Sheep, Camels and Spiders

This week we were missing our mentor and leader but we struggled on undaunted, 7 of us were present for the session and we started with Loot a nice and simple card game.

 In Loot players play either ship cards or pirate cards, ship cards are the victory points and the pirate cards are played to collect them, with a simple majority winning. Fun was had trying to sneak some small ships through to safety while others were distracted by richer booty. There is a nice twist to the end where hand management becomes important, there is no hand limit so players are keen to fill there hand with cards, however the game ends when a player is out of cards and the draw deck is empty, treasure ships in hand then count against you.

Battle for a 6 point treasure ship in Loot

Next we split into 2 tables, table 1 set up Uwe Rosenburgs Agricola, a brilliant game which sets a very high bar in the resource management field and has a rating of 8.17 on the geek, it is quite complex and with 2 people who had not played it before it was decided to use the easy decks and play with the turn order cards face up so that they had a chance. Knowledge of the game is a distinct advantage, so making as much available to new players is essential.

In simple terms it is a worker placement game, "Family Members" are placed on a central board to gather either hardware resources of wood, stone, clay or straw; animals in the way of Sheep, pigs or cattle; or plants in the way of grain or vegetables; other options include playing occupation cards, minor improvement cards or major improvement cards all of which interact in various ways with the other game mechanisms.

Agricola central board at games end with family members on them. some unused spaces still have materials on them

This is just a small part of the game and as you want lots of everything to score points at the games end there is keen competition for key spots and of course on your turn there are always nicer spots to go for than the one you really need. It is easy for plans to fall apart by being distracted elsewhere, for instance you need to build an extension to your farm but when it comes to your turn there is a nice pile of 9 wood just waiting, so you grab the wood and on your next turn the extension space has been taken, but you could not leave that wood for the next player.

There is also a lot of preparation to be done to accomplish tasks and most things are at least a 3 action process if not more, for instance to grow vegetables you need 1. Collect vegetable, 2. Plough a field, 3 Plant vegetable and as you start the game with only 2 actions a turn, to set things up and running can seem laborious.

Above is the players Farms at games end (click on picture if they do not rotate through). With 2 players new to the game it was going to be a long one, the initial learning curve is so steep as to be almost perpendicular however as the game progressed the rules and some of the card interactions became clearer and farms started to grow. It was a nice friendly enjoyable game and I look forward to the next game.

Table 2 in the meantime started with Yspahan a game where dice are rolled and placed into sets on a grid. On your turn you take a set of dice and take an action relating to your set, after which you may build a building using the 2 resources of the game, money and camels.

The main board for playing cubes to and a player board very early in the game

Points come from laying cubes on the board, playing cards from hand or building buildings, the skill in the game is picking the correct set of dice at the right time and not just grabbing the obvious.        

Next they played Lords of Waterdeep a lightly themed worker placement game set in the City of Waterdeep where you gather different resources, then you can trade in collected cubes to accomplish quests which give various rewards including victory points. It plays quite well but is not my type of game.

Player board with quests under way to the left, completed quests are placed face down on the player board

Table 2 then played Martian Dice, a simple dice rolling game it was this games second playing at the club and victory went to the winner of the previous 2 games.

On his turn this player failed to capture the 6 puny humans, his 1 flying saucer far outnumbered by the defending Earthling tanks

Next on table 2 was Tsuro  a nice route laying game where you lay a tile from a choice of three in front of your playing piece, each tile depicts 4 tracks and your piece travels to the end of its chosen track, as does any other players pieces. The board starts out blank so as the game develops your options for escape become less and less.

Tsuro board at games end

The idea of the game is to feed your players off of the board while yours remains on. Last piece standing wins.

The last game played was from the Haba stable, renowned for the large number of fun childrens games they have published over the years and all with wonderful usually chunky wooden pieces, they have 2 ranges of games, the first (yellow box) for younger players from about age 3+ the other (green box) from about age 8+.

The mother spider (central disc) precariously supporting all its young.

Purzelspinne is from the former range and is an excellent dexterity game where you are trying to balance baby spiders on top of the mother spider in her web (crossed rubber bands), errors in judgement can cause either the tower to topple or a shift in weight making the mother spider fall, or possibly even both. It is quicker and more fun than Jenga.

I do not believe any games player can call themselves a serious games player or collector without at least one Haba game in their collection, they are excellent fillers and even better "Gateway Games" for new players.

It was another good evening with a fine mix of games for all levels.

Pirates and Polo Ponies

The first game of the evening was Biblios an interesting and nicely presented card game, the idea is to gain control of as many dice as you can at the games end and the winner is the player with the highest tally of pips. The control of the dice is done by owning share cards and the highest shareholder wins, the winning mechanism of the game is its unique (and at the beginning very confusing) method of dolling out the cards. It is a game I will happily play again.

The Treasure and bonus chip island...some captains have already failed to keep hold of their chests...

We split up into 2 tables of 3, the first one playing Tortuga a dice rolling pirate game. (Sorry I know nothing about this game other than it is a Pirate themed dice rolling game– hopefully BQ can fill in a bit here).   BQ says: "Indeed I can :-).   We played this a couple of weeks back with some key rules accidentally omitted, and the game dragged out to more than an hour.   This week, with the right rules, it cracked along at a much faster pace, and finished in about 40 minutes.   A small strategic discussion was held at the end:  assuming the dice went in one's favour, could one simply ignore the aggressive actions of boarding and raiding other pirates, and focus on building and maintaining a large fleet and crew, whilst going treasure hunting on the island each round? Would the sheer volume of treasure accrued mean that the attacks of other pirates would not...?  I'll try it one day... :-)"

Tortuga players board

This was followed by Polterfass a bluffing and risk management game with some intriguing barrel shaped dice.

One of the group places all the play barrels in the cup, upends the cup on the table and reveals, all barrels which are not standing up are removed leaving a number of barrels standing with numbers on the lid (or bottom), this is the amount of beer in stock, players then select cards from hand to try to imbibe as much of the ale as they can, however if they drink the house dry they are penalised and the player playing the landlord wins the points, otherwise everyone scores what they drink  and the landlord scores what he has left.

Two doubled barrels - Beer heaven

Further confusion is created by 2 special dice which can be used by the landlord to double or eliminate a barrel of his choice and even more confusion where he can roll again all the fallen barrels after players have made a declaration. The part of Landlord passes from player to player and as with other dice rolling games we cursed our luck of the dice.

No Beer game is complete without Beer Mats

One of our number suffered badly from the “Fate of Four barrels”, the question of whether to roll again when left with 4 barrels, an apparent common occurrence. For this player, every time the cup was lifted it was to reveal 4 barrels on their side. Post game a short experiment in rolling 4 barrels revealed a 40% success rate – perhaps it was all in the wrist action.

Table 2 in the meantime played Polo Ponies or as it is correctly called Peloponnes an Empire building game where each round a set of tiles are auctioned off which are then added to the players empires. Every tile has a number of characteristics such as resource production, additional population, victory points and special effects.

Player board for the Argo player (me) with land tiles to the left of the town

Resources are used to build town tiles whilst some of the specials help you to avoid the disasters which appear towards game end. The winner of the game is the player whose score is the highest, however each player has two scores, one from population and the other from tile VP’s, and it is the lower of these that they put forward as their score (the higher acts as a tie break).

Tiles for auction in Peloponnes

It is a wonderful resource management game well deserving of its 7.23 geek rating, the first play through though just gives you a feel for what it’s about, a second play through is needed with knowledge of the tile set to get the full benefit of the game.

This was followed by Buccaneer Bones , another Pirate themed dice rolling game with a very simple mechanism where getting pairs and three of a kind is the way to win so of course I had a game of rolling straights which get you nothing.

My player board showing I am allowed an extra dice to help me with my straights!

As a result of your dice rolling you can earn more re-rolls (you get 1 for free), an ability to alter a dice by 1 spot and even get extra dice although this latter ability just helped me roll longer straights!

Pirate Treasure for Buccaneer Bones

It was another evening of fun games, Peloponnes being the heaviest game played. It was nice that for everyone who brought games, one of their games was played at some point during the evening. For the future I will be bringing a couple of heavier games Peloponnes/Stone Age/Key Harvest level each week. Not quite at the brain burner end of the spectrum but still games that must be played.

Chickens, Koalas and Grrrrrr!!! Dice

Only 5 gamers this week which meant one table. Undaunted we plumped for the lighter end of the gaming spectrum and started the evening with Hick Hack in Gacklewack.

A simple starter game where you play a chicken card to one of 6 fields to pick up corn and gain victory points or play a fox to eat other players’ chickens for even more victory points. It is a balance of risk taking and all players were quite close towards the end.

The chicken board with 1 Blue Corn (2 points) and the duck board with 1 Green Corn (1 point). 2 of the 6 boards to play to.

More often than not the winner is decided by successful fox plays, but not on this occasion, selective feeding on corn gave us our winner.

Australia is a much underrated game, coming from the Ravensburger stable it is often overlooked as being “too fluffy” when I believe it is heavy enough to comfortably carry the Alea label.

The board a map of Australia is divided into coloured zones into each of which is placed an industry token and a Koala token; at the junction of the areas are camps which will influence all adjacent areas. On a turn a player may take 2 actions from 1) Flying a plane to a location or 2) Playing a card to put explorers into a camp or 3) Pick up explorers.

Black has flown to a red territory revealing the industry token and placing 2 men in the South Westerly Camp.

 Scoring comes from matching the number of explorers around any area to the industry tile and/or completely surrounding an area to capture the Koala token. Collecting coins allows players a few extra actions including teleportation of an explorer which if timed correctly can be very effective.

Orange leads white on the scoring track whilst beige is looking for a huge leap in points monopolising a sea territory to the East of Australia.

Our game was quite a vociferous affair with advice being flung left right and centre as players were “encouraged” not to miss scoring opportunities where the “encourager” also benefitted and as the game neared its conclusion and scoring opportunities became scarce, unusually for a Ravensburger game a bout of rules lawyering took place, it was all good natured and humorous. The game had a well deserved winner.

An aerial view of Australia at games end with Orange winning.

Alhambra is well known and has been released in many formats, oddly enough my favourite from this line is the original game “Al Capone” which was later re-released as Alhambra the card game, our last game of the evening was Alhambra the Dice Game.

On your turn you have up to 3 rolls of the dice to place a token on the lower board based on how many of your chosen symbol you have and how many throws it took you to get there. After everyone has placed their tokens first and second place in each field of the lower board get to move their other tokens on the upper board, after rounds 1, 3 and 5 of this scoring takes place based on tokens position on the upper board. The banter from Australia continued but slowly changed in nature to cursing the bad luck of the dice, so much so that in order to avoid the glares of the players coupled with the blame they got for not rolling correctly, several of the dice continually tried to escape onto the floor, not one of the players managed to escape the ignominy of losing dice to the floor.

A close up of the dice track (left) and control track (right). On the Brown strip orange with the lead, will gain 3 points in the first scoring, if he maintains that lead he will get 10 points in the second round and 18 in the third. 

The last round of rolling commenced with one player trying the tactic of compressing the dice into one “Super die” to get the roll he needed, alas the dice became confused and completely ignored the roller’s wishes and none came up the appropriate colour, a fate suffered by all of us at some point in the game. This one ended with the tail-ender of Australia winning here resoundingly.

The "Alhambra Dice Game" Board after round 1 scoring.

It was an excellent evening of light hearted fun and I look forward to the next one.

Footnote : I realise that a lot of gamers would like to play some of the heavier games, this will be achievable when the numbers increase and we can get several tables running, at that point there will be enough variety of games on tables to suit all tastes, however until that time I ask everyone to be patient, the club is still young and I encourage everyone to pop along and play a few of the mid range games, these lighter sessions help people to get to know one another in an affable atmosphere and once we have the numbers we can bring out the more challenging games.

Kingdoms, Buccaneers and Goths

No Thanks (The German Box)

We started this week with a four-player game of No Thanks, a light game with simple rules: you either take the face-up card from the centre of the table, or refuse to take it and pay one of the supply of 11 chips with which you start the game.  The 33 cards in the deck show values from 3-35, and all cards you take count towards your end score - the player with the lowest score when all cards have been taken is the winner - but sequential runs of cards (12-13-14, say) score only the lowest value in the run (12, in that case).  The twists are that nine cards are taken at random from the deck before you play, so you can't be sure of making runs, and all chips paid to refuse a card are taken by the person who finally accepts the card, so taking a card others don't want gives you added chances to refuse cards later in the game...and chips also count towards reducing your final score.   Fun, and quick.

Carcassonne Mid-game with red laying claim to a massive town

When two more arrived, making our group a total of six, we split into two tables of three for the evening. One table (the one I wasn't on) started with Carcassonne, the well-known and popular tile-laying/landscape building game.  It's always interesting to see how the landscape grows during the course of the game.

Part of the board at games end after scoring - Reds town eventually earned him 46 points

Kingdom Builder

They then moved on to Kingdom Builder, another game with landscape-building elements, but a rather more complex one: instead of just connecting cities or cloisters, players must construct settlements to create their "kingdom" on a board that changes every time you play, with goals that *also* change every time you play.

Yellow has gained the influence of a nearby tower, yellow also will get 3 points for adjacency to the city at the games end.

Battle for control along the waterways and for the farmstead.

A Fistful of Penguins

This table finished with A Fistful of Penguins.   This is a dice-rolling/push your luck game we've played at MAB before, quite a light one, it has some rather lovely transparent purple and yellow penguins.  

A score of 26 points (16 for Kangaroos, 9 for the squirrel moose pair, and a penny from the next player).

On my table, we started with Tortuga, another dice game, and one I acquired quite recently, so was very keen to try.  Players are commanders of their own pirate fleet, and are trying to get treasure chests from a treasure island back to the pirate enclave of Tortuga, where their booty (no, not that one!) will be safe from the other pirates. Dice rolls are made in secret, the best dice are chosen from those rolled, and then the choices are revealed by all players simultaneously.  You're trying to out-score the other players in at least one of five action categories - expanding fleet or crew, hunting for treasure, boarding and raiding other pirates - represented by symbols on the dice.   The symbols also each have a value shown below them, and it's these values that add up to give you a score for the category, but only the highest and second highest scorers in each category for the round get to take actions.

The scores on the dice in the top left-hand corner blue's going to get to expand his fleet..not so sure about the crew, though...

It's supposed to be a quick 30 minute romp.  Unfortunately, in my rush to explain the rules I missed out a rather crucial point in respect of second place in boarding and raiding actions, and we collectively forgot a rule which gives everyone a free treasure chest at the end of each round.  Although we eventually caught on, and corrected these errors, they elongated the game, and didn't allow it to play to its full potential I feel.  So, I'm keen to get it back on the table, playing with the right rules this time...

Finally, in Attila - other spellings of the famous chieftain are available - we migrated various 4th-7th century Germanic tribes across the steppes and out into Europe: the Franks, Huns, Saxons, Teutons, Vandals and, of course, the Goths mentioned in the title of this post...what's that?  You were expecting a game about pallid folks dressed in black who listen to a lot of Bauhaus and Sisters of Mercy?  Sorry, not in this game...  :-)

Look at the time!  It's already the 7th Century!

It's a card driven game - you play a card to place a tribe marker into a region on the board, and to take "influence" in that tribe.  Too many tribes in one region will lead to a conflict between the tribes and some, possibly all, will "leave" - a euphemism, I think,  for "get stomped into the mud by the other tribes", but Eurogames are generally a bit coy about such matters.  After a certain number of conflicts in a century, a scoring takes place, with players who have most influence in tribes getting points, and after four centuries, or one player reaching maximum influence in a tribe, or all of a tribe's markers going on to the board, a final scoring is held, and the winner decided.   It's quite a sparse set of rules, I feel it still has some interesting decisions, and has quite a good thematic feel, as the tribes spread out through the course of the game.

Thanks to all who were able to attend, and see you next time!

Donkeys, Dolmens and Demons

Esel Rennen

Last week the Medway Board Gamers had a week off which may have had an effect on the numbers for this week, none-the-less in memory of Enid Blyton “Five sat down to play games”. First up was Esel Rennen, a game that has graced the table before, however unlike previous games I have had of this there was no definite leader, all 4 donkeys remaining close and with an equal chance of winning. For a warm up game it became quite intense towards the end .

Donkeys near the finish in Esel Rennen

 For a warm up game it became quite intense towards the end .

Die Dolmengotter

The second game was Die Dolmengotter an interesting area control game where you move one of 3 pieces and leave control tokens behind, simple control of an area allows you to place a scoring marker which can be valued from 1-4, the areas themselves also have different values.

Die Dolmengotter - The board before play.

An area is not scored until it is fully surrounded.

The Square scoring tiles surrounded by Dolmen and the odd meeple.

The game had quite a lot of depth and there were levels of strategy which I did not get to explore, I definitely want to revisit this one especially as it played very nicely multiplayer.

Game position after final scoring

Gloom

Third on the table was Cthulhu Gloom a card game which has the twist of transparent cards with symbols that overlay each other, although a very nice system I found some of the iconography difficult to see. During the game you play cards to any players display trying to make their characters happy and your own sad.

Gloom Character card

 There is a lot of humour in the game with colour in the blurb on the all the cards creating an atmosphere of fun and horror. Our game had the added humour of a missing character card being replaced “in-game” by a phantom spirit, fortunately the real card was found at games’ end.

Condottiere

Next was a game I had not played for so long that I had to be reminded of the rules, Condottiere. Each round everyone gets a set number of cards which they then use in a series of battles, cards can be valued from 1 – 10 or a power card, for each battle players play cards or pass, after everyone has passed whoever has the biggest total wins that battle.

A Condottiere mercenary card

Simple except that using your best cards in one battle means you will have nothing for the rest of the battles that round, as the aim of the game is winning 3 adjacent areas, picking which battles you contest is important.

An odd yet interesting aspect of the game was the mix of cards you could end up with, most of the time a weak hand was not as detrimental as you may think however for the last round one player did have a horrendous hand with over half the cards being ineffective scarecrows.

Unexpected Treasures

To wrap-up game we played Unexpected Treasures a nice little game of collecting rubbish from a tip to purchase recycling cards (victory point cards). Players choose a card from their hand to either steal tokens from other players or taken items from the limited number available in the dump. A small card allows you to go earlier in the round but you take fewer items. Out-guessing what your opponents will play is where the secret to success lies, I did not have that secret.