Unusually, Blue and Pink were joined early by Lime for pizza, and Pine who wasn’t eating. So, while they were waiting for food to arrive the group squeezed in a very quick game of Coloretto. This is a popular game within the group, but somehow Lime had missed out on it. It is quite simple to play, but one of those games that takes a couple of tries to get the hang of playing well, or as in Blue’s case, lots of tries and still not play it well. The idea is simple enough though: players take it in turns to either take a coloured chameleon card from the deck and add it to one of the “trucks”, or take one of the trucks and add the cards on it to their display.
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Players score points according to the triangular number series where every additional card is worth one more additional point than the previous card. Thus, the fourth card someone gets is worth ten points, four more points than the third card (which itself is worth three more than the second and so on). Collecting chameleons was briefly interrupted by the arrival of Hoi-sin duck pizzas, but that didn’t stop Pink winning with a total of thirty-seven points, well ahead of a tie for second place between Blue and Pine. By this time, Purple, Black and Teal had arrived and it was time to decide who was going to play what.
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Pink and Lime were very keen to give Zoo Break another go, having left the town of Bedlam over-run with escaped animals last time the group played. With it being such a quiet night, there was some debate as to what the other group were going to play, but in the end they opted for the “Feature Game“, the Marina expansion to one of our most popular little games, Draftosaurus. Pine was keen to play with the cute wooden zoo meeples and after the mayhem last time, Blue was also keen not to miss out, which left Purple, Black and Teal to play with dinosaurs. The only problem was, none of them knew how to play it, so while Lime, Pink and Pine set up Bedlam Zoo, Blue quickly explained the rules to Draftosaurus.
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Draftosaurus is a very simple drafting game in the vein of Sushi Go! or 7 Wonders, but instead of drafting cards, players are drafting wooden dino-meeples. The idea is that players start with a handful of dino-meeples and choose one to keep and pass the rest on to the next player. The active player rolls a location die which adds restrictions on which pens players can place their chosen dinosaur in in their dino-park. When everyone has placed their first dino, the die is passed to the next player and everyone chooses their next meeple from the pile passed to them by their neighbour. The round is complete when each player has placed six meeples, and the game is played over two rounds (passing dino-meeples in opposite directions in each round).
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The Marina expansion adds brown Plesiosaurs to the yellow Triceratops, blue Stegosaurus, pink Brachiosaurus, orange Spinosaurus, green Parasaurolophus, and red Tyrannosaurus rex from the base game. Where dinosaurs from the base game can always be placed in the river that runs through the middle of each player’s park (where they only earn a single point), Plesiosaurs all go into the river, which they travel along into an expansion board. Each expansion board is slightly different, but when a player places the non-Plesiosaur dinosaur shown on the bridge, if they have a dinosaur immediately up-stream of the bridge, it can pass under it into the next section of the river where it will score more points.
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It was a close game with everyone following different tactics. Teal concentrated on trying to fill his Meadow of Differences while Black focused on collecting pink Brachiosaurs and Purple stuffed her Forest of Sameness with blue Stegosaurs. Black took one Plesiosaur, Purple collected two and Teal three, though only one of his made it under the first bridge and out of the main river. Purple managed to minimise the number of non-scoring dino-meeples in her park, and that just gave her the edge, and she finished a couple of points ahead of Teal who took second place.
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Although Teal, Purple and Black tried to persuade her to stay (and there was even some suggestion of her playing both games simultaneously), once she had explained the rules, Blue joined the madness in Bedlam, playing Zoo Break. In this game, players are keepers trying to prevent their charges escaping from the zoo, and to win the game, they have to return all escaped critters to their enclosures and lock the doors. Losing is much easier—if five cuddly creatures or one dangerous one escape from the zoo, then it is all over. Last time, only one animal escaped, but it was a cobra, so that was that.
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On their turn, players first roll the action die to find out how many Action Points the player has to work with for that round. Then, after they have carried out their actions, one card from the Escape deck and then one card from the Move deck are revealed. The Escape card liberates one or more animals, while the Move card often moves animals towards the exit, but occasionally causes other things to happen, like waking up sleeping tigers, breaking barricades and generally cause more chaos. After last time, the group decided to start by digging through the Supply deck and make sure everyone went really well equipped, then, prioritise capturing (or at least controlling) the Meerkats, as they had been so problematic last time.
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On that occasion, the group had played with two “Phew” Cards in the Escape deck, and (following a rules malfunction) all the blank cards in in the Move deck. In spite of all the blank cards, they still lost spectacularly. So, this time, the group stuck with the two “Phew” Cards, but removed the blanks from the Move deck and did not add any other rules variants as they really wanted to win, though they stuck with the thematically logical variant where tigers remain tranquilised when returned to their pen. Lime had the Black Belt special power which meant he couldn’t be hurt by animals, so he got the job of dealing with snakes which hide so players have to reveal them, with the risk of being attacked if they are dangerous.
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Pink, as usual wanted to work with the pandas, but the Capuchin monkeys were a more immediate threat, and the group made a point of dealing with the troublesome meerkats early this time, so then he went on to deal with them once the monkeys were locked up. Blue, who had the panda enclosure key, took over trying to control them, but they kept escaping just as Blue was about to lock their cage. Blue was encouraged to capture one panda who was in the rhino’s path, but that meant she was left standing there—”You’ll be fine”, said Pink. And Blue was immediately flattened by a charging rhino and had to spend a turn with the medic removing the hoof-prints from her forehead. One meerkat escaped from the zoo, but was left to run free so Keepers could focus elsewhere and then lock their enclosure.
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With two enclosures locked early, things became slightly more manageable. The group wimped out of using the faulty lock variant however, because nobody wanted to risk failing a second time, and certainly, including it would have made things much more difficult. As it was, one tiger got within sniffing distance of freedom, but was tranked before he could take that one final bound. Pine made excellent use of his running skills (as Track Star he could move twice as fast as anyone else) and bravely helped Lime with snakes and wielded his dart gun—before long, the zoo was littered with big sleeping cats. That was all very well, until they woke up at which point Pine had to do the job all over again.
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After her run-in with the rhino, Blue tried to end her turn on hedge spaces, but that meant she was unable to swap supplies with other players as she couldn’t share her space. Once the Pandas were vaguely under control, Blue was able to get a stretcher and another dart gun and help Pine with the tigers, making use of her Gardener ability, hiding in bushes and taking a pop at the big kitties from a place of safety. While Pine and Blue were working on the tigers, the elephants started rampaging. As the nearest and armed with a leash, Lime took a break from snakes and tried prevent them from causing too much damage. This was all very well until (much to Pink’s disgust as he would have loved a black and white cuddle), Lime rolled the lowest number and got hugged by a panda leaving him unable to do anything until it was prised off him.
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In the dying rounds, Pink’s, and indeed everyone else’s delight was evident, when another panda popped up for a cuddle and everyone cheered when Pink was the one to roll the lowest number and get a hug. As the Lucky Duck, on his turn he was able to roll the Action Die multiple times to get more points, but he checked the rules to see if he was obliged to spend his first three points to escape from the furry cuddle or whether he could just stay there for the rest of the game. In the end, he sent it back to its enclosure, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered. With one last push, Pine and Lime rounded up the last of the snakes, then the group finally sorted out the charging elephants and mischievous pandas, and finally locked up the rhino, giving the group a much deserved victory.
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Draftosaurus is a much quicker game than Zoo Break, so while they Keepers were dealing with the tigers, elephants and disobedient pandas, Teal, Black and Purple moved onto play Splendor. This was one of Burgundy’s favourite games and he was almost unbeatable at it, so we never play it without thinking of him. It is a very simple engine builder card game, but takes great skill to repeatedly win in the way Burgundy did. The idea is that on their turn, players either collect gem tokens (three different colours, or two the same as long as there are at least four left), or spend tokens to buy cards from the market. Cards act as permanent gem tokens (effectively reducing the cost of cards later in the game), but also provide Victory Points—when a player passes fifteen points, that triggers the end of the game.
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In addition to the two basic actions, there is also the relatively rarely used action of reserving cards, where a player gets a wild, gold token and can reserve one card which they can pay for later. This time, both Teal and Purple reserved cards, while Black prioritised taking high value cards. Reserving cards can be a very effective tactic, but the game is all about the cards available in the market and surfing through them as quickly and efficiently as possible and amassing points. As it was, Black romped away with victory, his fifteen points three times that of anyone else. And with that, both Splendor and Zoo Break finished, leaving the group with a little time to play something else. Teal and Lime headed off, so after some discussion, Pine, Black, Purple, Pink and Blue decided to give Draftosaurus with the Marina expansion another go as it was the “Feature Game“.
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It was then that the group realised the errors in the original explanation, in particular how the Solitary Isle enclosure worked. Pine corrected Blue’s errors and the second game began. Pine and Blue both tried to exploit the Plesiosaurs at every opportunity, and Pink tried to claim extra points for reverse parking his solitary Plesiosaur into the dock. It turned out he didn’t need them though, as with forty-seven points he took his third win of the night. Blue and Black tied for second place, while Purple unfortunately had to recount when she realised she had a pink Brachiosaur elsewhere in her park so couldn’t score seven points for her solitary Isle. That left a bit of time for a chat, but everyone was tired and it wasn’t long before the last of the group headed home.
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Learning Outcome: Who needs TV when you’ve got T.Rex?
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