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

12th August 2021 (Post-Covid Test Event)

After some discussion, we had decided to have a “test visit” to The Jockey. As they are not doing food on Tuesdays at the moment, this was a Thursday and we decided to make it a fairly light event filled with some of our favourite games. Those that arrived early started with food and Burgundy was able to order Ham, Egg and Chips for the first time in over a year. There was a boisterous atmosphere amongst the gamers who were all clearly over the moon to be back, bolstered by the wake on the other side of the room which had been going full-swing since lunchtime.

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While we waited for food to arrive, the group revelled in the delight of face-to-face meeting discussing the meaning of the word “MILF” and whether or not there was such a thing as a “DILF”. Poor Ivory had been waiting well over a year to play the Japanese map for Ticket to Ride and it had been scheduled at least three times since and had been postponed thanks to “events”. As it was starting to become a bit of a harbinger, we decided to make the “Feature Game” the generic Ticket to Ride to ensure that the evening wasn’t jinxed again, but there was plenty of opportunity to give it an outing as two copies arrived.

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

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There were lots of other map choices and while we discussed the real options, lots of new variants were invented. The pick of these were perhaps the Beeching Variant (loads of the routes get ripped up halfway through the game leaving people with tickets they can’t make) and “Ticket to Row”, the “Climate Change Edition” (as the game progresses, coastal routes disappear due to erosion and flooding). Ivory was obviously keen to play the Japanese map and was joined by Green, Lilac and Burgundy. The other map ended up being the Heart of Africa and after some discussion about the best number of players for this map (which has reputation of being brutal), Burgundy moved over to join Blue, Pink and Pine.

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Ticket to Ride is a relatively simple game, often referred to as a “Gateway Game” because it has a reputation of drawing people into playing modern board games. The decision space on each turn is relatively small, but still meaningful and although a lot of the group like more challenging fare too, we all have a soft-spot for this one. The idea is that players are building track, by playing coloured cards that match the colour and number of the line shown on the map. So on their turn, they can draw cards, or place trains by playing cards. Points are scored for placing trains with longer the routes, giving more points.

Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 6 – France & Old West

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Things are not quite as simple as that though, because players also have tickets: if they can fulfil their tickets using routes they have claimed, they score points. If, on the other hand, they have unfulfilled tickets at the end of the game, these score negative points. Thus, instead of picking up cards or placing trains, players can also collect tickets to try to increase their score that way. The game end is triggered when one player has only two of their little plastic train pieces left. One of the things that gives Ticket to Ride its remarkable continuing appeal is the incredible variety in expansions available, each of which add interest with a different layout and slight variations to the rules.

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For example, the Japan expansion has routes reserved for Bullet Trains, which are marked by a single Bullet Train miniature. When a route is claimed, it can be used by all players to complete destination tickets. Instead of scoring points for such a route, players progress on the separate Bullet Train track with players receiving a bonus at the end of the game: whoever has contributed the most to this shared project receives the largest bonus, with the player who contributes least being penalized.

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In contrast, the Heart of Africa expansion adds new terrain cards which can be picked up instead of train cards which can be used to score extra points when placing trains. The terrain cards come in three different colour sets representing Desert/Savanna, Jungle/Forests, and Mountains/Cliffs. When a player places trains of the corresponding colours, if they have at least as many of that terrain card as every other player, they may additionally spend terrain cards to double the points value of their route. One of the consequences of the different terrain types having fixed colours is that routes of one colour tend to be clumped together.

Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 3 – The Heart of Africa

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This means that players need lots of cards of the same colour to connect routes together. This, combined with the fact that there are no “double routes” in the centre of the map, mean the Heart of Africa expansion has a reputation of being particularly savage and unforgiving. It was also much slower to get going, indeed, the Japan expansion players were well into their game before the Africa players had really started, and they had nearly finished before the others had got halfway through. In Japan, Ivory went for the Bullet Trains to get the bonus, but also in order to help complete his tickets. Although nobody really engaged in the building of the Tokyo subway, Kyushu Island was well catered for by Lilac who built a very fine connection from Kokura to Miyazaki.

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In the dying moves of the game, Lilac effectively gave Green fifteen points and with it, the game. Things were rather different on the next table, however. Blue and Burgundy got stuck with tickets that meant they had little choice but to go through the jungly centre of Africa. With Pine having accidentally picked up a large pile of jungle terrain cards, there was no chance of either of them getting double points. Worse, as Blue struggled she could see there was one single train route that she simply had to take and Burgundy was heading straight for it.

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When Blue took the critical route from under Burgundy’s nose, it started a cascading chain reaction of events where they continually messed up each other’s plans. Meanwhile, Pine sniggered from the sidelines as he built his routes round the south coast largely unopposed—even on the odd occasion that someone else managed to get in his way, it was on a double route. Pink was getting it largely his own way too, as he was going round the west and north edges of the map.

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Pine picked up handfuls of tickets most of which seemed to lie on the routes he’d already connected, and then Pink suddenly moved to end the game leaving Burgundy with no other choice but to take tickets and hope for a miracle (to no avail). As the last trains were placed, Pine had a substantial lead which only increased when he added his ticket scores and Globetrotter bonus for having the most complete tickets. Although it was all built on extreme good fortune in his starting tickets, Pine had put together a fantastic game finishing with a massive one hundred and seventy-five points, forty points ahead of Pink in second.

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As the depths of deepest darkest Africa were being slowly explored, the other three decided to take advantage of Burgundy’s preoccupation to play Splendor without him to guarantee one of them a rare victory in a game that we haven’t played for over a year. The game is very simple: on their turn, players either collect gems, or use the gems to buy cards. The cards then act as permanent gems, while the more expensive cards also give victory points as well. A player reaching fifteen points triggers the end of the game, and the player with the most points wins. Although we have played it a lot, this time was with Green’s brand new copy, with the wrapper still on.

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Once the cellophane had been removed and cards well shuffled, the group settled down to play. Maybe it was poor shuffling or perhaps just luck, but diamond cards (whites) were slow to come out at the start. In addition to points on cards, players can also get points for collecting Noble tiles. This time, Ivory suddenly claimed two Nobles in quick succession which, together with a high-scoring card pushed him over the line. Green was able to claim a third Noble, but it wasn’t enough and he finished one point behind Ivory in what had been a close game.

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The Explorers of Africa finished at around the same time as the gem dealers. So, as Ivory headed off to get ready for his weekend away, Pink suggested a game of our old favourite, Bohnanza. Everyone had played it a lot except Lilac, so as Blue explained the rules, Pine and Burgundy prepared and shuffled the deck. The game is a simple enough trading game, but depends on the vital rule that players must not change the order of the cards in their hand. On their turn, the active player must play the first card in their hand, and may play the second if they choose.

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Then, the player turns over the top two cards from the central deck. They can plant these in their two been fields if there is space, but fields can only hold beans of one type, and beans on the table must be planted, so most often these are traded to other players. Once the two cards on the table have been dealt with, the active player can finally trade cards from their hand, but again, all cards traded must be planted. When they are done, they draw cards to go into their hand. The aim of the game, once again is to collect sets. At any point, players can trade in their planted beans, getting coins at the rate indicated by the “Bean-o-meter”.

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And this is one of the clever parts of the game—when a player sells their beans, they take the relevant number of cards and turn them over, turning them into money. One side effect of this is that rare cards become increasingly rare, while the more common cards become increasingly common. The deck also gets progressively smaller as fewer cards are recycled making the rounds shorter as the game goes on. The game lasts three rounds, but as a result of this, the last round is usually very short indeed. There are a lot of other nuances, which Green and Blue tried to explain so Lilac wasn’t too disadvantaged.

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The others expressed their disapproval by referring to them all as “Team Trio”. However, while Lilac was getting the hang of it and everyone was doing what they could to be nice to her, Blue lost the plot and sold several fields of beans without taking her reward. It seemed to be contagious, because in the final round Burgundy’s pile of coins somehow became the draw pile. Chaos reigned and hilarity ensued as Blue, Pine, Pink and Burgundy tried to work out what had happened and variously blamed each other. Burgundy probably got most of his coins back, but there wasn’t really much doubt that the winner was Lilac with fifteen coins.

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Although it was late there was still much chatter, about how it wasn’t the same without Black, Purple and Lime, and what we were going to do going forwards. It got quite a lot later too, because as we headed out someone pointed out the clear skies and how it should be possible to see the Perseid Meteor Shower. As we stood in the car park, someone spotted a “shooting star”, but everyone else missed it. So we waited for another, and another, and another. Eventually, everyone had a crick in their neck and rather than spend the whole night there, we decided it was time to go.

– Image from wikimedia.org

Learning outcome: It’s great to be back.

3rd August 2021 (Online)

Last time, we had decided to have a “test visit” to The Jockey, with the hope that we’d be back this week. Sadly, since then, the pub has been closed, so we were online for another week. Lime, Pine, Black and Purple were the first to join the meeting, quickly followed by Burgundy, then everyone else eventually joined the chatter. We had hoped to mark The Games of the XXXII Olympiad in Tokyo and our return to The Jockey by playing Ticket to Ride with the Japanese map. However, circumstances meant that this was the third unsuccessful attempt to play that game. So instead, this week, the “Feature Game” was the Ishikawa map for MetroX.

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MetroX is a simple little “Roll and Write” type game that seems easy at first, but is difficult to play well. The game is driven by a deck of number cards, where the simple ones dictate how many sections can be marked on a route: Players fill the boxes along the lines with “zeros”, with the number on the card dictating the number of boxes filled. In general, if the line comes to an end, or some of the boxes had already been filled (because they were part of another line for example), then any excess are lost. So the game is all about efficiency, as there is a limit to the number of cards that can be used on each line (as shown by the indicator boxes at the start of each one).

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There are a small number of special cards as well, which break the rules. For example, there are number cards with a circle, which allow players to skip any filled spaces and and help avoid wastage. There are also special “star” cards, which allow players to fill a box with a number equal to the number of tracks passing through the space—this number contributes to the player’s final score. There is also a “free” card which allows players to fill in a single space anywhere on the map. Cards are turned until all the indicator boxes on the map have been filled or until the six is drawn, in which case, the deck is shuffled and drawing (both of cards and routes) continues.

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Points come from the “star” bonuses, but also from line completion bonuses. These are scored similar to the rows and columns in Noch Mal! or the bonuses in Welcome To…, where the first player to complete a line scores a higher amount than those who complete it later in the game. This is off-set with a negative score for the number of unfilled boxes at the end of the game. This time we were playing with the Ishikawa promo map, which is remarkably simple, however, the fact there are very few indicator boxes not only makes it a very short game but also leaves very little room for manoeuvre. With only eleven rounds (plus any free cards) we were all worried that if we didn’t get a six we might struggle to complete lines. That concern turned out to be baseless, however, with every line being completed by someone during the game.

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Green’s mind was clearly elsewhere as he missed a number and spent a couple of minutes trying to work out what he’d done and then asked for clarifications on the negative scoring. For reasons that weren’t entirely clear, everyone struggled to calculate their scores, with a long delay before scores came in, and with a large number of corrections. Ivory led the scores with nineteen points. After a brief spell in second behind Pink and Purple, a couple of recounts later it was confirmed as a four-way tie between Ivory, Pink, Burgundy and Purple all with nineteen. So, following the example of the high jumpers, Mutaz Essa Barshim and Gianmarco Tamberi, they agreed to share the Gold Medal.

– Video from youtube.com

The Japanese are very fond of their railways, so as the Ishikawa map was so quick to play, we decided to follow it with another train game, the new Railroad Ink Challenge, which we first played a month ago. This is another relatively simple “Roll and Write” game, where players have to draw the road/rail depicted when four dice are rolled. All four must be drawn and they must connect to an “entrance” or something already drawn on the player’s map. There are also special cross-roads which can be used a maximum of once per round and only three can be used in the whole game. Each game lasts for just seven rounds, so again efficiency is vital.

Railroad Ink Challenge: Shining Yellow Edition

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The Challenge edition adds extra features on the maps which in effect give players bonuses when they fill those spaces, and also adds a set of three “goal” cards that give players more points when they complete them. These work in the same way as the line bonuses in MetroX, except that there are three sets of points available: one for the first player(s) to complete them, one for the second set of players to complete them and one for everyone else. Last time, we played the Shining Yellow edition, but this time, although we used the yellow boards, we used challenge cards from the Lush Green edition, randomly drawing cards A, B and E.

Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition

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Goal A gave points for players filling five of the nine central spaces; B gave players points for completing three of the “village” spaces and E gave points for completing all nine of the central area. Ivory’s printer refused to play ball, so he gave up and took an early night. We were all sorry to see him go of course, but it did give everyone else a chance to win. The first round included one of the especially awkward back-to-back curves, but it turned out to be the only one, though. This time there were a lot of T-junctions and fly-overs, with very few straight segments and simple corners. As a result, people started using their “specials” quite early rather than saving them to the end.

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As is often the case, there were a lot of reports of huge numbers of “hanging ends” meaning that players were variously taking chances and keeping options open, but hoping upon hope for helpful dice rolls. As the game progressed, people started claiming the Goals, with B going first. Some players had decided to use different colours for road, rail and stations, which ultimately seemed to slow them down as they not only had to choose what to do but also make sure they used the right colour. That just gave more thinking time to everyone else though, so nobody really minded.

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Without expansions, the game only takes seven rounds, so it wasn’t long before people were starting to worry that they were running out of time. Burgundy said he could really have done with one more round and there were several others who felt the same, but the rules are the rules, so Burgundy posted his score, setting an initial target of fifty-one. When Green gave his score of seventy-seven, however, he was so far ahead of Burgundy that photographic evidence was requested by everyone else. While his score was being verified as correct, Blue and and Pink were confirmed as the winners of silver and bronze respectively.

Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green & Shining Yellow Editions

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Time was marching on, so we moved onto Board Game Arena for something light and easy, and sensing that this might be the last chance online, we opted for our go-to game, 6 Nimmt!, with the Professional Variant. In this simple game, players simultaneously choose a card and, once revealed, starting with the lowest card, they are added to one of the four rows—the one ending in the highest number that is lower than the number on the card. The player who adds the sixth card to any row, instead takes the five cards and the number of bulls heads on the cards make part of their score.

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Face-to-face, these are summed and the lowest scores wins, however, on Board Game Arena, everyone starts with sixty-six points and the scores are subtracted from their running total. Thus, the game ends when someone falls below zero and the winner has the most points at the end of the game. In the Professional Variant, players can add cards to the either end of the row, with cards going at the start of a row if they are lower, than the first card in the row and the difference is smaller than it would be if they were to go elsewhere. This really adds a new dimension to the game, but there is serious mathematical upkeep giving us reservations about playing it with real cards, face-to-face.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

This time, Blue picked up first and enthusiastically started the race for the bottom. It looked like she was a certainty to end the game very quickly until she had competition from Burgundy. Everyone else had picked up some cards and Burgundy was the last person to maintain his starting total of sixty-six nimmts, when he suddenly shipped a landslide of points going from the lead to vying for last with Blue in just a handful of turns. Both Blue and Burgundy managed to steady the ship, albeit briefly, before Blue grabbed enough points to end the game.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Everyone else was actually quite close, and once again we had a tie for the Gold Medal, this time between Purple and Pine (who always does well in this game); both finishing with thirty-eight, just two ahead of Black. From there, Green wished everyone else a good night leaving just six. With lower numbers the options abound, but everyone was in the mood for something that didn’t require too much thought, and someone suggested giving L.L.A.M.A. (aka L.A.M.A) a go. Although it was still in beta testing and we’d not played it online before, we felt there was “no cause for alarm-a”, as we’d played it before (albeit a long time ago) and found it to be a very easy game

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Nominated for the Spiel des Jahres two years ago, L.A.M.A. has a reputation of being a bit of an “UNO killer”, that is to say, it is a similar game to UNO, but perceived to be better. L.A.M.A. is an abbreviation for “Lege alle Minuspunkte ab”, which roughly translates as “get rid of your negative points”, and indeed this is what players do, in a similar way to UNO. Players start with a hand of cards and, on their turn can, add a single card face up to the pile in the middle as long as it has the same face value, or the same plus one. The cards are numbered one to six, with the Llama card simultaneously being above six and below one providing a bridge between the high and low numbers.

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Alternatively, players can pick up a card or pass. When players pass, their score is the total of the face values of their cards, but if they have multiple cards of the same face value, they only count once. So if a player has five cards with a value of two, they would score two points, however, just one card with a higher face value would score more and Llama cards score ten points. The round ends when either everyone passes, or when someone gets rid of all their cards and everyone takes chips equal to their scores. Players who succeed in checking out get the bonus of being able to return one chip, which is important because the game ends when someone reaches forty points and the winner is the player with the fewest points.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Burgundy spent a lot of time moaning about being given poor options by Purple who was sitting on his right. Based on the effect this had, he might have had a point as he was rapidly picking up chips and was the one to make it to forty and trigger the end of the game. Further, Purple was doing really well, finishing with just nine, twenty-five fewer than anyone else except Black, who just pipped her to victory with only six. With everyone keen to play another game, but nobody enthusiastic about making a decision on what to play, and medals only awarded once for each “event”, a second round meant the Gold was still up for grabs.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

This time, Blue joined the moaning when Pine did the same to her as Purple had done to Burgundy, changing the number when she didn’t want and not changing it when she did. Burgundy did better this time finishing in joint second with Black with twenty-eight points. The winner of the second round finishing with just a single chip was Purple. This made her the L.A.M.A. champion taking the final Gold medal of the evening.

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Learning outcome: As with the Olympics, everyone who takes part in playing games is a winner.

21st January 2020

Over the last three years we’ve spent a lot of Tuesday evenings discussing Brexit and following events in the House of Commons as they occured. Since this was going to be the last games night with the UK in the EU, and as a predominantly pro-EU group, we wanted to mark the occasion and show our support for our European friends and all those who have campaigned against Brexit so valiantly. For this reason, we decided to make the “Feature Game” “European Ticket to Ride“, in other words, European editions of one of our favourite games, i.e. the Italy, France, Germany, Poland, Netherlands and of course, Europe games/expansions. Unfortunately, Blue (and therefore most of the maps) was late arriving, and then, nobody could decide what they wanted to play; the only one who expressed any strong opinion was Lime who wanted to play the France map.

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With nine players, three groups of three looked good, but the debate as to who would play what rivaled the Brexit negotiations, not helped by the number of people who were enticed by the Japan map on the reverse of the Italy map. In the end, Ivory and Green took themselves off to play the new Poland map, and, after a lot of discussion, Lime, the only one who had a strong opinion ended up forgoing his choice of France and joined the Poles to even up the numbers. With Black, Purple and Pine starting on France, that just left Blue, Burgundy and Mulberry to decide, and eventually they decided to play the Italy map using the Germany base game components.

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Ticket to Ride is a very well-known, well-loved game that has now become something of a “gateway game”, that is, a game that starts people unfamiliar with modern boardgames along the slippery slope. The game is popular with casual gamers because it is simple to play, with few options and a little bit of luck, but not too much. The game is played on a map with cities connected by train routes each made up of anything from one to nine spaces (depending on the map). On their turn, the active player can do one of a small handful of things: firstly, they can take train cards from the market or use the train cards to place plastic trains on the map and score points. To place trains on the map, players spend coloured cards to match the route they are claiming. As well as coloured train cards, there are also multi-coloured locomotive cards which are wild; a face up Locomotive can only be drawn as the first card and ends the turn, making them more expensive as well as useful.

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Most cities have only a single route between them, but some are double or even triple, though these can only be used with higher player counts. Instead of taking train cards or placing trains on the map, players can also draw tickets. These are a sort of personal objective that give players points for connecting two cities—the further apart, the more points the ticket is worth, but the larger the risk, as failure gives negative points. Players start the game with a handful of these and can choose which ones to keep. They can also draw more during the game, keeping some and discarding others, but the specific conditions depend on the map used.

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This is the basics of the original 2004, Spiel des Jahres winning game, with a USA map, Ticket to Ride, but each variant provides a different map and some slight modifications to the rules. For example, Ticket to Ride: Europe adds Ferry routes which require a certain number of locomotive cards to be played in addition to the coloured train cards. It also adds Stations, which can used to help players complete tickets where a route has been blocked. For some different maps players get different numbers of trains, Poland is one of the smaller maps, with only thirty-five trains, compared with the forty-five in the Europe and US versions or the three German editions (Germany, Deutschland and Märklin).

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The other thing that makes the Poland expansion map stand out (aside from the fact that it is Map Collection Volume “6½” and goes by the name of “Wsiąść do Pociągu: Polska”) is that routes that connect to the countries bordering Poland give points directly. Unusually, the routes that cross the border include some triple routes and even a quadruple route, all of which can be used regardless of the number of players. Each country then also has a small deck of three or four cards, each card giving a different number of points. The first player to connect to two countries through Poland takes the cards with the highest value, the next takes the next most lucrative and so on. Adding more countries to a player’s network adds more cards and more points for that player.

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Green was particularly keen to play the Polish expansion because of the “Czech connection”, and Ivory also wanted to try it as it was a new map for him; Lime went along to make up the numbers. They were quick to get going and started off laying out routes without interfering with each other very much at all. Ivory was first to link two countries (Czechia and Slovakia), which was annoying to Green as he joined the the same countries on the very next turn. However, Green got his own back by getting in Ivory’s way and linking Germany into his network first. Lime was late to join the country network party, but concentrated on the Poland’s eastern borders. Ivory and Lime started taking new tickets about midway through the game, but Green instead continued to concentrate on linking more countries into his network.

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It was only in the last couple of turns that Green finally turned to tickets when it looked difficult to add any more countries to his already substantial, four country network. While Ivory and Green had been fighting over routes, Lime had quietly travelled the entire width of Poland and also linked several countries into his network, rivalling Green. In the final scoring it was Lime who had charged ahead, scoring well with tickets and country cards, finishing with ninety-six points—deserved since he gave up his preferred choice of the France map. It was very close for second though, with Green just three points ahead of Ivory with seventy-nine. Meanwhile, on the next table, Black, Purple and Pine were setting up the game Lime had missed; a much longer game, that had barely started as the Poles were finishing.

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France is one of the more complex expansions as the map mostly only depicts the track-bed, and players choose what colour a line will be. So, every time a player takes carriage cards, they also take a coloured tile of their choice and place it somewhere on the board. Thereafter, any player can claim that route by spending the appropriately coloured cards and placing the correct number of train pieces. Some of these track-beds overlap, but once a tile has placed any track-beds under it are no-longer available.

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At the start, nobody really knew how to play with the track-bed tiles: placing them somewhere near one’s own route telegraphed probable plans, potentially giving others an opportunity to obstruct. On the other hand, progress could not be made at all until tiles had been placed. The map is very, very large so to begin with everyone could get on with their own thing. Purple monopolised the Loire, Auvergne and Burgundy regions while Pine occupied the north coast and eastern borders. Pine had competition from Black in the Normandy, Picardy and Champagne regions, but other than that, Black took himself off to the west and south and everyone got on with their own thing.

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Ultimately, the game was very lopsided. Pine kept drawing tickets and kept getting lucky; he repeatedly got tickets along similar routes so needed minimal addition to his already substantial network. As a result, he not only took the longest route bonus, but also the Globetrotter points for the player with the most successful tickets, with eight. Had Black been successful with all his, things would have been closer, but failing two meant it was a tie for second place with both Black and Purple finishing with eighty, exactly half Pine’s massive victory.

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Meanwhile, further down the table Burgundy eschewed Netherlands, so the group went instead for Italy, played with the Germany base game, in which the pieces have an unusual colour set. This gave Blue a slight quandary as to which she should play with, as blue wasn’t available. Instead Blue opted for purple, only for Purple on the next table to offer to swap pieces as she had chosen blue because purple wasn’t available. Sadly there was already enough confusion of pieces with Pine, Black and Purple playing with Burgundy’s base game and Blue’s France expansion so swapping pieces just seemed likely to make the chances of all the bits going back into the right boxes that bit smaller. So in the end, both suffered with the “wrong colour”.

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The Italy map is a more conventional expansion than France, with the only significant differences being a tweak to the Ferry rules and a new bonus scoring opportunity. Instead of needing Locomotive cards, these Ferry routes include some carriages with a round wave-icon on them. These can be satisfied either using special Ferry cards, or Locomotive cards. The special Ferry cards are in a separate deck and one of these can be taken instead of drawing train cards, up to a limit of two at any one time. Each of these special Ferry cards then count as two “wave” cards. This makes them better value than Locomotive cards drawn face up from the market, but less versatile.

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The bonus is potentially extremely lucrative, giving points for having a network that connects different regions of Italy. This starts with one point for five connected regions and increments according to the “Lazy Caterer’s Sequence” to give a massive fifty-six points for a network connecting fifteen or more regions. The layout of the map itself has a lot in common with the Nordic map in that it is quite long and thin with what feel like a lot of north/south routes running the length of the country, in the middle of the board and a lot of short, east/west routes available in the north and the south.

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Blue kept all her starting tickets and Burgundy jettisoned just the one, but in contrast, Mulberry kept the minimum she could. As a result, it wasn’t long before Mulberry was picking up more tickets, and then more and then even more, much to Burgundy’s and Blue’s horror. When questioned, Mulberry said, “Just Nickels and Dimes, Nickels and Dimes…” This didn’t calm Burgundy and Blue in the slightest, as they were still struggling to complete their starting tickets. Eventually though, they also took more tickets, with Burgundy keeping a lot of his, while Blue was less fortunate. Burgundy supplemented his tickets with a couple of very long Ferry routes netting him eighteen points each.

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As the game came to an end, Blue was still struggling to get the yellow carriage cards she needed to complete her final ticket. So when Burgundy brutally ended the game it cost Blue some forty points, though in truth she was a couple of turns away from getting them even if she had somehow managed to get that one final yellow card. It was clear that unless Burgundy had a lot of incomplete tickets, he would probably be able to defend his already substantial lead. Mulberry’s tickets may have been “Nickels and Dimes”, but she had an awful lot of them; as the phrase goes, “Take care of the pennies and the pounds take care of themselves.” With just regional bonus to add, Burgundy was out of sight and although Blue and Mulberry made a dent in the gap it wasn’t enough. It was close for second place though, but in the end a couple of extra regions gave it to Blue.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Poland game was finished first and with France only just started and Italy only halfway through the Poles toyed with the idea of trying another European Ticket to Ride Map, but instead opted for a quick game of the 2017 Spiel des Jares Winner Kingdomino. This is a light little game with a very clever market mechanic. The idea is that players take it in turns to take a tile from the market and add it to their kingdom. Each tile comprises two “squares” (like a domino), each showing a terrain. At the end of the game, players score points for each area of terrain in their kingdom gaining points equal to the number of “squares” multiplied by the number of crowns in that region.

– Image by boardGOATS

The clever part of the game is the market which consists of two columns of tiles, each tile having a rank reflecting their value based on scarcity of the terrain(s) it depicts and the number of crowns. The tiles in each row are placed, and taken, in descending order. When a player takes their tile from the current column, they choose which tile they want from the next column, thus a player taking a less valuable tile gets a wider choice on the next round. Unfortunately, as each column has to have the same number of tiles as players, the game can be a bit unbalanced with three, because some of the tiles are removed at random.

– Image by boardGOATS

As well as scoring for terrain, players also score bonus points for placing all their tiles in a five-by-five array with their castle in the centre. This time, Ivory managed a full kingdom with his castle in the centre, and a large wheat field with a healthy number of crowns. His score was also assisted by a not inconsiderable lake (although with only a couple of crowns) and a small but valuable mountain. Lime, fresh from his stunning Polska victory, realised too late that his castle was not central in his kingdom and his last couple of tiles were unplaceable. Green managed a complete kingdom with his castle in the middle, though his was made up largely of forest. Pasture, wheat and sand also featured and gave what was a winning score of sixty-three, some ten points ahead of Ivory in second.

– Image by boardGOATS

With the Italian map players just finishing, the group decided to join them and see what else was on offer. There were three options: For Sale (best with it’s a maximum of six), Century: Spice Road (plays a maximum of five) and World’s Fair 1893 (maximum of four). Mulberry decided to get an early night, leaving five players and Century: Spice Road. This is a resource management game with deck building at it’s core. Neither Lime nor Green had played it before so there was a quick run down of the rules first. These are simple enough though. The central area consists of two markets: one for action cards and one for contracts.

– Image by boardGOATS

On their turn, the active player can take an action card from the market, if they take the card at the end of the row (the one that has been there longest), it is free, otherwise they have to pay resources dependent on the card’s position. This card goes into the player’s hand where, on a later turn, they can use it to get spices, upgrade spices or convert spices into other spices. When used, a card is placed on the player’s personal discard pile, and they can also spend a turn picking up all their discarded cards. The spices, turmeric, saffron, cardamom and cinnamon are then used to fulfill contracts, giving points.

– Image by boardGOATS

The contract cards that have been around for longest get a bonus, in this case a coin is worth one or three points at the end of the game. The challenge, or at least part of the challenge is storing the spices: each player has a caravan card which will hold a maximum of ten spice cubes, so converting cubes into other cubes and buying contracts has to be done efficiently otherwise spices are wasted. The game end is triggered when one player has five contract cards. There are a couple of minor details, like the number of cards in the markets and the values of the coins, but Burgundy clearly knew these without needing to check the rules.

– Image by boardGOATS

The engine-building nature of this game has a lot in common with Splendor and as Burgundy is invincible at that the writing was on the wall before the group even started. It was no surprise therefore that when Ivory picked up the first contract, Burgundy was immediately behind him. Green, new to the game, wasn’t far behind either. Blue had a complete nightmare, but Lime, after a slow start suddenly seemed to get the hang of it and then made rapid progress. It wasn’t long before Ivory took his final card though. Taking the maximum number of cards is always key, and when he said he had sixty-seven points it looked like he might have been successful, however, Burgundy, managed to take one last card in that final round as he was the last to play, and ultimately, he managed to take first place by just three points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Europe has a very extensive (and exciting) rail network.

Essen 2019 – Update

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

Essen 2019

This week, the Internationale Spieltage, the largest games fair in Europe (and arguably the world), is being held in Germany. Known to Gamers worldwide simply as “Essen”, the fair runs Thursday to Sunday in late-October every year with many new releases timed to coincide with the event. It is one of the biggest and most significant of all the boardgame conventions; according to convention organizer Friedhelm Merz Verlag, this year there will be more than one thousand two hundred exhibitors offering more than one thousand five-hundred new games, from fifty-three countries.

– Image from spiel-messe.com

A couple of people from the group are going this year and will no doubt come back with a selection of the latest new and exciting games, as well as some older games that are new to the group and expansions for other well-loved games. This year, the new releases include Cooper Island, Maracaibo, ECOS: First Continent, Alubari: A Nice Cup of Tea, Tapestry, Deep Blue, Paladins of the West Kingdom, Glen More II: Chronicles, the Japan and Italy map pack for Ticket to Ride, and the new European birds expansion for one of the Kennerspiel Des Jahres winner, Wingspan.

– Image by boardGOATS