (aka Gingerbread Man) mini expansion which consists of additional Gingerbread Man tiles mixed in with the base game; when drawn, the player moves the brown Gingerbread Meeple to an unfinished city of their choice. Before he is moved, however, the current city containing the Gingerbread Man is scored with each player receiving points for the number of meeples they have in the city multiplied by the number of tiles in the city.

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Thus, even players that have only one meeple in the city when their opponents have more score a few points. This year, in addition to Der Lebkuchenman, the group also added Die Kornkreise (aka Crop Circles) mini expansion. Although they were happy with the Gingerbread Meeple, they were less sure about the crop circles—they looked more like funny shaped snow “angels”. The expansion consists of six extra tiles which allow each player to place a second follower on a feature that they have already-claimed or return an already-placed follower back to their supply. Of course, the group did not play the rules quite right, however, initially thinking that each person had a free choice of which action to take and whether to take it or not.

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It was only just after the second tile was placed that they realised it was the active player that chose the action (add an extra Meeple to the specific terrain type or pick up a Meeple) and everyone else had to do the same (they decided that if the player had no Meeple in an appropriate area then they just skipped the action). As a result of the Kornkreise, Lime ended up with three Farmers on the same tile, which at least it guaranteed him that particular field! The Crop Circle expansion also led to the biggest coup of the game. Lilac had started a city with her first tile and Pine positioned himself to muscle in on it a couple of turns later.

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Their cities were joined, but they just could not get the city closed before Teal then joined the fray. This became a very long city and then in the last quarter of the game, Lime also managed to add himself into the action on this game winning city. Then the final Crop Circle tile came out for Teal. He decided he wanted everyone to add a Meeple to a city, which he, Pine and Lime were able to do. Unfortunately Lilac (who had started the city right at the beginning of the game) had no Meeples left, so couldn’t and found herself locked out of the scoring at the end of the game as it was never completed.

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It was a game where no-one seemed to be able to get the tiles they wanted. Green regularly selected from the pile nearest to him, but only ever got roads. When he tried from different piles, he still got roads and when others selected from the “Green” pile, they got cities! Pine started to choose tiles from within the middle of the stack, raising cries of “cheat” from Green and Lilac. Pine’s argument was that the tile was still random, which was hard to disagree with and Lime started doing the same later on as well. In the final scoring, Lime surprisingly edged everyone out for the win, with Teal and Pine not too far behind.

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It had been fun though and the Winter edition is certainly the prettiest version of Carcassonne, so Green and Lilac are already looking forward playing it again next Christmas. Meanwhile, on the next table, Blue, Pink, Ivory and Indigo were playing the “Feature Game“, Merry Madness: The Nightmare Before Christmas, a very quick and light dice chucking game where players are trying to gather together all the spooky-themed gifts in Sandy Claws’ Christmas Bag. It really is very, very light and quick: simultaneously players roll their three dice and do what they say (in a similar style to Escape: The Curse of the Temple). The three dice are different: one shows which of the six gift types is moved, another shows how many, one, two or three, and the final die indicates where: to the player on their left, right or of their choice.

Merry Madness: The Nightmare before Christmas

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The group played with the “Making Christmas Toys” variant. Players started with the same number of each of the different toys. The idea is to get rid of all the toys that don’t match the one depicted on their “Wish List” (shown on their player mat). If they roll the toy on their Wish List, they take that toy from the player indicated, whereas for every other type they roll, they gift one of that type to the recipient indicated. There really wasn’t a lot to it, and basically the game was all about who was most awake (possibly correlated to the person who had eaten the least pizza). Blue won the first round, and Pink took the second. Blue finished the game when she took another two rounds and, although it had been silly fun, it was time for something else and Purple joined the foursome from the next table.

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Meanwhile, Purple had been explaining Gingerbread House to Plum and Jade and their partners Byzantium and Sapphire, respectively. In this game players are witches in the Enchanted Forest, building their gingerbread house and attracting hungry fairy tale characters with colorful gingerbread. Each player has a board with a three-by-three grid of building spaces. There is a face down stack of rectangular tiles with the top three turned face up (a little like the train cards in Ticket to Ride). These tiles each feature two squares, similar to Kingdomino tiles. On their turn, players draw one of the face up tiles and place it on their player board, then carry-out the effect of the symbols they covered up. The most likely symbol is one of the four different types of gingerbread, which means they collect a token of that type.

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Careful placement of pieces is important because if a player is able to cover the same two symbols in one one turn, the player gets the effect three times instead of twice. Once a tile has been placed, the active player can use some of their gingerbread tokens to capture fairy-tale characters. If placing tiles completes a level, the active player may also take a bonus card. The group found the game simple enough once they got going, but it took a while to get there. The “wilds” caused problems from the first and the group weren’t sure whether covering two at once meant doing three of the same thing. After re-reading that bit of the rules, it was decided the extra actions didn’t have to be the same, and as a result, Plum was able to make more of her final turn.

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It was close, but despite his super-charged final turn, Byzantium finished two points clear of Plum with Jade coming in third. Everyone had really enjoyed the game, though, so much so that Jade and Sapphire are now on the lookout for a reasonably priced copy! Although it took a little while to get going, once Plum, Jade, Byzantium and Sapphire were playing, Purple was at a bit of a lose end. Nightmare Before Christmas didn’t take long though, so when it was over, Purple joined Blue, Pink, Ivory and Indigo for a game of the husky sled-racing game, Snow Tails.

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The idea is that each player has a sled led by two dogs. They start with a hand of five cards drawn from their personal deck. On their turn, they can play up to three cards as long as they all have the same number. There are three places a card can be played, two drive the dogs, and one activates the brake. The idea is that a sled’s speed is the sum of the dogs’ speed minus the current value for the brake. in addition, the difference between the dog values is the sled’s drift, which causes the sled to move left or right. At the end of their turn, players draw back up to five cards.

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In general, if players hit something, they pick up a dent card which goes into their hand, blocking space and limiting their options. The game is quite simple, but as always, how and when to apply the “drift” caused some confusion; Pink certainly benefited from the rules malfunction, but others probably did as well. The group started out with the “Treemendous” track, but it seemed to take an age to get the game going and everyone was concerned that they might not finish before midnight. So, about half-way through the game, the track was truncated removing the the final bend and finishing with a straight section just before the finish line.

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Ivory stole a march in the first couple of turns and looked like he was going to leave everyone miles behind, but when he rammed the first corner it let everyone else catch up. Ivory was still the first out, but Pink was now not far behind going into the first stand of pines and was taking a different line. By this time, the damage to Ivory’s sled was starting to take its toll, and Pink was able to take advantage of his balanced sled (his dogs pulling evenly giving him a bonus equivalent to his position in the field) and moved into the lead.

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It was then that the act of shortening the track played into Pink’s dogs’ paws. With just the finish line in front, his dogs stretched their legs, he released the brake and shot through the second stand of pines taking out a couple of saplings on his way through. Everyone could see what was going to happen, but nobody could do anything about it, and Pink crossed the line miles ahead of Ivory who would, no doubt, have taken second had the group played on. Everyone else was far behind, still working their way through the first plantation. It had been fun, but it was time for home, so with many “Happy Christmases”, everyone headed off into the cold dark night.

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Learning Outcome: Turkey, bacon, sausage, cranberry sauce and stuffing really do make a Pizza taste like Christmas Dinner!

Golden GOAT Award Winners – 2022

As usual, the boardGOATS met just before Christmas for a party and to decide the winners of the GOAT Awards. After pizza and crackers and the usual mayhem, the group voted for two awards: the Golden GOAT for our favourite game and the “GOAT Poo” award for our least favourite. Everyone had the usual three points to hand out for the Golden GOAT Award (plus a bonus if wearing Festive Attire), though a maximum of two points could be given to any individual game. Everyone could also nominate up to two individual games for the GOAT Poo Prize.

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This year, there were a few games that received the unofficial “Marmite Award”, that is to say they received nominations for both the Golden GOAT and the GOAT Poo prizes. These included Dice Hospital, Azul, Modern Art and Viticulture. For the GOAT Poo Prize itself, there were several games that received two or three nominations, but the clear winner was Villainous – The Worst takes it All which received six nominations—quite an achievement since only five people played it and one of those wasn’t present for the vote! Villainous is a beautiful, asymmetric card game, but one that we struggled with for several reasons, not least the fact that players had to work out how to play their own character, and we were playing it with five people which is two or three more than it needs.

Disney Villainous: The Worst Takes it All

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Nominations for Moment of the Year included two epic games, one of Viticulture and the other of Tapestry. The latter nomination included the citation: “I thought I was doing well until Ivory lapped me… twice!” Pine also recalled Lilac nobbling him in Turf Horse Racing. The most poignant moment however, with hindsight, was last year’s UnChristmas Dinner, which was the last meeting attended by Burgundy, who very sadly, suddenly passed away just a few days later. We all still miss him, but the fact we were joined by Jade and Plum and their partners this year is his legacy, and one we think he would have been proud of.

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Pushpendra Rishi

And that just left the Golden GOAT Award for the best game of the year. Previous winners including Wingspan, Altiplano and 6 Nimmt! were ruled out, but there were plenty of options remaining. Lots of games received three nominations including Endeavor, Cascadia, Old London Bridge, Splendor, Tapestry and Die Wandelnden Türme But this year, the clear winner was Everdell. This card-driven game was only played for the first time a few weeks ago, but it is planned to play it again soon with one of the expansions being the “Feature Game” early in the new year.

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17th May 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10th March 2022

Green and Lilac were first to arrive followed by Blue, Black, Purple and Pine with Pink late to arrive as he was enjoying the seemingly random deployment of variable speed limits along the M42 (30 mph, really?). The others had finished their supper and Pink was still dealing with his Ham, Egg & Chips, by the time everyone else had arrived and the great “who’s playing what” debate began. Several people were interested in playing the “Feature Game“, the first Tapestry expansion, Plans and Ploys, but it proved difficult to confirm a group. Despite enjoying the game, Blue was not up for something too thinky after a long week at work, and Jade (putting in a welcome return six weeks after his first visit) fancied something different. In the end, Green joined Ivory and Teal over the other side of the room.

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Playing explanations were relatively quick, and even set up did not take as long as some heavier weight games. It turned out everyone was a relative novice with Ivory having played it twice, Teal only once (and that was online at Board Game Arena), and Green not at all. Functionally, the game is quite straight forward, indeed the rules consist of just four, well illustrated pages. On their turn, players either advance along one of the advancement tracks, or begin an era by taking Income. The clever part is that the game ends at different times for each player — each player ends their game when they finish their final, fifth Income turn. Thus, prolonging their eras means more turns which means more time to generate points.

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Otherwise the game basically proceeds with players paying the fee for the space they move to and then doing whatever the space they move to dictates, sometimes with an optional bonus action. Often the action involves getting resources, but the four different tracks also allow players to claim space on the central map, gain technology cards (which give end game points as well as in-game bonuses), and build fabulous resin buildings in their capital city. Although this is quite simple in concept, the depth of the game is in the cards and the asymmetry in the special powers associated with the Civilisations that players get at the start of the game.

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The expansion mostly just adds more of the same with new Civilisations, Tapestry Cards and space tiles. The biggest difference is the addition of Landmark Cards which are designed to give each player a personal short-term goal in the first part of the game, in the form of buildings that only they can claim. The first few turns required a little help from Ivory, but very soon everyone had got the hang of it. The game is deceptively simple with only a few choices on each turn. As a result, turns were very quick and the group soon felt comfortable.

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Teal started on the Exploration Track, just ahead of Green who also wanted to go down that route. Ivory started on Science, which also got him going on the Military Track. Green had a plan and found Teal being one step ahead on the Exploration Track quite frustrating. In no time players started taking their second Income turns. Teal snatched the first Exploration Building and concentrated on developing his island on the central board. Green was using the Explore options to build his little huts onto his Craftsmen Civilisation Card instead of on his capital city board, gaining benefits on the way. Ivory was trying to get several different small buildings onto his city, and being the only one in Science he was unhindered in getting these to his board as well.

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Then much to Green’s delight, Teal changed tack and started on Military expansion. Now that his island had grown, Teal needed to expand if he wanted to it to grow any more. His collection of unused land tiles then enabled him to gain him his personal Landmark, making him the first to do this. By now his score was racing ahead of the others even though Ivory had started with a twenty point boost thanks to the civilisation adjustments. Green continued to concentrate on the Explore track and gained the next building and then revealed that his Landmark for the game had been to get the launch pad (third building on the Explore Track) and make it in to space. That had been Ivory’s strategy for his very first game too… “To get Meeples into Space!”

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Teal’s island empire was ever growing and he was the first to get to the central island. He was further helped by his Islanders Civilsation that enabled him to conquer an extra tile each Income round. He wanted to make sure he kept a buffer to everyone else’s islands though as he did not want any toppling. Ivory was flying up the Science Track by this time, getting other bonuses on other Tracks too, and his capital city was beginning to look a little crowded as well. Ivory had also got a couple of Technology Cards to Green’s one while Teal eschewed Technology entirely.

– Image by boardGOATS

As the game looked like it might be drawing to a close, Teal had raced well ahead on points, although Green was starting to catch him while Ivory was trailing well behind. Ivory completed the Science Track, then just into his final era, Green made his final trip into space reaching the top of the Explore Track. Teal, for his last action, played an extra Tapestry Card and declared an “Alliance of Peace” between Green and himself, which instigated much spluttering and muttering from Green who had just settled on growing his empire with a plan to topple Teal in the centre island for his final turns. With his carefully worked out plan in tatters he scrambled around to maximise the last few points, but probably lost some on the way.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was about at this point, Teal and Green realised that Ivory had still to collect his fourth Income round. So with Green and Teal finished, Ivory started his “attack run” and was left playing alone. His fourth Income gave him more than fifty points and he shot past both Green and Teal; both knew that they were going to be well beaten. This of course turned out to be the case, as in final income scoring Ivory lapped both his opponents and kept going lapping them a second time. Although it had been an extremely dominant victory by Ivory (winning by over a hundred points), everyone had thoroughly enjoyed the game. Although the game play is good, the icing on the cake really is the fabulous 3D buildings that come with it; cardboard counters would have been cheaper, but nowhere near as pretty or as satisfying.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, after the game of PARKS last time, Lime had requested the chance to play it again, so Pink, Black and Jade joined him. The game is reasonably simple, with players taking it in turns to choose one of their two hikers to move along the track, and then carry out the action dictated by the location. The aim is to collect “memories” (or “resources” as most players think of them) to buy “trips to National Parks” (or Park Cards). Lime and Pink ran through the rules as they had played it the previous week, discovering as they did so, a few deviations that had crept into the previous game. These included the fact that the trail gets longer each round and a misinterpretation of one of the icons. As last time, to keep it simple, the group decided not to include the personal bonuses, though they included the Parks Cards from the Nightfall expansion.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, Pink (playing what he thought was pink this time, not what he thought was orange, like last time), was fortunate in acquiring the Sunscreen gear card. This replaces Mountain tokens with Sun tokens when buying in Parks Cards and along with the canteen that provided two Suns, gave him a formidable points generating engine. There was much conversation about whether sunscreen could let you replace ALL the Mountains with Suns for a single Parks Card, or just one. Based on the use of the plural in the rules, the former seemed more likely. However, it was an important point, so a drinks break was instituted whilst Jade consulted the the rules forum on the Board Game Geek website.

– Image by boardGOATS

Results were inconclusive, so the decision stood (or to quote Pink who had been watching too much rugby, “On field decision is ‘Try’ — is there any reason why I cannot award the Try?”). As last time, Lime went for a “reserve Parks Card and then work towards it strategy”, whilst Black, Jade and Pink only reserved cards occasionally. This time, nobody seemed to want to take the camera: Pink got it at the start of the game, and despite him trying persuade people to take it, no one was having it, and he kept it until the end of the game, taking only the occasional photo (worth one point each at the end of the game).

– Image by boardGOATS

Jade picked up the compass Gear Card which came in very useful for collecting Parks Cards, while Black collected a store of emergency ketchup sachets. Lime almost kept the start player marker from start to finish until Jade decided at the very end of the game, that he fancied that extra point and took it off him. In the end, the Sunscreen strategy did it for Pink who won by a healthy margin of seven points, but otherwise it was really tight with just one point between everyone else and Lime and Jade tied for second place.

– Image by boardGOATS

The third table were slow to get going with nobody being very decisive. Eventually Blue suggested playing Sagrada and everyone else concurred. We’ve played this quite a bit in the group since it was released five years ago, but it has been a little while and we were rusty on the rules and details of setup. The idea of the game is very simple though: In “Settlers Style”, players draft dice and add them to their player board. Each die must be added according to the placement rules: next to another die (orthogonally or diagonally) while not orthogonally adjacent to a die of the same colour or number. Additionally, at the start of the game, each player chooses a “window card” which dictates the numbers and colours of dice in some of the positions.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is completed by Tool Cards which allow players to pay one of their limited number of tokens to briefly break the rules, and public and private objective cards. Sagrada ends after ten rounds (twenty dice). The group started with a lot of discussion about the private objective cards as some had snuck in from an expansion and confused everyone. Once everyone was mostly happy with what they were trying to do, Pine started with the first draw. Although he wasn’t aware of it at the time, his first placements turned out to be sub-optimal, as for the next few turns he had little or no choice in his placement and used up a lot of his most flexible spaces in the process.

– Image by boardGOATS

Purple and Blue tried to focus on the public objectives which were Shade Variety, Colour Variety and Row Colour Variety. The latter pair fitted together very well since one gave points for each set of five different colours, while the other gave points for five different colours in the same row. Given that people were trying to go for sets of different colours and numbers, it was particularly amusing when the random nature of dice drawn from a bag and rolled gave a very limited selection, which only added to Pine’s woes. The Tools cards weren’t terribly helpful either, especially as everyone was trying to save them for later.

– Image by boardGOATS

Lilac was the only one new to the game, but she got to grips with it quite quickly despite the fiddlyness of some of the rules. When she realised she had got herself into a little bit of a tangle, she managed to extricate herself using the Tap Wheel tool which allowed her to move dice. Lilac was very disappointed when she was unable to complete her window and had to leave a couple of spaces blank, but empty spaces only cost one point and the additional flexibility can often mean more points elsewhere. Indeed, only Purple actually managed to complete her window.

– Image by boardGOATS

The dice just rolled right for Purple and Blue was able to use the Running Pliers to ensure she got what she needed in the penultimate round. So, aside from poor Pine who had struggled throughout, everyone got what they wanted. When Lilac took the only “red three” in the final round, however, it cost Pine twelve points . With ten points for each complete row containing five different colours, it was clear it was between Blue and Purple. Blue just had the edge though with more points from the Shade Variety and pushed Purple into second by nine points. Pine took an early bath, but as the others were still playing, the remnants of the group looked for something else to play and grabbed the nearest quick game, which was Abandon all Artichokes.

– Image by boardGOATS

Abandon all Artichokes is a very silly little deck-builder, which is somehow different to almost anything else. Players start with a deck of ten artichoke cards from which they draw a hand of five. The aim of the game is to shed all their artichoke cards so that when they draw their new hand of five at the end of their turn, there are no artichoke cards in it. To do this, on their turn, the active player chooses one card from the face up market and, unlike most other deck builders, adds this to their hand (rather than their discard pile) They then play as many cards as they can/want before discarding any leftover cards into their personal discard pile and drawing again.

– Image by boardGOATS

Artichoke cards are basically hand blockers, with no practical use, but all the other cards (including the Rhubarb Promo cards) have an action that allow players to do things. These include swapping cards with other players, discarding cards onto other players’ discard piles and placing artichokes onto the compost heap (a communal discard pile) which takes cards out of the game. It took a while for everyone to get to grips with the rhythm of the game, but before long everyone was down to their last couple of artichokes.

– Image by boardGOATS

You could hear the anticipation as people drew their five cards and disappointment when they found it still contained an artichoke. PARKS had finished so, Pink and Black came over to see what was going on, and they were soon joined by Teal and Green who left Ivory to play with himself (the last era of Tapestry). Eventually, after each player had had several hands where they’d hoped to finish and hadn’t, Purple finally put everyone out of their misery and ended the game. Her obvious delight was in victory, rather than because of any dislike for the game, so although it is a strange little game, it will likely get another go soon.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: If you arrive late, you might not get the dinner of your choice.

20th July 2021 (Online)

Since last time, there had been quite a bit of debate about returning to the Horse and Jockey, but there was a little hesitancy and with the extremely hot weather, staying at home this week turned out to be the right choice all round. As the decision had been just a little bit last-minute, we chose to keep the “Feature Game” simple and opted for the Skills Mini Expansion for Cartographers. We have played Cartographers several times and everyone has really enjoyed it. With the Spiel des Jahres winners announced this week, this was also the nearest we could get to playing a game to mark the occasion (it received a nomination for the Kennerspiel award last year).

– Image by boardGOATS

Cartographers is a “Roll and Write” type of game, but one with more of a “gamery” feel than most. It is based on Tetris, with shapes revealed on the flip of a card in a similar way to other games we’ve played this year like Second Chance and Patchwork Doodle. However, the thing that makes Cartographers more “gamery” than these is the addition of terrain and players usually have to make a choice, either of the shape or the terrain. The terrains are tied in with goal cards, four of which are revealed at the start of the game. Two goals are then scored at the end of each of the four seasons, in a similar way to another game we like, Isle of Skye.

– Image by boardGOATS

There are lots of other little aspects of the game that make it interesting—the presence of Ruins and Ambush Cards in the deck, for example, deliver a curved ball, just when players feel they are in control. Players can also build their income by surrounding mountain ranges and choosing to play certain shapes; this gives more points at the end of each round. The Skills expansion gives players a way to offset this income for special actions which potentially give players other ways of achieving their goals, further adding to the decision space.

– Image by boardGOATS

One of the most impressive things about Cartographers is the amount of variety that is built into the game, which means every play feels different and the game stays remarkably fresh. So, there are two different player maps and four of each type of goal card. This variety is carried through to the Skills expansion; there are eight cards of which three are chosen at random. This time we chose the B side of the map (with empty “wasteland” spaces marked) and drew the Greenbough, Mages Valley, Wildholds and Borderlands goal cards together with the Search, Negotiate and Concentrate skills cards. These skills cost anything from free (like Search) to three (like Concentrate), and each can be played multiple times per game although only one can be played each Season.

– Image by boardGOATS

We quickly realised that the expensive skills like Concentrate are only likely to be played in the final round, as the cost is in “income” and that income is generated at the end of every round. So, playing Concentrate at the start of the game will ultimately cost a player twelve points, while playing it in the final round will cost three just three points. For this reason, the free Search skill was always likely to be used by almost everyone in almost every season (and so it proved). Of course, the higher tariff reflects the increased power though: Search allows players to increase the size of the shape they are drawing by a single square; Negotiate (which costs one) allows players to draw a two-by-two shape, and Concentrate allows players to draw the shape a second time.

– Image by boardGOATS

As well as the skills which we had not played with before, several of the goal cards were new to us as well, including Greenbough (which rewards gives players one point per row and column with at least one Forest square in it) and Mages Valley (which gave points for each space next to a Mountain—two points for each Lake and one point for each Arable). We’d played with the Wildholds goal before though (which gives six points for each Village of six or more spaces) and, although Borderlands was new to us (which give points for each completed row or column), we’d played The Broken Road goal which is similar (giving points for completed diagonals).

– Image by boardGOATS

The game began much as usual, and Pink, who was watering the tomatoes in the “mini-market-garden”, commented that he could hear Burgundy muttering, sighing and generally sounding stressed from outside. Although we had played with “Wastelands” before, we had all focussed on how the fact some of the spaces were already full would help. We had all forgotten how much the Wastelands obstruct plans and generally make life considerably more difficult. Blue made a bit of using the ruins spaces to give her more flexibility later, but had forgotten that it would reduce the number of spaces she would be able to fill later in the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was clear after the first round that Ivory was going to be tough to beat, a feeling that was cemented after the second round. Unusually, Burgundy was the first to post a score, with a total of one hundred and forty-one. Although this was high enough to earn him second though, when Ivory’s score came through he was a massive twenty-five points ahead. Once again, it had been a very enjoyable game, and as we tidied up there was a little bit of chit-chat about the skills and what they added to the game. Since they are not compulsory, the consensus was that we should add them every time, though it was clear that they had been widely used because of the presence of the free Search skill, which everyone had used, and some in every round.

– Image by boardGOATS

With Cartographers over, we had a bit of a discussion about moving back to our much loved and greatly missed, Horse and Jockey. We’d conducted some anonymous surveys over the preceding week to try to gauge opinion trying to ensure that nobody felt under pressure to do anything they weren’t comfortable with. Some of the group had been back on occasional Thursdays, playing old favourites like The Settlers of Catan, Wingspan, and Roll for the Galaxy and new games like Red Rising, Mercado de Lisboa, Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam, Tapestry (with the Plans and Ploys expansion), Ginkgopolis, Everdell, and Draftosaurus (aka “Sushi Go with Dinosaurs”). Others, however, had not been to the pub for nearly eighteen months. After some discussion, we decided that we’d schedule a trial visit in ten days time, so that those who had not been out could see how they felt without committing, and those that went could report back to those that were feeling a little more reticent.

– Image by boardGOATS

After that, we moved onto Board Game Arena. It was a quiet night without both Pine and Lime, and once Green and Ivory had left as well, we were down to five which gave us a lot of options. Coloretto was one, but in the end we chose Niagara, a game we’ve all played quite a bit, but never online, and we were keen to see the new Board Game Arena implementation and whether losing the tactile moving river would leave the game lacking. A strong element of the game is the element of simultaneous play, however, and this was a large part of the appeal this time. Players simultaneously choose a Paddle Tile which dictates how far their canoe will move in the round. Then, in turn order, players move their canoe up or down the river, paying two movement points to pick up a gem from the bank (or drop one off).

– Image by BGG contributor El_Comandante
adapted by boardGOATS

The winner is the player to get four gems of the same colour, five gems of different colours, or any seven gems safely home and into the shallows. On the face of it, this is relatively simple, but the really clever part of the game is the movement of the river. In general, the river moves at the speed of the slowest boat—if the lowest numbered Paddle Tile is a two, then the river moves two spaces and all the boats move with it. However, one of the Paddle Tiles is a weather tile which enables players to increase or decrease the rate to make life harder or easier. Since everyone has to play all their Paddle Tiles before they can recycle them, the timing of their weather tile is critical: players who leave it to the end run the risk of the river running fast and losing boats over the cascade because they can’t do anything about it.

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

And it wasn’t long before that’s exactly what happened, when both Blue and Black got their timing wrong and lost boats over the falls, so had to pay hard earned gems to get new ones. Then, to add insult to injury, Pink sneakily crept up on Blue and stole another gem from her. Players can only steal if they land on the same space as another boat while travelling upstream, and even then it is a choice. There was much ill feeling especially from Blue, but she wasn’t the only one. And with that, the gloves came off and everyone tried to redress the balance and ensure that such bad behaviour would not go unpunished.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Pink was abreast of that though and had a plan. Knowing his bad behaviour would make him a target he collected gems in one boat letting others take them while he stole the gems he wanted and got them to shore quickly. Much to everyone’s disgust, he soon had five different gems and there was nothing anyone could do to stop him getting them home. Burgundy actually had more gems giving him a nominally higher score, but his set of six did not include five different colours and Blue’s set of five included three nuggets of amber. The victims of Pink’s grand larceny were unimpressed with his terrible behaviour, and as it was getting late, we decided to call it a night.

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

Learning Outcome: Theft is totally unforgivable.

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.

31st March 2020 (Online)

It is at times like this that we need social contact more than ever, and board games are a great medium for that, a fact recognised by both the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the British government. With everyone confined to barracks for the foreseeable, we felt it was important to give online meetings a go. There are several online gaming alternatives, but they all either cost or are horribly slow thanks to the fact that everyone else is trying to do the same. For this reason, we decided to try to play a real game using the medium of Microsoft Teams with a camera pointed at the board and everyone else giving instructions.

– Image by boardGOATS

Our game of choice, and therefore our “Feature Game” for the day, was Las Vegas. This was because everyone knows it (minimising explanations), lots of people can play (this was intended to be a social event, so that meant lots of people could be involved); it has no hidden information (a necessity for this sort of thing). Blue and Pink began setting up at about 6pm, after the long walk home from work. They used two laptops: one was perched on some place mats and a pile of sturdy game boxes (specifically Tapestry, In the Hall of the Mountain King and Teotihuacan) with the reverse camera pointing at the table and the game, the second laptop was then used to see what everyone else could see.

– Image by boardGOATS

Black and Purple (in Abingdon), were the first guinea pigs and struggled to get the link to work. Eventually, with some discussion over the phone and the inevitable microphones and speakers on/off issues, they were successful. While Pink popped out to fetch fish and chips from Darren Pryde and his itinerant chip van (which were truly excellent), Mullberry (in Wantage) became the next guinea pig and signed in with little difficulty. After Blue sent out the link to everyone else at 7.30pm, there was a steady precession of gamers joining the party. There were a few things we learnt from this first experience:

As the sun set, the natural light from the window faded and the camera really struggled—lighting really is critical.
MS Teams worked OK with people joining through a link via a web browser, but it is important that the “game camera” has an active microphone. If it does not, Teams decides it is not active and it disappears for anyone viewing on a browser.
MS Teams thinks that feeds where the image changes a lot are the most active and therefore the most important focuses on these. This is a particular problem for those using a browser rather than the application; turning off cameras when inactive can help.
During setup, it helps to have something really obvious for people to focus on.
Maybe it’s the stress of the current climate, but there are an alarming number of soft toys in close proximity of people’s web cameras, most of which seemed to be pandas.

By about ten minutes to eight, most people had “arrived” and everyone was chatting about their new normal and sharing what they were drinking and stories of shopping—for a moment, it was almost like we were at The Jockey. A couple of minutes before the scheduled start, Green, the last to join, signed in. As Blue began dealing out the cards, Green’s opening comment was that it didn’t feel like a games night because we hadn’t spent half an hour chatting! That produced much hilarity, and more chit-chat, before we eventually started.

– Image by boardGOATS

Las Vegas is a very simple game, which is, of course, why we picked it. Players have a handful of dice and take it in turns to roll them and then place all the dice of one number on the casino of their choice. When nobody has any dice left, the player with the most dice in each cassino wins the jackpot. There are a couple of clever twists that make this a really great game though. Firstly, the prize fund for each casino is dealt out in money cards. Some cards are as high as $100,000, while others are only $10,000—the winner takes the largest denomination for that casino, the jackpot, leaving the player in second place to take the second largest, and so on.

– Image by boardGOATS

Secondly, and perhaps most cleverly, all ties, cancel each other out. This is absolutely key to the game: the vagaries of dice mean that a well-positioned player could roll one die and end up with nothing, and much hilarity follows. We also add the Slot Machine from the Boulevard expansion, which works in a slightly different way with dice of each number being added a maximum of once. We also use the “Biggun” from the expansion, so each player has on large die that counts as two.

– Image by boardGOATS

Mulberry began. One of the reasons we picked this game was that we thought most people might have dice of their own at home and could roll them themselves. Mulberry was the only one who didn’t, so being a true Millennial to the core, she opted for an electronic solution using an online dice roller. Otherwise, it was very satisfying to hear the rattle of dice as people took their turns. Although chatting was quite difficult over the network, that didn’t prevent a lot of smutty comments and requests for him to stop bragging when Green announced that he had “got a big one”. Even more entertaining was when the conversation moved onto Iceland’s entry for Eurovision and links were shared through the chat feature which resulted in Pink pressing play by mistake and drowning out everything else.

– From Eurovision Song Contest on youtube.com

It was not an ideal way to play any game and with our group Las Vegas is not quick at the best of times, but the combination of people reading out their dice roll so that Blue and Pink could display them, dodgy internet connections, people sounding like Miss Othmar (the teacher from the Peanuts cartoons), and trying to keep eight people on-message, definitely slowed things down. At the moment though, these things are unavoidable and we managed. It was nearly 9pm before the first round finished and people were happy enough with the result to play a second, if not our usual third.

– From Corgi Adventures on youtube.com

Black made hay with his singleton on Casino Three, when Mulberry’s and Lime’s piles of dice cancelled each other out. Green just pipped Blue to take $100,000 on the Slot Machine, leaving her with just $20,000 for the round, and poor Lime with nothing at all. Purple, Black, Pink, Green and Pine all had good totals in the range of $100,000-$150,000, so it was all to play for going into the second round.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time it was Casino Two that was a knife-fight in a phone box. Pink, Blue and Pine all had four dice in the mix with Green in second place (and therefore winning the jackpot) with two. The final roll of the game was Green’s “Biggun”, so when he rolled a two, nobody could believe his misfortune. Just before he placed it though, he realised he had another option—the oft-forgotten Slot Machine. At which point Pink realised the jackpot could have been his if he had done the same on his previous turn.

– Image by boardGOATS

Nobody really cared about the scores, but Mulberry, Lime and Blue all did better in the second round, though it was too little, too late. The winner was Green with total winnings of $280,000 with Purple in second with $230,000 and Pink and Black just behind. The real loser of the evening was Covid though: it wasn’t a great game, but for a couple of hours, we’d all had a bit of fun chucking dice about, forgetting reality for a while. And with that, Green, Lime, and Pine (signing in from Stoke of all places), left the meeting.

– Image by boardGOATS

Those remaining, decided to give yukata.de a go, and after a bit of discussion, decided to opt for Port Royal. It took a while to get going with Blue and Black trying to remember how to play and explain it to Mulberry. The game itself is simple enough though, and yukata.de, though old-school, keeps everyone honest.

– Image by boardGOATS from yucata.de

Port Royal is a fairly simple, push-your-luck game. On their turn the active player turns over cards until they either find one they want (and can afford) or go bust. There are four different types of card: Characters, Ships, Expedition and Taxes. Ships are free and give money, Characters give victory points and special powers, while Expeditions give opportunities to trade Characters for more points, and Taxes give people behind in the game a little windfall. Once the active player has taken their card, everyone else gets the chance to take/buy a card in turn order, paying the active player for the privilege.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink started well, but Blue eventually got her act together and initially made inroads into his lead before taking it from him. When there was a succession of people going bust, her Jester gave Blue lots of cash enabling her to cement her position at the front. It wasn’t long before her advantage was eroded though, first by Black, adding a Jester to his Admirals, and then by Purple, claiming an expedition.

– Image by boardGOATS from yucata.de

It was all very tight towards the end, but Purple was the first to our chosen end of twelve points, with a score of thirteen points. Unfortunately, due to a rules misunderstanding, everyone was expecting one final round, but sadly, it was not to be. Purple was the last player in the round, and once everyone had taken cards from her leavings, Yukata decided that was it, Game Over. In truth, it probably wouldn’t have made much difference, and Purple deserved her victory though the other platings might have been different if there had been another round.

– Image by boardGOATS from yucata.de

It had been a slow and trying game, though not quite as bad as attempts to play synchronously at the end of last week when the website had repeatedly failed to record moves. Mulberry was looking very tired and it was getting very late, so she signed off, leaving Blue, Pink, Black and Purple to start what will probably be a long, asynchronous game of Snowdonia. That’s another story though, especially as it could take a fortnight or longer to play!

– Image from yucata.de

Learning Outcome: Playing remotely is not as good as playing round a table together, but it is definitely better than nothing at the moment.

Golden GOAT Award Winners – 2019

The second Golden GOAT Award was announced at the boardGOATS 2019 “Un-Christmas Dinner” on Tuesday. As last year, we also gave an award acknowledging our least favourite game of the year, known as the “GOAT Poo” prize. Only games played at a GOATS games night since the 2018 Un-Christmas Dinner could be nominated, and, in a slight change to the rules from last year, everyone had three points to hand out for the Golden GOAT Award (plus a bonus if wearing Festive Attire), and everyone could nominate up to two individual games for the GOAT Poo Prize.

– Image by boardGOATS

This year there were a number of popular nominees, including Gingerbread House, Lords of Vegas, Villagers and Tokaido, with Boom Boom Balloon getting several honourable mentions for being very silly, but a lot of fun. There was some surprise that Terraforming Mars, Keyflower and last year’s Golden GOAT winner, Altiplano, had all not been played (we must make sure we rectify that next year). This was perhaps a measure of how strong the field was, and many people commented that there wasn’t a stand-out “bad game” for them. Tapestry was a strong candidate for the unofficial “GOAT Marmite-factor” Award receiving nominations for both prizes and added controversy, with a suspicion that its nomination for the GOAT Poo Prize was based purely on the appearance of complexity rather than any actual experience.

– Image by boardGOATS

The winner of the “GOAT Poo” award was 7 Wonders, with nearly a third of the group nominating it; it is clearly another Marmite game though as there were plenty of people keen to jump to its defense. The clear winner of the Golden GOAT 2019, however, was Wingspan, with Key Flow an equally clear second (the Silver GOAT perhaps?). Both are excellent games and very deserving choices; we look forward to playing them more next year.

– Image by boardGOATS

29th October 2019

Blue and Pink were first on the scene, armed with special deliveries from Essen and some new exciting toys to play with. Burgundy, Pine, Lime and Green weren’t far behind and soon those that hadn’t eaten earlier were tucking in. Inevitably, the conversation was all about the games fair in Essen and how much it had grown – this year, according the organisers, there were over 209,000 participants, ten percent more than last year. There were also one thousand two hundred exhibitors from fifty-three nations, occupying six large halls, around twice the hall space when Green last went.

– Image by boardGOATS

As people arrived, they received their consignments. Purple and Black got their sadly rather squished copy of the new release, Fast Sloths complete with Expansion and Chameleon promo, a copy of the new portable set of Settlers of Catan (“Catan Traveller“) and a several bags of German lebkuchen biscuits. Burgundy got his annual Concordia expansion (the Balearica/Cyprus map) and the European Birds expansion for Wingspan. This last game was one of the sell-out games at Essen, and Blue and Pink had been at the front of what became a very long queue to get it. That said, the length was probably more to do with the fact that it was also the queue to get a hand on one of the fifty English language copies of Tapestry at the show. Given the fact that Wingspan is very popular at the moment and it would need very little learning, the new expansion was “Feature Game” for the night.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is relatively simple, with players collecting birds for their reserves. On their turn, the active player chooses one of four actions/habitats, and then starting with the card furthest to the right in that habitat, activating each card in turn. The actions associated with the habitats are spending food to play cards; getting food; laying eggs, and more drawing bird cards. Players start with eight possible actions per turn, which gradually reduces to five over the course of the four rounds of the game. All the bird cards in the game have actions that fit with their real-life behaviour. For example, the food needed to play cards closely resembles their diet, the number of eggs each bird has in their nest is proportionately correct and bonus actions are associated with birds that flock and birds of prey.

– Image by boardGOATS

The European Expansion adds more birds that mostly do more of the same thing, but includes birds that have new end of round powers. There were enough copies for everyone to play, so we set up two games in tandem. Blue, Green and Pink helped Burgundy christen his new copy, while Black, Purple, Ivory, Pine and Lime gave Blue and Pink’s copy it’s first outing. After making sure all the new cards were thoroughly shuffled into the deck, Burgundy’s group were first to get started. The end of round objectives were particularly awkward as the final round rewarded players with the most birds without eggs on nests (one of the new objective tiles).

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue started off very well, but then her game stalled as she struggled to find useful cards. Burgundy wasn’t far behind and his very hungry Griffon Vulture seemed to be very effective when it came to catching mice. Blue’s Barred Owl was also successful on almost every occasion it went hunting while Green’s Northern Harrier repeatedly went hungry. Meanwhile, Pink was building a very fine reserve with lots of high value birds, although he felt they didn’t give him such effective actions. With Blue struggling to get anything she could play and Green muttering about not understanding the game, it was left to Pink and Burgundy to fight it out. In the end, although Pink had far more interesting birds, Burgundy did much better with his personal objectives and end of round objectives, giving him a total of seventy-three points, nine more than Pink in second place.

– Image by boardGOATS

On the neighbouring table, everyone started off slowly. Black grabbed one of the new European birds that allowed him to steal food which he used to great effect. Black and Lime also took one of the new end of round bonus cards each which allowed them both to tuck cards. Pine played a Long-tailed Tit, one of the new double space birds, allowing him to get lots of food. Ivory focused on cards with activation powers and in the second round, he and Lime built egg laying engines, with Lime making good use of his Fish Crow which allowed him to exchange eggs for food. Purple struggled due to the lack of fish, clearly having an eye on the last round objective (most birds in wetlands).

– Image by boardGOATS

Both Pine and Lime struggled seeing and understanding the cards, but despite this, both managed to get effective engines going, particularly Lime. By the end, Black had lots of valuable birds and did well on his objectives and Pine missed out on a seven point objective bonus by just by one corn eating bird (getting three points instead). Black also did well on tucked cards, as did Lime. Everyone drew for the first end of round objective (most birds in any row), with Ivory followed by Lime for the second (most birds with “brown powers”). Lime managed to win the third round objective battle (most grassland birds), edging Ivory into second place, but the final round (most wetland birds), was a three-way tie between Ivory (again!), Pine and Purple who all had the maximum number of birds in their wetland.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although he did well on objectives, in the final round Ivory’s primary focus was on getting as many eggs laid as possible and he finished with a massive twenty-seven, a significant contributor to his final, winning score of seventy-nine, seven more than Black in second place and ten more than Lime in third. There was the inevitable comparisons between the two games, and when Ivory asked whether people felt the expansion had made much difference to the game, opinions seemed divided. Having birds he could see in his garden had made a big difference to Pine, though to those people who were less interested in our feathered friends and more interested in the game play, the expansion had made less of an impact. For those that have it though, the European expansion will no-doubt remain a permanent feature.

– Image by boardGOATS

The four-player game including Burgundy, Pink, Blue and Green finished first by some margin, giving them time to play something else. With Blue and Pink having exchanged last year’s variant on the 2018 Spiel des Jahres winner, Azul (Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra), for this Essen’s latest model, Azul: Summer Pavilion, this seemed a good time to give it an outing. All three games are based round a clever “market” mechanism: players take all the tiles of one colour from one of the stalls and put the rest in the central pool, or take all the tiles of one colour from the central pool. In the original game and in the second iteration, these are placed straight away in a tableau, with the original representing a mosaic and the second a stained glass window.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the new, Summer Pavilion variant, tiles taken from the market are put to one side for the second phase when players take it in turns to place them on their personal player board. Where the tiles in the first two versions are square (opaque and clear plastic respectively), in the new edition, they are rhombus-shaped. Instead of rows, each player’s tableau consists of stars made up of six rhombi. In this game, as they add pieces players score points for the size of the block. For example, adding a piece to an existing partial star consisting of two pieces gives three points. Thus, increasing the size progressively yields increasing amounts of points. Although this is an obvious difference, the biggest difference in the game play is the cost of placing tiles and the use of “Wilds”.

– Image by boardGOATS

Each space on a player’s tableau has a number on it: one to six. This is the cost to place a tile in that space. So, placing on a six-space means they place one tile on the board and five in the tile tower. The tiles must all match the colour being placed, however, every round, one of the six colours is “Wild” and this can be used as a substitute. The Wild colour affects the tile drawing phase too: Wilds cannot be chosen from the market, however, if there is are Wilds present in the market, one (and only one) must be taken as well. For example, if there are two blue tiles, a red and a green (which is Wild), the player can take the two blues and the green, or the red and the green, but cannot take the green alone.

– Image by boardGOATS

There are several bonuses, both in game and end game. Players who surround certain features on their tableau get to take extra tiles from a second, special market. This helps grease the wheels and makes the decision space a little more interesting too. At the end of the game, players get bonus points for completing stars and for covering all the “ones”, all the “twos” etc.. The stars give different numbers of points depending on the colour. Each tableau has one of each colour available and one central multicolour star in which every tile must be a different colour. At the end of the game, the player with the most points is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although Blue had found time to punch the pieces in advance, she had not been able to read the rules properly so did it on the fly – the rules are not long, nor are they complex. That said, this version certainly adds strategic depth compared with the original, without the fiddliness of the second version. Without any experience, there were no clear strategies. Blue targeted the bonus points for the must lucrative, purple star and the central star as “low hanging fruit”, while Pink went for the in-game bonus tiles and picked up the extras for completing all the “ones” and “twos”, but didn’t quite make the “threes”. Burgundy played for some of the less valuable stars and Green struggled to get anything to work at all. It was really close, with only one point between Blue and Burgundy, and Pink just a handful of points behind him.

– Image by boardGOATS

This was a brand new game, never played by anyone round the table, so inevitably, something got missed in the rules. In both the base game, Azul, and the follow-up, Stained Glass of Sintra, the first person to take tiles from the central pool in each round takes the first player marker and a penalty for doing so. The same is true here, but unlike the base game, the size of the penalty depends on the number of tiles taken with the first player token. Everyone played by the same rules, so nothing was “unfair” and nobody noticed any balance issues, however, in such a close game it is very likely to have made a difference. We’ll get it right next time!

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Essen is Awesome!

Essen 2019 – Update

Sunday was the last day of this year’s Internationale Spieltage, the largest games fair in Europe (and arguably the world), known to gamers worldwide simply as “Essen”. Although there was a lot of buzz about some of the hot games like Maracaibo and Cooper Island, it is the smaller, less well-known games that really make the fair what it is. For example, Firefly Dance, is a fun little memory game with gorgeous little light-up fireflies activated with a wooden magic wand.

– Image by boardGOATS

Some games sold out within minutes: the last copy of Tapestry went in less than half an hour, and other early sell-outs included Alubari: A Nice Cup of Tea, A Fistful of Meeples and Point Salad. There were lots of good deals to be had, including Passing Through Petra, one of the hot games from last year which was reduced from €60 to just €15. Part of this might have been to attract attention to the Renegade Games stand because according to staff their entire supply of this year’s releases were “stuck in customs”. This included their copies of Paladins of the West Kingdom (the sequel to last year’s smash hit, Architects of the West Kingdom).

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

– Image by boardGOATS

There were also a number of other unusual games available, for example, Wsiąść do Pociągu: Polska, the new Poland map for Ticket to Ride, as well as the more widely available new Japan/Italy Map Collection. There were other expansions as well, including the European Birds expansion to Wingspan, Sagrada: The Great Facades – Passion and Terraforming Mars: Turmoil. In addition to expansions, there were several stand-alone re-implementations of old favourites, including the new 6 Nimmt! Brettspiel (boardgame), Glen More II: Chronicles and Azul: Summer Pavilion.

– Image by boardGOATS

Games fairs are also about demonstrations of games that have not yet been released. There were many of these, but one of the highlights was perhaps Namiji which is the sequel to Tokaido and will be the subject of a crowd-funding campaign in a month’s time. So there is much to look forward to from the Essen haul, old games as well as new, which will make the coming months very exciting indeed.

– Image by boardGOATS