Tag Archives: Ticket to Ride

6th August 2024

Blue and Pink were just finishing their supper when Pine arrived, soon followed by the rest of the posse. Despite missing Ivory, Teal and Cobalt, we still made it into double figures and everyone was particularly pleased to welcome back Green who has been missing in action for most of the year. Jade had declared an interest in giving the France map for Ticket to Ride a go. Ticket to Ride is always popular, so he quickly gathered Sapphire, Pine, Lime and Pink to make an enthusiastic group of five. He explained the rules differences, to comments of, “Lizen very carefully, I shall say zis only once!”

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

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Ticket to Ride is well known in the group and the basic rules needed no explanation (take cards from the market, or use them to claim routes while trying to complete Tickets). All the maps have their own little unique tweak to the rules. In the case of the France map, most of the tracks on the board start “uncoloured”. Whenever anyone draws cards, they take a colored tile that’s two to five train cars long, and place it onto an uncoloured track bed. After that, any player can claim that route in the usual way (by paying the appropriately coloured cards from their hand).

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Although anyone can claim a route “coloured” by another player, this time, in practice, most people didn’t build on tracks placed by others. This was partly because messing with someone else’s plans is usually at the expense of your own, but also because of the “mutually assured destruction” effect—that is to say, interfering with someone else is likely to encourage them to do the same in return. So on the one occasion when Pine DID “steal” a route that Sapphire had set up, everyone (especially Sapphire) was really shocked! Pine and Sapphire both picked up tickets in the very closing stages of the game and both got very lucky with the tickets matching the routes they had already built.

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The game was quite close and relatively high scoring, with all five finishing in a twenty point range, but that was before bonuses. With the France map, there are two bonuses: ten points for the longest continuous route and fifteen points for the player with the most completed tickets. With seven, Pine had the most tickets and leap-frogged Jade and Pink (who was playing with his pink “Cancer Awareness” train set), into third place. That left Lime and Sapphire, but with Sapphire taking the longest route bonus, he finished with a hundred and twenty-nine points, extending his lead over Lime to fifteen points to give him a comfortable victory. It had been a really enjoyable game, however, so much so that Jade and Sapphire added it the France map to their wish list.

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At the other end of the table, that left Blue, Plum, Green, Byzantium, Purple and Black. Nobody seemed keen to play the “Feature Game” (which was to be Montmartre), partly because that would have required splitting into two groups. Instead, inspired by the Olympics, the group opted for the Heptathlon variant of Reiner Knizia’s Decathlon. Decathlon is a print-and-play game consisting of a series of ten different, mostly push-your-luck, dice games loosely themed around the ten sports featuring in the Olympic event. The Heptathlon Variant is slightly shorter and is based on the women’s equivalent.

Reiner Knizia's Decathlon (Heptathlon Variant)

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Normally both variations are played with a maximum of four, but this time, the group played the “Championship Variant” where players play together and the winner of an event scores three points, the runner up gets two points and the person placing third gets one point. The rules say that tied players get the better rank, but the group used count-back to break ties in the first instance. Blue had brought an enormous pile of printouts and Las Vegas, from which the group got the dice, and started, slightly tentatively with the 100 m Hurdles. In this game, players have two sets of three dice and throw one until they are happy then throw the other with a total of seven tries. The catch is that each “one” that is re-rolled scores minus one.

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Green went first and achieved a total of twenty-three. By the time he had finished though, everyone had got bored watching someone else roll dice and had got on with their own. It was then that the group realised that, as the 100 m Hurdles was a race, rolling simultaneously was more in keeping with the theme. Blue crossed the line first (with twenty eight) followed by Byzantium and then Green. And it was on to the High Jump, a much simpler game where players rolled five dice together to achieve an ever increasing total (with three attempts at each height). Purple was the first out, failing to achieve eighteen, followed by Blue at the next height.

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The “springiest” was Plum, who sailed over twenty-two, but failed at twenty-four. She actually tied with Green, but beat him on count-back, with Byzantium taking third. Next was the Shot Put, where players roll eight dice, one at a time, with a one being a fault. Players can stick whenever the like, but because of a rules malfunction, the group only played with a maximum of six dice. The best score after three attempts was again Plum with Black in second and Blue in third. From here the games got a bit more complex, starting with the 200 m Sprint, which was played with eight dice rolled in a group of four dice, followed by two rolls of two. Players have a total of eight throws and sixes count negatively.

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Plum tripped over her own feet (or maybe Byzantium tied her laces together), but Green demonstrated a remarkable turn of speed to cross the line first, followed by Blue and then Purple. More than half-way through, it was a three-way tie between Blue, Green and Plum and others not far behind. So, the second day started with the Long Jump, a five dice game played in two parts. First there was the run-up, which dictates how many dice the player gets to use for the actual jump. For the run-up, players roll all five, freeze at least one and roll the rest, but if the total exceeds eight, it is a foot-fault. Then, for the jump itself, players use the frozen dice and roll all of them, again freezing at least one per throw.

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The best total after three attempted jumps was Byzantium’s twenty-seven. Green’s turn of speed obviously helped him as he came second while Blue and Plum tied for third, but Plum took the honours thanks to her second longest jump. Staying in the field, the next and penultimate event was the Javelin. This six dice game involved players freezing at least one die per turn, but this time only odd dice could be kept. Green’s first throw threatened to skewer one of the stewards, and things didn’t get much better from there. Black faulted on his first throw, but was consistent with his second and third taking third with twenty-two.

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First and second went to Purple and Byzantium (respectively), with both failing to improve on an excellent first attempt. So, going into the final event, the 800 m Race, most people were going for Gold, while everyone was in with a chance of a medal. This race was an eight dice game with players rolling two dice, then two dice and then the four remaining dice one at a time. Players have a total of eleven rolls (i.e. just five re-rolls) and the player with the highest total wins, but with the catch that sixes count negatively. It was a tight race, but Blue crossed the line first which put her in gold medal position, just until Green crossed the line in second and overtook her. Purple took third, but for her it was too little, too late.

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So, stood on top of the final podium with his gold medal round his neck, Blue with silver and Byzantium who took bronze just ahead of Plum and then Purple, stood either side. It had been a lot of fun though, and as people often say, it is the journey that counts. The games have a bit of a feel of Ganz Schön Clever/Doppelt So Clever/Clever Hoch Drei, but sort of stripped back to their raw essence. The individual events were quite simple and with a sheet each, players could keep their own score and recheck the rules as required. The questions, “Do I stick or keep going, what have other people done, and do I need to gamble to win?” in a large group add interest, and everyone enjoyed it so much that there was no difficulty getting people to take home the left-over sheets.

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From there, the group of six split into two groups of three and everyone moved from athletics themed games to Paris themed games. With the best will in the world, there wasn’t time to play Paris, so Blue promised to bring it again another time, and they opted instead to stick with “Roll and Write” type games in the form of Next Station: Paris. This is the latest variant on Next Station: London, a simple little route planning game with a really clever twist. The idea is that each station has one of five symbols; a card is turned over depicting one of these symbols and players must extend their route by connecting one end to a station with this symbol without crossing an existing track and following the grid shown on the map.

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At the end of each round, players score for the number of Districts visited multiplied by the number of Stations in the most visited District. At the end of the round players get bonus points for Interchange Stations (where two or more lines meet). However, like the Ticket to Ride maps, each each city comes with a slight variation to the rules as well as a different arrangement of stations. In London, players score points for crossing the Thames and for the total number of Visitor Attractions visited during the game. In Paris, these are replaced with scores for visiting Parisian Monuments at the end of each round and using the level crossings marked on the map.

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The clever part of the game is the fact it is played over four rounds, but each round is played with a different coloured pencil with players swapping pencils between rounds. This means that while everyone gets the same cards in the same order, they start in different places so are forced to do different things (unlike for example, NMBR 9, where players often play the first few rounds the same). The Paris version is supposed to be easier than the London variant, but as nobody had played it before, everyone struggled at the start. The trick though, is, for each line, players need to try to get the same number of Districts as Stations in the most visited District.

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This is similar to the mechanism in Orléans, where players receive victory points equal to their position on the Development Track multiplied by the number of Trading Stations they have on the map plus the number of Citizen Tiles they have collected. In both cases, players want these numbers to be as large as possible to give the biggest total. It is more important that both are significant, however, rather than having one large and one small. For example, a two times three gives more than one times four, thus it is important to concentrate on both parts equally and not neglect either one of them.

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Although nobody had played a “Next Station” game before, Blue explained the rules and had got her head round this element of the scoring, where it took the others a little time to get to grips with it. The game suited Plum’s puzzle brain and she liked trying to see where she might get to the level crossings and so on. By the third line, both she and Byzantium were beginning to get the hang of thing (or perhaps the cards just came out better) and then for the final round everyone found their space was more restricted. It was very close, but Blue’s consistency throughout just gave her the edge and victory by a mere five points.

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Meanwhile, Green, Black and Purple opted for a quick game of the Paris version of Ticket to Ride. This is the newest of the smaller, city versions of the game, and one that had not been played within the group hitherto. In general, these play exactly the same way as the bigger ones, but have fewer pieces and shorter tracks (so play a lot quicker) and have a little rules tweak to keep people interested. There had been a little bit of chat about it as people arrived and Blue, who had only read the rules was quite scathing about the new rule which felt very bolted on, and as there are now several of these little games, there were comments about the sound of barrels being scraped.

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The new rule is that when players claim a red, white, or blue track, they get a card, when they get all three colours they get four “Tricolore” bonus points—this didn’t feel terribly imaginative. After the game, however, Green commented that it was much better than it sounded. After he had completed his starting Tickets, he realised they only gave low points, so rather than taking more, he opted to go for Tricolore bonus points instead as the red, white and blue Routes are all short making them easy to get (one, two and one carriage long respectively). Simpler to achieve than extra Tickets they give an extra four points, though Green only got a total of two Tricolores.

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Black and Purple only took one Tricolore each as they were using it as a bonus rather than a target, so missed out on a few opportunities by laying trains on a colour they already had a card for. In the dying moments of the game, Purple took Tickets—of course she had no way of knowing that Green was about to trigger the final round, but even Black commented that it was a brave move. And Green ended the game on his very next turn, leaving poor Purple with a couple of uncompleted Tickets. That extra four point Tricolore bonus Green had taken made all the difference in the final scoring as that was the margin of his victory over Black.

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As Green went home (along with Jade, Sapphire, Byzantium and Plum), they passed the copy of Ticket to Ride: Paris along the table to Lime, Pine and Pink who also fancied giving it a go. They concurred that the Tricolore Bonus was much better in practice than it sounded. This game was also quite tight with six points between the first and last. Lime was particularly peeved however, as Pink edged him out by a single point. With that, and some residual chatter, it was time for home and everyone slowly drifted off.

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Learning Outcome: When you take away the sport, you still have France.

14th May 2024

Pine was already sitting outside marking his birthday, when Blue and and Pink rocked up and ordered their tea. Jade and Sapphire soon joined the group, ferried by newcomer, Tangerine who not only brought gamers, but also his shiny new copy of the “Feature Game“, Faraway, which he had won at Gweeplefest a few days earlier. This game is has been a bit of a hidden gem whose popularity is rapidly gaining traction as more people play it. It is quite a simple game, but one which really messes with the head. Some of the group played it a few weeks back and it was so popular that it seemed a good idea to Feature it so more of the group could try it.

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

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There are a couple of very clever things about the game. Firstly, if the card someone plays is numbered higher than their previous card, they take a card from the Sanctuary deck. These cards a really important because of the second clever element, the scoring. Each card has a number and a colour, while some also have resources and some have also have scoring conditions. The scoring is clever because the cards are played left to right, but the scoring is from right to left—at first glance, this looks like it makes things easy, because early in the game players find out what they need to get points and can then focus on getting the resources they need as the game progresses.

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However, the scoring is tensioned against the ability to get Sanctuary bonus cards. This is because the scoring cards are generally those that have a higher number and are therefore the ones players want to play first (following them with resource cards which generally have a lower face value). To get a Sanctuary card though, players have to play a higher value card than the immediately preceding one, and Sanctuary cards are very useful because they are eligible for scoring regardless of when they are played. Thus, trying to play cards increasing and decreasing in value to score the most points backwards really messes with players’ heads!

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Tangerine, started one game and explained the rules to half the group, comprising Plum, Byzantium, Blue, Pink and Pine, while he ate his supper. Meanwhile, Jade and Sapphire took their copy to a neighbouring table where they were joined by Teal, Black and Purple, and started a second game. Although it is a very simple game, the backwards forwards up and down thing got to several of the group at various points, including Blue (who lost the ability to count), Teal (who did all his scoring forwards instead of backwards), Pine (who struggled with the how maps worked) and Purple (who couldn’t get her head round the reverse scoring). Jade’s game was the first to finish, with Sapphire beating jade into second place by a single point and Black taking third.

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There was a general appreciation of the art and the mechanism though the theme was a bit invisible. There had been such confusion, however, that the group decided to “do a Lime” and play again. This time, the finishing order was exactly the same, but the game wasn’t as close with Sapphire’s eighty-two being the highest score of the evening. On the other table, Plum was the victor with seventy, followed by Tangerine and Byzantium in third. This game had taken a little longer, and with six, there is a lot of downtime, so although everyone had enjoyed it, the group decided to split into two groups of three. Blue tempted Plum and Sapphire to a game of Calico with cries of “Kittens!”, while Pink and Pine lured Tangerine into a game of Ticket to Ride: San Francisco.

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San Francisco is one of the smaller city versions of Ticket to Ride. The game play is much the same as the original, but the maps are smaller, players have fewer pieces and they only play a maximum of four. In all the games, players take it in turns to take coloured cards into their hand from the market, or play cards to place pieces on the board connecting locations to satisfy tickets and score points. Each version of the game has its own specific unique rules, and this one is no exception with players collecting Souvenirs which give points at the end of the game. Players collect these by building a route (in this case made of trolley cars rather than trains) to the cities where they are available.

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Each player can only collect one of each Souvenir, but a full set of seven gives twelve points, which is a lot. Tickets are also always key though. This time, Pink escaped early from Alcatraz to Twin Peaks which gave him a high scoring eight points. Unlike Pine (who always seems to draw routes he’s already completed), Tangerine was unlucky and and instead picked up some negative points late in the game. It was very close between Pink and Pine though, but the Souvenirs made the difference and Pink (with five) just edged it, beating Pine (who only had two Souvenirs) by three points.

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Meanwhile, the kitty-philes were playing the extremely frustrating game Calico, which is all about trying to entice cats to come and sleep on a patchwork quilt by making it with the patterns they like. In this game, players take it in turns to place a coloured, patterned tile from their hand into their quilt board before taking a replacement from the market. Everyone had played it before, but it had been a while, so the rules needed a bit of revision. Each player starts with three tiles in a fixed location with scoring criteria for the neighbouring tiles—satisfying these for either colour or pattern gives points, with more points for for those that satisfy both (which is not easy).

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Players then also receive a coloured button for every group of three adjacent tiles of the same colour (with a bonus if they get all six possible colours). Finally, there are the cats that give Calico its name. This time the cats in question were Almond, Tibbit and Shop Cat (from the Kickstarter Promo). Almond was attracted by a group of five tiles of one of the patters in a close packed predefined shape while Tibbit found a set of four tiles of one of the given patterns in any shape most appealing. Shop Cat was lured to the player with the longest connected chain of tiles in one of the given patterns with the player with the second longest attracting a smaller cat (worth fewer points).

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This last one was the subject of some debate as Byzantium ended up with both the longest and second longest chain and it was unclear from the rules whether he would get both. In the end he allowed the smaller Shop Cat to wander off, but fortunately it didn’t make any difference to the placings. Almond looked by far the most challenging kitty to attract and initially it looked impossible without failing on the fixed starting challenges. Plum thought she had made a mess of things, but Byzantium pointed out how Almond could be enticed using some of the partial tiles around the border of her player board and she was the only one to ultimately have that particular kitty to cuddle.

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Blue started badly, and in this game, when that happens things usually only get worse, which they did. Byzantium and Plum both picked up twenty-seven points for their buttons, but in both starting tiles and kitties, Byzantium had the edge (even without the second Shop Cat). In the end his final score of sixty-one points gave him a significant margin of victory, by seven points. Everyone agreed that Calico is a good game, but a very frustrating one when players can’t get the tiles they need. So Byzantium echoed everyone’s feelings when he commented, “That was fun, but very frustrating—I’ll be ready to play it again in another eighteen months…”

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As Faraway and Ticket to Ride had both finished, Tangerine took Jade and Sapphire home and Teal also headed off. That left Black, Purple, Pine and Pink to play a quick game of the old favourite, Coloretto. This is a very simple set collecting game, that makes a great filler. The idea is that players either take the top coloured chameleon card from the deck and place it on a cart, or take a card and add the cards to their collection. Players score points for their largest three sets (up to six cards, worth twenty-one points), while everything else scores negatively. The player with the most points is the winner. Playing with the Jubiläumsausgabe edition, as usual, there was a discussion about what the Golden Joker does and how it differs from the normal Joker.

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In the end, Pink was the victor and, for the second game in a row, pushed Pine into second place, this time with Black just behind. The evening looked to be ending there, when a couple of people from the bar came over and asked what we were doing. That led to a fairly wide-ranging discussion about Monopoly, Cluedo and Mystery of the Abbey amongst other games. The evening really did come to an end eventually, after Pink and Blue had dragged one of the interested parties into a quick game of No Thanks!. Unfortunately, there was a misunderstanding and he top-scored with ninety-three, but hopefully he understood that some of the games we play are not that complicated.

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Learning Outcome: Playing forwards and backwards at the same time makes heads hurt.

Boardgames in the News: 20 Years of Some Great Games

This year is the thirtieth anniversary of 6 Nimmt!, but also the twentieth anniversary of two more small-box card games, Saboteur and No Thanks!. All three are light, family-friendly games that play larger numbers, but they are very different in style. While 6 Nimmt! is a game of double-think, No Thanks! is a game of push-your-luck and Saboteur is a hidden traitor game. Looking back, 2004 was a very good year, so these are not the only games celebrating their twentieth anniversary. In addition to Saboteur and No Thanks!, Ticket to Ride, Power Grid, Goa and San Juan were released in the same year. Combined, these games have given over a hundred years of great fun.

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6th February 2024

People were still eating when Ivory rolled up nice and early to start setting up Ark Nova. Although it was not the “Feature Game“, we are planning to feature the Marine Worlds expansion in the next few weeks and wanted to play the base game before we did. So, Ivory was soon joined by Cobalt, Plum and Green on the other side of the table, leaving the rest to decide who would play the “Feature Game”, CuBirds, and what everyone else would play while they did. Before long, Pine, Pink, Lime and Blue were dealing out the bird cards while Purple, Black and Teal moved to the next table and rummaged through the game bags to decide what to get out.

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CuBirds is a fairly simple set-collecting game built round a central market. Players start with a hand of seven cards and, on their turn must place cards from their hand. They have to place all the cards they have of one type, adding them to one of the four rows on the table, at either end. If there is already a card of this type in that row, then they take all the cards between that card and the newly added cards into their hand. Optionally, if they have enough cards of a given type in their hand, they can complete a flock of them, that is play the cards, keeping one or two in their display (a bit like harvesting a been field in Bohnanza, where harvesting a field of five beans might leave a player with two Bean Thalers).

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The game ends immediately when one player’s collection has either three cards of each of two bird types, or seven different bird types (of the eight available) in front of them. It should play out in about half an hour, though inevitably, the first play through took longer as everyone felt their way through. When any player places the last card in their hand, everyone has to ditch their whole hand which can be quite brutal with players losing partial sets and having to start collecting again. Pink was the first to upset everyone’s plans, quickly followed by Pine.

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A lot of fun was had identifying the bird types, and nobody got close to guessing what the tall, thin, “little brown job” was, which turned out to be a reed warbler, but was soon universally known as “WeirdBird”. When the end of the game was triggered, both Blue and Lime had a magpie apiece with Lime’s paired with four toucans and Blue’s with three robins, while Pink just had two little ducks. Fittingly, as by far the most dedicated birder in the group, the winner was Pine with three flamingos and three “wols” with a spare parrot. It had been fun, but rather than play again, as he’d missed out on both the previous plays, Pink had been keen to give the new full-sized, Scandinavian Northern Lights version of Ticket to Ride a go.

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Like the other variants, Ticket to Ride: Northern Lights has slight changes to the rules and a new map, which in this case, similar to the older, festive themed Nordic Countries, though it plays up to five instead of just three. The base rules are quite simple: on their turn, players either take train cards from the face-up market (or the blind draw deck), or spend cards to place trains on the map for points. Once or twice during the game, players may instead choose to draw Tickets, which give players points at the end of the game if they are completed (i.e. the owner has connected the two locations with their trains) and score negative points if they are not.

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Northern Lights additionally has some triple routes (which only take effect with five players) and some routes have a “+X” next to them and when trains are laid on these the player takes X train cards from the face down pile. In general, Locomotive (wild) cards can replace any other card but for ferry routes they can be replaced with a pair of the same colour (that doesn’t have to be the same as the rest of the cards used). Unlike most of the other versions, however, if there are three or more face-up Locomotive cards in the market, the market is not refreshed. The biggest differences are the addition of Bonus cards, however, which extra points at the end.

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This time the Bonus cards used were Capital Investment (B), Local Area Network (F), International Tycoon (G) & Ferry Master (J). These gave Bonus points for completing Tickets to the capital cities (Stockholm, Copenhagen, Oslo and Helsinki); completing the most short Tickets; connecting to the most countries; and completing the most Ferry routes. The map is very tight with a lot of short routes, spread over a fairly long thin map and a wide variety of Ticket lengths. Everyone complained that their starting Tickets weren’t compatible, though Blue and Lime both kept all three of theirs, even so Pink surprised everyone when he took his first set of Tickets very early.

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Pine soon followed and his sniggering as he kept all the new Tickets was ominous, signalling that he’d already completed all three—a fact confirmed when he drew more on his next turn too. Blue and Lime covered similar spaces,connecting the north-west to the south-east, while Pine’s network dominated the east and Pinks sprawled over the south. Everyone was getting on with doing their thing when suddenly, Lime brought the game to a rather abrupt end, catching everyone else out. As a result, Pink and Pine both had an incomplete ticket that costing them fourteen and twelve points respectively, while Blue had two giving her a combined loss of sixteen points (though part of that was her own fault as she’d overstretched her self and would have run out of trains anyhow).

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In spite of that, it was a very, very tight finish with just six points between first and third place, meaning the Bonus cards became much more critical than might have been expected earlier in the game. Lime set the target with a nice round hundred points, but he did not take any of the Bonus points and was just pipped by Pine who took several of them with Blue making up the podium. It had been an imperious game from Lime, and he was unlucky to have lost to Pine who was the first to admit that he’d got very lucky with his Tickets, especially the draw where he’d already completed the Tickets, quite remarkable given how spread out the network is on this map.

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Meanwhile Purple, Black and Teal had been playing Azul. This is a favourite game within the group, which is unusual as we tend to eschew abstract games. Players are mosaic building, taking tiles from a shared array of factories, adding them to their Storage on their personal player boards. At the end of the round, any full rows are scrapped with one tile progressing into the player’s mosaic. Players score when the tiles added form rows or columns, and the longer they are, the more points players get. The catch is that each Storage space can only hold one tiles of one colour. If there is nowhere to put tiles taken from the Factories, left over tiles go into the Scraps bin costing players points which can be very costly as Black found out when he lost fourteen in the final round.

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For a little variation, the trio added the Joker tiles and the five double score markers from the Special Factories Promo tiles. The Joker tiles are a set of ten beautiful promotional tiles that can serve as a proxy for any of the other tiles, though their aesthetic comes at a price as players can’t use them for end of game color Bonuses. The five double score markers allow players to double the points scored for a row or column, by taking the marker of the matching colour. Everyone took one of these during what was a hard-faught game where Purple and Black tied for with seventy points. The clear victor was Teal, however, with eighty-eight points.

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Teal and Pine took their leave, so after some chatter, Purple and Black joined Lime, Pink and Blue in another game of CuBirds. This time, Black collected magpies but twice had enough for sets but kept losing them. Pueple got three WeirdBirds and was busy collecting parrots when the game came to an end. Both Lime and Blue tried to collect a set of seven different birds, but while Blue got close with five (and a duplicat “wol”), Pink was imperious. Before his final turn he had a set of three toucans and two sets of two (flamingos, ducks and robins), pretty-much guaranteeing him victory, regardless what he was left with, though he chose to check-out with another flock of flamingos.

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While all this was going on, on the other side of the room an epic game of Ark Nova was underway between Ivory, Cobalt, Green and Plum. This is a much longer game than we usually play with an advertised playing time of upwards of two hours and reputedly considerably more with inexperienced players and setup time included. It is all about planning and designing a modern, scientifically managed zoo, but the game-play is more like Terraforming Mars with animals, than Zoo Break or Zooloretto. That said, although it is quite complex, functionally it is not difficult to play on a turn by turn basis, though there is quite a lot to manage and keep a track of.

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On their turn, players take one of six possible actions: activating one of the five action cards (Cards, Build, Animals, Association and Sponsor) with a strength equal to the number above the card, or move a card back to the first space and take a cross token instead. When activating a card players perform the action based on its power level which is dictated by its position in the row. Once a card has been played, it is moved the first space in the player’s five card row (i.e.to the lowest power position on the left) moving the other cards to the right to replace the card removed, effectively incrementing their power by one. During the game, players can upgrade and turn over the action cards to a more powerful second side using various Bonuses.

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The Cards action is the simplest action, which lets players draw cards from the deck (the number depending on strength) then advance the marker two spaces along the break track which defines when the round ends. The Build action allows players to pay to construct one building on their zoo map. Players can build basic enclosures with a size of one to five, but they can also build a petting zoo for animal storage or pavilions and kiosks (which give players Appeal and money respectively based on adjacent filled enclosures). With the upgraded build action, players can build multiple different buildings and have access to the large bird aviary and reptile house which allow the storage of multiple animals.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Animals action allows players to add animals into enclosures in their zoo. Some animals have a special requirement and need a symbol in their tableau and/or the upgraded animal card. Adding an animal to an enclosure has a cost, and then the player turns over the empty enclosure of at least the size needed or places the listed cubes into a special enclosure (an aviary or a reptile house). The player then adds the animal card to their tableau and resolves the abilities on it and receives ticket sales along with possibly Conservation points and Reputation.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Association action allows players to take one task on the Association board with different tasks available based on their power level. This allows people to gain Reputation points, acquire a partner zoo they don’t already own, gain a partner university, or support a Conservation. Finally the Sponsor action allows players to play exactly one Sponsor from their hand which offer ongoing abilities. They can allow players to place unique tiles in their zoo and offer end game Conservation point opportunities. Some Sponsor cards have conditions on their play similar to the animal cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players take it in turns to take actions, resetting every time a break occurs, until the end game has been triggered. There are two tracks, Appeal (Tickets) and Conservation that follow the same course, but in opposite directions. The game end is triggered when one player’s pair of scoring markers cross, after which, everyone gets one more turn and then the end-game cards are scored. The player with the largest overlap between their Conservation and Appeal values is the winner. Everyone was familiar with the game and had watched the rules refresher video, so the group could make a fast start, however, Cobalt and Green had played a lot online and Plum had only played once, so there was a difference in experience levels.

– Image by boardGOATS

Green and Plum took early Association actions taking the two Reputation universities, scuppering Cobalt’s first turn who couldn’t make use of the double science university. Cobalt therefore took a partner zoo and snapped a Conservation project from the display in the first few turns. Early game sponsors included: “Veterinarian” by Green (grabbing him an additional university and allowing Conservation projects to be performed at Association level four instead of five, although he didn’t make use of this throughout the game); “Quarantine Lab” by Plum (providing her immunity to venom, constriction, hypnosis and pilfering); “Expert in small animals” by Cobalt (reducing the cost of two-sized animals by three); and “Expert in Herbivores” by Ivory (providing three money each time a herbivore is placed into any zoo).

– Image by boardGOATS

Plum was very pleased with her “Quarantine Lab” as it meant she didn’t really have to bother with the effects of red tokens that say you have been bitten or poisoned because it meant there was one less thing to get in here way and complicate her game. Cobalt used his expertise in small animals to good effect, especially when combined with partner zoos, with a petting zoo and several small animals, allowing his money to stockpile. Ivory concentrated on reptiles while Green played several negative effect cards early (e.g. boa constrictor), which hit Ivory and Cobalt (the latter multiple times, and grabbing some of that stockpiled cash). Plum appeared to take an early lead possibly due to her Quarantine Lab which kept her out of all the early pilfering and poisoning.

– Image by boardGOATS

Cobalt was first to complete a Conservation project, using the snapped card to release a herbivore into the wild and gaining the two-enclosure Bonus, immediately followed by Ivory. In the middle-game, the African Bush elephant and Serengeti National Park appeared side-by-side in the display, so Cobalt took the risky decision to nab these over two consecutive rounds, but was forced to discard five or six cards from an unexpected break. Having kept the elephant and Conservation project, Cobalt played these to grab an extra scoring card and race up the Conservation track and triggered the scoring card discard. Ivory and Plum took to the Appeal track. Green remained languishing on both tracks, particularly the Conservation track where he barely moved all game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Cobalt was first to upgrade his cards, leaving only the Association action not upgraded, whereas Green concentrated on Sponsors and Association actions. Plum was working through some difficult choices, ultimately deciding to having to flip the Animals card so that she could play the Elephant she had been nursing. She left the Reputation as the non-upgraded card, which unfortunately removed some of the better options that the Elephant gave. Plum was just a Europe icon away from being able to take the multi-regional goal, but ultimately forgot that having high Appeal is the negative element to the score and didn’t do the things to convert her Appeal to give her points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Green was slow to get going, but eventually, managed a master move with his first Conservation project and flew up the scoring to overtake Plum, and began chasing down Ivory and Cobalt. It was very close between Ivory and Cobalt on who would trigger the end game: Cobalt managed to keep his counters from crossing, causing Ivory to trigger the end game and allowing Cobalt one last turn. Although Ivory scored well on the final turn, Cobalt covered his zoo (giving him seven more Appeal) and scored more than twenty points in the final turn. In end game scoring, it became apparent that Plum had misunderstood her end game scoring card. She had thought it gave points for empty enclosures in her zoo (rather than empty spaces) and had set about building lots of them towards the end. Without this, her game would have ended very differently.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory took the third place on the podium having realised Green was closing and decided to end the game perhaps a turn or two earlier than he really wanted which may have inadvertently caused himself more damage as Green needed some three turns to score anymore. Green did exceptionally well taking a full four Conservation points from his Bonus card and three extra points from Sponsors, and with it, almost taking victory with a total of eighteen points. However, Cobalt’s final turn plus two scoring cards (one of which was for small animals) meant he won with a convincing score of thirty.

– Image by boardGOATS

It had been quite stressful getting the game completed in time, especially with some long turns where actions were chained together, for example Plum played one card which enabled another full turn, but with two new cards it was tough to decide which gave the better option. All that said, it had been very enjoyable and everyone had got on with their game and helped each-other where necessary. The group clearly demonstrated that the game can be played in around four hours even with four, so long as everyone knows what they are doing and keeps moving. It will be a few weeks before the Marine Worlds expansion gets an outing, but it will be exciting when it does.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Reed warblers are weird warblers.

14th Movember 2023

With Black, Teal, Pink, Green and Lime all away, it was looking like it was going to be a very quiet night. In the event, however, the numbers remained good with the slightly unexpected arrival of Plum, Byzantium, Jade and Sapphire. When Green dropped off Purple and stayed for a while, it became clear that we’d need something short to play alongside Kites, the “Feature Game“. Kites is a real-time, cooperative game where players are playing cards and flipping egg-timers to keep the air display going. A single play-through doesn’t take very long, but it is the sort of game that tends to get played through a couple of times in succession.

– Image by boardGOATS

The idea is that that the Team have to launch six Kites, each represented by sand timers, and keep them flying by preventing the timers from running out. Game play is very simple: Players start with a hand of cards and must play one on their turn before replenishing their hand from the draw deck. The cards all show either one or two coloured symbols on the corner, which correspond to the six coloured egg-timers in red, orange, yellow, blue, purple and white/rainbow colours that represent the different Kites. When a card with two symbols on it is played, both egg-timers in those colours must be turned, however, a card with one just one symbol allows the active player to choose whether to turn the timer in that colour or to flip the white/rainbow coloured timer instead.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game ends when either all the cards are played out (the Team win), or when one of the timers runs out of sand (the Team loses). There are a couple of additional “features”. Firstly, the different coloured timers each have different amounts of sand in them—the purple lasts the longest at ninety seconds with red running fastest lasting just thirty seconds. This catches out the unwary, and indeed it caught out the group composed of Jade, Plum, Blue, Purple, Pine and Byzantium on their first try when they succeeded in playing just four out of the fifty-three cards in the deck. The second attempt wasn’t much better, ending with just six cards played.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game has an “easy start” mode where players start with just three coloured Kites (plus the white/rainbow one), but nobody was keen to take cards out of the deck. So, to make things a little easier, instead of starting with three cards in hand as per the rules, the group started with a hand of four cards, giving them a little more in the way of choice on their turn. With this “House Rule” they were a little more successful, but it was at the fourth attempt, that things clicked, and the group finished with only twelve unplayed cards. And it was then that the second “feature” caught out the group—when the draw deck has been exhausted, players can no-longer turn the white/rainbow timer.

– Image by boardGOATS

Having done well with four cards in hand, it was then that the group decided to revert to the rules “as written” and play with three cards in hand. This made things more difficult during the early part of the game, but had the advantage of leaving players with fewer cards to play once the draw deck had been exhausted. At that fifth attempt, the players were left with just six cards unplayed, and on the sixth try, they had eight left. They were so close, they could feel it, and everyone in the group was determined not to stop before they’d won, which turned out to be on the seventh play.

– Image by boardGOATS

Kites is not the usual sort of fare for many in the group, being both cooperative and featureing real-time play. It had been interesting and fun, however, with players learning how to work together and what information they needed to share. Two people took responsibility for turning the timers and everyone else made sure they let people know when they spotted a timer running low. Perhaps the biggest impact was the realisation that waiting was sometimes more powerful than playing quickly, and certainly more haste often brought less speed. With the successful game, everyone felt they’d had enough, and while the other table finished their game, the group moved on to another party-style game, the simple little memory game, That’s Not a Hat.

– Image by boardGOATS

Each player starts with a single card and shows it to all the other players before turning it face down. One player then draws an extra card shows it to all the other players and passes their original card to the left or right (as per the arrow on the back of the card), announcing what they think it is. The receiving player can either accept the card as it is, or challenge the declaration. If a challenge is incorrect, the recipient keeps the card as a penalty point, whereas a correct challenge leaves the card/penalty point with the gifter. It seems very simple, and doesn’t sound promising when described, however, after a couple of turns, when someone realises they can’t remember the card they’ve got in front of them and is forced to guess, the tension mounts and everyone suddenly appreciates the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Byzantium, Plum and Jade had played the game before and knew what to expect, but it was new to everyone else. Most people thought they knew what card everyone had, only to discover that wasn’t the case after a couple of swaps. Blue and Purple picked up just the one penalty, while Plum and Jade picked up a couple each. After the game, there was some discussion about challenges needed to be accompanied with the correct card identity (which is how Plum had played it it HandyCon). With this, it actually paid to try to bluff/confuse people who couldn’t identify the correct gift. Inspired by this, there was some discussion about a possible “House Rule” to introduce a bit more jeopardy: the challenger could optionally attempt to name the gift with the carrot of forcing another point on their gifter, and an incorrect guess reversing the effect of the challenge.

– Image by boardGOATS

That was for another day. This time, the winners, were Pine and Byzantium who avoided any penalties, though whether that was by luck or judgement wasn’t entirely clear and indeed, was unimportant. That was especially true as the game was brought to an abrupt end by the game ending on the next table. That was 7 Wonders—Green only wanted to play something short that he was familiar with and this fitted the bill. 7 Wonders is a card-drafting game, but has a bit of a “Marmite Factor” and is very unpopular with a significant number in the group, so rarely gets played. This time though, Cobalt, Ivory and Sapphire were all happy to join Green and give 7 Wonders an outing.

– Image by boardGOATS

In 7 Wonders, players take the role of leader of one of the seven great cities of the Ancient World (Alexandria, Babylon, Ephesus, Giza, Halicarnassus, Olympia and Rhodes), gathering Resources, developing commercial routes, and developing their Military, build their City and erecting an architectural Wonder. In each round or age, players receive seven cards and draft them, that is choose one card, then pass the remainder to their neighbour (much like Sushi Go! or Draftosaurus). Players then reveal their cards simultaneously, paying Resources if required, collecting Resources or interacting with other players according to the cards played ant their player board (which gives special powers).

– Image by boardGOATS

7 Wonders is essentially a card development game: Some cards have immediate effects, while others provide bonuses or upgrades later in the game. Some cards provide discounts on future purchases while others provide Military strength to overpower neighbors and some cards give nothing but victory points. Each card is played immediately after being drafted, so everyone knows which cards their neighbor is receiving and how their choices might affect what they’ve already built. Players continue to draft cards until everyone has six cards (discarding the seventh). The game ends after three rounds or ages.

– Image by boardGOATS

7 Wonders is quite a famous game that Cobalt had heard about it and wanted to try, though he was the only one from the group who was unfamiliar with it. It is one of those games where it seems like there is a lot to take in, but actually it is really quite simple and easy to pick up (though players do tend to require a round to see how it all plays, and there are only three in the whole game). Everyone chose their respective Sides of Wonder. Ivory who had Giza, elected to go for Side B, which has a four-piece Wonder and would give lots of points if he could complete it; Cobalt (Halicarnassus) chose to go for the simpler Side A, which would give him points and a chance to rifle through the discard deck for a card if he managed the second stage.

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Sapphire (Ephesus) felt both sides were the same, money & points, just in different ways, while Green (Olympia) went for his Side B where he could have the option of copying a neighbour’s end game purple scoring card and the ability to buy Resources for only one coin each instead of two. As expected the first round was a little slow as Cobalt felt his way around the cards and options, with help from the rest of the group, particularly from Ivory who was sat next to him and was initially passing his cards to Sapphire (so he could show Ivory the deck for some explanations without giving anything away).

– Image by boardGOATS

The first round was gentle. Ivory and Sapphire lost out in the fight to Cobalt and Green. In the second round Cobalt had to use his “Muppet Allowance” and swap a card he had kept when others pointed out he should have taken the other one. Green was building up his army and building his Wonder with a lot of his own Resource (even though he had the Wonder benefit). Cobalt and Sapphire were beginning to specialise in the green Science cards. Ivory was not really sure where he was going as he was beginning to lose out by not having access to the vast amount of Resources he needed to build his epic Wonder.

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By the third and final round we everyone had the problems associated with trying to choose the best of a good bunch of cards. Green and Cobalt ended up in an army fight, with six points at stake and already a reasonable army, it wasn’t a battle either of them wanted to give up on. The result was that they both let other good cards pass by. By the end there were not many purple cards left, as it seemed a few had been used to build the Wonders, so Green’s “Copy” did not score heavily, although he did win the battle with Ivory (and subsequently with Sapphire too). Sapphire managed to get a full set of Science and a couple of single type multipliers, thus learning the power of Science in 7 Wonders (which is often hard to achieve).

– Image by boardGOATS

By the end scoring, it seemed that Ivory, unusually for him, had indeed been boxed into a corner and ended up some way adrift of the rest of the group. That aside, it was a very close contest between Cobalt, Green and Sapphire, with only a couple of points between each of them, but it was new player Cobalt who took the Laurels of victory. Everyone enjoyed the game, so it might get another outing soon for which Green would be particularly grateful as it had always been a firm favourite of his. With all the early games over at the same time, it was possible to swap the groups about as Green took an early night. Jade was keen to introduce people to After Us, a game he had picked up at the UK Games Expo and hadn’t yet had the opportunity to introduce the group.

– Image by boardGOATS

After Us is a deck-building, Resource management, engine building game featuring an original card-combo mechanism. The story is set in 2083 and mankind has died out leaving only apes which have kept evolving. As the leader of a tribe, players try to guide it towards collective intelligence, by adding new Primate Cards to their starting deck of tamarins. Primate Cards have three rows of “Effects”—the top row will award resources, the middle row will give points (often at the cost of resources) and the the bottom row will have abilities related to the primate type. At the start of a round, players draw four Primate Cards from their deck to be laid out in a row making “Connections”.

– Image by BGG contributor The Innocent

The aim is to get the most out of the Connections by closing the open ended “Frames” along the sides of the cards by butting them up against adjacent cards that also have open ended Frames. Players then resolve the now closed Frames following the order of top left to bottom right, trying to gain as many bonuses as they can. Once everyone has simultaneously collected their Resources they can then use them to buy Primate Cards which are added to the top of the draw deck (and thus they come into use on the very next turn). In this way, they are improving the quality of their deck. The Frames have been resolved, the players simultaneously chose one of their Action Discs denoting which primate type they want to recruit.

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The Action Disc chosen will also gives the player a bonus. When recruiting, players have an option to pay three or six Resource (fruit, flowers or grain) to gain a Card. Players can additionally spend two Resource during this phase to copy one of their neighbours’ Action Disc bonus. Once everyone has resolved their Action Disks and bonuses, players discard their cards and draw four new ones and start again. The game starts slowly with players building their tribe, but it can end in a sudden rush when one player breaks into a gallop and charges past eighty points triggering the end of the round. In the shuffle, Cobalt joined Byzantium, Jade, Blue and Purple playing After Us. Jade and Byzantium led the way (both being familiar with the game), while the others felt their way.

– Image by boardGOATS

Arranging the cards to make the Connections proved the biggest challenge initially, especially when frustratingly, it wasn’t possible to make use of a really good half Frame. Blue, Purple and Cobalt just started collecting cards as well as they could, but Jade showed everyone an alternative, shedding all his starting cards until he had no tamarins at all. It was then that Byzantium suddenly started surging forward on the points track—having picked up a small number of good quality primate cards and shed a few tamarins he just turned the handle on his engine and it was too late for anyone else to do anything about it. And he was the first to cross the eighty point finish line, with Blue (who had put on a bit of a spurt) in second.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Ivory, Plum, Pine and Sapphire settled down to to play the new Scandinavian edition of Ticket to Ride, Northern Lights. Like all the other editions, players take it in turns to either take two coloured cards from the market, pay cards to place trains or take more ticket cards. Like all the different versions, Norther Lights has a small number of special rules, but unfortunately, the rules in the box are in Danish, Swedish, Finish and Norwegian, and nobody in the group is a speaker, worse, although we played it about three months ago, nobody could remember the rules, so it was out with the phones to get translations. The biggest difference boiled down to the addition of bonus cards, four of which are drawn at random at the start of the game and give extra points at the end.

– Image by boardGOATS

Additionally, there are some triple routes (which only take effect with five players) and some routes have a “+X” next to them which give players who build them X train cards from the face down pile. Finally, for all routes Locomotive cards can replace any other card and for ferry routes Locomotive cards can be replaced with a pair of the same colour (and as a result, unlike most of the other versions, if there are three or more face-up Locomotive cards in the market, the market is not refreshed). This time, the bonus cards drawn at random gave points for the most stations in Norway, the most stations in the arctic circle, the most successfully completed small Tickets, and the longest continuous connected train route.

– Image by boardGOATS

While everyone else seemed to be taking more and more tickets, Plum focused on completing her three starting Tickets, two fairly long ones running north-south, and a short one across the top. It was a tight game for the podium places, though with Ivory, Pine and Plum vying for the lead. Ticket to ride is often a high-risk, big-reward game though and if Plum had taken Tickets on her final turn instead of placing a single train for one point, she would have gained two more tickets and an additional twenty point which would likely have given her victory. As it was, she finished in third, behind Ivory in second and Pine the worthy winner with a hundred and twenty-five points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Keeping kites flying takes teamwork.

31st October 2023

With it being Halloween, there were lots of treats and some very fine spooky-themed attire to go along with the “Feature Game“, Betrayal at Mystery Mansion. This is a Scooby-Doo themed re-implementation of Betrayal at House on the Hill, a semi-cooperative game, where players work together until there is a haunting and one player takes on the role of the bad guy. So, the first task for the evening was to decide who was going to take on the roles of Mystery Inc., which precipitated lots of discussion about which was the best character. Scrappy got short-shift from Pink, though others were less dismissive. In any case, Scrappy was not an option, and before long, Sapphire, Pink and Pine joined Jade to solve the mystery.

– Image by boardGOATS

Jade, as the group leader, took the role of Fred, while Pink and Pine enthusiastically engaged in the game as Scooby Doo and Shaggy. That left Sapphire to choose from Velma or Daphne and he went for brains over bimbette. The group spent quite a bit of time exploring the mansion collecting clues and the like, before the haunt finally started. As Sapphire was the one to trigger the haunt, Velma was “temporarily lost in the woods” as he took on the roles of the bad guys, a Spectre and a female character called Sharon who was being possessed and controlled by the Spectre. As the game progressed, it became apparent that the Spectre was her great uncle who was trying to control her to gain access to documents that would enable him to take control of the family fortune.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Scooby Gang (minus Scrappy Doo, Daphne and the now lost Velma) had to track down and battle the Spectre and try break the spell controlling Sharon. As the villain, Sapphire rolled very well and it was very hard for the Gang to pin him down. Fred ended up stunned at one point, but thankfully revived after missing a turn. Shaggy scoffed piles of Scooby Snacks in order to re-roll, but the dice weren’t with him. Scooby himself, however, did very well and survived his battle with the Spectre then was able to recharge in one of the special rooms of the mansion. In the end the Mystery Inc. won the day and the great uncle was unmasked and announced that he “would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for you pesky kids”!

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, there were two other games underway on the neighbouring tables. Blue, Plum and Byzantium eschewed Witch’s Brew (which plays better with more people) and opted for the slightly bigger, beefier, boardgame version of the same game, Broom Service. Both games rely on the players having a personal deck of Character cards and a lead and follow mechanism. Each player starts by choosing a set number of Characters from their deck, each with different actions. The first player then chooses one to lead with and announces that they are either “Brave” or “Cowardly”. If they choose Cowardly, they can take the action straight away, whereas, if they choose Brave, they must wait until everyone has played to see if they can take the more powerful action.

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The next player must follow if they have the card in hand, and has the same decision to make—be a Coward and take the weaker action, or be Brave, and risk being gazumped by a later player, as there can only be one Brave player taking the powerful action. The Brave player (or the most recent Brave player) then leads with another card. In the card game, Witch’s Brew, players are collecting tokens to give them points, however, in Broom Service, there is an additional “Travelling Salesman” pick-up and deliver type of mechanism. Players have two Witch-meeples which travel the land collecting potions and delivering them locations to get points. This time, it was a really, really close game, despite everyone doing different things.

– Image by boardGOATS

Byzantium prioritised collecting Lightening Bolts and Blue concentrated on collecting potions and delivering them. While they both headed south and contrived to get in each-other’s way, Plum headed north and fell foul of one of the events which left her stuck with no good move in the final round. Blue kept forgetting about the “Bewitched Roles” which can be used but with a hefty three point penalty and lost six points as a result. Byzantium assumed he would be the only one to consciously choose to take the hit and thus guarantee he could be Brave, but happened to do that exactly when Blue picked them as well and lost the advantage when he led with those roles.

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As the game came to a close, it was clear it was going to be close with Blue ahead by a single point with sixty points scored during the game. She lots of resources left while Byzantium had none but lots of Lightening Bolts, and Plum had some of both. Initially, Blue and Byzantium tied with seventy-three, just two points ahead of Plum. That gave Blue victory with the tie break (the most left over resources), but that was only until the miss-count was spotted and Blue lost one point and with it her Winning Witch Medal, instead taking second place by a single point.

– Image by boardGOATS

While the first two tables were playing spooky-themed games, Black and Purple led Teal and Cobalt in the monster-mad Finstere Flure (aka Fearsome Floors). This is a game where players are trying to escape from Fürst Fieso before the castle collapses and without getting eaten. The idea is very simple: first players move all their pieces the number of spaces shown on their visible side, then the Monster moves. The Monster moves according to a stack of tiles, either moving a set number or moving until he eats. The Monster moves one step forwards then looks straight ahead, left and then right. If he sees a player, he turns and moves towards them.

– Image by boardGOATS

Thus, the Monster looks, moves, looks, moves until he either runs out of spaces to move, or eats someone. The game ends after fifteen rounds. It is simple enough, but there are a few little elements that add to the fun. Firstly, each player piece moves a total of seven spaces over two turns, but while some alternate three and four space moves, others are more variable, with the most extreme moving six spaces and then one space on the next turn; these different pieces require different tactics. Players can’t land on another player, if they walk into a rock they push it and if you step in a pool of blood, they slide across it.

– Image by boardGOATS

Finally, if the Monster walks into a wall he appears elsewhere on the board adding a further layer of unpredictability. The game opened with a bang when the first Monster tile revealed was a “Two Kill”, that is to say, the monster keeps moving until he’s eaten twice. From there, it was carnage. Everyone had someone eaten, with some multiple times. There were people who managed to escape from Fürst Fieso, though it wasn’t easy of course. Everyone managed to get at least one piece out of the castle, with Purple and Cobalt managing to get two pieces out. The winner, however, was Black who liberated three of his people.

– Image by boardGOATS

They were the first to finish, so moved on to play the recent release, Ticket to Ride: Ghost Train. This is really just a variant of First Journey, a simpler version of the group favourite, Ticket to Ride, aimed at children and non-gamers with super-sized pieces. Like the original game, players take it in turns to either take “two parade float” cards (in this case blind), or pay cards to place trains on the map. However, instead of scoring points for placing trains, the game is essentially a race game. Players start with three Tickets and every time they complete one, they draw a replacement. The winner is the player who completes the most Tickets.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, Teal took an early night, but Black, Purple and Cobalt went at it with spooky enthusiasm. As a different take on the original, they found this a very enjoyable alternative. As well as Tickets, players can also win “Trick or Treat” bonuses for connecting the Dark Forest region to the Seashore region. Black and Purple both took a “Trick or Treat” bonus, but the winner was Cobalt who finished with six Tickets, one more than Purple who would have taken another if she’d had just a little more time. That wasn’t the only Ticket to Ride game of the night however, as the Scooby Gang played a quick game of Ticket to Ride: Berlin once they had solved their mystery.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ticket to Ride: Berlin is one of the mini versions, and there was a little chat about these and which ones people had played. The first mini version was a “demo” game the publisher used to introduce people to the game at conventions. Since then, there have been a series of City versions, with New York, London, Amsterdam and San Francisco all featuring and Berlin being the most recent (with Paris to come next year). These all feature the same basic mechanism as the original game (including the scoring of points for placing trains unlike the First Journey type games), but they have fewer train pieces and a smaller map. The Berlin map, is long and thin, but the big difference is that players have mixture of Trams and U-Bahn pieces.

– Image by boardGOATS

Tram and U-Bahn routes are paid for in similar ways, though only one U-Bahn piece is needed to mark them and they score slightly more points. Once the differences had been highlighted by Pine and Pink (who played this together a few weeks back), everyone got down to business. Jade and Sapphire dominated the West while Pink and Pine concentrated on the East, though the geography of the map meant everyone had to include East-West connections in their network. It was a hard-faught close game with both Jade and Sapphire taking negative points due to incomplete Tickets. Pine completed five Tickets and Pink finished six.

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Pine’s Tickets were more lucrative, however, and he took victory with sixty-one points, while Jade with forty-nine just pipped Pink by two points in the struggle for second place. Everyone had enjoyed the game, and Jade commented that it was one of his favourite renditions of Ticket to Ride so far—indeed, the addition of a second set of transport seems to have been much more successful in this mini version than it was in the full-sized Rail & Sails where it made it longer and more fiddly without making it significantly better. While everyone else was playing and then discussing the merits of different versions of Ticket to Ride, the Crafty Trio, Plum, Blue and Byzantium had finished Broom Service and squeezed in a quick game of Dinosaur Drafting with Draftosaurus.

– Image by boardGOATS

This is a fun little game that we play quite a bit, where players choose one Dinosaur from a handful, add it to their Park and then pass the rest on. Dino-placement is slightly restricted by the roll of a die, with everyone getting points for how they occupy their pens. Usually, the group plays with the Summer board, but with the cold weather, the group decided to play with the alternate, Winter board which introduces new and different pens. These include the Well-Ordered Wood (Dinosaur types must alternate); Lovers’ Bridge (giving six points for each pair of Dinosaurs separated by the bridge); the Lookout (contains one Dinosaur and scores two points for each one of that type in their right neighbour’s pen).

– Image by boardGOATS

The most challenging, however is the Pyramid, which holds up to six Dinosaurs in a layered structure, but dinosaurs of the same species may not be placed adjacent to each other (horizontally or vertically). Blue got into a mess with this, and was stuck with a Dinosaur she could not place at the end as a result. Plum and Byzantium did slightly better and were able to capitalise more on the Quarantine Zone, which allows players to move the single occupant at the end of the game. In the end, it was a tight game (though not as tight as Broom Service), in which Plum ran out the victor, three points ahead of Byzantium.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning outcome: They’d have got away with it if it weren’t for those pesky kids!

3rd October 2023

Black, Purple, Byzantium, Plum, Blue and Pink all arrived early for food, and were soon joined by Pine, Lime and finally Ivory. The “Feature Game“, was to be Crappy Birthday, a party game where players give each other comedy birthday presents and the recipient has to decide who gave them the best and worst gifts. A bit like the better known game, Dixit, the idea is to be the master of non-mediocrity, with the best and worst gifts netting points for the person who gave them. It was our birthday party, so as is now traditional, everyone shared cake (this year, meeple topped carrot cup cakes), before Plum started off the year of GOATS crappy birthdays, receiving her first gift from Byzantium.

– Image by boardGOATS

This year we discovered that Plum fancied a custom chopper, Byzantium liked the idea of visiting a radioactive swamp (so long as it wasn’t too active) and Lime would gratefully accept a gift Monster Truck weekend. Unusually, Pine didn’t get horses and a pile of meat, and picked skiing in Alaska (finding the Alaska bit more appealing than the skiing), and Black chose a Safari as his favourite gift. Plum picked a chick-flick marathon over a litter of puppies and Ivory opted for a catapult over several space-based options. Finally, much to everyone’s surprise, Blue picked a garden chess set and Pink chose a set of cuddly penguins over a pet vulture (who is very friendly, but stares at you while you are sleeping).

– Image by boardGOATS

Less popular were singing the national anthem a the baseball, extreme bungee jumping, face piercing, a flexible trainer, and perkiness training. The horrific baby sculpture was pretty much guaranteed to be rejected (and Lime had the opportunity for a second time), but others were more specific. For example, Purple eschewed the drive across the Sahara because she dislikes the heat while others felt they would quite like a visit to the desert. Similarly, Pink couldn’t imagine anything worse than mime camp, although most of the others couldn’t really see his problem. Most people managed at least one or two loved or loathed gifts, nobody came close to matching Plum, who took a massive six points—a remarkable seventy-five percent of her potential maximum, quite a record for a worthy winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

With our birthday suitably marked, the question was whether to continue to play light, large-group games or to break the group up and play something slightly more serious. Pink suggested Niagara, and although Blue, Black and Purple warned against it, Plum showed an interest and that suckered in Byzantium, Lime and Pine. The idea of Niagara is that players are rowing their canoes along the river to collect gems and then safely row them back to shore. Players do this by simultaneously choosing a Paddle tile to play, then taking it in turns to activate their chosen Paddle to move their canoe (or canoes), trying to avoid losing them over the cataract and turning them into match-wood. The winner is the player who manages to get seven different coloured gems or five gems of the same colour safely to shore.

– Image by boardGOATS

The reason for the warnings and large amount of reticence form some of the group was after an online game some two years ago when Pink had the temerity to steal gems from everyone else and collective punishment failed to correct his appalling behaviour, winning the game in spite of it all. This time, fore-warned and fore-armed the game started mean and got meaner, with the gem stealing starting in the very first round. As a result, three out of the five finished the game with nothing. Although Pink ended the game with two red gems, at least he didn’t win—that honour went to Byzantium, who by hook or by crook (mostly crook to be honest), managed to get five purple gems and ended the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the next table, Black and Purple were introducing Blue and Ivory to Little Town. Despite the similarity in names (and inevitable resulting confusion), this is nothing to do with Tiny Towns. In this game, players acquire resources like wood, stone, fish, and wheat from the surrounding squares by placing workers on the board. When a worker is placed, the owner acquires the resources available from all eight surrounding spaces. They can then build buildings by using these resources, and the owner (or indeed any other player), can gain the effect of the building when they place a worker next to it, although when claiming a resource from a building owned by another player, they must pay a them a coin.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is deliciously tight—each player gets one action per turn, three turns per round and the game lasts just four rounds. Players collect victory points by using the powers of buildings, by constructing buildings taken from the market (which is not refilled), and by achieving goals dealt to them at the beginning of the game. After the fourth and final round, whoever has the most victory points wins. Ivory started building an engine based on turning money into points, but then he realised the flaw in his plan: there was no additional source of money in the game, so once he’d spent his cash, he was reliant on others paying to use his facilities, a source that rapidly diminished. So he moved on to collecting wheat instead.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue built an engine to turn fish and wheat into points. Black also built a wheat into points engine and pinched the last wheat field that both Blue and Ivory had their eye on. Purple on the other hand did something completely different, converting resources into other resources to satisfy her goal card. Ultimately though, none of it really mattered as the game was really, really tight and all four players finished within three points of each other. Black’s experience with the game told and his thirty-two points just edged him one point clear of Blue who took second and she in turn finished one point ahead of Ivory. It had been an enjoyable game though, definitely deserving of another outing, especially as the variety in the buildings would make it play very differently every time.

– Image by boardGOATS

While the Little Town was being explored, Niagara had already finished and Lime, Plum and Byzantium rowed their respective ways home, leaving Pine and Pink to play a quick game of the new mini-version of Ticket to Ride, Berlin. This is the latest in the “City Series”, smaller versions of the game that play more quickly, but still keep the essence of the original game. Each game (full-sized or smaller), has some unique “hook” as well as a new map and features designed to bring a flavour of the new location. Like all the other game, players have a choice on their turn to either take coloured cards from the market, or pay cards to place pieces on the map.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the Berlin version, players have both subway trains and trams to place. Tram routes are claimed in the usual way, but only one underground carriage is placed to claim a Subway or U-bahn route. When a player has one or none of their pieces left in their supply (either Tram or U-bahn carriages), each player, including that player, gets one last turn, then tickets are scored as usual. One of the differences between this game and the other variants is the shape of the map, with it being very elongated in the east/west direction. Pine built his routes along the north side and into the centre while Pink stretched his network along the south bank and into the centre.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was a very enjoyable game, and both Pink and Pine said they would definitely play this one again. Perhaps part of the reason was that it was very close, but neither player realised how close until the final scoring. In fact, it was so close that they double checked the score and confirmed that it was a tie with both players finishing with fifty-four points. After a bit of chat, they had a rummage through the rules to find out what the tie breaker was, only to discover that it was the number of completed tickets, and both had finished with five. So remarkably, it was a real tie, but while they shared victory this time, there will almost certainly be a rematch in the not too distant future.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Everyone loves a nice birthday gift.

Essen 2023

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

– Image from spiel-essen.com

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

22nd August 2023

It was an unusually quiet night—indeed we haven’t been this low on numbers since the dark days of 2020. On a bleak night in mid March of that year, there were also just four, and that presaged eighteen months of playing games online. On that occasion, everyone knew something bad was coming and it was a very sombre evening as a result. This time was much more positive though, as almost all the absentees were away because they were having a good time. That left just Black, Purple and Plum to meet Cobalt on his first meeting.

– Image by boardGOATS

The group started with the “Feature Game” which was Ticket to Ride: Northern Lights. This is the latest version of one of the group’s most popular games, Ticket to Ride, and one that is currently only available in Scandinavia. Like all the other versions, the rules are quite simple: on their turn, players either take train cards from the face-up market (or the blind draw deck), or spend cards to place trains on the map for points. Once or twice during the game, players may instead choose to draw Tickets, which give players points at the end of the game if they are completed, that is to say, the owner has connected the two locations with their trains. Woe betide any player with incomplete tickets however, as they score negatively.

– Image by boardGOATS

Northern Lights is similar to the Nordic Countries stand-alone game that we often play at Christmas, except that more people can play and the artwork is a little less festive (though still very, very beautiful). There are the usual “rule tweaks” that come with a new version of the game and which are in Finish, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian only. In this case, a translation says that the biggest differences are the addition of bonus cards, four of which are drawn at random at the start of the game and give extra points at the end, (for example to the person with the most left over trains, longest continuous route, most completed ferries etc.). Additionally, there are some triple routes (which only take effect with five players) and some routes have a “+X” next to them and when trains are laid on these the player takes X train cards from the face down pile.

– Image by boardGOATS

The rules surrounding Locomotive (wild) cards are slightly different too: for all routes they can replace any other card and for ferry routes Locomotive cards can be replaced with a pair of the same colour (that doesn’t have to be the same as the rest of the cards used). As a result, unlike most of the other versions, if there are three or more face-up Locomotive cards in the market, the market is not refreshed (a point of discussion some weeks back). With just four players, the triple routes were not used and the bonus cards drawn were the Small Step Strategist (D), the Nordic Express (E), the International Tycoon (G) and the Snowplough Reward (I).

– Image by boardGOATS

These rewarded players for the most single space tracks claimed, the longest continuous route, connecting the most countries and the most routes connecting pairs of cities in the arctic. The group also forgot to remove the spare trains, making the game slightly longer than it would have been with the rules as written. Black built a long route all the way down the west coast of Norway, which he shared with Plum in the north and Cobalt further south. Purple kept to the East side of the map, with a significant amount of her tracks above the arctic circle.

– Image by Black

When it came to the bonuses, Plum took the Snowplough award and Black was the International Tycoon. Plum and Black tied for the Longest Route (Nordic express) and Cobalt missed out on joining them by just two two trains. Instead, he just pipped Purple to the reward for having the most single track sections. Aside from this, it was a hard-fought game as usual. Black and Cobalt both completed three Tickets, while Plum finished four and Purple managed a massive seven. Size matters though, and Purple’s Tickets were all short routes, so didn’t score as highly as the others’. The bonuses were critical though in such a close fought game, and there were just three points in it, with Black just taking victory ahead of Plum with Cobalt in third.

– Image by Black

It had been quite a long game and time was marching on, so the group opted for another old favourite, Splendor. This had been a favourite game of Burgundy‘s who’s birthday it would have been at the end of the month. This year it has not been possible to plan something to mark the occasion (as we did last year), but we will try to do something in September. In the meantime, as always, everyone will continue to remember him in the games we play. And Splendor was definitely one of those games—at one point Burgundy had a fourteen game winning streak. Although Burgundy liked complex games, he also really appreciated simple elegance, and this is definitely one of those games.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is a simple engine builder: players take chips from the market (three different ones or two the same if there are four or more available), or spend chips to buy cards. The cards are permanent gems and those that cost more additionally give points. At the end of the game, the player with the most points is the winner. Cards aren’t the only way of scoring points though, players can also get points for enticing a Noble to support their cause by collecting the correct gems. The rules say the game end is triggered when one player reaches fifteen points, however, this time, due the group played to just ten.

– Image by boardGOATS

There are several consequences of playing a shorter version of the game, including changing the effect of the more expensive cards, but it also changes the importance of the Nobles. It also makes reserved cards more difficult to fulfill. This time, Cobalt had one card that he reserved, but failed to complete. Everyone had lots of cards and the game was just getting going when Black swooped to secure the support of Elisabeth of Austria with his three Onyx, Sapphires and Diamonds and triggered the end of the game. Plum had looked like she might just take her revenge for Black pipping her in Ticket to Ride, but it was to be a second runner up place for her behind Black’s unsurpassed twelve points.

– Image by Black

Learning Outcome: Board games are in my mind, they guide me back to you…

25th July 2023

After Blue and Pink had sampled the new pizza menu at The Jockey, people started to roll up and join them for the usual chatter. There were a total of nine, which was one more than required for the “Feature Game“, the recently announced Kennerspiel des Jahres winner, Challengers!. This is a deck-building, dueling “capture the flag” game where players battle head-to-head to find the winner. It is a very light game, with a largely random element, at least on the face of it, so it was always going to be a bit of a “Marmite” game. Green commented that he wasn’t very interested in it, but as everyone else was quite keen to give something novel a go, he sportingly joined in.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is very simple, and seems, at first glance to be quite random. Players start with a hand of cards, and then draw five more and choose a set number to add to their hand. The clever part is that (with eight players) the game is played over seven rounds, and each round the decks players draw from and/or the number of cards they can keep changes. There are three decks, A, B and C, and the cards become increasingly powerful as the game progresses. Once players have fettled their deck, they duel against their designated opponent by drawing the cards from their deck. In this, one player starts by playing a card and taking the Flag, then the other plays cards until their total equals or exceeds that of their opponent.

– Image by boardGOATS

This initially seems quite random in that players have no agency in this element of the game. There is a suggested variant that can change this by allowing players to draw two cards and choose one to play—this was an option for later in the game, but in the end, the group stuck to the rules as written. The game focuses on this duel aspect, but really it is more about building card combinations during the first part of the game and deciding what cards to shed and how many. Shedding cards is just as important as acquiring cards as, as the winner of a duel is the last player with the flag, so running out of cards can lose a match.

– Image by boardGOATS

Having too many cards can be a problem as well though—when they take the Flag, players move all their cards except the last played to the “Bench”. The Bench has six seats, and when a card needs a seat and there isn’t one, that player loses. The winner of the match, the last player with the Flag, then takes a winner’s token which is worth points at the end of the game. The game is all about the cards which make it less random than it seems at first; some cards have special powers, while others give points. Additionally, identical cards can share a seat on the Bench, so effectively allow players to have more cards, however, those tend to be weaker cards from the A deck.

– Image by boardGOATS

As such, Challengers! should perhaps be thought of more as a programming game, more in the mold of games like Colt Express, rather than a dueling “capture the flag” game. After each match, players play musical chairs and after seven rounds (with eight players), the players with the most points duel for overall honours. Although the idea is very simple, it took a little while for people to get to grips with the procedure. Blue, who was suffering with the after-effects of a bad cold, acted as much needed umpire and guide, explained the rules and demonstrated how the duel worked using Pink’s hand of cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

Possibly thanks to her fuzzy head, but Pink despite the fact that he was sat in front of her, was onto the second round before Blue realised that something wasn’t right. Instead of taking his starting hand back after the demo, he had just drawn five blind cards from the A deck, making his hand immensely over-powered. There were the usual tongue-in-cheek cries of “Cheat!”, but it was a genuine error, albeit one that wasn’t easy to fix by this time. As a result, the quickest and easiest solution was for him to forfeit the first round and fix his hand before re-starting the second round.

– Image by boardGOATS

One of the nicest aspects of the game was the way everyone played against everyone else. The GOATS are a nice, friendly group, and although some people end up playing together more often, the group always makes a point of trying to avoid cliques caused by the same people playing together all the time. The Musical Chairs element of the game meant everyone played against everyone else which gave it a fun, party feel that we usually only experience in October (when we play Crappy Birthday). It was clear that some people enjoyed it more than others though. Ivory, Teal and Black, really got to grips with the deck-building element and found the game exceeded their expectations, Ivory in particular really enjoyed it.

– Image by boardGOATS

Lime, Pink, Pine and Purple were a little less enthusiastic, while Green felt it was a clever little game enjoyable for a short while, but that it out-stayed it’s welcome—too long for the game-play within it, he couldn’t wait for it to finish. It wasn’t much of a surprise, therefore, that Ivory, Teal and Black were the winners of the “Round Robin” tournament phase, finishing with thirty-five, thirty-three and thirty-one points respectively (some way ahead of Lime in fourth with twenty-three). The play off between Ivory and Teal, therefore, was quite close and tense, but Ivory ran out the eventual winner, largely thanks to his handful of yellow Vendor cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

From there, everyone was keen to play something they were familiar with, but it had to be something quite quick. Teal suggested SCOUT, which Blue was keen to give another try (having played appallingly last time) and Ivory and Purple were very happy to join them. This is a very simple, but clever hand management game that was nominated for the Spiel des Jahres award last year. The theme is almost non-existant (something to do with circus performers), and isn’t even reflected in the card art, which is not unpleasant, but very functional (and therefore useful). The idea is that players have a hand of cards which, like in Bohnanza, they cannot rearrange.

– Image by boardGOATS

Unlike Bohnanza, on their turn players may play any set of adjacent cards from their hand as long as they beat the current winning set, taking any cards they beat into their scoring pile. Cards can be a a run of cards with consecutive numbers, or a meld of the same number. Sets are ranked by size and value and a meld always beats a run of the same size. Players take it in turns to play, and if they can’t or choose not to “Show” a set of cards that beats the current winning set, they instead “Scout”, taking one of the two cards from either end of the set on the table, adding it to their hand (paying the former owner a point from the supply).

– Image by boardGOATS

And this is where the game gets clever: all the cards have two values, one for each end, so players can add any cards to their hand anywhere they like and either way up (i.e. making either value active). In this way, players can manipulate their hand making larger melds or longer runs. The round ends when either every body “Scouted” in succession, or where one player has run out of cards. Players then score points for each card in their scoring pile and for each chip for cards taken by “Scouting” with negative points for any cards left in hand. The first time we played this with the group, it had all been a bit of a voyage of discovery, and last time, Ivory gave everyone a bit of a spanking, so Teal and Blue were keen to prevent that from happening again.

– Image by boardGOATS

Things started off well, with Blue beating Ivory in the first round, though Teal and Purple did less well ending up with a hand of cards. The second and third rounds went better with everyone taking positive points and it was very close going into the final round leaving it all to play for. Sadly for everyone else, Ivory brought his A-game to the last round ending the round swiftly leaving Purple and Teal with a hand that more or less off-set their takings and Blue with a positive score, though one with fewer points than Ivory. The end result wasn’t really very close, though it felt less of a stomping than last time: Ivory finished with fifty-five points and Blue took second with forty-one, ahead of Purple and Teal who tied for third.

– Image by boardGOATS

On the next table, Green, Pink, Pine and Black played a close fought enjoyable game of Les Aventuriers du Rail Express, a variant of the Spiel des Jahres winning Ticket to Ride series, but one that is a sort of half-way house between the original full versions of the game and the mini “city” games (like Ticket to Ride: London). The game only plays four and takes less time, but is quite a nice variant and has a couple of differences to the original, being shorter without losing too much of the main game’s challenge. As in the original, players can either take two cards from the market (face up cards, or the draw deck), or pay cards to place trains on the board. Unusually, however, the Locomotive “wild” cards are kept in a single pile and therefore are always available. This is quite a nice variation, as it means that players never feel forced to take blind cards because what they need isn’t available.

– Image by boardGOATS

This effectively means players are guaranteed to get at least one train card they want. The other major difference is the presence of the long route ticket. This is one route that everyone can claim, however the highest scores go to the first to claim it. It additionally means that failing to complete it does not lead to negative points, so players can ignore it and concentrate on normal short route tickets if they prefer. There was a moment when the group had three identical coloured cards in the face up market which made them whether they should be scrubbed (as with three Locomotive cards in the base game). It couldn’t be found in the rules and it was pointed out that in the original games it is possible to have five cards of the same colour, so they stayed and someone eventually found a use for them.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine took an early point lead which he maintained for quite a while until Green and Pink caught up, and not long after, Black too. However, as the game neared its conclusion Pine pulled ahead again. Pink had completed the long route already and, at the cost of not being able lay his last two trains, Green decided to get the game finished before anyone else managed it. That long route helped Pink finish in front with sixty-four points, while Black’s slow start demonstrated that getting trains down early is no guarantee of success. That said, he managed to pull into the station in second place with sixty-one points. Green and Pine fought to not be last and ended up tied just a couple points behind with fifty-nine points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Winning the Spiel des Jahres award means a game is good, but doesn’t mean it will suit everyone.