Spiel: Boardgaming in the UK

Players: Ian, John, Mark G, Mark K, Garry

Last time we played this was with just three players and we all enjoyed it very much. This time, we had five players and the game took quite a bit longer to complete, which reduced the enjoyment a bit. It was still good and I think the way the river moves is very clever. The current seemed a bit stronger on this occasion and it was certainly tougher to land your gems. Also with five players, there was much more likelihood of gems getting stolen from your boat. We had a few boats lost over the falls, including Mark K early on. Ian looked to be in a good position as did John at one stage. However, Mark K eventually timed a surge up river just right to steal two gems and nobody could stop him from landing them on the next turn.

Result: Mark K = winner

Ratings: Mark K 6, Ian 6, Others already rated

Ticket To Ride

Players: Ian, John, Mark G, Mark K, Garry

Another outing for last year’s Spiel des Jahres winner and I remain very impressed with this and will be interested to see how Ticket To Ride Europe changes things (Yes, Mark, apart from playing on a map of Europe!). This time, I kept two destination tickets which looked very easy to complete. My plan was to get them well on the way to completion and then go for some extra tickets. Things didn’t work out that way as one of my destination cities got completely surrounded by other players routes. Hmm! A guaranteed minus 8 points. I also stood no chance of competing for longest route as Ian, John and Mark G were trading blows in that contest. So I went for just completing 15 point routes and it nearly worked. However, I made the mistake of not blocking Mark K when I had an opportunity to do so. Serves me right then that he managed to beat me by a single point. However, things were extremely close between Ian, John, Mark K and myself. However, Mark K was able to claim his second win of the evening.

Result: Mark K 89, Garry 88, Ian 85, John 82, Mark G 61

Ratings: Ian 8, Others already rated

Players: Mark G, Nige, Mark K, Garry

I have been meaning to play this new game by Richard Breese ever since I got back from Essen but, each time I’ve tried going through the rules, I’ve hit some kind of mental block and got terribly confused. Eventually, however, I got the majority of it figured out and decided the best thing to do was go through the rule book in detail together with the game set up. This meant quite a while was spent understanding the rules before we got down to play. Once we started, the game took a bit under two hours, which seemed ok to me. Reef Encounter is set on four rocks under the ocean. Players collect polyp tiles and play them in groups to form corals. These corals can then be expanded and, when sufficiently large, can be removed to feed your parrot fish (who likes to eat lots of coral along with the shrimps that settle on them). At the end of the game, all the polyp tiles your parrot fish has eaten get valued and the person whose parrot fish has consumed the highest value of polyp tiles wins. The value of the polyp tiles is determined by the battle for supremacy between the different types of coral. Space on the rocks is limited and, as corals expand, spaces occupied by weaker coral can be taken over by an expanding stronger coral, providing the weaker coral is not protected by a shrimp. The relative strength of the corals is shown on a display at the side of the board and this can change as the game progresses. However, players can also lock down a relationship between a pair of corals and this adds to the value of the stronger coral at the end of the game. The more of these relationships that are in the favour of corals you are feeding to your parrot fish the better. The game ends in a number of ways but normally by all ten coral relationships having been locked down or by one player’s parrot fish having been fed for a fourth time. There is lots to think about in this game but, although I understand why I had difficulty with the rules, it is not too complex. Nige was very single-minded in his approach to the game. He tried to lock down the orange coral’s superiority as often as he could and get orange polyps into his parrot fish. It nearly worked but the rest of us eventually slowed orange’s advance. I managed to establish 2 corals on the same rock and give myself room to expand one of these while protecting it from potential attack with the other. This enabled me to give my parrot fish a feast of white polyps. Mark K seemed to be building some nice positions and I felt the sooner the game ended, the better my chances. I was uncertain whether Nige’s orange was too strong but opted anyway to lock down the final coral relationship in white’s favour and end the game the next turn, taking a chunk out of Mark G’s orange coral at the same time. This just gave me enough to win but it was very close and everyone was in with a chance. Although there were some nice ideas in the game and we did, generally, enjoy it, we felt there was a bit of downtime between turns with little opportunity to assess what your best move would be until it came round to you again. This brought the ratings down just a shade but we may have to try again to see whether this changes now we know what’s going on a bit better. Result: Garry 18, Nige 16, Mark K 15, Mark G 14 Ratings: Garry 7, Nige 7, Mark K 7, Mark G 5 <strong>Gracias</strong> Players: Mark G, Nige, Mark K, Garry We just had time for a short card game so decided on this new release from Alan Moon and Richard Borg and published by Ravensburger. The game is played over a number of scoring rounds. The rules say 3 but we played 4 to match the number of players involved. In each round, there are a number of sub-rounds equal to the number of players. Cards are laid out in groups of three, two face up and one face down, with the number of groups equal to the number of players. On his turn, the player takes a group of three cards, examines the face down card and keeps this together with one of the face up cards. He then passes the remaining face up card to any of his opponents. Once everyone has selected a group, the next sub-round starts with new cards being dealt and the player to the left of the previous start player selecting the first group of three. Once the round is finished, scoring takes place. Each group of five or more cards in a particular colour is separated out and is worth 1 point. The player with the most cards remaining in each colour then has to discard those cards and then every card remaining on the table is worth 1 point each. Whoever has accumulated the most points after the final round is the winner. This is very simple and very quick. The choices are straightforward but the best play is not obvious due to the face-down cards people have collected. I quite liked it but it sits alongside a lot of other fillers I am quite happy to play at the end of an evening. Nige had a poor start but scored 11 points in the third round to share the lead with Mark K at that stage. The fourth round couldn’t separate them so they had to settle for a shared win. Nige was happy with that as he is looking for any wins he can muster at the moment.

Result: Nige=Mark K 20, Mark G=Garry 16

Ratings: Nige 5, Mark K 6, Mark G 6, Garry 6

Players: Mark K, Nige, Chris, Garry

Amazonas is the latest game to be released by Stefan Dorra and is published by Kosmos. The game is set on a map of the Amazon basin and players are attempting to travel from village to village to set up research stations on five types of research project. You also have a secret goal of reaching four particular villages dotted around the map. Points are awarded during the game for setting up a research station on each of the five projects and at the end of the game for those projects where you have set up research stations in at least three villages. If you have not visited your four secret destinations, you lose three VPs for each village you missed. The game lasts 18 rounds and at the beginning of each round a special event card is revealed. Some of these have positive and some negative effects for the current round. Players then simultaneously select an income card for the round (there are 7 of these and you play a different one each round, only getting all the cards back after rounds 7 and 14). The income number also dictates turn order. Once these are revealed, players collect their income and have the opportunity to spend this to build research stations in turn order. The first research station in a village is cheaper to build than subsequent ones and each village is only able to support 2 or 3 stations. Turn order can, therefore, be quite important in preserving cash, especially as cash is very tight. Often, all you can do is collect income without building and there aren’t that many turns to achieve all you would like to achieve. In our game, we thought 18 turns would take some while to complete but the game flew by, taking us just about an hour. We were all wary of our destination cards and tended to spread ourselves across the map pretty quickly. I made the mistake of placing my initial village between two of my secret destinations and then not linking into them straight away. Consequently, others got in there before me and meant it cost me more than would otherwise have been the case. There is also a dilemna between concentrating on one or two project types to boost income during the game and establishing a presence in all five projects. Mark K and Nige both went down the specialised route and this worked well for them. Chris managed to block both me and Mark K at key times and this meant Mark K only managed to connect to his final secret location on his very last turn. This proved crucial and gave him the victory. We all enjoyed this, Nige especially, as it is quite tactical but turns are short and there is very little downtime. Good stuff.

Result: Mark K 14, Nige 11, Garry 8, Chris 8

Ratings: Mark K 7, Nige 8, Garry 7, Chris 6

King Arthur – Das Kartenspiel

Players: Mark K, Nige, Garry

King Arthur – the card game is a new release by Reiner Knizia and Ravensburger and is about knights of the round table going on various quests. Basically, you are collecting knight cards of particular colours in order to defeat and collect enemy cards which, in turn, can be combined with other enemy cards to satisfy the conditions for completing one of the 13 available quest cards. The advanced version of the game, which we played, adds a couple of twists in determining when enemy cards become available for use on the quests, but it remains a fairly easy game to explain and play. Once all but one of the quests has been completed, the game ends and players receive points for the quest and enemy cards they have collected. Most points wins. This was a fairly light game with pretty obvious choices to be made. Watching what enemy cards other people are collecting is important to make sure they are not going to complete the quest you are working on before you do. The luck in drawing   “double” and “Merlin” cards also plays a part in helping you achieve your goals but, as it is clearly aimed as a simple family game, it didn’t seem overpowering. Mark K managed his hand the best to come out with the victory. We all thought the game to be ok for what it is meant to be and the theme is nice, but it is not going to set the world alight.

Result: Mark K 55, Garry 47, Nige 42

Ratings: Mark K 6, Garry 6, Nige 6

Fairy Tale

Players: Mark K, Nige, Garry

Finally, I managed to get to try out Fairy Tale, a game by Japanese company Yuhodo and designed by Satoshi Nakamura. This is an interesting game of drafting and playing cards over four rounds. In each round, players are dealt a hand of 5 cards. They select one card to keep and pass the remainder to the player on their left. That player selects a card and returns three to the original player. This is repeated but with the player on the right and the final card is kept by the original player. From the five cards collected, players choose one simultaneously and these are revealed with any actions specified on the card being implemented immediately. This is repeated twice further, with the two unplayed cards then being discarded. Cards played stay in front of you but through the card actions may end up face-up or face-down by the end of the game. After the fourth round, face down cards at that point do not score and face up ones are totalled to give your score, highest score wins. This is an interesting game where you try to accumulate combinations of cards that give high scores, while messing with other players’ plans. The difficulty we had was with the card explanations, which I managed to print off in such small type-face that Nige couldn’t read much of it – it’s his age, you know. The cards have icons which help to decrypt the meaning but it did take a little while to work it all out. That said, by the end of the game we had just about got it sussed so it shouldn’t present a problem in future. Choosing what to keep and what to pass on was interesting. On one occasion, I had to keep a card that was of no use to me merely because it would have made a huge difference to Nige’s score. However, you can afford to do this because, of the five cards you pick, you only get to play 3 of them, so 2 spoilers is ok. Having overcome the icon problems, I quite liked this and would like to try it with a full compliment of five players so all the cards are used. It is pretty quick once you get into the game and is a bit different to a lot of games we play at the end of an evening. Oh, and I won so that brought the evening to a nice close (although Nige might not agree).

Result: Garry 50, Mark K=Nige 45

Ratings: Garry 7, Mark K 6, Nige 7

Players: Nige, Phil, Mark G, Mark K, Garry

A new batch of games from Adam Spielt arrived this week, so I was keen to try a couple of them. The first was Manila by Franz-Benno Delonge and released by Zoch (an English edition to be distributed by Rio Grande is in the pipeline). The game concerns the shipment of four types of good by boat to the city of Manila. Each player starts with two random shares, secret from the other players, and the value of the shares will increase as more of the good is successfully shipped to Manila. However, the boats are not reliable and often fail to reach port with their cargo. Players hire accomplices, in the hope of earning money through their accomplices’ actions. The accomplices can be deployed in a variety of roles, with payment being determined by the success of that role. Those placed on boats will receive payment if the boat succeeds in reaching port; those working at the port get paid according to how busy the port is; at the shipyard, accomplices will be paid according to the number of boats needing repair; someone in the insurance office will gain or lose depending on how many boats fail to reach port; pilots can affect the likely success of the boats’ journeys but get no other payback; and pirates may be lucky to board or plunder the boats on their voyage. The game is played over a number of rounds and each round has two main phases, plus some admin at the end of the round. The first phase involves the auctioning of the role of harbour-master for the round. Bidding goes around the table until all but one have dropped out. The harbour master gets four advantages: He can buy one share of a particular good (and the harbour master is the only person ever able to buy any shares, over the intitial two everyone receives at the start of the game). There are three boats available each round and each can only ship one type of good, (so one good is not shipped each round) and the harbour master determines which three will be transported. Thirdly, he gets to determine which boats have the furthest to travel to reach port. Finally he gets to place accomplices first in the second phase. The second phase involves placing accomplices and moving the boats. In turn, each player gets to place an accomplice into a role for the current journey and then the dice are rolled to move the boats towards port. This is done three times, following which the round ends. Accomplices are then paid out depending on whether or not each boat reached port. Then the share price of goods that were successfully shipped to Manila are increased. A new round then begins with another auction of the harbour master role. Rounds continue until one good’s share price has been increased four times, at which stage shares are redeemed and whoever has the most money wins the game. In our game, Phil started out the strong leader. He was the only person to pick the pirate role for one of his accomplices in the first round and he came out with a huge profit, as a boat worth 30 landed on the pirate space after the third roll of the dice. We all “seemed” to be playing catch-up from then on. Money was very tight with three players taking loans during the game (Mark K took three, I think). Gaining the harbour master role is good but can leave you short of money when deploying your accomplices. Being able to buy a share though, especially early on, can be very lucrative if the share price of that good escalates considerably. Mark K seemed to like the idea of retaining the harbour master role, despite going into debt, as placement of accomplices first tends to be cheaper and gives one the opportunity of pinching the best roles before anyone else. Phil and I, being 2nd and 3rd in turn order behind the harbour master, were reasonably content to let Mark keep paying, while Nige was unhappy that there was no lucrative role left when it came round to the last player (him) placing accomplices. Maybe he should have pushed Mark K harder in the auctions, especially as Mark K would then still have been 2nd in turn order with Nige as harbour master. Eventually, I persuaded Phil to complete a fourth successful voyage for the beige good and end the game (as he looked to be miles ahead). Unfortunately, beige was the only really valuable share and Mark K and I were the ones holding most of these. Mark K’s indebtedness left me able to declare another win for me – much to Nige’s disgust: He would have been very happy for Phil or even Mark K to take the win but, for some reason, he wanted my loss record to be in an upward direction rather than the wins. We all thought this was a very good, verging on excellent, gambling game. It’s all about playing the odds and whether you want to try for the big gains or play conservatively for small returns. After one playing, the big uncertainty is what the value of the harbour master is. It gives you a fair degree of control but you can still get stuffed by the actions of the pilots and the roll of the dice. Players’ choices are pretty straightforward but judging the best one is not easy. The game took about 80 minutes, but this really depends on the number of successful and unsuccessful voyages there are. Talking to Mark K the next day, we both wondered whether to move our ratings up slightly, as the game was very engaging with people involved all the time. This could see quite a bit of play and definitely needs a repeat playing to try out new things now we know how to play.

Result: Garry 92, Mark K 62, Nige 48, Phil 41, Mark G 25

Ratings: Garry 7, Mark K 7, Nige 7, Phil 8, Mark G 8

Heckmeck am Bratwurmeck (aka Pickomino)

Players: Nige, Phil, Mark G, Mark K, Garry

Another brand new Zoch game is this new dice game from Reiner Knizia, which could be described as Can’t Stop with worms. Sixteen domino-like tiles numbered 21 to 36 are laid in the middle of the table. These also each show a number of worms (between 1 and 4) to be won by claiming that tile. At the end of the game, whoever has won the most worms wins. On a player’s turn, he rolls 8 dice each of which show numbers 1 to 5 and a worm (also worth 5 points) on the sixth side. Having rolled, he has to bank all the dice of one number and can re-roll the remainder. He has to bank a different number (or worm) after each roll and continues either until he can claim a tile or can re-roll no more. If he can claim a tile, either by matching a tile number in the centre or one visible in front of an opponent, he takes it and places it in front of him. If he finishes his turn without claiming a tile, he has to return the last tile he claimed to the middle of the table and remove from the game the highest tile in the centre of the table. It is then the next player’s turn. In our game, we started off with the opening tile won being passed between players, as they matched the previous player’s total. Mark K failed to score on his first turn but, as he had no tiles at that stage, didn’t lose out because of it. He then succeeded in gaining a tile on every subsequent turn and ran out a fairly easy winner. Nige demonstrated why he is not a fan of dice games by not even troubling the scorer. There is a lot of dice rolling in the game and although it is quite fun watching sombody’s prize tile being nabbed by another player, the wait between your turns is a bit excessive. Nige went and made a coffee between turns at one stage. The game is clearly aimed as a bit of family fun but I didn’t think it had the elegance of Can’t Stop and wasn’t anything like as enjoyable as Reiner’s Exxtra.

Result: Mark K 11, Mark G 7, Garry 6, Phil 3, Nige 0

Ratings: Mark K 5, Mark G 6, Garry 4, Phil 5, Nige 4

Players: Mark K, Ian, Mark G, John, Garry

With five of us this week, I suggested to Mark K that I would like to try Wolfgang Kramer’s Wildlife, a game I’ve not played before for some reason. Mark had played it at Christmas and had enjoyed it so I was keen to see how it measured up. The game is set in Stone Age times and is about the competition for survival between various species of creature and man. Each player is one such species and they compete to control the various areas on the board. Players hold a hand of cards each of which shows a terrain that action can be taken in or a special action. On a player’s turn, he uses 3 of his cards, 2 for himself and 1 which is auctioned off to the other players for their immediate use, in return for food chips. The areas are coloured according to the type of terrain they represent and contain a number of spaces to show how many creatures can be placed in the area. Each creature has differing abilities in each terrain (e.g. bears can do nothing in the desert, can migrate on the savannah, expand in the mountains and attack in the forests). However, an Adaptation card allows the player to upgrade his ability on one type of terrain, allowing him more freedom of action for the rest of the game. Ability cards give the holder extra .. err .. abilities, but they are limited in number and can be stolen. Text cards give various advantages to the player playing the card (or disadvantages to other players). Once all the spaces in an area are occupied, the person completing the area receives a number of VPs (3VPs for the earlier areas completed, 5VPs towards the end of the game). Then after the 4th, 8th and (possibly) 11th areas have been completed, all areas are assessed individually and VPs awarded for those with the most of their species present. At the same time, bonus VPs are awarded to those with the largest groups of connected creatures, those whose creatures abilities have advanced the most, those with the most special ability tiles and those with the most food chips. The game ends after the 11th area has been scored or someone has placed all of their creatures onto the board. Most VPs obviously wins. This was a typical Kramer game, trying to maximise your position from a limited number of actions. There is not a lot you can do between your turns but you do tend to be involved in other people’s auctions so downtime is not too much of a problem. Early on, Ian demonstrated his wargame background by taking an Aggression card. He also kept his herd together well, which allowed him to storm ahead on the major scoring, once the fourth area was completed. He also played a Famine Text Card, which cost Mark G and me some vital VPs, as we were low on Food points. John also kept scoring well by keeping to relatively uncontested areas. Once the eighth area was ready to be completed, the aggression started in earnest, with me retaliating against Ian for an earlier incursion into my territory. I scored well at this second major scoring and took a slim lead. I also looked likely to go out on my next turn with just three creatures left to place. However, it didn’t get round to me again. Ian broke up my herd and then Mark G broke up Ian’s, while finishing the last (11th) area. This reduced Ian’s scoring at the end and allowed Mark K, who had kept up with the pace all the way through to grab the win. Missing out on one final turn was deadly for me and, although I had started at the front of the score track, that didn’t make up for the swing I could have achieved if I had managed the same number of turns as everyone else. Despite this, Mark K played really well and showed that his previous experience of the game was not wasted. We all enjoyed the game but thought it just went on a little bit too long. It took about 2.5 hours, although Mark K didn’t think it was as late as it turned out to be. Plenty to think about, as usual for a Kramer game, and I’m sure I would play differently on the game’s next outing.

Result: Mark K 79, Ian 78, Garry 68, John 65, Mark G 63

Ratings: Mark K 7, Ian 7, Garry 7, John 7, Mark G 7

Im 80 Tagen Um Die Welt

Players: Mark G, Ian, Nige, Phil, Mark K, Garry

Last time we played this as a three player game and Nige won easily. I still think this was down to his good fortune in drawing low pairs of travel cards at the right time so I was keen to see if his luck would hold out with a full compliment of 6 globetrotters. We started off pretty well bunched going through Paris but Nige then surged forward to become the first into each new city and gain the bonus token. His luck in playing pairs continued from last time and I suspect he was probably printing them under the table as he needed them. Ian decided to follow the opposite strategy of aiming to be last into each city to gain the other bonus token. He just needed to make sure he didn’t fall too far behind as the game ends at the end of the round in which the fourth player arrives back in London. Anyone still on their travels at that point doesn’t finish. As Nige was setting a fairly brisk pace on his circumnavigation of the globe, I decided to try and keep in touch, even if it meant spending a couple of extra days here and there to advance to the next city. It soon became obvious though that this strategy just couldn’t keep me in touch with “Mister Pairs”. So I slowed my pace to try and wait for lower cards to appear in my hand but they just kept evading me. Nige raced into London two full turns before anyone else, using just 69 days. Ian’s hang-back strategy nearly paid off and he would have equalled Nige’s number of days had I not pulled out a grey event card on the final turn (adding a day to everyone’s time). To add insult to my injury, I also failed to finish as my transatlantic transport failed to materialise. So two wins out of two for Nige at this game but, more importantly, a first win for him in 2005. I think everyone enjoyed this one and I’m still keen to keep playing it.

Result: Nige 69, Ian 70, Phil 74, Mark K 78, Mark G 82, Garry – lost at sea

Ratings: Ian 7, Phil 6, Mark K 7, Others already rated

Piranha Pedro

Players: Mark G, Ian, Nige, Phil, Mark K, Garry

Next up was this simple game of out-guessing your opponents that Mark G and I had played before but nobody else had. With six players, the game is much more chaotic than with three. At least with three you stand a reasonable chance of deducing where Pedro might move. The last to go in a six player game has absolutely no chance of knowing which direction is likely to be safe, although this is compensated for by the fact that somebody else might hit the water before it gets round to your turn. The other difficulty with gamers involved is that the those playing first in the round try to make it as difficult as possible for later players by trying to do the unexpected. I think this resulted in some concluding that the game was pure luck. However, there is an element of knowing the character of your opponents, trying to follow what direction cards have been played previously and trying to minimise your potential losses when you are playing your card late in the round. My shining talent in these regards allowed me to take the win. We scored by number of piranhas taken (fewest best) and then by number of stones left in hand (most best). Ian was again a close second, tying with me in not taking any piranhas but losing out by having fewer stones in front of him. Mark G, however, clearly had an affection for the fearsome fishies.

Result: Garry 0 piranhas / 21 stones, Ian 0/17, Nige 1/22, Phil 1/21, Mark K 1/19, Mark G 2

Ratings: Ian 5, Nige 4, Phil 6, Mark K 6, Others already rated

Tanz Der Hornochsen

Players: Mark G, Ian, Nige, Phil, Mark K, Garry

We ended with the boardgame version of 6 Nimmt, which we greatly enjoyed last time we played. In that game, Mark G was mystically drawn to the dung heap and so it was again this time. He was certainly trying hard not to take penalty points but, no matter what he did, he seemed to end up in a cow pat. When we got to the stage of playing two tiles a turn, he deliberated very carefully and then promptly managed to finish two rows in one turn. Very funny! The rest of us stayed pretty close with Phil managing to stay on zero for a long while. However, a couple of unlucky tiles later on proved to be his downfall and this allowed Ian to grab the win. Both new players rated the game as ok and Mark K and Nige thought last time’s ratings may have been a touch high but I still think this is a very nice game and I would stick by my 8 rating.

Result: Ian 11, Garry 15, Nige 19, Phil 26, Mark K 34, Mark G 60

Ratings: Ian 6, Phil 5, Others already rated

Players: Mark K, Phil, Nige, Mark G, Garry

This week, we finally played Friedemann Friese’s Power Grid, a game I had put off buying as I already had the first edition of Funkenschlag. We quite liked the earlier version but it suffered from being a bit long, a bit fiddly and the components (especially the board) were not up to the usual German standard. I’m happy to say Power Grid addresses all these criticisms and is an excellent game. Each player represents a power company who is aiming to buy power stations and resources to supply electricity to a network of cities. Each game round is split into 5 phases: Firstly, turn order is determined for the round (basically determined by who has connected their network to most cities, with ties broken by size of power plant). Then a series of power plant auctions take place where everyone has the opportunity to purchase one power plant. The third phase involves buying resources to be used in your plants, then each player can spend money to expand their network into new cities. Finally, players receive income for the cities they choose to supply power to and some housekeeping takes place ready for the next round. Once a player has a network connected to 15 cities (in the 5 player game), whoever is able to supply power to the most cities at the end of that round wins, with ties being broken by who is left with most cash. Our game was extremely close. We all stayed pretty tightly bunched early on. Then I struck out to a bit of a lead, trying to get a bit of an income advantage. However, the game does not favour the leading player as buying resources and network expansion are done in reverse turn order allowing those players who are trailing to complete these phases more cheaply. This meant that everyone stayed in touch. I thought I had my plan all worked out going into the penultimate turn but a momentary lapse, involving me purchasing two resources more than I needed, cost me the game. If I had not purchased these, I would have been able to afford to connect up to a seventeenth city, but I was 6 Elektros short. This meant I was tied with Phil on sixteen cities (all of which we could supply power to) and he had 27 Elektros cash left to my 15, allowing him to win on the tiebreak. He did play very well though. Nige and Mark G also were able to supply 15 cities on that turn, showing just how close it was. The game felt much improved over Funkenschlag. It took just over 2 hours to play (the original took us well over 2 hours to complete step 1) and the pre-printed routes between cities got around the fiddly route-drawing part of the original without me feeling it lost anything. This is a very worthwhile business game that I thoroughly recommend.

Result: Phil 16 (+27 Elektros), Garry 16 (+15), Nige 15 (+10), Mark G 15 (+5), Mark K 13

Ratings: Phil 7, Garry 8, Nige 7, Mark G 7, Mark K 7

Players: Mark K, Chris, Nige, Garry

With four of us tonight, we decided to try this new game by Cyril Demaegd and self-published under the label Ystari Games. The game is all about placing your brokers into areas of a city, to exert the most influence in order to gain gems and victory points. The board shows a city which is divided into four quarters and each quarter into 3 areas: port, commercial and palace areas. Separately there is also a market where you can place brokers to manipulate the price of gems. There are four main types of gem, red, yellow,green and blue whose price can be manipulated, plus there are black gems which can be won only at the ports and white gems which can be traded for any of the main gems. Each player has 11 brokers with values between 0 and 4. There is also a deck of character cards which players can win in the 4 palace areas, and these give advantages to the owner in later rounds. A game round consists of setting up the gems and character cards available to be won in the current round; bidding for turn order using two of your brokers; playing your brokers into the city or market areas – two brokers at a time until everyone has played 8 brokers; paying out gems, VPs and character cards to those with the most influence in each area; and adjusting the price of gems in the market. The game lasts four rounds after which gems are converted to VPs based on their relative value and whoever has the most VPs is the winner. In our game, I got off to a pretty good start in the first two rounds, picking up some useful VPs cheaply in the commercial areas and some gems. However, my gems were the least valuable. Chris seemed to be keen to manipulate the prices at market and pick up the odd gem of the more valuable colours here and there. In the third round, Mark in particular picked on me, as he viewed me as the leader, and I had a disastrous round. Nige continued to concentrate on black gems, which paid a fixed price (in VPs) at the end of the game, based on how many you had collected. However, the final round was the critical one. In this round, the palce areas each pay out one white gem and Chris decided he wanted these, a feat he achieved relatively unopposed. He also picked up a white gem from the market   and by careful allocation of these to the most valuable colour he moved from having the third-most gems in that colour to having the most. As he also had the most gems in the second-most valuable colour, he cruised past us on the scoreboard for a great win. The white gems individually don’t make that much difference but allowing him to win five had a huge effect. We all quite liked Ys: It is fairly easy to understand your goals and there are multiple ways to achieve progress in the game. It took a little bit longer than we would have liked ideally but it is a good debut from M. Demaegd.

Result: Chris 87, Mark K 74, Garry 72, Nige 68

Ratings: Chris 7, Mark K 7, Garry 6, Nige 6

Coloretto Amazonas

Players: Mark K, Chris, Nige, Garry

We then decided to dip into this new card game by Michael Schacht. Don’t be fooled by the Coloretto link: It has very little to do with the original and is a much simpler game (even accepting that Coloretto itself is pretty simple). The game is played with 90 cards, each card showing one of 18 different species of animal in one of four colours. Each player is trying to collect sets of cards in the four different colours. A set consists of between 4 and 7 different animals in a colour. Once you have completed a set, these cards are set aside for scoring at the end. In addition the first player to complete a set of a particular colour receives a bonus card worth 4 to 7 points. The game ends once a player has completed three columns or the deck of cards runs out. Each player has a hand of three cards and on his turn he can either play a card for himself or offer it to an opponent. Playing a card for onesself merely involves adding it to one of the four colour sets you are collecting. However, duplicates of the same animal species cannot appear in your set. Playing a duplicate means both duplicated cards are discarded. A card offered to an opponent (often a duplicate of a card he has already played) can either be accepted or rejected. If accepted, he adds it to the relevant set or, if a duplicate exists, discards both the card offered and the duplicate. If rejected, the offered card is discarded together with a card of a set in an adjacent colour. (Card sets are laid in columns in a given colour order). If you do not have a card in the adjacent column, you have to accept the offered card. At the end of your turn you draw a new card to return your hand to three cards. At the end of the game, cards in your hand are discarded; uncompleted sets are scored based on the number of cards in the set ( 1 point for 1 card, 3 for 2, 6 for 3 etc.) Completed sets score using the same method, bonus cards are added and whoever has the highest total wins. Our game took about 15-20 minutes. Nige complained of only picking up cards of one colour, which doesn’t help if you need to protect that colour by having an adjacent colour to allow you to reject offered duplicates. The choices all seemed farly obvious: Better to play a card for yourself than offer it but it is sometimes worth attack someone getting close to completing a set. Make sure you’ve got adjacent coloured cards to protect your more valuable sets. Try and win a bonus card. The game is clearly aimed as being a light family game and it is pleasent enough but it doesn’t have the gut-wrenching dilemnas of original Coloretto. I managed to grab the win once the deck had run out.

Result: Garry 35, Nige 30, Mark K 29, Chris 26

Ratings: Garry 6, Nige 5, Mark K 5, Chris 6