It is all about the Pillaging and the Plunder

This weeks warm-up game was No Thanks! otherwise known as Geschenkt! a game I last played some 10 years ago when it was first released. A round is started by turning over a card from a limited deck, then each player in turn chooses to whether to take the card for negative points (value of the card) or pay a VP chit which is put on the card, any person who takes the card takes the VP chits as well, the neat twist is that for any runs you form you only lose the points on the lowest card of that run.

The group then split into two tables with table 1 tackling Tortuga, a Pirate game that I have yet to play despite its 3rd appearance at the club. In this game everyone has a batch of dice with different symbols on the faces, on a turn all players roll their dice simultaneously and then collect one type of symbol, any remaining dice are re-rolled and again a symbol collected.

The Green Players board in Tortuga

In this way everyone ends up with a different selection of dice. Each symbol is then taken in turn and the players with the best and second best score of that symbol get the benefits.

Table 2 started with Machi Koro a nice card game from Japan which has now been translated into English. It is a deck building game except that your deck is always open and in play, each player in turn rolls a die and triggers the effects on all cards, this may produce money which is used to buy more cards for your display.

Part layout of cards in Machi Koro, with a roll of 8 this player is looking to gain 36 cash.

The game continues with progress bringing a second die which may be rolled to affect more powerful cards, some of which action in your turn or possibly also/only in your opponents turn. The game ends when a player builds all four of their Monument cards. It is fast and fun with a certain amount of tension from the dice rolling.

Table 1 moved onto Splendor, this game is a simple trading game I have covered before, on your turn collect Gems from limited stacks or buy a card which gives a permanent gem and possibly victory points. In my mind the pirates were splitting up the booty from the previous game, this game is still played in silence but turns come round quickly so no real time to chat.

Table 2 next played Vikings, one of my favourite games, the game is played over 6 rounds, at the end of an odd round players collect cash from their Gold Merchants and on even rounds they also collect victory points from their display.

The game board, round 3 after the first action

On a players turn you collect a tile and the Viking next to it, the tile must then be placed into your display adjacent to other tiles, if the tile is placed in the colour row for the Viking taken then the Viking is placed on the tile. In this way your display grows. Warrior Vikings repel ships and gain cash or victory points, Noble Vikings and Trader Vikings score victory points whilst the fishermen provide food at the games end. The game is a mix of balancing cash, collecting the right tiles for your display and Vikings for scoring.

Players display, all ships current un-repelled which affects all the Vikings in column 2 (so they are lain flat).

It is one of the most balanced games for random tile drawing I know and with power tiles and game end scoring interesting and one that keeps you thinking and planning throughout.

The diehards got together for the last game which was to be Carcassonne, one of the best introductory games for the hobby but also interesting enough for experienced gamers to enjoy. For those that do not know it you draw a tile, match it to the display after which you may place one of your meeples (wooden figure) onto one of the features on the tile. In this way the playing area grows, players score victory points for the various features they place their meeples on. The game went well until about 5 minutes in when we found that we were all playing to different scoring rules, 2 of us were playing to the original 2001 rules whilst everyone else was playing to some new scoring system. A quick discussion and a check of the written rules for the version we were playing and we continued with the more modern rules (they were the ones in the box). Fortunately this early discovery did not affect the game play or the end and victory went to a well deserved winner (says he with a big smile on his face).

Halloween a time for Zombie Pandas

The club started off this week with the usual warm up and as Halloween was so near Zombie Dice was the game of choice. This proved to be an amusing start to the evening with the games owner completely failing to score any points at all.

Beresford Quimby's home made dice rolling tray - excellent for Zombie Dice

Zombie Dice is a nice “push your luck” style of game rolling dice in an effort to collect brains (points) before you roll too many shotgun blasts, this version has been nicely pimped with skull markers.

My little collection of skulls in Zombie Dice.

The group then split and in keeping with the evenings theme Table 1 played Takenoko .

Okay it does not have horrible spiders, evil witches, blood seeking zombies or a terrifying mummy but it does have a Panda, a slow pondering bamboo munching Panda – now that is frightening.

The Panda - has Halloween ever had such a frightening spectacle before?

The game has some nice mechanisms and plays quite easily, the winner is decided by points on cards which are achieved by making set patterns with tiles, growing certain types of bamboo or using the Panda to eat various chunks of bamboo.

A selection of points cards in Takenoko

The board begins to open up in Takenoko

Table 2 in the meantime had started with Lords of Vegas , I do not know much about this game except to say that you are trying to build successful Casinos to get victory points, I was informed it was a nice game and meshed together well.

One of the building areas in Lords of Vegas

Table 1 had moved onto Splendor a nice game that has an unusual side effect of being played in silence.

On each turn a player has 4 choices, (1) take 3 different  gem tokens (cash), (2) take 2 of the same gem token, (3) purchase a card, (4) take a gold (joker) token and reserve a card. The cards have gems on them and some have victory points on them, the first to 15 points wins.

The gems collected in Splendor - the sturdy chips have a nice feel and I think are better than the small plastic chips you get in some other games.

The game is about timing, it is very easy to get side-tracked into continually buying cheap cards using previous cards gems to finance the new cards, however there are no victory points on the cheap cards so choosing when to get into the expensive cards is key to being successful.

One of the cards in Splendor - this provides a single gem but no victory points.

I was not successful having spent all my time getting loads of cheap cards, I had the most cards but hardly any points.

The next scary game chosen was The Witches: A Discworld Game .

This is a co-operative game where the Witches from Terry Pratchett’s novels combat all sorts of problems around the Ramtop Mountains. On a turn a player reveals a new problem then sets to work usually tackling 2 of the problems on the board, restrictions on movement and unlucky die rolling can reduce this to one problem on a players turn.

A look across part of the board in The Witches

The problems all come with victory points so the more problems you successfully tackle the more points you get; you do have a hand of cards to assist in dealing with the problems but certain actions attract “Cackle” counters and these in abundance attract negative victory points. The game fitted well to the Halloween theme and was a nice end to the evening.

Table 2 had moved on to Midnight Party , this brilliant game from Ravensburger also goes by the name of Hugo which is the name of the ghost in the game. The players have figures which walk around a corridor which loops back on itself in a clockwise direction, movement is decided by the spots on a die which also has two Hugo’s marked on it.

Aerial view of the board

If a Hugo is rolled Hugo the Ghost is moved 3 spaces, he starts off in the cellar and climbs the stairs then moves along the corridor attempting to catch the players figures any figures caught attract negative victory points with the earlier figures attracting a higher negative score than those caught later.

Hugo has been busy in this round and captured nearly every playing piece, he usually is a busy ghost but rarely this busy.

There is safety in the rooms that line the corridor however you are forbidden to enter a room until Hugo is on the corridor, the other restriction is just 1 figure per room. This is a great fun game and crosses all age boundaries.

Table 2 also played King of Tokyo a nice little game where players take on the role of a monster similar to Godzilla and through rolling dice either attack other monsters, gather energy to buy power cards, collect victory points or heal wounds. It is a fun game and excellently themed for Halloween.

A good fun evening with a fair smattering of Halloween themed games.

From Stone Age to Ancient Times

First game on the table was Ark of Animals from Fabryka Gier Historycznych, a nice little memory game aimed at players age 6 and over.

Now you may think it’s a bit young for our group but played at the top level (it has 5 levels of play) it provides a nice challenge and is an excellent warm-up game. Each player gets a board which depicts a small grid of hexes, then at the same time each player grabs discs one at a time from a face down pile and add them to your grid, however there are several restrictions, you have to complete the first column before starting to fill the second column, tiles you do not want you can put back face up for others to see.

An ark before checking for scoring.

Other things to consider are that you do not want to put herbivores next to the corn spaces or next to carnivores unless smaller and you want to gets sets of animals and avoid duplicate animals. Another factor is that when you add an animal to your ark you do so face down and cannot check it at a later point. All will be revealed at scoring time. As a game it is fairly fast, 3 rounds in about 30 minutes 4 player and is an excellent game for youngsters, it is partially a puzzle game and for those of a particular frame of mind it is solvable at which point it ceases to be a fun game, so be warned.

The same Ark after the carnivores have been nibbling and duplicate animals have been removed.

We split into 2 groups, the first playing Abyss which got its second airing at the club, one of the better games I have tried from this year’s batch of pre-Essen releases.

The mechanics are simple, on your turn you take one action which is either to collect cash cards or purchase a power card, with the cash cards you have already collected in hand.  

A couple of the cash cards in Abyss

The second table got stuck into a game of Stone Age .

A very nice resource management game from 2008 a “Spiel des Jahres” nominee,  in fact this game has been nominated for quite a few awards (24 in all) winning some. The game revolves around 5 resources (Food, Wood, Brick, Stone and Gold), food is used to feed your workers whilst the others are used to purchase Hut tiles for immediate victory points or power cards which double up as victory points at games’ end.

The sort of die roll that hurts in games, this is equally so in Stone Age, this is one of my rolls collecting Bricks - this magnificent roll got me 1 Brick (average for 5 die would be 4 Bricks)

The mechanism is worker placement at the resource places, on cards or tiles you want to purchase or at one of 3 power places to gain a farming ability, tools or breed for more workers.

My player board early in the game with some collected wood - a brick and some tools.

The rules encourage you to feed your workers – however the mathematics suggests that letting your people starve whilst gathering richer resources is the better plan.

Two huts, pay the resources at the bottom and get the points at the top

There is a timing element as well, whether you should push for a short game or string the game out for a long one. All in all a well thought out game. In our game the “starving” tactic worked to good effect against 2 balanced players.

Last game of the evening was 7 Wonders – this award winning game is an excellent bridge game enjoyed by gamers and non-gamers alike and has the advantage of playing up to 7 players with equal balance to any other number of players.

My end of game set up, with only 1 stage of my wonder built and too few points to be in with a chance.

In short the game is about set collecting, each turn you choose a card for yourself from a hand before passing that hand onto the next player. After 18 cards have been played there is a scoring. As simple as that sounds the interaction of the cards and using the cards to best effect requires a bit of thought and there are usually difficult choices to make.

A good evenings gaming.

Kings of Bluff

A quiet week this week just the five of us sat down to the warm-up game of Bluff, this game has been around since 1987, long enough to pick up various names including Perudo and Roodo as well as having been released with several different film and TV tie-ins and seen  being played on Pirates of the Carribean (2nd film) so I was surprised that it was new to other club members.

In this game each player has a cup with 5 dice in it, everyone rolls their dice and keeps the result secret , the first player then makes a bid of how many dice of any one value he feels are under ALL the cups. The next player either accepts this and raises the bid by stating a higher face value than the one nominated or a higher number of dice, or calling Bluff at which point all dice are revealed.

The bid raising board

Whoever between the called and caller is incorrect loses a number of dice equal to the difference in the call and those revealed. It is a nice game simple and fun with great replay value, the only drawback is that it is a knock-out game and between keen players the losses can be kept to a minimum thus making an early illumination a bit of a wait. As it was just a warm up game we called it quits soon after the second knock-out and we moved on to the next game.

Kingsburg was the second game on the table, the idea of this game is to score the most points by collecting resources and using them to construct buildings.

The winning players board showing buildings built during the game

The driving mechanism for this game is the three dice which every player has of their colour, each round these are rolled and the pip total used to select jobs from the board, the limitations are that the selected job must exactly equal the pips on the faces of the die/dice used.

Yellow fortunate enough to place all three dice singly.

The lower numbers (1-6) give a single resource whilst the higher numbers give multiple resources. The other aspect of the game is that after every 3rd turn a random aggressor is met by all players and should a players combat strength not be enough then they will suffer losses, usually victory points or resources.

Barbarians (8 Strength) if beaten will give 1 VP but if victorious themselves will destroy a building.

Our game went well, however those with experience in the game started to edge ahead after round three and by the end of round four a clear winner was evident. To play the game well you do have to plan ahead and work towards a plan, those with previous experience of the game find this easier as knowledge of how to exploit the buildings benefits is an advantage.

Squeakers and Guns / Tribes and Power

Apologies for the late report and having to do 2 weeks worth of gaming in one but I have been trying to get my Essen purchase list together,.This has meant looking at over 450 games, reading reviews about them and then visiting the games website to get background information, occasionally reading the rules came into it as well. All very time consuming - however enough of me and onto the games.

6 people attended on 1st October and the first game on the table was Tsuro , this simple path laying game can cause minor frustration as you try to think your way out of the ever nearing problem of being fed off the board.

Four on one side of the chasm and one on the other, control of the paths is very important, planning for your next turn is essential.

We then split into 2 threes, the first group played the new game Five Tribes which has been getting favourable reviews in the gaming world.

The game is simple enough to play, first off players bid for turn order then on their turn select a group of meeples and then drop them off one at a time on the following game board tiles, the last meeple allows the player to collect all meeples of that colour from the tile and then undertake the tiles special action, the aim is to gain as many Victory Points as possible which can come from many sources.

The tiles which make up the board of Five Tribes

The game plays excellently and the Mancala mechanism works well in this nicely balanced game.

The other table played Power Grid from Friedmann Friesse, this superb route laying game sees players bid for Power Stations which will need a specific type of fuel and will power up to a set number of cities, this phase is followed by an fuel purchasing phase and then a route purchasing phase.

Some cities early in the game showing links between them

The idea is at games end to be able to be linked to and be able to power the most cities, in the case of a tie cash will decide the winner. The art of the game is timing your growth spurts, grow too early and you will be find yourself buying fuel and routes last, grow too late and the others will leave you behind.

Three different factories using a total of 3 Coal and 2 Oil to provide energy to 12 Cities. The Green Power Station requires no resources.

The last game of the evening was Loot a simple card game where you play either a ship card or a pirate card onto another players ship card.

The idea is to collect the ships by either  playing higher pirate cards than your opponents onto ship cards or having one of your own ships survive a round without being attacked. With five power cards in the deck it is a bit luck orientated but fun as a filler.

The previous week 7 of us started off with the classic game SET it is interesting to note that this observational card game was first released in 1988 and is still available at all good stockists; 12 cards are layed out in a grid and it is the first person to successfully identify a set that collects that set and the grid is refilled. It is a game you have to “Click into” but is an excellent 15 minute brain-burner game.

A Kwiiietsch squeaker

I was after lighter games and I started Table 2 off with a game of Kwiiietsch , another observational card game where one player will make a noise they associate with one of the cards, the other players then stake their claim by banging a card of their choice with a squeaker, it is a fun game and yes it is aimed at kids, but it is excellent for a bit of light fun.

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We followed this with a game of Feurio! , this simple area control game is played by turning over a tile then placing between 1-3 firefighter pawns on any tile, places on tiles are limited.

The layout at the games end

At the games end you score for all hexes you are on divided by the number on the tile at the edge of your group.

Red is getting 24 points, Yellow 5 (4 + 1) and Blue 1 from the tiles on the right.

Next on the fluffy table was Castle Panic , a co-operative game where on a turn you play cards to attack the advancing hordes.

The board in Castle Panic, quite basic but with helpful information in the corners its all you need.

The whole mechanism was quite simple as far as co-operative games go, but it did play quite well and the end was quite tense, something which I think is important in these types of games.

Knight card in Castle Panic

Last was Cosmic Cows a game by Maureen Hiron a British games designer, although her games can seem simplistic at times they do tend to have a high replay value and Cosmic Cows was no different.

Players divide into 2 teams and on a teams turn a player rolls the dice and tries to create as high a poker-like score as possible, and then scoring this on the chart with a cow, when a team has three scoring chits in their scoring zone they win.

The score track

Not quite as simple as it sounds as the other team can pull the cow their way as well, even out of the scoring zone.

Table 1 in the meantime had played a game of Asteroyds , it is a race game whereby you navigate your spaceship through an asteroid belt to reach three check points before your opponents.

The asteroid belt to be navigated

Each round a roll of 3 coloured dice dictates which way the different asteroids are going to move, possibly damaging your ship also dodging them is essential for success. This is not as taxing as Roborally and I would put it on a par with Twin Tin Bots.

Dice which dictate the way the various asteroids move

They then moved on to Ingenious Reiner Knizias popular game of matching colours on a hex grid with hex-dominoes, the game is an excellent bridge game for introducing new players to the hobby.

You have a rack of 6 tiles and on your turn you play one to the board, it scores for every other tile face that matches your tile face in a connected row, as your tile is two separate hexagons this can lead to multiple row scoring.

The board showing all the colours of the game, each colour has a unique symbol making this a colour-blind-friendly game

We all came together for the final game of Ca$h 'n Guns , on this occasion the 2nd edition which was released this year. On each round a number of reward cards are spread out for the players to share. However before the loot is given out the players simultaneously choose a bullet card and then point a foam pistol at one of the other players, each player is then  given an opportunity to hide, however even a gun pointed at you does not mean you will be shot as each player is given only 3 bullet cards and 5 blank cards.

The bullet cards are then revealed for those not hiding and any live bullets give wounds. The reward cards are then shared between the players who are not hiding and who have not just been shot. It is a lovely party game and was an excellent conclusion to an evening of fun.

A Cash n Guns gun