Kevin & Games

Review – Tante Trudels Trodel

2012-02-07T21:43:00.001Z

2 – 4 Players, Aged 7+ with a 15 - 20 minute playing time

A review copy of Tante Trudel’s Trodel designed by Steffen Bogen was kindly provided German publisher Zoch GmbH.

The theme of the game is you are shopping in Aunty Trudel’s Junk Shop and today she has come up with a very special offer. One person gets their shopping for free! All the lucky person has to do is fill their basket with junk that weighs less than Aunty Trudel’s basket of junk, BUT more than any other player’s basket.

What follows is an overview of the game broken down into 5 sections: The Game Components, Setting Up The Game, How To Play The Game, What Did We Think? and finally Who Do We Think Will Like It?. So if you don't want to read the whole review scan down to the heading that interests you.

The Game Components
Tante Trudel’s Scales – A sturdy cardboard image of Aunty Trudel with wooden peg and balancing wooden beam, golden chains, pans and two mice to help ensure the beam is properly balanced.

Game board – This depicts a blue 5 by 5 grid intended I imagine to depict shelves in a junk shop.

25 ‘rummage’ objects – These wooden objects are coloured blue, green, yellow and natural and depict 22 unique shapes such as clocks, coat hangers, cars etc. The colour of the objects plays no part in the game.

3 Shopping Coupons – These are study cardboard counters depicting shopping baskets.

4 Baskets – These player baskets are in heavy lipped cardboard in the four player colours of blue, red, yellow and green.

1 Die

Setting Up The Game
Put the figure of Aunty Trudel and her scales together

One player then constructs Aunty Trudel’s ‘rummage of the day by putting aside 3 items.

Place the remaining 22 wooden ‘rummage’ objects together with the 3 Shopping Coupons randomly one in each of the in the 25 squares on the game board.

Each player selects one of the baskets.

Starting at the door (depicted on one of the corners of the game board) one player throws the dice and then moves their basket that number of spaces, in a clockwise direction, around the outside of the board placing a ‘rummage’ item (selected from the row adjacent to the final move) in the basket, this process is then repeated twice more; the three shopping coupons should be placed in the now vacant spaces on the game board.

These three items represent the ‘rummage of the day’ and are thereby the target weight the players ‘rummage’ will be measured against. The ‘rummage of the day’ is placed in front of the scales for all to see. Players will need to create a basket of three items that whilst lighter than this is heavier than their fellow competitors.

How To Play The Game
Players enter the shop (game) by throwing the dice and moving that number of spaces around the outside of the board in a clockwise direction. They can then do one of the following:

Take any single item (or shopping coupon) into their basket from the row adjacent to their basket.
Exchange an item in their basket for an item in the row adjacent to their basket.
Place an item from their basket back on an empty space on the row adjacent to their basket.
If the row the basket is adjacent to has a scales in it then the player can test the weight of their basket against that of the ‘the rummage of the day’.
If they have landed next to another player swap one of their items for that of the other players.
If they have a shopping coupon in their basket they can exchange this for an additional item from that row or another player’s basket if they are now adjacent to this.

Once you are happy with your items then you can exit the store i.e. throw the requisite number that will take your basket out of the store and line it up in front of the scales; so long as nobody else has exited the store than players may move their basket backwards by the number thrown in order to adjust their selection of items.

Once all players have left the store than weigh each players rummage against the ‘rummage of the day’. If more than one player has ‘rummage’ that is lighter than Aunty Trudel’s then remove hers from the scales and compare the players rummage to see who’s is the heaviest (i.e. closest in weight to Aunty Trudel’s) in order to establish the winner.

What Did We Think?
Very definitely a child game that in my view unlike many other Zoch games will have significantly less appeal to adults, other than in the family setting. That said whilst in Essen last year I played this game with two ladies who had wanted to play this game as something light and amusing.

It is colourful, tactile and with the scales offers a visually appealing package to children. It is simple to setup and play made of sturdy materials and for families with younger children should offer enough replayability to make this a good investment.

It will no doubt support their education and development in helping to teach that size doesn’t always determine weight and that three or four objects may weigh the same as three very different ones.

Who Do We Think Will Like It?
Families with young children or teachers looking for an amusing way to convey some of the maths principles around shapes and volumes.

Games in a Pub - 29th January 2012

2012-02-03T22:42:00.000Z

Some strange bean farming, a magical city and a pacific island

With only 5 people it was not a large turnout, but it was enough to play one our Monday night favourites, Bohnanza. We haven’t managed to get this to the table before on our pub nights and having played Space Beans at our last pub meeting I thought why not try another bean based game. Bohnanza is a simple card game on the theme (loosely) of farming. Each player has an imaginary 2 fields within which to plant their beans and a mixed hand of bean cards. The unusual thing about this game is that you cannot re-arrange your hand of cards, you must play them in the order they are dealt. Given that the aim is to get as many beans of one type in your fields the trick is to trade unwanted cards with other players maybe even give them away – if other players will take them. Bohnanza is not a game for those backward in coming forward as you need to be both vocal and creative in the deals you suggest.

When the time came to tot up the points Simon and I had come joint first just one point ahead of those in second places and 2 points ahead of the third place, so a very tight game with the players taking many different creative approaches in seeking to either acquire or discard cards.

With our first game complete we split into two groups of three with Oliver, Simon and Robin embarking on a game of Discworld:Ankh-Morpork later to be won by Robin as The Dragon King of Arms who had successfully managed to confuse his opponents to his real identity. This subterfuge allowed him to profit from the steadily increasing levels of trouble whilst convincing them that he was actually Chrysoprase (whose victory condition relates to Money not Trouble)!

Martin, Gwen and I tried one of Martin’s new games Tobago. Another game by Zoch but picked up on e-bay at under half price for a brand new unopened game. In this treasure hunting game the game board represents a tropical island and the players each have a Land Rover like wooden token with which to travel around the island collecting treasure and magical amulets. There are 5 treasure types on the island and a number of different landscape types e.g. mountains, beach etc the trick is to narrow down the field of search.

To do this players can choose to either travel around using the Land Rover or play a search cards (each player has 5 and takes another one each time they play one) each of which specifies a type of terrain or proximity to a landscape feature e.g. statues, huts or palm trees where the treasure may be or is not. As these cards build up under the respective treasure types so the field of search is narrowed down until there is only one possible location.

This is denoted using little square cubes. So if the first card for the white treasure denotes that the treasure is on a beach then white cubes are put on all the beaches and the player who placed the card puts one of their tokens on the card. If another player then places a card that gives a proximity to a hut then all those tokens of the relevant colour that do not meet this combined formula are removed with a player token being placed on the card. Gwen and I both thoroughly enjoyed this game feeling that it would be well received by our Monday night crew, with the right balance of simplicity / tactics.

Having completed Discworld the other guys embarked on another game Dominion. This is another game we rate highly and whilst we sadly had to pack up before the guys could complete their game both Simon and Robin commented about how much they liked it – a game they had never played before.

More photo's from the evening can be seen here.

Our next event at the Blue Anchor, Crowborough is in two weeks time on Sunday 19th February starting at 7pm - £1 per head. More details can be seen on our Facebook Page Social Gamers - Crowborough

Review – Wollmilchsau

2012-01-25T19:58:00.004Z

2-6 Players, Aged 8+ with a 15-20 minute playing time

A review copy of Wollmilchsau (released in 2011), designed by Liesbeth Bos was kindly provided German publisher Zoch GmbH.

Wollmilchsau is an awkward name to the English tongue and in translation means something akin to ‘all-purpose’ or ‘allrounder’. The idea of this dice throwing card game is to call out the name of the wanted animal. Not sure how this ties into the games name – you are not the only one! Essentially this is a game of speed of recognition that has some similarities to other Zoch games Geistesblitz amongst others.

What follows is an overview of the game broken down into 5 sections: The Game Components, Setting Up The Game, How To Play The Game, What Did We Think? and finally Who Do We Think Will Like It?. So if you don't want to read the whole review scan down to the heading that interests you.

The Game Components
66 Cards – 11 of each animal type, Pig, Dog, Cat, Sheep Cow and Mouse.

1 Dice - With images of the six animal depicted on the cards.

Setting Up The Game
To set up, shuffle the deck of animal cards, and then divide it into two face-up piles of cards. Take one card from the top of one deck, and insert it face-down halfway through that deck.

How To Play The Game
One player rolls the dice. The first player/s to call or yell (!) out a correct animal will score.

The three rules for calling out are that:

That you call out the name of the animal on the dice except;
If the animal is on one of the face-up cards; in this case, players must call out one of the animals not visible on the top of the decks except;
That the animal named correctly in the previous round cannot be called out in the current round.

If two or more players call an animal's name correctly at the same time, they all score.

Note – When multiple valid animals are called the largest correct animal is the one that players cannot name in the subsequent round.

If you score, you either:

· Take one card from the top of one of the face-up decks and place it face up in front of you, or

· Turn all the face-up cards in front of you face down to make them safe.

If however you called out an incorrect animal, you must discard any face-up cards in front of you; and if you have no face-up cards, then you must turn one safe card (if you have any) face up to put it at risk again.

Once the face-down card in the deck appears, you split this deck to create a third face-up pile, increasing the difficulty of the game.

Once all the cards have been claimed, the game ends and the player with the most cards wins whether they be face up or safe (face down).

What Did We Think?

Personally I like Geistesblitz but am rubbish at it and am roundly trounced by both my wife and one of our young friends at it every time I play. Largely I sit looking at things trying to work out what to grab whilst they steadily accumulate more cards. It seems to me that Wollmilchsau offers a similar level of torture, a torture that children seem to delight in it – just not this one!

I personally also had difficulty with the images on the dice with the Mouse and The Dog in particular appearing to me (I am also colour blind so the different colours on the dice didn’t seem to help me) to be confusingly similar – maybe that was the intention. I suspect that this is a game where children will beat adults more often than they lose – the advantage of young brains.

With our game it also took longer than the suggested 15-20 minutes as there were so many wrong calls – this may have been because we had too many adults playing!

Again this made the game which I was sadly not enjoying seem even more interminable.

On the up side the artwork is as amusing as we have come to expect with Zoch’s games.

Who Do We Think Will Like It?
Our experience is that (like Geistesblitz) children will give any adult a good run for their money once they understand this game; so families with children looking for a game that helps with speed of thought / recognition and where the need to shout out is be part of the attraction will probably delight in this game.

It has an age on the box of 8+ but we thought this would work for children aged significantly younger although it might be wise to reduce the number of cards so the game can be played in a time frame that will keep the little ones engaged.

If you liked this review then other games I have reviewed can be seen here

Match Report - 23rd January 2012

2012-01-25T09:53:00.002Z

From trading 'Dollies' to some very strange drawings!

With sickness afflicting Crispin, the Safari delights of Tanzania detaining Malcolm and Daniella under the cosh trying to keep a busy family fully fed and watered it was down to Gwen and I to welcome our version of the young ones, Ben, Ruth and Natalie.

These youngsters all like a game with lots of interaction so when it came to selecting which board game to play what better choice than one of the modern classics, Settlers of Catan. A game we have described in previous blog posts in a lot more detail, it requires players to actively trade natural resources with each other in order to advance their civilisation of roads, towns and cities.

Playing with the 5/6 player expansion there was plenty of land for us to colonise although by the end of the game the island felt pretty cramped. Whilst Ben was busy accruing sheep (fondly termed “dollies” since he first played this game with us around the time Dolly was cloned) he was also keeping a watchful eye on my obvious progress and zealously pointed a very unwelcome spotlight on my advancement towards the 10 victory points required to win.
Needless to say this left me somewhat handicapped and increasingly aggrieved! Ruth having not played the game before was feeling her way whilst Natalie was trying to avoid drawing too much attention to her significant iron ore production capability. Gwen, always a keen competitor, kept a low profile and, I feel, was able to slip stream in behind me and profit from Ben’s negative publicity program – not that I’m bitter or twisted you understand!

Suffice to say that his machinations resulted in Natalie’s interception of my road (at that point the longest on the island) thus depriving me of the Longest Road card and the 2 victory points it gives. Then, in her next turn Gwen (the dark horse) managed to not only build a road section (thereby acquiring MY Longest Road card) but also to convert one of her 3 towns into a 3rd city. This meant that with the University development card she had quietly acquired, quite early on, she actually EXCEEDED the 10 points necessary point to win - really adding insult to my sense of injury, Ben!! Note 1 to self – must cross Ben off my Christmas pressie list.

So time to drown my sorrows in coffee and munchies – again Natalie had come up trumps this time baking us some deliciously moist and tasty Carrot cake buns, topped off very artistically with handmade icing sugar carrots. Note 2 to self – suspect Ben knows it is Gwen who does the Christmas shopping!

With the debris cleared out of the way I felt the team might enjoy Pictomania, one of the CGE games brought back from last year’s Essen trip (reviewed in more detail here ). This is a game that might be described as Pictionary on steroids since it calls on each player to draw one of 42 images whilst simultaneously working out which of the other 41 possible images their opponents are each drawing. It is a game that is both highly amusing and high tension as the guessing stops when the 4th player in a 5 player game has laid their last Guessing Card. Note 3 to self – no justice in this world; proved beyond doubt by Ben’s undisputed supremacy in this game.

You can see below the cards we had to work with during one round of play:

along with our sophisticated drawings:

Pictomania is a light fun game that got a definite “thumbs up” from our group of players.

More photo's from the evening can be seen here.

If you would like to try some of the games talked about on this blog come along to our next event at the Blue Anchor, Crowborough is in two weeks time on Sunday 29th January starting at 7pm - £1 per head. More details can be seen on our Facebook Page Social Gamers - Crowborough

Games in a Pub – 15th January 2012

2012-01-17T13:05:00.005Z

A quiet evening with some familiar games

With a little confusion over dates to start the New Year and with apologies from 5 regulars before we even started the evening was never likely to yield a big turnout. That said 5 new people had made contact over Christmas having only just discovered us I was hopeful of a few new faces.

The good news is that although in the end none of those 5 was able to join us on this particular occasion Robin was. Typical of most of the people that join us he likes games but to never having played any of the games we play before but. Having spotted our activities through a combination of this blog and Facebook he was intrigued enough to join us and give the games a chance.

As to what games to play, Oliver was enthusiastic proposer of Discworld:Ankh-Morpork a game he had played with us twice before, so with no gainsayers and Robin having read all the Terry Pratchett novels it was the obvious choice.

Described in more detail in my review Discworld:Ankh-Morpork is a board game with a play a card take a card mechanic where each player has a hidden identity and potentially different objectives to win the game. Suffice to say that it was a close fought game with Oliver, one of the Lords (he used one of the Game cards to try to change his character early in the game only to get another Lord in replacement - he was unimpressed with this turn of fortune) on the cusp of winning a number of times only to be hauled back from the victory line, by random events and the unhelpful attentions of the other players. Karen (Dragon King of Arms) won in the end through the helpful intervention of the Demon random event card (this introduced an additional four trouble markers to the game board, Karen’s victory condition requiring 8 trouble markers on the board) and the distraction of the other players who noted the level of trouble and strangely then did nothing about it!

I think this might be attributed to the alcohol (not that there was much) or the mistaken belief that the Dragon King of Arms wasn’t one of the characters in play. Both Robin as Chrysoprase (how do you pronounce this name??) and Simon as another Lord competed well but were undone in their battle for supremacy by the almost constant efforts to stop Oliver and ultimately the good fortune of Karen.

This game with two newcomers and quiet a lot of pondering of choices took a little longer than normal and so sadly Karen left us at its conclusion leaving the rest of us to play Space Beans. An interesting card game that Simon had brought along that required players to collect sets of bean cards but notably required players to pass their unused cards to their right (anti clockwise) whilst the game proceeded in a clockwise direction. This perhaps not surprisingly led to quite a bit of amusing confusion with victory in the end going to Simon.

More photo's from the evening can be seen here.

Our next event at the Blue Anchor, Crowborough is in two weeks time on Sunday 29th January starting at 7pm - £1 per head. More details can be seen on our Facebook Page Social Gamers - Crowborough

Match Report – 9th January 2012

2012-01-13T08:58:00.001Z

Welcome to the New Year

I had been unsure of when we would be able to get together and only confirmed this meeting the night before so it was tremendously encouraging that so many of our regulars where able to join us and Natalie somehow with under 24 hours notice also managed to bake some of her lovely apricot munchies.

Joining Natalie was Crispin, Malcolm (shortly heading off to Africa for four weeks on what sounds like a very exciting trip), Ben and obviously my long suffering wife!

Our first game in the 10 mins whilst waiting for Natalie to join us was the simple Fuchs and Fertig. This is a game that in the past Crispin has performed particularly badly at but he started well in 2012 only to sadly fall away as the game progressed and let Malcolm win. As the others steadily got rid of their cards I didn’t which left me feeling under pressure to remember longer sequences of my cards and whilst I was good to five the sixth card always caught me out and so I kept all of my original cards (I could blame poor health, man-flu is after an awful affliction) but I guess the first lessons of 2012 was don’t push your luck too far and learn from your mistakes!!

With 6 players now sitting around the table we briefly entertained the notion of playing Panic Station for the first time (not briefly enough in the view of most) before moving onto one of our oldest games LandLord. Whilst it said 6 players on the box this was also a mistake as it works well at 4 players but 6 is just too many – second lesson of 2012, games generally work best with less than the upper limit specified on the box. This game saw a lot less bombing and pinching of tenants than most previous games and to the chagrin of the others I won, despite the aforementioned man-flu.

Natalie’s medicinal munchies and coffee, along with Crispin’s excellent Christmas Cake and chocs saw the blood sugar go up along no doubt with the cholesterol!

Crispin and Gwen resumed after the break with one of my Christmas presents Jaipur. Unusual for our games evenings this was a two player trading game, with a distinctly Eastern theme, that saw Crispin triumph over Gwen. Something that I have largely failed to do at this game – amongst so many!

The rest of the group went for a game of Safranito which Malcolm triumphed at before moving onto Hey! That’s My Fish which was convincingly won by Ben after all the players had delighted in isolating my penguins (encouraged I felt by the most angelic of assassins) leaving them very hungry– oh well it makes them happy!

So a slightly shortened evening (man-flu meant my bed beckoned) for our first meeting of 2012 but everyone seemed to enjoy themselves despite slightly mixed success with the choice of games.

More photos from the evening can be seen here.

If you would like to try some of the games mentioned in this post or indeed any of the others on this blog then why not come along to our next Social Evening with Game at the Blue Anchor on 15th January at 7pm. More details can be seen on our Facebook page ‘Social Gamers – Crowborough’.

Review – Safranito

2012-01-07T14:24:00.000Z

2 to 4 Players, Aged 10 + with a 30+ minute playing time

A review copy of Safranito (released in 2010), designed by Marco Teubner was kindly provided by the German publisher Zoch GmbH.

Players are cast in the role of top chefs from around India jostling around Rajive’s booth in the Mumbai spice market seeking to obtain the best spice blends and thus be the culinary trend setters. In order to buy or sell the spices players try to throw roasted bread chips into the desired spice bowls. Hoping their fellow chefs do not knock their bread chips out of the bowls when they come to throw!

Safranito is perhaps an unusual game to the British eye in that it requires a degree of dexterity blended with some tactics as players try to both buy and sell spices as they seek out the winning combinations. However to those that follow publishers like Zoch in particular this blend of:

• Quality components;

• a dexterity mechanism;

• a game that can be enjoyed as much by adults as children.

is unsurprising. Zoch is after all the maker of games like Villa Paletti (a Spiel des Jahres winner) and Bausack amongst others.

Game Components
A game Board – This comes in two heavy lipped parts which are joined by 2 well fitting clamps. The board depicts 9 spice bowls (Curry, Ginger, Cardamom, Chilli, Garlic, Mint, Cumin, Saffron and Cinnamon) plus four Action Spaces.

24 Bread Chips – These are substantial resin chips, rather like gambling chips, in the 4 player colours (Green Red, Orange and Blue), each with a small hole in the middle. They are denominated in 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 rupees.

54 Spice Cards – Each card depicting one of the aforementioned spices.

18 Spice Blend Cards – Depicting various combinations of three of the spices.

42 Money Bills – The paper money in denominations of 6x100, 12x50, 12x20 and 12x10 rupees.

1 Pepper Mill – Used to denote the 1st player or ‘Head Chef’.

A well illustrated set of rules

Setting Up The Game
Place the game board in the centre of the table.

Players choose a colour and take the six Bread Chips in the corresponding colour plus 200 rupees.

Place the remaining money by the side if the board as a bank.

Shuffle the respective decks of Spice Blend Cards and Spice Cards and then depending on the number of players:

• Turn over 2 or 3 Spice Blend Cards. Players will acquire these cards by handing over matching combinations of Spice Cards through the course of the game.

• Turn over 4, 5 or 6 individual Spice Cards and place them in their respective positions around the edge of the board.

• Players will use 3 or 4 Bread Chips during each game round, throwing them onto the game board and seeking to land them over the spice bowls; thereby gaining the opportunity to buy the available Spice Cards and in certain cases sell them.

As you might expect with a game about spices and cooking the Pepper Mill goes to the last person who cooked anything – it’s as good a system of determining the start player (Head Chef) as any other!

The winner of the game will be the first player to obtain 3 Spice Blend Cards

Playing The Game
The game is played over a series of rounds consisting of 4 phases, but it is the first phase that is the most important in this tactile game:

1. Throwing your bread chips – Starting with the Start Player each player selects one of their chips and throws it facedown onto the game board, aiming to get it onto the image they are trying to acquire (or later in the game sell). Typically this will be one of the 9 spice bowls but there are also 4 Action Spaces:

• Extra Throw - the player can throw an extra Bread chip this round.

• Additional Spice Card - the player gets to draw as many Spice Cards as are represented by the first digit on the Bread Chip that landed in this area, keeping one of them.

• Reserving Spice Blends - the player takes the top most Spice Blend card face down i.e. they have their own secret blend and the other players do not know what they need to collect to complete it.

• Head Chef - the player takes the Pepper Mill and immediately becomes the Head Chef.

Knocking another players chip out of a bowl or indeed of the board is entirely legal as is trying to use another player or player’s chips to help direct the direction of travel for your chip.

Players continue throwing Bread Chips to the limit set out in the rules. In planning what chips to use this round you need to have an eye to how many rupees you have and whether your intent is to sell a spice(s) you already have in order to raise additional rupees or to buy more spices? If your intent is to sell spices then you will look to use your highest value chips but when it comes to buying the chip you choose is likely to be determined by:

a. The amount of money you have available;

b. Whether other players are likely to want the same spice, as the highest value chip gets first choice;

c. The number of that type of spice cards sitting on the edge of the game board; if there is more than one card then you may get away with not having to pay as much.

So as you plan what to throw and indeed when to throw (early chip’s are frequently displaced) you will want to consider the placement of other player’s chips as well as the Spices they have already acquired and their relative importance given the face up Spice Blends Cards.

Importantly when throwing the Bread Chips, the player’s hand must not go over the outside the margin of the board.

This is not as easy, or at least it wasn’t for us, as it looks. We had chips flying of the board and definitely struggling to hit the target we were aiming at and as for aiming at an Action Space we felt this would take a practice as most of the time we struggled to hit the Spice Bowls! Some of us also struggled to keep our hands outside the margin of the board when throwing.

2. Evaluating Action Spaces – The Head Chef adjudicates if a Bread Chip is over an Action Space, to be over the target the target must be visible when looking through the hole in the centre of the chip.

If two chips are covering an Action Space then the player with the highest value chip receives the benefit.

If a player has managed to get one of their chips over the Head Chef Action Space then they immediately become the Head Chef for the remainder of this round.

3. Selling and buying spices - The Head Chef adjudicates if a Bread Chip is over a Spice Bowl, to be over the target the target must be visible when looking through the hole in the chip. Those that are not are returned to their owners whilst those that are are turned over revealing their values.

Having revealed all the chips the Head Chef now determines the order in which the spices will be first Sold and then Bought.

Selling
If the Head Chef decides to handle Garlic first then players that hold a Garlic Card are allowed to sell them irrespective of whether they have a chip in the Garlic bowl themselves. The price for selling Garlic is determined as the sum of the Bread Chips in that bowl.

If any of the sellers have Bread Chips in the Garlic Bowl they then remove their chips from the Bowl i.e. they cannot also buy spices they have sold.

Buying
Players with chips still in the Garlic bowl may now buy those Garlic Spice Cards that are displayed face up on the side of the board, commencing with the player with the highest value chip. They take the chip back into their hand and hand over the chip value in rupees, receiving the first or maybe the only Garlic Spice Card! If more spice cards are available to buy and there are more chips still in the bowl then the purchase is resolved in a similar fashion. If there are equal value Bread Chips and not enough Spice Cards to go around then the priority is determined by play position i.e. the Head Chef takes priority then proceeding in the order of play.

Play then proceeds in the order determined by the Head Chef resolving selling and then buying of spices until there are no more chips on the board.

4. Putting together spice blends – Starting with the Head Chef each player may hand over the Spice Cards shown on one of the face up Spice Blend cards receiving this card in return and placing it face up in front of you.

If anyone has the spices necessary to complete a reserved (secret) Spice Blend Card, acquired by landing on the relevant Action Space they may hand over the Spice Cards and turn up the Spice Blend Card in front of them.

If no player has won the game by completing 3 Spice Blends then a new round is started by:

a. Moving the Pepper Mill round to the next player in a clockwise direction.

b. If Spice Blends have been acquired in the last round the display is replenished by turning over new cards.

c. 4, 5 or 6 Spice Cards are turned over and added to the board as for the first round.

d. The players then continue with the 4 phases described above.

What Did We Think?
Safranito is a game that needs dexterity as the primary requirement and for most I would guess the early games will be littered with good and bad luck as players hit their bowls as much by chance as skill and or have their chips knocked into or out of bowls by their fellow players.

So whilst not a deep tactical game it will reward practice and familiarity as with so many euro games but in this case it rewards dexterity rather than tactical skill. Although it is also not just about throwing bread chips in that you need to manage your money and this will inevitably mean you need to sell spices at times and also keep track of what others are buying.

We liked Safranito and found it grew on us. The components are generally of a high quality with a substantial board and heavy Bread Chips. The cards are colourful and good quality and whilst first impression was that the money was a little flimsy the quality of the paper is good and will I think stand up to general wear and tear.

Will it get regular play? I suspect it may, I was cool on it initially because the game theme doesn’t particularly inspire me and I was fairly inept when it came to throwing the chips however, my wife immediately liked it and felt it was a welcome addition to our collection if for no other reason than that it is completely different to any of our other games. In the second and subsequent games my throwing ability improved to mediocre thus allowing my personal level of enjoyment to go up significantly and I also began to appreciate the tactics that can be employed. However we felt that with four players the playing time was more likely to be 45-60 mins, not 30 mins as indicated on the box.

Who Do We Think Will Like It?
I am absolutely sure that this will not work for some people (and it didn’t initially grab me) but I think it will prove to be popular with others. In particular it strikes me that for those people, young or old, whose skill is with their hands this may be an excellent game and whilst the box gives an age range of 10+ I think that most 8 year-olds I know would quickly pick this up (and enjoy the chip throwing) making this a good family game where a wide age range can complete equally.

If you find the theme or mechanism interesting then I suspect that the degree of skill will go up and luck down through regular play and so it will become a much more satisfying experience.

Also the ability to mess up other players as your skill level goes up will give the game an appeal all of its own for some!

So not a gamer’s game, but definitely a game for Social Gamers and families looking for something a little different.

If you liked this review then other games I have reviewed can be seen here

Match Report 21st December 2011

2011-12-24T18:50:00.000Z

Merry Christmas

With only days to go to Christmas it was probably unsurprising that we had lost some our regular gamers but in the upside we were the grateful recipients of:

a. A 500g slab of Mississippi Mud Pie from Hotel Chocolate, courtesy of Ben, one of the regulars sadly unable to join us.

b. Some of the reindeer munchies that regulars of this blog will have seen last Christmas - thank you again Natalie - they were just as good this Christmas!

c. Crispin’s stunning Christmas cake. This is the 3rd year he has been kind enough to bake one of his excellent Christmas cakes for Gwen & I (in return for a donation to a charity to help the homeless). It is absolutely yummy - a cake lots of fruit and cherries, no nuts but extra brandy. I am very tempted to be uncharitable and hide it away before my brother-in-law arrives since I am sure my wife favours her brother over me when cutting slices!!

So no Ben (working at the aforementioned Hotel Chocolate), Daniella (visiting family), Malcolm (AWOL) and all our other possible players busy wrapping pressies or recovering from another hard days Christmas shopping.

To set the festive scene we had our decorations up and a medley of Christmas pop music, acquired over the years Gwen and I have been together, and as is the way of today all now stored on an Ipod. So with this music in the background we were reminded of Crispin’s simply awesome knowledge of music as he named the artist and song track after track in seconds with no errors and very few “don’t knows” during the whole evening.

Gwen needed to catch up on some paperwork so opted out of the first game leaving four of us: Natalie, Crispin, Alex and myself to play DiscWorld: Ankh-Morpork. This is a game we reviewed earlier this year and one that all the players were familiar with. When played with friends who can approach the game with the same levity and flexible approach to decency and social norms it is both very funny and challenging.

I think I may have mentioned before how sweet and innocent Natalie appears and how deadly she is in games that allow her to wreak havoc and mayhem (a game of Landlord springs to mind some months ago - although I cannot find it recorded on the blog) and so it was once again. Now I am sure if she was writing this post she may put a slightly different spin on things given that she had numerous minions removed (i.e. intimidated, murdered or assassinated) and she might point to the fact that I was one of the offenders attacking her from the off. But what I will remember from Wednesday night was the sound of glee in her voice when she muttered darkly to herself ‘excellent this is going to be fun’ as she drew the ‘Hello’ card then used it almost immediately to murder two minions – although I think on this occasion I escaped her attentions. In the back ground we had Crispin doing impressions of Leslie Phillips (of Navy Lark fame) saying 'Hello' in that very suggestive, almost salacious, way he had.

As it turned out Alex and I were both Lords and so trying to gain control of four districts of the city, something Alex was on the cusp of doing when Natalie played a random event card - The Flood and as luck would have it reduced his areas of control (to win the game you need to meet the winning condition at the beginning of your go) from 4 to 3 – shame. Crispin meantime was the Dragon King ergo was trying to spread trouble (little black markers); again he was on the cusp of winning when I squeezed in with control of 4 districts snatching the win from under his nose. Natalie had been Lord Vetinari and so was trying to get minions in 9 districts of the city and I am sure would claim that we repeatedly wrecked her plans for all my comments of how deadly she can be.

With such a close finish where frankly, had luck changed direction only slightly any one of us could have won, we all agreed once again what an excellent game Discworld: Ankh-Morpork is and how much we had all enjoyed the mayhem it seems to encourage.

With the first game out of the way Gwen now joined us along with coffees and munchies – thank you everyone.

Two quick games of Fuchs and Fertig saw Crispin continue to struggle, with this game, as much with luck as anything else whilst for the first game my luck held out and then Gwen won the second by discarding 8 cards in one go – well remembered, although she has an undeclared technique that some may call sharp practice!

With half an hour left and Kalimambo sitting in a corner there seemed only one choice to be made. As my review suggests this is not a game of high tactics rather toilet level humour mixed with luck and chaos. But for a group in the right festive mood it can provide an amusing half hour, similar to Hick Hack in that respect. In this game, Natalie (who so nearly won last time) quickly took a points lead on the score board (just to remind you points most definitely do not mean prizes in Kalimambo) with me close behind. Gwen was undisputed winner, having managed to dance around every single pile of elephant dung and receive what might be described as a single gentle kiss from Mambo, as opposed to the ramming Natalie and I repeatedly received.

So our last scheduled games evening of 2011 came to a close with festive music in the background, amusing games and good friends. When asked what their favourite games of 2011 had been:

Alex quickly responded with Dominion

Natalie went for Galaxy Trucker

Crispin thought this was difficult to answer in that how to you compare games like Fuchs and Fertig with a playing time of 10 mins with say Discworld: Ankh-Morpork (around and hour) or Stone Age (nearer two hours). Stone Age would feature high on his list although he too enjoyed the early games of Dominion, then a couple of games with either too many players or less enjoyable (in our view) card combinations left him disenchanted with this excellent game. Ultimately he felt they are all good but to say a favourite depends on who you are with and how much time you have to play a game, a sentiment the others agreed with.

Gwen’s list included Qwirkle, Stone Age, Alhambra, Colosseum and Dominion.

Thank you for reading this blog over the last year and I look forward to continuing the journey in the New Year.

More photos from the evening can be seen here.

If you would like to try some of the games mentioned in this post or indeed any of the others on this blog then why not come along to our next Social Evening with Game at the Blue Anchor on 8th January at 7pm. More details can be seen on our Facebook page ‘Social Gamers – Crowborough’.

News Update - More Zoch Games Available In The UK

2011-12-19T20:00:00.001Z

Following discussions at Essen Spiel 2011 I am pleased to be able to announce that some of the great games we have been talking about on my blog are at last going to be readily available in the UK through our friends Paul and David at GamesLore.

Aquileia	£32.49
Fuchs and Fertig	£7.49
Bamboleo	£45.99
Bausack	£45.99
El Paso	£18.49
Safranito	£27.49
Geistesblitz	£9.49

The prices are indicative and so may change.

Having only taken delivery of them today (19/12/2011) they may still show as 'pre-orders' on the GamesLore web site but its is great to see that games that we have picked up in Germany and have had so much fun with like Fuchs and Fertig, Geistesblitz, and Bausack are going to be more readily available in the UK.

Games in a Pub - 11th December 2011

2011-12-18T12:12:00.001Z

A large race and then some surprisingly disappointing games

With the rain lashing down outside I was surprised to find a large group ready and willing to play when I arrived at the Blue Anchor, last Sunday. With yet more people arriving close behind me and the festive season approaching it seemed (to me at least!) an ideal opportunity to give Pitch Car another run out.

With the evenings focus on social gaming and with so many people I suggested people pair up and play in teams of 2. It thus accommodated 12 players with a further 3 spectators. Mark and Nick took an early and commanding lead and were way ahead of the rest of us however as they entered the final lap everything went to pot and the way seemed open for Oliver and myself placed in second or the green team (see my post from 18th September 2011) in third. However whilst we were lucky enough to profit from their engine malfunction the green team lost it completely with their car doing pretty much everything you don’t want a car to do bar turning around and driving the wrong way around the track, to the point that they came in in last place - oops.

With this big game over we split into a number of smaller groups, one group happy to chat in the corner, another keen to play Settlers of Catan and another happy to play whatever I suggested – hmmm this can be a mistake at times!

Well Martin kindly undertook to teach the 6 people interested in playing Settlers of Catan. Ultimately in spite of his efforts the game proved disappointing for those involved with them abandoning it at around 10pm. In the post game analysis, I think the mistakes were:

1. Too many players – especially since NONE of them had ever played it before.

2. Not having one of us who have played it before actually involved in the game to clarify any uncertainties as they arose and help keep the game flowing quickly.

Sorry guys.

I guess this just goes to prove that you can have a bad experience with even the best game and if that were your only experience then you might conclude, mistakenly in my view, that board games are rubbish.

On the up side, for me at least, it was great to hear that having played and enjoyed both Braggart and Discworld: Ankh-Morpork at our pub games evenings previously Nick and his friends had bought both games and in the case of the later played over a dozen times already.

Other games played during the evening were TransEuropa, Fuchs and Fertig, Kalimambo and Villa Paletti. It was obviously something to do with the weather outside because Kalimambo which has been successful with everybody else we have played it with left the group of players Sunday night distinctly unimpressed. So sadly a couple of disappointing games experiences to end 2011.

But to finish 2011 on a positive note we started the year with a couple of friends and family with the notion that we would quickly attract 20 plus people (naive), this did not occur and by the middle of the year I was contemplating giving the idea up as we had so little support. However in our darkest hour we were found or joined by a number of different people and as we look towards 2012 I believe we have found a kernel of people around which a sustainable group can be built. If you are one of those people – THANK YOU. If you are a reader of this blog but have not been able to join us thank you for your support and positive vibes!

More photo's from the evening can be seen here.

Our next event at the Blue Anchor, Crowborough is in two weeks time on Sunday ~~11th~~ 8th January starting at 7pm - £1 per head. More details can be seen on our Facebook Page Social Gamers - Crowborough

Review – Kalimambo

2011-12-17T22:19:00.000Z

3-7 Players, Aged 8+ with a 20-30 minute playing time

A review copy of Kalimambo, designed by Antonio Scrittore, was kindly provided by Zoch GmbH.

Kalimambo is an amusing family game where an unwitting group of amateur explorers (the players) are led through the jungle by Kali (a newly discovered species - our group though that it was an African land based seal!), trying to avoid stepping in elephant dung and all the while being chased by Mambo the large and very fast rhino

When Mambo catches you he inflicts a number of damage points, if he catches Kali then the slowest explorer receives the damage, if you tread in the elephant dung you get negative points and if Kali steps in the elephant dung then the slowest explorer again gets the points. There are no ways to get positive points this is a game of damage limitation and trying very hard not to land in the ‘brown smelly stuff!’

What follows is an overview of the game broken down into 5 sections: The Game Components, Setting Up The Game, Playing The Game, What Did We Think? and finally Who Do We Think Will Like It?. So if reading the whole review doesn't appeal just scan down to the headings that do.

The Game Components
1 game board with a track around its edge made up of artistic images of animals.

7 Amateur Explorers (wooden tokens) in 7 different colours together with a Set of 12 Cards for each player, numbered 0 to 11, in the same colour.

Mambo the grey rhino.

Kali and a set of 12 black cards, numbered 0 to 11.

6 Dung Heaps!

1 Sore Pad

Setting Up The Game
The person who most recently stepped in dung pile (what an honour!) places Mambo on any of the spaces on the game board, facing in either direction - this determines the direction of the race.

Each player selects an ‘amateur explorer’ and the associated 12 coloured cards.

The explorer tokens are randomly placed in front of Mambo, one on each space. Kali is then placed at the front of the line.

Kali’s cards are shuffled and placed face down by the side of the board.

The 6 Dung Heaps are placed on any of the spaces on the game board including the spaces that Mambo, Kali and the explorers have been placed on. The only limitation is that the dung tokens should not be placed next to each other.

Playing The Game
Each Explorer selects one of their numbered cards and then all simultaneously reveal them. Kali’s topmost card is then revealed.

The numbers on the cards determine the order in which Kali and the player’s Explorer tokens will be moved NOT the distance they move.

We found the best way to do this was for one player to move the explorer’s tokens whilst another kept score.

The Explorer who played the highest card moves first. Their token is moved in a leap frog type fashion to the front of the line. As you do this, turn over the card to create a discard pile for that player’s cards.

The Explorer’s tokens are then moved and cards discarded in similar fashion with the lowest card going last and thereby ending up furthest away from Mambo as they will inevitably be at front of the line.

The game then proceeds over 10 further rounds with Explorers selecting a card, revealing it and moving their Explorers.

Things to note are:

That, when moved, Kali and the Explorer tokens are always moved to the front of the line even if there are gaps in the line.

That if two or more Explorers have played the same value card then the Explorer whose token nearest the back of the line i.e. nearest Mambo is the only one to move which obviously leaves the others at risk of being caught by Mambo– oh dear!

If your Explorer lands on a space with elephant dung then you receive three negative points.

When Kali and all the Explorers have had their cards resolved and been moved or not, Mambo moves from his current space to the space immediately behind the last Explorer counting the number of intervening spaces. This is then awarded to the last player as negative points, a penalty for getting caught!

That the Explorer who plays the lowest value card gets any negative points that Kali would have received for either treading in dung or being hit by Mambo. If two or more Explorers have played the same lowest card then they all receive the negative points.

That if you have just been hit by Mambo then the next urn it is a really good time to play the 0 card as Mambo only inflicts damage when he moves. If your token is immediately in front of Mambo then he cannot move this turn. This will cause Mambo to inflict a lot more damage on subsequent turn as he will have further to run (OK this may not be nice but hey it’s a game!) and if you play your cards right then you will not find yourself at the back of the line i.e. play a low card on the next turn!

Make sure you have played your 0 card by the last turn as playing a 0 when you are not immediately in front of Mambo is a sure fire way of getting caught and having the inevitable negative points awarded to you.

The winner is the player who has been hit the least by Mambo and most successfully avoided the dung, or put another way has the fewest points!

What Did We Think?
Kalimambo is a little chaotic but frankly to our mind that is part of its charm.

The board is colourful and attractive and as you would expect given the theme of the game a little abstract. The wooden tokens are sturdy and colourful and will to my mind boost its appeal to the younger audience.

The playing time and complexity felt right as a game that is intended as a family game that will work with children aged 8+. The combination of elephant dung and being chased by a rhino caused great hilarity each time we have played it and will I believe have a strong appeal to all those young at heart.

Our Social Gamers really liked it, they enjoyed playing it, would happily play it again and felt it stood up well against other games we might use at the beginning or end of a games evening.

I have now played it with several groups of adults, adults and teenagers, adults and a 10 year old and adults and 7 year olds; in all bar one case we have had a very enjoyable game with lots of laughs - winning didn’t really come into it. However, on one occasion the game went down like a lead balloon.

As I have said before there are many games and opinions on whether a game is good or bad are seldom 100% unanimous.

Who Will It Work For?
Any families with children aged over 8 (maybe less, as said we played with 7 year olds but they are used to playing games).

Anybody looking for a game that can be played in about 40 mins, that doesn’t require much brain power, will result in lots of toilet type humour and noises and where they don’t mind being impacted by the random effects of other players choices.

It won’t work for those who:

Don’t find humour in elephant dung or being butted by a rhino
Nor for people who want to be in control of winning a game!
As for any game those people who don't fall into either of the above camps but for whom the combination of elements in the game just don't work

Review - Pictomania

2011-12-17T17:13:00.002Z

3-6 players, Aged 9+ with a playing time of 25+ mins

A review copy of Pictomania (designed by Vlaada Chvátil whose other games include Galaxy Trucker, Dungeon Petz and Dungeon Lords) was kindly provided by Czech Games Edition.

Played first when it was still at the prototype stage last summer, I thought then that it would be a fun game, ideally suited to parties and family gatherings. In its finished form its components are functional rather than inspiring, albeit of a high quality. However the game itself is every bit as much fun as I expected.

It is a game of art, communication and interpretation where players have to draw an image to represent one of the 42 possible images whilst simultaneously guessing which image each of the other players is drawing – frenetic.

As a game with an age of 9 to 99 it is not surprising that Pictomania has 4 levels of difficulty and rules that will definitely allow it to be played at the younger end, indeed we had a game where we had four adults and two 7 year old's who both scored well and enjoyed it every bit as much as the adults.

What follows is an overview of the game broken down into 5 sections: The Game Components, Setting Up The Game, How To Play The Game, What Did We Think? and finally Who Do We Think Will Like It?. So if you don't want to read the whole review scan down to the heading that interests you.

The Game Components
99 double-sided Word Cards with 4 levels of complexity represented by the colours of the cards from Green through Orange, to Blue and finally Purple. Each card is double sided and has 7 words or phrases on each side.

2 Cardboard Holders, each with three different symbols (6 in total), these are used during the game to hold the 6 Word Cards being used for each round.

6 Drawing Tablets (with boxes down one side to record the players score in each round), 7 Guessing Cards (numbered 1 to 7) and 5 Scoring Tokens (three with a value of 1, one of 2 and one of 3) in the 6 player colours, red, yellow, green, blue, purple and orange.

6 whiteboard style marker pens and 6 eraser / wiper cloths.

13 Black Cards, six with the symbols mentioned earlier and seven numbered 1 to 7.

5 Bonus Tokens with stars on them - one token with 1 star, two with 2 and two with 3 stars.

Setting Up The Game
Depending on the number of players set out a number of Bonus Tokens in the middle of the table. Once players have finished drawing and guessing players can grab one of these tokens.

Each player takes a Drawing Tablet, 7 Guessing Cards and a number of Scoring Tokens depending on the number of players.

Shuffle the Black Number cards and deal one to each player, face down. Then shuffle the Black Symbol cards and deal one of these to each player again face down. The remaining unused cards are placed to one side, face down; players do not look at these cards.

Decide what level of complexity is suitable/desirable and place 6 Word Cards of that colour in the Cardboard Holders so that all players can read them.

Give players a few moments to read all of them and if there are any words or phrases that a player is not familiar with they may reject one card.

How To Play The Game
Once all players have had a few moments to look at the cards the dealer (or whoever you wish) says ‘go’.

Players can then look at their two Black Cards identify which word or phrase they need to draw by looking at the 6 Word Cards in the Card Holders. They then place their Black Cards face down in front of them.

The aim is two-fold:

To draw the word of phrase indicated on your cards. This may be done slowly or quickly and in detail or poorly, but must conform to a number of rules e.g. you cannot use words, numbers, Morse code, the Greek alphabet or in some way indicate which card /word it is you are drawing. You are also, not surprisingly, not allowed to comment, murmur or in any way indicate what you are drawing through any sounds.
Guess what other players are drawing. When you believe you have identified what word or phrase, from the displayed Word Cards, another player is drawing then you place your Guessing Card corresponding to the number of the word or phrase face down on top of the players Black Cards.

When a player believes they have completed their drawing and guessed (or attempted to guess) everyone else’s images they can grab one of the Black Bonus tokens in the centre of the table, the more stars the better.

There will always be one less Bonus Token then there are players. When a player grabs the last token they shout ‘Stop’ and no more drawing or guessing is allowed.

It is conceivable that all players may finish drawing and guessing without grabbing the Bonus Token/s if they have struggled to identify the images drawn by the other players and therefore believe that they may be the ‘Black Sheep’, see the next section on scoring.

The Scoring
Resolved in turn each player:

Turns over the stack of cards in front of them and reveals the two Black Cards. This will indicate which word or phrase they were trying to depict and from which of the six Word Cards.
Identifies if the first players Guessing Card is correct. If it is they return the Guessing Card to the player along with the highest of their Scoring Tokens, if it is not the Guessing Card is placed in the middle of the table.
Work through each of the Guessing Cards in their pile either awarding Scoring Tokens or placing the Guessing Card in the middle of the table.

Players may be left with a number of Scoring Tokens roughly equal to the number of players who did not identify their drawing correctly.

The player with the most Guessing Cards in the centre of the table is designated the ‘Black Sheep’

Players now score points equal to the net of positive points on Scoring Tokens received less their Scoring Tokens not given out plus the value of the Bonus Token if they were not the ‘Black Sheep’ and minus if they were. The net total is written in the first of the five boxes on the players Drawing Tablet.

Next Turn
Guessing Cards and Scoring Tokens are returned to their players, Bonus Tokens are placed back in the centre of the table, the Black Cards are taken back and the deck of Symbol Cards is shuffled as is the deck of Number Cards. New Word Cards are placed in the cardboard holders, Black Number and Symbol cards are dealt to each player and the game turn proceeds as described earlier.

The game is played over 5 turns.

What Did We Think?
I am not a great fan of Pictionary, the most well known drawing game, or generally any game that calls on you to be artistic. However this game is like Identik (available in Waterstones Christmas 2011) in that it is as much about interpretation as it is art and I feel thus creates a much more interesting and balanced game that should appeal to a wider audience.

As already mentioned one of our games was with a mixed group of adults and children and everybody had a lot of fun, even though the children were only 7. It is maybe a more tense experience than Pictionary in that players are competing on their own whereas Pictionary is a team game. In Pictomania you have the pressure of trying to draw something whilst simultaneously guess what everybody else is doing and being conscious that game mechanism will penalise the player who completes their combination of drawing and guessing last.

Tense for sure but definitely thought it was fun, with a lot of laughter at our various efforts.

With the number of Word Cards it offers lots of replayability and an interesting option for those looking for something different for their families at Christmas.

Who Do We Think Will Like It?
Families and in particular those who enjoy games like Pictionary.

Gamers looking for a game that tests their artistic / interpretation skills, rather than their tactical nous.

If you liked this review then other games I have reviewed can be seen here

Match Report 5th December 2011

2011-12-06T19:12:00.066Z

Racing, digging, chasing and then a party with woodland friends!

Last night saw us change venue for the first time in nearly a year and thereby have the opportunity to involve Daniella’s 3 wonderful youngsters - they told me to write that!

With Malcolm off at a Christmas Party and Gwen resting her weary feet (recovery from the operations is proving to be a long process) we nevertheless mustered 5 of the usual suspects: Natalie, Crispin, Ben, Daniella and obviously your scribe.

With the youngsters involved I thought it would be a good excuse to let the group loose with Pitch Car a game both Ben and I acquired earlier in the year and have had a lot of fun with. However before I suggested that Ben bring his copy and more importantly his Extension I should have had a closer look at it. The concept of the game is that you have a racing track with up to 8 racing cars in the form of circular wooden disks that you take turns to flick around the track. The main rule to note is that if in the process of flicking your car you:

Knock your car off the track.
Knock another player’s car off the track.
Knock your car and an opponent’s/s off the track.
Turn your car or that of an opponent over

Then you go back to where you started that turn from, a rule that we invoked frequently.

Well this is a fun but tricky little game that takes practice to perfect the optimum approach to flicking your car, as too much power and your car goes sailing off the track, too little and you go nowhere and there is always the issue of opponents cars and trying to calculate the angles off the crash barriers. When you are doing well you feel like Sebastian Vettel and when done badly you end up loosing it and spinning off the track, going nowhere at all or worse still propelling an opponent’s car forward.

Great fun but it takes practice even when using the basic game. Well I foolishly asked Ben to bring the Extension, he was given for his birthday, as well – a mistake I feel! The Extension brings with it a tunnel, a bridge and the division of two bends into lanes by placing crash barriers down the middle of the track -hmmm! Something just designed to cause chaos.

By the time I realised my mistake the track was set up and we were off. With Daniella in pole position stalling (flicking her car of the track and so having to place it back where it started at the front of the grid) it was always going to be tricky. There is room for about 4 cars side by side on the track but if you allow for the accuracy of our flicking you can call that no more than two! Those that managed to get round her without either flicking themselves or an opponent’s car of the track piled into the second bend and the lanes I mentioned earlier. Not surprisingly given the lack of experience there was a huge pile up with cars going in all directions and it taking some time before any cars could successfully navigate the bend other than Leonie who drove (flicked ) like a pro from the off - like Vettel she never let anyone else close to getting a shot at winning the race. Daniella after an awful start where she flicked either her or opponents cars off the track numerous times navigated the mess at the second bend and went onto come in second place.

Everybody seemed to really enjoy the game and whilst I suspect it might have worked better if we had omitted the expansion, given that this was completely new to so many, Leonie’s heroic win rather belies this thought. However, it would certainly have been a much faster race and we would have had the time to get a number of laps in without the complications of the Extension.

With a large group and only one table we went for an old favourite next, Saboteur, a game where players have concealed identities in which the good dwarves try to get to dig tunnels to the gold whilst the bad guys try to sabotage the efforts of the good guys. With nobody sure of what role other players are playing this game always leads to much false accusation and protestations of innocence even when patently untrue – from me at least! Lots of fun with the first round going to the good guys (boo hiss – I was a Saboteur at this stage) and then the subsequent two rounds going to the Saboteurs (players roles change in each round). Leonie won this game, again by some margin, since she found the gold in the first round and then, in spite of her innocent looks and comments, she was a Saboteur in the second and third rounds.

Time for the munchies, Natalie’s offering were savoury cheese and chive muffins and we were then spoilt with a Lemon Drizzle cake from Daniella, as delicious as ever.

At this point Matt headed off to do some studying taking our number down to 7 so, having really enjoyed Kalimambo on our previous evening there was little hesitation when this game was suggested again. In this game, players find themselves in a bizarre race where the person at the back of the line is inevitably caught by Mambo the rhino and the unwary / unlucky find themselves treading in the elephant dung. Both events result in receiving negative points and the aim of the game is about getting as few negative points as possible.

Sadly for Crispin he took an early lead in acquiring these points and never really looked back, treading in dung at every opportunity. Natalie and Tom took a different approach both navigating this challenging race track and its inhabitants without a single mishap until that is the last round. By this stage the rest of us were covered in brown smelly stuff and battered and bruised from having been caught by Mambo. Sadly for Natalie and to Tom’s delight player after player moved past Natalie leaving her firmly at the back of the line with the inevitable negative points for the considerable distance Mambo had had to cover to catch her. Tom on the other hand nestled safely in amongst the adventurers avoiding both Mambo and the dung once again.

With 10 minutes to go before Daniella threw us out and having lost Daniella to the washing up (the delights of being the host of these evenings have a negative side as well) and loosing Leonie exhausted from her victories and the trauma of seeing her younger brother win a game we turned to our current favourite 10 minute game –Fuchs und Fertig.

Needing minimal explanation and with 12 cards dealt, Crispin started and immediately guessed wrong, something he continued to do in all his subsequent rounds – he really didn’t have a good evening on the score board. Whilst Natalie on the other hand slowly but surely guessed her cards correctly and then as she started seeing cards again stopped guessing and was hesitantly but surely remembering the cards she had already seen. Needless to say she won and we completed the game in just over 10 mins. Not bad for a 5 player game with a rules explanation!

More photos from the evening can be seen here.

If you would like to try some of the games mentioned in this post or indeed any of the others on this blog then why not come along to our next Social Evening with Game at the Blue Anchor on 11th December at 7pm. More details can be seen on our Facebook page ‘Social Gamers – Crowborough’.

Mini Review - Hick Hack in Gackelwack

2011-12-04T21:58:00.002Z

Also known as Hick Hack for short or Pick Picknic: 2 to 6 players, Ages 8+, 30 Minute Playing time

This is a fun little game, designed by Stephan Dorra and published in Germany by Zoch GmbH., where players balance the alternative of trying to get as much feed for their poultry as possible or send in the foxes and try and eat the other player’s poultry! It may look a little childlike but like so many of the Zoch games it’s good fun whatever your age. Our Social Games groups have had a huge amount of fun playing this game over the last year.

Game Components
There are 6 types of poultry in the game: chicken, game hens, pheasants, ducks, geese, and turkeys (these types matter little but might add more interest when playing with younger children).

What is important is that each breed will only feed in their own yard, represented by a 12cm square “yard tile” on which the colour and images match the colour and images on the 60 cards. There are 10 cards of each colour; 7 of which show various sized birds of the same breed and 3 of which show foxes who will each only eat one breed of poultry - obviously raised to be picky eaters!

There are 78 mall wooden cubes representing the corn that the birds will eat throughout the game, different colours have different nutritional values – Green - 1, Blue - 2 Yellow - 3.

1 Die

Setting Up The Game
Place the 6 coloured Yard tiles in the centre of the table.

6 cubes are randomly selected and distributed each turn to the 6 poultry yard tiles.

The deck of cards is shuffled and each player is dealt 5 cards. Each poultry card has a number either between 3 and 6 or -2 (the “fleet fowl”), whilst the foxes have a number between 4 and 6. The numbers reflect the relative size / strength of the bird or fox. These numbers become very relevant when more than one bird or fox turns up to feed at the same tile.

Playing The Game
Each player decides which poultry Yard (tile) they intend to visit this turn by placing one card (either fox or poultry) of that breed/colour face down in front of them. Once revealed:

1. Players who have played a unique poultry card i.e. a card of a colour that nobody else has played get to eat all the feed present on the corresponding tile.

2. Where more than one player has played a card of the same colour depicting a bird, the players can negotiate the division of feed between them, or in our experience more typically fight over who gets the feed. The poultry fight by rolling a die and adding the die number to the number on each bird’s card - the highest combination wins. However if your bird had a -2 then you get a piece of Green feed before the other birds fight over the remaining feed.

3. Once the birds have eaten their cards are put on the discard pile.

4. As the game progresses not all the feed gets eaten each turn and so there can be a build up of feed. This obviously attracts the attention of other player’s poultry as well as those damned foxes described in more detail below.

5. Players who placed cards with foxes eat any poultry of the same colour as the fox card (i.e. the collect those poultry cards), if any turned up to feed or rue the fact that they went after the wrong type of poultry.

In one of our games, my foxes went hungry on three occasions whilst on three separate occasions Malcolm sat chuckling away as his foxes munched on my poultry - oh the injustice.

6. If more than one fox turns up then their fight (they never negotiate) is resolved in the same way as described for the poultry with the pultry card going to the winner.

7. Any player who sent a ‘fleet fowl’ i.e. a poultry card with a -2 on the card gets one Green feed before they are then gobbled up by the fox. The fox gets the poultry card with the -2 towards their overall score at the end of the game.

So the game consist of birds eating corn and foxes eating birds and the winner being the player who has managed to use his cards to eat the most - the sum of the corn cubes and poultry cards eaten by their foxes.

This was a game picked up at Essen 2010 (for a mere for a mere 7 Euros) which like Straw and Saboteur has become a regular at our games evenings. It is very light but has that mischievous element that my group love, we would strongly recommend it as an amusing game that in our experience works well whatever your age and whether you are a gamer or non-gamer.

If you liked this review then other games I have reviewed can be seen here

Games for Christmas 2011

2011-12-04T17:33:00.001Z

New and alternative board game ideas for this Christmas

As the pressure builds towards the Christmas and New Year bank holidays many people will start thinking about what game to buy for Christmas. Having played some brilliant games this year with people representing a broad cross-section of society from primary children to people in care homes (and every point in between) I thought it might be worth highlighting some of my favourites from this year. I have broken this article into three section:

Games We Have Had Lot of Fun With During 2011
Alternatives To The Perennial Favourites
Where To Buy The Games In This Article

And it maybe that an article written earlier this year may be of interest on Why Games Work in Some Families and Not Others.

A common factor amongst the games in this article is they generally seek to emphasise social interplay, maybe a touch of strategy, more skill than luck, short playing times and rarely have player elimination.

Games We Have Had Lot of Fun With During 2011
These games are not necessarily games that have been released this year but they are games that I have seen being enjoyed by many different people and or caused a lot of laughter when we have played them.

Fuchs and Fertig

This is a late entry being a game I brought back from Essen 2011. It can be played in 5-10 minutes takes up little or no space, works well with every age group, as long as the teenagers don’t go ‘I’m too cool for this’! Essentially it is a push your luck memory game that will have players frustrated and delighted in equal measure. Everybody we have put it in front of has really enjoyed this quick card game about a fox and his woodland friends. A full review can be seen here.

Kalimambo

Another late entry and a game where a group of adventurers are chased by a rhino whilst trying to avoid piles of elephant dung. With the artwork it is likely to immediately appeal to children but if this doesn’t put you off it is a game (there are some tactics to it) with about a 40 minute playing time that will bring a lot of smiles and humor to any table over Christmas. It also has the advantage of being playable by 7 players. My review of Kalimambo can be read here.

Hey! That’s My Fish

In my view this one is only really only worth buying if you go for the deluxe edition that comes with some superb surfing penguins. The game sees players, in the form of their team of penguins, munching their way through the frozen tiles of fish that make up the “ice flow” games board. As the fish get eaten so the ice flow shrinks. This is a board game with some great components that children, not surprisingly, love but which actually offers a more tactical game than might be obvious at first.

Army Of Frogs

Another child like game but again one that can involve a lot of tactics; with its hard wearing plastic (almost marble) frogs it is a game that can be played anywhere. So whether you find yourself skiing or sitting in a beach or at a table by a log fire this is a game that can cope and will appeal to those looking for something with a little mental challenge but where they don’t want lots of rules and care little about beautiful graphics and colourful components.

Discworld: Ankh-Morpork

Another late entry only being released this September it has lots of player interaction, albeit mainly of the malicious kind (so may not work for everybody). A game for families relaxed about playing board games who don’t mind a game where you are called to act out of character and spread trouble and mayhem through Terry Pratchett’s Discworld city of Ankh-Morpork. Each player takes the character (kept secret) representing one of the7 powerful political leaders of the city each with their own hidden winning conditions. We have played this game a number of times, it has always been very closely fought, fun, plays in just over the hour and has lots of replayability. My review of Discworld: Ankh Morpork can be read here.

Forbidden Island

Join a team of fearless adventurers, very much in the style of Indiana Jones, on a do-or-die mission to capture four sacred treasures from the ruins of this perilous paradise. You and your fellow players will have to work together under increasing pressure, as the island slowly (at first) starts to sink beneath your feet! You race around the Island attempting to collect the treasures and shore up the island. Only when you have all the treasures can your team make it back to the helipad and attempt to escape the island. Forbidden Island is a great introduction to modern collaborative games.

Pitch Car

This is a game that adults and children will enjoy and is pretty good from a spectator point of view. With a heavy wooden track players flick their racing cars around a track. If they knock another players car of the track they have to go back to their start position, if they flick themselves off the track they go back to where their start position. However if you get your angles right you get the elation of bouncing of a number of crash barriers and covering a significant distance on the track. Unlike all the other games mentioned it also works really well as a team game and is a game with lots of extensions.

Alternatives To The Perennial Favourites
The suggestions that follow are all games we have played and enjoyed and have to varying degrees similarities to their more well known counterparts :

Like Dominoes? Take a look at Qwirkle

Qwirkle, this year’s Spiel des Jare winner is a brilliant family game that looks good, feels good and will offer a tile laying game that grandparents will feel immediately comfortable with whilst children will enjoy just as much. Whilst not the most taxing game in this article it offers a light tactical dynamic that is ideal over a coffee and mince pies.

Like Jenga? Take a look at Bausack or Villa Palletti both of which take building to a whole new level!

Bausack mentioned in last year’s article is simply brilliant and should seriously be considered if you are looking for a tactile game that is almost as good to watch as it is to play. Our games have predominantly used the ‘Tower of Babel’ rules however the game comes with 4 different sets of rules, once again adding significantly to the replayability.

Villa Palletti is by the same publisher, Zoch, and is a Speil des Jahre (SdJ)winner from 2002. More of a structured tactile game than Bausack it never the less won the SdJ accolade in 2002 because it is such a good family game.

Like Jigsaw Puzzles? Try Carcassonne

Carcassonne is a game not a jigsaw puzzle but as a tile laying game which builds into an attractive medieval landscape and as another Spiel des Jahre winner it is a superb family game that may appeal particularly to families where Jigsaw’s are popular. Depending on the group it can almost be collaborative but is equally good as a two player game were the competitive dynamic will be more obvious.

Like Monoploly? For Sale, Last Will or Bohnanza are all less attritional; no one is excluded before the game end.

For Sale is a game of two parts. Firstly players build a portfolio of properties and then they seek to sell them. The winner being the player who ends the game with the greatest monetary value. It may sound a little dull but the artwork is amusing with properties ranging from a Cardboard Box or a Dunny at one extreme to palatial mansions and even a Space Station at the other. With a game time of around half an hour and no player exclusion it delivers the property theme in an engaging and enjoyable way without the tension that so often surrounds Monopoly.

Last Will is another new game from Essen 2011 and offers players the inverse of Monopoly in that in this humorous take on Victorian reality the aim is to lose a set amount of money as fast as possible. It is a more thoughtful game than many of the others on this year’s list and offers players lots of choices that they will need to balance and no single clear way to win. It has evocative artwork, no random luck caused by the throwing of a dice, stimulating game play, no player exclusion and a playing time between 1hr-1½ hours. If you are looking for something a little more testing then this excellent game from CGE is worth considering. My detailed review can be found here.

Bohnanza offers a trading card game on the theme of being a bean farmer with amusing cards and a game that calls for almost constant negotiation between the players. This is another game that has proven hugely popular with our group of Social Gamers because of the strong interplay between the various players. There cannot be many games were you can relax when you hear the cry ‘I will give you a black eye!’(Black Eyed beans are one of the many bean types in this excellent card game.)

Like Pictionary? You might also like Pictomania or Identik

Pictomania is a game released this year by the Czech games publisher CGE. With categories in the box that will work with ages from 9 (and we played it with two 7 year olds who really enjoyed it) to 99. There are a number of cards placed in the centre of the table each with 7 words on them. Each player has to draw one word whilst simultaneously trying to guess what the other players are drawing. Pictomiania takes the drawing theme found in Pictionary into much more of a game. My review of Pictomania can be read here.

Identik is an older game but again little known in the UK, where one player has a minute to describe an image on a card whilst the other players have to draw what they hear (they cannot see the image). When the time has expired then the drawings are marked against 10 criteria. This game has proved popular with a teenage family we know well and is as much about communication skills as it is drawing.

Like Risk? Try Kingdom Builder

Kingdom Builder is a territory building game for 2 to 4 players aged 6+ (!) with a variable board that is set in a vaguely medieval setting that will play within an 45 mins to 1 hour . With its high quality components and with its variable setup using 4 of 8 game boards, 4 of 8 Special Action Cards and 3 of 10 Kingdom Cards it is a game with bags of replayability. Add this to simple rules and fast game play and I think it would offer families an interesting alternative to one of the classic games.

Like Sudoko? Try a new challenge – Take It Easy

Take It Easy! Offers a game that can be played solo or with up to 6 that whilst having a strong mathematical theme is a bit of a puzzle, simple to understand and can be played at a number of levels. The aims to create lines of continuous colour across the hexagonal game board with each colour being worth a number of points between 1 and 9 and completed lines being worth a multiple based on the length of the line. With younger children you can convert this times table dimension to a completed line being worth the colours number rather than a multiple. Interestingly it was at the top of the list for one of our 6 year old relatives last Christmas. This is another game we feel can be enjoyed over a coffee or a glass of mulled wine.

Like Yahtzee? Consider Roll Through The Ages: The Bronze Age

If you like throwing dice and ticking off the results on a sheet of paper then maybe Roll Through The Ages: The Bronze Age may appeal. With its polished wooden boards (1 per player) dice (7) and score pad it is a game that has a very similar feel to Yahtzee but instead of ticking off number combinations you have a dice per city and gain trade goods and raw materials allowing you to build more cities, monuments and acquire civilization. It plays differently every time and is a game we have played many times over a coffee break; it is one we feel works particularly well with 2 players.

Where to Buy The Games In This Article
This falls into three distinct categories depending on how much effort you want to expend.

1. Specialist Internet Games Suppliers
These are people whose full time job is involved with games and so if you want to talk through alternatives then these guys have the experience and expertise to help.

I could have listed many but will limit myself to three (I am not on commission):

Imagination Gaming
Nigel and Chris are specialists in games that work with non gamers and that can be taught in seconds. If they don’t answer the phone immediately it is because they are in a school using games as a tool working with children of all abilities.

GamesLore
Paul and David have a wide selection of games suitable for all ages and interests.

BoardgameGuru
Paul offers many of the same games as GamesLore but with a stronger focus on gamer’s games, often imported from Europe and the US.

2. Games Stores on the High Street
There are specialist games shops out there albeit not many but a list can be found here. They may not always have the games mentioned here and depending on their focus may be focused more on ‘gamers’ than families / social gamers, but would always be worth talking to.

WH Smith and Waterstones
Both of these stores carry some of the more expensive modern games at Christmas including a number of Spiel des Jahre winners.

The Works
This is a discount store which over the last few months has started carrying some excellent board games (at heavily discounted prices) alongside some that are not so good. Many of the games they stock have not been mentioned in this article but maybe worth considering. If you are tempted then check out the games on www.boardgamegeek.com for a descriptions; reviews can be found under the Forum section on each game and broadly if the games has a score of 6 + it’s an OK game and a 7 is a good game.

3. Amazon
Many of the games mentioned here can be obtained via Amazon. I wouldn’t encourage you to use this channel but I do understand why people use it….simplicity, single point for multiple related items and cost.

If you have read this far and are curious to read more and or still looking for something slightly different then try:

Games for Christmas 2010 on this blog

Or

Boardgamegeeks Board Game Gift Guide 2011

Or

The BoardGameFamily - Game Gift Guide 2011

Games In A Pub – 27th November 2011

2011-11-30T23:10:00.000Z

Still more new faces with both new and traditional games

The pub was buzzing Sunday night and we had the pleasure of welcoming a number of new people who had come along to play both traditional games as well as our more modern offerings.

Having been going since the beginning of the year it is always really encouraging when new people appear having discovered us via one of the many advertising mediums we use.

On this occasion three of the new faces found us via our Boardgamegeek postings and Facebook. Although I think they would consider themselves ‘gamers’ familiar with much meatier fair than we typically have on offer at the Blue Anchor games evenings, they willingly took on the challenge of playing a variety of lighter weight games they had not played before. In more than one case these were games they had heard of and wanted to play but not had the opportunity to play before.

It is in the nature of the evenings that we offer a range of games (typically we have 30 to 40) that can be taught in very quickly, (seconds in some cases) have a relatively short playing times and typically have a fairly high level of player interaction. Whilst offering varying combinations of luck v’s tactical decision making they require no previous experience or knowledge, so can be played by everybody irrespective of their age, educational background, technical ability or level of general knowledge.

Basically games suitable for families, social gamers (people who play games for fun but would not call themselves ‘gamers’) and non-gamers alike.

Later in the evening we were joined by a larger group who appeared happy to play amongst themselves in the corner with some traditional games they had brought along.

Games played last night included: Straw, Patrician, Discworld: Ankh-Morpork, Hey! That’s My Fish, TransEuropa, The Dwarf King and Scrabble.

More photo's from the evening can be seen here.

Our next event at the Blue Anchor, Crowborough is in two weeks time on Sunday 11th December starting at 7pm - £1 per head. More details can be seen on our Facebook Page Social Gamers - Crowborough

Match Report 21st November 2011

2011-11-25T14:21:00.000Z

An evening playing with spices, chocolate and elephant dung!

Monday night saw another gathering of our games team with on this occasion, Malcolm (with photo’s of his MG project), Natalie (with scrummy chocolate and orange buns), Ben (with news of his new job at Hotel Chocolate - we do wonder if they will have to announce a profits warning having such a chocoholic on the staff - for Ben on the other hand a dream job), Crispin (with his good looks and charm!) and obviously Gwen and myself.

As the conversation was beginning to slow and Natalie trying hard to balance her lack of interest in the photos of Malcolm’s car with not wanting to appear rude (with a car mad father she has I suspect seen all the photo’s of engines and wheels she will ever want to) we repaired to the dining room.

First up was one of our current favourites Fuchs and Fertig a silly but very funny push your luck game where the players need to guess if the next card they are going to turn over will show an animal larger smaller or the same size as the last card; the winner being the first player to get rid of all their cards.

As I sat out of this game I was able to observe at close quarters
the difficulty others have in guessing and then memorising the order of the cards. Both Natalie and Crispin in particular seemed to repeatedly turn over a bear or the ant (the largest and smallest animals depicted respectively) card and not unreasonably guess that the next card would be smaller or larger only to then turn over another bear or ant to cries of anguish from them and delight from the other players. This game took no more than 10 mins for Malcolm to emerge victorious.

Discworld: Ankh-Morpork
2- 4 players, aged 10+ , 60 minute playing time
Next we split up with Gwen leading another newly acquired Zoch game - Safranito and me leading another current favourite Discworld: Ankh-Morpork. Safranito is a physical game and I was initially a little worried that having Gwen, Malcolm and Ben throwing, what look a little like poker, chips would be very distracting to our game. But once Crispin, Natalie and I got into the machinations of this excellent Martin Wallace /Treefrog game we took little notice of the cries coming from thither end of the table.

This is not a game to hold back when it comes to knobbling your fellow players, as the dynamics of the game mean that winning is as much about stopping the other players as what you do yourself. To do this all players to varying degrees spread chaos (trouble markers), assassinate other players minions, extort money with menaces, seek to dominate areas of the city and generally spread their minions throughout the city.

To win this game guessing which of the 7 characters your opponents are playing is very important so that you can foil their plans - and I was struggling with this. I had both pegged as Lords. As it turned out this was a mistake with Natalie ultimately winning as Lord Vetinari (she needed minions in 10 city districts). However the game was very close with me nearly winning a number of times (I was a Lord and so needed control of 5 city districts) only to have Crispin repeatedly assassinate or otherwise noble my minions. However when Natalie declared victory with a very small fist raising gesture and a cry of YEAH Crispin revealed his character as Commander Vimes (his condition was to have ensured nobody else won and for the draw deck t be exhausted - there were only three cards left!

From half way through the game Crispin was saying how much he was enjoying this game, a game that in our view only gets better on subsequent plays.

Safranito 2-4 players, aged 8+, 30 minute playing time

At the other end of the table the guys had been playing Safranito. The game board depicts bowls of 9 different spices, 4 special event spaces and has a raised lip with spaces marked for spice cards. The aim of this unusual board game is to throw poker like chips onto the game board and by their position either buy or sell spices, gain a secret spice blend recipe, gain an extra turn, gain secret spice cards or take control. There are always 2 face up spice blend cards depicting the 3 spices required to make the blend, the aim is to acquire the cards to make up the blend – the first person to have 3 completed spice blends in their possession is the winner.

Malcolm and Ben trying this for the first time both enjoyed it and felt it offered something completely different; although a physical game this is not a game for young children and is an interesting addition to my games collection blending acquisition and trading with dexterity and motor control. Finishing slightly ahead of our game Gwen and her supporters served coffee and Natalie’s lovely munchies.

Kalimambo 3 -7 Players, Aged 8+ , 30 minute playing time

Our group are thankfully always game to try the new games I buy and am given as review copies and so another Zoch game Kalimambo made it to the table. Having had a hoot playing it a few times over the weekend with a couple of 7 year olds we felt sure our friends would enjoy this game. Kalimambo is a board game about a weird animal (Kali) leading an expedition of explorers in the jungle who are in turn being chased by Rhino (Mambo). The weird wooden animal token was thought by me to be a black mongoose whilst my fellow players thought it to be a seal - obviously because you get a lot of seals in the jungle living alongside rhinos! Interestingly the two 7 year olds had not worried about what type of animal it was. I am not sure what this says about either group of players!

The aim of Kalimambo is to avoid the elephant dung on the board (nice brown round wooden dung pile shaped tokens - as you might expect Crispin felt for enhanced realism they should perhaps have been of squidgy rubber and perfumed!) whilst at the same time not finding yourself at the back of the column of explorers as Mambo is sure to catch you.

Each player has a set of cards numbered 0 to 11 and players play one of these each turn. This will determine the order with which the explorers play leapfrog on the game board e.g. the highest card moves their explorer to the front of the column first whilst the lowest moves last or in the case of a zero they don‘t move at all. If an explorer stands in the dung they get 3 damage points, whilst if Kali does (he has his own set of cards that are shuffled and then one is drawn randomly each turn) the 3 points are awarded to the player who played the lowest numbered card. When all the players have moved, Mambo chases the explorers and inflicts the number of spaces he has moved as damage on the last explorer. If Kali is in last place then again the damage is awarded to the player who played the lowest numbered card.

The winner if the game is the player with the lowest score at the end of the game. Kalimambo is a lot of fun, and, as you would expect of game in which dung features there is lots of sniggering over the many terms used to describe the ‘brown smelly stuff’ or the unfortunate players who end up standing in it! A game our group thoroughly enjoyed and thought would be a good end to any games evening.

More photos from the evening can be seen here.

If you would like to try some of the games mentioned in this post or indeed any of the others on this blog then why not come along to our next Social Evening with Game at the Blue Anchor on 27th November at 7pm. More details can be seen on our Facebook page ‘Social Gamers – Crowborough’.

Review – The Dwarf King

2011-11-24T18:55:00.000Z

3 to 5 Players, Ages 10+, 30 Min Playing Time

This is a game designed by Bruno Faidutti of Citadels and Incan Gold fame (well at least in our house) and released earlier this year by the French games publisher Iello, who also kindly provided the review copy.

The game immediately caught my attention due to a combination of its game play (based on a trick taking mechanism therefore it would be a game most non-gamers would immediately be comfortable with), and the beautiful (if you like fantasy) artwork.

What follows is an overview of the game broken down into 5 sections: Game Components, Setting Up The Game, Playing The Game, What Did We Think? and finally Who Do We Think Will Like It?. So if reading the whole review doesn't appeal just scan down to the headings that do.

Game Components
The Dwarf King is described as a “wild trick taking card game full of surprises” or randomness in our language and has a passing resemblance to Fluxx i.e. it’s a card game where the rules keep changing. When opening the quality magnetic box you find a deck of cards and a 20 Quest Tiles.

The deck of cards is made up of three suits, The Knights (Blue), The Goblins (Red) and The Dwarves (Green - I thought Goblin’s were always green!) plus 5 uncategorised cream coloured cards.

Sort the cards into two decks one consisting of the 5 uncategorised cream coloured cards, the three 1’s, and six 11’s (two from each suit) – Call this the Character Deck (called imaginatively the ‘Special cards’ in one place and the ‘Card Draw Pile’ in another within the rules).

The remaining cards form The Armies Deck; called the ‘basic cards’ in the rules.

Shuffle the Quest Tiles and place them face up in the middle of the table.

Setting Up The Game
Shuffle The Character Deck and turn over the topmost card reading it to all the players. Once everybody is clear about its impact / use, add this to The Armies Deck.

Example Character cards include:

The Dwarf Druid (Green 1) – After this trick swap your hand with another player of your choice.

The Goblin Ninja (Red 1) – You score 1 point for each Royal (Champion - the Aces, King, Queen or Jack) in the trick to which the Ninja is played.

The Knight Jester (Blue 1) - +3 points if you keep this card in your hand until the end and play it in the last trick of the hand.

Place the remaining cards in the Character Deck face down in the middle of the table.

If playing a 2 player game then remove the 2 of Dwarves (for the rest of the game) then shuffle the Armies Deck (with the Character Event Card) and deal all the cards face down to the players.

The players examine their cards and the player with the Knights Musician (the 5 of Knights) shows their card.

They then turn over the top Quest Tile read the narrative to the other players and decide, based on their own hand, which of the two scoring options will apply to the coming hand. Examples include:

Four Tricks +5 points if you take exactly four tricks
or
Two Tricks +5 points if you take exactly two tricks

Three Quarter +4 points for each 3 and 4
Or
From Six to Seven +4 points for each 6 and 7

Knights and Royals +1 point for each Royal (J, Q, K, A) and for each Knight. Royal Knights score 2 points
Or
Without Knights and Royals -1 point for each Royal (J, Q, K, A) and for each Knight. Royal Knights score -2 points

Playing The Game
The player with the 5 of Goblins leads the first trick, with the remaining tricks of the hand being led by the winner of the preceding trick.

There are no trumps

You must follow suit if you can.

The highest card of the suit that led wins the trick; Aces (Champions) are high.

Points are scored and added up after each hand, although you may wish to do this after each trick

After all the tricks have been played the Character Card and the Quest Tile are discarded

The player who won the trick with the 5 of Dwarves is the dealer for the next hand and reveals a new Character Card shows it to everyone and then shuffles it into the Armies Deck.

The winner is the player with the highest points score after 7 hands.

What Did We Think?

It is random bordering on chaotic and of the games I played at Essen 2011 this year the one that had the most people laughing and therefore the one that I enjoyed playing the most.

On each of the subsequent times we have played The Dwarf King we have has a lot of laughs with it.

It is fast to explain and play with one serious proviso!

In each of our games there has been a debate of varying lengths about the interpretation of one or more Quest Tiles. This may have arisen when it was converted to English. The language itself is clear but in defining the scoring rules it feels ambiguous at times.

Some of the Quest Cards will result in big point’s scores whilst others are dependent on only one card. It seemed sensible to us that if the Character Card has been played and there are no more points to be gained based on the Quest Tile for this hand then you might as well end the hand and deal a new one.

Who Do We Think Will Like It?

Anybody that is up for a laugh and doesn’t mind a strong random element in a game, so long as there are no rules lawyers in the group.

Gamers, Social Gamers and Role Playing Gamers looking for a filler with a fantasy theme.

People who like trick taking card games.

Non gamers looking for something different for families at Christmas.

If you liked this review then other games I have reviewed can be seen here

Review – Last Will

2011-11-23T23:03:00.002Z

2 -5 Players, Age 12+ , Playing Time 60 minutes

A review copy of Last Will (designed by Vladimir Suchy; his other games include 20th Century, Shipyard and League of Six) was kindly provided by CGE.

I am a sucker for humour and good artwork and Last Will struck me as having both; set in Victorian England the game has a slightly Dickensian feel about it. Prior to his death a rich man had the inspired idea of deciding which of his nieces and nephews should inherit his fortune by giving them £70 each - the one who spends it fastest is obviously the most ‘competent’ and deserving beneficiary of his fortune!

What follows is an overview of the game broken down into 5 sections: Game Components, Setting Up The Game, Playing The Game, What Did We Think? and finally Who Do We Think Will Like It?. So if reading the whole review doesn't appeal just scan down to the headings that do.

Game Components
As you would expect with a game coming from the publisher of games like Dungeon Lords and Galaxy Trucker the components are all of the highest quality and there are plenty of them:

A central Game Board made up of three separate parts:

A Planning Board which is double sided to accommodate different numbers of players; this records the fluctuating property markets and provides an area where players can bid for a combination of, additional cards, Errand Boys, Actions and the Turn Order for later in the Round.

A Card Offering Board (again double sided) – To accommodate 7 or 8 face up cards available during each game Round. In addition there is a Supplemental Card Offering Board required when there are 3 or 5 players.

5 Player Boards (Green, Blue, Yellow, Red and Purple) which can each hold 5 cards. Plus 5 sets of Player Tokens consisting of 2 Errand Boys, 1 Planning Marker and 1 Action Marker - bizarrely in a different colour!

12 Player Board Extensions used to hold 1 additional card each and available to all players.

140 cards divided into 4 decks:

These decks are organised according to the design on their backs. The front of the card gives the playing instructions. Black bordered cards are played onto the Player Boards, White bordered cards are used once and discarded whilst Blue (Slate) bordered Companion cards are used in conjunction with other cards to help you spend extra money on your guest, dog, horse, or chef thereby enhancing your fun.

Events – White backs showing silhouette of a man with a penny farthing cycle on the back; all are white bordered on both sides; includes cards such as the Boat Trip, Dinner and the Theatre.

Helpers and Expenses –Wine coloured backs with silhouette of a gentleman with top hat; all are black bordered on the front; includes cards such as the School Chum, Estate Agent and a Carriage.

Properties – Brown and sepia coloured backs showing a silhouette of a house; all are black bordered on their front; there are 4 types of property in the game, three of which can be used as venues for costly entertainment with the possibility of depreciation if you fail to maintain your Town or Manor House or Mansion (this is a very good thing in this game). Farms do not depreciate but do allow for costly investments in Dogs or Horses. However, beware of having a property on your Player Board as the game nears its end as you can only go bankrupt if you owe more than the value of your assets!

Companions – Slate blue and pink backs with a silhouetted lady and her dog; all have blue borders on the front; these cards allow players to gain Guests, Dogs, Horses and Chefs which, used in conjunction with other cards, add to your fun and obviously cost you money.

Special Cards – Wine coloured backs showing 1,2 or 3 Crowns, these have black or white borders on the front and introduce expensive friends and events; in some cases the black bordered cards cost two actions to get onto the Player Boards but they can be game winning.

Wild Cards – These two cards have identical images of the 4 possible companions on both sides with blue coloured borders. The game Offering Board has at least one space for these cards and they can be used by the players to gain whichever type of companion they wish.

Last Will Cards – These 7 cards offer more variety to the game by changing the players starting money from £70 to £130 in £10 increments.

Plus 4 Property Adjustment Tokens; wooden tokens to represent the Companions: Dogs, Horses, Guests, Chefs; Property Value Markers; cardboard Money Tokens; a Start Player Marker and more...

Setting Up The Game
Make up the central Game Board based on the number of players and randomly place the Property Adjustment Tokens on the 4 places provided.

Shuffle the Special Cards based on the number of crowns on the back of the cards and place them in a single pile with the cards with one crown on top.

Shuffle each of the other decks of cards and place them by the Game Board face down.

Each player takes a Player Board and the corresponding Player Tokens plus, in the basic game, 70 pounds and 6 cards, 3 from the Helpers and Expenses deck and 3 from the Properties deck.

Create a bank (a pile) with the remaining Money Tokens and create piles of all the other tokens by the side of the game board.

Playing The Game
The game is played over a maximum of 7 rounds made up of 5 phases:

1. Set-up
Cards are dealt face up onto the Card Offering Boards as indicated by the symbols in the place holders so you will have cards from the Helpers and Expenses, Properties, Events, Wild Cards and perhaps most importantly the Specials decks. The Special Cards are typically more powerful, always in short supply and unlike the other decks only available through the Card Offering Board.

The exact combination of cards varies depending on the number of players and the round.

At the beginning of the first round,once they have seen what cards are on the Offering Board, players need to discard 4 cards taking their hand down to 2 .

2. Planning
Starting with the first player everyone uses their planning markers to indicate which of the six available planning options they wish to take during this round. Depending on the number of players the planning board gives various mixes of the following options:

a. 0-7 cards to be drawn from the Events, Helpers and Expenses, Properties or Companions decks as the planning marker is placed; the combination is the player’s choice.

b. 1 or 2 Errand Boys used in the Errands phase.

c. 1 to 4 actions to be used in the Action phase to play cards and spend money.

d. The player order for placing the Errand Boys. The player order is based on the position of the Planning Token with priority to those on the left.

As you might expect the decision making is always difficult never offering the players quiet the combination of choices they want, with the choice reducing the later your go after the start player. However, whilst you will frequently not get the option you really want the game mechanics mean this is frustrating rather than terminal in your efforts to win the game.

My feeling is that it will take a couple of games to fully understand the interplay between the various alternatives and feel comfortable with your decision making at this stage.

3. Errands
The players now place their Errand Boys one at a time on the Central Game Boards, in the order their planning tokens are in on the Planning Board, starting with the leftmost token. Each player places one Errand boy and then those that have a second one place them in turn.

The choices offered to the talented Errand Boys are many and varied, from:

· Manipulating the Property Market in preparation for buying or selling property. However don’t miss the opportunity to adversely influence the market if your preferred choices have already gone and you can see that one of your fellow players is likely to sell their properties!

· Obtain a Player Board Extension - we found it was useful to have at least one of these.

· Go to the Opera. You only spend £2 but crucially it doesn’t take any Actions and if you are lucky enough to have the Tailor card this increases to £5. This should be paid now! Don't do what we were doing for a while and omit to pay the money during this Phase, picking it up with all the other expenditures in the Action phase.

· Take one of the face-up cards on the Offering Board. This is the only way of accessing the more powerful Special Cards or you can go for a card that fits into your overall strategy; blocking other players can be a useful tactic here too.

· Acquire 1 face down card from one of the four regular decks. This may not be your first choice for an Errand Boy but again may be useful if you preferred options have already been taken amongst the face up cards on the Planning Board.

4. Actions
Having made your choices the players, again in the order determined at the planning stage, carry out their various Actions i.e. play the various cards they have acquired or activating the ones with an Action cost on their player boards. The players start by placing their Action Token on their Player Board against the number of Actions they have this Turn. Then move this down to zero as they use their Actions up. Examples include:

a. Playing a White bordered card and spending the associated Actions (indicated by an A in a red box on the card) and Money (indicated by a Gold Coin) e.g. A Soiree or Dinner card with a cost of £2 or one of the Ball cards with increasing levels of expenditure depending on the number of Actions used, up to a maximum of 7 Actions and a Cost of £25.

b. Placing a black bordered card onto your Player Board e.g. buying a property by placing a Mansion card at a cost of £15, a Farm at £10 (adjusting the costs by the figures on the Property Market and placing the depreciation marker on the top most value figure on the left hand side of the card) or one of the School Chums which allow you to either retain extra cards at each round end or take extra cards at the planning stage (and can also help you spend your money); the Gentleman’s Club which costs 2 Actions to place it but will allow you to spend £5 per turn for the cost of an Action.

c. Using a Companion or Companions with a white bordered card e.g. The Boat Trip will cost 2 Actions and £2, but if you can take along the Lady, A Dog and The Chef the expenditure could rise to £9. Alternatively depending on the type of Farm then using a Companion Card with a Horse and Dog can significantly increase the expenditure on the Farm every turn.

d. Activating a card on your Player Board, even those placed this turn e.g. the previously mentioned Gentleman’s Club. Having activated it expending the Actions and paying the Money over to the Bank the card should be slid down on the player board to reveal the Tick to indicate it has been used.

e. Selling a Property; typically Town and Manor Houses and Mansions will have depreciated whilst Farms won’t. However with timely manipulation of the Property Market it is possible to loose £6 on a single property simply by swinging the market from +3 at the time of the purchase to -3 when you sell it. If you are lucky enough or can engineer the situation of having two or more of the same property type this could prove very helpful.

f. Removing non Property Cards from the Player Board costs no Action points.

Once you have expended all your Actions it is worth having a quick look at your Player Board to see if there are any cards where you can spend money without expending any Actions.

5. End of Round
During this phase players:

· Depreciate any properties by moving the depreciation marker down one increment on the left hand side of the card - note some properties have a lot of increments whilst others have only a few and that there are some Helpers and Expenses cards that allow you to accelerate the rate of depreciation. This will apply even for properties bought during this Round.

· Reset any cards activated this Round (slide them up) on the Player Board

· Remove to the discard piles any cards not acquired from the Offering Board.

· Retrieve your Planning Markers and Errand Boys.

· Discard your hand down to 2 cards (4 with the School Chum on your Player Board);

· Advance the Round Counter.

The game is played over 7 rounds and the winner will be the player with the least money at the end of the last round or the player with the biggest deficit at the end of any round when one or more players go Bankrupt, remembering that you cannot go bankrupt if you have a property on your player board, that it costs an Action to remove a Property Card from the Player Board and that you need cash (money tokens ) in order to spend money ergo don’t get into the position of having a property, with no money and no actions left.

What Did We Think?

We really liked Last Will and it worked quite well as a two player game. You can’t like all the games you review but we were keen to play it a number of times as part of the review process.

It was interesting with challenging decisions but we felt would not be a game prone to analysis paralysis and had a playing time even on only our second game of under an hour.

Is it interesting enough to become a staple game? I am not sure. I suspect that this very largely depends on what you already have in your collection and the degree to which the theme or game play grabs you. It is certainly worth giving serious consideration and definitely on our current favourites list.

That this is a well constructed game that has a clear well illustrated set of rules and in the main excellent artwork on the cards. The colouring is broadly dark and gives a Dickensian almost dour feeling which is presumably intentional given the Victorian setting.

A small gripe was that I didn’t understand why the player’s Action Token was in a different colour to the rest of the player tokens.

We felt there is a lot to take in (we play a lot with Social Gamers) and the game would have benefited significantly from a quick player sheet that as a minimum explained the symbols on the cards.

As previously mentioned it will play faster and be far more enjoyable on subsequent plays i.e. it gets better with repeated play.

Whilst we will need to play more games to be certain of this our feeling at the moment is that 3 or 4 players would be optimal.

If you like this game then it may be worth taking a look at another game by Vladimir Suchy and published by CGE that we have enjoyed, League of Six. Read more of how we got on with League of Six at one of our games evenings earlier this year by clicking here.

Who Do We Think Will Like It?
Anyone with a playful cat!

With the combination of cards and the game play around acquiring them we felt there was plenty of replay-ability in the game and I would agree with Paul Lister (of Boardgameguru) that once you are familiar with the rules it would offer gamers a “go to fast playing card game with a strategic punch..." similar in that respect to Race for The Galaxy or Dominion.

Gamers who like worker placement games but are looking for something a little different.

Social gamers who are looking for something with a little more depth than the gateway level games.

Anybody who like board games centred around money.

With more interesting and balanced game play it may well also appeal to those non gamers who like Monopoly and are prepared to venture beyond the familiar.

If you liked this review then other games I have reviewed can be seen here

Games in a Pub – 13th November 2011

2011-11-14T18:45:00.013Z

Two new faces and three very different games

We started the evening with the fun family game Fuchs and Fertig – which I am sure would have surprised other punters in the pub had they come close enough to see what we were playing!

Fuchs and Fertig is a game about guessing the size of the animal on the next card you turnover (from the Ant to the Bear) it’s very light (child friendly), fast and with its push your luck element funny when you and your fellow players get it wrong. A full review of the game can be seen here.

With two new people joining us (one having travelled from Eastbourne) we moved onto Discworld: Ankh-Morpork a game played at our last Sunday session and that I had reviewed in the intervening time. Having explained the rules and with characters chosen we quickly get into the swing of the game with me demanding money with menaces, Martin retaliating with an assassination of one of my minions and Simon and Oliver going about achieving their objectives in an equally interactive (aggressive) fashion.

My objective as Lord Rust was to exert control over a mere 4 areas of the city, however unfortunately for me the others quickly spotted what I was up to and made sure that my building and minions were constantly assailed keeping me well clear of my victory threshold. Oliver threw everybody of the scent having little money but being Chrysoprase was actually trying to amass $50 and came very close through the acquisition of lots of properties (all of which counted towards his total), Simon if memory serves me correctly was Lord Vetinari but certainly had me
convinced he was Chrysoprase. However it was the Dragon King of Arms, Martin, who won in the end having spread chaos (trouble markers) throughout the city, well done. Although I am sure I heard him claiming at the beginning of the game that he didn’t entirely get it! All agreed that it would have been better had the city areas been more clearly marked out and that it was a game that would benefit from being played more than once.

With Discworld: Ankh-Morpork complete by shortly after 9pm we had time to try another game brought back from Essen 2011, The Dwarf King. This is essentially a trick taking game where the rules change after each hand and for those who care about such things some it has some lovely artwork.

Struggling at times with the English translation of this French game we nevertheless had some fun with this chaotic card game which saw me head well into the negative points and Martin emerge triumphant for the second time in the evening.

More photo's from the evening can be seen here.

Our next event at the Blue Anchor, Crowborough is in two weeks time on Sunday 27th November starting at 7pm - £1 per head. More details can be seen on our Facebook Page Social Gamers - Crowborough

Match Report 7th November 2011

2011-11-09T23:00:00.000Z

Victorian England doesn't work for everybody, however foxes and dwarves do!

As people arrived we congregated in the kitchen whilst drinks were sorted and people caught up with what we had all been up to since our last evening. Gwen had had a very tiring day (still recovering from two operations on her feet) so she needed to sit with her feet well up and bowed out of the evenings activities. When all were gathered we had Malcolm, Crispin, Ben and Daniella, whilst Alex, Ruth and Natalie all had circumstances conspire against them to ensure they were detained elsewhere.

With a pile of the games brought back from my trip to Essen at one end of the table, Daniella was soon opening boxes and delighting in the artwork and quality of the components the games she looked at. We briefly considered Giestesblitz (reviewed here) but with drinks on the table a game that call on the players to grab objects in the middle of the table was never going to be a good idea!

Gwen and I had played Last Will three times over the weekend (on one occasion with one of our cats determinedly trying to play with Gwen’s Errand Boys). Whilst our initial reaction had been that is was complicated we had both really enjoyed it and were keen to play it with more players, although as it was one of the meatier games brought back from Essen I was a little nervous that it might not work for everybody.

With the board setup and rules explained we embarked on this humorous game set in Victorian England where players seek to lose a large sum of their Uncle’s money in order to prove their ‘competence’ and thereby inherit his fortune. This is a beautifully constructed game with high quality components and artwork and an interesting game play, by the designer of League of Six (a game we have played a number of times with various groups). But being by this designer it is also a more tactical and thoughtful game than we often play on a Monday night. What gamers might describe as a medium weight game were luck is kept to a minimum, there are many competing options to consider, with (in this game) limited Actions and Errand Boys to carry them out.

The result is that there are always more things you would like to do than are available to you. Put these factors together with the absence of a quick player guide for the players to help each player understand the iconography on the cards then I think that trying it with 5 players was perhaps a mistake on my part.

I didn’t manage to get a photo of the furrowed brows and confused looks but suffice to say that for three players this was a game where the humour was lost in the complexity and would not be one they would rush back to. That said Daniella was much more positive about it and keen to give it another go. Not I am sure for the reason Crispin suggested 'that this was a game ladies would delight in because it was essentially about spending money' – I am sure he ducked out of the classes at school on political correctness!

With coffees and munchies (very nice flapjacks provided by Daniella, sadly no close up photo’s) consumed we looked for the next game. I should also note that Malcolm also brought a nice bottle of red wine something he has done a number of times before, but on each occasion I have forgotten to flag our appreciation in the way I do for the munchies, sorry.

Looking for a lighter game to help our players recover we turned to one of the many Zoch review games Furchs and Fertig (reviewed here). This is a child friendly game about initially guessing and later memorising the cards you turn over. That said however child friendly it is it also provided a lot of laughter and fun last night as players tried to guess the size of the next animal.

With 40 minutes of the evening left and knowing Crispin in particular is a keen card player I suggested that we go for my favourite game from Essen 2011. This is essentially a trick taking card game with some stunning fantasy artwork where there are no trumps and the rules as to who wins keep changing.

After a slow start because of what we believe to be language issues with two of the Quest Tiles we were soon laughing as loudly with this game as we had with Furchs and Fertig. It is a chaotic game were players are rarely in control but the combination of screwage (messing up your opponents), fast game play and the artwork offers a very satisfying way of spending 40 minutes that we felt could be enjoyed by many families.

More photos from the evening can be seen here.

If you would like to try some of the games mentioned in this post or indeed any of the others on this blog then why not come along to our next Social Evening with Game at the Blue Anchor on 13th November at 7pm. More details can be seen on our Facebook page ‘Social Gamers – Crowborough’.

Mini Review - Fuchs and Fertig

2011-11-08T23:27:00.008Z

2 to 5 players, Ages 6+, 10+ Minute Playing time
A review copy of Fuchs and Fertig was kindly provided by the publishers Zoch GmbH.

This is a short fun game that will delight adults (families) and children alike, although it can also be very frustrating. Described by one of our games team as something she could imagine even the most unlikely games player playing, Fuchs and Fertig would be a great game for family gatherings over Christmas. It is quick to explain, has fast play, is funny and whatever end of the age spectrum you are everybody will have an equal chance of winning. Plus it would be pretty funny to watch as well.

The game has 61 cards each with one of 7 very different sized animals on it plus a banner across the top of the card that shows the size of each animal relative to the others.

The cards are shuffled and then each player is dealt 12 cards face down. The players may not look at the cards but leave them in a pile in front of them.

The dealer places the remaining cards in the centre of the table and turns over the top most card showing one of the 7 animals.

The first player now has to guess what their topmost card is relative to the one in the centre of the table. Does their card depict an animal that is 'smaller', 'larger' or 'the same size'?

If they guess correctly then they may have another go but this time guessing if the next animal will be smaller, larger or the same size as the animal on the card they have just turned over.

If they guess correctly they can have another go if they get it wrong then they place all the cards they have turned over face down at the bottom of their 12 cards and play passes to the next player.

Essentially this is a push your luck game where fortune can favour the risk taker but invariably they come unstuck. A situation that occurred repeatedly in our games; you have turned over 3 or 4 cards and your last animal was the bear or the ant and you think ‘the next animal must be smaller or larger’ only to turn over another animal of the same type to howls of pain and glee from the other players. It may be simple but it is great fun.

The memory element comes in as the game progresses and your deck of cards is slowly reduced and you start cycling through them repeatedly. Having seen them once can you remember what comes next?!

If you liked this review then other games I have reviewed can be seen here and in particular other games by Zock GmbH we like include Geistesblitz and Bausack not reviewed, but some great photos of the game in action here.

Review – Discworld: Ankh-Morpork

2011-11-03T14:17:00.005Z

2- 4 Players, Aged 10+, Playing Time 60 minutes

I have already mentioned this game on my blog and its potential so was delighted to receive a review copy from Treefrog.

Set in the largest city of the fantasy world created by Terry Pratchet, in his many Discworld novels, Discworld: Ankh-Morpork is about the intrigues between the powerful lords of the city resulting from the alleged disappearance of Lord Vetinari. Players take on the roles of various lords vying for control of the city but perhaps his disappearance was just a ruse to expose his opponents!

What follows is an overview of the game broken down into 5 sections: Game Components, Setting Up The Game, How To Play The Game, What Did We Think? and finally Who Do We Think Will Like It?. So if you don't want to read the whole review scan down to the heading that interests you.

Game Components
1 A Game Board – Depicting the city of Ankh-Morpork with its 12 named districts. Each district bears a number, used to determine the effect of random events and a cost for building there.

7 Personality Cards – These cards determine the victory conditions which vary according to the character. A brief description of each character is shown below together with a link to a detailed description of their place in the Discworld series of books:

· Lord Vetinari – Exerting control through his network of spies, if you have this character you will win if you have Minions (spies) in the required number of areas of the city and there are no demons there.

· Lords Selachii, Rust and de Worde – Seeking power through domination, if you have one of these characters, you will win if you have Control of a certain number of areas of the city.

· Dragon King of Arms – Your character will win if the city is in chaos (indicated by the presence of 8 trouble markers) as the people will the clamour for the return of the king.

· Chrysoprase – A troll who seeks wealth so if his net worth is $50 or more the player with this character will win.

· Commander Vimes – If no other character wins before the pile of Game Cards are exhausted then the player with this character will win.

101 Game Cards – 53 brown bordered and 48 green bordered cards, all cards have identical imagery on their backs. Each of these cards has one or more of the 9 possible symbols on them. These images indicate that you can:

· Place a Minion. If you have no minions on the board then you may place them anywhere. If you have any minions on the board then the minion must be placed either in the same area or an adjacent area.

· Build - If you have a minion in an area with no trouble marker or opponents building you can pay the designated cost to place one of your own buildings.

· Assassinate a demon, troll or another players minion from any area with a trouble marker. This also removes the trouble marker!

· Remove one trouble marker from anywhere on the board.

· If there is a gold coin icon this will indicate how much money to take from the bank.

· The scroll icon allows you to perform the action detailed at the bottom of the card. There are lots of these cards.

· If the card has a pentagon symbol the player MUST draw a random event and play it.

· Play another card. It is possible that a player may have a number of cards with this symbol and they could choose to play as many of them in one turn as they wish.

· Interrupt another players go. Typically these cards can be used to stop another player doing something bad to you and your minions.

12 City Area Cards – When a player plays a Build Card they place one of their wooden buildings in the relevant area and acquire the relevant City Area Card. Each City Area Card grants the owner a special ability which can typically be used once per turn and most involve receiving money from the bank or paying money for some benefit e.g. removing a Trouble Marker from the board.

12 Random Event Cards – are all bad, with many of them causing the removal of buildings from the game board. The only question is will they affect your tokens on the board or another players?

4 Sets of 18 wooden Player Tokens (12 Minions and 6 Buildings) – Are placed on the game board as directed by the Game Cards.

4 Demon Markers – These appear on the board as a result of Random Event Cards. No one controls them and they can be removed in the same way as player minions; once present they negate the influence players would ordinarily exert through the presence of minions and buildings.

3 Troll Markers -These appear on the board as directed by the Random Event Cards, again no one controls them but they can be moved or removed in the same way as player minions.

12 Trouble Markers – These will appear on the board whenever a player places their minion in the same area as another minion, a Troll or Demon; they enable assassinations and prevent building.

Ankh-Morpork Dollar Counters

4 Player Aid Cards – On one side these detail the winning conditions applying to each of the Characters and the benefits which apply to have buildings in each City Area; whilst on the other side are the symbols found on the Game Cards together with an explanation as to their meaning.

1 standard blue twelve-sided die – Used determine the areas a Random Event Card will impact.

A Rules Booklet including FAQ’s

Setting Up The Game
1. Shuffle the Character Cards and deal one face down to each player. As previously mentioned this defines what each player needs to achieve in order to win the game and so obviously should be kept secret.

2. Give each player 10 Ankh-Morpork Dollars; put aside the remainder to form The Bank.

3. Shuffle the Random Event Cards and place them face down in a deck beside the game board.

4. Shuffle the brown edged Game Cards placing them face down in a deck beside the board.

5. Shuffle the green edged Game Cards dealing 5 cards to each player and placing the remainder face down on top of the deck of brown edged Game Cards.

6. Each player takes a Player Aid Card, selects a set of Player Tokens and places one Minion token in each of the following city areas: The Shades, The Scours and Dolly Sisters.

7. A Trouble Marker should also be placed in the Shades, The Scours and Dolly Sisters .

8. With a two player game you will remove one Character Card and two specified game cards.

How To Play The Game
Given the explanations of the components so far you might be expecting something a little more complex than what follows:

1. Throw the die to decide which player will start.

2. Play a Game Card from your hand carrying out the actions it allows (indicated by the icons discussed earlier). You may decide not to carry out some of them (the exception being the Random Events) but those being carried should be done in order from the left. If the Game Card allows you to play another card then you may do so.

3. Played cards go into a face-up discard pile.

4. Draw you hand back up to 5.

5. Play passes to the next player.

6. Play continues in this way until one of the following three game end conditions are met:

a. One of the players announces that the have met the victory conditions defined on their Character Card.

b. The deck of Game Cards is exhausted in which Commander Vimes wins.

c. The Riot Event Card is drawn and there are 8 or more Trouble Markers on the board. If this occurs then each player evaluates how many victory points they have. These are calculated as:

i. 1 point per Ankh-Morpork Dollar

ii. -1 point PER Ankh-Morpork Dollar loan outstanding

iii. 5 points per Building Token on the Game Board

iv. 1 point per Minion on the Game Board

What Did We Think?
Put simply we really liked it. It plays in around an hour with a simple game play mechanism that could be summarised ‘as play a card, or cards and draw a card, or cards’. This makes it simple to explain to people who have not played it before and in particular non gamers who we felt would be comfortable with it after three or four rounds. Although given the number of cards and their impact on the game I think players will get much more from the game on the second and subsequent plays of it.

The trick as it says in the rules is to not be obvious in the way you play your game and so keep your opponents guessing as to which character you are and more importantly which set of victory conditions you are trying to meet.

We felt it played best as a 4 player game but was still OK with two or three players.

My only gripes with it are:

That when sorting out the Game Cards into the green and brown decks to start a new game, those of us who are colour blind will struggle to varying degrees.
Initial thoughts that the board was a bit drab were reversed when we played the 4 player version – nice bright coloured pieces stood out well against the board. However it would have been helpful to have clearer demarcation lines between the city areas.
Why didn’t the coins have 1 or 5 on them? Although they are a lot nicer than the wooden tokens provides with Treefrog’s game from last year, London.

Our verdict was that it is a really good game and although it has a strong Discworld theme you don’t need to have read the books to enjoy the game. In fact my wife who is definitely not a Discworld fan had to almost be dragged kicking and screaming to try it (after prevaricating for well over a week) enjoyed it sufficiently as a 2-player to suggest a repeat run out with 4 of us (which was really good fun) and she would happily play it again. After playing with my pub group at least one person was talking about buying it.

Who Do We Think Will Like It?

Obviously Discworld fans.
Families looking for something different for Christmas Present Ideas / things to do with the family over Christmas.
Social Gamers or people who enjoy a little chaos in a game. The Random Event Cards add a dimension that hard core gamers may dislike as it takes the element of control out of their hands but it is worth noting that there is only one Random Event Card in the green deck so you are at least half way through the Game deck before too many start appearing.
Gamers who like screwage – many of the cards are aggressive (in a humorous way) but because you are all trying to achieve different outcomes to win we found no one person got singled out for attack.
People working and playing with young people where they are looking to:

Help them develop their language skills, as a key part of the game is reading the text on the cards and analysing when to use them most effectively.
Inspire an interest in reading as playing the game may help tie in well with reading and discussing one of the Discworld books.
Find a tool that can be used to help develop student’s creative writing skills. Using the game teachers could have students record the events within the game as they affect them in the form of a diary and then use this as the basis for an inspiration for an essay, artwork etc.

If you liked this review then other games I have reviewed can be seen here

Games In a Pub - 30th October 2011

2011-10-31T19:00:00.003Z

Some new games, some old games and all of them very different, but lots of fun.

A week ago I had been surrounded by thousands of people at the largest games event in Europe at Spiel 2011 in Essen; the previous day we had been running our own little games event in Tunbridge Wells on behalf of the Pantiles trade Association and had seen nearly a 100 people through the day (details of this event can be found here). Both of these experiences had been wonderful but to sit down with friends last night and get a chance to play some of the games I brought back from Essen was really nice.

However the evening started with an old favourite, Carcassonne, but as people arrived slightly later in the evening I had to dive out of Carcassonne and explain a couple of other games to our newcomers. I am not sure how either group felt about me jumping between their tables but in my absence the Carcassonne team selected and placed tiles for me. At the half way stage this was looking really good for me as I was joint leader, however as the game moved towards its
conclusion this committee approach to the placement of my tiles started to fail and ultimately I came in last place. I am not sure what this says about committee decision making!

In the other corner of the room Geistesblitz was being played. More details about the game can be read in my review of the game here. The guys (Andy, Katie and hmmm - sorry I have forgotten your name ) liked the game but felt that it would have been more fun with more players, we played it ourselves with four on Monday night and had a blast with it.

Whilst Carcassonne continued in my partial absence our other team moved onto Army of Frogs and had less success, feeling that this didn’t really work for them. Sadly I will suggest games at times that don’t always work (ultimately we all like slightly different things), however having dismissed it they were keen to try something new and their eyes alighted on one of the many new games I have available Discworld: Ankh-Morpork (my review of this game can be read here).

This was a game I had been keen to put in front of some of our social gamers believing that it would have a fairly wide appeal, although feeling less confident about this after the response to Army of Frogs. It took a similar amount of time to explain as some of the classic gateway games e.g. Ticket to Ride or Settlers of Catan and encouragingly there were enthusiastic nods and murmurs from a very early stage. So much so that by the end of the game the team were talking about maybe buying their own copy for a holiday trip they were planning.

As they got into their game our other table had a quick game of Villa Paletti another lovely wooden game from Zoch and a Spiel des Jahres winner from 2002. This was followed by our two remaining chaps having three games of another very tactile but also tactical game Hive (interestingly by the same games designer John Yianni, as Army of Frogs), where players use various insects to protect their queen bee whilst seeking to capture their opponents queen bee.

More photo's from the evening can be seen here.

Our next event at the Blue Anchor, Crowborough is in two weeks time on Sunday 13th November starting at 7pm - £1 per head. More details can be seen on our Facebook Page Social Gamers - Crowborough

Mini Review - Geistesblitz

2011-10-31T17:00:00.004Z

2 to 8 players, Ages 8+, 20-30 Minute Playing time
A review copy of Geistesblitz was kindly provided by the publishers Zoch GmbH.

Geistesblitz is a fun game about speed of recognition / action where there are 5 wooden objects, a White Ghost, Red Chair, Green Bottle, Blue Book and a Grey Mouse and a deck of 60 cards. Each card has 2 of the objects represented by their physical image and importantly by their colour. On most of the cards the objects are coloured incorrectly so you might have a green mouse sitting in a blue chair. However on some of the cards one of the images will be correctly coloured e.g. a White Ghost holding a Red Bottle.

The wooden objects are placed in the centre of the table and the game then proceeds with all the cards face down being passed to the active player. The active player turns over the top card and then all the players have the opportunity to either grab the correctly coloured object on the card OR the object that is missing from the card i.e. neither its image nor colour is present. The person who is the first to correctly grab the object receives the card. They will also receive a card from any players that get it wrong! We played without this option and would recommend that you do likewise for your first game as players are familiarising themselves with the images, particularly when playing with young children and adults like me!

As the active player if you grab or call out the correct object you retain the deck of cards and turn over the next card. If not then the rules say you pass the deck to the person who was correct, in our games we simplified this so that the deck was always passed to the next person in a clockwise direction. The winner being the player who has the most cards when the deck is exhausted.

This is a game clearly targeted at families and in particular children. Our experience is that they will love it and have a lot of fun playing it but that it will also help to develop skills around colour and shape recognition, plus speed of reaction and analysis skills.

However as with so many of the Zoch games it is really good fun and will also work for:

· Gamers as a light filler when time is short at the beginning / end of a games evening.

· Social Gamers who will I believe really enjoy this simple yet testing game.

· Non gamers who are up for a fun game that will be boisterous and have lots of interplay between the players as they frequently grab the wrong object.

A wooden ghost and happy confusion

If you liked this review then other games I have reviewed can be seen here