Artificium, Antarctica, Cinque Terre and Scoville

Back into my archives for this one and a cracking game it is, best with 6 but still good with 3-5 players.

The last quiz picture was of Grab-a-nana which has many other names and could even fall into the traditional category in its “spoons” format. This is a great party/group game and I remember it fondly from my convention days where it became so boisterous that we had to come up with house rules to limit the injuries and thus was born “full-contact grab-a-nana” and despite the bruises and scratches suffered it was played at several conventions for a number of years with great humour.

The kick-off game this week was Rhino Hero, although it says 2-5 players on the box we had no difficulty playing with six. It is a simple tower building game where the idea is to be the first to run out of “floor cards” and to avoid knocking the tower over. As we played we discussed the possibilities of creating a larger version with ideas starting at thicker card stock to wood and finally to metal with players playing the part of the rhino and I think a fork lift truck came into the conversation somewhere as well. You could tell it was to be a serious evening of gaming.

Super Rhino - the anti-gravity game.

When we split Table 1 commenced with Artificium, BQ has kindly given the following on the game which I know nothing about.

BQ > Artificium is one of the oddest and least appropriate names for a game I've come across - I mean, it doesn't exactly make you think of being a lord in a high-fantasy medieval setting, does it? But that's what the game's about. To be fair, it wears its theme lightly - it could've been about building robots, or mining jewels, or even making jam, really, because it's essentially a game of harvesting resources and improving them to increase their value. Each player starts with a hand of five cards; a small board showing the various resources, starting from simple ones at the bottom (wheat, wood), and getting more refined further up (charcoal, metal, swords); and five resource tokens which count as coins - the same resource tokens, when placed in the right spots on the board, count as actual goods. A fresh of set six cards are placed as a "Market" display in front of all players at the start of each turn, and there's then a round where each player in turn can exchange one card from their hand with one in the display. The first such swap is free, but each subsequent swap costs two coins. You can also, as your first swap and once per turn only, ditch all your cards for five new ones. Once everyone's swapped all the cards they can or want to, it's on to card play. Players simultaneously place a card from their hand face down, and then reveal them. Each card has an action or a building - actions let you do stuff like steal resources or cards from others, or take back cards you already played; buildings either generate resources or improve a resource you already have - a wood into a charcoal, say.

Players Resource Board

Buildings also, crucially, generate victory points as you play them. There's a scoring board on which the points are tracked, and on some of its spaces additional resources are shown: reach or pass those spots, and you get the resource indicated - very useful. The top two "resources", Wizards and Knights, produced by the Wizard's Tower and Castle building cards respectively, don't give a new resource, but an effect: lots of points plus extra cards (Wizard) and knocking an opponent back four points (Knight).

Score Track

Once all players have played the cards they can or want to, the round is over, all the played cards are discarded (you're not building a city here, you're using what's already *in* your city), and hands are replenished to five. Players do all this stuff for a scanty four rounds (oh, and you can buy/sell resources for coins at various points too), and then it's all over. You then sell all your remaining resources for coins, convert coins to VPs at a 4:1 ratio, and the winner celebrates

A sample of cards played during a round

I really like this game - it's about a Splendor level of rule complexity, but there's a lot of interesting stuff going on. You really must strive to create a chain of cards that means you can play out all of your hand during the card-laying around, but getting there means some careful planning, and other players can try to block you if they get a hint of what you're doing. You also have to be careful not to gift someone the card they want during the exchanges, if you can avoid it. It all flows very nicely, and there's virtually zero waiting for your turn. At 15 quid on Amazon, I reckon it's a bargain.

Table 2 played Scoville, the background is that you are chilli farmers gathering different types of chillis to trade in for achievement cards which give victory points, the player that has the most victory points at the end of the game wins.

The field after round 3 planting

The game play is quite straightforward in that before each round players bid for player order, then in player order each plants a single chilli to the main board (once planted they remain throughout the rest of the game) then in reverse order each player gathers produce and finally in player order again they can claim achievements.

Here is a re-enactment of the round 2 auction, immediately after some serious round 1 over-bidding.

There are 10 different types of chilli in 4 levels, the basic chillis are red, yellow and blue, next level are green, orange, purple and brown, then there are black and white and finally the top chilli is a clear sparkling one. When you go farming you walk from 1-3 steps between fields and the combination of what is either side of your farmer dictates what chillis you get en route so each turn you can pick up to 3 extra chillis. All the combinations are laid out on a crib card and are easily learnt, in essence each to breed the next level chilli you need 2 of one rank lower.

Some victory point cards and a couple of auction cards

Overall it is a lovely mid-weight game with plenty of pre-planning and opportunities to undermine your opponents. I do have two moans though the first is that in the clubs lighting I had difficulty differentiating some of the beans colours but brighter lights could solve that as would a more distinct red, the other is that the main board is a jig-board, these warp so easily and made the first part of the game a pain in the backside as bits kept falling over near the middle where the four corners (and most warpage) were.

 J > Scoville is a game about cross breeding peppers. The game may look intimidating at first as there are quite a number of peppers of various colours; some colours look more similar than others. Each player also gets a double-sided guide that has a breeding chart on one side and an "turn-action-end condition" summary on the other. Then there's the 4 piece puzzle Jigsaw board that is a little warped. Players were liberally volunteering redesign ideas as we were setting up which I thought was fair.
However, it wasn't until you started playing the game (about after 2 rounds for me) that the joy of the game play arises. Who knew how much fun it would be to breed/harvest/sell hot peppers? The theme is applied well to the game. I do have to admit that I couldn't plan my planting and harvesting very well. I feel the game opened up for points around the middle. Overall, even though I came it last I would love to play it again.
 

BQ again assists with Antarctica  played on Table 1, the general feedback I got on the night was positive enough to add this game to my wants list.

BQ > On the evidence of my first play, Antarctica falls into that ever-widening category "Games I like a lot, but am rather bad at." In a strange near-future where Antarctica is being exploited to keep the world going, you move your ships around the eight octants of the board, triggered by the (counter-clockwise) movement of the Sun (a yellow wooden hemisphere smile emoticon ). As the sun enters an area, the player whose ship is in the first of three slots in that area moves their ship to *another* area, and takes an action there: construct a building (research base, scientist camp, resource building or super-whizzy hi-tech thingamabob); build a ship; recruit scientists (workers); or advance on one of several "research tracks" in the centre of the board. Which buildings you can build depend on which are currently uppermost on three small decks of building cards, and each card also shows at least one other building you must already have access to (via the locations of your ships) before you can construct. Some special building cards also give points at the end of the game.

Antarctica Board mid-game

You also need at least one scientist to build, and they are permanently placed, together with a token for the building concerned, in the octant your ship is visiting, so you'll need to keep recruiting them. How many scientists you can recruit is based on the number of your scientists already in the octant you move your ship to, and also the number of ships you have there - the same calculation is used to determine how many spaces you move forward on the Research Tracks if you take *that* action. Building a ship gives all players except you a bonus card with various actions - but you do get another ship, and thus an additional opportunity for a turn, something that I somehow didn't grasp the value of until it was far too late...

Building cards

The scoring at the end is interesting - for the various scoring categories (most scientists in an area, furthest forward on the Research Tracks, most of the special "scoring" building cards, and one other) the person gets a sum of points based on how well they've done but also on the positions/contributions of other players, and the next ranked player gets points based on the first player only and so on. For example, the person with the most scientists in an area gets points equal to the total of buildings and scientists (of all players) in that area plus one. The second player receives 1 point per scientist of the first player, the third 1 point per scientist of the second player, and so on. It makes it tricky to calculate one's relative position during the game, which I like, as it tends to reduce analysis paralysis a bit - not that MABers are prone to AP, I have to say smile emoticon . I consistently failed to put my ships in the right places to get several turns on the trot, and coupled with my lack of foresight over shipbuilding, was deservedly annihilated by the first and second players, who, while nearly lapping me on the scoring track, were only 3 points from each other. Despite that, I enjoyed it very much...lots to do, again a game with little downtime, and great fun.

The next game on Table 2 was Cinque Terre which is a fairly simplistic pick-up and deliver game but with some interesting twists, the board has only 9 spaces of which 3 are farms, each farm produces either 2 or 3 different food items of which there are limited quantities, the other 6 spaces are coastal towns which each have 3 or 4 price dice rolled for them, the dice are of different colours to match the goods colours. There are 2 decks of cards one showing demands from various towns and another with each card showing one of the eight different products. 

On a turn a player takes 3 actions which are to move up to 4 spaces (always clockwise) pick-up goods (max 4 at a farm for which they must pay matching goods cards) or deliver goods at a town they are at.  Goods delivered go to a players board against the town they delivered to for which they get points equal to the dice value for that good in addition when you match cubes on your board to that shown on a demand card you can take the card for additional victory points.

The pink players Took Took board showing what goods have been delivered to which towns

Two trucks at a farm with demand dice pictured behind

There are two main ways to victory collecting demand cards or selling goods at high prices, overall though the main skill in the game is economic use of actions, to this end you need to be specific with your goals and then do everything to reach them as quickly as possible, there is a little luck in the card draw for bonuses and for collecting goods but this can be mitigated by good long term planning. This is a lovely game and one that I have added to my wish list.

J > Cinque Terre (Five Villages) was sold to the table as a "Ticket to Ride" type game. The mechanics are very similar and easily accessible. Wooden trucks go around a map where they can harvest produce from 3 farms and sell them to the five villages. The components are the best part; the truck is large enough to carry the limit of 4 squares on it's flat bed back.

The last game of the evening and played on Table 2 was Cockroach Poker, definitely a multi-player game and a lot of fun with bluff and falsehoods a plenty. I am not sure what the skill is in the game but varying your calls and mixing truth with lies is essential to survive, there is also an element of kicking someone when they are down but in a fun way and being victimised is part of the game.

Three of the creatures in Cockroach Poker

J > I've only played this game once before and I do remember it being fun. Last night's game was a lot of fun. I believe this game would do well with 4+ players, I'll put this in the same category as Hanabi and Skull & Roses.

The Gallerist

The quiz picture this time is of one of my convention favourites, this is just a small part of the contents of the box. “Full contact” rules are available from me on request.

The last quiz picture was Le Havre, the clues were indeed in the picture, the name of the ship MS Rosenberg and a guy carrying a crate labelled Agricola were a gift to a follower of Uwe Rosenbergs designs.

The club had a break this week due to building work at the Style & Winch however there was one “pop-up” event which I was fortunate enough to attend and a big thanks to our host and hostess, the first game on the table was Splendor a nice card collecting game which we have covered before, there are different avenues to victory all of which were played out at our table and led to an interesting ending with the victor a clear winner ahead of the rest of the us who all tied on 13 points.

A players collection of cards in Splendor with 4 points of the 15 needed.

The game of the evening was The Gallerist, in the rules it says 30 minutes per player but after our game I would say this is a slight underestimate our introductory game with four players took about four hours and although I can see this time reducing with familiarity I would be impressed to see it reduced to 2 hours, I think even with another half a dozen games under our belts it is unlikely to get under 40 minutes per player, despite the playing time though it is a good game and there is always something to think about. As the title suggests each player runs a gallery with a view to gaining the most cash by the end of the game.

Overhead shot of the main board, the 4 main pawn positions and the associated actions are North South East and west of the central plaza, 2 of these spaces are occupied by Red (S) and Yellow (W).

On a turn you place your one and only player pawn in one of four spots on the board, each spot has two actions of which you must choose one. The actions (in short) are :- Buy a painting, Discover an artist, Recruit some assistants, Boost the reputation of an artist, Take a contract card, Sell a painting Attend an auction and Obtain overseas investment. After completing your pawn action you may take a secondary action which is either to place an assistant on a contract card in your possession or to use entrance tickets. If in moving your pawn you dislodge the pawn or assistant of another player they may take an extra action which may be a secondary action or for a cost of five reputation points they may take another major action at the spot they were displaced from, after which their piece is returned to them.

My gallery showing three paintings, I also have 3 assistants who are all stuck on contract cards and will remain there until I fulfil the contract

There are three currencies in the game and running short of any one of them will cause problems and definitely reduces a players flexibility. The first is reputation, a high reputation brings extra cash (victory points) at the end of the game end and is generated by pink meeples; cash is the second currency obtained from selling paintings or generated by brown meeples; the third is tickets which allows you to move meeples into your gallery. These currencies are used throughout the game for various benefits and are always in short supply. The auction and overseas investment actions gain you game-end bonus tokens, you also get a game end bonus token at the beginning of the game along with two game-end bonus cards which will give you bonuses for selling specific paintings and displaying certain paintings in your gallery. For your first game these bonuses do not seem large (5, 10 and 15 coins) but after playing you realise the game is all about collecting lots of small bonuses from as many different sources as possible each of which average out at about 10 coins each.

The Blue players Gallery showing their visitors and those awaiting entry in the lobby area - the lobby is linked to the central plaza, it takes a relevant coloured ticket to move a visitor between one of these spaces and the next.

So how did it play? The mechanics worked very well and everything linked up, however from my one play I could not find any strategy, it is very “bitty” in its play as every turn you will get a little bit of this or a little bit of that towards a small goal, for instance to move meeples into your gallery you need tickets but it takes two tickets of the relevant colour to get a meeple from the centre (where they spawn) into your gallery however you only ever get 1 ticket of any particular colour at a time so 2 turns (if you are lucky) is the minimum build up for the tickets by which time the meeples you were after have gone. Each of the in-game mechanisms seem to operate in this manner and over-riding your play is the need to have a small float of all three currencies and some spare assistants. For me it felt that I was not aiming to some game end goal (even with the game-end bonus cards) and that the majority of my turns were “what can I get?” then “what can I do with it?” and even when I knew what I wanted on the next turn something occurred to change the plan. So the game was more about getting bits and finding something to do with them for me I like to have a bit more control in a game.

The auction House and Overseas Investment section of the main board

The Gallerist is an interesting game and I would rate its complexity as similar to that of Antiquity, I would like to give it another couple of plays before making any final decisions about it, the first game was more about experiencing the mechanics and for the first half hour of play I was just doing the different actions to see what the outcome was and what it affected without any aim in mind. It may well be that my lack of knowledge of all the game end tokens (there is a lot of iconography) and an incomplete understanding of the interconnectivity of the basic mechanisms is letting me down in spotting long term plans which I hope will become clear with more plays, it is complicated but not overly so and if you like your games with depth this is definitely one to try. Finally a word from another player :-

S > I appreciated the opportunity to play the Gallerist and can't say how often that will happen again. It's long especially the rules explanation, it's a hive of interaction and coded pictographic bonus slots. I like it though. All the actions fit the theme well, there's not masses of downtime because of the kicked out action and there's reputation as a third currency if you want to sacrifice it to do things. I think there's space for having a variety of routes to a win but only after a couple of plays and that's the hurdle; getting a few people willing to play a fairly mammoth game a couple of times before they can try and be strategic.

Bruxelles 1893, Dogs of War and Steam Time

This quiz picture speaks for itself but can you name the game?

Last time the picture was of a new purchase for me, City of Iron by Ryan Laukat a designer whose games greatly appeal to me, “Above and below” and “8 Minute Empire” being two other examples. “I” correctly named it as the second edition.

This week we did not have a warm up but went straight into the main games, Table 1 commenced with Dogs of War. From what little I understand of this game the players invest in the 6 “houses” that are available and aid them in what is best described as matches of Tug-of-War (each round there are 3 matches between the houses). A players end score is based on their investment in the houses and how they fared together with some in game scoring, BQ who played it explains a bit more :-

Dogs of War showing two of the three battle tracks and the interesting playing pieces

A closer look at one of the battle tracks

BQ > Dogs of War: As a mercenary faction, one allocates soldiers and captains to three simultaneous battles between six great houses, in each of four rounds, in most cases gaining instant rewards as the captain is placed. When all players have committed all the military might they can (or want to), each battle is resolved, and participants in each of the three winning collective armies usually gain victory points. The mercenary with the most captains in each battle also gets a bonus. End game bonuses can also be acquired by supporting the house(s) that do best over the course of the game. I messed up my first turn royally by recruiting insufficient soldiers, but scrabbled my way back into the fight by the end of the game. And a fight it truly is - betrayal, misdirection, cowardice, crushing defeats and horrible reversals of fortune. The huge busts representing one's captains are pretty, but somewhat unwieldy and fiddly. So: overproduced, yes; at times frustrating, yes; but fun...? For me, absolutely yes!
 

My table went with Bruxelles 1893, this is quite a complex game with a lot of rules (which are far too many for me to cover here) and it took me a while to explain them all and I thank everyone for their patience with me, once the iconography is understood and the first round played the game mechanics do start to slot into place and you appreciate how everything meshes together. The idea is to gather the most victory points through the many sources which are available, the main game mechanic is worker placement which allows you to collect people cards, paintings, sell paintings, collect building resources or build buildings, each of which is a mini-game within the larger game framework where cash, workers and building resources all lay limitations on what you can do, for instance the people cards allow you to obtain in-game bonuses, however each people card you keep has a fee which must be paid at the end of the game, failure to do so results in a loss of 5 points for each.

Mid-game. This part of the board showing one of the worker placement areas with some buildings erected and at the bottom of the screen bonus cards for column control. The "L" shape indicates the area of the board currently in play.

 It is the mix of these mini-structures within the game which gives it its depth and charm however as often happens with some of the games I bring to the club the dynamics change dependent on the number of players, playing 2 player control of people cards is quite important however 5 player this proved not to be the case and in fact it was hard to say which mini-game had the upper hand and I believe this games sweet spot is 4 players. Congratulations to “S” who won convincingly outdistancing the rest of players who were all within a few points of one another.

Some of the "people" cards available (bottom of picky). The dial mid picture indicates which building materials are currently required to build with whilst the grid top left shows the current selling price of paintings.

My play area showing workers available, cash, 2 people cards, 3 paintings, and my building card showing I have built 3 buildings, the next build will require 3 bricks and the built ones are worth 3 Victory points each.

J > The 5 player game of Bruxelles was a fun learning/intro game. The game is deep enough that it takes a while to play with the full player count. I believe this might be better played at 4 or even 3. It helped that I watched Rahdo's runthrough on YouTube before the meet. I don't think it gave me an advantage, however, as I only finished third. I did stick to one majority area contol points and watched how it unfolded. In hindsight, I should have been more aggressive at blocking. I'll save for future plays. I think the theme and art is very well done. I particularly enjoyed the movable grid mechanic and the lose a worker only if you've got majority mechanic. I would love to play this again before it gets replaced in finite brain or I can just go through my youtube viewing history.

S > I really enjoyed Bruxelles. It's pretty complicated for a first playthrough because of all the mechanisms for points scoring. I think the error I made was over committing to a single means of scoring points. Good fun though, I'd be interested in trying again.

In the meantime a couple of later arrivals commenced a 2 player game on Table 3, of Sushi Go!. This game is quick, fun and versatile, it currently leads the table of most played games at the club, a simple card game with some great graphics.

Their next game was Love Letter: Batman, this simple bluff and deduction game is almost as popular as Sushi Go! at the club sitting in 5th position of most played games.

Table 1 went on to play Steam Time, I know nothing about this game so I am handing over to BQ here :-

Player board in Steam Time

BQ > Steam Time: Adventurers with time-travelling airships stuffed full with strange machines powered by preternatural crystals, we boldly dived into the stream of time and visited ancient monuments in their prime, met historical personages and explored civilizations before they were archaeology. Or, put another way, we played an entertaining worker placement game, where the "workers" were airships, and placing them on various space on a number of randomly-ordered boards representing the ancient monuments allows various actions to be taken: acquiring secret endgame scoring cards; gaining instant bonuses that may also be usable by other players; mining crystals to power our various machines; upgrading our airships to provide regular income of money/crystals/victory points; grabbing cash from the bank; and gaining exclusive bonuses, of variable value depending on how many crystals are powering a specific machine in one's airship. We each seemed to pursue slightly different paths to getting points, some more successful than others...all in all, I rather liked it.

Main board in steam Time

Table 2 went on to play lightening Port Royal with 5 players, the game did crack along at a fast pace and we finished it in under 20 minutes, not bad considering the last time it was played 5 player at the club I believe it went on for what I believe was a couple of hours.

One of the players hands in Port Royal

J > Speed Port Royal. There is an elegance to a game played by decent aficionados of the analog art whose familiarity with the game allows for a clean and quick gameplay. It's a testament to the robustness of game design. I personally took away a rule clarification that I will apply to my home games.

The last game on Table 2 was Skull, we have played this at the club before however to slightly different rules, in previous games the caller has had a choice of which discs in others stacks to flip, however this time you had to flip other players discs from top to bottom but like the other version you are not compelled to flip all of another’s discs just as many as you want from each stack so long as it is top to bottom. This rule had the effect of players committing more discs to their stack and changed the emphasis of the game from probabilities to deduction. I cannot say that there is more skill playing this way but the general feeling was it played better, I would be happy playing either way but what I can say is that playing this way screwed with my head and I found myself laughing throughout the game as I tried to come to terms with players bids which always appeared to be contrary to what I expected, however I did manage to notch up a win despite my brain arguing with me throughout.

J > Skull. We played 2 games of this and with the clarified rules of stacking the mats, I feel, the game plays better and faster.

Player Discs in Skull

Rome : Rise to Power, Cornwall and Metro

The quiz photo this time is of one of my most recent purchases, the artwork is the big clue here.

The last quiz photo was of Intrigue an interesting abstract strategy game where you choose a wheel and keep moving it until one of your marbles falls, the winner is the first to get all their marbles home, despite its appearance this is not a game of luck or dexterity but of looking ahead and planning.

The first eight at the club started off with Incan Gold, I have covered this game several times before and it is interesting how different numbers of players affect the dynamics of the game structure, it seemed to me that with 8 of us chasing the treasure players were dropping out quite quickly to secure their small gains whilst with fewer players the rewards tend to be larger and therefore the incentive to remain and take bigger chances is greater. I may have this wrong, however I am correct about this being a great warm-up game.

Cards in Incan Gold - beware the Mummy.

I missed the first game on Table 1 which was Vom Kap bis Kairo a card game from Gunter Burkhardt who has brought us such games as Seeland, Maori, Copper Kettle and Darjeeling. In this game players bid for terrain and track cards to build a railway. BQ reports :-

BQ > Vom Kap Bis Kairo - When this came out (way back in 2001), it was all the rage in the group I used to play games with at the time. I never played it then, but as I was recently looking for portable games that play with two, I thought I'd give it a go - even though it's a train game :P. In the auction phase, you auction terrain areas with money (pounds), then in the track building phase, you build track across the terrain (for which you receive some money back), paying for that track with track icons shown on terrain you already own, and track icons on cards all the players turn over one by one. I enjoyed it - it was light, and seemed primarily an auction game, with some very minor decisions during track building...but all of us at the table felt like we had too much money and felt confused by that: you start with 100 pounds, and we were initially bidding less than five each per auction. When I got home, I re-read the rules, and realised that - although I *had* explained the rule concerned - none of us (including me) had been using the ability to pay 10 pounds in place of a track icon. That would indeed have added another element - one could move ahead much more quickly than one's opponents, if one were to use up one's money for that purpose, and - given that money available for bids would then likely become tighter - it would make the coins from the track building more important, and thus add to the decision factors during the auction itself. Since the game's pretty short, I'll bring it again very soon, and underline that rule to the players, so we can see if I'm right about it making a difference.

The first game on my table was a recently delivered kickstarter game, Rome: Rise to Power, it took a while to go through the rules especially as there seem to be a number of different mechanics (dice rolling, worker placement, set collecting, deck building) within the game but once you know them things tick along quite smoothly, it only lasts 5 rounds and the aim is to collect victory points however these are only awarded at the end of rounds 3 and 5 so you have to be quite targeted with your play to ensure you score well. A round is split into different phases the first phase is setting up the game for the round this consists of laying out some Province, Senator and Arena cards, the next phase is to roll 4 dice and in player order assign one die at a time to either the Province, Senator or Arena track, however the rules on dice placement create some interesting situations, first off if a die placed is of a lower value than another players die placed on the same track then the dice are re-arranged so that they are in numerical order, any die you add to where you have a die must be of a lower value than that already placed and sits with your other die however it is your first placed die that dictates player order (sounds odd and took me a few turns to get it straight in my head.

The province track

Each track is then taken in turn with the lower positioned dice having first dibs of the cards on offer, from the province track you collect provinces, you need 5 die-pips for each province you want to take at the beginning of the game, they increase in value/cost to 9 at the end of the game. Taking a province gives one of 3 commodities recorded on a commodity track, you get to place an owner marker on a map where the provinces are grouped in areas in 2’s and 3’s and the province card will also show one of 3 senator icons, the senators when claimed with a die of any value provide in-game bonuses but only when you match them with the relevant icon on a province card in your possession, lastly the arena cards bought again with die pips depict various Beasts, Romans and Barbarians for which you get points for creating specific sets during scoring rounds.

The province board

Points come from controlling areas on the map board, Senator special abilities, production of goods and from arena sets, however the points gained in each category are not a lot so doing well in as many categories as possible is what is important. Overall the game is quite nice, players are completely involved in what is going, there is very little down time and although the die placement rules are a little confusing they will become second nature, I have since played it 2-player and although it worked it did lack the interaction in the 3-player game at the club and I feel it may be at its best 4-player. lastly for those who become familiar with the game there are some intrigue cards which can be added, they are Senator cards with abilities which can directly affect other players.

Table 3 played Tongiaki this was last played at the club 18 months ago so it was nice that it got another airing.

Tongiaki (library picture)

They followed this with the route laying game Metro, in which you lay tiles on a board with the aim of creating as long a route as possible for your trams, each tile has 4 paths on it as soon as a route is complete for a tram it scores a point for each piece of track it runs over so with loops may score the same tile several times over and this is doubled if you feed the tram into a central shed as opposed to off the board. All in all this is quite a fairly neat route-laying game and quite quick.

Metro part way through the game

Table 1 in the meantime was playing Jenseits von Theben, I know nothing of this game, BQ reports :-

BQ >  I had forgotten how much I liked Jenseits Van Theben (Beyond Thebes, in its English translation). There's something exciting and thematic about pulling the dig tokens from the bags representing the various archeological sites...will I get a high-scoring artifact? Will I get some more knowledge to help me in other digs? Or will I just get worthless debris? Well, in the case of "I" and myself, the answer was mostly the latter :( . "W", however, seemed to have the magic touch, and plucked artifact after artifact out of the bag, even when the sites were becoming played out. Valuable artifacts are not the only way to score, though: exhibitions and collecting congresses are alternate strategies (though you do still need *some* artifacts for the former) so we were able to pull back a bit of ground, but not enough to counter W's impressive lead.

Jenseits von Theben from above

Two tables then came together to give Secret Hitler a bash, the game was explained in my 8th February post, our game this time was a little odd, it did not help that I gave myself away as a facist before we even started in that when I was giving the introduction talk with all our eyes closed and I was telling the facists to look for Hitler I as a facist turned my head to look for Hitler too and a couple of players noticed my voice changing as I turned my head. This error was followed by my colleague facist when President choosing me as Chancellor and I passed a second facist policy and we were more or less “outed” from that point onwards.

What is in the envelope - a player card, a yes vote and a no vote and finally a faction card

What had not helped matters was that the first President of the game just happened to be Hitler and had also passed a facist policy. However our play caused confusion in the ranks of the liberals and not only did they choose the Hitler player as Chancellor the choice got passed and against all odds the facists won. Despite my bad play and fairly quick win it was a good fun game. I highly recommend everyone giving this game a go it is a lot of fun and is at its best with 6 or more players.

I joined Table 1 and played Cornwall, I last played this last year (see post of 23/11/15), where I felt that options were a little restricted, I again felt limited in the choices left for me and although I was prepared for them there was still little I could do. This is a tile laying game where you match an edge and place a meeple to gain points dependent on the size of the area when it is scored, flexibility in play comes from coins gained by matching more than one terrain type when you lay your tile, however if you do not draw the right tile every now and again to give you a little fillip it can be a quite frustrating game especially if others are reaping the benefits, so although I am happy to play this game it will never reach my “to buy” list.

Cornwall part way through the game

BQ > I liked Cornwall more than the last couple of times we played. I think its strategy is not as readily accessible as some other tile-laying games like Carcassonne, and sometimes it can feel like one is railroaded into doing something against one's interests by the nature of the tile one had picked up. I'm coming to the belief that this isn't really so, as I think such issues can be mitigated by careful placement of one's workers, but I need to play some more to be sure...

Table 2 played Hex Hex, I have not played this game and know nothing about it, from an outsiders point of view playing on another table it seemed to be a game about discussing what effects the latest card that was revealed had on the current play position. There were 6 playing and they seemed to enjoy it.

Some of the cards in Hex Hex

The last game of the evening was King of Tokyo, a very colourful die rolling game where you play a monster terrorizing Tokyo. On your turn you roll some dice which may give you healing, attack strength, energy tokens or victory points. To gain the victory points you need at least three dice showing the same face, the energy points are used to buy cards which may give victory points or in-game powers. The attacking in this game can be brutal and your demise can happen rapidly, it is a knock-out game and an early exit can lead to a fair amount of sitting around and in fact that is what happened in our game, the first two were eliminated very quickly whilst the last three hung in there for what seemed ages. Despite (for me) the drawback of it being a knock-out game it is a lot of fun and there is plenty of player interaction making it an excellent game.

A monster in Tokyo looming over one of the K.O.'d pieces, if you survive in Tokyo for a whole round you get 2 VP's.

Rheinlander, Pax Pamir and Steam Works

The quiz photo this time is of a crackingly good abstract game I picked up in a charity shop last week, can you put a name to it?

Last weeks quiz photo was correctly guessed by “G” as Speed Circuit, this race game really set the standards for all following grand prix style games and had quite a big fan base in the 1980’s where many games were played by post and in my guesstimation was probably the third most popular multiplayer postal game of the 1980’s (pre-internet days), Diplomacy and Railway Rivals being the other two.

The first game on Table 1 was Hive, a 2 player strategy game that can be quite quick, each player has a team of various bugs with the goal to be to completely surround your opponents Queen Bee with either/both players pieces. The Queen Bee must be placed within the first 4 turns after that a player can either place a new piece adjacent to only their own pieces or move a piece of theirs which is already in play. The different pieces and their movement peculiarities make this an interesting tactical game.

J > Hive is a good game. Simple concept. Quality Bakelite pieces. Lots of replay value. I've played this on Board Game Arena but have never won it. Tonight was my first time playing with a physical copy. I have to say that this has moved up on my wishlist.

The first game on Table 2 was Fearsome Floors, in this game the players try to get their team of pieces from one corner of the board to the diagonally opposite corner, pieces move up to the number on their face and after everyone has moved all their pieces a monster moves across the board and devours anyone it lands on, players can avoid being eaten by hiding behind pillars and teleports.

The monster gets among the player pieces near the start space

The Monster

It is a fun game which can lead to some headaches when trying to calculate where the monster will move on its turn as it can move anywhere between 5 and 20 spaces and behind a pillar can end up being in front of a pillar.

Table 1 played a couple of quick games, the first was Stoplights a simple card game which I know nothing about.

 BQ > Stoplights was an easy to learn, enjoyable little filler game. As Jeric alluded to, we didn't really get too far into it before I annihilated my opponents with a strategic master-stroke. Or was handed the win by a momentary lapse in concentration. One of the two...

J > I've only played Stoplights as a 2 player before tonight. Our game was too quick to really explore its complexities. The object of the game is to be the first player to make a row or diagonal of 5 lights of your colour. The game can play very quickly and easily replayable.
 

The second was Love Letter: Batman which I have covered a couple of times before.

J > We also played Batman: Love Letter as a 4-player. I discovered that I had been playing a house rule all along by turning over the first card.

The first main game on Table 1 was Discoveries a simplified version of Lewis and Clark played with dice. On a turn a player can place all their dice with showing the same face, these dice are generally used to set up movement, collect native cards or take a journey along a card in their possession, once a card has been travelled it goes into the players score pile, the Indian cards make travelling easier and aid the player with other dice options.

The white players dice (left), natives (right) and current travel card (top)

Some helpful native cards

BQ > Discoveries is a very nice, "dice management" game, and is indeed beautiful to look at. I also find it very thematic: you explore, and then write it up in your Journal...it just *feels* right. Turns are suprisingly quick, and I always feel like I've something interesting to do. I forgot a couple of actions available to me that might have seen me do better - I should've use the swap-out to replace a lower point value exploration card with a exploration flora/fauna card that would have improved my final score <sigh>. I'll be bringing it again soon, I think.

J > Discoveries was an excellent mid weight game. The artwork was excellent. I found the dice to be really light as if they were made of balsa wood. The gameplay is not too complex. I like the "grab other people's dice from the common pool" mechanic. I would love to play this again.

Pax Pamir player board

Table 3 played Pax Pamir a game I am quite interested in playing however I have been told that the play can be quite chaotic something I am not always comfortable with. I know little about the game so forgive me if I have anything incorrect here, the players are Afghan tribal leaders and are trying to gain influence with the various powers (Russian, British and Afghan) and whoever has the most influence in the relevant “power” when it gains rule, wins the game, part of the mechanism of the game is buying cards from the market and it is these cards that give the game its depth and variety.

The cards held by one player part way through the game.

Table 2 played Steam Works by TMG, in this game the players take on the role of machine builders and create various contraptions from the given components to collect victory points. On a turn players place one of their workers to undertake an action which can be collecting a power source, collecting a machine part, building a 2 part machine or placing him on any machine in play.

Two simple machines - the left is clockwork and gives 3 cash and a tile from the conveyer belts, the second is electrical and gives cash if you destroy a power source, converts cash to victory points and gives an automaton for the turn (an extra worker)

Machines are built with one of three power sources (clockwork, steam or electricity) and a machine part which in order to work needs to match the power source, machines are capable of many things but generally they generate cash, power sources, machine parts and towards the end of the game victory points, they also build larger machines or upgrade smaller machines to bigger machines. The game revolves around creating bigger and better machines, not only can you use them for your own ends but you gain victory points if others use them. My first time of playing (at home) I was thoroughly confused about what worked best with what, my second play at the club left me a little less confused but not necessarily any wiser and I managed a humble second place.

Some of the machines in play at the games end

It has an interesting catch-up mechanism in that if anyone does build a game-winning machine others are equally likely to gain its benefit as the owner. The skill in the game is spotting the good machines first and getting the benefits before others spot them, it is an interesting game but can be lengthy time-wise until familiarity is gained with the different tiles and their powers.

Table 1 moved on to Sector 41 a move and explore game played on a grid of shuffled face-down tiles. On a turn players move their ships to explore tiles, when revealed the tile may have one of many random effects, the game does seem to be quite luck based but as a short fun random event game it is quite playable.

The play area of Sector 41 near the games end.

BQ > Sector 41...Sector 41...hmm. For a £3.99 BoardGame Guru special offer it was...well, OK. Perhaps it would need more plays to get to grips with the interactions of all the various heavenly bodies on the tiles, but I did feel that it was a little chaotic and random for my tastes. I think if there were fewer different types of tile, it might be better, although again familiarity might help with that, but I ask myself whether there's enough game there to keep me interested while I learn the tile powers. However, I'll give it another try sometime before I make a final assessment.

J > Sector 41 was a longer game than I expected and that's after the game ended early before the guardian started eliminating explorers. I had a very difficult time collecting points as I couldn't make a chain of tile movement as well my competitors. I wasn't sure whether this was just the luck of the tile spread or I wasn't taking advantage of the "space fold" where the row of tiles are cycled to the edge like a conveyor belt.

Table 3 played Rheinländer  a 1999 game from Reiner Knizia, it is quite a simple area control game where a players turn is to place a knight piece in an area adjacent to the numbered river space of the card they play from a limited hand. Two or more adjacent knights form a duchy with the majority holder of knights ruling the duchy, takeovers are common as adjacent duchies merge and compensation is paid to the loser. The 2005 version has some nice miniatures but as far as I am aware the rules have remained unchanged.

The board (from the back of the box)

The last game played was Port Royal which has been covered before, the game is well balanced no matter how many players (2-5) and I can highly recommend  picking this one up if you are after a nice light game with a little bit of bite to add to your collection.