Tag Archives: Ticket to Ride: New York

24th January 2023

Blue and Pink were first to put in an appearance and availed themselves of the burger offerings at the Jockey before everyone else began to arrive. Ivory turned up cradling his enormous copy of the Collectors’ Edition of Everdell, complete with its Bellfaire expansion (as well as pretty much everything else available). And from then on, it was a matter of deciding who was going to play what. As Ivory began building the Evertree, Green commented that he’d really enjoyed playing it last time and would like to play it again, but wanted to give everyone else the opportunity. Everyone else similarly followed this gentlemanly gesture, but in the end Ivory took first Teal, then Green and finally Purple to the end of the table and started the mammoth task of unpacking.

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As they began setting up, the other four began deciding what to play. After suggestions that largely fell on deaf ears, Blue eventually began unpacking World’s Fair 1893. This is a clever little game that integrates area majority and set collecting mechanics. The idea is that players choose a segment of the board and place a population marker in it before taking all the cards in that section. Three cards are then added to the board, with the first added to the section cards have just been taken from and one each added to the next two segments. Cards come in three types: Character Cards, Midway Tickets and Exhibit Cards.

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Character cards can be used to move cubes about or add extra cubes and are played by the active player between placing their token and taking the cards from that section. When the Ferris wheel car has travelled all the way round there is an interim scoring stage. Midway tickets are exchanged for one point, with the player who has the most earning bonus points. Exhibit Cards are exchanged for tokens: each of the five segments of the board are evaluated and the player with the most population tokens gains a couple of bonus points and the opportunity to trade up to three exhibit cards for matching coloured tokens. The player who comes second also gets points and can exchange fewer Exhibit Cards for tokens.

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The tokens are combined into sets at the end of the game with the larger sets worth more points; sets containing all five different coloured tokens are worth fifteen points, with sets of four worth ten, and three, two and one worth six, three and one point respectively. Played over the three rounds, the winner is the player with the most points at the end of the game. Blue didn’t do a great job of explaining the point of tokens, so in the first round, Lime focused on collecting Midway Tickets, lots and lots of Midway Tickets taking lots of points and the bonus too.

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Pink, on the other hand, had played it before and better understood the relationship between Exhibit Cards, Tokens and points at the end of the game. That said, he seemed to have a bit of a mental block on how to use the his character cards (after placing a population token, but before taking cards). Bertha Palmer seemed to cause a particular problem and her function had to be explained at least three times before the message got through. Through the second and third round, Lime continued to collect Midway Tickets while Blue, Pink and Pine tried to manipulate the majorities in the areas for which they wanted tokens for.

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Lime kept doing well in the green Agricultural region, but was unable to get the cards to match. This is the catch with the game: in order to obtain tokens in a specific colour, players need the majority of population markers in that region, but also need to gain Exhibit cards to match, which quite likely are only available from other segments. Pine commented that he thought this game should be played with ties cancelling each other out like in Las Vegas—funny, that that would have left him in pole position in several key areas that he needed…

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As the game came to an end, the question was whether anyone would have enough sets of tokens to catch Lime with his huge pile of coins from his Midway Tickets. It looked like Pink might make it with his two sets of five giving him thirty points, but he fell two points short. Blue however did slightly better with sets of five, four, three and two and finished with sixty-two points, five more than Lime. When Pine asked how Pink collected so many tokens, Pink’s response was, “Never underestimate the value of coming second…”

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Everdell was very much still underway and although time was marching on, there was still time to play something else. So a decision was made very quickly as Blue got out Les Aventuriers du Rail Express. “Les Aventuriers du Rail” is the french name for Ticket to Ride, and this “Express” version originally released only in French and Italian, was a “light” version of the game, positioned somewhere between the “City” editions (like New York, London, Amsterdam etc.) and the full sized games. Thus it plays quicker than the full sized game, but is longer than the City editions, and has a maximum of four players like the smaller games

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The basic principle of all the games is the same however: on their turn players either take two coloured carriage cards from the market, pay sets of cards to claim a route and place plastic pieces on the map, or draw tickets giving cities that players need to connect to score points. Each edition has its own special rules and this one has a shared ticket: London to Istanbul. The first player to connect these cities gains twenty points with the second getting fifteen and so on.

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Additionally, instead of Locomotive (Wild) Cards being included in the Carriage Card market, they are always available from a separate face up deck with players taking one card on their turn instead of two). It didn’t take long before the group had checked they had the right number of trains and had identified the special rules for this version of the game. Blue went first, but Pine was the first to place trains on the map, at which point everyone else realised they were going to have to go hard and fast to compete.

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Blue also placed an early train, but Pink opted for the “expert strategy” espoused by Black, to pick up tickets early. The idea is that knowing the destinations you need to connect early is an advantage, but this is offset of course, by the fact that it gives everyone else an extra turn to claim some of the routes you might need. This time, unbeknownst to the others, Pink got lucky with long overlapping routes and, as a result picked up another batch of tickets. Pine tried to follow the ticket strategy, but got less lucky.

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Blue thought the London to Istanbul ticket was quite a good option as it was almost zero risk since it wouldn’t cost her if she failed to complete it, it was also relatively complementary to her starting tickets. This strategy meant she had to go through the middle of Europe and, as a result, got caught up in the three-way punch-up with Lime and Pine centred on Strasbourg. Pine came off worst, but unquestionably, Pink came off best as he eschewed central Europe, instead focusing on taking the route to Warsaw via Berlin which also included two slightly more lucrative five car connections.

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Blue claimed the London to Istanbul route first and with it twenty points, followed by Lime who had completely forgotten about it in his tussle to make his other tickets. Blue was then left with a choice: pick up tickets or try to end the game quickly. Knowing Pink and Pine in particular had a lot of tickets to complete and with plastic trains beginning to run low, she opted for the latter. Unfortunately for her, Pink had already nearly finished his tickets and was able to complete his last one on his final turn. That just left the scoring, and it wasn’t really close with Pink finishing with eighty-two and Blue the best of the rest some fifteen points behind.

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On the next table, Ivory, Green, Teal and Purple played the “Feature Game“, the Bellfaire expansion to Everdell, the winner of the Golden GOAT just before Christmas. Everdell is a fairly simple game in principle, with players either placing a worker to collect resources or then using the resources to pay to play cards from their hand into their tableau. The game is very smooth to play, well balanced and has beautiful artwork. One of the things that makes it different to many other games is that when a player runs out of actions (or earlier if they choose), they can end their season and reclaim all workers and start again. This is important because some of the action spaces can only be occupied by one critter at any one time.

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The cards come in different types, but one of the key aspects is that critter cards can be played by paying their cost or as a bonus for playing the associated construction card. For example, if a player builds a Courthouse, they can play the Judge at the same time if they have it in their hand. Cards give players special powers, extra resources, actions and points at the end of the game. Each player’s tableau can only hold a maximum of fifteen cards; when a player cannot perform any more actions (or does not wish to) they pass and their tableau is completed. Everyone else carries on playing and the game continues until everyone has passed with the winner being the player with the most points.

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The Bellfaire expansion adds a little bit of variety to the game, in particular the Market, a Bonus for one of each card category, and a randomly selected Beauty Bonus for the most purple flower cards. The group also included the Extra! Extra! and Legends cards with the Corrin Evertail cards (from the Mistwood expansion). One of the joys of Everdell is selecting playing pieces. With sixteen different creature meeples to choose from there is something for everyone. Ivory was quick to nab the purple coloured Platypus, Teal selected grey Hedgehogs, Purple chose red Squirrels and Green wanted the green Lizards.

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On pulling out all the Lizards from the Box, Green declared that one of his meeples was disabled. It was missing the bottom half, its legs and its tail, poor thing! To give this one an easy ride green selected it for later use as part of the Autumn cache. As expected Ivory got off to a flying start. While Purple was the first to leave winter and head into spring, Green and Teal were not far behind. Ivory, however, seemed to be able to keep going in Winter for many turns after everyone else had left. He had been quite lucky with the card draw and was able to pair critters with his buildings to a much greater extent than everyone else.

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Teal noticed that Ivory had completed all the card categories and could claim the bonus tile, but he kept quiet and instead was the first to claim a bonus tile: for having three forest tags. A short while later Green also noticed that Ivory could claim the bonus, but he, perhaps due to silliness or perhaps innate honesty, did not keep quiet. Ivory had not noticed, so promptly claimed it on his next turn. No-one else was able to fulfill that requirement for quite some turns.

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The Bellfaire Market allows players to choose to either gain resources, or to trade them. When gaining resources, players choose one token, gain the resources and cards, then move that token to the “trade” side of the market. When trading, players pay resources and discard cards to gain three points and any two resources, before moving the token back to the “gain” side. This time, players used the market to collect initial resources, but once they had all been used, no-one seemed to show much interest in trading to bring them back into play. Trading did happen a couple of times later in the game, but no-one could really see the benefit of the trading versus collecting resources outright, especially since two of the randomly drawn extra forest spaces included the ability to trade cards or wood for “any” resource.

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The pattern of Purple going into the next season first and Ivory going last remained all the way through Spring and Summer. Ivory did slow down somewhat though, and did not enter Autumn much later than Teal and Green. By this time, most the group had managed to play at least one of their Legends cards and were beginning to use them to good effect. Green’s Ranger Strey Softpaw which enabled him to use two already used forest action spaces for one worker was generally remarked as a very useful legend card. Maybe that was how he was able to catch up a little, but one of the key challenges he struggled with was being able to get the Critter and Construction pairs.

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Once Autumn came round, it was time for the poor disabled lizard to play a part on Green’s behalf. That part was, to cries of being cruel, to go straight to the Cemetery so he could select a card to play for free—unfortunate critter! Although Ivory kept going longer than anyone, he already had all fifteen cards played, and found himself unable to do much else, even though he still had workers left. Purple finished early with a similar problem, although she was unable to afford any more cards even with gathering from her last worker.

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Eventually, everyone finished their final season and in the final scoring, Ivory scored big on the card totals. Green did quite well and finished a few points ahead of Teal, though Purple suffered as she had not been able to play as many cards. Ivory also scored well on other bonuses and Teal and Green were similarly matched with several bonuses, except that Teal managed to accrue more coins and score Journey points. As a result, Teal took second, though Ivory was way ahead of everyone else.

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Learning outcome: We’ll have to brush up the Everdell skills if we ever want a chance of beating Ivory in future.

28th June 2022

When Blue, Pink, Orange and Lemon rolled in (late thanks to the delights of the Oxford traffic and garden watering), Plum was already there. A gamer with Gweeples in Didcot, Plum was a friend of Burgundy’s that members of the group first met at his funeral about six months ago. While she finished her tagliatelle, Blue and Pink waited for their supper to arrive, and everyone admired Pink’s Pornstar Martini, the group revisited Tsuro, which Orange and Lemon had enjoyed so much on their first visit, last time.

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While setting up, Pine arrived and needed a quick reminder of the rules, but that only took a moment: players have a hand of three tiles and, on their turn place one of them in front of their stone and extend it’s path, moving their stone (and any others) to the end of its path. Players are eliminated when their stone goes off the board or collides with another stone—the last player on the board is the winner. First blood went to Blue, who took out Lemon and Pine, but that was collateral damage as she had no choice and went off the board herself at the same time.

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Pink was next, being trapped and left with no option, and then just Plum and Orange remained to duel it out. There was very little space left on the board and the writing was already on the wall when Plum went off. That left Orange a worthy winner, especially as he had a tile to spare too. Teal arrived and while Blue and Pink fed, he led everyone else in a game of No Thanks!. This is a game we’ve played a lot in the group and is a very clever design but like all the cleverest games, has very simple rules. Played with a numbered deck of thirty-two cards, the idea is that on their turn, the active player can take the card in the middle or pay a chip to pass the problem on to the next person.

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The next person has the same decision: they can take the card and the chip, or pay a chip, and so on. At the end of the game, a player’s total score is the sum of the face value of the cards they took and the player with the lowest number wins. There are two key points that make the game, however. Firstly, if a player has consecutively numbered cards, only the lowest card in the run contributes to their total, which means cards have different values to different players. Secondly, nine cards are removed from the deck, which adds jeopardy on top. The game can play out in several different ways.

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The player or players with the most chips are always in control, until one player is left with so few chips or runs out completely, that they are forced to take cards even when they don’t want them. This can prevent players, even those with lots of chips, from getting the cards they need to close runs causing the strategy to back-fire, and leaving those with the most chips with the most points as well. This time, Orange and Teal amassed a huge pile of chips each, but both managed to avoid ending up with multiple high scoring runs. Then someone dropped a chip on the floor giving Pine the opportunity to recount the tale of how he dropped a chip between the floor boards and how it is still there despite everyone’s best efforts.

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This time, the dropped chip was recovered successfully and the game ended without further mishap. Orange and Teal took first and second respectively, giving Orange two in two games to match Lemon’s achievement at the start of last time. By this time, the feeders had finished feeding and everyone else had arrived, so it was time for the “Feature Game“. To mark the start of the Tour de France later in the week, this was to be the Peloton expansion for the cycling game, Flamme Rouge. Flamme Rouge is a fast-paced, tactical bike-racing game where each player controls a team of two riders: a Rouleur and a Sprinteur. The aim is to manage the first rider to cross the finish line.

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Each rider has a deck of cards, and Players move their riders one at a time, by drawing four cards from the rider’s deck, choosing one to play, and recycling the rest. Once every player has picked cards for both their riders, players simultaneously reveal their cards and, starting with the cyclist at the front, each rider is moved in turn. After all the riders have moved, slip-streaming takes effect, with groups that have exactly one space between them and the group in front moving forward to remove the gap. Finally, every rider that still has an empty space in front of them is deemed to be riding into the wind and takes an exhaustion card which goes into their deck—these are bad because they are slow cards and block up plays’ hands.

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At the start of the race, everyone’s Rouleurs have the same cards, and everyone’s Sprinteurs have the same cards. The Rouleurs have lots of cards with a similar face value, where the Sprinteurs have some cards that are faster and have a higher value, which are offset by others that are slower and have a lower value. Players have to balance how they manage their riders and make the most of the slip-streaming opportunities. The game is modular with the option to add hills to the base game. The Peloton expansion adds extra riders (so that the game plays up to six players), cobbled sections (aka “Pavé”), Feed Zones, and rules to set up a break-away.

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Unusually with so many people, rather than splitting in to three groups playing three different games, we split into just two with both playing the same game. Since the Grand Départ was due to take place in the essentially flat Denmark this year, both groups largely played without hills, but included cobbled sections (à la Stage 5, from Lille to Arenberg, a week later). Cobbled sections change width frequently and are generally narrower than normal road, but perhaps more importantly, riders can no-longer benefit from slipstreaming but still get exhaustion cards. The slightly larger group, led by Ivory and Teal also decided to start with a break-away.

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Their chosen route was Stage 11 of the stage race and took in three sections of Pavé. The first of these was shortly after the start, the second after the first hairpin and a short slight up-hill ramp, and the third was after a second hairpin and a little chicane. Teal and Lime made it into the breakaway and they stayed away for most of the game. Being at the front “pushing air out of the way” all the time is tiring though, and inevitably, they picked up a lot of exhaustion cards. That meant that as the Peloton was bearing down on them, just as the finish line was in sight, they didn’t have the energy fend them off.

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As a result, Black and Pink, who had been sheltering in the middle of the group slid across the line just ahead of the gallant breakaway, who were definitely candidates for the day’s combativity award. Black took first place, having spent most of the race doing as little as possible and saving it all for the final sprint. While saving energy is a good tactic, Purple took it to a different level picking up no exhaustion cards at all, though she wasn’t able to turn on the burners in time to take advantage of it.

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The smaller group, led by Blue and Plum rode a simpler route based on the Avenue Corso Paseo ride, with a cobbled section in the middle between the two hairpin bends. With most people in this group new to the game, they decided to keep things simple and eschewed the complexities of hills completely, sticking to a pan-flat course, and kept to the standard roll-out used in the base game. First Orange and then Lemon rode off the front while Pine and especially Blue were repeatedly under threat of being spat out of the back of the peloton. Most rounds seemed to end with Blue breathing a sigh of relief as she managed to hang on and Lemon laughing as she picked up yet another exhaustion card.

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Once the riders had passed the Pavé the speed picked up and Blue and Pine started to try to move forward in the field. Lemon who had led most of the way “bonked” and “hit the wall”, and as a result, was unceremoniously dropped. It was tight, but Pine’s Rouleur was first over the line just holding off Plum’s first rider who took second followed by Pine’s Sprinteur who took third. It had been a close and quite attritional race, but despite the fact there were fewer riders with a shorter parkour, the race finished at much the same time as the other one. So races were compared and there was a bit of chatter about other options as people packed away.

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Ivory took himself off for an early night, as did Teal, but those that were left were keen to play on, albeit not for long in some cases. Inevitably there was a lot of discussion about what to play, but when Ticket to Ride got a mention, Pine and Lime were keen to give the London version a run out, and were quickly joined by Pink and Purple. Ticket to Ride is one of our favourite games and we play a lot of different versions, short and long. They all have the same basic structure, but different layouts on different maps, and often with a little rules change. In summary, in the original game, players are connecting cities across the USA.

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They do this by collecting coloured cards and then spending those cards to place trains. Players score points for placing trains and also for completing “Tickets” by connecting two cities together by any chosen route—the further apart the cities, the more points they are worth. The game end is triggered when one player has only two train pieces left and at the end of the game, the player with the most points is the winner. The original game takes around an hour to play with the full compliment, but more recently, there have been a number of smaller, lighter versions available. They have the same rules, but players have fewer pieces and the maps are more congested, based on cities like New York, Amsterdam and later this year, San Francisco.

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This time, however, the version chosen was London. In this edition, players are placing buses to mark routes, and in addition to scoring points for claiming routes and Tickets, players also score points for connecting all the places in the same district. Pine won the “name the people on the front of the box” competition and went first. Lime crossed the city travelling from Baker Street to The Tower of London while both Purple and Pink did the same but from Buckingham Palace to Brick Lane, and via different routes. Pine had a northern route and a south route that looked like they would join up in the middle, but didn’t quite make it. He did manage to claim a district though, the only player to do so for a district of any significant size.

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It was very close between first and second, though there was a bit more distance to Pink in third. In the end, Lime just pipped Pine to victory by two points. Meanwhile, there had been some debate between the other five as to what they would play. Blue suggested introducing Orange and Lemon to one of our old stalwarts, 6 Nimmt!, but it wasn’t one of Plum’s favourite games. So instead, Blue and Black introduced everyone else to …Aber Bitte mit Sahne, a clever but simple little “I divide, you choose” game. The idea is that one player is The Baker who divides the cake into pieces and then everyone else takes it in turns to take a one of them.

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Each slice of cake has a type, a number on it and a some cream. When a player takes cake, they can choose to eat it or store it. For all eaten cake, players a point for each blob of cream. For stored cake, however, the player with the most of each type will score the number of points associated with that type. The clever part is that the number of points is equivalent to the number of slices of that type in the game, so the more common types which are harder to get a majority in are worth more, but they also have the most cream, tempting players to eat them straight away.

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It is always difficult for the first couple of players to take the role of Baker, but this is exacerbated with five players. Blue went first, then Black. It was only a couple of rounds in, that the twinkle appeared in Plum’s eye as she realised how clever the game was and expressed her approval. It was quite tight in the early stages with players staking their claims to different sorts of cake. There was competition for kiwi and redcurrent, but others went largely un-stored (and therefore eaten). After everyone had been the Baker it was time to see who had the most of each and add up the scores. Black got lucky with the chocolate as everyone else was greedy and ate theirs.

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Unfortunately, there was a rules misunderstanding and Orange thought he would get points for every slice he kept if he had the most of that type, so we’ll have to play it again soon so he can try again. This time though, Black who had been very abstemious and eaten none of his cake, ran out the clear winner with thirty-five points to Blue’s twenty-nine and Plum’s twenty-seven for second and third place respectively. Ticket to Ride: London was still underway on the next table, so as Orange and Lemon had not played it before, Blue got out Dobble. We’ve not played this in the group for years, but it is a fantastic little Snap-based filler.

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The idea is that every card has several pictures and each card shares exactly one match with every other card in the deck and using this principle, there are five possible Snap-based games. Black decided discretion was the better part of valor and opted to spectate while Plum had a significant drive so headed off, leaving just Blue, Orange and Lemon. They started with a pile of cards each and the winner the first to shed their pile onto the central one. The game was all very well, but there was a vocabulary check as, although Blue said they could play in Ukrainian, Orange and Lemon were game to give English a go. Once the items had been identified, the mania started.

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As it was a trial game, the piles weren’t carefully measured, but Orange quickly got the hang of it and in spite of the language differences, managed to shed his pile first for yet another victory. From there, the group did the reverse and started with one card and grabbed progressively matching cards from the middle. This can be quite savage, which is why Blue opted for the gentler game first. Still, everyone was well-behaved and nobody got scratched. The tension and concentration was palpable though and Ticket to Ride finished and Lime and Pine left with only a a cursory grunt from those playing Dobble, before Blue just edged it to win the final game of the night.

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Learning Outcome: Tour de France coverage is available on ITV4.

23rd September 2021

Burgundy and Blue were just finishing their supper when Teal introduced himself. The three were chatting when Lime, who hadn’t been able to come for over a month, also joined the group. It was expected to be a quiet night with Green and Lilac away on holiday, Pine working late, and Pink stuck somewhere on the Warwick bypass. So, there was a lot of chat, but eventually, the group decided to play something and settled on Love Letter.

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This is a very simple little game that we’ve played a lot, but somehow Lime had missed out. So, there was a very quick rules explanation: players start with a hand of one card, draw a second and choose one to play and do the action on the card. The cards are numbered and the aim of the game is to finish the round with the highest card, or more commonly, avoid being knocked out. There are only sixteen cards in the deck (and one of those is removed at the start of the round), so it doesn’t take long.

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The group were only three rounds in when everyone else turned up (including Pink who had escaped the roadworks), so Lime was declared the winner with two tokens and everyone else was introduced to Teal and started to discuss what to play. In the end, Burgundy took matters into his own hands and started a game of Wingspan, so while Pink waited for his pizza to arrive, Blue explained the “Feature Game“, Mini Rails.

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Mini Rails is a very simple little stock-buying and track-laying train game that compresses a lot of the game play of long and complicated games like the 18xx series into under an hour. Players have two turns in each round, on one they buy shares in one of the companies and on the other they extend the “track” of one of the networks. If it is built on a white space, players with holdings in that colour increase their value by the marked amount. If the network is built on a red space, the stocks in that company are decreased in value.

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The game is very simple, but there are a couple of clever little tweaks. Firstly, there are two “tracks”, one is the turn-order track, while the other holds train disks drawn at random from a bag. On their turn, players choose one of tokens and decide which action to use it for, “build track”or “buy shares”. The position of the token that is taken dictates where they will be in the turn order in the next round. Manipulating this turn order is one key aspect of the game, as is deciding whether to buy and then build, or build and then buy.

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Perhaps the most complicated aspect of the game is the end-game scoring. At the start of each round train discs are drawn from a bag; one more than there are turns. This means everyone always has a choice, but the token the last player does not use is put to one side indicating they have paid “taxes”. For the companies that have “paid taxes” any negative dividends are erased and positive dividends are counted. For those companies that have avoided paying their taxes the reverse is true and negative points will be scored while positive points are lost.

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This means it is in the interest of players with both large positive or significant negative scores to forgo building track or buying shares and leave a potentially valuable token as taxes. Similarly, if a player is left with a choice of two tokens, it may be in their interest to buy/build a relatively unfavourable track to deprive other players of points. With three players, the game doesn’t take too long to play, and with more it would likely become quite random.

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Lime took an early lead, though of course lots of early points are… pointless, if the company doesn’t pay taxes. In the end it was extremely tight, but in the end, Blue just pipped Lime by a single point. With just three there isn’t much downtime and the game rocks along nicely with plenty of interaction, though as Pink said, “That’s one hell of an abstraction for a train game.” Blue pointed out that this was what a lot of gamers thought of when someone said “Train Game”. Pink felt disappointed at the lack of actual trains and tracks so to make it up to him, the group moved on to play Ticket to Ride Demo.

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Ticket to Ride Demo is one of the small games based on the Spiel des Jahres winner, Ticket to Ride Europe. The Demo game has an interesting history—it was designed as a sales tool and had only a small print run. It was so popular though, that it ultimately spawned a new range of small “City” games, New York, London and Amsterdam. These games are essentially played the same way as the full-sized versions, but with fewer pieces on a smaller map which means they typically take less than half the time.

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On their turn players can do one of three things: take cards from the market, spend cards to place trains or take tickets. Players score points for placing trains, but also for connecting the places on their tickets. The catch is that any tickets that are not completed score negative points. The small versions of the game are much tighter with less room for error. Unlike the others, Ticket to Ride Demo has a double sided map, one USA and one Europe. This time the group played the Europe map.

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Compared to the full-sized equivalents, all the little games are like a knife-fight in a phone-box, and this game was no exception. Lime only completed three of his four tickets as Blue brought the game to a quick and sudden end. Pink completed all four of his tickets and they were high-scoring too. Blue’s tickets were less lucrative, but she managed to place all her trains and took the European Express bonus points for the longest continuous route, and with it victory, by just two points.

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Meanwhile, on the next table an epic, five-player game of Wingspan was underway. We’ve played Wingspan quite a bit since it came out and always found it very enjoyable. We’ve played it enough that we’ve also explored the European expansion, but thanks to the restrictions over the last year or so, this was the first opportunity to play the new Oceania expansion. The base game is a reasonably light, card-driven, combination building game. On their turn, players can place a bird card from their hand in one of the three habitats, or activate all their cards in one of the habitats and carry out the associated action.

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The habitats are Woodland, Grassland and Wetland and the actions associated with them are collecting food, laying eggs or collecting cards (respectively). Once the action has been carried out, the active player activates each card in the habitat in turn. The game is played over four rounds, with a decreasing number of actions per round as the game progresses. At the end of each round there are goals and each player also starts with a personal bonus card which is evaluated at the end of the game.

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The European expansion really only adds extra cards, though this includes a number of birds with abilities that are activated at the end of rounds, and others that increase player interaction. The new Oceania expansion also adds more cards, but additionally mixes things up a little more with the addition of a new food type, nectar. Nectar can be used as wild food type, although some of the new bird cards have nectar specified in the cost. Whenever players spend nectar though, they don’t put it back in the supply, instead they store it in the habitat they spent it on.

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At the end of the game, the player with the most nectar stored in each habitat scores five points at the end of the game with the player coming second scoring two points. Nectar is therefore a very important resource giving a potential fifteen points at the end of the game, although it requires some skill to use it effectively as it can’t be carried over between rounds. Burgundy and Black really invested in nectar and managed to make good use of it during the game as well as take the lion’s share of the nectar points at the end of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Burgundy and Black also prioritised valuable birds and tried to ensure they stayed in the running for the end of round bonuses. Three out of the four of these involved eggs, which fitted with Ivory and Teal’s strategies which focused on an end-of-game egg rush. Ivory also picked up a lot of points from his Common Starling which enabled him to discard up to five bits of food and tuck a card for each one. With a maximum of twenty points, Ivory did well to take eighteen during the game, but it was only enough for third place this time though.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was very close at the top between Black and Burgundy. Burgundy had four bonus cards one of which proved quite lucrative. The big difference was in the value of the bird cards, however, while Black edged it in many departments Burgundy had a ten point head start. This wasn’t simply because he had high value birds, more that he had lots of them. In the end, Burgundy finished five points ahead of Black with ninety-five, in a good game that had been enjoyed by everyone round the table.

– Image by boardGOATS

Wingspan was still only on its third round when Ticket to Ride Demo came to an end. At around the same time, Pine pitched up, so the, now foursome settled down for something else which ended up being a game of Reiner Knitzia’s Botswana (aka Wildlife Safari). This is an unusual auction-like game made all the better by the inclusion of plastic animals. Played over several rounds, players are dealt a hand of cards and on their turn play a card and take an animal of their choice. The cards are numbered zero to five and come in five different animal suits.

– Image by boardGOATS

The cards are played in the centre of the table in suits and the game ends when all six cards of one suit have been played. The top card in any suit is the current value of that animal. Thus, if the top zebra card is a five, a player that has three zebras will earn fifteen points for them if the game ends. However, if the zero just before the game ends, the zebras will become worthless. It is a deceptively simple, yet fun little game. Blue thought she’d won until a recount docked her ten points and she finished just two points behind a delighted Pink.

– Image by boardGOATS

As Botswana came to an end, so did Wingspan, and although time was marching on, and Lime and Ivory took an early night, there was still time for everyone else to play one last game. After a little discussion, we settled on 6 Nimmt!, a game we all know and love. Players simultaneously choose a card and these are sequentially added to the end of four rows of cards, specifically the row with the highest number that is lower than the card itself. If the card is the sixth card in the row, instead, the player takes other five and adds them to their scoring pile. The player with the lowest score at the end of the game is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

We’ve all played this a lot online over the last year, but doing the maths ourselves was a little daunting, so we decided to go back to playing the non-professional version. We play over two rounds using half the deck in first and the other half in the second. This time Teal top-scored in the first round with nineteen, while Burgundy kept a clean sheet with Pink just behind. Blue’s killer thirty-three in the second round gave her a total of forty-eight, but the winner for the second time in the evening was Pink with just four points. And with that, it was bedtime.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Today’s railway industry is no longer about trains and tracks. ☹

18th February 2020

Food was a little delayed, so we decided to start playing something. Food was clearly on our collective minds though, because we opted for a starter of Point Salad. This is a very simple set collecting game where players take cards from the market. The cards are double sided with brightly coloured vegetables on one side and scoring conditions on the other. The market consists of three piles of cards showing the scoring condition sides, and six cards showing the reverse, the vegetable side. The number of cards a player can take depends on where they take it from: one scoring card or two vegetable cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

Each pile of cards feeds one pair of vegetables. So, when a vegetable is taken, a scoring condition card is turned over to reveal its vegetable side, and that scoring condition is no longer available. Players can also, once per turn, turn over one of their scoring cards so it becomes a vegetable, but they may never turn over a vegetable to make it a scoring card. The game is over when all the cards have been distributed, and the scores have been totaled. One of the more unusual things about this game is that both vegetable and scoring cards can be used more than once. So, a player with a card giving points for sets of onion, cabbage and carrot (i.e. coleslaw), can score it as many times as they have sets. Furthermore, if they also have a card that scores for pairs of carrots and lettuces (i.e. rabbit food), they can reuse the carrot cards and count them a second time.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine began collecting lettuces, an obsession with green things that ended up lasting the whole evening. Burgundy was more obsessed with red things, specifically tomatoes, so Mulberry, Black and Purple took great delight in snaffling them first, even when they didn’t help. Blue only needed mayonnaise for her coleslaw as she collected onions, cabbages and carrots and generally made a nuisance of herself with Mulberry, sat to her left. Food arrived before the game finished, and with people getting distracted by pizza and chips (always more appealing than salad) it is possible there were some missed opportunities. It was tight finish at the front with only six points between the winner and third place. Sadly, despite everyone else’s best efforts, Burgundy top-scored with fifty-six, ahead of Mulberry and then Blue.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once everyone had finished eating, it was time to decide who would play what. The “Feature Game” was The Isle of Cats, a tile-laying game where players are rescuing cats and packing them onto their ship. There were a lot of takers, none of which were keen to back down (even though Mulberry misunderstood and thought it was called “Pile of Cats” which, on reflection, does sound very exciting). The game is not terribly complicated though we did make a bit of a meal of it. It is played over five rounds, each of which starts with card drafting. Players are dealt seven cards and keep two passing the rest to their neighbour; this is repeated until they receive only one single card.

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The cards come in five different colours: blue, green, yellow, brown and purple. Blue cards are Lesson cards which are really just Objective cards, but these come in two types, personal and public. Yellow cards depict some combination of “Boots”, “Cat Baskets” and “Broken Baskets”. Boots are useful because they dictate where you come in the turn order, while Baskets are needed to used to “pay” to rescue Cats. Yellow cards are treasure cards, brown cards are special “Oshax” cat cards and purple cards are instant effect cards that can be played at any time.

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At the start of every round, each player receives twenty Fish which are used to pay for both cards and Cats. So, once the cards have been drafted, players choose which ones they want to buy. with prices varying from free to five Fish. The rest are discarded. It is imprudent to over-spend, as Fish are also needed later in the round to lure cats off the island and onto the players’ ships; some cats are easier to lure than others, with cats on one side of the island costing three Fish and others costing five Fish.

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Once everyone has paid for their cards, they must play any blue Lesson cards they kept in the round. Any Public Lessons are revealed while Private Lessons are kept to one side face down. Players then play their green cards—this is the guts of the game. Players do not have to play all their green cards straight away, some can be kept for later rounds. The number of Boots played are counted up, and the turn order is adjusted according to the number of Boots played so that the player with the most goes first and so on. Player then take it in turns to spend one of their baskets and the appropriate amount of Fish to take one of their Cats and place it on their ship.

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Each player starts the game with one “Permanent Basket” which they can use once per round, aside from this, the other Baskets usually come from the cards played or other Permanent Baskets acquired later in the game. The Cats come in five different colours and are depicted on polyomino tiles which are placed on the players’ Ship-player boards. At the end of the game players score points for grouping Cats of the same colour together in Families: the larger the Family the more points. So, a group of three Cats of the same colour will score eight points, while a Family of ten Cats scores a massive forty points. In addition, players lose one point for each rat they have failed to cover with a cat, and lose five points for each room they fail to fill.

– Image by boardGOATS

Thus, perfectly tessellating Cats is the aim of the game, but additional points are also available from the Lesson-objective cards. It would be quite a challenge to perfectly tessellate tiles while keeping cats of the same colour together and conforming to the arbitrary objectives given in the Lessons, however, there are a couple of things to help grease the wheels. Players who cover Scrolls on their Ships with a Cat of the same colour can add a Treasure tile to their ship for free—these are small tiles that are very useful for filling in holes. There are only five scrolls though, one of each colour.

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Additionally, however, once everyone has run out of Baskets, they can also play their Rare Treasure, yellow and brown cards. The yellow cards enable players to place more Treasure tiles while brown cards allow players to place the very rare Oshax Cats (or “Oh, shucks!” Cats as we mostly called them). These are very friendly Cats and will join any Cat Family of the player’s choice, though they have to pick the colour when they place it. The cards are quite rare and very expensive, but a couple of these can be a really good way to boost the size of a Family.

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In addition to Baskets on cards, each player starts with one Permanent Basket which they can use once per round. Blue started the game quickly, by playing two lesson cards followed by a special card which enabled her to swap them for a second Permanent Basket. Everyone looked on agog, envious of the advantage that would give, however, it had cost a lot of Fish, and she spent the rest of the game trying to recover. Mulberry struggled to get some useful cards, but eventually managed to get a Permanent Basket of her own while Burgundy managed to get a couple of his own and he concentrated on trying to make sure there were no gaps round the edge of his boat to fulfill Lesson 113 to give him twelve points.

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Pine meanwhile, continued his obsession with green and hogged all the green cats. Since cards are drafted most of the cards are seen by some of the other players, so when he said he wasn’t sure how one of his Lesson cards worked, Blue and Burgundy knew exactly what his problem was. The Lesson in question was Card 222 which gave ten points for each row of twelve containing at least twelve cats of the same colour. Green’s queries concerned whether the row had to be continuous or whether they could be broken up by treasure, and whether Oshax cats counted. We said they didn’t have to be continuous and Oshax cats counted so long as they were the right colour. As a result, Pine’s green car family continued to grow, now forming long rows, lots of them.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was in the final round that Mulberry turned nasty playing Public Lesson Card 235 which meant anyone who didn’t have seven treasures would lose five points, which inconvenienced Blue quite a bit. When it came to scoring, it turned out that we weren’t quite right with the rule for Card 222—the rows should have been continuous. That might have cost Pine ten or even twenty points, though of course had he known that, he would likely have been able to offset that a little. It wouldn’t have mattered anyhow as finished with ninety points and a huge lead. Over thirty points behind, it was close for second, but Burgundy, who just managed to ensure there were no gaps at the edge of his boat, pipped Blue, by two points.

– Image by boardGOATS

There are a number of really nice things about The Isle of Cats. Firstly the production quality is stellar and there are some really, really nice touches. The cat artwork is fantastic and the fancy screen-printed cat-eeples from the deluxe upgraded version are quite special. Unquestionably, we made a mistake playing with five the first time round—we were slow, with a lot of people spending a lot of time checking whether tiles would fit and that made the game even slower. Mulberry commented that she disliked variable turn order as a mechanism: it is common in lots of games, but tends to encourage a lot of pauses followed by queries about whose turn it is. The are other little things like the fact the purple and brown cards could have been more distinct. Overall, it definitely deserves another chance, but it might be hard to get some of the players from the first time to give it a second try.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the next table, Ivory, Black and Lime, started off with Key Flow. This was particularly sad for Blue to see, because Key Flow is a sort of card game of Keyflower, one of her favourites. That said, Key Flow had been played at our sister group, the Didcot Games Club, just a few days previously, so she consoled herself with the memory of that and concentrated on The Isle of Cats. Although Key Flow has a lot in common with Keyflower, it has a very different feel. Where Keyflower is really an auction game (using meeples as currency), Key Flow is a card drafting game. So, in Key Flow, players start with a handful of cards, simultaneously choose one and place it face down, passing the rest on.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players then simultaneously reveal their card and add it to their village before picking up the hand they’ve just been given, selecting another card and so on. Like Keyflower, the game is played over four seasons, and like Keyflower players receive some of the Winter offerings at the start of the game which they can then use to drive their strategies. The iconography is very similar too, so a player who is familiar with Keyflower generally feels at home with Key Flow. The cards come in three flavours: village buildings, riverside buildings and meeples. Village cards are placed in a player’s village, in a row extending either side of their starting home card. Riverside tiles are placed in a row below, slightly off-set.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meeple cards are used to activate Village cards by placing them above the relevant building. As in Keyflower, buildings provide resources, skill tiles, transport and upgrades. They also provide meeple tokens which can be used to increase the power of meeple cards or activate a player’s own buildings at the end of the round. Arguably the clever part is how the meeple cards work. At the centre of each card there are a number of meeples which dictate the power of the card. A single meeple card can be played on any empty building; a double meeple card can be played on an empty building or one where one other card has already been played.

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If two cards have already been played, a triple meeple card is required to activate it a third and final time. Alternatively, a lower power meeple card can be played with one of the meeple tokens, which upgrade a single meeple card to a triple meeple card. Double meeple cards can also be upgraded, but each building can only be activated a maximum of three times per round. The really clever part is that the meeple cards have arrows on them indicating where they can be played: in the player’s own village, in the neighbouring village to the right, the village to the left, or some combination.

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Black began the game by adding the Key Mine to his village which provided him with iron (wooden, black octagonal prisms). In summer he added the Smelter which added more iron producing capacity (converting skill tiles), but he quickly upgraded this to give gold instead as it is more versatile and can be used instead of any other resource and any left overs are worth a point each at the end of the game. Ivory also had resource providers in the shape of the Workshop which provided him with a wood, an iron and a stone every time it was activated. He then added an Apprentice Hall which generated skill tiles.

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Meanwhile, Lime built a village strong in gold production, with the Gold Mine and Brewer and potentially the Carpenter too if he could upgrade it. To his village, Black added a flock of sheep on his river bank while Ivory added a heard of pigs; Lime was more of a mixed farmer though with a bit of everything. As the game progressed into the scoring rounds, Ivory added a Truffle Orchard which gave him four points for each pig and skill tile pair, allowing him to put all his pigs to good use netting twenty-four points.

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Lime and Black pulled in similar points tallies with their Emporium (four points for each green meeple and gold pair) and Traveller’s Lodge (points for transport and boats) respectively. With similar points for their upgraded buildings as well, it was close and the smaller contributors became really important. Ivory’s Trader which scored him fifteen points for stone and axe skill tiles, while both Black and Lime scored ten points for their Autumn stores (Stone and Timber Yards respectively).

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Perhaps it was the points he got from the meeples (Winter Fair and Craftsmen’s Guild), but there was only two points between first and second in the end. Black finished with a total of seventy-one points, just enough for victory—a couple of points more than Ivory, with Lime not far behind. It had been a hard fought game, and Ivory was impressed how the Scribe, which in Keyflower he felt was always a winner, had little effect. For him, this made the game more interesting, though he had really enjoyed the last time the group played Keyflower with the Farmers expansion, as that had also mixed things up.

– Image by boardGOATS

Given the recent game with the Didcot group it was inevitable that a comparison was going to be made. This time Black won, but he scored fewer points than he had the previous week when he had come second. Perhaps the most marked difference was how much quicker the three player game of Key Flow had been than the six player game a few days earlier. Where the six player game had taken all evening, there was still time for something small, and with Lime taking an early bath, Ivory and Black chose to play a head-to-head of Ticket to Ride: London.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ticket to Ride is a train game with an inexplicable alure, which everyone in the group loves and we’ve found that the small versions of the game, New York and London make excellent fillers. The rules and game play are very similar to the full versions, but the take half the time, and with just two players, that makes it a very short game indeed. On their turn, players take coloured cards or spend them to place their pieces on the map. Points are awarded for completing tickets, but critically, failing to connect two locations marked on a ticket will score negative points. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

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This time, Ivory built a network connecting Brick Land and the Tower of London in the East with Hyde Park in the West, while Black joined Regent’s Park in the North with Waterloo and Elephant & Castle in the South. The crunch point came in the area around Covent Garden, but despite this, both players managed to complete all four of their tickets. This meant it was down to the length of the tickets and the number of pieces placed—Ivory had the edge on both of these. His revenge for the result in Key Flow was completed by a four point bonus for connecting all four in the St. Paul’s district resulting in a ten point victory. With that, Ivory headed home, leaving Back to watch the end of The Isle of Cats.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Games take longer with more players.

12th Movember 2019

The combination of Illness, work and jet-lag meant we were really low on numbers, despite having a new player, Emerald. Blue arrived first followed by Pine and both ordered food. Green arrived shortly after and ordered the mushroom tagliatelle as he was suffering with toothache and he thought it would be nice and soft. Blue’s scampi arrived lightening fast, quickly followed by Green’s tagliatelle, much to Pine’s chagrin. Despite his head-start, Green was still last to finish, partly due to his toothache making him eat slowly, but mostly because he was busy texting. When called out on it, he explained that it was important – he was helping some friends at a quiz.

– Image from google.com

Green denied it, but that didn’t stop everyone from was roundly chastising him for aiding and abetting cheaters. That was until Ivory pointed out that it was strange anyone would choose to ask Green when it would be just as easy to ask “Mr. Google”, and “Mr. Google” would probably be better! Eventually, as Green mopped up the last of his sauce, Blue suggested people started shuffling seats so games could be started. Blue, Pine and Lime had all had a fairly long week and fancied an easy night, and the “Feature Game”, The Voyages of Marco Polo which Green was leading, was always going to be right up Ivory’s street, and it turned out, Emerald’s too. So after a little prompting, the groups sort of formed themselves.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although we’ve played The Voyages of Marco Polo a couple of times before on a Tuesday, the last time was over a year ago. In the game, players recreate the journey from Venice to China undertaken by seventeen year-old Marco Polo, his father and older brother. During their voyage, they travelled through Jerusalem and Mesopotamia and over the “Silk Road” until they reached the court of Kublai Khan in 1275. In the game, each player has a different character and special power. The game is played over five rounds with players rolling their five personal dice and using each one to perform one action per turn with them.

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The actions include: gathering resources, gathering camels, earning money, buying purchase orders and travelling. The game ends with players receiving victory points for arriving in Beijing, fulfilling the most purchase orders, and having visited the cities on the secret city cards that each player gets at the start of the game. With only three people playing the group decided not to use the Agents of Venice, but did use the New Characters mini-expansion. It took quite a while to set up and explain the game as it is one of those where the rules explanation is far heavier than the game itself: after only a round or two it all becomes quite clear how to play. However, the trick is to work out what are the best actions to take and when.

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The main game board is divided into two parts with the upper part showing a map of Marco Polo’s travels from Venice to Beijing. On the routes there are oasis-spaces as short stops and fourteen cities. When a traveller stops at a city, they mark that with a trading post and may use the special action of that city for the rest of the game (these are allocated during setup). The first player reaching a city also gets an additional bonus. Travelling costs a varying amount of camels and money depending on the route taken and whether it is over land or sea.

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The bottom part of the board shows the five main actions, which are triggered by the placing of dice. Each player has five personal dice in their player colour and may purchase one additional black die per turn. The actions are the guts of the game. The first action is purchasing Resources/Camels and the table on the board indicates how many dice must be placed for different numbers of a given resource. Players need Camels to travel, and Gold , Silk and Pepper to fulfil orders. The first player at each Resource gets them for free, with each subsequent player paying as much as the lowest result he placed next to the table. For the next action, Players can instead take one Resource of their choice and two Camels, and again, each player sets the cost for subsequent players.

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The next action is getting money: the first player can take five coins in exchange for any die, but the later players must also pay the dice value for doing so. As an action, Players can also purchase Orders. These are placed on six “double dice” spaces at the beginning of each round. The value of one die unlocks the orders up to that number (shown on the spaces) and allows the player to buy one or two of those orders. The Orders are refreshed and replaced at the beginning of each round. The orders are placed on the player’s individual player board and can be fulfilled at any time as an additional action by returning the resources needed back to the supply. The completed Order cards are then turned face down and placed in the player’s “drawer”, and the player gets victory points, money, camels, another order, etc. as a reward.

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Finally, players can travel. To do this, they place two dice are to “unlock” the distance they want to move on the map. Each traveller starts in Venice and can decide between several possible routes eastward, towards Beijing. Each player also gets two “city cards” with two cities on each of them, which they keep secret. At the end of the game, they get additional victory points depending on how many of these cities they have visited by the end of the game.

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This is one of those games where players want to do lots of things but can’t do everything, need lots of Resources way more than they have, and therefore want to be first to do all the actions, but can’t. Despite the dice, the luck factor is relatively low; high rolls are usually better, but low ones are also usable in many ways. With city cards, Orders and attractive special actions in the cities, players usually have clear primary and secondary targets as well as an overall strategy. At the same time they have the freedom to do what they want.

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The winner is usually the player who makes best use of their character’s special ability, however, so it is this that usually drives strategies. The characters are very different, for example, with one character the player doesn’t roll their dice, instead turning them to the result they need before each placement. With another, the player always gets one of the resources from the supply, whenever another player purchases any resource. As a result of these differing abilities, each player generally follows a totally different path with a very different approach.

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Following the group’s usual policy of the player with the least experience of the game going last, Emerald took that position, but that meant choosing his character first. Fortunately, he only had four to choose from and they did not take much explaining. Emerald chose Johannes Carprini which allowed him to jump between oasis points on the travel map; handy to get to those hard to reach bonuses. Ivory then chose Alton Ord (from the New Characters mini-expansion) which gave him extra cumulative bonuses every time he placed a trading station. This had the potential to become quite lucrative if he could get around the map fast enough. This left Green with a choice of two. He didn’t favour the extra trading posts, so went for Matteo Polo which gave him a new contract and resource at the beginning of every round; clearly the contract strategy was the way to go for him.

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As ever in this (and many) game resources were tight, camels all too rare and players could never get the dice rolls they needed. Emerald quickly got the hang of it and was doing his best to move around the travel map while also keeping an eye on completing contracts. Even with the oasis hop, it still took him a few rounds to get to the far side of the board and the triple action city, but once there, he started using the extra actions to his advantage. Ivory also went travelling and managed to place a number of trading posts and so collect more and more bonuses on the way. The small city bonus card which allows a player to choose any other small city bonus at the beginning of each round was located near to Venice. So this was an early target for Ivory and Emerald who both got there early and used it to broadened their options and give them room for manoeuvre.

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Green hardly travelled at all, and found himself somewhat at a dead-end which was compounded by making a free move in the wrong direction, so he only managed to place two trading posts in total. This wasn’t his game plan anyhow though, and he mostly stuck to the bottom part of the board, hoovering up contracts and hunting down resources to complete them: not bothering with travelling gave him extra dice to do it all with. He also made use of the favours two or three times and by the end of the game had a huge lead and a pile of completed contracts far higher than either of the other two. Ivory, in particular, had a lot of bonus points to come from his travels though.

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Everyone thought it would be a tight game, and indeed it was. When all the points were in, Ivory and Green tied on sixty-seven points with Emerald not far behind. A quick check of the rules for tie breakers gave it to Green thanks to the fact he had two Camels left over. meanwhile, on the next table, while Ivory and Emerald helped set up Marco Polo and Green began his rules explanation, Pine pointed out the long and unpronounceable title of “Weltausstellung 1893” on the German box. So, before long Blue was explaining the rules to World’s Fair 1983.

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This is a fairly simple little game that is now a few years old and flew under the radar a bit at the time. Reviews generally seemed to be complimentary though, referring to it as a bit of a “Hidden Gem”. So, having been on the look out for it at a reasonable price for nearly three years, Blue and Pink had finally picked up a German copy at Essen. The game is a set-collecting dame with an area majority mechanism where players are proposing exhibits for the fair in the five different areas (Fine Arts, Transportation, Manufacturing, Electricity and Agriculture). The game is played on an eye-catching, modular, Ferris-wheel shaped board surrounded by sections for each of the five areas.

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The actions are simple enough, making the decisions that players have to take theprimary focus of the game. On their turn, the active player places a Supporter cube on one of the five coloured areas, taking all the cards in the area. They then place three cards drawn from the top of a deck around the wheel, the first going in the now empty area the player chose, and one going in each of the next two areas round the wheel. There are three types of cards: Exhibit cards associated with each of the five areas, Medway tickets and Influential People. The Medway Tickets are the timer, with the Ferris wheel turning one step each time a Ticket is taken. The round ends after the Ferris wheel has made one full revolution.

– Image from google.com

At the end of the round, the Tickets are cashed in for a dollar each and the player with the most gets a couple of dollars bonus. Each area is also evaluated, and the player with the most supporters in that area gets a monetary reward worth three dollars in the three-player game. In addition the winner is also able to exchange three exhibit cards for that area, for tokens. The player who comes second receives a smaller remuneration and can exchange one card for a token of the same colour/area. The game ends after three rounds, and sets of tokens scored, with larger sets worth increasing numbers of points.

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Perhaps the thing that makes the game is the Influential People cards. These must be played the turn after they are taken, after the player places their influence token, but before they take the cards. If a player has more than one influential person card on their turn they have to play them all at this point too. These allow players to mess with the distribution of Supporter cubes slightly, either by adding an extra one in a given space, or moving one. As a result, these add a thin layer of complexity to the decision space, making it that bit more interesting. Thought processes go something along the lines of, “Placing a Supporter here will give these cards, but this person card means this Supporter can be moved giving the majority in that area, but there’s little point in winning that without any cards of that colour, so perhaps it would be better to try something else…”

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Although the game is not terribly difficult, Blue had only played it once and was a bit flaky with the rules, but it wasn’t long before the game got going. Half-way through the first round, Blue had a pile of tickets, Lime had a pile of Exhibit cards, and Pine had worked through a pile of Influential Person cards. Blue took the Medway Ticket bonus, but Pine turned a lot of his now substantial pile of Exhibit cards into a significant pile of coloured tokens. Blue picked up a few, but Lime took a round to really get the hang of things. The second round when much the same way with Blue and Lime struggling to edge out Pine.

– Image by boardGOATS

The third round was a tight affair with everyone needing certain colours to get full sets of five in order to be even vaguely competitive. The key was having enough cards as well as gaining the majority in the necessary area. As the game drew to a close, Lime decided to go for Fine Arts letting Pine place his Supporter in the Electricity area, take a Medway ticket, get the majority he needed, and end the game as well. In truth, the writing had been on the wall from the start—it was clear this had been a game that had just clicked for Pine and he romped home with eighty-five points leaving Blue and Lime some way behind fighting it out for second.

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As World’s Fair 1983 was coming to an end, The Voyages of Marco Polo was only just beginning and it was becoming clear that it was going to last most of the night, so Pine suggested a game of Ticket to Ride: New York. Like the London version played a few of weeks ago, this is one of the new, smaller versions of the popular route-building game, Ticket to Ride. These are reduced in size and designed be quicker to play although the game play is very similar. The New York version is set in the city, with players placing Taxis instead of train carriages.

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Players also start with two ticket cards (which they must keep one of) and successfully fulfilling these give more points. Similar to the original games, on their turn, the active player can take coloured cards from the market or play cards to place Taxis. There is no end-game bonus for the longest route, most completed tickets or similar, instead, bonus points are awarded for each of the landmarks a player builds a route from.

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Lime started and claimed one of the double track route from The Empire State Building to Gramercy Park. Pine went next and took the other track leaving Blue stymied before she had even taken a turn, specially given the tiny number of taxis each player had to place. Not one to give up, she started a detour, very glad that she had decided to keep only one of her starting tickets. Matched step for step by Pine, she built a route from The Empire State Building to Brooklyn via Chelsea. Pine on the other hand was building what he later referred to as the “Beckham” route going from Chelsea to Brooklyn.

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Blue was the first to pick up tickets and, after checking she had enough Taxis, decided to gamble, keeping both, as she had only kept the one from her starting pair. Lime quickly followed and also kept his, as did Pine, who then drew another second set. Lime claimed two tracks going from Central Park to Gramarcy Park, then suddenly looked crest-fallen having just realised he didn’t have enough Taxis to do what he wanted to. It wouldn’t have mattered anyhow, as Blue promptly triggered the end of the game. That only left the scoring.

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These little versions of Ticket to Ride are always really tight affairs where things can go horribly wrong. In this case, Blue scored most for claiming routes. Pine would have scored most for tickets except he’d just failed to complete an eight point ticket from The United Nations Building to Wall Street giving him a brutal sixteen point swing. Lime discovered that he’d not made the mistake he’d thought he had, as he’d actually gone from Midtown to Central Park by the long route, via Gramarcy Park.

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In the end, the opening play from Lime and Pine taking the two sides of the single Taxi double route from The Empire State Building to Gramercy Park might have been critical. In forcing Blue to take a detour, she had been able to visit almost all of the eight tourist destinations giving her a very valuable seven points. This coupled with completing all three of her tickets (including two long ones) and placing all fifteen of her Taxis gave her a final score of forty-four, five more than Lime in second.

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By this time, The Voyages of Marco Polo were progressing, but it was clear it wasn’t going to finish soon. With Pine flagging after his trip up to Edinburgh, and Blue and Lime fending off colds, Blue suggested Coloretto as a light game that didn’t take too long or need a lot of thought. Although it’s been played a lot within the group, it was new to Lime, so Blue gave him a run-down of the rules while Pine shuffled. The game is really simple: on their turn, the active player either takes a coloured chameleon card and places it on one of the trucks, or takes a truck.

– Imageby boardGOATS

Each truck has a maximum of three chameleons, and there is one truck per player. Once a player has taken a truck, they are out of the game until everyone has taken a truck and the next round starts. At the end of the game (when the deck is mostly depleted and the end of game card is drawn), players score sets of chameleons. The three largest sets are scored positively and everything else gives negative points. The clever part is the triangular number sequence (one point for the first card, three points for two cards, six points for three cards etc.), which means that one more card in a large group is worth a lot more than a singleton or the second card in a pair.

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Lime picked it up quickly, but not quite quickly enough given that Blue and Pine had played the game many times before. Served two wild Joker cards by Pine, Blue was able to put together two sets of six, giving her a total score of forty-eight, a healthy advantage over the other two. Lime had enjoyed playing though, and suggested a second game as it would save getting something else out. With lethargy playing its part, Pine and Blue were very happy to give it another shot. This time, Lime was quicker out of the blocks this time, as Blue started to go off the boil. He wasn’t quite quick enough though, and Pine took the second game with forty-four points, seven ahead of Lime.

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Lime doesn’t give up easily, however. As The Voyages of Marco Polo was finally coming to an end, and Coloretto is quite quick, Lime suggested a third game. This time, Lime started very strongly with obvious determination. Ultimately Lime made a killing picking up a massive fifty-three points, more than ten points clear of Blue in second.

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Learning Outcome: You can never have too many camels.

3rd September 2019

There were a lot of people feeding and food was a little delayed, so we didn’t start until gone 8pm. At this point, people were keen to chat and almost everyone seemed interested in giving the “Feature Game”, Lords of Vegas, a go. Although it involves dice, it is totally different to our old favourite, Las Vegas, and in fact, very different to pretty much anything else we have played too. Although the game is very “rules-light”, it is still a bit of a “brain-burner” with the potential for inducing “analysis paralysis”.

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The idea of the game is that players are developers in Las Vegas in 1941. The board depicts Highway 91, what will become known as “The Strip”, and the blocks either side, each divided into plots. Players acquire these plots, build casinos, improve their casinos, take-over other casinos, and when desperate, gamble. At the start of their turn, the active player turns over a card which indicates one plot and one of the five casinos. The active player claims the plot by placing a clear plastic counter in their colour on it and then everyone receives income: every plot owner gets $1,000,000 per plot, and then every casino that matches the card pays out cash (in our case, in poker chips) and points.

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After everyone has received their income, the active player can do as many actions as they like, the only limit is what they can afford. The first action is build on a plot they own: they pay the amount of money listed on the board, chose a coloured casino tile and place it on the board together with a die of their colour showing the face depicted on the board. The number shown is important for many reasons, but initially it indicates the income that the player will get when that casino pays out: one million dollars per pip shown. The casino colour chosen can be the same as casino adjacent casinos, or different, which is a critical decision. If it is the same, the two (or more) casinos merge and the owner of the die with the highest face value becomes The Boss of that casino.

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The Boss gets victory points when that casino colour pays out, receiving points equal to the total number of plots the casino occupies. Since The Boss controls the casino, their are things they can do that others cannot. For example, they can choose to “remodel” the casino, changing the colour of all the tiles. There is a cost, of course, five million dollars per space, but it can be worth it to force mergers giving more points. The Boss can also “sprawl” their casino which means expand into neighbouring, unoccupied plots. This is both costly and risky, but can be worth it to give a short term benefit or to merge casinos. It is costly because the cost to build is twice the usual fee, and it is risky, because if the card that shows that plot is drawn later in the game, the player who draws the card replaces the die with one of their own.

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Merging casinos are a vital part of the game because unusually, increments in the score track progressively increase. So, at the bottom, the steps increase by a single point, but after eight, each step is two points, and after twenty the steps increase to three. Since the points are added casino by casino (rather than summing them and adding them all at the same time), it is critical to match casino size to the current increment. For example, two casinos of size “three” would add six points if the player were below eight points or above twenty. However, if they were between eight and twenty, the same casinos would only be worth two each as the remainder would be lost as each casino is added.

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Thus, with the merging and taking over, the game is highly strategic with a sprinkle of luck from the card draw. Perhaps the most important part of Lords of Vegas though are the gambling aspects. There are two: firstly, once per turn, the active player can gamble at any casino by rolling two dice. The odds are slightly in favour of The House, but it can be a good source of cash, as well as providing the opportunity to damage an opponent, as The Boss of that casino provides the pay out (though they can lay this off with the bank). More importantly, any player can choose to “Reorganise” any casino they have a stake in, by paying a million dollars per pip to re-roll all the dice in that casino with the chance of control changing hands.

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So the game is not especially difficult to understand, but small changes can have a large impact. As well as the mix of strategy, luck and gambling, there are a number of little things that really make the game sing. For example, almost anything can be traded for almost anything else at any time, which enables players at the back to gang up on a run-away leader and neutralise the effect of overtly bad (or good) draws and dice rolls. The quick description had most people interested in playing it, but Burgundy (who had played before) felt that it would be very chaotic with five, so in the end, Pine, Black, Red, Lime and Ivory left Blue, Burgundy, Mulberry and Purple to their visit to Nevada.

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The game started very slowly, with incomes small and investment correspondingly small. Blue tried to increase her income by building her number of plots. That probably wasn’t a good move, though she was able to build some cash and then invest heavily a couple of turns later. Despite the lack of rules complexity, the groups still managed to make a mess of it: when Reorganising, each die can only be rolled once per turn. It was perhaps a good thing the messed this up though as otherwise Purple, Blue and Mulberry would have been deprived the chance of seeing Burgundy attempt to Reorganise a single two and re-roll a two three times. Hilarity ensued when, a few turns later the casino had merged to form two-plot casino now with a two and a three and Burgundy chose to try Reorganising again, this time getting a two and a three and then a double three before finally settling for a one and a four!

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As the game progressed, the casinos merged and grew, with one particularly large “Sphynx Casino”, occupying five plots. Blue, Burgundy and Mulberry all had an interest and re-rolled the five dice many, many times during the game, but despite his lack of success elsewhere, Burgundy mostly retained control. The other side of Flamingo Road, Mulberry built a lovely casino, mostly uncontested. The “Vega Casino” cards came out a lot at the start and since some cards are removed at random, it didn’t look a good gamble. As a result, only Purple took the risk of investing and made a killing with her “Big Purple Casino” when the group kept drawing the Vega cards ending up with all nine putting in an appearance.

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Mulberry and Burgundy stole a slight early march, but when the steps in the scoring track increased it became clear that this was an illusion and it was in fact a very close game as the leader’s jersey kept changing hands. The balance of power was held by whoever was in charge of the Big Sphinx Casino, and Blue and Mulberry ganged up on Burgundy to try to break his hold on it. First Blue rolled the dice and gave control to Mulberry only for Burgundy to wrest if from her and Mulberry to then give control to Blue. In what turned out to be the final turn of the game, Blue gambled in Purple’s Big Green Vega Casino, won $10,000,000 and used it to remodel her small Sphinx Casinos and sprawl the Big Sphinx Casino into one extra space.

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This turned out to be critical, because the game ends when the “End of Game” card is drawn and all the casinos on the strip score for one final time. That final sprawl gave an extra three points for the Big Sphinx which was just enough to cross the boundary from twenty-nine to thirty-two, breaking what would otherwise have been a three way tie. Money is the tie-breaker, which meant that Burgundy just sneaked into second place $7,000,000 ahead of Purple, who would have been $20,000,000 better off if Blue had not won when she bet in her casino.

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All in all, it had been a lot of fun and everyone was agreed that they’d like to play it again, and that they’d play it differently next time. It had been a really slow burner though and while the foursome had been gambling property in Vegas, the others had had time to play two games and get up to date with the Brexit riots and discuss all the possible outcomes—some people even had time to check out the proxy voting and postal vote options and evaluate both options!

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The group had started the evening with Ticket to Ride, the original USA version, rather than the more usual Europe version or the relatively new, New York edition, which had also been also an option. It is relatively rare that the USA edition gets played because it can be quite unforgiving, this time though, everyone was quite experienced, and knew what they were letting themselves in for. The game rules are much the same as for every other version of Ticket to Ride: on their turn players can take any two two cards from the face up market or blind from the draw deck; place some of their plastic trains to score points paying for them with appropriately coloured cards, or draw more ticket cards which score points at the end of the game if completed.

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There are no tunnels, ferries or stations in the original USA version, and Locomotive cards can be used as wild under any circumstances, but only one face up Locomotive card can be drawn per turn. It was a very tight game with everyone obstructing each other a bit, though Red got the worst of it. Green prioritised trying to get the ten point bonus for the longest continuous set of trains, while Black was concentrated on completing his tickets from Los Angeles to Miami and Winnipeg to Boston. It was very clear it was going to be a close, high scoring game where completed tickets were going to be essential to the final scores.

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Pine completed his first two tickets and started on his third route, from Montreal to Vancouver. As the game came to a finish, everyone put the finishing touches to their plans: Green added a couple of trains to his longest route, and Pine just managed to complete his third route before the game ended. As players totalled up their extras, it turned out that Green had just managed to take the longest route bonus by a single carriage, and red had been Red totally stymied—someone was always likely get stuffed in a five player game that was so very, very close. In fact, in the final accounting there was just nine points between first and fourth place. Black topped the podium with a hundred and four points, a single point ahead of Green with Pine a few points behind him.

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There was a bit of debate as to what to play next, but as Ivory had never played it before, the group eventually settled on Carcassonne, with the River expansion. This is one of the most popular “gateway” game so it was quite remarkable that Ivory had managed to avoid it for so long. The rules of the game are really simple, though they generate a surprising amount of depth, especially when played with two. With five, there is less control, but it can still be a lot of fun. On their turn, the active player draws a tile from one of the available stacks and adds it to the central map, making sure that any features on the edge of the map are preserved. The active player may then place one of their Meeples on the tile they’ve just added to the tableau.

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The Meeple is placed on a feature – a Road, a City, a Monastery or Farm. The key rule, however, is that a Meeple cannot be placed on a feature that already has a Meeple on it. So if the tile is added in a way that means it extends an occupied pre-existing City for example, the player cannot place his Meeple on that City, though if it were unoccupied it would be fair game. Once the player has finished placing their tile and Meeple, any features that were completed are scored and the associated Meeples returned to their owner. When complete, Cities score one point per tile they occupy, double for every tile with a blue and white shield on it; Roads also score one point for every tile that contributes to them.

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Monasteries are rather different and when completely surrounded by eight tiles, score nine points. Farms are a little different, only scoring at the end of the game, giving three points for every city it supplies. These are usually a crucial source of points and the player who controls the biggest Farm usually wins. Again, a Meeple cannot be added to a farm if there is already a Meeple occupying it, so this aspect of the game is all about joining Farms together and sharing or ideally, taking control of other people’s Farms. Adding the River expansion helps to reduce the dominance of Farming by helping to prevent one single super-Farm forming, though Farms are still a very important part of the game and timing is crucial.

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This time, the game was played very quickly, especially given who was playing. As a result, poor Ivory, on his first experience, had no idea what was going and really struggled to follow some of the more subtle parts of the game. The game began as the Battle of the Cities, with Red and Ivory merging their Cities to increase their points haul,, and Black and Green sharing another City to do the same. At the end, however, it all came down to eating and praying, i.e. Farms and Monasteries, in what was also a very close game. Again, there was just one point between first and second and again the top two places were held by Black and Green, with Black once again pipping Green to the win. This time it was Red who took a very close third, just three points behind. Black’s comment as Ivory left, was that the game had been “Quite vicious,” and as the group waited for Lords of Vegas to finish and caught up on the votes in the House of Commons, that would be an appropriate description for the happenings in Parliament too.

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Learning Outcome: It doesn’t take many rules to make a really good game, just the right rules.

25th June 2019

It was lovely to see Burgundy back after his long lay-off, and the staff at The Jockey were thrilled to provide him with his ham, egg and chips once more. While people finished eating there was a bit of chit chat, which extended into lots and lots of chit chat after people had finished eating. Green explained that this was likely his last visit until September, while Lime commented that he had enjoyed Villagers so much last time that he’d bought a copy for himself. He hadn’t realised that it had only just been released, and this led into a discussion about KickStarter and why people might be prepared to support a project months, possibly years in advance of its arrival. This encouraged Ivory to show off his latest acquisition, Tiny Epic Mechs, a cool little game with meeples that can hold weapons or wear mech suits, and came with some KickStarter exclusive content.

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Eventually, after several attempts to get people playing games, Blue made an executive decision. She split the group into a three and a four, with the four playing the “Feature Game”, Hook! and left the remaining three to sort themselves out. Hook! is a very, very silly game where players are trying to place square cards over other cards, orienting them so that the holes pick out certain features and not others. The game is played simultaneously, with each player first drawing a “target” card, taking a look at it and placing it in the middle. Each player then chooses one of their three “aim” cards, each with a different arrangement of three holes, and places it over one of the target cards.

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Cat-like, each player starts with nine lives, and, for every picture of their character that someone picks out with their aim card, they lose a life. If they manage to hide behind a barrel or a crate, that protects them from cannon fire, but not from a grenade, which destroys all barrels and crates and causes everyone to lose a life. Catching a “black pirate” in their sights allows the player to choose which of their opponents suffers. Rum, on the other hand, helps to deaden the pain and restores a life, even bringing a pirate back from the brink of death if they lose their last life, but manage to take a swig of grog in the same round. There are two aims to the game: firstly, a player needs to survive till the end, and secondly finish with the most parrots—any target card where a parrot was visible through the sights is kept and the parrots added up at the end of the game.

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The pirates come in three colours, red, blue and yellow, and two types (“sailors” and “captains”), with the colour distinction being much, much more obvious than the difference between sailors. Thus, with the stress induced by the time pressure of the game, the potential for picking out a captain instead of a sailor is much larger than picking red instead of yellow for example. This means that with more than three players, it is better to play with pairs of colours and team play is recommended. Therefore, Blue and Lime played as one team, and Mulberry and Pine played as the other. Pine commented, “I thought we didn’t do cooperative games,” which led to a discussion of what these were and the promise that one would be the “Feature Game” next time (probably Forbidden Island or maybe Flash Point: Fire Rescue).

– Image by BGG contributor aldoojeda

As the group played the first few rounds of Hook!, it quickly became apparent that Blue was more of a hazard to herself and her team-mate than the opposition, dropping several cannon balls on her foot and accidentally catching Lime a couple of times too. Lime, it turned out, was quite good at catching parrots, while Mulberry and Pine had a bit of a thing for making Mojitos. As it was the game’s first outing, it took a bit to get the hang of game play. The idea that everyone looks at their card first and then plays meant that everyone ended up playing on their own cards. We tried to fix this with a simultaneous count of three: “Draw, One, Two, Three, Place!” but while that was more successful, it wasn’t perfect.

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Playing again, we’d probably just skip the “preview target cards” phase and simultaneously place them in the middle without looking. The vagaries of the game didn’t stop us having a ball though, as everyone attacked everyone in mad chaos. Then Blue suddenly looked in real danger as her number of lives tumbled (mostly due to self-inflicted wounds). Realising that she was at serious risk of an unscheduled visit to Davy Crockett and that Parrots aren’t known for hanging around corpses, she prioritised staying alive over parrots. Before long, Pine was in a similarly precarious state, and he was not so lucky as Lime unceremoniously stabbed him in the back and dumped his body overboard. As Pine’s parrots flew away, that left Mulberry with a titanic battle, the more-so as she was now also getting low on lives.

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Although both Blue and Mulberry survived till the end, the winner was undoubtedly Lime who not only had more lives left than anyone else, but also had almost as many parrots as the other two put together, giving his team glorious victory. With all the fight taken out of her and citing jet-lag, Mulberry was making noises about finding her bed, but Blue twisted her arm a little and she agreed to give Ticket to Ride: London a go before she left. This is a cut-down version of the Spiel des Jahres winning, train game, Ticket to Ride. This game has spawned a whole family of games and expansions, including maps of Europe, Asia, India and Africa, but the most recent are the two city specials, New York and London.

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The game is very simple: on their turn, players can do one of three things, draw coloured travel cards, spend travel cards to place pieces on the board, or pick up tickets. Points are scored for placing pieces (usually scored during the game) and for connecting the two places shown on the ticket cards (scored at the end of the game). Any unfulfilled tickets score negative points. Each of the variants has some other little feature, for example, Pennsylvania includes a stocks and shares element, Märklin includes passengers and Nederland includes bridge tolls that players have to pay. The new city titles, have fewer trains (less than half), players draw two tickets instead of three, and, in the case of London, bonus points for connecting all the places in a district.

Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 4 – Nederland

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Only Blue had played this new version of the game before, but Pine had played other versions many times and Lime had also played one of them before, though it was a while ago and he wasn’t sure which it was. The London game is really cute though and has a lot of UK references. For example, for those of a certain vintage the box features John Steed and Mrs Peel, and the travel cards include yellow submarines and black cabs. Perhaps the best though are the pieces where trains have been replaced with really high quality miniature Routemaster buses. As ever, there have been lots of online criticisms, but we just liked spotting the obvious references and trying to guess what the orange car was meant to be (a Lamborghini Miura?).

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Pine went first and started quickly by placing a couple of Routemasters. Blue, Mulberry and Lime were a bit slower, building up their collection of cards. With some versions of Ticket to Ride, the game is all about planning routes, gathering the necessary cards and then playing all these cards in quick succession so others don’t have a chance to block. In other versions, this strategy doesn’t work so well as the key parts of the network are taken early in the game. The shorter games, especially those with short routes tend to fall more into the latter camp, so Mulberry looked to be playing a dangerous game as she fell behind with the number of pieces she’d placed and amassed a huge pile of cards.

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Pine, always one to play this game close to the wire, was the first to chance it with some tickets, drawing two and keeping one. Then, he drew another two and kept one. Lime and Mulberry were still working on their existing routes, but Blue decided to follow Pine’s example and drew two tickets, but kept both. As Pine, pushed his luck once more, it turned out he’d pushed it too far this time, drawing two tickets that were almost impossible to complete. Blue learning from Pine’s mistake (rather like last time she had played Ticket to Ride with Pine), decided not to draw any more tickets and instead, brought the game to a swift end by placing all but one of her remaining Routemasters to connect Piccadilly Circus to Baker Street.

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Checking the scores proved that most people had managed to more or less keep on top of their scoring during the game and it was just tickets and district bonuses. Inevitably, the bonuses were minimal, so as is common in this game, it was all about tickets. Lime and Mulberry had both completed their tickets, so the question was whether drawing more had been a good bet for Blue and Pine. Pine had more than Blue, but unfortunately, he’d failed to complete the last one, leaving Blue some way in front with forty-one points. In the battle for second place, Pine had come off best demonstrating that drawing more tickets can be a good move, but only if you can complete them.

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Meanwhile, on the next table, the trio of Burgundy, Green and Ivory had decided to give Endeavor: Age of Sail another outing. Perhaps it was because Green wanted revenge for last time, or maybe Burgundy had missed out, or possibly it was just because Green wanted to play the game again while considering whether or not to commit to getting the new Age of Expansion buildings, but whatever the reason, out it came for the second time on the bounce. The game is a simple game of exploration in the age of Captain Cook, played over eight rounds. Players first build, then populate and remove workers from their buildings, all according to how far they have progressed along the associated technology track.

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The guts of the game are the actions, however, which allow players to colonise cities on the central map board, engage in shipping, attack occupied cities, plunder and become slave masters. Last time, it was the “Feature Game”, specifically including the Exploits expansion. The really change the game, giving players a different aspect to work on. This time Exploits were included again, though different ones to last time: “The Sun Never Sets”, “Globalization”, and “Underground Railroad”. Between them they covered most of the continents, requiring India & the Caribbean; the Far East & the Caribbean, and Africa & North America to be opened (respectively) for the three Exploits to take effect.

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As before, Ivory started building a robust network of connected cities while Green once again used tried to use the Exploits as a target. In contrast, Burgundy largely ignored the Exploits and played a traditional game concentrating on building up his technology tracks giving him a strong foundation from which to build in the colonies. Playing with the new three-player map meant that all regions were opened up by the end of the game, though it was a bit late for Green to capitalise on the Exploits as he’d hoped. Worse, Ivory’s city network meant he was able to sneak a hat-full of points from the “Sun Never Sets” and “Globalization” Exploits as well.

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Ivory and Burgundy managed to build one of the Charter Company buildings from the mini expansion and, like Blue last time, both ended up with too many cards and had to choose what to cull. This problem was exacerbated by the number of Governor cards they picked up. As the game drew to a close, the last of the continents were opened up activating the final Exploit, but it was too late for anyone to occupy any of the stations on the Underground Railroad. With the last round coming to an end, all that was left to count up the points. Although it wasn’t actually a tie like last time, it was still a very close game. This time, honours went to Burgundy who finished with seventy points, just three more than Ivory who, in turn, was three ahead of Green.

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As Endeavor was just coming to an end, so Blue, Pine and Lime looked round for something quick to play. Ivory excitedly suggested that when they were finished everyone could play Bohnanza, but Pine vetoed that and in the meantime, Blue’s beady eye moved from Biblios to settle instead on No Thanks!. This is an old favourite, but one that Lime had not been introduced to yet. As a really quick game, both to teach and play, this was ideal. Everyone starts with eleven red chips, and the first player turns over the top card in the deck (which runs from three to thirty-five). They can then either take the card or pay one chip to pass the problem on to the next player who then has the same choice.

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The clever part is the scoring—the winner is the player with the lowest total face value once the deck has been exhausted (offset by any remaining chips). There is a catch though, if a player has continuous sequence of cards (e.g. seven, eight, nine, ten), they only count the first card (i.e. they score seven not thirty-four). The real gamble comes because some of the cards are removed from the pile at the start of the game. Lime started by collecting lots and lots chips, while Blue helped by pointing out some of the things to look out for. Although having chips is a must, and having most chips gives control of the game, once one player runs out, that control is largely lost. This is because any player with no chips is forced to take whatever comes along. Lime finished with a massive ninety points with Pine some way behind, with Blue cruising to victory with forty-one.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although Endeavor was now finished, they were still packing up, Lime was keen to give it another go while Pine insisted he wasn’t coached this time, so the trio squeezed in another quick round. Lime tried the same trick, and hoarded lots of chips, again putting Pine under a lot of pressure as he ran out of chips. He managed to keep his total down though by making a very fortuitous run, and ended with two points less than Lime. This time, Blue concentrated more on her own game and was able to just hold on to enough chips to see out the deck, while avoiding picking up too many cards, giving her a second victory. It was much closer in the battle for second place though, with Pine taking it by just two points.

– Image by boardGOATS

With Endeavor finally over and packed away, Ivory (perhaps more boisterous than usual as it was exactly six months to Christmas), once again suggested Bohnanza. Pine once again vetoed it, this time even more grumpily following the suggestion that we should all sing some festive hits to get us in the mood. Blue diplomatically suggested 6 Nimmt! as an alternative as everyone loves it and Lime had not yet played that either. 6 Nimmt! is a great game that gives players the illusion of control right up until the point when it all goes horribly wrong. The idea is that everyone has a hand of cards and simultaneously chooses one to play.

– Image by boardGOATS

Starting with the card with the lowest face value, these cards are added to one of four rows, specifically the row with the highest value that is lower than the card played. When a sixth card is added to the row, the five cards already on the table are taken and the new card restarts the row. As well as a face value, each card has a number of Bulls’ Heads, most only one, but some as high as seven. At the end of the game, the player with the fewest “nimmts” is the winner, with a special “wooden spoon” shout-out for the person whose plans went most awry landing them with a huge pile of bull. As a group we usually play in two rounds, each with approximately half the deck (numbered one to a hundred and four).

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue top-scored in the first round, with twenty-four nimmts, but everyone else had a far more respectable total and Green led the way with just two. This is a game where everything can fall apart spectacularly in the second round, so there was everything to play for. The second time round time, Lime beat Blue’s score from the first round taking twenty-five nimmts, giving him a total of thirty-two. This was nothing compared to Pine though, who took thirty-five in the second round alone, giving him a a sizeable forty-eight. Blue made a clear round, but for her the damage had already been done, so the honours fell to Green who was consistency itself, taking just three in the second round giving a total of five – the only one to finish in single figures. Lime was keen to play again, but as others were leaving, it was time to pack up. There was still time for a long gossip though before we sadly said goodbye to Green after what was likely to be his last meeting until September.

– Image by boardGOATS

Leaning Outcome: You don’t have to play a game correctly to have fun.