18th September 2024
Thirteen gamers this week tackled a variety of games including a rematch from the previous week, with additional tasty cake treats on account of Richie’s birthday.
Starter games for the session were Tomb Trader back for its eighth club play and Kingdomino on its tenth outing. In Tomb Trader James T. managed to be the clear winner by bartering for the most treasure maps without anyone else noticing as they were too focussed on their own artifact hauls! Whilst next door, in Kingdomino although Richie managed to acquire almost every gold mine which did create good score of 42, it was Graham’s more diverse terrain kingdom, but with a substantial water area that won the game.
A rematch of Kanban EV had been organised, because clearly, they hadn’t learned their lesson from the first time (see blog 87). This time, the line up included Steph H, Jyo K, and Darren C, all attempting to get back into Sandra’s good graces. With Steve L getting his sick leave approved, Jyo K represented his trusted yellow meeple.
The players stumbled through the early rounds, collectively losing points faster than you can say “oh no Sandra” as they spectacularly failed to meet her expectations. This time around, Steph H had a plan and seemed to know exactly why she was in logistics. She scored a convincing victory by being the player with the most up to date training in all departments and a select few cars in her garage with several upgraded parts. The curse of the yellow meeple continues.. until next time.
The others split into two groups of five for Flamecraft and Forest Shuffle.
Flamecraft is a game about dragons and shops back for its second club play from session 69. Players are Flamekeepers trying to enhance the shops in town by homing dragons there, gathering items and casting spells. Visit shops to gain items or dragon favours, then enchant shops to increase your reputation and try to attract fancy dragons. A simple but cute game with a bit of strategy and dragons or shops with interesting or comical names.
Forest Shuffle had been played a few times at our online BGA sessions but James T’s physical order had finally arrived so it was time to give it a whirl at club. It is basically a card game and setup is very quick, but there are a lot of different cards. They are basically of three types; trees essential to start your forest which come in eight different types and top/bottom and left/right split cards with animals or plants on. To play each card there is a value in the top left corner showing how many other cards that need to be discarded from your hand. Discards go on the forest row and can then be picked up by other players instead of the draw pile, but when the row has more than 10 cards it gets cleared. Once you have some trees down you can start populating them, each tree can cater for up to four residents one on each side by tucking the fauna and flora cards underneath so only one half of that card is showing. All the cards come with different ways to score victory points and some also allow in game bonuses like extra card pickups, a second turn or a free play of a certain icon type. Everyone keeps building their forest until the third winter card is revealed from the bottom third of the deck and then play immediately stops.
James managed to play all eight tree types into his forest activating some of their complementary scoring conditions and then tried a dormouse and bat strategy but was caught out by winter before getting a third bat type in his trees. Dormice apparently like sharing their trees with bats and bats like a variety of other bats in their forest… Kathy had gone with a deer and wolf strategy with a side helping of butterflies and hedgehogs. Graham managed a good bear play when the forest row was full and got 12 cards in his cave for an equivalent score, alongside a lot of trees and a mole that allowed him to string a lot of turns together. But it was Dave’s violet carpenter bee on Horse Chestnut tree strategy that brought in an impressive multiplier that gave him the win.
Then as those were medium length games the tables switched to Patchwork Doodle back for its eighth play and Neom.
Neom was back for a third club play, there is a gameplay description in blog 14. It is similar to 7 Wonders with a pass and play element, developing resources and using them to enable building but you put down seven tiles each era to add to your city. Tiles are either raw resources, residential, industrial, commercial or special that tend to generate victory points in different ways. However don’t neglect to build some power for your city or some housing and remember not to build too much industry near your houses as the residents don’t like the pollution, these all lead to negative points.
This game avoided the floods and fire disasters in eras one and two, but Graham triggered a crime spree in era three leading to some monetary penalties or loss of tiles for those that could not pay or hadn’t built police stations. In the end the best two players (James and Graham) had developed some good revenue generating commercial zones and some nice victory point keystone tiles.
Then the Kanban EV table finished in time for them to have a go at Forest Shuffle as well.
The next session is the 2nd of October, what games will be selected next time? If you want to influence that join the Discord channel and make some suggestions and we can try and make sure to bring them and matchmake some other players too. Otherwise come along on the night and see what the table full of games brought along has on display.
- Total Session Attendance: 13
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Board Games: