10th November 2019

Sunday lunch time at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking. 50 Fathoms is still on hiatus, so board games it is.

We actually begin the day with a card game. A little 2 player 'Alice in Wonderland' themed game called 'Wonderland'. Yeah... Someone spend a while coming up with that.

What's in a game?
Wonderland is quite a minimalist game. There is a deck of cards for each player and each deck has only 7 cards in it. 7!
Despite the differing artwork, the 2 decks are identical.

• There is a deck for the 'Alice' player and a deck for 'The Red Queen' player.
• The cards in each deck are numbered from 1 to 7.
• Each card will display one or two symbols. These symbols are a 'vial of poison' and a 'cake'. They may be along the short edge or the long edge.

The art on these cards is obviously themed around the book and is quite nice.

The theme though, is entirely replaceable, it could as easily been about cats v dogs or elves v orcs or whatever v whatever.

How's it play?​
The purpose of Wonderland is to place cards down in the playing area (In a 3x3 grid.) to 'win' the rows and columns.

After deciding who will be playing who, each player should take their respective deck.

• Both players keep all 7 cards in their hand.
• Both players will play 3 cards face-down.
• One player should put their 3 cards in a row and the other in a column. This should look like a 'right-angle' shape. Between the row and the column there should be a imaginary 3x3 grid.
• Then taking turns, both players lay down their remaining 4 cards face-up. These can be played in the 'normal' orientation or upside-down.
• Once both players have finished playing their card, we go to the endgame.

Endgame
Rows and columns are 'won' by calculating the value of each players' cards in each row and each column, the player who has the highest value in each row and each column 'wins' it and takes that row or column's face-down card.
However, it's not just the value of the cards that matter here. The poison and the cake play a vital role here.

• If a card has a cake along one side and that side is is pointing at another adjacent card in the 3x3 grid. Then the value of that adjacent card is doubled.
• If a card has a vial of poison along one side and that side is pointing at another adjacent card in the 3x3 grid. Then the value of that adjacent card is reduced to zero. The card is still worth 0 if a cake is pointing at it, zero doubled is still zero.

The player who captures the most face-down cards, wins the game.

Overall
Wonderland is an interesting little game that seems to be about trying to out-predict the other player and ruthlessly take advantage of any error the other player may make.
Playing a card with a cake or poison symbol facing the right way can dramatically change the scores.
There's also an element of bluffing here, as each player essentially has to discard 3 cards and only play 4. This means it not possible to count cards as a player never knows what their opponent has put into their row or column.

Wonderland is a quick game to play and is small and portable.
I don't think it's a game that stands up to a lot of repeatedly play. But has a quick filler for 2 players it's OK. 

15th October 2019

Tuesday evening has rolled around again and we're at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking. This can only mean it's games night.

Our game of the evening is 'Gold West'. A game for rootin' tootin' prospectors and quite possibly outlaws and bandits.

What's in a game?​
There are quite a lot of components in Gold West. The general game components are:

• Game board: The game board contains a lot of information. As well as a scoring track, it has 3 precious metal delivery tracks, a 'boomtown' area and most importantly a hexagonal map area, a river sits in the middle of the map area (Will be explained later.).
• Hexagonal map tiles: These hex tiles are actually composed of 7 hexes, each hex on a tile has a colour. There are 4 colours to represent the 4 different types of terrain in game.
• Resource tokens: On one side it depicts a 'mining shovel and pick' in the colour of one of the 4 terrain tiles. On the other side of the token it depicts 2 or 3 resources.
• Resource blocks: Little blocks that represent the 5 different resources that are used in Gold West. These are wood and stone, and the precious metals gold, silver and copper.
• Boomtown tiles: These are placed on the boomtown area and earn players points.
• Contract cards: These cards represent contracts that can be fulfilled by players and earn them points.
• Stagecoach meeples: These are used to track deliveries of precious metals

As well as game components, there are also several components for individual players. These include:

• ​Personal game board: There are also 4 'influence' tracks (One for each of the 4 terrains.) and a 'supply' track on the board. There is also space for player tokens.
• Tents: These are little tent shaped meeples that sit on the player's board until used, there are 10 tents.
• Influence token: These disc shaped tokens sit on the player board until used.

That's more or less it.

Use metals
So now that resources have been moved out of the supply track, they must be used. There are 5 resources and 3 of them are precious metals - gold, silver and copper. In this stage, the precious metals are 'spent'.

• Metals can be spent to purchase contract cards, this will earn victory points. Contracts can also confer additional bonuses such as moving a stagecoach along a delivery track.
• A player can spend metals to place an influence token on to a tile in boomtown. These tiles can be used to earn points, provided they player meets the conditions on the tile.
• A player can deliver metals 'back east'. This moves the stagecoach meeples along the 3 delivery tracks (One for each metal). These points are immediately scored. The delivery tracks also have 'break points' which earn whoever gets there first earns a bonus points token.

Any 'unspent' metals are discarded at the end of the turn. But you can always deliver them, so they are never actually wasted.

Build camp/settlement or loot
After using metals, the active player has to build a camp or settlement, or loot. This is done using wood and/or stone resources that were bought out of the supply track along with the metals.

• A camp can be built with a stone or a wood resource. When building a camp, the active player selects a hex which contains a token showing its resources (Not the mining side.) and takes the token and replaces it with a tent meeple from their board. The active player then turns the resource token back over to the mining side and places it on the first available space on the relevant influence track on their board.
• A settlement can be built with a stone and a wood resource. Just like with a camp, the active player takes a resource token, but instead it is replaced with an influence token and a tent on top of the influence token. The active player turns the resource token to the mining side and places it on the relevant influence track, but places it one space further along the track. Thus building a settlement instead of a camp earns more influence.
• If the active player has no stone or wood, then they must loot instead. This is done by taking a resource token as explained above, but no tent or token is placed in the hex and it is left blank. Instead a tent it placed into the 'bandit camp' area on the main game board and incur penalty points at the end. Furthermore, the resource token is discarded and not placed on to a influence track.
• When a resource token is taken from the main game board, any adjacent hexes that have unrevealed resources, have those resources revealed.
• When a resource token is taken either by building a camp or settlement or by looting, then the active player takes the displayed resources and places it in one of the 4 boxes in their supply track. Now since putting the resources in the lowest box will cause headaches when moving them up, why would you ever do it? The answer is points, those boxes are numbered from 0-3 for a reason; that's how many points the active player immediately receives when putting resources into a box in the supply train.

Just with precious metals, any unspent wood and stone resources are discarded at the end of a player's turn.
This means that having more than 1 stone or 1 wood is a waste as these will be discarded. A player only needs a stone or a wood, or a stone and a wood.

That's it for a player's turn, it seems like a lot, but in play it's pretty straightforward.

Endgame
Gold West is played over 11 rounds, players have ten tents to use and there's a further round with no tents. Then we get on to scoring, points are scored in the following ways:

• Each of the 4 terrains types will earn points for the player who has the most influence tokens in the pertinent influence track. 2nd place earns a lesser amount of points. This is done for all 4 terrain types, not all of the terrain types earn the same points.
• Boomtown tokens are scored, there are a large variety of ways these can be scored.
• Bonus tokens are scored.
• Each player earns points for the single longest contiguous line of camps/settlements that they have placed on the map.  
• Finally points are deducted for tents placed into the bandit camp.

Scores are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
There's a lot to like about Gold West.

The supply mechanic is equal parts infuriating and brilliant. If you put your resources in the lower boxes and have trouble getting them out effectively, it's only your own fault for being greedy for points. But if you're able to manage the flow of resources well, it's a good source of points.
Talking of points, Gold West presents players a good variety of ways to score points. There is always a way to accumulate points, it's a question of optimisation and individual strategy. Players are always given meaningful choices on how to approach scoring. Even if a player fails to bring out a stone or wood resource, they still have the open to loot.
I also like how resources become revealed as players build camps and settlements on the map. It's a nice touch.
The game is also a nice looking game, I like the stagecoach meeples and there's something pleasing about looking at the game map covered in lots of tent meeples.

​All in all I liked Gold West.

7th September 2019

Saturday evening. Matakishi's. Game night.

Tonight we decided to play another classic board game. This time it was 'Britannia', a game originally published in 1986, over 30 years ago.
Britannia is a historical game of invasion and conquest and when I say invasion and conquest, I really do mean constant invasion and conquest.

In Britannia, players do not play a single nation or tribe or whatever. Instead they play a colour and each colour has 4 nations of varying size. Each colour will have 1 nation that benefits from a 'major invasion', this explained later.

Britannia is played over 16 rounds and centuries of time. The game starts with the Roman invasion (So around 43 A.D..) and end with the Norman invasion (Around 1066 A.D..).
Even though each player has control of 4 factions, the factions do not appear at the same time in the game. They appear when 'historically appropriate' in various turns throughout the game.

What's in a game?

• Game board: A board that has a map of the UK, split into 37 different ancient regions.
• Tokens: There are lots of tokens, lots and lots of tokens. Tokens for each of the different factions, tokens for leaders, tokens for population expansion.

How's it play?
The rules for Britannia are relatively simple. The complexity comes from the interaction with the other players.

Before the game begins we have set up. Each player chooses a colour and is given all the relevant tokens for that colour, the play begins.

• Players do not take turns in the traditional sense. Instead the game dictates the order in which the factions act (Not the players) in a round. Obviously not all the factions act in all of the turns.
• The first thing a faction does is calculate population increase. The faction accumulates 1 token for each 3 areas that they control (Some areas that are considered 'difficult' and only count as a 1/2 for population.). Extra tokens are distributed into areas the faction already controls.
• Second comes movement. Most tokens can move 2 spaces (But when tokens move, they cannot leave 'empty' areas.). Thus placement of tokens is important to expansion.
• Combat is next. If tokens end their movement in the same space as an opposing faction, then combat ensues. During combat, both factions roll a number of 6-sided dice equal to the size of their force. Every result of 5+ eliminates and opposing token. Some factions are tougher than others, they eliminate enemies on a 4+ and are only eliminated on a 6! If combat takes place on difficult terrain, all tokens are only eliminated by a 6. Finally if after the 1st 'round' of combat, no one side has won, tokens possibly have the choice of retreating to a friendly area.
• Finally, overpopulation is calculated. The amount of tokens a faction has on the map cannot be more than double the number of areas that faction controls. Excess tokens are removed from play.

That's a basic overview of the core rules. But there are rules for Roman forts, rules for leaders, rules for sea movement and rules raiding etc.
One other thing worth noting are 'major invasions'. Each player will have a faction that has a major invasion at some point. A major invasion means that the relevant faction gets to turns in a row.

Endgame
Britannia is played over 16 rounds. Scoring occurs throughout the game, but not on every round. In fact not all the factions score at the same time, some factions score on entirely different rounds.

Additionally, when scoring is carried out, different factions score different points for controlling different areas of the board. Which means that different factions may have different priorities. However quite often opposing factions score points for the same regions, invariably pushing them into conflict with one another.

After all the rounds have been completed, points are tallied and highest score wins.

Overall
Britannia is a wargame and as such is very confrontational. It's a game that charts the historic invasions and conquests of early Britain. It turns out there were a lot of invasions and conquests! Players will more or less be in constant conflict with other players and there's no way to avoid it.

Combat is a key component in Britannia: Luckily, the basics of the rules are simple to remember. Mostly players will be looking into how to expand into and hold high scoring areas and this drive most of the game's conflict.

Asymmetrical rules make Britannia interesting and quite unique.

I like how the asymmetrical factions give different players advantage at different times. So for example; whoever has the Romans will gain an early lead, but after that they will have smaller factions appear.
Combined with the asymmetrical scoring that gives different players different objectives means that the end score is always unpredictable.

I do have a couple of minor criticisms of Britannia.

Britannia should only really be played with 4 players. Sure you can play with 3 or 5 players, but it's not optimal.

Britannia can take about 4 hours to play, so it requires quite a time commitment. I guess a millennia of invasions of Britain can't be played out quickly!

But these small criticisms aside; Britannia is an involved but entertaining game to play, provided you don't mind a game about conflict with other players.

4th June 2019

Tuesday night and it's game time at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking with the board game club.

Does the idea of game about slowly growing trees excite you? If the answer is yes, then  Photosynthesis is the game for you!


What's in a game?

All of the components of photosynthesis are made from card. All of the of the tokens, even the trees. There are no plastic meeples or soulless wooden cubes here.
And even though this is the case, they are still good components. When a bunch of trees are all on the playing board. It looks impressive.

In photosynthesis there is a main playing board and a sun marker to indicate the direction of the sunlight. Additionally, each player has their own board that contains most of the seeds and trees needed to play the game.
Players also start with some seeds and trees that are not on the player board that are 'available' to use. There is an important difference between the two that will explained a little further down.

How's it play?

The premise of Photosynthesis is to plant seeds, grow the seeds until they become the largest possible trees and then score points from those trees.
 
In a normal game, play continues until the sun has completed 3 revolutions of the board. It takes 6 rounds to complete 1 revolution. Thus players each have a total of 18 turns to win the game.
Each round consists of 2 phases.
Phase one.

• The first phase allow players to collect 'light points', (This is the game's currency that allows players to carry out actions). Collecting light points is an intriguing process, it's dependant on the position of the sun.
• This is indicated by the sun marker, which will placed in 1 of the six positions around the board and indicates the direction of the sunlight.
• Any tree in sunlight earns its player light points, (The bigger the tree, the more points it earns.).
• However, trees cast shadows in the opposite direction of the sunlight, (The bigger the tree, the longer the shadow.). Any tree caught in a shadow does not earn light points. There is one exception, if the tree caught in the shadow is bigger than the tree casting the shadow, then the bigger tree will earn its full points.

So now that all the players have calculated their light points, play proceeds to the next phase.
Phase two.

• In this phase players can spend some or all of their light points to carry out various actions.
• Actions include planting seeds, growing trees or scoring trees. As well as acquiring seeds or trees.

​That's it for the basic rules. There are, however a few other rules to remember which are very important.

• Even though players will have multiple light points and can perform multiple actions. Only 1 action can originate from a space on the game board per turn. Therefore players cannot plant a seed and grow it into a tree in a single turn. Nor may they use a tree as a point of origin to plant a seed more than once per turn.
• Seeds and trees on the player board are not 'available' to use. Only the seeds and trees off of the board can be placed on to the main game board. Players must light points to purchase seeds and trees, in which case the are taken off of the player board and then become 'available' to be used.
• When a player grows a seed into a small tree, or increases the size of any tree; they replace whatever is on the game board with its relevant 'upgrade'. Thus a seed is grown into a small tree is removed and replaced with the small tree. The seed is returned to the player's board, (It does not go to the 'available area.). If there is space available on the player board, then it is discarded and permanently removed from the game.

​All of these rules basically serve one purpose - to slow the game down. And that makes complete sense, this is a game about growing trees after all. It forces players to think a few turns ahead.
It takes time to score points. A tree can only score points when it is a 'large' size. It takes 4 actions to plant a seed and then go to a small, medium and large tree. Then it takes a 5th action to score it.
Furthermore it will take more actions and light points to 'buy' the seed and 3 different sized trees from the player board in order to do this.

Overall

Photosynthesis is a peculiar beast: It's a little bit like a worker placement game with trees earning light points from their positioning and it's a little bit like an area control game, where larger trees will shut out surrounding smaller ones.

It's simple to learn but forces players to adopt a 'ent-like' mentality towards the games varied choices, strategies and occasional hard decisions. It's slow place means players cannot burn light point to do one thing quickly. Sometimes it's possible to speed events by sacrificing seeds or trees, but this can be tricky choice as it's permanent. I'm sure there are ties when it is prudent to do so. But slow and steady, that's the way to go.

I think all of this good and makes for a good game. I'm sure Treebeard would agree!