Tag Archives: Ticket to Ride

Essen 2025

Today is the conclusion of the largest annual gathering of gamers in Europe. The Internationale Spieltage is known to gamers worldwide simply as “SPIEL” or “Essen” and is a four day fair with lots of new releases scheduled to coincide with the event, just in time for Christmas sales. This year, there have been lots of exciting new games available to be seen including Galactic Cruise, Brick Like This!, Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor, Waddle, Orloj: The Prague Astronomical Clock (which was sold out before the end of the first day) and Origin Story (which was sold out by Friday).

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In addition to new games, the rise of crowd funding has had a large impact, and increasingly there are stands presenting current live projects in the hope of seccuring additional backers. Examples of this included, Eldertide: A Thousand Lights, the Lodges expansion to Kavango, Cascadia: Alpine Lakes, AstroNavigators, and the re-release of Nippon to name just a few. There have been a lot of really good deals to be had too, and there will be even more on the final day today. It was with sadness though that the Snowdonia spin-off, Alubari was found at a discounter for €15, as this was a great game released with much fanfare a few years ago.

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Old favourites typically often get a new lease of life with the release of expansions. This year, relatively recent releases like SETI (which was confirmed as the winner of the Deutscher Spiele Preis), Faraway, Castle Combo and Windmill Valley recieved new additions, but older games like Underwater Cities and Wingspan also got some love (with the new Data Era expansion and the fan-designed promo packs). As well as new games and expansions, there were also a number of re-releases of old favourites including Ra, Bohnanza (with Dahlia artwork) and Botswana, and even Ticket to Ride which has had a bit of a face-lift with new artwork.

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For those that were prepared to stay late on Friday, there was a world record attempt for the most people playing The Settlers of Catan together. This was achieved with CATAN-Connect, which is a new version of the game designed for large parties that has large groups playing around single islands with elements of simultaneous play and everyone working to one electronic dice roll and a timer. The record had been set at Essen in 2015 with one thousand and forty, only for Rotterdam to set a new record two years later with one thousand and ninety-six. At SPIEL, one thousand, one hundred and seventy players joined in the game (watched by a few more who were just curous), successfully bringing the world record back to Germany where it arguably belongs.

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22nd July 2025 (Report)

This being the summer, Lime brought LIttle Lime to join in the evening, but as there is a curfew for under-eighteens (due to licencing restrictions), the first game had to get off the mark quickly. Together with Pink and Plum, they quickly got going with the well known favourite and Spiel des Jahres winning game, Azul. This is known to everyone, so needed little clarification, though they group decided to use one of the alternate boards from the Crystal Mosaic expansion (the one with the cross pattern). The game is very simple with players taking tiles of one colour from a factory and putting the remains in the centre, or taking all the tiles of one colour from the central pool.

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In either case, players have to add them to their conveyor and if, at the end of the round the conveyor is full, one tile is slid across to be added to the mosaic and the rest disposed of. If the added tile is isolated it scores a single point, but if placed next to other tiles, then more points are scored with larger groups scoring more points. In this way, tiles grouped together keep scoring points. Thus, a player who starts well can build a lot of points, which both Little Lime and Plum managed to do. In the end, Big Lime ended the game, leaving Plum with a single point advantage—The moral of the story: Don’t end the game too early (as Big Lime commented regretfully).

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On something of a roll, the group moved on to one of Pink’s favourite quick fillers, For Sale. Dating from the end of the last century, this game is now nearly thirty years old, but isn’t really showing its age, despite that. The game comes in two halves: Buying Properties at Auction, then Selling Properties by Blind Bid. This game was really really close with a single point between Plum and Little Lime, but they were a a few points behind Big LIme who, as an accountant might be expected to perform well in a financial game. The winner, however, was Pink, who, despite it being one of his favourite games had never won, until now. And with that, it was time for Family Lime to head off.

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Meanwhile, the rest of the group were engaged in the two tables of the “Feature Game“. To mark the recent announcement of the Spiel des Jahres winners, this was Looot. Although Loot was not actually one of the winners, it, along with Faraway, had recieved a nomination for the Kennerspiel des Jahres and, as it had proved popular within the group (also like Faraway) we decided to make it the Feature. Although its nomination was in the Expert or Connoisseur category, the game is not overly complex. The game is played over a series of rounds where each player places one of their Viking workers—the game ends when everyone has run out of Vikings.

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On their turn each player places one of their Vikings on the central playerboard. This is is made up of hexagons: the Viking must be placed on an empty space next to another Viking (of any colour). Each hexagon gives a resource which can be used to purchase Longships, and if the Viking fulfills certain conditions, it’s owner can capture a house, Watchtower or Castle. The player with the most points at the end of the game is the winner. This time there were two tables playing the same game, with Black leading the first table comprising Purple, Byzantium, and Cobalt.

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This game turned into a a bit of a battle for Castles between Byzantium and Cobalt. Cobalt did rather better in the end though thanks to his Long-ship bonuses. This was because Byzantium kept revealing them and everyone else eschewed them until it came to Cobalt who snapped them up. Byzantium’s frustration was increased somewhat because Cobalt was just before him in turn order so it looked like they miight make it round to him until they didn’t… quite… In the end, Cobalt’s were worth forty-two while Byzantium’s gave him just twenty-eight, despite the fact he actually had more.

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It was still close between them, but fairly inevitably, Cobalt had the edge finishing with one-hundred and twenty-eight, ten more than Byzantium in second place. This was a much higher scoring game than the second table, although that was much closer. Jade led this game with Mint, Sapphire, and Blue making up the group. The strategies were very varied, with Jade going for Castles, Mint for Watchtowers, Sapphire for Gold, and Blue who was new to the game, going for a balanced strategy so she could change her tactics as required.

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In the end, Blue’s “points from everything” approach just had the edge giving her victory with eighty-eight points, two more than Mint who had one more than Jade with Sapphire close behind. With the games of Looot coming to an end at the same time as For Sale and with Family Lime heading off, the rest of the group split into two. The first, larger group, consisted of Jade, Sapphire, Blue, Pink, Mint, Plum and Byzantium who decided to give a simple and supposedly quick little game called Tacta an outing. This is a sort of “card placing” game where players have a hand of cards and place them on the table to cover up spots on other players’ cards. At the end of the game, the player with the most spots visibleis the winner.

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Unfortunately, game time is proportional to the number of players, so with the six players (Plum and Byzantium shared a hand and worked together), the game was always going to take twice as long as it would with three. Worse, this was one of those games where gamers take even longer as they want to make sure the find the best placement option and push the rules boundaries. It is a very clever little game though and a lot of fun, though perhaps playing with fewer cards or fewer players would avoid it outstaying its welcome.

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It was made worse by the fact that everyone helped everyone else and therefore, the victor was quite obvious from fairly early in the game Although Blue made a dash to come from zero to finish in a more respectable last place, nobody looked like they were seriously going to challenge the Byzantium-Plum team. Mint took second one point ahead of Pink who was one point ahead of Jade who was one point ahead of Sapphire. Definitely one to try again, but with fewer people next time. The supposed quick card game ended up finishing some time after the supposed longer game, Ticket to Ride: Paris that Black, Purple and Cobalt chose.

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One of the small, “City Editions” of the popular, Spiel des Jahres winning Ticket to Ride games, we’ve played Paris quite a bit since it was released last year. Following the same pattern as all its brethren, the game involves collecting coloured carriage cards and spending them to place metro carriage pieces on the board to connect regions of the city, while trying to also complete tickets. Each edition has its own extra little rule, and in the Paris edition, this is centred on the colours of the tricolor. When players build a red, white or blue route, they keep one of the cards, when they complete a set of three they discard the cards and claim bonus points.

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Purple started and game play was rapid. Before long, players were running out of pieces, with Blake miles ahead of the other two. But that was without the addition of scores for Tickets. Purple took got nine points for her three completed Tickets thanks to her misplaced bravery in picking up tickets at the end and not being able to complete her last one. Cobalt took sixteen points for completing all four of his Tickets, though that was with a bit of jiggery pokery (i.e. retaking his last turn) in order to complete one ticket when he realised he had actually failed to complete it. It was therefore perhaps fair that Black who only scored ten points for completing his pair of tickets just managed to keep his nose in front, taking victory by a single point.

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Learning Outcome: There is something for almost everyone in the Spiel des Jahres lists.

10th June 2025 (Report)

The evening started with a lot of chat about the new and used games people had picked up at UK Games Expo a few days ago, with everyone very keen to play their new acquisitions. The “Feature Game” was to be one of these, a a shiny new pre-release copy of Sierra, flown in specially for the fair by a chap from Hachette Boardgames UK called Flavien Loisier who was recognisable by his memorable, playable, MicroMacro suit. Sierra is card game about traveling the Andes that received a UK preview at UK Games Expo, and is a very unusual game. There are several different ways to play the game including cooperatively and competitively, but this time the group went with working in pairs, playing with the person opposite.

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The pairs were Jade & Sapphire, Blue & Ivory, Black & Byzantium, and Purple & Plum. The idea is that in their pairs players place cards from their shared hand to create a landscape and earn points for satisfying their objectives. The catch is that while the Landscape cards are shared, all but one of the objectives are not. In each round, the player with the Landscape cards draws two and plays two, while the other player draws two Objective cards and keeps one for themselves. At the end of the round, the player with the Landscape cards passes them onto the next couple and the player who drew the Objective cards receives two Landscape cards—thus, the roles are swapped over for the next round.

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The Landscape cards come in four different colours and can be placed at either end so that the colours match, or they can start a new row. The tops of the cards makes them look like mountain ranges, the cards form an interesting tableau. As well as the colour, each card also has one of six symbols: Mammals, Birds, Houses, Ruins, Rivers and Wind—these are used for scoring. After eight rounds each player will have four Objective cards and each pair’s shared Landscape will contain sixteen Landscape cards. The game play was very different with so many players and playing in pairs. The cards and the Landscapes the formed were beautiful. Everyone who was new to the game started feeling their way somewhat, but eight rounds doesn’t last long and it was all over really very quickly.

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The scoring turned out to be a little quirky and in the end took almost as long as the game. Each player then scores one point for each River and Wind cards in their shared Landscape and scores for their shared Objective. Players then count the number of points they have earned for their individual objectives. The player with the highest total wins, however, the partner of the player with the largest total receives a bonus of five points If, with this bonus, the partner has more points than anyone else, then the pair win as a team. This time, Blue and Ivory scored the most for their shared Landscape. Individually though, it was a tie between Plum and Ivory as Plum scored much more for her personal Objectives (as indeed did Purple).

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Because the individual winner was tied, there were no “team bonuses” awarded, which left the scoring feeling a little unsatisfying somehow and nobody fancied playing again straight away. Instead, the group split into two groups with Ivory, Sapphire, Jade and Blue deciding to squeeze in a quick game of Ticket to Ride with the Japan map. This had an outing fairly recently (when Pink hilariously took a fifty point hit when Purple played a single train claiming the route from Hiroshima to Okayama and blocked all his Tickets), but all the people involved in that game were elsewhere.

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

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The Japan map is played exactly the same way as all the other versions of Ticket to Ride (i.e. take cards from the market or spend them to place trains in order to fulfill Tickets), but on a map of Japan and with the addition of the Shinkansen or “Bullet Train”. Once a player has completed a section of Bullet Train, any player can use it to complete Tickets, but the player who completed that section moves along the Bullet Train Track. At the end of the game, the player who progressed the furthest, who contributed the most to this shared project receives the largest bonus, with the player who contributed least being penalised.

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This time, everyone went for the Bullet Train early, so much so that there was quite a battle and by the time Sapphire realised what was going on, it was too late and he was left with the penalty. That forced him to switch tack however, which might actually have done him a favour as he left Blue and Ivory to fight for the biggest, twenty-point bonus. It was all really tight, but Sapphire was some way out in front as the Shinkansen points were evaluated. And despite picking up a five point penalty, there he stayed to claim victory—Ivory who finished in third, pipped Blue on the Bullet Track, leaving her runner up with an eight point deficit (instead of a two point lead).

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The other half of the Sierra group had moved on to play another game picked up at UK Games Expo, Tegula. This is a very beautiful game played with beech wood hexagonal tiles with artwork based on Roman mosaics. The idea is that players have to match the edges in order to place them. Players can use actions to swap tiles, give tiles or play extra tiles and the first player to run out is the winner. This time that was Black, with Purple the best of the rest (i.e. the player with the fewest tiles left, and Plum and Byzantium tied for third.

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Meanwhile, Mint had also brought her new acquisition from the UK Games Expo, Intarsia, and taught it to Pink and Pine. Although this had a most uninspiring box cover and the uninteresting theme of polishing wooden floors, the game itself is really pretty and fun to play. Like Tegula, it is also made out of wood, the game is played over three rounds with eacvh round comprising three phases. First, each player takes the ten Material Cards depicted on their Starting Hand Card from the general supply. Players then take it in turns placing wooden elements onto their Flood Boards by paying the necessary Material Cards and taking new ones where possible and claiming and scoring Tool Tiles when their requirements are complete.

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Finally, players score points based on the number of connectors they’ve placed and choose a new Starting Hand Card to begin the next round. At the end of the game, players calculate their scores for the number of intarsias they’ve built and add them to their running total and the winner is the player with the most points. The game was very tight… for second place! In the end Pine pipped Pink’s ninety by a single point, but Mint took victory by a bit of a landslide with a hundred and eight, as she had four intarsias, compared with three and two for the others. It had been a very enjoyable, lovely tactile game though and that hadn’t out-stayed its welcome.

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With the floor duly polished, the trio moved on to introduce Mint to the weird and wonderful game that is Botswana. This is a sort of stocks and shares game played with cards and plastic animals. Players start with a hand of cards and, on their turn, choose one to play taking a plastic animal of their choice from the central supply to add to their holding. At the end of the game, each player scores for each animal with points equal to the total number of animals of the type they hold, multiplied by the face value of the last card of that type that was played. Thus a player with five elephants might be scoring twenty-five points until another player replaces the “Five of Elephants” with a zero and crashes their value.

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This game went down to the wire, but Pine just got his nose in front, with twenty points for his lions and fifteen for his rhinos giving him a total of thirty-five, on point more than Mint, while Pink finished a few points behind that. There was just time for another very quick game and the game they chose was Ticket to Ride: Berlin—one of the city versions of Ticket to Ride. These are much quicker to play, but still follow the same collect cards and spend them to place pieces in order to complete Tickets pattern. However, in Berlin, players have two different kinds of train car to place—trams and U-bahn trains. On the board, there are specific single-space routes that can only be filled using an U-bahn train.

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The number of coloured cards required to complete the U-bahn is indicated on the game board (up to three), but similar to the Bullet Train in Japan, players only ever place one piece on than U-bahn route. Players only have a total of five U-bahn carriages to work with and their placement is critical, which makes Berlin one of the more interesting of the city games. Once again, this was a close game with everyone using all their pieces. Pink was the victor however, beating Pine into second by two points, but that meant that all three of them had won a game, so everyone went home basking in the warm glow of success.

– Image from facebook.com
adapted by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: You can get some great games from UK Games Expo.

27th May 2025 (Report)

This week, Jade was proactive and quickly got a group together to play the “Feature Game“, which was to be Flip 7. This is a quick, push-your-luck card game along the lines of Blackjack and recently won a Golden Geek award and received a nomination for the Spiel des Jahres. The group have already played it a couple of times on a Tuesday, but we wanted to raise its profile and share it more widely amongst our people by making it the Feature Game. The idea is really simple: players turn over cards and gamble on not revealing the same number twice. Unlike Blackjack, the game is played turn-wise, so the the dealer starts by dealing one card to each player. Then players take it in turns to decide whether they want to “flip” or ” stick”.

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This mode of play is critical to the game’s popularity because it keeps everyone involved and the turns short. If players stick, they score the total of the face value of their cards. There are a couple of other things that make the game tick, in particular the fact that each numbered card appears in the deck that number of times (i.e there is one one, two twos and so on). Thus, the highest scoring cards are also the most risky. Further driving push to gample, flipping over seven cards in a row gives fifteen bonus points. There are also some action cards in the deck, “Flip Three”, “Freeze”, “Second Chance” and modifier cards which give extra points, all of which break the rhythm and add interest without adding significantly to the downtime.

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The game ends when players have reached the pre-agreed total (two hundred, according to the rules, though games can easily be made longer or shorter as desired). This time, the group played the game as written, to a total of two hundred, which took seven rounds. Sapphire and Flint managed to go bust five and six and seven rounds respectively, though Flint did manage to push his luck to get seventy—the most in a single round. Jade achieved a new low, however, failing to score at all. The front runner was Teal, but going bust in the sixth round left the door open to Ruby who had been matching him step for step, scoring in every round and triggering the end of the game with her unsurpassed two-hundred and thirteen.

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Everyone else was playing a longer game, so with six, that left the choice of another six player game or splitting into two groups of three. The party feel of Flip 7 had got everyone in the mood for playing in a larger group, leaving a fairly limited choice, though there are a couple of really good options. Bohnanza is one, but instead, the group chose Faraway—another game that received a Spiel des Jahres nomination this year, that we first played in the group over a year ago and has proved very popular since. This is another relatively simple game, this time with a market and a trick-taking type element, but with a really clever twist, and one that really messes with the head.

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The story is that players are exploring the mysterious land of Alula in search of its secrets, meeting its inhabitants and listing its wonders in order to gain more fame than everyone else. Players simultaneously chose one of the numbered cards from their hand to add to their tableau then, starting with the the player that played the lowest card (similar to 6 Nimmt! or Kingdomino), everyone takes it in turns to choose one from the market to add to their hand. Players then simultaneously choose another card to play, and again, choose one to add to their hand. The game ends after everyone has played a total of eight cards, and then everyone scores.

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The scoring is the really clever part, because although the cards are played into tableaux from left to right, the scoring is from right to left. At first glance, this looks like it makes things easy, because early in the game players find out what they need to get points and can then focus on getting the resources they need as the game progresses. However, the desire to play scoring cards early is tensioned against card choice (the player who placed the lowest numbered card goes first) and the ability to get Sanctuary bonus cards. Scoring cards are generally higher number and Sanctuary cards are gained when the card played has a higher value than the previous one in their tableau.

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It is always hard to see how players are doing with this game, because if a player has played a high value scoring card early it can be worth a lot, but if the player fails to gain the necessary resources it can be worthless. In the event, it was quite close with four of the six players scoring over sixty. The winner, however, was Pink who got lucky early when he played card number fifty-nine first to start a map strategy and finished with five of them. Sapphire was only two points behind in second though, and Teal two points behind that.

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Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, Black and Purple were introducing Pine to Looot, another game that received a nomination, this time for Kennerspiel des Jahres, the “Expert” or “Connoisseur’s” game. This is a game where players gather resources and capture buildings to develop their fjord, fill their Long Ships and complete buildings to rack up victory points. The player with the most riches is crowned Jarl of the Vikings. The game is played over several rounds until each player has played all their Vikings, giving a maximum of thirteen turns. In each, a player first places their Viking on a Resource tile on the central board adjacent to another Viking of any colour and takes the Resource and place it on their personal board.

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If possible, they then capture a Building and place that on their board, take a Long Ship and also place it on their board, use a Shield, complete a Construction Site and finally grab a Trophy. At the end of the game, scoring is a bit of a point salad with points awarded for Castles, Watchtowers, Houses, Gold, Sheep, Trees, Construction Sites, any Trophies the player may have claimed and a five-point penalty for any unfilled Long Ships. Purple raked in points for her Houses, Construction Sites and Trophies, while Black did better for his Watchtowers and Gold, and Pine top-scored for Trees. The winner, however, was Purple whose total of ninety-one was five ahead of Black in second.

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The trio followed this with a shorter game, the Paris version of the 2004 Spiel des Jahres winner, Ticket to Ride (aka Zug um Zug). Like the original, game-play is very quick and simple: players take it in turns to take Cards from the market, or spend them to place Trains on the map with the aim of completing Tickets. Players score points for placing Trains and completing Tickets with penalties for any incomplete Tickets. Each game variant has its own special rules. In the case of Paris, when players score bonus points each time they complete a Tricolor: a set of blue, white, and red routes. This time it was a very close game. Pine had the most points collected during play (including Tricolors), but Black picked up more for his Tickets and edged it by a single point.

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The final game of the night took all evening and was the only one that that has not had a nomination for the Spiel des Jahres, Century: A New World. This is the final game in the Century Trilogy (preceded by Spice Road, Eastern Wonders), but as they all use some of the same components, Plum and Byzantium had managed to squeeze all three games into one box (with an extra set of cubes so two could be played at once). In A New World, players are exploring the Americas at the dawn of the 16th century trading with local inhabitants, recording their findings, and hunting and gathering to survive.

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The game uses the resource trading mechanisms (Collect, Upgrade and Exchange) found in the rest of the Century series, but instead of using cards as in Spice Road, this is combined with with a worker placement mechanism. On their turn, players can either Work (place Workers) or Rest (retrieve Workers). Workers can work at Locations that have neither an Exploration tile nor Workers of their own colour. If a Location is vacant, they can activate it by placing the number or workers depicted on the space; if it is occupied, the current occupants must be evicted and returned home by placing one extra Worker.

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There are four locations types, thee allow players to Collect, Upgrade and Exchange Resource cubes, while the fourth (Forts) allows them to use Resources to claim Points Cards and Bonus Tiles. Players can only have a limited total number of Bonus Tiles, and can only claim the Points Card associated with the particular Fort. These Cards are supposed to slide along a conveyor belt so that they move from one Location to another, but thanks to a rules malfunction, this time the didn’t until more than halfway through the game. The game finishes when one player has their eighth Points Card, so it can end quite suddenly, as players can pick up cards quit quickly due to special powers.

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These games are basically race games, and it felt like Byzantium had a good start with points from his Exploration tiles, the only one to have any. However, as Plum built her engine, she galloped up on the rail, ultimately taking the most points from her Cards. She also took the most points from Bonus Tiles. In such a tight game, left over resources were critical and they enabled Cobalt to leap-frog Byzantium into second. Plum was the winner, though by just two points. It had been fun, though Plum’s comment that she actually preferred the second of the trilogy meant Blue who had not played it would take the opportunity to grab a copy at the UK Games Expo Bring and Buy a couple of days later.

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Learning Outcome: The Spiel des Jahres Jury can spot a good game.

29th April 2025

The evening began with a quick game of the popular Blackjack based game, Flip 7. This is a quick, push-your-luck card game along the lines of Port Royal where players turn over cards and gamble on not revealing the same number twice taking it in turns to decide whether they want to “flip” or ” stick”. The catch is that each numbered card appears in the deck that number of times (i.e there is one one, two twos and so on). Flipping over seven different cards in a succession gives fifteen bonus points. There are also some action cards in the deck, “Flip Three”, “Freeze”, “Second Chance” and modifier cards which give extra points. The game ends when players have reached the pre-agreed total.

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Ivory was keen to get in a little practice as “Little-Ivory” was getting it for his birthday in the next few days. Although the game plays up to eight (with one box), there were just the four as Ivory was joined by Jade, Sapphire and Mint. Mint went bust early and Sapphire started fast, but the victor was Ivory who didn’t go bust at all during the game. With that over quite quickly Jade and Sapphire were joined by Pine, Plum and Byzantium to play the “Feature Game“, Creature Comforts. In this game, players spend Spring, Summer, and Autumn gathering different resources from the forest and spending them to collect items that will home a more inviting place while the world outside is covered in a layer of snow in the Winter.

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Creature Comforts is a worker placement game with a twist: the workers can be placed at various locations, but dice of specific values (or sum-totals) are required to activate the locations. Thus, the players need access to dice of specific values when it comes to triggering those workers. Jade explained the rules to Pine, Plum, Byzantium and Sapphire, some of whom were new to the game. Played over twelve months, at the start of each month or round, a Traveler “event” card is revealed which either applies an instant effect or one that lasts the duration of the month. Simultaneously, players then roll their two Family dice and place them on their Home Boards.

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Then, players simultaneously place their Workers at their choice of the twelve locations. Although the locations can hold any number of Workers, players can only place a single worker at each one. Each location will either require a dice of a specific value or multiple dice that add to a given sum (or have a particular requirement e.g. feature all odds or evens). The catch is that at this point, players only know the values of the two dice that they have access to, their Family dice. So, placing Workers requires some astute planning mixed with some luck when the four communal Village dice are rolled next, by the start player for the month. Players then take it in turns to allocate the six dice at their disposal to activate as many of the locations their Workers are at as possible.

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Each Worker that a player cannot activate gets them a Lesson token, which can be used to modify dice values in later turns (for only that player). Finally, players finish their turn by crafting any creature comfort cards they can, keeping in mind that only three can be carried over to the next round. After eight months (six if playing a shorter version of the game), players can craft any left-over cards they might have in their hand if they can afford to and then score for their Comfort Cards, Improvement Cards, for empty Cottage spaces and left-over resources. The first problem was that there were a lot of locations to get to grips with. Pine, who was new to the game, struggled initially, but by the end was wanting to play again soon!

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Sadly, although the game was a lot of fun and enjoyed by all, it was marred by the fact that “Last Orders” was called sooner than expected. This meant the last couple of rounds were played at something of a rush and points were missed and some of the scores might not have been correctly counted. There are a lots of odd points to be counted, but the bulk come from the eponymous Creature Comfort cards. Byzantium top-scored for these with forty-three points, some ten more than anyone else, so it was no surprise that he ran out the winner by a sizeable margin, with everyone else left fighting for second. That battle was won by Sapphire with Pine taking third.

– Image by BGG contributor hipopotam

Meanwhile, Mint introduced Blue and Ivory to the really cool, three-dimensional game, Planet. This is quite a simple game, but really clever: each player receives a dodecahedral planet core with twelve pentagonal spaces and a magnet in the centre of each one. On their turn, players choose a pentagonal tile with different terrains (Mountain, Ice, Forest and/or Desert) on them and stick it to their planet. The player who fulfills the most conditions for the appearance of certain animals gains its card. There are public, animal objectives and each player has a private objective, their “Natural Habitat”.

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Players score points for the size of their Natural Habitat, and also for each animal card they claim. Animals that live in an area that is not the player’s Natural Habitat score extra points which creates sort of opposing incentives to cover the planet with Natural Habitat tiles while also creating the right conditions to score animal cards. And as the Planet fills up, this gets more and more complex. Although everyone loved it, the game didn’t quite click for Blue, but it was close between Ivory and Mint. There were only two points between them in the final totals, with Ivory taking his second victory of the night with twenty points.

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From there, the trio went on to play the Golden GOAT Award winning game, Stamp Swap. In spite of the theme (which didn’t really set anybody’s imagination on fire), this has proved to be a really popular game within the group—it is just very smooth and doesn’t outstay its welcome. Everyone had played it before, so there was only the barest minimum of a rules run-down. The game takes place over three rounds, each split into two parts: Firstly players take it in turns to choose from a central pool, then players divide their pile into two and the first player chooses one pile from another player to take, who keeps their other pile and chooses one from another play—and thus the piles of stamps are swapped.

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Players score points at the end of each round for their achievements and at the end of the game, for the face-value of the stamps and for end game objectives. Despite everyone having played it before, there was a rules malfunction that might happened before and could have made a significant difference, to Mint and Blue especially. Each player has an “Exhibitor” which gives players a point for each stamp they have of a given theme. The group scored this at the end of the game, however, it is supposed to give points at the end of each round. Everyone played by the same rules, so Ivory was the deserved winner with a hundred and eighteen points, but the scores would have been closer if the Exhibitors had been played correctly.

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On a night when there were four tables, the third consisted of Pink, Black, Pine and Purple, started with a game of Little Town. This is a really cute little game of Worker placement, resource collection and management, and building tile placement. The game lasts for four rounds, during which players collect resources (wood, stones, fish, and wheat) from the eight surrounding squares by placing Workers on central map. Players can then build buildings using these resources, players can then gain the effect of the building by placing a Worker next to it. Placing a Worker next to a building owned by another has a cost though, and the player must pay a coin before you can collect resources.

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Players collect victory points using the powers of buildings, by constructing buildings, and by achieving objectives dealt at the beginning of the game. This time, Pink played a really pragmatic game essentially simply repeatedly activating the Well and the Bar (giving him two and three points each respectively). As a result, the game was a bit of a land-slide with Pink taking victory with thirty-nine points, eleven ahead of Black in second with Pine a few points behind that. With everyone else otherwise engaged, the group went on to play a quick game of Ticket to Ride: New York. This is one of the first of the very small editions of Ticket to Ride, in fact, the first of the “Cities“, as it was preceded only by the Demo version.

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The game is played much the same as the full version of Ticket to Ride, with players taking coloured cards from the market and spending them to place pieces (in this case taxis) with the aim of completing tickets. Black took the most points for the Tourist Attractions he made connections with, but had a bit of a ‘mare elsewhere, failing to complete a large pile of tickets which left him losing fifteen points. This almost entirely wiped out the rest of his points, but it was relatively close between the others. Pink was once again the victor though, taking the most points for placing taxis and for his tickets giving him a total of thirty-four points, with Pine taking second place just ahead of Purple.

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The fourth table consisting of Green, Teal, Salmon and Flint, only played the one game, but it was one of the most beautiful of recent times: Earth. This is a card-driven engine-builder where players are building themselves an ecosystem. Often compared to Wingspan, although there is a lot to understand, the game itself is not actually all that complicated. Players are building a four by four grid of Flora and Terrain cards which represents their island; during the game they will plant flora, water it and allow it to grow.

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On their turn, players do one of four things: Planting (paying the cost in Soil tokens), Composting (gaining Soil and placing cards from the deck in their discard pile), Watering (place Sprouts and gain Soil) & Growing (draw new cards and place growth tokens). A bit like Puerto Rico, once the active player has chosen which action they are taking, everyone else gets to do a subsidiary, slightly weaker version of the same action. For example, when Planting, the active player plants two cards, draws four and keeps one, while the other players plant one and draw one.

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Once everyone has completed the action for the turn, everyone activates all the cards in their island that match the colour of the action chosen, starting with the card in the top left and working across each row in turn. So, not only is it important which cards are played, but also where they are located in the player’s island. At the end of the game (which is triggered when one player has completed their island), players score points for each Flora card, any Trunks and Canopies they have grown, their Sprouts and their pile of “Composted” or discarded cards. Players also score points for achieving objectives on the Fauna cards revealed at the start of the game and for completing their island first.

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This was another game that turned out to be a bit of a land-slide. The base scores for the islands was pretty consistent, but as with many games, it’s about what you do with the cards you get that makes the difference. Green “Composted” fewer cards, but scored more for his Sprouts. Players had ups and down, but otherwise it was fairly even. The biggest difference, however, was the number of Leaf Tokens on the Fauna board—Green had more than twice as many as anyone else with sixty. As a result, his total of two-hundred and forty-four was nearly fifty more than that of Teal who took second ahead of Flint in third.

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Learning outcome: Rushing the end of a game can take the shine off it.

22nd April 2025

The evening began with the sad news that Kath and Ian and their daughters were leaving for a new pub in Shipton Abbot (or was that Newton Abbot?). They have been good to the group and worked hard to give us an environment that conducive to gaming, so it is sad to see them moving on, though Devon is quite a nice place. Everdell is also reputed to be a nice place, and one that some of the group were to travel to perhaps using its new railway station, as the Newleaf expansion to Everdell was the to be the week’s “Feature Game“. The game got going after about fifteen minutes of general faffing about and reminding everyone of the rules to the base game and explaining the additional features of the expansion.

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The base game is a fairly simple one of worker placement to collect Resources and spend them to place Cards. Players keep playing until they run out of workers when they get them all back (vacating the associated Action spaces), and then start again. The game is played over four rounds (or Seasons), with players with the most points from Construction and Critter Cards as well as Event (end-game scoring) Cards. The Newleaf expansion adds new Critter, Construction and Event Cards, but more obviously, it a new railway station. This and associated Visitor Cards, Freight Trucks (which provide an alternative way to get Resources), Travel Tickets, and Reservation Tokens.

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Plum (who obviously chose to play with Cat-eeple Workers) went first, grabbing some Resources, followed by Purple (Butterfly-eeples), Cobalt (Hedgehog-eeples) and then Ivory (Duck-bill Platypus-eeples). Everyone started setting up their town, particularly focusing on green Constructions and Critters that could give income in spring. Plum built up a large pile of Resources and grabbed a Freight Truck with Resources loaded on it and her choice of discount when producing (paid in part using the Reserve Token to gave her a discount) . Purple didn’t go for green Cards, but red Cards with additional worker spots (in particular the Hotel and Chapel), whereas Cobalt and Ivory both got a Mine and Miner Mole, giving them access to valuable pebbles.

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The length of Seasons in this game is variable, with some players doing more than others before they are forced to reclaim their Workers. Purple passed on to Spring first, followed by Plum and then, sometime later, Cobalt and Ivory. Cobalt gained a few blue Cards which had given him Resources (and in particular Cards) when playing Constructions and Critters, whereas Ivory had built quite a collect of green Cards, giving him a significant pile of Resources going into Spring. Spring was very similar to Winter, with everyone focusing on engine building, although Purple was beginning to struggle, due to a shortage of green Cards. Ivory made an early grab for Harvest Festival Event which gives a points bonus for having four green Cards in his city—he was already building quite a big tableau including a Castle.

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Cobalt was taking things slightly more slowly, still focusing on blue Cards, which was enabling him to draw three cards every time he played a Card, so he was always at the hand limit. Moving into Summer, Cobalt significantly stepped up his building, as did Plum. She grabbed the Ever Wall Tower card which rewarded her for having nine Constructions. Having already taken Grand Tour event for having three red Constructions, Ivory was eyeing up the Royal Tea special event for having three green and two purple Cards in his town. However, whilst focusing on collecting resources for buildings to complement his already built Castle and the Palace Card he had in his hand, he failed to notice Cobalt had already played three purple Critters/Constructions.

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As a result, Cobalt beat Ivory to both the Royal Tea and the Scenic Flight awards. Much to Ivory’s disgust, Cobalt was then also able to claim the Sunflower Parade achievement award for having three Events too. So, Ivory went into damage limitation mode, and began focusing on the passengers at Newleaf station as an alternative way to score points. Purple was first to move into Autumn and as everyone else followed the focus was firmly on points. Cobalt was able to collect the Juniper Jig Dance Contest Event card for having nine Critters (in part due to Ivory giving him the Fool!). Ivory was collecting more passengers using his special ticket to enable him to take a worker back, something everyone had from the from the expansion while Plum was building as many building as possible.

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It was all a bit of a rush at the end as it was nearly midnight when the game finally finished. Largely due to the scores for his huge number of Events, the winner was Cobalt with ninety-three points. Ivory took second some ten points behind, closely followed by Plum who got over half her points for Critters and Constructions. The game had taken all evening, but during this time, Pink, Pine and Lime had managed to get through no less than five games. The first was one of Pink’s favourites, Zoo Break. In this game, players work cooperatively to try to prevent the escape of animals from their zoo. It is one of Pink’s favourite games, but this time it was very, very short-lived.

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Things started well as the group locked up the Capuchins, Snakes and the Rhino. But then the Meerkats, who were partying in the fountain, decided to make a bid for freedom. Three tigers and four elephants were already on the loose and rampaging round the zoo and while Pink put two Pandas back in their cage, five of the Meerkats made it to the exit and headed out. And thus a handful of mischievous Meerkats led to the sad demise of Bedlam Zoo (which really had been Bedlam this time). To help get over the disappointment of the epic failure, the group decided to go on a a train ride around France with Les Aventuriers du Rail Express, a light version of one of the group’s favourite games, Ticket to Ride.

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There are lots of versions of Ticket to Ride, from the teeny-tiny city editions through to the rather epic Rails & Sails and Legacy versions. Les Aventuriers du Rail Express is a French map that is a step up from the city editions and fits between the standard games (Like Europe) and First Journey, making it slightly quicker than the full games, as it is played on a slightly smaller map with slightly fewer trains. Aside from that, it is essentially very similar in game play to all the others: on their turn players either take cards from the market, or spend them to place plastic train pieces on the map.

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As in the larger version players can also take tickets, but this has to be balanced with the bonus for completing a route from London to Istanbul, the most distant pair of cities. The first player do so gets twenty points, the second gets fifteen and the third gets ten. Additionally, the wild Locomotive cards also work slightly differently in this game in that, instead of being mixed in with the market, they are always available from a separate stack, but as usual, players can only take one per turn. Being a quick game, and with everyone feeling they knew the game and was in with a chance of winning, the group ended up playing it twice.

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The first time, Lime finished with the most points from placing Trains, but both he and Pine carried negative points from incomplete Tickets. Incomplete tickets are a real drag as they effectively, carry a swing double their face-value. As a result, Pine just pipped Lime to second place. The winner was Pink, however, despite the fact that he had the lowest points for his tickets; he did finish the London to Istanbul connection first though. In the second game, the roles were somewhat reversed with Pink taking the most points for placing trains, but failing to complete the London to Istanbul route at all. The winner was Pine who, like Pink in the first game, also claimed the maximum of twenty bonus points, while Lime was the runner up.

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Everyone else was still playing, so the trio managed a quick couple of games of the card-drafting game, Sushi Go!. This is a very simple game, where players start with a hand of cards and choose one to add to their tableau before passing the rest on. Played over three rounds, players collect points for collecting Maki Rolls, Sashimi and Nagiri (which is all the better when combined with Wasabi). At the end of the game, players with the most Pudding cards score an extra six points, while those with the least lose six points. The player with the highest total is the winner. The points throughout both games were fairly even with nobody crashing out or having a golden round.

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Despite this, the winner of the first game took it by a bit of a land-slide. It’s true that Lime top-scored in two of the three rounds, but they were all really close. The real difference, therefore, was made by the Puddings which he had the most of and left him with a total of forty-five, a dozen more than Pink, the runner-up. It was fairly inevitable then that in the second game, there was quite a battle for the Pudding cards. The scores were close again, and again Lime won two out of the three rounds. The overall winner was arguably Pink, who despite losing all three rounds had the most Puddings and therefore took victory from Lime on a tie-break.

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The final table for the evening, consisted of Jade, Sapphire, Black and Blue playing Meadow with the Adventure Book expansion. Meadow is a clever little card game where players collect cards to add to their tableau from a central market. On their turn players place one of their tokens next to the grid with the type of token and the location combining to dictate which card they take. Players can then add a card from their hand (which may or may not be the one they picked up) to their tableau. In the base game, there is an additional campfire board, but the Adventure Book replaces this. Each “page” from the book changes the mechanics to a greater or lesser extent.

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The group played with the first scenario, which introduces Weather. There are two token that indicate a row and a column in the market, and every time a card is taken from these, players can move along the appropriate Weather track. Reaching the end of these gives players extra cards. Additionally, placing a token in a space in the Book allows players to claim rewards if they have fulfilled the criteria and have the two symbols shown visible in their tableau. These give extra points at the end of the game. There was a lot of faffing about and getting to grips with the rules changes, especially as initially, the wording in the rules for the expansion was a little unclear. Added to which, Black hadn’t played the base game at all before.

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Once the rules had been fathomed out and explained, the group got the game underway. Different players targeted different card types with some going for the harder to place higher up the food-chain cards, while others tried to diversify. Blue tried to get as many of the bonus points for collecting pairs of symbols as she could and as a result finished at the back of the pack. The game is not a high scoring one though and those bonus points made a big difference. It was not quite enough to give her the victory, however, and she finished one point behind Jade who topped the rankings with forty-six points, with Black in third. It had been a very enjoyable evening all round though, regardless of the number or type of game played.

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Learning Outcome: Cards are a critical part of most modern games.

25th March 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

31st December 2024

Black and Purple were the first to arrive and for once in a way, Blue and Pink were ready with pigs in blankets already in the oven and all the other food as prepared as it could be. They still had to move the table and set up PitchCar though, a task which Black and Purple went at with a will. By the time Pine arrived, the track was built and the table was mostly laid with crudites, crisps, dips, and a cheese and pineapple hedgehog, with just cheesy mushrooms, pigs in blankets and devils on horseback to come. Purple started and began with a superb flick to take an early lead, somewhat in contrast to black who shot up the jump (from the first extension) and off the track.

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Purple carried on with her quality flicking, while Black continued jumping off the track and/or landing upside down (costing him stroke and thus returning him to the start line each time). Eventually, Purple got a little stuck, and Black finally managed to remain rubber-side down for a few flicks, as Pink began an ominous move through the field, eventually taking the lead. Everyone seemed to find the fork-in-the-road (back to back “Upsilons“) challenging, variously getting stuck in the corners or ending up more in the wrong lane than the right one. Blue who started last also began to progress through the field though she struggled with the narrow sections on the inner loop (from the No Limit extension), on one occasion ending up with her car sitting in a dish of raw vegetable sticks.

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She made it into second place eventually though and starting to chase down Pink, however, he had a substantial lead and shot round the fast section of the course to complete his first lap well in front. As the enchiladas weren’t ready though, the group decided to push on for a second lap. By this time Pink was in front with Blue in second. Towards the end of the first lap, Black who had been some way behind was just starting to catch Purple and Pine who, hitherto, had been fighting it out for third. As the cars rocketed into the second lap, Purple tried to rocket her car into orbit off the bridge, ceding third place to Pine and then fourth place to Black in the process.

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It remained mostly tight for the first half of the second lap, however, with Black, Pine and Purple generally getting in each other’s way, allowing Pink to increase his lead and Blue, who had been caught up, eventually pulled clear in second place. Every now and then Purple managed to pull out a truly fantastic flick, but then got stuck again, while the others were generally a little more consistent and edged in front. Coming out of the inner loop, Pink shot onto the fat section chased by Blue, who managed to catch and bumper-shunt him, but alas, not overtake, as he cruised over the line in first. Blue followed leaving what looked like a tight race for third until Black broke free.

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In the end, Black was some way clear in third before Pine eventually broke free from his race-long tussle with Purple. Purple finished much as she started with some spectacular long, fast flicks, interjected with a couple of “off-track incidents”, as the track was pulled up just behind her because supper was ready. After veggie and non-veggie enchiladas followed by Traffic-Light jellies, Pink excitedly got out his Christmas present: Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West. This is an epic game based on the original Ticket to Ride game play, but where the cards and boards are changed during the twelve game campaign. Pink had eyed it up at Essen in 2023, but the box size and price, which are both also epic had put him off getting it. Santa had been more generous however…

Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West

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The idea is that, in the usual Ticket to Ride way, players collect coloured train cards and spend them to place trains on the board with the aim of connecting the cities shown on their Tickets. Unlike the base game, players don’t score points instead they receive money when they complete certain tasks, like successfully completing Tickets at the end of the game, but also when some Event cards are drawn during the game. Spoiler alert—hover HERE to see details. After each game, players fill out a Bank Slip with their earnings and place it in their “Vault” so their winnings can be totaled at the end of the game.

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Playing with five, was always going to make the games tight, but the first game was still a bit of a baptism of fire. Nobody seemed happy, even Pine who picked up loads of money and lots of Tickets during the game, seemed to think he wasn’t doing well. Spoiler—hover HERE to see details. Blue was blocked at least three times trying to get from Knoxville to New Orleans and was beginning not to enjoy herself, so decided the best solution to all her problems was to end the game as quickly as possible. This she did quite successfully and fairly abruptly leaving Pink with one incomplete Ticket worth eleven dollars, and Pine with two worth a total of fifteen!

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The night was still young, and it was some time before midnight, so everyone filled in their Bank Slip and the first “Pause” card read. Spoiler—hover HERE to see details. With this finally resolved, the group began their second game. This time, the battleground was along the eastern seaboard, specifically between the large cities of Boston, New York and Philadelphia. First one player would claim one of the three tracks, then the next player would panic and claim one before the third was also claimed. In this way, it took barely three rounds for all nine spaces to go. Pine again took more Tickets, as did Pink and Black.

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In the second game, Black took victory, with Blue in second. Spoiler—hover HERE to see details. By this time New Year had been and gone, and although Blue pointed out midnight with plenty of advanced warning, everyone was far too engrossed in the game to give more than a cursory Happy New Year toast (most with empty glasses!), before continuing to play. There was quite a lot of chit-chat as players set things up for the next game and munched Lebkuchen while Blue put together “Doggy Bags” of enchiladas to make sure nobody starved in the coming cold snap. With that, and a formal bidding farewell to 2024 and hello to 2025, Pine, Purple and Black headed out into the dark night.

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Learning outcome: Small parties can be as much fun as large ones.

29th October 2024

The evening began with everyone admiring Plum’s spooky cardie and wish Black a happy birthday, before people settled down to play spooky games. To mark Halloween, the “Feature Game” will was Ghosts Love Candy Too (the sequel to Ghosts Love Candy). This is ostensibly a quick little card game where players haunt kids to steal their sweeties, however, in practice, it took rather longer than expected to get to grips with. The idea is that players simultaneously choose a card from their hand (of nine) Ghost Cards and then reveal which card people played to decide turn order. Starting with the player who revealed the highest value card, players then take it in turns to place their card one one of the Kid Cards, to “haunt them”.

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The player immediately takes any Treat Tokens on the Kid Card and then activates the Kid’s special ability. Any Kids whose courage has been exceeded are then collected by the active player and the Kid Card is replaced. Players score points for some of the Kid Cards (some positive, but most are negative), and for Treats they have collected according to their personal, secret, Craving cards which mean that Treats score differently for each person. Thus, while one player may score five points for, say, Licorice, another another player, Licorice will only be worth one point. for some reason, there was a bit of sussing out of the rules as, although Blue had done her homework, somehow it didn’t quite fit together in practice.

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Between them, however, Teal, Pink, Ivory, Cobalt and Blue worked it out in the end. Ivory began, and his favourite was Chocolate, while Cobalt who went second was after peppermints. From early in the game, it was apparent that Teal was collecting Gummy Bears, and seemed to have little competition, but then, it appeared that Blue was collecting Candy Corn, but that was all she could get her hands on and she really wanted Licorice. In the end it was a tie between Teal and Pink, who did really well on his Treats, especially his favourites, Lollipops, but picked up ten negative points from his huge pile of terrified Kids. Victory went to Teal on the tie-break, however, as he had the most of his favourite Treats (that pile of Gummy Bears).

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Meanwhile, on the next table, Jade was leading Black, Purple and Green in a game of Potion Explosion, which is sort of “Candy Crush the board game”, played with Marbles. Players take an Ingredient Marble from the dispenser causing other Marbles to fall. If that causes Marbles of the same color to connect and form rows or columns, they “explode” and players can take them take as well. They then use the Ingredients to make potions and then drink them to give special magical powers. The winner, however, is the player who brews the most valuable Potions with the least Help and the most Skill.

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This time, Purple took the least assistance and finished with no Help tokens at all, however, a little Help can go a long way if you make the most of it. Green got a Lot of help which cost him eight points but this was more than offset by the fact he had the most valuable Potions, worth fifty-seven points, and the most Skill giving him another twelve and a total of sixty-one points and substantial victory margin. Black just pushed Jade into third—although Jade had considerably more valuable Potions, Black had more Skill and had needed a lot less Help, giving him a total of fifty-one points, two more than Jade.

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On the third table, Plum had been keen to give the Ghost Train version of Ticket to Ride a go, however, before they got round to that, they played a couple of games of the rather more tenuously Halloween themed Nova Luna. This is an abstract tile laying game that uses the mechanism from the slightly older, animal-themed game, Habitats. On their turn, players choose a tile from the Moon wheel to add to their array. Each new tile brings a new task to fulfill which are completed by placing colors in a specific arrangement which in turn bring more new tasks. Each time a task is completed, the player may places one of their Markers and the first to place all of their Markers is the winner.

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Plum was joined in Nova Luna by Sapphire (as it is one of his favourite games), Byzantium and Mint on her first visit. The group played two games—the first of which was really close. Plum and Sapphire tied one seventeen and were beaten by a single point by Mint. The winner was Byzantium, however, with a two point lead and finished with twenty points. The game was slightly less tight, though Byzantium, the master of consistency, was also the victor with twenty points. Second place this time went to Plum with sixteen who was one point ahead of Sapphire who, in turn, was one point ahead of Mint.

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Then the group moved on to play the Ghost Train version of Ticket to Ride. This is really a re-implementation of the introductory version of the game Ticket to Ride: First Journey, but what makes it special is the gorgeous board and large train pieces. It still uses the same basic mechanism as all the Ticket to Ride games with players collecting parade Float Cards and using them to claim routes on the main board. Each player starts with a couple of “Ticket” cards showing locations they have to connect. In this version, when a player completes a Ticket, they reveal it and draw a new one. If a player can’t complete a ticket, they can take a turn to discard both their cards and redraw.

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There are also bonus Tickets available for connecting a location of the Dark Forest region in the top left corner of the board to a location in the Seashore region in the bottom right and bonus Float Cards for connecting Town Hall to the Crypt. The winner is the first player to claim their sixth Ticket or the player with the most Tickets when someone places their final Train piece on the map. The game was a bit of a landslide, with Sapphire stealing a march on the others and quickly taking the lead, rapidly collecting his six tickets before anyone else had got anywhere. Mint took second with two Tickets and and Byzantium and Plum tied for third.

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Pink was somewhat surprised when Mint expressed an interest in his bottle of his favourite Blood Orange cider. Initially he was reluctant to part with it as it wasn’t empty, but once it was pointed out that they needed it for their next game and Pink could just poor the rest into his glass, everyone was happy and Mint began setting up her birthday present—Cards vs Gravity. This is a silly, but fun party game where players balance cards on a platform attached to the top of a bottle that has the feel of Jenga, but with cards. The idea is that players have to add cards to the tree without collapsing it. Byzantium was obviously on a bit of a roll, and followed up his two victories at Nova Luna with two victories against Gravity (and the others of course).

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With everyone pretty much finished, some headed home, but the remaining ten managed a couple of rounds of the old favourite, and totally not Halloween themed, 6 Nimmt!. In this game, players simultaneously choose a numbered card from their hand and then reveal them at the same time. These cards are added to four rows of cards in the centre of the table, starting with the lowest card, adding each one to the row that ends with the highest number that is lower than the card. Where the card would have been the sixth card, instead the player takes the five cards as their scoring pile leaving their card as the first in the new row. The player with the lowest final total is the winner. The catch is where players play a card that is lower than all the end cards, and as a result takes the row of their choice.

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This has the potential to completely upset everyone’s plans. The plans are not the thing here though, it is the tension and anticipation as people wait to see who is going to pick up that brightly coloured, high-scoring set of cards… This time, Cobalt top-scored in the first round with twenty-seven, slightly more than Jade. Pink, Ivory and Purple all finished in single digits, but it Pink was the victor with one solitary point. In the second round, Green took the biggest pile giving him thirty-three points, but Jade managed to take thirteen points from just three cards. Ivory was the only one to stay in single digits, and was therefore the winner with a total of eight points.

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Learning Outcome: Even apparently silly children’s games can be fun when the occasion is right.

20th August 2024

Cobalt was first to arrive. Pink and Blue weren’t far behind though, and had just ordered their supper when Indigo and her son Navy arrived followed by Jade and Sapphire, then Ivory, Purple, Black, Pine and Teal. While the others chatted and got drinks, Cobalt began teaching Indigo and Navy Akropolis. This is a quick little game where each player is building their own acropolis. On their turn, players first take a tile the market. The first tile in the market display is always free, the one after costs one stone (the only resource in the game) the next one two stone and so on. The tiles comprise three conjoined hexes each either a Quarry (which provide Stone when built over), a Plaza, or a District tile.

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Plazas and District tiles are in different colours, representing Houses, Markets, Barracks, Temples and Gardens. Tiles are freely added to the player’s display, either on the base layer or on top of other tiles, so long as any Districts meet the their conditions and as long as there is a matching Plaza present. At the end of the game, players score for the largest District of each type—each visible hex scores a point for the level it is on (one point for the base layer, two for the first floor etc) multiplied by the number stars shown on the Plazas they have visible. The game is a sort of cross between Taluva and Cascadia, taking the conjoined triple-hex tiles and layered stacking from Taluva and the tile-placement and individual tableau from Cascadia.

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The game was quite tight between Cobalt and Navy, but Navy had the edge, winning his first game in the group with a hundred and eighteen points to Cobalt’s hundred and five. As the game came to an end, the rest of the group began trying to work out who was going to play what. In the end, there were two groups setting up to play the “Feature Game” which was Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails. This is a variant of the popular train game, Ticket to Ride, but with a considerable step up in complexity. In the original game, players take it in turns to carry out one of three actions: take train cards, pay train cards to claim Routes on the map by placing train pieces, or take Tickets. Points are scored for claiming Routes and for successfully connecting the two places shown on their Tickets with negative points scored for failing to complete Tickets.

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In Rails & Sails, however, players build two connected networks, one on land and one on sea covering the whole globe. Players build these with two separate sets of train cards, giving them two hands to manage, making it a more complex version of the game. In addition to the usual four possible actions, on their turn, players can also build a Harbour into a city that they have already claimed a route into. To do this, players spend two Train cards and two Ship cards that are all the same color and all have Harbour symbols on them. At the end of the game, players gain points for each Ticket that lists their Harbour, with players scoring for each Harbour when more than one features on their Ticket.

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Another thing that adds to the complexity is the tension between Ships and Trains: at the start of the game, players have a set total number of Ship and Train pieces, and choose choose how many of each they will have. During the game, instead of a normal turn, they can exchange Ship pieces for Trains or vice versa, but at a cost of one point per piece swapped. There are two different maps in the game, one covering the Great Lakes, and the other covering the whole World—the total number of Ships/Trains players have depends on which of these is used. This time, both groups used the World map. In addition to these major rules changes, there are also a couple of minor tweaks.

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For example, there are Double cards in the Ship deck, which allow players to place up to two Ships per card. There are also Tour Tickets, which feature more than two destinations—these will score a higher number of points if the locations are connected in the right order (and of course, will score negatively if one of the destinations in not connected at all). On the World map, there are Pair Routes too. These require the player to place two train cards of the same colour per space, but the whole Route doesn’t have to be the same colour. There are the usual Double Routes as well, which come into play with four or five players, and multi-colour “Wild” cards which can be used as either Ship or Train cards of any colour.

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Jade, Ivory, Sapphire and Pine made up the first group. In their game, Jade and Ivory started by focusing on Trains while Pine and Sapphire began with Ships giving them both taking an early lead with Ships generally giving more points. Sapphire went to the front and stayed there for the majority of the game. There was an initial scrabble in Asia/south east Asia as well as along the east coast of north and central America, and apart from some early commitments from Pine and Sapphire in the latter, in general there was no major “blocking” and everyone at least tried to play nicely. That said, by the end of the game the board was very congested, perhaps due to the wrap around nature where Routes could fall off one side and come back on on the other.

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Ivory was the first to take more Tickets and it was some time before Jade joined him. Ivory went for Tickets considerably more times than anyone else and by the end of the game, he had significantly more completed Tickets than anyone else, though his were of lower value. Pine in particular started with much more ambitious Tickets and happily declared that he had finished his first ticket about half through the game. That was until Jade pointed out a potential gap in his track which Pine then hurried to fill. Sapphire was following a similar strategy to Pine with bigger, higher risk Tickets and also focused on long Routes (hence his throughout the game). It looked like he was going to trigger the end the game, but in the end, that was Pine.

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Jade and Ivory both had shorter scoring Routes, but with more Tickets, predominantly located in Asia, whereas Sapphire and Pine were mapping the rest of the World. Everyone except Ivory had to take advantage of the Ships/Trains swap and although this cost points and a turn it didn’t feel like it had a large impact on the game. Both Jade and Ivory had cards at the end allowing for a late grab of high scoring Shipping lanes, but the game ended a little early for Sapphire. That said, everyone completed all their tickets, including a very complex and high scoring Tour Ticket. Pine and Sapphire eschewed Harbours, while Jade built just one. Ivory, on the other hand, went built all three in the south east, despite the fact they were challenging to place.

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After placing the Ships/Trains and scoring the Tickets, the scores were fairly even, but those extra Harbours really made a difference. Sapphire and Pine took a twelve point penalty for not having any while Jade picked up twelve (an eight point penalty for not using two and twenty points for having one Ticket ending in his Harbour. Ivory, however, scored a massive ninety points from his, with each of his three Harbours having two of his Tickets finishing in them. This ultimately give him a total of two hundred and seventy-five eighty-five more than Pine who took second place. On reflection, there was a minor rules malfunction—when the group recounted the Route scoring, they failed to take account of the penalties for swapping Ships for Trains, but this was only a handful of points and wouldn’t have affected the final standings.

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The game on the next table was not as highly scoring, but there was still quite a large spread in the scores. While Black reacquainted himself with the rules, the others chatted and counted pieces, eventually they got going though. Pink started in Australia because he liked it there when he visited almost exactly a year ago. Then, he traveled north to east Asia, visiting exotic places like Bancock, Jakarta, Hong Kong and Tokyo, before crossing the Pacific to Winnipeg. As the game came to a close, he also traversed the south Pacific to Valparaiso and took the southern coastal route to Rio de Janeiro. Black also more or less circumnavigated the globe traveling from the UK, east across Europe to Tehran then on to Mumbai.

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From there, he crossed the Pacific to Lima from where he traveled north, around the top of South America also making it to Rio before crossing the Atlantic to Cape Town. Part of the reason for Black and Pink choice of Routed (aside from their Tickets of course) was the fact that Teal was monopolising the Atlantic crossings, making it no fewer than five times! From his Atlantic ports, he spread into North America and across Africa to Dar es Salaam. Purple in contrast, focused her efforts on a single extended trip across the USA, found one of the few Routes across the north Atlantic not taken by Teal, journeyed across Europe following Black through Iran to the far East.

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There was an unfortunate “Rules malfunction” when it came to scoring Harbours, which would have had quite a large impact on the game, but as everyone played by the same rules, it was at least fair. Instead of scoring for each Ticket into each Harbour, they simply scored ten points for their first Harbour, twenty for the second and so on. With this scoring, Pink, with his eight completed Tickets was the victor with two hundred and five points, fifteen points ahead of Teal in second and Black in third. Both groups had really enjoyed the longer and bigger challenge of Rails & Sails. The mix of boat and train cards did cause more grumbling than usual about the wrong colours being available, especially when there was an imbalance in favour of trains over boats or vice versa, but that’s just Ticket to Ride.

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Meanwhile, the remaining group of four, Cobalt, Indigo, Navy and Blue, should really have been playing Azul (!), but after some dithering, Cobalt encouraged them to try The Artemis Project. This is a game where players are trying to develop colonies on Europa. The idea is that players roll dice and place them on action spaces to carry out actions. There are seven Regions and players take it in turns to place their dice in them. They are: Basecamp, Vents, Quarry, Gantry, Doorstep and Outfitter. At Basecamp, players go on Expedition to earn Expedition Badges and other Rewards. These are a bit like the Quests in the game Lancaster, and like the Squires in that game, dice can be augmented by Colonists.

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Also similarly, Expeditions are unsuccessful if a certain number of pips isn’t reached, which leaves players without their desired Rewards. In such cases, players don’t come away with nothing, instead they move their Token along the Relief Track and pick up a lesser reward. However, there is a fixed number of spaces available along the Relief Track for each person, so when they are gone, they are gone. The Vents and the Quarry provide players with Energy and Minerals respectively. The level of the action depends on the value of the dice, however, the dice are activated from the lowest to the highest. So, for example, placing a high value die like a six, will yield six Minerals, but if there are only ten available and two other players place fives, these will be activated first leaving nothing.

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The Gantry provides Buildings, which provide players with long term benefits during the game and points towards the end of the game. Players bid for these and if they win, they must pay the bid amount in Minerals (the value of dice placed), to build them. Both the Doorstep and the Academy deal with Colonists. The Doorstep provides players with Colonists, but like the Vents and the Quarry, players who bid high, go last and may not get what they want (or even anything) while the Academy allows players to upgrade their Colonists if required. Finally, the Outfitter allows players to gain Toolkits which grease the wheels a little by allowing players to alter the values of their dice. Once all the dice have been placed, these different Regions are activated in order.

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Thus, for example, Minerals collected can be used later in the same round to build Buildings, however, it is wise not to rely on that as another player can play a lower value die, easily scuppering plans. In this way, the game can be quite aggressive with intentional and unintentional conflict when players get in each other’s way. It is played over six rounds marked by Event cards associated with the Regions which are resolved before the relevant Region is activated. At the end of the game, it is a bit of a “point salad” in that players score for left-over Energy and Minerals, for Fully Staffed Buildings, for the number of Buildings, for each complete set of four different Colonists, for any Colonists not part of a set, for Expedition Badges and for having the most unused Toolkits.

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Indigo clearly found the number of Regions a little bit bewildering and was keen to learn by playing, but The Artemis Project is not really a game that lends itself to that. Indeed, in spite of understanding what each Region does, there is still an element of learning by playing in order to see how things fit together. As the only one who had played it before, Cobalt stole a march by targeting the Basecamp early and grabbing one of the Expeditions, and because nobody joined him, taking both Rewards. Navy opted for the sensible choice and went for Buildings in order to get an engine going. Blue and Indigo weren’t so quick off the mark and took a little longer to work out how to put a strategy together.

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As the game progressed, Indigo became the Queen of the Resources gathering piles and pales, making god use of the multiplier tokens. Blue made her way up the Relief Track after rolling some higher numbers and not using them well. This was a problem made worse by Cobalt trying to muscle in on one of her Expeditions leaving her to walk away with nothing, leaving him with nothing too. As the game came to a close, Navy had more buildings than anyone else and, as Blue and Cobalt both made a bit of a mess of things, he sailed gracefully into the lead finishing with sixty-eight points, while Blue just pipped Cobalt to second place.

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Learning Outcome: Who needs Planes when you have Ships and Trains?