Tag Archives: Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West

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.

21st January 2025

Blue and Pink were still eating as everyone else rolled up. But as they did, like last time, there was an unusual amount of interest in the “Feature Game“, which, in a change to previous plans, was to be Heat: Pedal to the Metal. This is a car racing game, in a similar vein to other games popular within the group like Flamme Rouge, Snow Tails, and Downforce. Like Flamme Rouge and Snow Tails, as well as a racing game, Heat is also a hand management game. The idea is that players simultaneously choose cards to play and then these are activated from the front of the pack (much like PitchCar).

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Players have a hand of seven cards drawn from their personal deck. During the game, certain actions that are bad for their engine cause it to heat up meaning they pick up cards that block their hand. Initially, Heat cards go into players discard pile, simulating the delayed effect engine damage can have, blocking their hand later in the game as the deck is recycled. There are ways to cool the engine down, but these Heat cards cannot be discarded or played in the normal way. What makes Heat slightly different to some of the other hand-management-racing games is that there is formally simultaneous play to choose cards and then players take it in turns to activate their cards and take a series of optional mini-actions.

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Players start by simultaneously adjusting their gear, staying put or shifting up or down one without penalty, or shifting two and picking up a Heat card. The gear dictates how many cards a player must play – second gear means they have to play two cards for example. Players then take it in turns to reveal their cards and move their car. There are then five “situational” options: Adrenaline, React, Slipstream, Corner Check, and Discard, before the player replenishes their hand back to seven cards. Adrenaline is a catch-up mechanism, where the player at the back can move one extra Space while adding one to their Speed value and/or gain one extra “Cool down”.

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“Cool down” is an important aspect of the game because it allows players to remove a Heat card from their hand and return it to their engine deck. In React, players activate any additional symbols on the cards they have played or from the gear they are currently in or from the Adrenaline. These include picking up cards because of Stress—players start the game with three Stress cards in the deck which represent lapses of concentration. When a player plays these, they then have to draw cards from their deck to add an essentially random amount to their speed. Of course it is not random, and a player who has an idea of what cards are still in their deck will be able to mitigate this.

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Further, Stress cards can also be used to postpone the effects of Heat, as any non-movement cards go straight into the discard pile. Players can also control their engine heat by spending a period of time in a low gear by “Cooling down” their and removing Heat cards from their hand (three for first gear, two for second). In contrast, players that have Heat cards available, may add an extra one to their discard pile to boost their speed by drawing an extra card as for Stress cards. Once all these have been activated, players who end their movement along-side or immediately behind another car can Slipstream, that is move two spaces forward (this does not add to speed, it simply means the car moves further because it is moving more efficiently).

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If the player has crossed a Speed restriction line typically at a corner, they have to evaluate their Speed by summing the value of their cards and adding one for any Adrenaline bonus if they used it. If this is more than the limit, players add the difference to their discard pile in Heat Cards. Players that do not have enough Heat to pay for their excess Speed, pay all the Heat they have and then immediately spin out—move their car back to the last available space before the Speed limit line, take one or two extra Stress cards and change down to first gear. Once all this is done, players can discard any cards they want that are not Stress or Heat cards before replenishing their hand, shuffling their discard pile if necessary. The first player to cross the finish line triggers the end of the game and the player that travels the furthest is the winner.

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Although Blue and Ivory were keen to play, numbers meant they missed out and instead, Jade, led Teal, Pink and Lime. A slight rules malfunction where the group were trying to play all the steps simultaneously meant the safety car did a lap before a restart, then they were off in earnest. The group were playing on the USA track, which is generally recommended for a first play and is raced over two laps. One thing that seems to be true for all race games is that once someone has got in front, it is very hard to haul them back, making it critical to get a good fast start. This time, the good fast start was had by Jade and before long he had built that up and had gone one corner ahead, everyone else felt they were playing for placings and trying to work out how best to approach the corners.

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Instead of playing the end-game as written, the group decided to play it until everyone had crossed the line, so the game continued for some time after Jade had claimed victory. Lime crossed the line second with Pink in hot pursuit, so much so that although Pink crossed the line in third, he finished his turn ahead of Lime and therefore was awarded runner-up (or first loser) status. Teal just crossed the line, claiming a sympathy vote ensuring that everyone finished the race. It had been a bit of a trial and Blue was still keen to give it a go, so Jade, who had been looking to pass it on, sold it to Blue on the spot, which means it will likely get a few more tries over the coming year.

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Blue and Ivory meanwhile, although keen to play Heat, had also been tempted by Roll for the Galaxy. So, when Byzantium had commented that he hadn’t understood his first and only play, but had enjoyed it, the decision was made. Roll for the galaxy is a dice game based on the card game Race for the Galaxy, which is itself a sort of space themed, card game version of Puerto Rico. The thing all these games have in common is “Role (or Action) Selection”—the games have five or six phases or Roles and each player chooses one which will happen in the round. Thus some things happen, and others do not. A large part of these games is correctly gambling on others picking certain Roles or Actions and making them happen, so they can be piggy-backed.

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The smaller the number of players, the more critical this can be. So with just three players in Roll for the Galaxy, at least two will not be happening, possibly more. The Actions are Explore (acquire world tiles); Develop (progress on building Development worlds); Settle (progress on building Production worlds); Produce (use Production Worlds to produce Goods), and Ship (sell Goods for money, or consume them for victory points). In this game, the actions are all carried out using dice which are rolled in secret and placed behind the players screen to choose where those dice will get used. This placement depends on the face shown, though any one die can be used to choose which Action will happen.

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The dice are then moved to the Development or Settlement piles of tiles in their respective phases to progress building those worlds, or placed on Production worlds as goods. Alternatively, they can be spent to pay for Exploring or Shipping in which case, they (along with any dice from any completed building projects or shipped goods) are placed back in their Citizenry. Dice can be purchased into the player’s cup at a rate of one dollar each, so it is important for players to ensure their finances are healthy or their game will rapidly stagnate. The game ends when, either someone has built their twelfth World, or the the pool of victory point chips has been exhausted.

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The game was slow to get going at the start, but then Ivory raced to an early lead getting a nice array of Worlds in his tableau leaving Blue and Byzantium trailing in his wake. But then, instead of finishing the game by building his final World, he appeared to pull up. This gave Blue and Byzantium the illusion of a chance, but was of course because he had a plan. Ivory had the Galactic Reserves Development World which gave an extra victory point for every Goods item on a World at the end of the game while also allowing each Production World to hold an extra Goods item.

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So, the couple of extra rounds was to enable him to fill his Production Worlds and in the end, the game was brought to a close by Byzantium building his twelfth planet, although the victory point chips were also depleted by the end of that round. Blue had taken a sizeable twenty-four of those victory points through trading goods, but hadn’t been able to build enough. As a result, her planets were worth only eighteen points, barely twice those of Ivory’s and Byzantium’s thirty. Byzantium had five victory point chips and a couple of points from his New Galactic Order, but Ivory was some distance in front, thanks to his thirteen points for his Galactic Reserves and Galactic Bankers Developments together with his eight victory point chips.

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There was time to play something else, but rather than go through rules, as Roll for the Galaxy was already out, the trio decided to give it another go. This time, with an element of time pressure, it was arguable that some of the decisions made weren’t as sharp and the scores were all lower the second time, though that might have been partly because there were notably fewer rounds. Blue kept dipping into the bag to try to get Rare Element (brown) Worlds to go with her Mining League, but failed repeatedly and eventually gave up. Ivory triggered the end game with his twelfth World and this time it was Byzantium who struggled to build enough.

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The scores were a bit closer on the second attempt, though the end result was still much the same, with Ivory again taking victory, though with half the winning margin. By this time, the other games had also finished. The first of these was Forests of Pangaia, in which Mint was joined by Pine and Plum. This is a truly beautiful, tactile game, where players are trying to meet objectives to score Life Points; the player with the most Life Points at the end of the game is the winner. The game has elements of set collection and area control and is played on a central map made of terrain hexagons. Players take turns to perform three phases: Grow Seeds, take a Spirit Action, and finally add Treetops. Once Seeds have grown and been turned into Trees, players carry out one of three possible Spirit actions.

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These are: Plant (moving their Spirit Pawn to a Lake space and planting seeds in adjacent spaces); Gather (moving their Spirit Pawn back to their player board and receiving a resource), and Prey (moving their Spirit Pawn back to their player board and playing their Ritual Card). There are fourteen Rituals the Spirits can perform to collect Gaia’s Life Energy. Once the Ritual card has been scored all the player’s Trees that were involved in the Ritual then partially or fully Decay (depending on the Ritual), either losing a level or rotting back to nothing and leaving a Seed. The player then discards their Ritual card and draws a new one. The game ends when the last Ritual card is taken by any player.

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Plum went first and spent most of the game collecting Sun tokens. In contrast, Pine collected lots of Wind tokens inspiring lots of jokes about using wind to spread his seed. The winner, however, was Mint with a nine point Trail Ritual due to excessive seed spreading giving her a total of twenty-eight points. Pine just pipped Plum for second place by a single point. It had been a really enjoyable game, however, made all the better by the gorgeous pieces. Meanwhile, on the other end of the same, albeit long table, Black, Purple and Sapphire played a game of last year’s winner of the Golden GOAT Award, Stamp Swap.

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This is a really smooth tile placement centred around stamp collecting. There is a lot of simultaneous play, which is nice because it minimises down time. First, players take it in turns to choose items from the central Pool, then simultaneously divide them into two piles of offerings. The player with the first player token, chooses and takes one of the piles offered by their opponents. The opponent keeps their other pile and then chooses a pile from one of their opponents and so on. Once everyone has two piles, players arrange the Stamps in their Album and then choose which of the four available end of round cards to score this time.

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After three rounds, players score the end of game objective card and the player with the most points is the winner. One of the clever parts about this game is how much difference the objective cards make to the way players arrange their Stamps. The end-game scoring gave three points for each enclosed gap two spaces in size (i.e. a one-by-two hole). More points were available during the game for cancelled stamps not on the edge of the page; for large square stamps; for each stamp in a player’s second most abundant theme, and for groups of a chosen colour.

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This time the game was very close. Purple (specialising in Flowers) struggled to get the stamps she needed and Sapphire (specialising Space stamps) kept getting confused which way the turn went. It didn’t seem to inconvenience him too much however as he and Black (Monuments) fought it out for first and second place. Black picked up a lot of his points for Special Stamps—just three accounted for a quarter of his points, which contributed to his total of one hundred and seven points, just four more than Sapphire.

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While everyone else was finishing up, there was some discussion about the continuation of the Ticket to Ride Legacy campaign that Blue, Pink, Black, Purple and Pine embarked on at New Year. The campaign is played over twelve rounds and the group had managed the first two games on the first outing with the next two more recently on Saturday evening. Spoiler alert—hover HERE to see details. The winner of the third round was Black, very closely chased by Pink with Blue taking third. After a break for tea (lamb and vegetable tagines with millet), the group began their fourth game. Spoiler alert—hover HERE to see details.

Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West

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This was much less close than the third game. The winner was Pine, with Black six dollars behind and Pink a further fourteen points behind him, in third. Spoiler alert—hover HERE to see details. While chatting with the others, out of curiosity, Pine went through The Book and totaled up the scores for the first four rounds, which gave Black a lead of some twenty dollars. Something the rest of the group need to give some thought to next time, before he gets an unassailable advantage although there is a suspicion that as the campaign progresses, the games get longer and more points will be available in each round giving players a chance to catch up. We shall see.

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Learning Outcome: However you roll, when you race you need a fast start.

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…

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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.

Spiel des Jahres Nominations 2024

The 2024 nominations for the three Spiel des Jahres categories have just been announced. Although there are now other awards, this is arguably still the most prestigious award in board gaming and, certainly the one that carries the most weight when it comes to casual gamers. There are three categories, the Kinderspiel (children’s game) , the Kennerspiel (“expert’s” game) and the most desirable of all, the family award, the Spiel des Jahres. The nominees for this year’s awards have been announced as:

Kinderspiel des Jahres
Große kleine Edelsteine by Wolfgang Warsch
Die magischen Schlüssel (aka Magic Keys) by Markus Slawitschek & Arno Steinwender
Taco Katze Pizza Junior by Dave Campbell & Thierry Denoual

Kennerspiel des Jahres
e-Mission (aka Daybreak) by Matt Leacock & Matteo Menapace
Die Gilde der fahrenden Händler (aka The Guild of Merchant Explorers) by Matthew Dunstan & Brett J. Gilbert
Zug um Zug Legacy – Legenden des Westens (aka Ticket to Ride: Legends of the West) by Rob Daviau, Matt Leacock & Alan R. Moon

Spiel des Jahres
Auf den Wegen von Darwin (aka In the Footsteps of Darwin) by Grégory Grard & Matthieu Verdier
Captain Flip by Paolo Mori & Remo Conzadori
Sky Team by Luc Rémond

In recent years, there has been a shift to light or innovative games. Although the complexity of this year’s offering is not in the same league as some of the 1990s winners (e.g. El Grande, Tikal and The Settlers of Catan, all of which won the “Red Pöppel” as they preceded the inception of the Kennerspiel award), there is a marked shift away from the novel, internet or app based games of MicroMacro: Crime City (from 2021) and Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game (from 2019) and the party games like Just One (from 2019), Pictures (from 2020), Top Ten (from 2022) and Challengers! and Fun Facts (both from 2023).

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In addition to the nominees, there are a number of recommended, including Harmonies and Forest Shuffle (aka Mischwald) both of which have peaked interest in the group, with the latter having been enjoyed on a Tuesday evening shortly after its release at Essen. As always, the Deutscher Spielepreis is likely to be a better fit for more dedicated gamers, but we will no-doubt play many more of the nominations and recommendations over the coming weeks. The Spiel des Jahres Awards are still the industry’s headline award and therefore are of great significance; it will be interesting to see what the winners are when they are announced on Sunday 21^st July in Berlin.

– Image from spiel-des-jahres.de

Boardgames in the News: Role-playing Climate Resilience

It was nearly ten years ago that Stuart West, a Professor of Evolutionary Biology in the Department of Zoology, Oxford, used playing board games as a teaching tool to understand evolution and published his results in the prestigious scientific journal, Nature.¹ Now, Matt Leacock‘s new game, Daybreak has been reviewed in the journal Science.²

– Image from amazon.com

Matt Leacock is best known for the cooperative game, Pandemic. However, while thirty of his forty-seven published games are cooperative (including the well popular Forbidden Games series), he has also been instrumental in the innovation of legacy games, co-designing both the Pandemic Legacy series of games and the recent Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West.

– Image from amazon.com

Daybreak is cooperative game about climate action where players controls a world power, Europe, the United States, China, and the Majority World, each of which has different energy demand and sources, emissions, resilience, and vulnerable populations. The idea is that players deploy policies and technologies to deal with the engine of global heating and to try to build resilient societies that protect people from life-threatening crises.

– Image from amazon.com

The author of the article is Science‘s books and culture editor, Valerie Thompson who concludes that the trade-offs in the game reflect those seen in real life. Most importantly, however, where climate change is concerned, we only stand a chance if we work together.

¹ West, S., Nat. (2015), 528, 192; doi:10.1038/528192a.
² Thompson, V., Science. (2023), 382(6673), 890; doi:10.1126/science.adl4244.

Essen 2023

Today is the final day of this edition of the largest games fair in Europe and arguably the world, the Internationale Spieltage. Known to gamers worldwide simply as “SPIEL” or “Essen”, the annual fair is of particular significance as many new releases are scheduled to coincide with the event just in time for Christmas sales. Following the recent change in management, this year there were quite a few changes. Aside from the logo, the most noticeable was the layout in the halls—according to one game designer, every stand except his was in a new location in an effort to theme the halls. For the most part, this seemed to work, though inevitably some people will feel they lost out in the great shuffle.

– Image from spiel-essen.com

One thing that hasn’t changed, is the lack of general gaming space, especially when compared with the likes of the UK Games Expo and Gen Con. SPIEL is a games fair, not a convention—it’s purpose is to showcase new and up-coming games and sell them to the general public, but also small and medium-sized resellers. Additionally, there is a lot of business going on behind the scenes, including designers demoing games to publishers, and publishers meeting with producers and other publishers to discuss contracts. It is arguable that large amounts of playing space are counter to SPIEL’s priorities, but they could definitely do with providing more chairs—not everyone has the stamina of a twenty year old, and the number of people just sitting on the ground suggests more seating is an essential.

– Image by boardGOATS

Following the cancellation of SPIEL in 2020, there were restrictions on numbers for 2021 and Covid mandates in 2022 leading to reduced numbers (93,600 and 147,000 respectively), so 2023 was the first year when things were back to normal. One question therefore, has been whether numbers would return to the levels, or even exceed those of 2019, when there were 209,000 entries. It will be a few days before the statistics for 2023 are reported, but anecdotally, the answer is yes, with some exhibitors commenting that Friday was the busiest it had ever been, and the annual no-ship Maths Trade and Auction was as mad as ever.

– Image by boardGOATS

This year there is the usual selection of the latest releases including, The White Castle, Nucleum, Kutná Hora: The City of Silver, Evacuation, The Glade, My Gold Mine, Amygdala, Forest Shuffle and Footprints. There are also expansions for previous games like Cascadia (Landmarks), Ark Nova (Marine Worlds), Lost Ruins of Arnak (The Missing Expedition) as well as this year’s winners of the Deutscher Spiele Preis, Planet Unknown (Supermoon).

– Image by boardGOATS

A common theme are the re-releases and reimplementations of old favourites and there are a lot of these this year, like Ticket to Ride (Legacy: Legends of the West) Elfenland, Zooloretto, Dixit (Disney Edition), Shipyard (Second Edition) and NMBR 9. As usual, there are also loads of mini promotional expansions available for games like Flamecraft, Die Wandelnden Türme, Keyflower, Underwater Cities, Dorfromantik and 2022 Golden GOAT, Praga Caput Regni, amongst others. There truly is something there for everyone.

– Image by boardGOATS