String Safari, Savanne and Port Royal Expansion

The quiz this time is something new.

Last week the board shown was that of 8 Minute Empire another great game in a small box, despite its title the game plays in about 15 minutes.

Three tables at the club this week, Table 1 playing Port Royal with the newly released expansion Port Royal: Ein Auftrag geht noch..., which adds a number of new character cards and a few extra ships all of which add to the cash-flow of the game; there is also a new way to earn cash and victory points through contracts, to fulfil one all you have to do is match the criteria shown on one of those in play. The new cards increase cash flow and the contracts fit into the existing game but I personally do not think they add much more to an already nice filler game, others though commented :-

• The expansion for Port Royal has added a whole new layer of strategy. I lucked out a win as others were busy trying to do contracts.

  • I strongly agree about the Port Royal expansion - the contracts really added a dimension. I'll be bringing it back soon, I think...

Table 2 started with Orléans a game that is on my “to play” list, I know nothing about it (sorry) other than everyone enjoyed the game and that it has a high rating on the geek. Here are some pictures showing some of the boards and bits.

Table 3 started with Champions of Midgard. After seeing it played at the club last week my interest was piqued enough to ask to play it this week. I am glad I did as I thoroughly enjoyed the game and despite a myriad of rules the actual play mechanism is quite simple. The idea of the game is to collect victory points, these are mainly gained from defeating foes of which there are two sources one set are of low value and provide a little reward a second set which give more victory points but are harder to vanquish.

Top end of the board with the weaker combats, some meeples are shown on worker spaces

There are only 8 rounds to the game and each round is split into 2 phases, the first phase is worker placement, workers are used to pick up combat dice, obtain resources (food, wood and gold), lay claim to a game end scoring card, claim an in-game bonus card or lay claim to one of the combats on offer. In the second phase players undertake combat with the various foes, combat is simple, you roll your dice which will show hits, misses or a shield, if you score enough hits you destroy the foe taking the victory points and any cash, each damage taken by the player not defended by shields causes the loss of a die.

The combat dice are on a boat together with food, the small blue cards are events to overcome before combatting opponents at the bottom edge of the board.

After combat any surviving dice are kept for the next turn; the resources are mainly to fund the battles against the higher victory point foes. The game is really just a race for victory points but the mechanisms allow you to feel some control over your destiny despite the luck of die rolling. One player joined after round 2 and although there was hardly any difference in resources the extra few bits the rest of us had obtained allowed us to weather any bad breaks in the die rolls later in the game, it was also interesting to note that the game is a little unforgiving for those that take unprepared risks.

Table 1 next played Traders of Osaka, I have only played Traders of Carthage the forerunner of this game so do not think I should comment until I have played this version and ascertained what (if any) the differences are.  

Traders of Osaka

Suffice to say it is a nice trading game where monopolies can make or break you dependent on the actions of other players. Others have commented thus :-

• Traders of Osaka was waaay more fun the second time around. I learned that if you have a whole lot of one colour, everyone else will try very hard for that colour boat to not score. I also learned that if you're patient and have enough money, you will be able to cash in on a big market buy that can win you the game.

  • Traders of Osaka I like more every time I play it - it's deceptively simple in its rules for a game that actually has a lot of interesting psychological elements at work, I feel.

Table 2 played a number of short games all of which have been covered before, the first of these was Welcome to the Dungeon, it is a push your luck game however the balance always changes with different players and some of the skill in this game is reading your opponents.

They followed this with the nice filler game Love Letter: Batman which has been played at the club quite a few times now.

Then Table 2 played Hanabi which ought to be subtitled “the deduction game that blows my mind”. There are a number of games that I cannot play to any decent standard because my thought processes seem to be different to everybody elses. What may seem a sensible and fully illuminating clue to others will appear to me to be useless information that I cannot link to anything else I know. This though does not stop Hanabi being a good and popular game.

Our next game on Table 3 was Sawanna a simple, colourful race game aimed at kids but easily playable by adults. Each player has a team of animals any two of which when they cross the finish line will win the player the game. Each of the animals has 2 numbers on them and a special power, on a turn the player rolls some dice, they then choose one of their visible animals and allocates any number of dice whose numbers match the animal to that tile. They then choose to either stop and move each animal or roll the remaining dice again. If on a roll they cannot allocate any dice their turn ends and no animals will move. When moving animals must move the exact number of dice allocated to them.

The Antelope can be moved with rolls of 3 and 4, the Lion with rolls of 1 and 2, their special ability is shown at the bottom of the tile

There is a stacking limit of 2 on any space and the special powers on each of the animals allows them extra movement, or to defend or attack other animals. The mechanism is sound and when you play your turn there is plenty to think about however the game is let down a bit by the downtime between turns and although this is the same in many games of a similar nature where players are sequentially rolling dice (Martian Dice and Zombie Dice to name but two) I found the downtime particularly noticeable. The other thing that is mildly dissatisfying is that the game seems to end after three rounds with no chance of benefitting from any tactical play, just being lucky enough to roll four similar faces seems to be enough to secure a win. I will have to do some minor rules tweaking before the next play and try with 3 players where I think its sweet spot may be.

The last game on Table 1 was Ra a simple set collection game with a push your luck element. On a turn you make a choice of either drawing a tile or starting an auction for tiles which have already been drawn. Bidding is done with sun chips with different values written thereon and you only get to win a maximum of three times each round.

This player has bidding tiles 2, 4 and 10 and has collected quite a few monument tiles for scoring at the end of the game.

The tiles are collected for various sets which score you points for the round or for game end points, the values of tiles drawn vary dependent on what people are collecting or need to avoid loss of points, the winning bidding chit is also swapped for the spare chit, in this way the bidding values swap hands. On the whole I like Ra it has a nice balance of points collecting and damage avoidance, it is also fully engaging with hardly any downtime at all, players commented thus :-

• As for Ra...I'd rather play sushi go.

  • Ra is - like most auction games - of those that takes a few plays to figure out what things are worth. But there's so many games competing for our time these days, and it's pretty venerable, so I understand why people might not feel like giving it another go. I just felt like I hadn't played it for years, so thanks for the game, everyone on Table 1...

 The last game on my table was String Safari, where the idea is collect victory points from groups of tiles in play. The game consists of a piece of string and some square cards each with an animal thereon. Each animal has a number of factors, preferred time of activity, food preference, type of animal and between 1 and 4 victory points.

Part of the play area the Zebra in the foreground has been claimed by purple

A turn consists of first taking a random card from the animal deck and a victory point card, then in turn a player places their animal into play then uses a small loop of string to encircle as many victory point gaining cards as possible to match the victory point card they currently have. Finally the player then places an “interest” cube on an animal within their loop. The interest cube prevents others scoring from that animal for the rest of the game whilst preserving it for extra victory points at the games end. The game is fun and I think a lot of play depends on the victory point card you are able to grab, there was quite a bit of fluctuation between a high point scoring card and a low one, but that may have due to the types of animals in play at that time. Another commented :-

• String Safari was good, it felt quick and scoring was easy and there are probably tactics that would make a second game even better. Particularly nice artwork too.

Porta Nigra, Cornwall and Coloretto

Please note other players comments shown as bullet points. This quiz picture shows the pieces and the board mid-game. The added clue is “I would say more 15”

The photo last week was of the board from Small World the fantasy version of Vinci, some members may be familiar with the game from the Halloween/Birthday event earlier this month. It is well themed and works well but I think the system is a bit “messier” (it certainly has a lot more bits) than its predecessor which I personally prefer.

Three tables this week, with Table 2 starting early with Get Bit! a card playing race game where players are a line of swimmers trying to escape a shark. All players  simultaneously play a card face-down from identical starting hands, they are then revealed and swim order decided by their values with tied cards not moving. The swimmer at the back gets bitten by a shark, loses a limb and is placed at the front of the line; lose all your limbs and you are out, the swimmer in the lead when only two are left  is the winner. It is an excellent short warm up game and does tend to engender the odd bad pun.

Table 1 started with Porta Nigra a resource management game where players gain victory points from conducting building work in four of Augusta Treverorums (present day Trier, Germany) great buildings. On a turn a player plays a card from a hand of two, the card dictates how many actions the player has and what those actions may be, which are to purchase a brick, undertake a build action, take a torch token, take an influence token or take money. When you have finished your actions it becomes the next players turn, this continues until your deck of cards is played out at which point you can take a cash injection or take part of the income in victory points, then you do it all once again before final scoring.

The card depicts two buying a brick options (any colour) taking 5 cash and 1 build option

Players gain the much sought after victory points by undertaking a construction action at one of the four construction sites, to construct part of a building you must pay with the correct number and type of bricks after which you place a soldier on top to denote your part in the construction of the edifice, at the games end you get bonus points for majorities of bricks in each of the four buildings.

A view of the centre of the board showing the shops full of bricks, away from the centre are the building areas

There are some nice mechanics in the game, influence tokens are traded in for special cards which either grants a specified bonus action or endgame victory points, torch tokens can be traded in for a bonus action from your played card, the tokens and bonuses can occasionally be nicely chained together; timing can be crucial in brick gathering or taking building actions where several players can be after the same bricks and builds, money is tight but provided you plan ahead should not be an issue.

A tower built of red bricks in the Porta Nigra owned by the blue player

The game played well and seemed balanced until the last 2 cards of the game where building plots were scarce and I think we all felt that the actions the cards provided were effectively useless at accomplishing anything, the “wrong bricks” were available to match the plots and the influence cards were equally unhelpful and therefore the actions felt wasted, this could have been bad planning on our behalf or a mechanic of the game with 4 players. I had played it once before 2 player and although the plots were again limited towards the end of the game I did not feel the same restrictions or frustration, despite this kink in procedures I enjoyed the game however as with a lot of Euro-games these days pre-knowledge of the cards (in this case the influence cards) is an advantage.

• I enjoyed Porta Nigra and would definitely like to give it another play, having now got the rules straight in my head. Its a nice resource management game, although not up there with russian railroads and viticulture in my opinion (I particulary like those two). The one slightly frustrating thing was the luck element of which order you get your activity cards in. It's only a small thing, but I was left with cards I couldn't do much with at the end of both rounds. Also, in future I would make sure I had more coins, as I ran out towards the end. Still overall, as I said, a good game.

Table 2 next played Hunters and Gatherers a game belonging to the Carcassonne family, for those unfamiliar with Carcassonne it is a tile laying game where on a turn a player places a square tile orthogonally adjacent to those already in play and must match tile features like for like against touching edges (e.g. river – river, field- field etcetera).

A rather blurry picture of the playing area showing rivers and forests

After tile placement they may put a meeple on any feature on the tile they just played provided there is no other meeple on the extended feature, then any completed features are scored. In Hunters and Gatherers you get points for fish in rivers, tiles in forests and for deer and mammoths in fields. The advanced play mode introduces bonus tiles for completing forests with a gold blob.

Table 3 started off with Champions of Midgard a worker placement game which seemed to surprise everyone how quickly it played. I know little about it other than workers are placed to gather resources, you also have warriors which combat various monsters from Norse mythology, points I believe are gathered from different achievements. Despite my lack of knowledge it has intrigued me and I am keen to give it a go sometime soon.

A players area in Midgard

Really enjoyed Champions of Midgard as a worker placement game - quite a short one but there was healthy competition for places and there is a nice mix of actions you can do to get points. I think in our game we had a split of people focusing on the Troll/local monsters to fight, and the rest going out to see to fight the higher point monster. It was interesting to see that this balanced out at the end with the final score, with end-game bonuses and shame tokens for negative points. Would definitely play again.

Table 3 also played Welcome to the Dungeon a nice light push your luck game where on your turn you either pass to let others battle the monsters in a dungeon or you select a card (thus volunteering to enter the dungeon yourself), the card will depict a monster which you can either place in the dungeon to be battled later or banish it from the dungeon by losing a piece of the heroes equipment.

Some of the monsters

Play continues until only one player is left “in”, they must now battle the monsters in the dungeon with what is left of the equipment either gaining a trophy for defeating the dungeon or losing against it, two failures and you are knocked out, two wins and you win the game.

Table 3 was rattling through the games quite rapidly and Bohnanza was their next choice an Uwe Rosenberg hit from 1997, in the game you plant one or two bean cards in the two plots available to you then turn over 2 cards from the deck to trade with other players after which you draw three new cards. Trading is the heart of the game and helps you manage the cards in your hand as well as the fields in front of you, it is an excellent game, well balanced and those that enjoy trading games will love this one, however it is not a game I personally like but then I do not enjoy trading games that much.

• Had never played Bohnanza before but found the haggling for beans a good laugh, and the scores were pretty close in the end.

On table 1 we finished the evening with Cornwall a tile placement game which has been compared to Carcassonne both favourably and unfavourably. The tiles used in the game are groups of three hexagons which have 2 or 3 different terrains on them (one to each hexagon), the tile may also contain a cottage, church or flag. On your turn you take a random tile and place it on the board so that 2 edges are connected and at least one terrain type is expanded, if you match multiple terrains you collect coins, after tile placement you may place a meeple on any of the terrains, coins allow you multiple placements or even placements where meeples already exist, meeples also come in three different sizes and strengths, any completed areas are then scored, with flags giving a boost to the points which mainly go to the player with highest strength.

Tiles are added to expand an existing feature e.g a field was expanded in playing the tile in the SW corner

The game does play differently to Carcassonne but you cannot help drawing parallels and in Cornwall I felt restricted in my plays, if you draw a tile that you cannot match to get a coin then all other options of multiple placements are also withheld from you I felt frustrated to have to make repeated single plays to be followed by someone who then made a double play over me. Oddly enough the restrictiveness and lack of choice I felt in this game was not dissimilar to what others felt in Porta Nigra and like Porta Nigra I highly suspect that the number of available options increases with fewer players.

When an area is scored the meeples are sent to the pub where it costs a gold to release them.

• Cornwall with the right rule was fun for me, but another player made the point that he felt he lacked meaningful control. I do see the point: depending on the tile you get and the state of the board, you can end up with little choice in its placement, and I began to feel that towards the end of the game, though not at the beginning. However, I think that I will try a few more times with different strategies before I call it one way or the other on the control asepct - I get the feeling that there are ways to mitigate the draw somewhat by conserving cash. I also think maybe different player numbers (we played with 4) may have an impact too.

Table 2 in the meantime played Tiny Epic Galaxies which has been briefly covered before. I think I overheard that the game was won with a score of 26, the player gaining enough extra points from their secret bonus card.

The last game on table 3 was Coloretto a Michael Schacht game from 2003 more recently released in a 10th anniversary edition, the game consists of a deck of coloured cards. On a turn a player has a choice to either draw and place a card against one of the stacks on the table (limit of 3 to a stack) or to take one of the stacks at which point they are out until all players have taken a stack, then a new round begins. The rounds are repeated until depletion of the deck then scoring takes place, players positively score their 3 longest suits and negatively score the rest, scoring is based on triangular numbers. The game plays nicely and will appeal to both those that like to calculate and play it safe as well as those who like to take a risk and gamble and as all sets are open there is plenty of opportunity to stitch up your opponents.

A Players hand currently scoring 2

Viticulture, La Isla and Betrayal at House on the Hill

The quiz photo this time is a gameboard where the graphics and iconography should easily give it away.

The last quiz was Fuzzy Heroes an excellent game played with your favourite cuddly toys, this is from a participation game I organized at Beer & Pretzels a 2 day convention in Burton-on-Trent and combines Fuzzy Heroes with Escape from Atlantis and The Settlers of Catan.

Once again it was straight into the gaming and Table 1 went with Viticulture .This is one of my favourite games from 2013 and is a very nice worker placement and resource management game. Players each own a vineyard, grow grapes and turn them into wine which they then use to fulfil orders, to do this they place workers on the board to undertake various actions.

The board, Spring on the left and Autumn on the right

The first phase of the game is placing on the Spring side of the board which enables you to collect money by giving a tour, build a structure on your own personal board, plant grapes, play a summer visitor card or a taking a new grapevine card; when everyone has passed in the Spring phase players start placing for the Autumn phase on the Autumn side of the board, the twist here is that you do not get back any workers from the Spring phase, workers can only be used once in the whole year.

Player board, the glass tokens represent bottles of wine maturing in the cellar

Autumn is the phase where players harvest grapes, turn it into wine and complete orders. There are several other nice mechanisms in play such as choosing player order with various bonuses, getting a small cash bonus every turn for wine contracts and the scoring track. It is a very nice game where money is very tight at the beginning and the correct choices with the money you do have can be crucial and some wise builds can get you nice bonuses later, however the main driving mechanism behind the game is the various card decks which provide in-game bonuses, grapes for planting and the all important contracts which are needed to win the game. Overall it is a superb game and one that has been requested at the club several times. Comments were :-

·        Really enjoyed Viticulture and rarely felt too blocked like can happen in some worker placement.

·        Viticulture is a game I always enjoy playing...it's one of those that seems to take an age to explain and yet once you start playing the mechanisms fall into place quite quickly - the strategy, however, has many possibilities, and that's the tricky bit.

·        I love viticulture, and am really glad I got to play it again.

Table 2 played La Isla a slighter lighter offering than his normal fare by Stefan Feld author of Luna and Aquasphere both of which have been played at the club before. La isla has numerous animal tokens spread across a board between various camping spots, to gain the tokens players have to place explorers on all the camps around it whereupon they collect the token and the points given on the board.

The board at the end of the game with a few tokens still available

The tokens represent “shares” for which their value increases throughout the game and explorers can only be placed by playing 2 tokens of the appropriate colour. The driving mechanism for the game are the cards each of which can have one of 3 different powers, each turn you get three cards and have to order them in preference of the bonus you want or need but only one of each. The aim of the game is to get victory points from the three sources (cards, the board and animal tokens) however it is how you play your cards that dictates how well you will do, in our game some were collecting tokens and/or affecting share prices whilst I was grabbing points from cards this all led to a very close finish with only a few points separating the leaders.

Table 1 next played Cornwall a game which to me is steeped in mysticism. There are mixed reports which compare it both favourably and unfavourably to Carcassonne, unfortunately our group missed a rule so I am leaving feedback on this game until it is next played, it is still one that intrigues me. Comments were :-

·        Sadly we missed one rule on Cornwall. The way we played it felt like Carcassonne plus a little complexity, I think with the rule played properly it would have panned out quite differently, probably requiring a different strategy to Carcassonne.

·        I'd also like to try cornwall again with the real rules in place - I think it would make it a lot harder to place your meeples as it seems money would be in short supply. This in turn would really make you think about your strategy.

The Cornwall board as it develops

My table next played Betrayal at House on the Hill, to say this game is outside my comfort zone would be a bit of an understatement however I am always happy to try anything in gaming and it is normally a pleasant experience to play something a little different from what one is used to, Betrayal at House on the Hill was doubly so.

The ground floor slowly being uncovered

The game is more of an experience or journey rather than about winning or losing, initially all players are working together to explore various rooms in a mansion – to this ends it is almost a dungeon crawl game enter a room see what happens and roll dice to avoid dangers, collect items and gain (or as we found lose) experience and abilities. The timing mechanism for the game is a deck of Omen cards which are triggered by specific rooms when revealed. Omens are additional events that happen after which dice are rolled and if you do not roll high enough a haunting occurs at which point a matrix is referred to which reveals a specific player to become the enemy.

A secret door led to the basement

The game then becomes all against one, the betrayer who may have various minions or powers available to them to tries to defeat the other players whilst they in turn try to destroy that player. The game is well themed and atmospheric, everything is very uncertain until the very end of the game. No one knows who the betrayer will be and sothere is nothing to deduce with each player trying to improve their statistics prior to a haunting at which point panic sets in. All in all a very enjoyable experience and one which I am happy to repeat, if this is your type of game it is highly recommended. As an aside we did defeat Batman.

Item on the left (which I lost by handing to my future self) and an Omen card on the right.

Between Two Cities was our last game of the evening and was explained in full last week. It is a strange game with lots of interaction and negotiation where you are all trying to get the best for all the cities in play however when it comes to scoring (to me) it feels a little anticlimactic, the fun for me is in the playing not the scoring. We had a good game and it was all quite close.

Le Havre, Between 2 Cities and Bang Dice Game

The quiz picture is a little different this week, I do not expect anyone to get it (I will be impressed if they do) however I am open to any and all comments.

The previous quiz picture was the 1987 release by Ravensburger Flying Carpet an intriguing race game. The picture was of the buildings and clouds all of which are obstructions in the game.

We went straight into the meatier games this week Table 1 started with Tiny Epic Galaxies, this space exploration game is quite nice and is a lot bigger than the box gives credit to. The aim of the game is to score victory points these are obtained from increasing your technology or from colonising planets, 21 VP’s is the game end trigger. On your turn you get a number of dice dependent on your technology and roll them you get one free re-roll, with these you can gain energy or culture dependent upon where your spaceships are in orbit, or you can colonise planets by diplomacy or conquering.

The planets in play in Tiny Galaxies, colonised planets are replaced

The game is a balance between climbing the technology ladder as quickly as possible (which gives extra dice and ships) and leaving yourself enough flexibility to do other things if the dice roll does not go your way, an excellent small box game. BQcommented :-

• Tiny Epic Galaxies was even better, for me, than the first time I played it, because with 4 players rather than 5 it was a bit shorter, and I felt it ended just about the right time. I begin to see how the planet colony powers can interact - the ultimate winner had a nice little combo set up, of which I was jealous smile emoticon

Table 2 went with Takenoko which I have covered a couple of times before but for those who have not played it before the game is about achieving objective cards which come in three different types, Bamboo plots (specific configurations of land tiles), Panda food (specific segments of bamboo) and Gardener ( specific bamboo growth). On a turn you roll a die which gives a random action after which you can take 2 additional different actions to grow bamboo, collect bamboo, take an objective card or place a new land tile.

The Takenoko playing area slowly expanding

It is a light fun game where you have quite a few choices but decision making is fairly quick, there is a bit of luck in what goal cards you draw however this helps steer the game towards some interesting decision making. This is an ideal bridge game with minor resource management and low level decision making, together with a cute panda and wooden bamboo pieces it is a pleasure to play for gamers of all levels, highly recommended. One player stated :-

• We had an wonderful game of Takenoko. Our winner was first to table 5 cards and was able to eke out a win with an awesome draw.

Table 3 went with the much heavier game Le Havre designed by Uwe Rosenberg (he of “Agricola” fame) in 2008, despite being released in consecutive years they are both excellent games with different styles of play and themes. Le Havre is definitely a resource management game, there are nine different resources, all with an upgraded version which are needed to build buildings (clay, wood, brick, Iron and steel), feed people (meat, bread and fish), produce energy (charcoal, coal and coke) and gather victory points (money, leather, hides). On a turn a player must put 2 new resources into play from a predetermined list they then get one action. The one action is to either collect all the resources from one resource pile or to place your playing piece on any building in play and undertake the action permitted by that building.

the board showing piles of resources collecting plenty of fish on the second space from the left

At the beginning of the game the only buildings in play allow you to build other buildings however as the game gets under way more buildings come into play allowing you to gather fish, turn cows into meat, bake bread or smoke gathered fish amongst many other abilities. At the end of each seven actions players must take a feeding action, the number of food required increases slowly throughout the game, failure to feed attracts cash loans which must be paid off by the end of the game or they attract severe victory point penalties. I have only covered the basics here, it is not an overly complex game but there is a requirement to plan ahead, for instance later in the game if you want to build the bank you need to gather Iron then turn it into steel for which you need to turn coal into coke, you will also need bricks made from clay and some wood – this is a minimum of 7 actions and in a 4 player game this is 3 complete rounds of feeding so you need plenty of food before you start. There are some short-cuts and it is planning ahead using the right short cuts that will get you victory whereas mismanagement of food can sink you badly.

Four of the building cards, Red has converted wood into charcoal, when the charcoal kiln was built it cost 1 clay to build.

Our game was quite tense up to the end with two of us struggling to pay off all our debts before the end of the game whilst a third suffered from a miscalculation in food; my previous experience in the game and heavy investment in steel ships saw me the victor but it was a hard won struggle as key positions were taken by the other players and it was never certain I would clear my debts before the games end. It is well deserving of its 15th position of all board games on the geek and if you enjoy a challenge I highly recommend this game and although it is definitely a gamers game with zero luck factor it plays light enough for medium weight gamers to enjoy as well.

Table 2 played Portal: The Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game – sadly I still know nothing about the game but those that played enjoyed it. Comment :-

• Portal went through the grinder on our table. Our first game took a while to set up buy ended quickly. Then we were eager to play it again but I ended up handing the game to the winner accidentally.

They then moved on to Love Letter: Batman which has been covered before, a nicely themed quick deduction game.

Table 1 next played Between Two Cities, another 2015 release with a nice twist on the tile laying mechanism. Each player is helping to construct 2 cities, one jointly with the player to their left and another jointly with the player to their right. Each turn you take 2 tiles from a small stack, all players reveal their two choices simultaneously then the players choose which of their two tiles to add to which city, what you actually place where may change with what your co-builders intend to play and some smart negotiations tend to take place. The game ends after all cities are complete (a 4 x 4 grid) and scoring takes place, different types of tile combinations score differently. Each player then scores points equal to their lowest scoring city, the winner is the highest of these scores.

One of the Cities. Yellow scores 10 points for a row, red scores 9, blue scores 5, brown scores 8 and grey scores 6, 9, or 12 dependent on which city has the most factories.

The game is interesting and the mechanism is sound giving some perplexing decision making dilemmas especially as you want both your cities to score highly (as does your two neighbours) and there is a lot chat about what to play and where, one of a very few games of this level that encourages discussions as opposed to the sitting around the table in silence thinking e.g. Splendor, however the scoring at the end seems a bit of a let-down for all the activity, thought and discussion that went beforehand and I do not know why, perhaps its just me. BQ said :_

• Between Two Cities was unlike anything I've played before, and I don't know if I'll "get" it, but I really, really enjoyed it. Negotiating with one's partners around the table meant that - a bit like with 7 Wonders - there's zero "downtime". Winning seems to be a matter of optimising one's scoring across both cities - one's final score is that of one's *lowest* scoring city - but although I felt I had done that as far as possible, I think there were a couple of things I *didnt'* do in the tile passing part (where you give your pile of tiles to the person on your left/right, depending on the round) that could have made things better. I'll know for next time.

Table 1 then moved onto Traders of Osaka I want to play this again before I comment on it. The version I have played is Traders of Carthage and although I enjoyed it others gave it a luke-warm reception. I do not know if Traders of Osaka is any different rule-wise, it certainly seems more professionally produced but I would like to know whether it is just cosmetics that have made it more acceptable or something else.  

The playing area of Traders of Osaka

BQ commented thus :-

• With Traders of Osaka, I feel I'm now starting to appreciate the strategies. As I've said before, some people on BGG have accused this game of being "chaotic" with 4 or even 3 players. I now disagree even more with that. I think that there's lots you can do to "shape" the move of the other players - and not just the player to your left - by doing things like taking cards of a colour you don't really want to move forward; making the market more attractive to take; reserving a particular card; taking the market even with merchandise you don't want or need to force a bunch of "junk" cards to come down from the farm, etc.

The last game of the evening was BANG! The Dice Game, we have played this several times at the club and are now well versed with the rules and the player roles. As one of the Outlaws I had a lot of enjoyment spreading doubt as to whom the Deputy was, I do not think the sheriff was fooled but the doubt was always hovering in the background, in the meantime the Renegade put a target on her back with a rules question and got rewarded with plenty of gunfire from all directions. This left a self confessed outlaw to try and deduce his partner in crime (which he was successful at), the Deputy then collapsed from several rounds of arrow fire and bullets despite quaffing healing beer, this allowed me to concentrate on the Sheriff whom I managed to put 5 bullets into in the very next turn thus ending the tyranny of his regime in our small town.

The Outlaw that gunned down the Sheriff

Samara, Deep Sea Adventure and Game of Thrones

The mystery photo this week is an old one from my collection and shows some of the landscape pieces used.

The mystery photo last time was Thunderbirds  from the Matt Leacock game released last month. An excellent co-operation game I cannot wait for the expansions due out at Christmas.

Apologies but this will be a more succinct report than usual as I am running out of time due to a full (and fun) weekend. The warm-up game was Rhino Hero which has been previously described however we must be getting better because the towers are getting higher as the photo shows.

Table 1 played Compounded  a game about chemical compounds, the idea is to collect compound cards (victory points) by placing elements on them, although described as a trading game I think of it more as a resource management game.

Some of the compounds in play

A player board

Each round you draw element tokens from a bag which you may trade with others, in my experience (half a dozen games) very little trading goes on and it is more who makes the best from the elements (resources) they obtain. It is a lovely game, well balanced and I feel a little under-rated on the geek. A comment given by one of the players indicates the depth it may have :-

• I need to play Compounded again. I didn't feel like I explored it enough.

My table played Samara one of my Essen purchases by Corne van Moorsel one of my favourite self-publishers from Holland under the Cwali label, probably best known for Powerboats. The idea of the game is to accumulate victory points by taking building tiles from a board, this is done by moving workers singly or as a group to space on a moving conveyer belt, you can then take anything from that column, the purchase price (in people-power) being the row the tile comes from.

The time conveyer

The conveyer belt is a time mechanism which moves so that the pieces at the back become the present, you can obtain more workers by moving a female piece to the end of the time board which at worst is 11 months after conveyer movement and at best 6 months when the conveyer is about to move; there are a few specialist buildings which add the odd twist as well.

A sample of the buildings in Samara

The base game plays nicely but lacks a little something however the first expansion which provides game end goals and more specialist buildings makes for a much more interesting game. I enjoyed playing it and hope to replay it at the club soon. One player commented :-

• Was surprised by how much I enjoyed Samara despite Kevin's regular birthings...a nice light game where the moves can be quite satisfying once you get your head around the shifting board.

Table 3 played BANG! The Dice Game, they played it four player and although it worked I do feel this game plays best with 6 or more players.

My table moved on to Nations: The Dice Game which again was well received and is certainly in my top 20 games from 2014, I have described its play in previous Blogs. Seen by some as a dice collecting game it is only one of the strategies that you can go for, I think a lot depends on what tiles are drawn for each round and even 4 player where the choice is maximised you have to be flexible to what is available and if you spend your turn collecting dice tiles there will be nothing left to buy with all your new dice. The picture below shows the score at the games end, mine is the yellow dobber. Another commented :-

• Nations dice game was better than my last attempt, but it still feels a bit like a game where if you fail to pick up extra dice in earlier rounds due to turn order, it's very difficult to really challenge for the win. Still fun though, and I find it hard to predict the winner.

 I was yellow before final scoring I was way behind on just 2 points.

Table 3 moved on to A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition), I know nothing about this game but I have seen the TV series. Those playing the game were quite engrossed and it seems a quite in depth game however with a playing time of several hours it was destined never to finish at the club, all seemed to enjoy it even though it was not completed.

A Game of Thrones Game - board

Table 1 had moved on to Deep Sea Adventure, this is currently on my Essen “to buy” list but I have not found it available anywhere, even worse I still have not played it. Everyone seemed to enjoy it and the prospect of making me play, something about having to hold my breath which everyone felt would be good for me. Others commented :-

• Game of the night for me was Deep Sea Adventure. "Push-your-luck" + tiny box + modular/artistic tile/board = fun and interesting night.

There was a bit of amalgamating at this point to play A Fake Artist Goes to New York this is more a party game than a board game and one I highly recommend, probably best with 6 or more players the game will take up to 10 players. One player from a broad subject chooses an item then writes the item on separate pieces of “dry wipe” board, however on one piece he just writes an “X”, these are then handed to different players then in turn a blank sheet passes along the player and each player puts 1 line onto the sheet in their coloured pen.

Snowman (ish)

This is NOT an Anteater

Jointly the players are all trying to draw the same picture, the player with the “X2 though is working in the dark and tries to guess what they are jointly drawing. After the sheet has done 2 laps everyone tries to guess who they think is the “Fake Artist”. It was very enjoyable and a game that will be making an appearance at family gatherings at Christmas. Comment given :-

• May have to pick up A Fake Artist has a bit of fun for Christmas gatherings, as I think the drawing element would only be improved by several more drinks than I can have on a Wednesday night....

As Halloween was near I had brought Nacht der Magier this is a play in the dark game and has luminous pieces. The board is a raised platform with a glowing ring in the middle, this is covered by a large cardboard disc upon which a glowing fire is placed, around this piece are placed some cauldrons each with a glowing emblem then around these a large number of wooden discs and trees are placed so that the rest of the board is filled.

Lights on, lightening has won

The lights are turned off and each player in turn moves their playing piece with a glowing symbol against the wooden discs, play is from the edge of the board and the aim is to get one of your cauldrons into the ring, your turn ends when you hear a piece fall from the platform.

Lights on and the moon symbol has won