Ulm, Colony and The Cottage Garden

Lovely artwork

The quiz picture this week is from a game released at Spiel this year (should be a gimme)

The last quiz picture was correctly identified as Haru Ichiban a nice 2-player game.

Thanks to the arrival of “spiel” releases this week several very new games hit the tables, with a large number of “Deck-building” games at the fair it was difficult to find something that stood out and Colony from Bezier Games had a hint of a difference from the norm. The box contains a lot of cards, some dice (in 2 shades), some tokens and the rules. The set-up gives each player 4 cards and 3 dice which they roll, one of their cards is a warehouse where you keep your dice, laid out on the table are 6 standard card sets which are placed out for every game and 7 sets of action cards (from a choice of 28), the number of cards in each of these sets is equal to the number of players. Each card has several pieces of information, first is its background colour which shows what type of card it is (e.g. defensive, production, aggression), its name, the cost to purchase, how many victory points the card is worth (shown by a number of red tabs) and finally the action you can do with it, all cards can be flipped to an “upgraded” side which generally has better versions of the basic action.

A players set-up position before rolling first dice

The top row is the basic sets used in every game, the bottom row is the additional sets for this game (missing 1 stack)

A turn consists of rolling three dice, you take one the following 2 players also get a choice of what you leave then you may action all your cards ONCE after which you can store unused dice for the following turn. Actions include collecting dice which are “unstable” (and cannot be stored between turns) at the basic level or “stable” at the upgraded level, using dice to upgrade cards in your possession or building cards where the values on the dice shown must equal that as shown as the cards purchase price, other actions include trading with other players taking dice from them or shielding yourself from other players attacks.

My set up mid-game scoring 7 points

On the whole the game was a slow build up, build 1 thing a turn and gain 1 point a turn, the game only accelerates over the last couple of rounds where if you have built wisely you should have the edge over the other players, I liked the game but could not help draw parallels with Machi Koro, I have played Colony solo, with 2 players and with 3 players it works quite nicely with all these numbers although it would not be my first choice of game to play solo.

Ticket to Ride India where the idea is to make big loops

Table 2 played Ticket to Ride – India which has been covered before followed by Chinatown, originally a 1999 alea game they played the newer version by Z-Man, then they did Cockroach Soup and finally Takenoko both of which have also been covered before.

Chinatown from above

Takenoko about 1/4 into the game

Table 3 played Ulm described here by BQ

BQ > Ulm was one of the best I've played in a while. Aside from the pretty little 3D Ulm Cathedral model, there's a rather neat mechanism at the core of the game. The game board shows medieval Ulm, and next to the afore-mentioned cathedral is the "Cathedral Area", a 3x3 grid which is filled with action tiles at the start of the game. Each tile shows one of the five different actions available to players, and on your turn you take a new (random) tile from a bag and slide it into the start of one of the rows or columns, which of course displaces the tile at the other end. You then take (in any order) the actions shown on the three tiles still in the chosen row/column (i.e. not the displaced tile). Now, you can't choose a row/column that already has a displaced tile at one end, so eventually the choices get limited, but don't worry, because one of the tile actions is to clear the displaced tiles off one side of the grid - the player who does this takes the tiles, because they can be used to pay for special cards (that give immediate benefits or end-game score), and acquiring those cards is another one of the five tile actions.

Some of the special cards

The third tile action is money, which gives you one coin from the bank, and coins are generally used for the fourth tile action, placing "seals" (no, not the furry aquatic mammal, or the singer of "A Kiss From a Rose", but the ones you use to authenticate documents). Running along the bottom of the board is the River Danube, and players each have a little barge, which start at one end of the Danube and progress along a track of spaces from left to right during the game (and guess what? Moving your barge one space is the fifth available tile action!). Progressing the barge does two things: first, the barge track spaces show minus victory points at the starting point (-11), and progressively increasing points as you go towards the other end (up to +11), so moving the barge effectively gives you points. Secondly, as the barge travels along the Danube it passes through different "quarters", each conferring a different benefit to a player who places a seal there with a seal action - things like acquiring additional money; getting a "descendant" tile that gives you a special power for the rest of the game; hunting through the card discard pile for the card of your choice; or acquiring the coat of arms for a "quarter", which will give points on acquisition, and also (if it's a gold coat of arms) points every time anyone places a seal in the corresponding quarter.

The Ulm board during play

There's some other stuff: "Ulm Sparrows" which give points at game end, but can be used to swap out tiles from an area called the "loading docks" which has a small selection replenished each time a tile is taken from there; and there's some set collecting with the cards, if you use them for end-game scoring. Each time a round starts you place a "tower tile" in the 3D cathedral and once 10 tiles are in there, the game ends, and you add up points from cards, and Ulm Sparrows, and determine the winner. I really liked this: the tile pushing thing is neat, there's lots of random setup elements to increase long-term playability, there's a number of interlocking ways to get points, and once the core rule elements are grasped it all ticks along nicely. I will say that though those core rules are pretty simple, there's some complexity around how the various card/desendent tile/coat of arms stuff works that made the rules explanation a bit tricksy my first time out, but now it's embedded, I think I (and the poor folks I'm explaining to) would have an easier time of it.

I believe this was the winning hand in Dragonwood

Table 1 played Dragonwood (covered before) and Shithead a public Domain card game played with a standard deck. Whilst Table 3 finished with World's Fair 1893.

Another new game for my table was Cottage Garden by Uwe Rosenberg, each player gets a “garden” in which they have two plots each of which is a 10 x 10 square grid, each square is either blank (the majority) or contains a plant pot or a cloche. In the centre of the table is a 4x4 grid each square set up with a bed of plants in various shapes of between 1 and 6 squares, at the side of the board is placed a circle of the remaining pieces which are used to fill the central board as it empties.

The central board, emptying quickly, when the die reaches the bottom row it will refill empty spaces from the path of tiles at the side of the board

On a turn a player either takes one piece from the display in the row or column that the gardener (a dice) is in or takes a single plant pot, this must be immediately placed in one of their plots. The idea is to cover over all the blank spaces with the flower beds leaving just cloches and pots, when a plot is complete (no blanks at all) it is immediately scored, 2 pts / cloche and 1 pt / pot.

My two plots with the right hand plot one space from completion - at the moment it scores 7 orange points and 2 blue points

You have a total of 6 scoring tokens and manipulating them to maximise your score takes a little fore-thought as does collecting kittens to use as fillers for the single spaces. The similarities to his 2014 release patchwork cannot be ignored however this to my mind is a simpler game, you can plan a little ahead but there is not a lot of control in the game, overall it is a light game, if you are just after a game to play 2 player then Patchwork gives you a lot more control and is a far more tactical game where planning 3 or 4 turns ahead are rewarded.

Table 1 joined my table and we played Bohemian Villages and Midnight Party, both are excellent light end of evening games and have been described before.

Finally a mention of our satellite group in Gloucester who played Telestrations a light drawing game, Room 25 a co-operative traitor game and Exploding Kittens a fun card game none of which I have experienced.

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu and Ice Cool

Red gets his first win.

The quiz picture this week is another new 2-player game.

Last weeks picture was of 7 Ronin a 2-player game which has one person playing the attacking bandits and the other the seven defending Ronin. I have played the game 4 times now and each battle has been very close.

The game board in Istanbul is made up of 16 tiles

15 Games graced the tables at the club this week so this write up is going to be mainly a list with only a few expanded upon.Istanbul is a medium level resource game which is about finding the winning path through the stalls to create a mini resource engine and inevitably gain the victory points to win. It is an excellent game and plays equally well with any number of players.

Snatch is a word making game where letters are revealed in the centre, players then try to be the first to make a word from the letters in the middle, the snatch part is that you can extend other players words and then steal them. (I have not played this so may have it a bit wrong).

The central board in round 3 of Nations the Dice Game

Takenoko early in the game

Nations: The Dice Game, Castle Panic and Takenoko I am sure I have covered before, all are solid games with repeated plays at the club which I highly recommend.

Lotus cards

Lotus is a new card game where you are creating flowers by adding petals, as you play you can see the various flowers developing on the table, sadly I do not know the rules but it does look great.

Survive gives us meeples instead of pawns and slotted boats, but where are the Dolphins?

Survive: Escape from Atlantis! I believe is a reimplementation of Escape from Atlantis with a few rule changes, they have also taken to providing “surprise surprise” several expansions for it. I have not played this version but two of the changes are how the island sinks, tiles are randomly placed so that the island can fragment and the volcano piece can appear at any time towards the end of the game as opposed to the very last piece of the game, no swirler though, they have stuck with a die.

Mechs v Minions board

Mechs vs. Minions is a miniature co-operative game where the players program the mechanoids, however things can go horribly wrong with the programming causing chaos, I was informed it was an enjoyable game and it did look great, the table played it twice.

Mangrovia is a game about getting majorities on a grid, however the mechanics behind placement are quite neat requiring cards matching terrain and taking an action permitting the building of huts. The game multi-player does lead to some interesting decision making as prime plots are taken quickly and you find yourself manouvering for different majorities than those initially planned for. Arcane Academy was played again, I will get to play this at some point.

I think this may be Cockroach Soup rather than Cockroach Salad, however blog is now written so it stays. 

Cockroach Salad was one of the filler games, this cute card game relies on a quick brain so the likes of me are left standing. On a turn you flip one of your cards and call out the name of the vegetable that is unless it matches the last vegetable played in which case you must lie which you must also do if the last player said your vegetable (as a lie for their vegetable) or your vegetable is a taboo vegetable. There is much hilarity as your brain struggles desperately to say the correct thing as duplicates and taboo vegetables are played. It has similarities to Cockroach Soup but is a kinder game as far as the memory element goes.

Dominion layout at end of game

Dominion was played at the club, not my favourite style of game but as far as deck-builders go it is excellent but it has about eight expansions not including promos. The basic idea for those who have not played it is that each player starts off with a deck of 7 single coin cards and 3 single victory point cards, on a turn you take 5 cards from your shuffled deck and play them, you can play one action card then spend any money to buy a card from those decks on offer (these have been pre-picked before the game start and consist of coin cards values 1, 2 & 3, Victory point cards values 1, 3 & 6 and ten sets of action cards). The art of the game is to pick out the action cards that work well together to gain the cash to get the victory points, there is also an element of timing, go too soon for the victory points and your hand becomes clogged with useless cards, leave it too late and all the victory point cards will be taken.

Metro in early stages (this is a library picture of a 3 player game)

Metro has been played before it is an intriguing route-laying game, each player has a fleet of coloured trams in their colour and the idea of the game is to accumulate the most points, these are gained by the number of tiles that your trams travel over when they leave the garage. On a turn you place a tile in the direction of the arrow printed on it, if at any point you complete a route the relevant tram travels the route and scores for its owner. You can get double points by ending your route in the middle of the board, the art of the game is create looping tracks for your trams thereby travelling several times over the same tiles racking up the points each time. It is not a particularly long game but some tiles can create some interesting decision making on whether to extend your own track or attack another player who is dangerously close to scoring high.

Ice Cool is a filler game, excellent for young as well as the more mature player who cannot help but be reminded of Subbuteo. The board is the game box which has several inner boxes all which cleverly stack inside each other but also clip together to create the playing area. Each player has a penguin with a weight in the bottom so that it wobbles like a weeble, the game is separated into rounds with one player playing the teacher each round, on their turn a player gets one flick to try to get through the arches of the play area collecting rewards as they go, after all players have had a flick the teacher has a flick this time trying to canon against the other players penguins. 

A round ends when one player collects their three rewards (fish) or the active players are caught by the player playing the teacher for the round, the game ends after all players have played the teacher once at which point everyone counts up their points. Overall a sweet game and kudos to the design work of the board, it will appeal mainly to youngsters but is good as a frivolous filler.

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu, follows much in the vein of Pandemic and is a co-operative game but the theme is very different, in this version there are four regions in which cultists practice their dread arts summoning forth the “Old Ones”. The aim of the game is to close the four portals (one in each region) before losing the game which can be achieved in quite a few ways. A turn consist of your character with its special ability undertaking 4 actions the choices are to move to an adjacent board space, use a card to do a special move from a bus station, remove a cultist from the board location you are at, trade a card with another player, close a portal at the space you are at and kill a Shoggoth (takes 3 actions).

The board at set-up

After each turn a player draws 2 cards from the location deck – these are needed for travelling and for closing gates, then 2 cards are drawn from the cultists deck each of which places a new cultist on the board. Should a fourth cultist need to be placed in a location a summoning occurs and an Old One is revealed, some cards on the cultist deck moves Shoggoths and should one reach an open portal then again an Old One is revealed, the Old Ones are powerful beings who skew the game mechanism against you making it harder to succeed. You lose the game if all the Old Ones are revealed or the last Shoggoth (there are only 3) OR the last Cultist is placed on the board, you also lose if Cthulhu is revealed or if the location deck is ever emptied.

A sample of the "Old Ones"

There is some hope, the players may find relics which will aid them in defeating the cultists, closing a gate also removes cultists from the board however there is a sanity die which must be rolled every time a player uses a relic or stands in the same space as a Shoggoth, should you lose all four of your sanity chips you flip your card which gives you fewer actions and diminishes your special action. We played the game at the easiest level and won however with only 6 cards left in the location deck we were cutting it fine. I have also played it solo and the system works just fine.

New Bedford, 3 Wishes and Chaos Marauders

The quiz picture this week is another recent release, this time the artwork from the box cover.

The last quiz picture was Dreamwell a nice game of route-finding on a changing map board.

Arcane Academy in play

Cyclades mid-game (I think)

More people at the club means more games to cover, I shall start off with those I know little or nothing about. The first is Cyclades  an area control game that despite sitting at 118 on the geek I have never got around to playing. The next two were played on Table 2, the first, Elder Sign is described as a co-operative dice-rolling adventure game the second was Arcane Academy on which I have no information at all but BQ writes :-

Table 2 had a good first part of the night thoroughly kicking the ineffably evil backside of the Ancient One Yig. Oh, and it's "Arcane Academy", not "Power". Speaking of that game, and kicking of backsides, congrats to Sarah for scoring more than Jo, Rory and I put together. I think I need to give that game another go soon - clearly there's something I missed... .

Ice Flow at the beginning of the game, the dark blue pieces on the board are the ice flows

Ice Flow is an English design and worth more of a mention than I have time for on this occasion but in short is a resource management game played across a board where the ice flows (board) keep moving. The last in this batch is Chicago Express which I have played before but remember little about it other than it is a share buying railway building game, I liked it enough to get my own copy, it is fairly light and 3 player it was done in about an hour.

We played BANG! The Dice Game which I have covered several times before, it is a nice filler game and it was played twice and oddly enough despite the shuffle between games everyone ended up with exactly the same role for the second game (there were 6 of us).

we also played Chaos Marauders by Games Workshop, released in 1980 it is not a particularly well balanced game but can be a lot of fun. In the box you get a large deck of cards, 4 playmats, a special die and 16 cones (4 in each of four player colours). Each playmat consists of three rows of 16 boxes in which to place the cards you collect, each row represents a line in your army and you end the game (or round if you prefer to play a longer game) when you complete three lines at which point the player with the most points wins and these (with a few exceptions) come from treasure cards and completed lines. 

Bits on my layout in the early stages of the game.

On your turn you draw a card, and add it to one of your lines, then you take another card and add it to one of your lines, you continue until you draw either a duplicate card that you already have on your display or you draw a green special card. The cards themselves come in five different types and each has a wonderful picture depicting various creatures from Snotling Slaves to Chaos Marauders, treasure cards are blue and generally score 40 or 50 points, War Machines are red and score for completed machines – even more if they have a crew, Warrior cards are purple and range in strength from 1-10, grey cards are fillers and have no special attributes, then there are the green special cards all of which have different effects on play.

Various types of characters (Claws of Malal is supposed to be purple, blame my camera)

Each line on your playmat to be complete must start with a card bearing a unit carrying a Standard, must end with a Musician card and must consist of at least five cards with no spaces between any of them. When a line is complete you add up its combat strength and if it is stronger than an incomplete line on another players sheet you may attack that line, you roll a die with a 1 in 6 chance of losing, the winner of the conflict takes all the cards of the losers line, discards all purple and grey cards and adds the rest to their player sheet which may have a knock-on effect of completing more lines.

The game is colourful and fun but a trifle unbalanced, my best games of this have been 2 player and played as a set of three games, 4-player can be a bit long but we were fortunate and finished the game in about an hour with the balance of play swinging between all players.

New Bedford Town Centre, players buildings are built in their seating orientation

The next game I played is a 2016 release called New Bedford, the game is about the growth of New Bedford Massachusetts which was an important whaling town. The game lasts 12 turns during which players gather victory points through sending out two ships to go whaling and constructing buildings in the town; each player has two worker tokens which they in turn place one at a time on the board and undertake the relevant action, if you are the first to use a central building you get a small bonus, you can also use buildings built by other players by paying them a coin but all player buildings can only be used once a round. Buildings generally provide resources, small amounts of cash or victory points, you can also use them to build and launch a ship, when you launch a ship you choose a distance from the shore to send it and pay the required amount of food. Each round a ship is at sea it moves one step closer to shore and then has a chance of catching a whale, this chance reduces drastically the longer it is at sea and the more ships that are whaling. When a ship lands the player must pay the “lay” cost for each whale at which point they put it into storage as victory points.

My player board with my few resources, the wales on my 2 ships (stacks on the right of the board)  Wales in storage and thus scoring bottom left of the board.

The game runs smoothly and works well and plays quite quickly, but it struck me as being just another resource management game, there was nothing special in the buildings, how the whaling operates or the mechanisms that run the game, each player collects whales and then collects cash to pay for them (and the victory points) and that is basically it. There was an element of distaste at the subject matter and I can see that whaling could be a sensitive issue to cover in a game. Usually in games where sensitive topics are touched on the historical element takes us on a learning exercise, sadly for me this did not come across and the theme was actually a thin layer on the mechanism, it could quite easily have been any expedition game with a base camp, for instance treasure hunting or mining.

The whaling board showing we are on round 11, 6 ships at sea and to the right are 5 town tiles which can still be built.

A quick deduction filler was next 3 Wishes, this consisted of a small deck of cards, three were dealt to each player and three in the middle, with a card placed to one side. There are three suits and all a player has to do to win is to have three cards each of a different suit, in the case of more than one winner in a round then the player with the highest values on their cards wins. At the game start you get to see only one of your own cards, then on a turn each player can take two actions, 1) look at any card on the table, 2) swap any two cards on the table, 3) shuffle their own cards and look at one, or 4) as a first action declare the round over whereupon everyone reveals their cards.

At first this sounds like a deduction game, however in between your turns there can be a lot of switching of cards so any knowledge you may have even with a perfect memory will not aid you much; this sadly fell flat for me, it was too chaotic and hardly any control.

BQ > 3 Wishes was...odd for me. I mean, I'd like to give it a few more goes before I make a final judgement, and I'm not terribly good at games that require a decent memory, but it seemed kind of chaotic.

Small Star Empires was the last game of the night for me, the playing area is a hex board each hex representing a system containing 1,2 or 3 planets, a nubula (there are 3 each of red, blue and green) or an empty space. Each player has between 2 and 4 rockets depending on the number of players and a number of control markers, 4 being trade centres and the remainder space stations. On a turn you move one of your spaceships in a straight line along a hex row stopping on the hex of your choice and placing one of your control markers, in moving you cannot pass over any opponents pieces nor may you stop on any of your own pieces, thus as the game continues there are less options for movement. It is quite a quick game of area control and it is over as soon as no-one can move either through lack of movement options or having run out of control markers after which you score, 1 for every planet you control, then 2,5 or 8 points for each set of nebulae you control and 1 for each opposing piece next to a trade centre. the game plays in 15-20 minutes and is one of the better fillers I have got this year, highly recommended. 

Small Star Empires in play, yellows trade centre scoring 1 for the star system and an extra 3 for the green pieces next to it.

The last game running was Stellar Conflict which I did not get to play, but very basically consisted of the players placing cards showing different types of spaceships onto the table in real-time then firing the ships lasers, this was done with different pieces of coloured elastic. They seemed to be having fun and although it is a game I am unlikely to do well in I would like to give it a try.

Two of the cards in Stellar Conflict - the lasers show the direction the elastic bands are stretched.

SR > Stellar conflict was excellent. I really liked how easy it was; against the clock set up made it tense and exciting and the minor randomness of shooting it out afterwards was very nice. Line of sight neon elastic bands are it's crowning glory!

Hit Z Road and Junk Art

The quiz picture this week is of a game recently released (at the time of spiel I know that is not much of a clue at all).

The last quiz picture was Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia which has remained on my list of favourites since I first received it back in 2013.

The first one on my table was Hit Z Road which is best described as a zombie bash game where the players attempt to travel along a road with the aim of getting their own group of survivors to the end through the numerous hazards which are portrayed on their chosen journey and hopefully accumulating as many victory points as possible. A game lasts 8 rounds and along with 5 survivor meeples each player gets 12 resources (4 each of ammunition adrenaline and gas (it is set in America)).  

Journey set up for a four player game

At the start of each round start 8 cards are dealt out from a stacked deck (3 parts of increasing difficulty) face-up in pairs so that there are 4 groups, players then start bidding for the pair of cards they wish to “travel” over. When bidding is done each player in turn chooses a pair of cards to travel over, unfortunately for the players the bidding is done with resources and these are very much needed to survive the game. Each card of the route will have up to four pieces of information on it, the first is resources found, the next is a special event, the third is victory points for completing the card and the last a number of zombies to encounter; the cards in the first part of the deck are rich in resources and only a few have zombies on, the middle deck consists of a few resources, several special effects and a middling number of zombies whilst the last part of the deck has plenty of zombies and very few resources.

A card from each of he three deck parts - the deck 3 card can be overcome without a fight with the stick-man disc

On your turn you encounter your chosen cards in order completing the first card before dealing with the second, the first thing you do is collect the resources on the card, next you deal with any event, generally the event is to collect a disc or deal with the consequences of having earlier picked up a particular disc and this usually leads to losing or gaining a survivor. The next step is to encounter zombies, at any point from now-on the player can just drive away from the card for two gas resources however in such a case they will not get any victory points on it. The player gets one long range attack for which they roll 2 dice for each ammunition they throw in, any hits (50% chance on each die) kill a zombie, there is however only 1 round of long ranged combat after which the player (unless they flee) must undertake melee combat. Players now roll a die for each survivor they have, here there is a risk of losing a survivor each skull on a die loses a survivor unless you pay an adrenaline counter, adrenaline can also be used to enhance certain die results to get more hits against the zombies. Combat continues until one group is destroyed or you flee.

Discs which can be picked up in the game some are beneficial others are not

Some cards have stronger zombies where special red dice replace some of the normal black dice which can cause an instant loss of a survivor. After the eighth round players receive bonuses for having the most of any particular resource. The game states that it plays 1-4, I have played it solo and 2-player as well as 4 player at the club, I found the solo version a trifle dull, it picks up a bit with 2 players but the game really shines when played with 4 where it is hugely competitive bidding for the easiest or most lucrative route and is very nicely balanced on the knife edge of “just scraping success” or “suffering elimination”.

The Origin board (side on)

Origin was played, a nice territory grab game where you are trying to obtain various criteria to gain victory point cards, its play is interesting and uses totems of different heights and thicknesses.

Origin has lovely wooden pieces

Worlds Fair board

World's Fair 1893 made another appearance at the club, I am going to have to play this soon so that I can do the write up on it.

One players position in Gloom

On another table Gloom was played, this is a card game where players try to lose their characters to various miserable deaths it ends when a player loses all their characters. In brief the cards are transparent and have various motifs on them which overlay one another, you may play cards on yourself or other players and get points by manipulating the various symbols and texts on your cards to provide as high a negative number as possible when they die, however your opponents do their best to make you happy. The fun of the game is amplified when it is played as a story, reading through the flavour text.

Junk Art was our next game, opening the box you are faced with a large amount wooden building bricks cut into various shapes and in four different colours, you also get a deck of cards which show each block (one on each card) and crib cards of the various games that can be played with the blocks. The essence of all the games are to build towers using the bricks provided, sometimes individually and other times collectively, every player has a black base piece and the over-riding rules are that your latest piece must be placed no matter what falls off your tower, no piece may touch the table except the base piece, you may use two hands to place but you may only touch the current piece and the base with your hands/fingers, you may only move pieces on the tower with your current piece.

Player towers in Junk Art

We played four of the games on our table, I will describe one of them, the idea was to have the tallest tower at the games end, the game ended when a star-card placed into the bottom third of the deck appeared, three cards were laid out depicting pieces to use, then on a turn you chose one of the three pieces and added it to your tower, if you placed it so that it touched a piece of the same colour or shape you took another turn, the game was a balance of building sufficient height to win but not getting that height too soon in the game as you may end up knocking over the tower before the game ended. This was fun, you cannot help comparing it to that other great tower building game Bausak, but they play quite differently and have a different feel, Junk Art is more family orientated and has a lightness to it whereas Bausak feels more competitive and strategic I recommend them both.

More player towers in Junk Art

Two players played Eclipse, sitting at 17 in the full geek listing it is a game I should have played before now, however the impression I get from pictures and the description on geek is a space combat game (not something that appeals to me) and thus I have not felt a need to give it a go, this may not be the case at all but it is the impression I get.

The Universe at the beginning of the game

The Universe towards the end of Eclipse

Taluva game in progress - though I have no idea what the other players were doing as white appears to have complete control.

Taluva was played, a nice area control game where the board grows, you are trying to build large settlements and at height to construct towers, the game can be quite strategic with the tile placement and how you develop your settlement(s), sadly I last played it about 8 years ago and can remember nothing more.

Cacao was also played at the club – this nice tile placement game has been described before.

The last game on our table was Carcassonne which for me is one of the best tile laying games out there, it scores positively for simplicity of play, easy teaching and enough strategy to keep me interested throughout and very little down time between turns. I have covered it before so in brief you play a tile next to any other tile in play so that it matches along all sides adjacent tiles then you may play a meeple on any feature on that tile so long as there is not already on the extended feature, when a feature is closed/finished you score points for it, generally this is 1 or 2 points per tile. The exception is fields which score 4 per adjacent completed town, a majority or joint majority of meeples is required to score any feature. A great gateway game if you are new to the hobby.

Our Carcassonne game in progress

Mangrovia and Le Havre

The quiz picture shows one of my favourite games, do you know what it is?

Last week was of Warlord the predecessor to Apocalypse, this edition came with an extended board, I was so excited at seeing it I forgot to photograph the box so you get the board again this time all of it.

A few more games played this time across four tables, my table played Le Havre. As always when I play a heavier game 4 player as opposed to my usual 2 player games the dynamics are totally different and I am left struggling to break free of my usual playing style and adapt. Le Havre is a superb resource management game, on a turn a player places 2 items of stock onto the board as dictated by the position of their turn marker, they can then do one of two actions, take a pile of resources or place their character token onto a building and do its action.

The resource tokens all of which (except coins) are 2 sided showing a base resource e.g. Clay and on the reverse an upgraded resource e.g. brick, wheat becomes bread, coal becomes coke etc.

Every 7 player turns everyone must provide food or pay its cash equivalent, players who still cannot pay must take a loan to pay, this can lead to severe debts (I had 8 loans at one stage – a potential minus 56 points at the end of the game). The idea of the game is to make the most money, this can be either in hard cash by shipping goods in boats you build or by building lots of buildings which have a cash value at the game end, cash earned in the game can be used for building buildings as well as using resources. There is a lot to timing and managing your resources in this game, for instance to build certain buildings may take 3 or more actions to secure and upgrade the appropriate resources in the meantime an opponent may obtain cash and buy the building.

Examples of buildings and ships

This just skims the surface of this game which when played multiplayer has several possible paths to victory but no matter what path you take it is important to keep a close watch on what your opponents are doing, there is nothing so galling as playing 3 actions of a 5 action process to note at the last moment that one of your opponents is one step ahead.

SR > Enjoyed Le Havre, prefer it to Agricola though I'm not sure I'd know how to fully maximise opportunities for winning. I'd happily play again, but I'm still disappointed with resources that aren't nice wooden bits!

BANG! The Dice Game has become a regular filler-game at the club and plays well with 5 or more players, it was also well received at a convention I visited recently.

Near the beginning of the game - the pathway of tiles

This was surprisingly Tutankhamen first play at the club, a nice set collecting game where a long trail of artefacts are laid with players pieces set at the end. Each turn a player takes a piece from the line and then moves their piece to the vacated spot – movement is always in one direction so any you pass you may not return to and collect later. When the last piece of a set is taken it is scored, the player with the majority scores points equal to how many pieces in the set whilst second place gets half, the game ends when a player crosses their score marker over the score tracks finish line. It is a simple mechanism but full of second guessing and plays well with any number of players.

Drunter und Druber board early in the game

Drunter und Druber has been at the club several times before, a nice “stitch-up” game without being too harsh and is one of my favourite lighter games. In brief players are dealt a type of building which will be represented on the board 5 times, on a turn players build a road, wall or canal with the idea of steering it away from their own buildings whilst demolishing the buildings of their opponents.

Histrio I know nothing about but it has been played at the club several times so appears well liked by others, being a fan of Shakespeare I have not had an urge to play this even if they are different.

Ghost Stories board

Ghost Stories is a game I have struggled with, I just do not seem able to get my head round the rules even when taught by others however everyone at the club seemed to be enjoying it without any problems at all, perhaps it is time to give this one another crack.

Red7 got 2 plays at the club, a simple card game with simple rules, it is just that the goal changes with every card played, you must have a winning position after you have played by either playing a card fitting the current rule and ending up with the best hand as a result or changing the rule so that you have the best hand in play with the new rule. If you fail you lose.

Biblios was played on table 1, covered before a card (share) collecting game with dice indicating set (share) values.

BQ > Mangrovia  was a nice "bowl-placement" game set in a mangrove swamp. "Bowl-placement? Eh, BQ?" I hear you say...well, yes: Competing to become tribal chief, you put your little wooden offering bowl on the pair of actions you want to take, chosen from 6 pairs, but the actions are taken in strict order (as a little boat paddles round the sacred island archipelago where the actions are depicted on the board) - you get to take your first action...then others take their first action...then the boat paddles up the other side of the archipelago and everyone gets to take their second action. The actions mostly revolve around building huts, placing them on the spaces of a grid printed on the board. You usually have to discard a "landscape" card, and some "valuables" cards to build a hut - the valuables cards have numerical values, as do the board-spaces, and you have to pay the exact right amount of valuables for the space.

Mangrovia - the board

There's also four different landscape types, and you have to play the right landscape card to build a hut on a given space. Huts give you end-game points for majorities achieved in the rows and columns of the grid of spaces, and often immediate points when built, as well. There are also special bonuses for huts built in a couple of areas (the "stone" and "pole" areas), and "amulet" spaces - if you build huts on those, you can later use the amulet action to draw amulets from a bag - more amulet huts means more amulets drawn. Amulets score end game points, but are also the only way to build on some hut spaces - they are turned in instead of the usual "valuables" cards. As well as hut building and amulet actions, there are card drawing actions, so you can get the cards you need to build the huts, and an action that makes you first player on the next round, and also lets you change the positions of the "birds of paradise" - these are two little green birds that sit on a 2x2 grid showing the four landscape types, and during each round you can ONLY build on the two landscape types the birds are sitting on, so being able to change them is a pretty useful thing.

Some of the playing pieces - Huts, bowls, boat and birds

This all carries on until someone builds their last hut, then hut majorities on the board are scored, there's some bonus points from the special hut areas, any amulets still in hand add points based on their face values, and we have a winner...

Some of the cards in Mangrovia

All in all, pretty simple game flow, a fair amount of interesting decisions, and doesn't outstay its welcome. I made the error of blowing all my cards in an early turn to build a couple of quite expensive huts, and then, in a panic that I would not be able to build high value if I didn't grab lots of cards, I took a turn to build up a huge wad of them, without building a hut. Hint: don't do this! The game ends sooner than you think, and at game-end I had copious quantities of cards I could do nothing with. It seems a constant flow of hut-building is important. There were a couple of times where it did seem that me combo of cards was good for nothing, which was annoying, and I think the game could bind up a bit with analysis-paralysis prone players, but the traditional MAB threats of physical violence would no doubt resolve that... On the physical side, the board and components have well-executed, colourful and evocative artwork. Nice game.