9th February 2020

It's a Sunday and we're at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking. There's no 50 Fathoms this week as 3 players are absent.

Instead we are playing 'Puerto Rico'.

William Shakespeare wrote:
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.​

Well if you happen to play a plantation owner in Puerto Rico, you will play 7 roles, I dunno about 7 acts though.

What's in a game?

• Game board: Not really a game board speaking conventionally, it's used to display all the game's buildings that available to be purchased by players and to store money.
• Player boards: Each player has their own board. These boards have 12 'city' spaces and 12 'plantation' spaces. There is a spot marked as 'San Juan'. There's also a spot marked with a 'windrose' 
• Role cards: There are cards for the 7 different types of role in Puerto Rico.
• Building tiles: There are a total of 49 buildings, 44 standard sized buildings and 5 large buildings. Each building has 1 to 3 little circular spaces for colonist markers.
• Plantation tiles: There are 5 different types of plantation, corn, indigo, sugar, tobacco and coffee. There are 58 of these tiles, but they are not distributed equally amongst the goods, there are slightly less of the more valuable plantations (Tobacco & Coffee) and slightly more of the less valuable plantations (Indigo & Sugar). Each tile has a little circular space for a colonist marker.
• Quarry tiles: Used to indicate quarries (Explained below.), there are 8 of them.
• Colonist markers: Little wooden discs used to represent colonists.
• Colonist tile: Used in conjunction with colonist markers.
• Goods tokens: Little wooden tokens to represent the 5 types of goods that the plantations produce. There are 50 of these tokens, like the plantation tiles they are not distributed evenly amongst the 5 types of goods.
• Trading tile: This tile has 4 spaces on it for 4 goods (When they are traded.).
• Ship tiles: There are 5 tiles to represent ships, they can store cargo. Each ship has a different amount of storage space, this range from 4 to 8 spaces. Although only 3 ships are ever used at one time.

There are also victory point markers, cash and a first player card, but these are self-explanatory.
The quality of the components is mostly quite good.
What artwork there is in the game is OK, but it's not particularly memorable or interesting.

How's it play?
As always, we begin with setup. It looks quite long, but it's actually straightforward. 

• Put out the game board and place all the building tiles on their allotted places on the board.
• Put all of the money on the bank space on the game board.
• Shuffle all of the plantation tiles face-down and then put them randomly into 5 stacks, Put these stacks in a row next to the board. Then turn over tiles from the stacks face-up. There should a number of face-up plantations equal to the number of players +1.
• Place the quarry tiles in a stack face-up next to the row of plantation stacks.
• Put out the trading tile next to the game board.
• Put out the Colonist tile, place a number of colonists on the tile equal to the number of players. The remaining markers form a supply of colonists (The number used varies according to the number of players.)
• Put out 3 ships, the ships used depend on the number of players.
• Put out victory points chips, the number used depends again on the number of players.
• Put out all 7 role cards.
• Give each player a player board, some starting money and a starting plantation. This too is dependent on the number of players and turn order. Money and goods are stored on the windrose on a player's board.
• Finally determine a starting player.

In Puerto Rico there are 2 ways to earn victory points; by shipping goods out and buying buildings.
Each round, in turn order, each player will assume 1 of the 7 roles and carry out the action associated with that role. When a player chooses a role, all players can the also carry out that action, but the player who chose the role can do it's bonus action instead. When players chose a role, they take the relevant role card from the display.
The roles are:

• ​Settler: Starting with the active player, each may take a plantation from the available face-up tiles and place it on an empty space on their board. Once all players have taken their action, remaining plantation tiles are removed from play, new plantation tiles are drawn from the stacks and placed face-up. Bonus action; the player may take a quarry instead of a plantation (And place it on to an empty plantation space.).
• Mayor: Starting with the active player, each player takes a single colonist marker from the colonist tile, continue going round and doing this until all the colonists have been removed from the tile. Players can now place these colonists on to their plantations, quarries and buildings as they see fit. None of these can become active until at least 1 colonist is placed on them. Excess colonist markers are placed into 'San Juan' and can be moved out San Juan to fill empty spots during this action too. Once every player has take their colonist(s), the colonist tile is refilled, the number of markers placed on the tile is either; equal to all the empty circles on all the players' buildings (Plantations & quarries do not count.) or equal to the number of players - whichever is highest. Bonus action; before taking a colonist from the colonist tile, the active player may take an additional from the supply.
• Builder: Starting with the active player, each player may build (Buy.) 1 building from the game board. The cost for each building is shown on the tile, for each active quarry the player has in their plantation area, the cost is lowered by 1, thus the cost can be lowered to 0, although there are limits on how discount quarries confer. Once bought, the building tile is placed on to the player's city area. Bonus action; the player who chose this role can deduct a further 1 from the building cost.
• Craftsmen: When the Craftsmen role is chosen, starting with the active player, players may produce goods. To produce goods, a player must have both plantations and matching production buildings that are active. Furthermore, there must be at least as many colonists in the production buildings as in the plantations to produce all the goods. The exception is corn, that needs no production buildings All goods produced are placed on the windrose on a players game board. Bonus action; the player may produce 1 extra good of any good that they can already produce.
• Trader: Starting with the active player, each player may trade 1 good for money. The player takes the good from their windrose and places it on a space on the trading tile. Only 1 good can be traded and the same good cannot be traded twice. Nor can goods be traded if there are no spaces on the trading tile. Once all trading has concluded, if the trading tile has all 4 spaces filled with goods, then the goods are all removed. If there is at least 1 space available, then  no goods are removed. Bonus action; the player who chose the Trader role earns an extra coin for their trade.
• Captain: When the active player chooses the Captain role, then players must load all of their goods on to the 3 ships, however there are strict rules on how this is carried out. In turn order, starting with the active player, each player will load 1 type of good on to a ship, they must load as much of that type of good as possible. All of these goods must be loaded on to the same ship. If a ship already contains the type of good that the player is loading, then those goods must be loaded on to that ship. If no ship already has those goods, then they can be loaded on to an empty ship. Goods cannot be loaded on to ships that already have a differing type of good. If a ship is already completely loaded with the type of good a player is trying to load, or there are no empty ships, then that kind of good cannot be loaded. Play continues in turn order with players loading (Or not!) 1 type of good at a time until players have had the opportunity to load all their goods (Or not!). Players earn 1 victory point for each good they load - regardless of what type it is. Victory points are taken from the supply. Any player who has any goods left over when loading has ended must discard all of those goods except each player gets to keep a single good. Then, any ships which are full 'leave Puerto Rico' and a replacement ship arrives, essentially, the ship is emptied of its goods and is now an empty ship. Any ship that still has any space in its hold, remains how it is (Phew! It's not a complicated as it sounds!). Bonus action; the player who chose the Captain role gains an extra victory point when loading goods.
• Prospector: When the active player chooses this role... nothing happens! Really, nothing happens. Bonus action; the player who chose Prospector takes a coin from the supply (And possibly more - see below.).

Once all players have chosen a role for the round, a coin is placed on to any role card that was not selected in that round. A role card can accumulate multiple coins if it not chosen for consecutive round. If that role is taken in a later round, that player also acquires the coin(s). Since there are more role cards than players, coins will always be placed on at least 2 different role cards.

Players return their role cards and the next player in turn becomes the new first player and a new round begins.

There remains one last thing to discuss - what function do buildings serve. Firstly, they earn player points. Some buildings are necessary to process goods. Other buildings confer bonuses when trading and shipping or allow players to 'break the rules' in some way or other. Finally, the 5 large buildings give extra victory points according to the conditions on each individual large building tile.

Endgame
There are 3 manners in which the endgame can be triggered.

• When a player places a building into the 12th and final space in their city.
• All the victory points in the supply are taken (Extra points are still recorded for the remainder of the round.).
• There are not enough colonist markers to sufficiently fill the ship tile after the Mayor action has been executed.

If any of these conditions are met, play continues until the current round has ended.

​Players then tally their scores, highest value wins.

Overall
​​Puerto Rico is not a complicated game, but it is a fairly involved one and the rules are fairly detailed. The game has minimal 'downtime' as it allows players to act in other player's turns. This keeps players on their toes, being able to take advantage of another player's role is key to optimising strategy.

It's also a game of very little luck. The only random element is drawing the plantation tiles, everything else is down to player actions and choices.

Talking of choices, the game mostly provides players with useful and meaningful decisions to make. There's always the balancing act caused by there being one too many actions that players will want to do, pushing them into making tricky choices.

The trading and shipping rules give Puerto Rico a little bit of a competitive edge. Players need to watch what each other are doing, because as mentioned above, a decision that the active player makes can aid another player.

Since the trading tile and ship tiles are not emptied until full and even then only at the end of their respective actions. Players can screw each other (And themselves to be fair.) by initiating trading or shipping at particular times, this can and probably will deny certain players the benefits of trading or shipping. After all there are 5 types of good, but only 4 spaces on the trading tile and 3 ships.

Since the game has 2 ways of scoring points. There are broadly speaking, 2 strategies for winning.
These are; accumulate victory points by shopping goods out, or buy buildings and accumulate victory points that way.
In the few times, we've played it recently, it seems to be that acquiring buildings might be a better way of accumulating victory points. Perhaps the trading approach has a harder learning curve?
This is about the only negative I can think about the game.

But other than this, Puerto Rico is a game that rewards thoughtful play and that's always a good thing.

8th February 2020

Saturday is here and we're at Matakishi's for some role playing goodness.

We are continuing on with the next session of Clockwork & Chivalry.

Location; on the road.

We were continuing our journey when through the cold and the snow. We encountered a Parliamentary baggage train heading towards us.
We gave way and allowed them to pass. As they were doing so, a cannon slipped off it's wagon and crushes a horse.
The Parliamentarians had decided to put the horse down. But Ursula interceded and used her witchcraft to heal the animal.

We continued on and then encountered some soldiers, possibly deserters. They saw us coming and moved to block the road, forcing us to stop.
The soldiers demanded payment to let us pass and we immediately refused. Before they had the chance to threaten us, we threatened them!
It looked like a fight was about to kick off and just before it did, Lord Percy 'Dasher' and his 'Gallopers' rushed on to the scene and attacked the soldiers and slew them all.

After thanking 'Dasher', we pressed on. Later in the day we arrived at the village of Croughton.
Looking around the village we saw that the villagers were being entertained by a 'dancing bear'.
Looking further, we noticed that a pair of thieves plying their trade. Perhaps the bear is more of a distraction than entertainment?

​We accosted the two thieves and they tried to flee, the bear handler - realising the act was up also tried to flee. However it seems the bear was not happy with his handler and struck the fleeing man down.
Meanwhile we managed to capture the two others.

Ursula used her 'affinity' to tame the bear, whom we named 'Terrance' and we handed the thieves over to the villagers, who will know how to deal with them.

Next our journey took us to Sizeham.
Before we arrived, we heard screaming from a closeby manor house, the door was open, which was unusual.
There appeared to be a group at the manor, they appeared to be attacking the manor house and menacing the occupants.
We ran to help and drove them off.

We spoke with Lady Louise Rundle, she gave us a letter to give to her husband.

​By evening we had reached Sizeham and went into the local inn, pleasantly named 'The Hangman's Paunch' and we booked rooms from the owner Edith Shrewt.

Morning came and we were approached by an elderly man. He warned us that 'Roundheads' intend to burn Althorp manor to the ground and kill the children within.

We realised that we need to get to Althorp manor and quickly! We enlisted the aid of one 'Jed Frame',  a woodsman/forester, he led us through Whittlewood Forest and we arrived at Althorp House.

We met with Lady Catherine and spoke with her. She refused to leave the house in the face of an assault.
As we are conversing with her, we hear 4 'mechanical horses' with eight riders arrive, behind them are more soldiers.

Whilst in the house, we heard the soldiers being ordered to kill everyone inside!

Now was not the time to discuss matters with Lady Catherine. We grabbed the Lady and her children and fled for the woods.

Earlier we had spoken with some of the locals and learned that there was a Leveller/Digger camp somewhere in the woods. Luckily for us, Jed Frame knew and led us there.

The inhabitants of the settlement were most unhappy to see us, they feared that soldiers would follow us  and head for their camp. This did seem quite likely.

We prepared for the oncoming attack.

When they arrived, we attacked and managed to temporarily drive them back. In the lull we took the opportunity to return to Althorp house. In our flight from the house we were forced to abandon our caravan so now we collected it.

We then agreed to escort Lady Catherine to a place where she could find transport somewhere safe.

We headed out and exited Whittlewood Forest at it's northern perimeter. As we departed, we passed a campsite guarded by 2 Roundheads, no doubt this is the camp of the soldiers who are currently in the forest.
We spoke with the two remaining guards. They tell use that they had been sent here with orders to burn the manor house down. They also told us that they are led by a 'Captain Adam Frame' (Possibly related to Jed Frame?).

We left the camp behind and as we did so, we spotted a black-robbed individual watching us from the edge of the forest. 

4th February 2020

Tuesday evening at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking with the Woking gaming club.

The 3rd and final game of the evening was 'Noctiluca'.
Read about it here.

4th February 2020

Tuesday gaming at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking continues.

The next game of the evening was 'Cloud 9'.
Read about it here.

4th February 2020

Tuesday evening at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking with the Woking gaming club.

We started the evening with 'Bang! The Dice Game'.
Read my blog here.

2nd February 2020?

Sunday gaming at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking is drawing to a close.

Now that we had finished 50 Fathoms for the day, we played a quick game of 'Princess Legend'.
Read my blog about it here.

2nd February 2020

Sunday at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking and we're here for some RPGing.

Location: Yumas.

​We had been watching a house in the port of Yumas when we noticed that a Kehuna was watching us!

We spoke with him and he introduced himself as 'Rufus'. After some conversation, Rufus agreed to join our crew.

We continued to scout the house.

Shia concocts a 'cunning' plan.

Using the Kieran Empire uniforms that we had acquired previously; we would pretend to be guards and take the prisoner (Rana.) out of the house.

One of our company pretended to be a wounded soldier. They approached the house, pretending that they had been attacked.

Meanwhile, out of sight, Rufus lights a fire and lets off his pistol to cause a distraction and reinforce the story.

​Shia appears (In disguise.) and convinces the guards to let us in and that they should go to the lower tier to help repel the attackers.
Now that we had access to the house, we headed straight for the room that we believed held Rana.

We found the room and entered. Rana was not alone, she was accompanied by Captain Livis and his companion.
We tried to convince Rana to come with us willingly but she refused to do so.

Baxter stepped forward to bind her arms and it was at that moment that Captain Livis moved to stop Baxter.
We managed to quickly incapacitate Livis and his companion as they did not suspect that we were not guards. We searched them and then tied them up. We then tied up Rana and fled.

In the meantime; guards had left the fortification at the top of Yumas to deal with the fake attack.

Win and Rackham surmised that it must now be empty and went in to loot the fortification.

We returned to the dock. A large crowd had gathered there and were milling around confused. We managed to avoid all of them and get back to our ships.

Win and Rackham made their own ways back.

When we were at sea, we released Rana, she was suspicious and agressive towards us. Shia however, manages to convince her that we were rescuing her and not kidnapping her. Shia explains that we will let her off some place safe.

1st February 2020

February and Saturday have come around again, it's the evening and we're at Matakishi's for RPGing.

​The Clockwork & Chivalry campaign kicks off tonight.

Location: Oxford, Christmas Eve, 1645.

It was cold, it was wintry and snow covered everything. This did not deter the crowds from gathering to watch the fireworks display tonight.

Ursula, Abraham and I had found ourselves in 'The Jolly Magpie', the tavern is crowded and filled to capacity.
We were sitting and nursing our drinks when we witnessed a fracas breakout between some Levellers and Royalist.
Being no fan of the Royalists, Abraham stood up and waded in with the intention of aiding the Levellers. The fight was eventually quelled and we were all ejected from the tavern, regardless of our involvement or not.

We had planned to stay in The Jolly Magpie until our meeting with a certain 'Sir Reginald Perkinson', but now we decided to explore the Christmas fair.

We came across a street play, a comedy depicting events from the civil war.

After this we head to the fireworks display to meet with Sir Reginald. Whilst we are watching the display, Sir Reginald invites us to his house tomorrow.

During the latter part of the display we noticed a giant humanoid shape in the bonfire itself - a salamander!
Suddenly we saw a puritan preacher leap forward and break the seal, freeing the salamander.

​The salamander escapes and began to flee!

Without delay, Sir Reginald gives us each a 'philosopher's stone' and explains that we must surround the elemental whilst brandishing the stones. When this is done, then Sir Reginald will able to deal with it. Finally, Sir Reginald tells us that he thinks that someone has given the salamander instructions of some kind to go to a particular place.

We tried to anticipate where the salamander was going and took a short cut in order to cut it off. But then; ambush! We're ambushed, our attackers rake us with gunfire and I stopped a shot in the arm and it nearly downs me! We respond and counter-attack, Ursula's witchcraft made short work of most of them and Abraham and I dealt with what remained.
During the altercation we noticed a black hooded stranger watching us, but they disappeared before we could move towards them.

We then continued with our pursuit and managed to surround the elemental and Sir Reginald used his alchemy to banish the creature.

The next day was Christmas Day! We headed to Sir Reginald's home, when we arrived we found that his sister was also present.

Sir Reginald went on to explain why he wanted us here. He explained that he was at the 'Battle of Naseby', it was during this fight that he lost both sons and his wife Cecilia.
Much to his surprise, Sir Reginald discovered that his wife might still live!

Sir Reginald then explained that he wanted us to investigate the supposed disappearance of Cecilia.
He went on to tell us that if she's not at Naseby, then she might be at Cambridge.

Sir Reginald also wanted us to deliver a letter on his behalf. The letter meant for the mother of a dead friend of his! The address is; Althorp House, Whittlewood forest.

The next day we exited Oxford and upon our leaving we were accosted by some town guards. They searched us, complaining about the activities of smugglers. once out of Oxford we headed towards Naseby.

During the morning we spotted a band of horsemen, they were Parliamentarians and they rushed past us along the road?

During the afternoon a fox hunt crossed the road in front of us. Later in the day we encountered the hunt again, the hunt leader had been seriously injured. We decided to stop for the day and see if we could help. Luckily for the huntsman, Ursula's witchcraft proved helpful.

The next day, the hunt leader gifted Abraham a riding horse in thanks.

We continued on with our journey.
The next day we encountered gypsies fleeing Parliamentarians. Later on it began to snow and soon it started to get dark. Ahead we spotted circling crows, it did not bode well and we found a body.

It was the remains of a cavalier, he had been stabbed in the heart through the back. He must have died several days ago, but it was hard to tell in that bitter cold.

We searched his remains and found a ring with the initials 'J.S.'. Abraham took the ring and hoped to return it to a family member. Afterwards we buried the body. 

The next day we woke to find that snow had blanketed everything. We set off but the going was slow in the awful conditions.

We had few encounters during this day, the harsh weather kept many people off the road. We did pass a ragged couple however, they stopped us and asked for food & clothing. We helped them as best we could.

Later in the day a mounted Royalist patrol comes up behind us and we are surrounded.

They were led by 'Lord Percy Carsdale' with his 'Gallopers'. Lord Percy introduced himself as 'Dasher'. Then he questioned us about our actions and movements over the last few days. He was searching for a spy and also looking for 'John Seddon'.

The initials on the ring we had taken from the body matched the name John Seddon. So Abraham explained the situation to Dasher and handed over the ring.

After matters with Dashers had been dealt with we continued on.

We soon entered North Hampshire and were drawing closer to Whittlewood forest.

28th January 2020

Tuesday is here and we're at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking to play board games.

Popular opinion states that most restaurant fail in the first year, so running one is hard work (And believe me I know!). What could be harder? Running a whole chain of restaurants! 

That's where 'Food Chain Magnate' comes in. Now you too can know what it's like to run restaurants without all the 'fun' of inconsistent staff, irritating customers, infuriating regulations and interfering local authorities. 

What's in a game?
There's quite a lot to Food Chain Magnate and quite a lot of components too.

• Tiles: Each tile depicts some buildings (Represented by white areas with grid lines.) and roads (Shown in blue.). A number of tiles are placed together to form the main playing area, essentially representing a neighbourhood.
• Meeples: There are 2 types of food (Burgers and pizzas.) and 3 types of drink (Soft drinks, lemonade and beers.), these are represented by very nice wooden meeples.
• Staff cards: All the staff your chains of restaurants could ever need are depicted on these cards. Delivery boys, chefs, managers, HR and err zeppelin pilots? When staff cards are played, they must be placed in a hierarchy. This hierarchy can have up to 3 rows, but in order to have more rows, a player will need more managers to manage the staff in the lower rows.
• Display stand: Amazingly, the game's lid is flipped over and becomes a display stnd for all the staff cards. This is not just a nice touch, it actually saves a lot of room as displaying all the staff cards flat on the playing area would take up so much space.

How's it play?
First; setup.

• The tiles are randomly placed to form the playing area. This will determine the placement of buildings and roads. The number of tiles used depends on the number of players.
• The staff cards are put in their display
• Players are given 3 restaurants and the starting order is determined.
• Each player is given a 'CEO' staff card.

That's pretty much it for setup, let's get to playing.
A round of Food Chain Magnate is played over 7 rounds.

• Staff hierarchy; during this phase, players put down their staff cards (Face down, they are all revealed at the same time.). At the start, players only have a CEO. The CEO can manage 3 other staff (In the row below) and has the ability to hire another member of staff (This new staff card is not immediately put into play.). The CEO can hire staff like chefs etc, but in the long term the player will also need to hire managers, managers will manage other staff (A bit like a CEO.), so if a CEO gets a couple of managers, they can manage 6 staff. Players will also need to hire trainers, when staff are hired, they are at a 'junior' level, training staff make them more effective; managers can manage more people, cooks can cook more, etc. There are a lot of staff that do a lot of different things. Any staff cards that a player has that are not in their hierarchy spend the day at the beach!
• Determine new player order; the order in which players act is recalculated every turn. Basically, the player who has the most 'empty' spaces in their hierarchy gets t choose where in turn order they go (They could choose to go first or last or anywhere in between.). Then the player who has the 2nd highest number of empty spaces goes next etc.
• Actions; in turn order, each player carries out the actions for the staff they have in their hierarchy. Actions include hiring and training. They also include marketing (Marketing creates a demand for food & drink.), getting food & drink, placing new houses (Creating houses creates customers) and gardens (Gardens are attached to houses and increase demand.) and finally placing new restaurants and moving existing ones.
• Supply the demand; players can carry out actions to create a demand for food & drink. Provided a player has generated food & drink, they can try and then supply that demand. How does this work? Well, 'people' from houses will go to the cheapest restaurant selling the food & drink that they want (Players can hire staff to push the price of their food & drink down.), however the further that 'people' have to travel, the more it costs. Every time customers visit a player's restaurant, that player earns money. 
• Wages: Players now have to pay the wages of their staff.
• Marketing campaign: Even though a player may have created a marketing campaign in the 'Actions' phase, the effect of the campaign doesn't kick in until now, so players need to think ahead. There are various different types of campaign that a player can undertake, that have different ranges and areas of effect and can have differing duration. This includes using billboards, mail shots, radio and even planes for advertising.
• Clean up; excess food & drink is discarded and various other end of round actions are completed here. The game includes 'milestones', these are varied objectives to meet, the player who completes a milestone first, gets an in game benefit for it in this phase. If multiple players achieve a milestone in the same phase, then they all get the benefit.

Endgame
​Play continues until all the allotted money from the 'bank' supply is depleted, in which case any remaining money is paid out from the reserve supply.

The player who has accumulated the most money, wins.

Overall
Food Chain Magnate markets itself as a 'heavy' game and it's not kidding.

The aim of the game is to build housing and create marketing campaigns, this generates a demand for whatever particular food & drink the player decides advertise.
Then the player produces the relevant food & drink to fill that demand, this equals profit.

Except it's not so simple.

There is a lot to think here and all of it is important.

How a player structures their company is crucial.  All of the other actions options will become avaialable based on the staff cards that you recruit and play.
A lot to think about.

You need food? Pizza chefs will produce pizza and burger chefs will produce burgers.
You want drinks? You need an errand boy to go and collect them.
Want to be more competitively priced? Get a pricing manager.
Need an advertising campaign. You'll have to get marketing staff.
Want to place more housing? A business developer is what you need.
Your staff need training to be more effective? Trainers are what you need.
You got too many staff? Get more managers!
Need to recruit people even quicker? Recruiters are what's needed.

And so on.

Marketing needs to be targeted. There are different types of marketing that target a player's audience at different 'ranges' and they tend to be of varying length. Players will need to optimise creating their demand.
Advertising can have a real sting in the tail. Because other players can benefit from it too. If one player creates a demand for burgers and another player then opens a burger joint closer to the housing that's been targeted, then the customers will go there instead (Customers have absolutely no loyalty!). Or if another player slashes the price of their burgers, then other restaurants will be ignored.
Sly players will definitely try and exploit other player's marketing.

This brings me to 'pricing'. This is a great game mechanic. Instinctively, players will want to increase prices to generate more revenue. But a player really needs to undercut their opponents, because less profit is better than no profit. Pricing is a real race to the bottom and forces players to make horrible choices - always a good thing!

Players will also need to think about food & drink production, as more and more demand appears, players will need to get better and better at production to meet that demand. Also, as demands get more complex, fulfilling those demands gets equally as complex (A house's demands cannot be only partially fulfilled and must be fully met.).

And don't forget milestones, the benefits they can confer can be very important.

When we played this game, the owner explained to us that he thinks at the start there's a couple of different routes to follow for 'opening moves' that there are 'no brainer' moves (These are to do with milestones.). It seems some of the milestones can be completed in the first couple of turns and only the first player(s) that complete them get the benefit, not following the 'no brainer' moves means a player can lose out on those benefits.

This implies that early moves (Or mistakes really!) can affect the entire game.
I'm not sure how I feel about this? I don't like 'no brainers', because what they do is remove choice from a game. On the other hand, maybe it was overstated. I guess the game would need to be played multiple times to see if this is the case

All of this contributes to make Food Chain Magnate a deep game that requires a lot of forethought and strategy. There is no luck or chance in this game. If you like genuinely heavy games, this may interest you.

For me though, I found it to be a little bit difficult to play the game on all the levels it required and mostly ignored the marketing side. It felt a strangely unengaging game, perhaps it was the theme?

25th January 2020

Saturday gaming continued. Day became night as we headed over to Matakishi's on Saturday for some gaming fun with the 2nd RPG of the day.

We will be playing an RPG called Clockwork & Chivalry. Clockwork & Chivalry uses a rule set called Renaissance. Renaissance is in itself a descendant from the Basic Roleplaying (Or BRP.) RPG published by Chasoium. 

​In case your wondering: Renaissance is 'skill based' system that uses percentages. Although character stats such as Strength and Intelligence are based on rolling 'd6s' very similar to D&D.

Since this is session zero, we will be generating characters this session. Clockwork & Chivalry utilises a rule that creates bonds between the player characters.

Our 3 heroes are:

Ursula Ramsey: A secretive witch.
Abraham Culpeper: A stalwart soldier.
Arturo Fluke: A hardworking merchant.

Backstory

Arturo was a son of the affluent Fluke family and Abraham had been adopted by them. One day when the two of them were on the road to High Wycombe, they stumbled upon a lynching of some sort.

They saw that a young woman was in the process of being burnt at the stake! Seeing the injustice, the pair of them took matters into their own hands, drove the mob away and rescued the young woman.

The young woman introduced herself as Ursula. Once Ursula was freed, to the astonishment of Abraham and Arturo, she immediately used witchcraft to heal her burns. Ursula really was a witch!

Concerned for Ursula's welfare, Abraham and Arturo brought her back to the Fluke estate. There Ursula found gainful employment.

Matters were fine for a time, but this did not last. Ursula was witnessed using her witchcraft in the estate and this raised great concerns. Abraham and Arturo had hidden this secret from everybody and they tried to protect Ursula. When it came out that they had lied about her, Arturo was disinherited from the Fluke family.

Arturo had no choice but to leave the estate and make a living off his wits. Ursula, feeling guilty for events was determined to have him reinstated to the Fluke family and chose to accompany him to do so. Abraham, being a long time friend also chose to leave the estate and travel with his companions.

Their journey had bought them to Oxford.