Be Excellent To Each Other

Ironically, I played Catan for the first time in probably a decade, as I've always hated it and I actually quite liked it. There was loads of trading going on that really elevated it all - but yeah, the honest truth is it isn't great.

Really need to get back into board games. Covid and having a kid killed them for me. Soon though, soon.

Come to Cottage!

I played a really funny quickfire card game over the weekend called Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza.

It's just Turbo Snap, but great fun.

That looks great fun, if likely to get very violent.

It's quite slappy

We play that quite a lot here, it’s one of the kids’ favourites.

I am terrible at the three action cards, always get the wrong one first.

Doesn’t take long before your hands and forearms are fucking wrecked.

Hello, welcome back, good to see you. All that jazz.

Yeah, I always found Catan to be not exactly a fun experience.

I went to the UK Expo a few years ago and had an excellent time...an expensive excellent time.

Star Wars: Outer Rim

I shouldn't like this. I have no interest in Star Wars. The characters, factions, and planets mean nothing to me. Oh yes, of course I know who various key figures are, such is its impact on modern culture. But spending three hours playing a game set in this universe, then coming back a week later to have another crack it? No, this shouldn't be happening. But it did. And I'm still eager to explore it some more.

Star Wars: Outer Rim is, essentially, Elite but in cardboard form. You start off with a basic ship, and can travel around the galaxy delivering cargo or contraband, completing jobs, recruiting crew, or dabbling in a bit of old fashioned bounty hunting. Most tasks give you money which you can spend on upgrades, but you want the ones that give you fame points. First to 12 fame points (or, in the shorter games we played, eight), wins. How you do it is up to you.

Most turns involve a bit of movement, a bit of shopping, and a bit of resolving either a randomly drawn card from that planet's stack or resolving something from your pile. Normally you have to test for skills, and the addition of crew can help increase your abilities.

If you pass a patrol ship from one of the four factions (Hutt; Syndicate; Empire; Rebels), they'll either let you pass freely if you've a positive reputation with them, stop your movement if you're ambivalent, or engage in combat if you have a negative reputation. A bit of dice rolling, but if you or your ship gets destroyed you're not out of the game or having to start from zero, you just have to spend a turn fixing things. This helps move the game along.

The open-endness allows you to decide your own path to victory. In my first game, I fancied a bit of bounty hunting so went all in for tracking down some suspect for a big reward, only to be taken out by a stream of bad dice rolls. Next time round, I realised that I should have focussed on tooling up my ship before taking such a risky career choice, so embarked on some several cargo deliveries before tooling up my ship but by then someone else had scored some easy kills and was well on the way to becoming the most famous person in the galaxy. Next time, perhaps I should try a different approach?

I never felt that I was hanging around waiting for my turn, nor were the decisions particularly onerous. Just a case of should I deliver this pack of space moisturiser for some cash to spend on a new ship, or take onboard some dodgy illegal hyperspace fuel for more money, a shot at fame, and the risk of it all going wrong? Depends on how far away the planet I need is, and what the rebels think of me.

Good fun, and something I didn't expect to enjoy.

I was reading the rules of Fire Tower with the aim of getting to the table sometime (it's been on my shelf for ages), and I'm a little alarmed by the warning in the manual. Are board games the next moral panic? Or is this another example of every sign marking a dead sailor?

I was alerted to this on /r/boardgames, and after watching it yesterday confirm that the Board Game Badge episode of Hey Duggee is a hilarious (and touching) take on modern gaming.

Played an absolutely lousy game of Suburbia last night, but somehow managed to win. It's one of my favourite games but I haven't played it in ages, even though a few years back I dropped quite a lot of money on the fancy super-shiny overproduced Kickstarter box.

The universe corrected itself a while later when we were playing Secret Hitler and I accidently let Hitler win. Oops.

Another enjoyable board game night.

Irish Gauge

Hard to describe this one ["It's 5 Foot 3!" - Railway ed.]. It isn't Ticket to Ride, but then it isn't one of the legendary 18xx series. If you go in expecting either, you'll initially be disappointed but then charmed by this game's simplicity.
Players are wannabe railway tycoons, competing to create the most profitable network across Ireland.

After an initial share auction, the game begins and you can either bid for more shares, build track, upgrade a town, or call for a dividend payout. You can build track if you hold shares that company, which means if more than one of you are shareholders you can build an extensive network pretty quickly. Or, indeed, your fellow capitalist scum can do all the hard work and you can just take the profits. I had invested in different companies to my opponents so looked on in anguish as they spread across the island whilst my services were about as patchy as the current network.

The real meat of the game, and the hardest to explain, is calling for dividends. You randomly pull out three cubes, and the colours show which cities are paying out that time. Dividends are split between shareholders, and likely payout affect the auction price if others want to get in on the action. But with limited cubes of each colour, a formerly profitable line might ebb into irrelevance, so knowing when to buy becomes important. Upgrading towns takes cubes out of the bag too, so you might want to be careful with where you place them - or place them to screw others, even fellow shareholders, over.

The cards are solid, but we did run out of cash near the end and had to resort to the honour system . I also find the board a bit plain but it does the job and the tracker helps with calculating dividend payouts.

We finished within about an hour, including set-up and rules rundown. I've never played the 18xx series, so a few rounds of this might encourage me to go further into the railway capitalism genre. Irish Gauge is solid enough to explore and enjoy on its own merits, and it's definitely one I want to get to the table again, probably with more players for better alliance building.

Sniper Elite
The cardboard version of the hit game, or Scotland Yard with Nazis. One player is a super-stealthy US sniper, roaming the board trying to complete two missions and perhaps shoot people on the way. Everyone else controls squads of Nazis trying to find him and take the intruder out.

The early stages are probably the toughest, as you grope around trying to get any clue that might set you on the right track but as the game progresses and the sniper starts revealing himself (or where he could be), the tension mounts as the options narrow before a final dash on both sides. We got very close, but he slipped us past in the night.

I found the line of sight rules slightly awkward, and the Nazis move a bit too slowly, but the game arc is satisfying, leading to many painful decisions.

We rounded off the evening with another round of Feed the Kraken, a hidden role game with a pirate theme. Doesn't add much to the genre, but at least you're not Hitler (*cough* Lovecroft *cough*).

Hand to Hand Wombat

Yep, it's another hidden rule game! But with wombats!

Each team is randomly assigned a role - you might be a good wombat, a bad wombat, or a chaotic wombat. Good wombats want to build towers within 90 seconds, bad wombats want to stop them, and chaotic wombats want chaos. Pretty easy to tell who's on which side, right? Except, and here's the fun twist, everyone's blindfolded.

After each round, there's the inevitable arguments and voting off, and the game ends when either the good wombats have successfully built three towers, or when the bad ones have stopped them. The chaotic wombats win by avoiding detection.

It's pretty mindless but ideal for that final end of evening wind down, with everyone collapsing into fits of laughter and attempts at tower-stealing. The last blindfold game I played was When I dream but that only had one masked player per round. Having everyone blindfolded adds an element of danger, hilarity, and surprise. It is what it is, and with the right group at the right time in the right situation will cause everyone to leave grinning.

Oh, and the cards are furry.

Parks: Nightfall (expansion)

I'm always in two minds about expansions. Sure, they add more variety and can extend the lifetime of a game, but then a truly great game would not need any extras and instead offer a fulfilling experience time after time. I can never tire of the base versions of Ticket to Ride, Flamme Rouge, or Colt Express for example. As the average plays-per-year of my collection is usually three (and that's generous, as I look over mournfully at expensive Kickstarters still in their shrinkwrap), it's hard to justify the outlay when the original isn't getting sufficient attention. So with trepidation and uncertainty of step, I played Parks with its Nightfall expansion

Parks has long been one of my favourite games of recent times, and always goes down well with gamers of all abilities, tastes, and experience. It's stunningly beautiful to look at, and its engine-building mechanism is cleverly disguised within the theming but easily discoverable. Whilst the teach is a bit involved as each element is explained, people grasp the mechanics the second they embark on their trek.

The major change in Nightfall is the addition of campsites. Land on a tile with a tent, and you can either do that tile's action as normal, or use one of the new camping actions if someone hasn't taken that it first. It also ditches the game's original bonus system (the 'year' cards) and introduces a whole new set with simpler scoring and goals. You also the option to get more and exchange them through out the game, meaning you're not tied to one. It also makes the camera more desirable as some include photos. And of course, it brings in more parks, just as beautifully designed as before, but now with instant rewards for visiting as well as just points.

How did these extra elements work? Exceedingly well. I am one happy camper.

The camping actions contain powers such as refreshing the gear pile or cheaper conversions to wild cards, and provides more decisions about when and where to move if you want something before someone else. The new year-end bonuses are easier to get and being able to switch them out or collect more means if one route isn't working due to the lay of the land you can probably find a bonus that does.

I felt that the expansion changes the game's economy, making it easier to get gear or buy parks. A subtle rule tweak illustrates this: some of the new parks have a cost of a symbol then a set number of any tokens. This means you aren't as constrained by reaching the end of the trail with a pile of unspent pieces. Moreover. wild animals count as two for this. Similarly, the camping and instant bonuses offering a reset of the gear deck and free kit means you don't end up with something people don't want taking up precious shopping space for the entire game.

The original Parks is solid enough not to need any expansions. I've played it loads, and always enjoyed the challenge and sometimes painful decisions. The additions and tweaks in Nightfall add sufficient (boot) polish to make the game really shine. This is definitely going in my backpack.

Just read this thread on r/boardgames and learnt something about the stations in Ticket to Ride: Europe



Wow! That makes it much easier. Definitely going to do that next time I play it.

Heat: Pedal to the Metal

When you turn off the A34, there's a long stretch of straight road that leads you to Bicester. It veers suddenly to the left to join a roundabout. You're supposed to have slowly dropped from 70 to 50 to 40 before hitting this below 30 but nobody ever does and an upturned car on the roundabout is a common sight. Why slow down when you've the open road ahead of you? That's the key decision in Heat

For many years, the go-to car racing game in my group has been Formula D. Playing up to 10, you speed round a track, shifting gears and rolling dice whilst trying not to destroy your car before the finish. It's a real hoot and gently pressures you to go for that risky dice roll just to get the edge on your opponents.

Heat owes more to Flamme Rouge. Like the bicycle game of champions, it's about hand management. Pick your movement card, then resolve in placement order. There's even a slipstreaming mechanic, although it isn't as elegant as the glorious rule in Flamme Rouge.

How many cards you play depends on your gear. First gear gives you one card, second two, and so on up to the giddy heights of fourth! You can move up or down one for free, but if you want to crank the gear box, your engine complains and a heat card enters your deck.

Heat cards are the penalties in this game. As the engine gets hotter and hotter, your hand is increasingly likely to fill up with these red cars of infernal doom. But if you drop down to the lower gears, you have the chance per turn to cool the engine down and drop them. Knowing when to take these penalties and when not to is a key element to your gameplay.

Heat cards are also the usual punishment for speeding. Unlike Flamme Rouge, each corner has a speed limit. Go over it, and you have to pay the difference in heat cards. Can't afford it? Your engine is on fire, you spin out, and get shunted to the nearest free space behind the bend. You're not out of the game, just humiliated and have to slowly make your way back up from first whilst your deck is full of fire.

You can also crank up the speed to give yourself a boost. Again, your engine complains but it might get you ahead of the pack. To boost, you turn over the top card of your deck and move that number of spaces. As with Formula D, part of the fun is watching your friends going for that risky gamble that blows up in their face.

Because everyone is driving responsibly and slowing down for corners, the speed-up-slow-down rhythm means people can easily catch up with the pack leading to nerve-racking finales.

The base game is pretty solid and after the first turn everyone I've introduced it to has grasped it and is speeding away to glory. The box contains various bits for more advanced games, including weather, upgrades, and a championship mode. Automata mean you can have more cars than players to add extra tension.

I haven't been as obsessed by a game in ages. I played loads over Christmas (with the robot cars it works well with two), and it's gone down a treat at my board game group. It's been a long time since I've played something that's caused so much laughter even in the early stages. It's only January but this is looking like the game I'll be playing most in 2023.

We recently played the board game Back to the Future: Dice Through Time after having it for over a year.

I was expecting a daft little dice roller tie in game, but I was wrong. It's actually quite complex and takes a fair bit of brain work to figure out. Luckily it's a four player cooperative game so we managed to beat it (with maybe a few comfort changes to the standard rules. Shush) in about an hour.

I'm nto sure what you Board Masters would think of it. Anyone else tried it?

We have it and I enjoyed it a lot, though was on the more complex end of what my family will tolerate, so we have not been back (to the future).

Custom Ticket to Ride map generator (unofficial)

Print and play fun!

I love it! Picked a long game on the world map. Some classic journeys

Anchorage-Burnaby
Ontario-Mexico City
Sao Paolo-Cape Town
Addis Ababa-Hyderabad
Reykjavik-Murmansk
Casablanca-Scunthorpe...

One aspect of the hobby I've been keen to experiment with is tabletop roleplaying games. I've always been slightly prejudiced against it because I've only really known it as D&D and similar and fantasy just really isn't my thing. However, I've recently been exploring non-orc alternatives and there's quite a few out there.

Last night I played a game with four others using the Fiasco system that allows for the re-enactment of Coen Brother style movies and resolves within three hours. I'd first become aware of it when it featured on Wil Wheaton's Tabletop many years ago, but was reminded when I recently watched a play-through by the No Rolls Barred crew.

Before it begins, everyone's relationships with the people sitting next to them is established (eg rivals; friends; manager/worker; newly-weds) and various objects, locations, and needs are assigned. The system is designed so these provide the sparks and narrative drive for the stories, and often an element someone picked would lead to someone choosing something to complement that and, where possible, create conflicts further down the line.

It plays over two Acts, with each player getting two scenes in the spotlight. You get to choose to either "establish" the scene or "resolve" it. In the former, you decide what happens but the other players decide if it's going to have a positive or a negative outcome for your character, and in the latter you decide the outcome but everyone else picks the scene. This is particularly helpful if you're stuck or uncertain about a direction. We found that people would either choose immediately or wait until the scene was playing out before picking.

At the interval, plot twists are introduced which must be incorporated during the second act somehow (we had "someone thinks it's all under control, but it isn't" and " a death, after an unpleasant struggle"). Everything ends with a montage sequence where people describe what happens to their characters (or their legacies).

We used a playset set in an Antarctic research lab. I quite enjoyed playing a misanthropic downtrodden scientist who just wants to be left alone. Our story ended up with a frantic rush to a helipad, a bloody struggle, and a lot of dead seals on a funeral pyre.

I also enjoyed how open the game was to different styles - sometimes we'd just narrate what was happening, other times act it one. One guy used his last scene to monologue on his choices (we made sure he took the bad one). The best part was the co-operative element with everyone taking and building on each other's ideas.

It was easy to explain, easy to play, and was over within three hours . It's definitely something I'm eager to play again.

Most importantly, it showed me that there's more to roleplay than decades-long campaigns with fucking orcs.

I can't stand narrative type TTRPGs. I'm in this for dice & maths

That's because you're wrong in the wrong-hole.

@kern if you want something a bit more sci-fi take a look at The Sprawl. It's closer to "traditional" TTRPGs but still uses narrative to do a lot of stuff and is lacking in orcs.

Will check it out, thanks!

Anyone going to the UK Games Expo this year?

After having a great time on my first ever visit last year, I'm there on the Friday and Saturday this time round.

Rumours are spreading about a possible legacy version of Ticket to Ride.

Quite tempted, but nothing will ever beat experiencing Pandemic Legacy for the first time.

I really hope the story is something like "You, intrepid railfans, must co-operate to stop Dr Beeching in his tracks".