With Blue and Pink otherwise engaged, the early arrivals were left to talk amongst themselves to begin with. Eventually, everyone joined the table talk and admired the new, very yellow arrival that was the Oceana Expansion for Wingspan. Sadly it will likely be a while before it gets an outing with the group, but it gives us something to look forward to.
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| – Image by boardGOATS |
Once the yellow eggs had been put away, it was time to start the “Feature Game” which was to be HexRoller. This is another of the “Roll and Write” style games and is a relatively recent release. The game is quite simple in concept, though the scoring is quite involved and it is quite different to anything else we have played in this vein. The idea is that a handful of dice are rolled and “binned” into according to value. Players then choose two numbers rolled and write those numbers on their player board as many times as that number was rolled.
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| – Image by boardGOATS |
This means if three and five are chosen and they appear once and twice respectively, the player will write three down once and five twice. The game is played on a pre-printed sheet with a play area made of hexagons (because they are the bestagons, obviously). Some of these have numbers written on them. Once a player has chosen a number, they start writing in a hexagon next to a number already on the board, with every subsequent number written next to the previous, making a chain.
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Once per turn, players can also use one of three special actions, each of which can only be used once per game. These allow players to write one of their chosen numbers an extra time; write a two anywhere, and choose a third set of dice from the pool. At the end of the game players score from a smorgasbord of opportunities. There are points for filling all seven hexagons in one of the coloured groups; for filling all the orange hexes in the central area; for connecting pairs of pre-printed numbers, and any left over, unused special actions.
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Additionally, every round a player picks two numbers and one is written in a box in the top row in the bottom left corner with the other written in the bottom row. At the end of the game, a “straight” starting from three, score points equating to the highest number in the straight. In other words, a set of two threes, a five, a four, a six, and a couple of eights would score six points.
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Explained, the game sounds extremely complex, however the scoring is outlined on the sheet and in practice, it is actually quite easy to play, though challenging to play well. That said, it is very different to any of the other games we’ve played and nobody really had much idea how it would pan out. There are two different boards and with different layouts. We started with the slightly more challenging, “seven dice” board, but only realised we were using eight dice after we’d already started, and that probably made it quite a bit easier.
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With only seven rounds, the game rocked along quite quickly and was over in about twenty-five minutes. Some people did better than others, but it was tight at the top with Green and Ivory tied for first place with sixty-seven and Burgundy just two points behind. Everyone had really enjoyed it though, and we were all very keen to play the second, “Eight Dice” layout. This layout is nominally the easier of the two, though we didn’t realise that before we started otherwise we’d have played it first.
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It has a larger central area, though, and is played over one extra round. Some of the scoring is also very slightly different, which some people didn’t notice until the end when they came to calculating their score which led to quite a lot of recalculations. Burgundy was third again, and Blue took second with fifty-seven. Although Pink was insistent that because he was unable use a single die in the final round, he had a “moral score” of seventy-three his total of fifty stands. That left Ivory the winner for the second time with a score of sixty-one.
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HexRoller is a really quick little game, and even playing it twice, there was still time for something else. As we had struggled a little with Tiny Towns last time, we had planned to give it another go, this time with a new set of buildings. The idea of the game is clever but quite simple: players place resources on the spaces on their four-by-four town grid, and then, when the have the right resources in the the correct arrangement, they can replace them with a building.
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Different buildings are built from different combinations of resources in different arrangements and, ultimately give different numbers of points. We play using the Town Hall Variant where two resources are drawn at random, and then players choose their own for every third. So, the key to the game is careful planning, but also keeping options open in case the required resources don’t come up. And luck also helps of course.
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This time we drew buildings from the alternative cards adding the Granary, Millstone, Bakery, Trading Post, Cloister and Almshouse to the Cottage. These change the game considerably. For example, the Granary feeds eight cottages (rather than the four of the Farm we used last time), but they must be in the eight surrounding spaces. Similarly, the Millstone is worth two points if next to a red or yellow building (in this case a Granary and the Bakery), rather than a single point for each adjacent cottage. The resources always take up more space than the buildings though and if players aren’t careful they can easily end up building on a space that makes it impossible to work with what’s left.
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Several players including Green, Blue and Pink picked up on the fact that the Cloister had the potential to be highly lucrative, scoring one point for each cloister in a corner. Blue explained (several times) that this meant that two Cloisters both in corners would score two points each, whereas if one were in a corner and the other were not they would score one point each. Pink decided that they were too difficult to build to get the most from them as they required four different resources, but Purple, Blue, Green and Lime were braver and decided to give it a go.
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Meanwhile, Pink and Burgundy went heavily for Almshouses. The larger the number of these, the more points they score, but while an odd number of these scores positively, an even number scores negatively. So this strategy was not without risk, although as players are not obliged to build buildings, they could always wait, and only build when they know they have a second ready to go.
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Lime was the first to be unable to do anything. One of the down sides of playing games like this remotely is that players can’t watch what other players are doing, so as players dropped out, nobody else knew how they had done until the scores started to come in. This time there was quite a spread with scores covering a range of nearly fifty points from minus fifteen upwards. Burgundy had managed to avoid the pitfalls of the Almshouse and finished with twenty-eight points.
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Blue, however, had made the Cloister strategy work building a total of six, including one in each corner. It was at this point that Green realised he could have built another two Cloisters, but had thought they wouldn’t score. Worse, he hadn’t realised the empty spaces would score negatively, leaving him some eight points worse off. He insisted that he wouldn’t concede, that there should be a recount as the rules hadn’t been clear, and that a lawsuit would clear it up…
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As in Pennsylvania, however, nobody listened to the litigant. It was getting late though, so Lime, Lilac and Ivory left everyone else to play For Sale. This is a great game for six players and the rendering of Board Game Arena is really good, making it really quick and fun to play. The game itself comes in two parts: buying properties and then selling them—the player who finishes with the most money wins.
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Everyone starts with $14,000 dollars and the bid must increase by at least $1,000 each time with players who pass taking the lowest numbered property available and getting half their stake returned. There are two ways to play this, with the money returned rounded up or down – this time we chose to give every player the maximum amount of money with their returns rounded up.
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This time, all the high cards came out in the final round. This meant Burgundy paid just $1,000 for his castle (number twenty-eight) and Purple paid just $2,000 for the sky-scraper (number twenty-nine), although Green still paid $7,000 for the most valuable property (the space station). As a result, most people had acquired some nice properties for a very good price.
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| – Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com |
It was a three-way tie between Black, Burgundy and Green for the player who managed to sell their properties for the most money, with all three taking $48,000. However, it is the total, including any money left from the starting funds. In this, Pink and Blue had only spent $3,000 so had $11,000 left. This enabled Blue to just beat Burgundy into second place and take victory with $53,000. At this point, Pine, who had been unable to join in earlier as he was staying with his poorly mother. Inevitably, the game of choice with seven, was 6 Nimmt!…
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6 Nimmt! is one of the group’s favourite games, and we really enjoy the additional madness that the “Professional Variant” gives. In the original game, players simultaneously choose a card from their hand and then, starting with the lowest value card, cards are added in order to one of the four rows of cards on the table. Each card is added to the row that finishes with the highest number that is lower than the number on the card. Placing the sixth card instead causes the player to take the five cards into their scoring pile.
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The “Professional Variant” allows players to add cards to the other end of the rows, as long as the difference is smaller. This has the effect of making otherwise be “safe” plays, decidedly “unsafe”, and makes low value cards much more interesting to play. It can have far more catastrophic effects on the game though, and this time was one of those games.
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| – Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com |
Purple was the first to pick up cards, immediately followed by Green. It wasn’t long before others joined in the race to the bottom. Purple was leading the pack, though when Burgundy picked up seventeen nimmts, shortly followed by another fifteen and several other smaller totals, he overtook her, finishing with a magnificent minus forty-two! The winner was largely incidental, but was Blue, who had only picked up fifteen in the whole game some twenty less than Pine, who always does well in this game, in second place.
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| – Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com |
With that over, Green and Pink signed off, leaving five to continue, and the game of choice was Coloretto. This is a very simple set collecting game, that we played from time to time when we were at the Jockey, but has become one of our staples this year. The game is so simple and plays very quickly: players take a card from the deck and add it to a truck, or they take a truck and sit out until the end of the round.
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Players score points for their sets, with the three most lucrative sets scoring positively and any others scoring negatively. Last time we played, we used the “Difficult” scoring, but that hadn’t been as interesting as, say, the “Professional Variant” for 6 Nimmt!, so this time we used the standard scoring, according to the Triangular Number Series.
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With everyone very familiar with the game, it is often quite close and this was one of those games. Indeed Pine and Black tied for second place with twenty-five points, but were beaten by Burgundy who finished just two points clear. There was just time for one more game, and Sushi Go! has become one of our recent favourites in such circumstances, as it plays very quickly and the rendering on Board Game Arena is really good, though it would be really nice if they could add some of the extra options available in Sushi Go Party!.
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As it is, we played with the Soy Sauce mini expansion. The game is very simple and we find that a little bit of Soy does add a little extra flavour. The game is one of card drafting and set collecting, with players choosing one card from their hand to keep, passing the rest on. Some cards score for sets of two or three (Tempura and Sashimi), while the Nigiri score more if played after Wasabi for example. Soy goes well with everything, so scores if the player also has the most variety on their plate at the end of the round.
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| – Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com |
The game changers Maki Rolls and the Puddings which give points for the player with the most at the end of the round and game respectively. The Puddings can be the real game-changers though as the player with the most gets six points and the player with the fewest loses six points. In a close game that can make all the difference.
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– Image by boardGOATS from
boardgamearena.com |
This time, Blue and Pine took an early lead at the end of the first round while the others built up their Pudding supply for the end of the game. Black took the lead after the second round though. Burgundy put in a storming final round taking the six points for the most desserts, but with a three-way tie for the fewest, the negative points were split between Blue, Pine and Black. Burgundy didn’t quite catch the leaders though, and he finished two points behind Pine and Black, who tied for first place. And, well fed, it was time for bed.
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– Image by boardGOATS from
boardgamearena.com |
Learning Outcome: Listening to the rules explanation usually gets you more points.
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