Tag Archives: World’s Fair 1893

24th January 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

21st January 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

12th Movember 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

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

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

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

– Image from google.com

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

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

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

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Imageby boardGOATS

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

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

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

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Learning Outcome: You can never have too many camels.