Beer Barrels and Bees

A game of Polterfass was already underway by the time I reached the club, a simple dice rolling game but where the dice are barrels with digits on either end.

8 Barrels of Beer and either the 5 or the 3 MUST be doubled

The barrels are shaken under a cup then the cup gently lifted, only barrels on an end score, you may reroll fallen ones but the fewer the barrels that are shaken under the cup the less likely that any of them will be stood on end – a failure to have a standing barrel is bust.

Polterfass - game in progress

Whilst the shaker is having his turn the other players play cards to indicate what they think the score will be when the shaker finishes his turn.

In the meantime I sat down to a 2 player game of Roar-A-Saurus which I described in the last write-up, this is definitely my favourite filler game at the moment as it is fun, fast and did I mention, fun?

More people arrived and we played Waggle Dance from a British games designer Mike Nudd. The game is all about making honey with you as the controller of a hive of Bees. Each player starts the game with 3 Hive tokens (hexes) and 6 Bees (dice of your colour).

To speed up play it is handy if players set out their dice in numerical order. Note the hexes as dots on the dice - a nice touch to this game.

All players roll their dice and in turn place a die on any free location, once all players have placed their dice the dice are then auctioned in action space order. The first space allows you to increase the size of your hive, the next allows you to breed another bee from an egg, the next laying an egg, then there are 6 flowers to take pollen from, the last 3 spaces allow you to swap pollen, change pollen to honey and take a power card.

Some of the power cards in the game, the sun and moon relate to whether they are played during Bee (dice) placement or on bee retrieval

All seems straight forward however certain spaces have limited spaces and once taken no-one else can go there, these spaces are numbered 1-6 and only those numbered dice can go there, the next difficulty is that there are 6 different types of pollen collected again by the relevant dice numbers, pollen can only be turned to honey when there are 4 pollen cubes of the same colour on the same hex and accompanied by a pair of dice bearing the same number.

A hive just prior to night phase with breeding and honey making about to be activated.

These added complications make for an interesting game, the power cards help add a little chaos to well laid plans but do not imbalance the game. The game is most enjoyable and a little bit of a brain bender, when you try to fathom out what other players are going to use their pairs for and as the players breed more bees the decision making becomes more complex.

In the meantime Table 1 had moved on to Pandemic – The Cure (one I know nothing about again).

Then Table 1 played Abyss a collecting game, players either have a choice of 3 options. 1) Collecting cash cards which can be in one of 5 currencies however as a player reveals a cash card he has to offer it to other players first for which they pay pearls to take, a card declined may be taken by you (which ends the turn) or placed in tone of the currency stacks.

Currency cards

2) Take all cards of a given currency from a currency stack. 3) Purchase a Lord card which will stipulate a cost and what currencies it must be paid for with.

3 of the many Lords

Lord cards carry a power, a number of victory points and a number of keys, should a player accumulate 3 keys they must take a land card and place Lords under it (which nullifies their in-game power) but each Land also gives further victory points.

Land tile removing 3 Lords from play

A player owning 7 Lords will end the game and it is the player with the most victory points that wins.

Roar-A-Saurus play mat carrying 2 damage counters but 2/3 of the way to an attack to the left

I would like to have crammed in another game of Roar-A-Saurus at the end, but time was not on our side.

Letters, Cargo and Trains

After an extended Christmas break the club saw in the New Year on the 7th January with 9 attendees including 2 new members, a warm welcome to you both and I hope you had a good time. As an introduction to the nights seriousness I put Roar-A-Saurus on the table.

A set of dice - the game contains 20 dice allowing for advanced play.

The rules are simple, first off there are no turns and all play is simultaneous, you have 3 dice which you roll trying to get 3 of a kind, you may re-roll as many of your dice as you wish and you may re-roll them as many times as you like, when you have 3 of a kind you yell out the appropriate noise – 3 reds is “Rawrr” and you dish out a damage point to the player on your right, 3 Blues “Grrrr” is yelled and a damage point given to the player on your left etc.

Player board with 2 damage tokens and a Grrrr attack 2/3 complete

When someone receives their 4th damage point they are out. Powers of healing and flame blast are 2 other options available. There is advanced play which includes various power boosts but the basic game is enough for a warm-up and is fun and fast. Each round lasts no more than about 3-5 minutes.

We split into 2 tables – table 1 went with Black Fleet a new pirate game from Sebastian Bleasedale who is a British designer and author of two other games I like namely “On the Underground” and “Keyflower “  however I did not play this game and know nothing about it other than it does have a huge map board requiring 2 tables to support it and I have been asked for my roulette rake for the next game to help move the ships around.

Beresford Quimby writes:  I'll just chime in here with a summary of the game.   And yes, the board is rather big, depicting a pretty and very stylised version of the Carribbean split up into sea movement spaces, interspersed with small islands.   The object of the game is to be the first turn over all of your set of five development cards, and you do this by paying the amount of doubloons indicated on each card (5,8,11,14 and 10 in our case, though you can replace the 10 with a 20 card, for a longer game - the 10/20 must always be the last card turned over, and triggers the end of the game).   You have control of two of your own ships (one pirate ship, one merchant ship), and also joint control, with all the other players, of two Navy ships, one yellow and one purple.  The needed doubloons can be acquired in a number of ways:  by picking up cargo from ports and delivering to other ports with your merchant ship; by sinking other players' pirate ships with one of the Navy ships; and by plundering other players' merchants with your pirate ship as they ply their trade, and possibly burying the booty on one of the islands.   On your turn, you move the ships a number of spaces by playing a movement card (chosen from your hand of two such cards), and these cards have a value for each kind of ship indicating how far it can be moved.  Notably, whilst you can always move both your merchant and your pirate each turn, only one or the other of the two Navy ships is featured on each card.  

The Board of "Black Fleet".  It's big...

Mixing things up further are Fortune cards, acquired, or in some cases, lost, when many (but not all) movement cards are played.   Fortune cards can be played at any time on your turn, and give special one-time benefits, such as extra movement or interfering with the other players plans.  Also, the development cards themselves - except for the 10/20 values - confer additional permanent powers, such as extra doubloons from certain actions, once flipped over.  These development cards are randomly assigned at the start of the game from four decks, so the combinations of powers are going to be different for each game.

Black Fleet is a "family" style game, with fairly low complexity, a bit of chaos, and some fun "take that!" aspects.   It demands one play light-heartedly, and not try to overthink the situation - taken in that spirit, I had a lot of fun with it.   A deep strategic experience it isn't, but it doesn't pretend to be.   And the bits - beautiful little plastic ships, and real metal money - are great, and add to the atmsophere.

I now return you to the esteemed Kent Gamer...

Table 2 played Colt Express, released at Essen last year players play bandits on a train trying to rob it of its loot, however each player is independent and shooting one another is expected and in fact you get a $1,000 bonus if you empty your gun of bullets.

Four player game with cash bags and Gems inside the carriages

The train itself is several carriages long with loot in the form of purses and gems placed inside each of them whilst the Engine carries the Marshall and a carry case containing $1000 cash.

The Marshall in the Engine guarding the carry case of cash.

The winner is the player who has the most cash at the end of the game. Each player has a hand of cards which includes shooting your gun, swinging a fist, picking up loot, moving the Marshall, moving between carriages or climbing onto the roof of the carriage; on your turn you play one of your cards to a common pile either face up or face down dictated by a round card, then after players have played their 3rd, 4th or 5th card, again dependent on the round card the whole deck is played out in the same order.

Player board, left stack is his gun showing 2 shots fired, middle is draw deck and right is discard with a hit from white on top. He has 1 gem and 2 cash bags.

If you get shot you receive a bullet card which becomes a hand clogger and if the Marshall moves into your carriage he shoots you and you automatically move to the roof. Just to add another bit of confusion each players character has an additional power.

Table 2 then moved onto Cargo Noir a worker placement game where you collect resources which you trade in for victory point cards. The board is sectioned off into different areas into which are placed some random resources of which there are 9 different types. On your turn you send ships to the various areas each with some cash to bribe the officials at the destination, anywhere which is uncontested the ship receives all the goods. At a location where a player has been outbid they can make a choice of either withdrawing and taking back their coins or increasing their bid, if the latter this location may not be resolved until the following round – a missed opportunity as there are a limited number of turns. After this players sort their resources into sets of either alike (in which case value is square numbers) or different (in which case they are pyramid numbers) and use these sets to purchase victory points. Limited storage and choice of low cost upgrades make this an interesting game.

Table 2 then finished off with another bash at Roar-A-Saurus, in the meantime table 1 had moved on to Love Letter a simple game where on a turn a player takes a card and adds it to one they already hold, they then play one of the 2 cards applying its effects. Play continues until the deck runs out (only 16 cards) at which point the player with the highest card in hand wins a point. Simple but addictive, this game has been re-incarnated many times over by fans  of the game with various themes, Star Wars, Cthulhu & My Little Pony to name just a few.

Manuscripts and Merlot

We started the evening with a 3-player game of Biblios (we were a little low on attendees for this meeting, owing to a few regulars being unavoidably committed elsewhere).   We’ve played Biblios a few times at MAB before:  it’s a fast, light set-collecting card game, where players take on the role of abbots running a Middle-Ages monastery.   At the end of the game, the person with the highest total value cards in each of five ecclesiastically-related categories (Monks, Pigments, Holy Books, Manuscripts and Forbidden Tomes) wins the points associated with that category, and those points can be manipulated up and down during the course of the game by the use of “bishop” cards.

Biblios - inside the box.

Biblios plays quickly but packs some fun and interesting decisions into the time.   I’ve also found that the mechanics of the game scale well in terms of player numbers (it accommodates from 2-4) and thus it's equally enjoyable with any number in that range.  This is a good thing, since, whilst many games say they work with a wide range of players, it often seems the case that in reality a “sweet-spot” of a particular number works best.  I don’t think this’s the case with Biblios, making it a very useful “filler” game indeed.

Towards the end of Biblios, two more players arrived, so we next launched into a 5-player game of “Viticulture”, a game now in its second edition, and recently reprinted in that edition for a second time – the original edition was crowdfunded, and when released on the open market proved very popular indeed, but needed some rules tweaks.  These were all included in the second edition, and made it even more popular – I only just managed to grab a copy before they all sold out, when it was recently re-released!   When we began to play, I realised why it’s been so sought-after:  it’s a very dynamic “worker placement” game, with a nice flow, some exciting and difficult choices, and plenty of scope for different routes to victory – and of course, the theme appeals to me greatly, as wine is typically my booze of choice.

It's a "Strategic Game of Winemaking", you know!

The story is that you’ve inherited a run-down vineyard and winery in Italy, and from its humble beginnings you must build it up to become the most prestigious wine producer in the region.   Unfortunately, all the other players have (in a strange twist of fate :-) ) come into the exact same kind of fortune, and will be competing with you.   You start off with your own little player board, showing your fields, the “crush pads” where harvested grapes are stored, the cellars where  you store your wines, and places for all the structures you can build to enable you to make and store more and better wines.  You also get some workers to use for the various winemaking actions, and one “Visitor” card – visitors are specialists that you can activate with a worker for a one-time benefit, such as extra money, harvesting grapes out of season, discounts on building, and the like.

Viticulture Player Board.   You can see the vines that have been planted in the fields at the top, and the cellars and "crush pads" at the bottom.

The workers are placed on the main board, to allow players to plant vines, build structures, harvest grapes, make wines, put one of their visitors to work, and so on.   The game turn represents a year, and is divided into four seasons, Spring (where you determine the player order for the rest of the year by choosing a "wake up" time for your workers - and players who choose go after others in turn order get a benefit to compensate), Summer (where you plant, build, etc. ), Fall (where you get to acquire an additional visitor card) and Winter (where you harvest, make wine, train extra vineyard workers, etc.).   Visitors can be used in Summer and Winter, but each visitor can only be used in one of those seasons, as indicated by their card’s colour.

The Viticulture main board, mid-game.   The "Summer" side is on the left and "Winter" on the right - we're in Summer right now, and players have been planting vines, building structure, using their Summer visitors, and various other actions.   You can also see the card stacks at the top, (L to R:  Vines, Summer visitors, Wine orders, Winter visitors).

Then there are vine cards to acquire so you can plant them, and wine order cards which are the main way of getting victory points quickly, and which need wine to fulfil them.  On that subject, the process of making the wine in this game seems really well thought-out to me:  you plant vines, harvest the grapes, crush them into wines, age the wines in your cellars, and sell them…it just feels right.

After some rules checks, and a slightly shaky start, we got into the swing of it very quickly.   At the very end, three players were in realistic contention for the win, but one, who’d focussed on training workers early in the game, managed to get ahead and end the game - which happens at the end of the year during which at least one player achieves 20 victory points – and did it just one turn/year before the other two would have passed him, and would have likely forced a tie-breaker situation.

I really liked this game, and will be bringing it down again soon...

Dragons and Mayors from the East, Pirates and Ancients from the West, Monsters from Everywhere!

We welcomed another new person to the club last night and the ice-breaker chosen was Tsuro, this simple path laying game can be quite evil in its latter stages.

Red and Black vying for the same space.

The rules are simple on your turn you place a tile in front of your playing piece and then move it along the path to its end. If your piece goes off the board then you are out.

The board at games end showing the various routes and loops

If a tile is placed in front of your piece by another player, then your piece also gets moved to the paths end. Last piece on the board wins. 

As this game takes only 15 minutes the next quick game of the evening was Midnight Party. In this game you move your pieces around a corridor until Hugo the ghost makes an appearance, as soon as he arrives on a corridor space players can move their pieces into rooms.

Hugo the ghost smiles at his first three victims. Although white has lost both of his pieces he still rolls the die hoping for more Hugo's.

Movement is governed by players taking a turn rolling a die, if the die shows pips you can move one of your people into the safety of a room, however when a piece goes into a room they slam the door behind them and no one else can hide there, if however a Hugo shows on the die he moves 3 spaces catching anyone he passes over or onto.

Hugo the really friendly ghost.

Captured pieces attract negative points and the winner is the person with the least negative score. It is a fun game but it is astonishing the number of times that you will move Hugo onto your own piece.

We split into 2 groups, the first playing Grog Island a 2014 game from Michael Rieneck who brought us the numerous Cuba games. Sadly I was not at this table and have not played this game so cannot tell you what it was like.

Beresford Quimby writes: Let me help out, then :-).   Grog Island is about retired pirates settling down and buying businesses (like peg-leg shops, or pirate hat stores) with the ill-gotten gold from their life of plunder.  At its heart, it's an auction game, where players use their gold to bid for the right to acquire the various businesses.  However, there's a little twist: at the start of each round, the active player rolls five dice (you can see them in the picture below), and for that round the players can only bid values that can be made up from the dice rolled.  So, 5, 4, 4, 2, 1 might be rolled, and the first player bidding might bid 6, using one of the 4 dice and the 2...the next player might increase the bid to 7 by adding the 1 dice, the next player might use the two 4's to bid 8, and so on. 

Grog Island Board

Passing on a bid gets you commodities based on which dice are currently being used to bid - in the picture above, for example, a passing player would take the four commodities that are not grey, since all but the grey die are in the current bid.  These commodities can be used to acquire  more gold or other benefits.  There's more to the game than that, of course, and it was great fun for me, but like all auction games, it's hard to gauge the relative worth of things on one's first play - next time, I'll know what's what!  Now, we return you to Kent Gamer, for the rest of his report...

Kent Gamer continues: My table decided to play Stone Age, one of the top resource management games ranking number 3 in boardgamegeeks “Family Boardgame” listing. I always enjoy this game, very briefly it is worker placement to collect one of 5 resources, 4 of which are used to purchase victory point tiles and power cards.

The last resource is food which is used to feed your workers. Resource gathering relies on die rolling and during the course of a game bad and good luck often even out – but not always.

My one and only visit to the wood pile. After this the other two locked me out from wood.

I went for a proven strategy of starving my workers whilst maximising resource gathering, however a mix of unlucky timing on cards and a concerted effort whether deliberate or not I know not, to keep me from gathering wood made it awkward for me and I was beaten by a more solid strategy.

The other table had moved on to Castle Panic, a cooperative game with a nice flavour to it.

The Castle in the middle with the enemy zones shown surrounding it.

In short hordes of horrible creatures race in from 6 different directions to tear down the walls of the castle, then attack the keep and sack it. Players on a turn play cards to destroy oncoming foes, rebuild walls and generally try to survive, after which more foes appear. This game is craving to be pimped with model meanies and real castle walls.

The last game on our table was Machi Koro, I have played this 2 player a few times so it was nice to try with 3 players.

Early stages I was banking on the other players rolling 1's or 3's

The game as last time ebbed and flowed, I started the game very slowly and built up a limited portfolio of cards whilst one of my opponents went for diversity. It looked like the latter tactic was going to win, but in the end a couple of good rolls of the dice and I managed to pip my opponents to the post.

Essen 2014 - A little taste

No games this week, however for those who have never been to Spiel I have written a brief introduction, it is just a short article to give a bit of flavour and to showcase some of my Spiel 2014 purchases.

Spiel in October is one of those special times of year when gamers flock to Essen in Germany and games companies from around the globe present their newest games to the public. This year (2014) was no exception with I believe around 850 different products being presented to the public and although I was unable to attend and had to follow events from afar this did not mean I could not enjoy some of the hype that accompanies this event.

Spiel is held in the Grugahalle which has similarities to Olympia, with 800 plus stands filling 4 Halls, stands vary in size from one man booths for the small independents to large affairs for the major companies such as Ravensburger and Amigo, each stand has one or more games on show and most will have seating where you can sit down and play the game, try before you buy.

The major problem with Spiel is that it only runs from Thursday to Sunday so how do you get to try everything and decide what to buy in only 4 days?

We all have our particular passions, some prefer Fantasy games others Science fiction or historical themes,  there are various mechanisms such as deck building, dice rolling, worker placement and  many more, some players have their favourite companies some are passionate about particular authors; anyway you get the idea – whatever your gaming passion there will be something to feed it at Spiel and it is not just board games, Role Playing Games and Live Action Role Playing are also represented as is comics, but it is primarily boardgames that is promoted.

If you are thinking of going to Spiel yourself, there are numerous ways to travel, some of my friends fly and some drive, when I first went I used to travel by train. My last few visits though were by vehicle, the extra carrying capacity provided by a car cannot be under-estimated and the journey is quite easy with the route being fairly straightforward and  (for those of us in Kent) being shorter than a drive to Gretna Green.

Once you get to Essen there are plenty of hotels to stay in, but booking early is essential if you do not want a long walk to the Grugahalle each day.

So how do you whittle the list down from 850? For the avid gamer there is a lot of research to be done, fortunately there are several sites which try to assist the researcher, Spielbox is my first site of choice with a full listing of what is on offer, Boardgamegeek provides some extra background, this year I also used 2 other websites Cliquenabend and Bordspeler .

It is amazing how much information can be gleaned, but it all takes time. Most of what you get tends only to be company blurb and with the case of the geek there is a certain amount of uninformed opinion to wade through too. So to actually find out about a game I go hunting for photos, rules and informed reviews, the latter being scarce with unreleased games.

Sadly I have missed the last few years, but this has not stopped me enjoying the excitement surrounding this event. First off I have been fortunate enough to have a couple of friends who have been willing to do some purchasing on my behalf, secondly I had the joy each day of the event of reading through the highly recommended Kulkmans Gamebox  Blog of the event. Lastly for those who are a more modern than I there was boardgamegeeks live video feed, but I found that this was not “my cup of tea”.

Spiel is the event where several awards are announced and confirmed, this years Spiel des Jahres  award (family game) was Camel Up with Istanbul winning the Kenner prize (gamers game), the German game of the year was Russian Railroads, all good games but Russian Railroads is my favourite of the three.

Boardgamegeek reports the three games with the most buzz at Spiel as being Historia, Alchemists and Deus. I am happy to say I managed to obtain 2 of those games Historia and Deus.

The photos in this article are of my Essen 2014 purchases, if anyone wants any feedback on any of them please let me know. Some of the games may seem “odd” choices but with my collection I am interested in a variety mechanisms and in games which are just a little different from the norm as well as the popular ones.