Tag Archives: Wingspan: Asia

21st February 2023

With this set to be our last meeting before The Horse and Jockey changed hands, a lot of people turned up early to enjoy the Thai special (a preview of the Thai Night the following day). As the last of the food was consumed the final couple of people arrived, and then it was all about deciding who was going to play what and how we were going to split up the group of thirteen. In the end, Ivory took a group of five to play the “Feature Game“, Verdant, while Pink and Lime led a group of four to play Cascadia, and Green gave his copy of Wingspan with all the expansions (Europe, Oceania and Asia) an outing.

– Image by boardGOATS

The “Feature Game“, Verdant is a card game where players are trying to match plants to rooms and grow luxurious foliage to give them the most points at the end of the game. The game is played over fourteen rounds with players taking it in turns to take cards from a central market. In a similar way to Cascadia where hexagonal tiles are paired in the market with animal tokens, in Verdant, the cards are paired with object tokens. However, where, in Cascadia players just have to choose which pair to take, in Verdant the decision is a little more complex. Instead of taking a card and it’s token, in Verdant each tokens is paired with two cards (a room and a plant) and players choose one card to take with the associated token.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players then add the card to their three by five array, with plants placed next to rooms and visa versa to form a chequerboard-type arrangement. Whenever a plant is placed next to a room with matching lighting conditions, it gets a verdancy token; plants which achieve target verdancy are completed and gain a fancy pot (some of which give bonus points) and then score points at the end of the game. Players then add and/or spend their object tokens. The objects come in two types, Furniture/Pets and Nurture tokens. Furniture/Pets are either added to a room or placed their one storage space. Nurture tokens are particularly useful as they can be spent to add extra verdancy to plants.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the end of the game, as well as scoring points for completed plants, players also score for each room with adjacent plants that match their type—one point for each plant, two for each if the room contains an object with a colour that matches the room. Finally, players are rewarded for any residual verdancy and receive bonus points for having a complete set of each plant type, for having a complete set of each room colour and an increasing number of bonus points based on how many unique Furniture/Pets they have in their home.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue started, and with no idea what she was doing, took a high verdancy plant and passed the problem on to Teal whose turn it was next. There was quite a lot of “try something and see what happens” going on in the early part of the game, but before long Pine voiced everyone else’s thoughts when he asked of Ivory, “How come you’ve got two pots already?” Then, as everyone shrugged, Pine added, “Oh, I see, you have cheap plants…” Ivory looked, if not exactly disgruntled, some way from being actually gruntled, and replied, “You make it sound like I got them from a garage on the way here!” And so the game continued with players taking cards and adding them to their arrays with as much verdancy as possible.

– Image by boardGOATS

About halfway through the game, Pine shared a new post on The Jockey Facebook page which said the current business owner would now be leaving in two weeks but Dan (the current manager) would be responsible for the pub for the next couple of months. So, while there’s still some uncertainty, it seems there WILL be a meeting in two weeks time. By this time, people were getting into their strides a little, though most people’s main strategy just seemed to be taking Nurture tokens whenever they had the chance, something which Pine and Indigo seemed to get a lot of and Blue didn’t have until her final tile (which she picked up with a Panda Plant, much to Pink’s delight from the next table).

– Image by boardGOATS

And that just left the scores. A bit of a point salad, it seemed like points came from everywhere. The bulk of everyone’s points came from completed plants though and rooms scored surprisingly well too. Most people thought Ivory was going to win, and so it proved, but much to her surprise, Blue was only a couple of points behind his seventy-nine, and took second. It was really tight for third with everyone else within a couple of points of each other, but it was Pine who just made it onto the podium ahead of the others. Although the game had taken quite a bit longer than expected and was more of a head-scratcher than its brother Cascadia, Verdant had been universally enjoyed and deserves another go.

– Image by boardGOATS

Speaking of Cascadia, Pink, Lime, Black and Jade were giving last year’s Spiel des Jahres Award winner another outing. In this game, similar to Verdant, on their turn, players take a terrain tile and animal token from the market and add them to their array. In this game however, players score points for their largest terrain of each type and also for animals in a specific arrangement. There is a lot of replayability in the game as each animal has several different scoring motifs on cards with one of each drawn at random at the start of each game. This time Bears scored for each group not surrounded by bears with larger groups scoring more; Salmon scored for long chains, and Elk scored for groups of one, two, three or four tiles in a particular layout.

– Image by boardGOATS

There was some discussion surrounding the scoring of Foxes, but they scored for each unique animal pairs surrounding them. The Hawk card was from the Tantrum House Promo Set and gave points for each Hawk that had a direct line of sight with both an Elk and a Fox. And this proved challenging for most people as Pink spent the first half of the game by taking all the Elks in what was later referred to as “The Great Elk Shortage”. The others soon got their revenge, however, when Pink was after Bears and everyone else took them just before he could. The game progressed quite quickly and before long, it was time to score.

– Image by boardGOATS

Despite the Elk and Bear based tussle, the scores for the Wildlife were very close with Jade just three points ahead of Black and Pink. In this game though players ignore the largest areas at their peril, but these need quite a lot of planning to make them work. With bonus points available to the player with the largest of each type of terrain, going heavily into one or two not only scored per tile, but also an extra three points. This tactic gave Pink eight more points than anyone else for his Habitats which ultimately gave him a comfortable victory, eight points clear of Black in second.

– Image by boardGOATS

Cascadia was the first game to finish and the group looked around for something quick to play that everyone knew, and quickly settled on Sushi Go!. This is the archetypal card drafting game, where players are dealt cards, keep one and then pass the hand to their neighbour. Played over three rounds, players are collecting different types of sushi. This game was closer than Cascadia and a bit rushed. There was a big debate as to whether players could play wasabi on top of wasabi and score nine points—the initial response was “that would be silly”, but it was confirmed with a rules check.

– Image by boardGOATS

The group played with the Soy Sauce Promo which gave points for having lots of different types of sushi, and variously pretty much everyone had a go at making them score. Almost everyone eschewed the Chopsticks, which allow players to take two cards instead of one later in the round, but that assumes there is an opportunity to use them later. Pink gave them a go, but without much real success. The final round had no Puddings, so there was a three-way tie for Desserts giving each player two points, except for Pink who missed out completely and lost six points. With a deficit of eight points in such a tight game that probably gave victory to Jade, who finished two points ahead of Pink in second and five ahead of Black in third.

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– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the third table, a rather epic game of Wingspan was underway. This is one of the group’s favourite games and seems to be popular with almost everyone. The game is a kind of action based card-driven, engine-building game. Players take it in turns to take one of four actions: take food; take bird cards; pay food to place bird cards, or lay eggs on bird cards. Since we enjoy Wingspan and play it a lot, we have all the current expansions within the group, though none of the people playing this time had experienced Oceania or Asia (except solo), so the group decided to put in as much content as they could. This meant using all the bird cards available, creating three huge stacks.

– Image by boardGOATS

There were so many cards that they piled way up beyond the top of the card holder, and by the end of the game, they were still over the top! The group added the round bonus chits from the European and Oceania expansions to the base game ones, but ended up only pulling out one from Oceania (birds pointing left) and none from Europe. And of course the group used the nectar (replacing the original set of dice too), and lots of different coloured eggs from the different sets. The only parts of the expansions the group weren’t able to use were the two player components and the six/seven player components from Asia as there were four in the group, Green, Plum, Byzantium and Sapphire.

– Image by boardGOATS

The group only needed to refer to the rules a couple of times for clarification on how the birds interacted. Byzantium’s Snowy Owl, did not point left or right, so he could not count it towards the end of round goal, which meant he only tied with Sapphire for first place in round two. For most of the game there was little egg-laying, but the group managed to fill their boards with lots of birds (ten to thirteen each). Only Green and Sapphire went on an egg laying frenzy in the last couple of rounds, but they still only managed ten and thirteen in total respectively. Plum and Byzantium both managed to collect an almost unheard of total of four bonus cards each.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although this helped Byzantium towards an extra twelve points from the bonus cards, it was still shy of Sapphire’s thirteen from two cards (seven points of which he gained on his very last turn with a lucky bonus card draw). Plum, however, really made good with her bonus cards for a whopping total of twenty-five. This was to prove the clincher for her as she won the game with ninety-six points, some way ahead of Sapphire’s eighty-eight giving him second and Green five points behind in third. Of the expansions, everyone in the group used lots of Nectar (another aspect where Plum managed to outscore everyone else) and a good smattering of birds from each expansion, except for Asian birds.

– Image by boardGOATS

Only Sapphire placed an Asian bird card with the group using twenty base game birds, ten from the European expansion, fifteen from Oceania and the single Asian bird. Green did manage to get two “flitting” birds and regularly made use of them to flit between habitats. During the after game discussion, the group agreed that they really wanted to try the two player and the large group versions. Having played Wingspan with six last summer without the Asia adjustment, it was clear what needed tightening up, and that seemed to have been done. As a result, the group all agreed that they looked forward to a Mega-Wingspan game soon.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Some board games are prickly and others more succulent.

29th November 2022

Although the numbers were severely dented by holidays, work commitments and norovirus, there were still nine of us, and although everyone was late, timings were perfect and the whole group arrived within moments of each other. There was the usual chatter, as people bought drinks and shared stories of the week, then everyone finally settled down to play some games. The “Feature Game” was the shiny new Asia expansion to one of our favourite games, the multi-award-winning bird-themed card game, Wingspan. But first we had to decide who was playing what.

– Image by boardGOATS

Like last time (when there were also nine people), splitting the group into two or three was quite challenging, but eventually, we decided to go with two tables with Blue, Plum, Black and Ivory playing Wingspan with Pink and Pine leading the rest in a game of Downforce. Downforce has three parts: a car auction, a race, and betting on the race which occurs during the game. Downforce has had a couple of outings in the last year, and after last time we played, we concluded that the betting skewed the game a little. Essentially, when the first car crosses the first betting line which triggers players to place their bets, if several people bet on the same car that tends to lead to a runaway leader.

– Image by boardGOATS

After a little research, we found an alternative, “Odds Betting” variant that we thought might be worth a try and Pink was keen to give it a go. This scheme rewards riskier bets because a player’s winnings depends on the position of the car at the point in the race when the bet is made. Thus, if a player bets on the leading car at the first betting line and it comes in first, they will win three million dollars ($3,000,000 × 1), however, if they bet on the last car and it defies the odds, they will take eighteen million dollars ($3,000,000 × 6). Even if that last car comes in third, anyone betting on it will take six million dollars ($1,000,000 × 6)—twice that of betting on the leader if it wins.

– Image by boardGOATS

The track chosen was Switchback Pass from the Danger Circuit expansion. The race began and as the cars weaved around the track, players tried to muscle past each other. Purple made good use of her power, “Tough” (from the Danger Circuit expansion). This allowed her to move an extra two spaces every time she finished her move on a space adjacent to a “rumble strip” and she used that a lot, an awful lot. This was in contrast to Pink who didn’t use his “Determined” power at all. Despite using her power a lot, sadly, Purple wasn’t able to capitalise on it. “Ambitious” Lemon was the first to cross the line, shortly followed by “Unpredictable” Orange. However, the winner is the player with the most cash including income from bets, and in this case, that was Orange who had backed himself from the start.

– Image by boardGOATS

The consensus was that the “Odds Betting” variant was a definite improvement on the rules as written, though they made things significantly more complicated. As a result, they weren’t considered a perfect fix. There are other options still to try though: the “Simple Odds Betting” variant (where players only bet on the winner with the takings based on position at the time of the bet); the “All Bets are Off” variant (where the betting rules are as written but each player must bet on three different cars, none of which are owned by that player), and the “Three Bets” Variant (which just increases the number of cars everyone has an interest in).

– Image by boardGOATS

While the race was ongoing, the next table were playing Wingspan. This is one of the most popular games within the group, so we were keen to give the brand new Asia expansion an outing. The basic game is simple enough: on their turn, players either play a bird card in one of the three habitats, or activate one of those habitats and all the birds in it. The three habitats are Woodland, Grassland and Wetland giving food, eggs and bird cards respectively. Food and eggs are necessary for playing bird cards, as well as eggs being worth points in their own right at the end of the game. The European and Oceania expansions both added more cards and the latter also added nectar as a food source.

– Image by boardGOATS

Wingspan: Asia is a standalone two-player game that can also be added to the base game as providing new bird and goal cards. It also adds a new “flock” mode for playing with six or more players, but with only four players this time, the group decided to make the most of the Asia expansion. So Ivory, Plum and Black started by removing all the other expansion bird cards from the deck and shuffling in the new ones while Blue sorted out all the other bits needed to play. That all took longer than expected, but with everyone knowing the game well, there was no need to revise the rules before the game, with just a few edge cases that were checked during play.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory started the fastest, with more birds in his reserve than anyone else by the end of the first round. The goal at the end of that round was the rather cool “most birds facing right”, and although Ivory won it, everyone else was close behind. That wasn’t the case in the later rounds though, with somebody struggling to get points in each case, but Ivory taking the top bonus in every round. Some of the new birds offered a bit more, in particular, those that allowed players to cache food, but gave them a wider choice of options. Some allowed players to choose which food, and there was another that gave the option of caching food or tucking cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although some of the bonus cards were the same as those in the base game and the other expansions, there were also new ones. There was one that rewarded having different nest types in the trees. Ivory and Plum both got cards that gave points for playing birds in a given habitat that increased or decreased in value. Although these were a bit different and added variety, they didn’t fundamentally change the game. As Black pointed out, sometimes the bonuses are a bit too difficult and the other ways of accumulating points much easier. They are good to give a steer at the start of the game though, when the range of options can be overwhelming.

– Image by boardGOATS

With eggs worth one point each, the final turns involved the usual round of egg-laying. It felt like it was less of a frenzy than it sometimes is, probably because everyone had other things that they felt they needed to do that were more important. Towards the end of the game, Plum also picked up a couple of extra goal cards, but had to choose between them. Both gave points for having birds that increased or decreased in value in a Wetland or Woodland—she went for the Wetland as at least the values were increasing, decreasing values was not ideal at that stage of the game. Black also picked up a couple of extra goal cards during the game, but from Blue’s perspective, Ivory was where he always was, out in front with a formidable lead.

– Image by boardGOATS

That was not quite how it turned out in practice, however. Ivory said he thought Black might have it, and ultimately he was proved right. The differences in the scores were not quite as anybody expected however. As the scores came in, it became clear that Ivory had a lot of end of round bonus points (twenty-two in fact) and Black had a lot of points from the bonus cards (fourteen) while Blue had the most from her birds (thirty-eight) and Plum had the most cached food (nine). Of course it is the total that counts, and in the event, Black was some way ahead of the rest with a total of seventy-seven points.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was much closer for second than anyone expected as Blue had made an extremely slow start, but Ivory’s total of seventy-two pipped her by a single point. Everyone had enjoyed the game, but then we always do enjoy Wingspan. The Asia expansion didn’t change things very much, though it did feel a little different, mainly because of the new goal cards (e.g. the cards that reward placing birds in order of points and for playing birds with different types of nests). These were the biggest difference, though some of the bird card caching options were a little more flexible and players seemed to like that too. It is unlikely we’ll play Asia in quite this “Asia strong” way again as it will get mixed in with the other expansions, but it was a good way to introduce it to the group.

– Image by boardGOATS

Downforce never takes very long to play and the other group were still only half-way through Wingspan, but rather than something longer, the racing group decided to play something lighter and eventually settled on No Thanks!. This is a very simple game, but always a lot of fun. Players take it in turns to either take the card on display, or pay a chip to pass the problem on to the next player. At the end of the game, players sum up the total of their cards and subtract the number of chips they have left and the player with the lowest total is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

The catch is that if a player has a run of cards only the lowest counts, but some of the cards have been removed… This time, that rule was really critical. Lemon managed to collect cards thirty-two to thirty-five, but unfortunately, that still gave her lots of points. Orange did a bit better with his run from twenty-four to twenty-seven finishing with just thirteen points. Sadly however, Pine did slightly better and finished with an excellent eight. Points in the second game were much higher—Lemon’s twenty-six points gave her second place, but Pink just nicked it with twenty-three. And as Wingspan had finally finished, that was it for the night.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Playing an expansion without other expansions makes its features more obvious.

Next Meeting, 29th November 2022

Our next meeting will be Tuesday 29^th November 2022. As usual, we will start playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

This week, the “Feature Game” will be the Asia expansion to the multi-award-winning bird-themed card game, Wingspan. This latest expansion introduces new cards and a “flock” mode for playing with six or more players.

– Image from stonemaiergames.com

Speaking of birds…

Jeff and Joe were chatting about their favourite songs. Joe was really into modern stuff, but Jeff said he preferred eighties music. Then Joe asked Jeff what his favourite song was.

Jeff answered, “Wake me up before you Dodo…”

Essen 2022

Known to gamers worldwide simply as “SPIEL” or “Essen”, the Internationale Spieltage, the annual German games fair is the largest in Europe and arguably the world. The fair is of particular significance as many new releases are scheduled to coincide with the event just in time for Christmas sales. In 2020, like many other events, SPIEL was cancelled. The online event that replaced it was not as successful, and in 2021 there was a return to the in person fair albeit with restrictions and much smaller than that in 2019. Today is the first day of this year’s SPIEL which runs from Thursday to Sunday every October.

– Image from spiel-messe.com

Although many of the Covid restrictions have been lifted, medical grade surgical masks covering mouth and nose are still mandatory for all visitors and exhibitors. So while SPIEL will likely be larger this year than last, it probably won’t reach pre-pandemic proportions. The maths trade is back though, a crazy event where hundreds of people agree multiple trades and sales online in advance and then all meet up at 3pm and try to find the people they have made contracts with and make the exchanges. Remarkably, it works, and very well too, with some people selling hundreds of euros worth of games through this means.

– Image by Friedhelm Merz Verlag

Despite the number of people involved, the exchanges only take a few minutes and it is usually almost all over in half an hour making it a surprisingly efficient way of making space for the new arrivals. In addition to the Maths Trade, there will be the usual exhibitors showcasing their wares. The Spiel des Jahres and Deutscher Spiele Preis winners will also all be available and there will also be lots of games making their SPIEL debut. These include Uwe Rossenburg’s latest game, Atiwa, and the top of “The Essen Hotness” games: Tiletum, Revive, Woodcraft, Lacrimosa and Hamlet: The Village Building Game. Games like Flamecraft, Turing Machine and War of the Ring: The Card Game will be for sale too.

– Image by BGG contributor W Eric Martin

There will be re-implementations, like Richard Breese’s reworking of his 1998 game, Keydom’s Dragons (formerly Keydom), Clever 4Ever (extending Ganz Schön Clever), Skymines (a redevelopment of Mombasa), Amsterdam (formerly Macao) and of course, Ticket to Ride (San Francisco). Expansions will also be on show for games like The Red Cathedral (Contractors), Galaxy Trucker (Keep on Trucking), Meadow (Downstream), Sagrada (The Great Facades – Glory) and two of our favourites, Viticulture (World) and Wingspan (Asia). Sadly, no-one from boardGOATS will be there to see them though; maybe next year…

– Image from stonemaiergames.com