Drums, Gold and Pirate Ships

This Wednesday the first game on the table was Boing!, a nice warm-up game for all ages. It is essentially a biscuit tin with different coloured plastic balls which sit on the rim. On a turn a player must strike the drum in order to knock their opponents balls into the hole in the centre, but you are only permitted to strike once so an accidental tap or a poor tap means your turn is over.

Boing showing hammer and player balls in the rim

If you strike too hard and balls fly off the tin you pay a penalty and lose a ball to the tin, lose all your balls and you are out, the game continues until only one players balls are left on the rim at which point they win. Playing in 10 minutes it is a fun dexterity game, we played 2 games of this.

Table 1 had started their first game of the evening with a warm-up game of Incan Gold a simple mechanism with a nice push-your-luck element where players are exploring a Temple hoping to deprive it of all its treasures. A deck of cards consists of some disaster cards (3 of each type) and a number of gem cards. On a turn a card is revealed, if it is a gem card the gems are split equally between the players and any remainder are placed on the card, after each revelation the players decide whether they want to leave the Temple or carry on deeper into its depths.

Two treasure cards flanking a disaster card and a special treasure card

A round ends in one of two ways, the last player has left the temple or a second duplicate disaster card is revealed in which case everyone still in the Temple returns their gems, anyone who previously left the Temple keeps their Gems and puts them in storage. The winner is the player who collected the most gems over 5 rounds.

Table 2 then started the main game of the evening, Harbour  by TMG a very new release which I received last week. The game is about managing 4 different resources in order to collect building cards, the building cards all have victory points and it is the player with the most victory points at the games end that wins.

The centre board showing the current prices for goods

On a turn you must move your sole worker to a building card of your choice, either owned by you, another player or the central purchase pool after which you undertake the action of that card. Purchasing a building is by way of using a building with a purchase action and then zeroing your chosen goods whose value is depicted on a central board.

2 building cards in Harbour flanking a bonus victory point card

After the purchase the goods used are immediately devalued. Buildings bought bring a small bonus to the purchaser which can be one of 4 types including storage for goods used and a discount on further purchases.

A players position early in the game after purchase of his first building. The large card is the players character with special ability

Forward planning is not essential until you have built up a stock of goods, in fact as the price of goods can change drastically between turns forward planning can leave you bitterly disappointed. The game was a bit slow mainly due to the fact that half the time because of price changes you have to evaluate your turn from scratch at the start of your turn, familiarity with the cards in the deck would speed this process up.

The next game on Table 1 was Black Fleet. I do like Sebastian Bleasedales games but I have yet to play this one.

Some of the cards in Black Fleet

Ship with Cargo

No doubt I will get an opportunity at some point to play it especially as one of the clubs members has an insatiable love of Pirate games which means it will hit the tables again.

The last game on Table 1 was Smash Up, Each player gets 2 decks of 20 cards, each deck is a different faction, they shuffle the deck which becomes their personal deck which will contain both minion and action cards.

A Selection of cards in Smash-Up

On a turn a player can play 1 minion and 1 action card, the minions are played against score cards in the centre of the table, each score card (or base) has a defence strength that when reached is scored, the players then all get points dependent on how strong their minions are at that base.

A Base and Minions in Smash-Up

The interplay of action cards and the minions own special abilities ensures that each battle is not as simple as first appears.

After Harbour Table 2 moved on to Incan Gold, its addictive “push your luck” mechanism was proved by our table playing it twice. That wrapped up an entertaining evening of game play.

Octopods, Gems and Sailors

The warm-up game Red7 was already underway by the time I arrived this week, a nice card game with simple rules that was well liked at the club. Players in turn play cards either in front of them or to the centre with the aim of either beating the other players to the goal (the centre card) or changing the goal so they are currently winning. When one player is left they win the round and the points.

I started a rival warm-up game of Purzelspinne  a simple balancing game by Haba. The idea is to stack wooden pieces upon a base which is precariously held between some rubber bands or on any of the wooden pieces already there.

Spiders stacked on the Mother Spider

The roll of a die dictates whether you place a light or heavy piece or turn the stack through 360 degrees, any falling spiders (blocks) on your turn gains a penalty point. A simple, quick and fun game.

Table 1 then played Port Royal, an interesting card game which I described last week.

Some of the cards in Port Royal

The winner this week was the same as the last game so there may be a perfect strategy that the others are missing, apparently a huge stack of money was mentioned.

Table 1 then moved on to Lords of Vegas, I still have yet to play this game so know little about it other than there is a certain amount of risk taking when making investments.

Beresford Quimby writes:  Lords of Vegas is, essentially, about controlling areas of the board by "investing" in casino groups, like the mega-resorts seen in modern-day Las Vegas.   On each player's turn, they reveal the top card from the deck of casino property cards, which both gives them permanent ownership of a "lot" - a location on the grid-like board where that player can later "build" a casino tile - but  also triggers a payout in both money and victory points for one of the five casino corporations, and, crucially that payout is for all players who have acquired an interest in the relevant corporation: for each casino, any player with an interest gets cash, but only the "boss" of the casino gets victory points - more on the "boss", later.  There are the same number of cards in the deck for each corporation, and so if a given corporation has already paid out a few times, it becomes less likely it will do so again, which introduces a kind of stock-market prediction mechanism.  This is complicated by the fact that the game ends when a "Game Over" card is revealed in the deck, and that will occur when roughly three-quarters of the property cards have been revealed, so there's always some uncertainty about the exact number of a corporation's cards that will come out by game end.

Lored of Vegas board, with a "lot" owned by Blue on the right, and a 1-tile casino, with Yellow as "boss" on the left.

The active player can then choose from a number of actions, almost all of which can be taken multiple times:  build a casino tile of one's choice - when a player does this, they place a six-sided die from a supply in their colour into the tile to mark ownership, and that die is set to the value shown by a die printed on the "lot", with the highest value single die in any group of tiles showing which player of all those with an interest there is the "boss"; sprawl (by taking over a "lot" that's not yet been acquired, though this's a risk, as if another player acquires that lot later, the "sprawling" player is kicked out!); remodel, where the "boss" of a casino can change the colour of all the tiles in that casino, often to merge it with another adjacent casino; reorganise, forcing all players in one casino to re-roll their dice there, usually so the active player can try to become "boss" there; and gamble, the sole action that can only be done once on a player's turn, when the player can place an evens bet against an opponent, the outcome decided by the throw of two dice.

It's a fun, easy-to-learn game, with lots of "take that!" player interaction - not for the faint of heart.  Theres's some other stuff around trading, and victory point progression, but I've said too much already, so back to Kent Gamer...

Table 2 played Das Amulett a game I played back when it was released in 2001 and did not like, for me it was a flawed game although I cannot fully remember why, other players liked it though and it was nominated for Spiel des Jahres. The game has since been re-implemented as Wizards Brew (not to be confused with Witches Brew a totally different game which I really like).

Das Amulett main board

Anyway back to Das Amulett, the idea is to collect a gem of every colour from the gameboard, this is done by use of spell cards which are auctioned off. The club played Das Amulett twice. The first game ended very quickly when it was found that due to the way the set up (done randomly), the first player could win and there was nothing the other players could do about it.

Players hand in Das Amulett

The second game was balanced and provided quite enjoyable.

Table 3 played AquaSphere  by Stefan Feld, like a lot of his games the idea is to collect small amounts of points throughout the game and hopefully give it a little boost at the end through ongoing projects. I had played it 2 player a couple of times and was looking forward to a four player game, I was not disappointed.

A segment of the main board showing different segments

On a turn a player has a choice of programming a robot to one of seven tasks or sending a robot on one of those tasks. These tasks include collecting tiles to complete your pod, taking bonus ability cards, placing submarines to collect victory points, collecting crystals or time tokens, destroying octopods or going for a delay.

Players board, the top of the board showing the seven actions

The mechanisms mesh nicely together, a task board limits the options you can choose from whilst you need to collect time tokens to move and crystals to score, there is also a need to remove octopods as they attract a negative score. There is a certain amount of planning to do to make sure you undertake the correct tasks to maximise your points in each round. It is a good game which has you thinking throughout and rewards good planning.

Overview of the main playboard

Table 2 finished with Red7  and thus ended the evenings gaming for all. A good turnout and some interesting games played.

Some of the cards won in Red7

Kings, Sailors, Farmers and Ghosts

Tonight the warm-up game was Midnight Party , in this game players have a number of characters (2 in a 6 player game) which they move clockwise round a corridor by the roll of a die, however two of the faces show the outline of Hugo The ghost in which case they forgo moving their characters and instead move Hugo three spaces.

Hugo the ghost chasing purple whilst green and red are safe in rooms

He starts off in the cellar but climbs the stairs onto the corridor whereupon he also moves clockwise chasing the characters any he captures attract minus points the only escape is to dive into a room however each room can hold only one character, so others are condemned to continue around the corridor until they are captured or find an empty room.

We split into 2 tables, table 1 played Ciúb a new dice game from Amigo, I have yet to play it so if I have got any of this wrong please let me know. The idea of the game is to gain victory points, these are on cards which you obtain during the game and of which a number are on display in two rows.

A player board with dice saved this turn, to the left points cards already achieved

 Your first action is to place or move your token onto a card that has no other token on it (thus staking your claim), then you roll all your dice. The dice have various symbols as well as numbers on the faces, the symbols may allow you to have a re-roll, turn a die or swap a die, there is also a skull symbol which kills that die for the turn. After this if you can match your dice to any of the cards on display in the lower tier and it does not have an opponents token on it, you may take that card as victory points. Failure to take a card gains you a die for the next round, taking a card means you discard down to five dice.

My table chose Kingsburg , a nice worker placement game. The board depicts 18 different advisors (actions) which players can choose to enact, most give resources but others give other bonuses such as victory points or combat strength. All players simultaneously roll 3 dice then in ascending order of pip value decide to play one or more of their dice together to select an advisor which must match the pip total of the dice placed.

Two of the first buildings in a row, each giving 1 battle strength in future battles

Placement continues until all players have placed all their dice at which point the advisors are then activated in numerical order, after everyone has activated their advisers players can then use their resources to build a building, these buildings can help in combat or resource gathering and gain you victory points.

The Queen, in my opinion the most powerful space on the board giving 3 victory points, 2 resources and a preview of what attack is on its way

The only drawback of Kingsburg I would say is the luck associated with die rolling, sometimes continual lucky or unlucky die rolling unbalances the game a bit, I was fortunate enough to roll three 17’s in our game whilst another player did have more than their fair share of the low numbers.

The next game on our table was Oregon a nice tile laying game, on your turn you play 2 cards from your hand, cards relate to lines and columns on the board and you get to play one of your farmers on any of the 12 squares shown by the areas in which the 2 cards cross, if you get a set of 3 or more farmers together you get 5 points.

Oregon at games end - yes I was yellow tailing badly.

There are also building cards and if you play a land card with a building card you may build the building shown on the card in any column or row indicated by the land card. Buildings when placed next to farmers give victory points and sometimes a bonus and similarly any farmer placed next to an existing building also picks up points. The game plays well multi-player and ours was an enjoyable game – even though I came last by quite a margin.

The other table had moved on to Port Royal a recent card game from Pegasus games, on a players turn they turn over cards 1 at a time from a deck, stopping when they want to, a card can be one of 3 types a ship card giving money, a character card or a bonus points cards, these latter get put to one side and are victory point cards that all players have access to, the others are laid in 2 rows.

2 Character cards a bonus point card and the reverse showing money

A player after stopping may then take any ship card which gives cash or a character card which costs cash , after which the next player may take from what is left (paying a coin for the privilege) and so on round the table after which it is the next players turn to flip cards one at a time.

Part of a players layout, the Trader gives an extra cash on Black boats, the admiral gives 2 cash if 5 or more cards are in the display and the Jester gives 1 cash if there are no cards in the display when it comes to your turn. There are also 4 victory points on show.

The idea is to collect 12 victory points which are on character cards and bonus point cards, the character cards also give special in-game abilities. It is a fairly quick game and probably one for the beginning or end of a gaming evening.

Last game for us was Geschenkt (aka No Thanks! ), a lovely little card game where some cards are removed from a deck numbered 1-39, then on a round a card is turned over, in turn players decide whether they want to leave the card in which case they put a point chip on it, or take it in which case they also take all the chips on it. A card remains face up collecting chips until someone decides to take it at which point the next card is turned over.

The winning hand in Geschenkt only the lower cards count negatively

The deck is played out at which point scoring takes place, the player with the lowest score wins and your score is made up from the lowest card of all your runs (including singletons) minus the chips you end the game with. It is neat, quick and mixes deductive reasoning with risk taking, an excellent game.

Artifacts, Bosses and Caballeros

To make up for last week, games started early and I walked in with my Hot Chocolate (boy was it cold last night) to find a game of Love Letter already in progress.

Love Letter is quite a simple game but very popular, it consists of 16 character cards of which 1 is dealt to every player, on a turn a player takes a card and then plays one of the two cards they are then holding using that characters power to undertake an action, the aim of the game is to hold the highest ranked card at the end of the round. There is a lot of deducing to be done and as it plays quite quickly an ideal warm-up game.

As there was another person waiting I started off with one of my favourite warm-up games at another table. Animal Olympics is quite an old game, aimed at younger people it is quite nice and has fantastic artwork. There are 39 cards numbered from 1 -39, the deck is shuffled and a number of cards dealt face down in a row in front of the players.

Part of a players layout

On a turn a card is taken from the deck remainder and the player places it face up in their row passing the card it replaces face up to the next player and so on. The idea is to get all the cards in your row face up first and in sequential order. The game can be made more difficult by each player having more cards face down in front of them at the start of the games.

The cutest artwork I have come across in any game

I went for middle difficulty of 10 to each player in a 2 person game and 9 in the following 3 player game.

After the warm-up games Table 1 moved on to El Grande . Sitting at number 20 in boardgamegeek boardgame listing it is well deserving of its rank requiring a lot of thought to play the game well as there is a lot of player interaction/interference. The board shows a map of medieval Spain showing a number of regions, the idea of the game is to score the most points and points come from having the most units in a region when that region is scored.

Part of the board showing regions with caballeros battling for control for the points values shown

To start a round the players in turn choose a card from a ranked deck of 13 cards they hold in their hand, this provides a number of raw recruits to put into play later and also dictates when in that round that player is to have their actions, the more you recruit the later in a round you will have your turn.

The King action card

In the new turn order players take one of 5 action cards available and then take the actions thereon, these cards allow you to place units on the board and then either score a region, moviethe King (who affects scoring and unit movement), move units and a few other events. The balance of increasing your unit strength in the various regions  against slotting yourself into the perfect position in the turn order, early to have best choice of power card but late enough to have an influence on the game is a fine line to travel.

My table opted for something equally testing and chose one of my favourite medium-heavy games , Pergamon . This game is about collecting artifacts and exhibiting them in a museum, it is these exhibits which get you the victory points, the path to success is intricate and requires some forethought and planning to do well.

The first 3rd of the Pergamon board showing the cash track at the top and the artefact-tiles in the five levels of the dig.

In the first phase of a turn players place their playing piece on a cash ladder, however there is a limited amount of cash to be shared, the spaces chosen also dictate how deep in a 5 layered pit players can dig for artifacts, the deeper you dig the more it costs. The second phase is taking artifact cards, however these cards are all incomplete showing 2 halves of different treasures, the idea is to collect them and marry the halves together, these are then exhibited the numbers showing their ranking when placed in the museum.

An exhibit consisting of 4 complete artifacts and initially scoring rank 10 in the museum

Each scoring round exhibitions are given points based on their position on the ranking table. Depreciation and bonus points for the oldest artifacts add to the fun.

Our table moved on to Langfinger a nice fun game of thieving art, the board is split into five sections, in sections 1 and 3 players collect various tools, in sections 2 and 4 players use these tools to pick up works of art and gold and in section 5 they sell the items stolen to fences.

Tools at the bottom which are then spent on items cards in sections 2 and 4, the fences are on the right showing what they will buy

In turn round the table players place their pawns in the various sections then after all placements the different sections are auctioned in pawn placement order. Players pick up victory points when the sell goods to the fences. It is a nice game and plays quite quickly.

The other table had moved onto Biblios , this has been played at the club quite a few times and I have explained the mechanics before, it is basically a card game where you collect sets, there are also some special cards which will affect the values of these sets at the end of the game.

The winning hand in Biblios winning 2 of the dice and 5 points.

Only the biggest set (effectively largest shareholder) of each type will count at the end of the game.

The final game for our table was The Boss a recent acquisition for me. In this game a number of city bosses are laid out dependent on the number of players together with a face down card of that city, then the rest of the city cards are shuffled and dealt equally to the players.

The layout part-way through a two player game

On a players turn they place a number of cubes on one of the bosses and then plays a card face up, so as the round progresses more information is made available and the value on the hidden cards can be deduced. At the end of the round whoever has the most cubes on a boss gets the hidden card which will be either a cash value or an event card.

The score board also containing a prison and hospital for injured and captured mobsters.

At the end of the game it is the person who has collected the most loot that wins, I have only played this 2 player so far where it works quite well, though I am keen to play with more players as it should throw up some interesting situations.

Horses, Gold and Penguins

Operation stack took its toll on the game club last week preventing 1 member attending and making me 20 minutes late but not too late to join a game of Royal Turf a newer version of Turf Horse Racing.

In this game seven horses are displayed with movement possibilities shown dependent on what face of a racing die is showing. The players in turn place betting chits on the various horses after which a race takes place, during the race the players in turn roll a die and apply the results to a horse of their choosing provided it has not moved yet, once all seven horses have moved the movement restriction is removed and once again there is a choice of all seven horses.

The race ends when 3 horses have crossed the line and the game ends once 3 races have run. It is a nice game and plays fairly quickly, in addition over the 3 races the vagaries of the die should even out, our games winner played a good game throughout obtaining a steady income in all the races. I managed to not only fail to win anything in the last race but lost money by backing the last placed horse.

We then split onto 2 tables with my table choosing Macho Kori a relatively simple card collecting game the aim of which is to build 4 special buildings held in your hand, the first to do so wins. All buildings cost money to build and you earn money from buildings previously built, fortunately to start the ball rolling you already have 2 buildings given to you at the start of the game. 

On your turn you roll a die which may activate buildings in your display and other possibly other players displays as well, blue buildings activate on everyones turn, green ones only on your turn and red ones on other players turns, a building activates if the die roll matches its activation number.

Tactics vary some go for a spread portfolio with a variety of buildings so they get something on every turn whilst I prefer stocking up and taking just the occasional big payout on monopolies, normally to progress you need the railway station which then gives you the choice of rolling one or two dice on your turn but in this session someone won very convincingly with a one die strategy.

The other table had started with a game of King of Tokyo, a fun and certainly very colourful game, the idea is to earn 20 victory points, to do this you undertake the role of a giant monster and terrorize Tokyo.

On your turn you roll 6 dice and in time honoured fashion re-roll as many of these as you want twice more, there are 4 types of faces :- 1) an energy point symbol for which you collect an energy point, 2) 1,2,or 3 victory points for which you need to get a triplet to score the points 3) an attack symbol which damages your fellow monsters that are in a different location and 4) a Heal symbol to heal a damage point.

The game is not about die rolling though it is really about the power cards you collect which are bought using the energy points you collect off the dice. These cards may have a one off use or a continual use and it is the collecting the right cards that will win you the game.

It is a fun game however it does suffer a knockout rule, if your monster takes too much damage you are out of the game, okay for conventions where there are always other games you can move onto but I am not so sure about a games evening.

Biblios was the next game on the other table, a card game which we have covered before. It has a nice intricate card purchase/auction mechanism where the idea is to build up a strong hand of cards to gain control of various companies whose value is influenced by other cards.

On our table we played Pingvinas, aka “Hey Thats my Fish”, an abstract strategy game of moving your penguins over hexagonal tiles in a straight line, the tile your penguin left goes into your score pile, in this way parts of the board start to disappear, penguins cannot move over gaps but if your penguin is alone on a cluster of tiles then they all go into your score pile. It is fun, quick and strategically testing.

We finished off with a new purchase for me “Korrigans”, in this game the idea is to collect as much gold as possible the winner being the player who collects the most. The board depicts a number of fields each of which has a Menhir (standing stone) and a small stack of tokens therein, each field will also have 2 or 3 entry points with an animal (usually different) depicted at each entrance.

Each player has 2 pieces which they place in different areas of the board and take their choice of token from the face down stack. A token will either have a number of gold pieces shown on it or one of the various animals shown on the board. On your turn you must move one of your pieces to an adjacent field through one of the gates and select a tile from the stack in that field, to use the entrance you show an animal token matching the animal on the “gate”, for the rest of the game you may now move through any entrance showing this animal.

As the game progresses you collect gold, animal tokens and Menhirs which are taken with the last token in an area and grant either gold or a random event. The endgame is played a little differently, each round of turns a coloured disc is drawn from a bag, when the seventh different colour is drawn the game enters its final stage and a crock of Gold is placed on the board and the game pieces now have to get there using their animal tokens except each animal token can now only be used once, extra gold is handed out to players who get 1 or both of their pieces to the crock of Gold.

The game is fun and light hearted and there is a little bit of luck in the disc drawing and Menhir collecting, but on the whole it is quite well balanced, in our 4 player game the scores were all within 5 points of one another making it a very close game.