19th April 2022

It's a Tuesday and we're at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club.

Mesopotamia; source of much history, a birthplace of the world's early civilisations. Also the source of many board games, one of them being Babylonia.
Take on the role of a merchant dynasty and attempt to create the most lucrative trade routes.

What's in a game?

• Game board: Babylonia's board has an illustrated a map that depicts this part of Mesopotamia, along with the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. It has a hex overlay used to delineate, cities, farms, rivers and ziggurats. A scoring track circles the perimeter of the board.
  Additionally, the board is divided into 3 regions, north, south and central which are marked out and separated by the 2 rivers. This dictates what parts of the board are used in the game as per player count.
  Unusually, the orientation of the map feels unconventional, when viewed from the landscape orientation, north is to the left and south to the right. Only when viewed in portrait orientation are north and south where you expect them to be, it's been rotated '90!
  Obviously this is a non-issue, since I'm used to looking at both board and maps in the landscape orientation, it's a bit counterintuitive for me.
• Ziggurats: There are 5 of these little 3D wooden models.
• Cards: There are 9 of these ziggurat cards, when acquired they provide the owning player with benefit of some sort, this may be a once-only or ongoing benefit. They are numbered 1-9.
  A one-off benefit may be immediately gain 10 VPs and ongoing benefits may include allowing a player to have more tokens on their stand or being able to play 3 noble tokens instead of 2 and so on.
• Tiles: Babylonia uses 2 types of hexagonal card tile, they represent cities and farms. The front of each type shows their scoring criteria, which for farms are straight-up numbers or a city symbol, city tiles will have icons related to the game's 3 types of nobles.
• Tokens: There are 30 of these round wooden tokens in each player colour and they come in 4 types; farmers and nobles. Nobles are further subdivided in to civil servants, merchants and priests. Dang! Even in the ancient world civil servants were a thing, I'm surprised there aren't lawyers!
• Stands: There's a oblong stand with 2 grooves for each player and are used to hold tokens.

Babylonia's components are all good. the cards are actually as chunky as the tokens. The remaining components. the tokens and ziggurats are all constructed of wood and feel high quality. The stands are a nice touch.

The artwork used on the board is good and portrays what I imagine to be a suitably middle-eastern landscape for Mesopotamia. It is perhaps a little too busy and distracts the eye, however, the hexes help to make the layout clear.
The cards all use the same illustration which is a little bland.

For the most part, iconography is easily understood. Only some of the ziggurat cards are not immediately clear and will require looking up in the rule book but that only applies when and if the card comes into play. Nothing that would be a problem or approaching a dealbreaker.

How's it play?
Setup

• Board: Put out the board and place the following.
  Ziggurats: Place the ziggurat models on their allotted spaces.
  Cities and farms: Shuffle the city and farm tiles into a face-down stack and randomly place them face-up on their allotted spaces on the board.
  In games with a lower play count, not all the board is used, consequently not all the ziggurats, cities and farms are used either.
• Cards: Put out the cards numbered 1-7.
  There's a variant where all 9 are shuffled and 7 are randomly dealt to use.
• Tokens: Give each player all the tokens and stand in their colour, they should be shuffled into face-down stacks. Then each player should deal themselves 5 and place them into their stand.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
Babylonia uses a standard turn structure with the active player taking their turn before play moves to the left.
In their turn, there are 3 phases active player must complete.

• Play Tokens: The active player must play tokens, depending on where tokens are placed, there may be immediate scoring. When playing tokens, the active player can choose from 2 options:
  Play any 2 tokens: The active player may put any 2 of their tokens (Any mix of nobles and/or farmers.) on to the board. These may be used on river spaces but must be turned face-down to do so.
  Play 3+ farmers: The active player may put 3 or more farmer tokens and only farmer tokens on to the board. They cannot be used to cover river spaces.
  Placement rules: Some rules and restrictions apply when placing tokens.
  ​In the 1st two turns only 1 or 2 tokens can be played respectively, after this the usual limits apply.
  Tokens may be placed on to any empty hex space. That's is one not occupied by a city/farm/ziggurat or opponent's token. Tokens do not need to be placed next to each other or the board edge or anything like that.
  Farms: Having said that, a farmer token can be placed on a hex with a farm tile if the active player already has at least 1 other token adjacent to that farm. When this occurs, the player token replaces the farm tile which is removed and score - more on this below.
  Scoring: Farms and ziggurats can be immediately scored during this phase depending on where the player put their tokens.
  Farm tile: When a player acquires a farm tile, it is immediately scored. If the tile contains a number, that's the VPs scored.
  ​If it has the city symbol, then the active player gains VPs equal to all the city tiles all players have in their personal areas! (More on acquiring city tiles below.)
  Ziggurats: When a player puts one of their tokens adjacent to a ziggurat, they immediately score VPs equal to the number of ziggurats they have tokens adjacent to. Thus for the 1st time a token is placed adjacent to a ziggurat, the active player gains 1 VP, if they place a token adjacent to a second ziggurat, the would score 2 VPs.
  Multiple tokens adjacent to the same ziggurat do not increase scoring, it ziggurats, not tokens that score.
• Score surrounded cities/ziggurats: When all the land hex spaces surrounding a city or ziggurat are occupied (By any mix of player tokens.), it is considered completed and is scored. Tokens placed face-down in river spaces adjacent to a ziggurat do not count towards completion but do count for the purposes of majority.
  Whoever has the most of their tokens surrounding a city/ziggurat has majority (Which confers extra benefits.), in the case of a tie, no one will have majority.
  Cities: When a city is completed, all players who have adjacent noble tokens that match the icon(s) on the city tile score 2 VP per matching token. Furthermore any matching tokens connected via the players own network of other tokens (Including face-down tokens.) also score 2 VPs each. This can be a good source of VPs.
  Finally, whoever has majority, takes the city tile and places it in their playing area and scores VPs equal to the number of city tiles they've acquired and placed in their playing area. Thus the first city tile acquired earns 1 VP the second gains 2 VPs and so forth.
  If there is no majority, then the city tile is discarded and no one scores it.
  Ziggurats: When a ziggurat is completed, whoever has majority immediately takes an available ziggurat card of their choice and gains whatever benefit it confers. Again, in the case no majority, no one can acquire a ziggurat card via that ziggurat.
• Refill tokens on stand: Once the active player has completed the first 2 phases, they draw tokens from their personal stack to increase the tokens on the stand back to 5.
• Next player: Play progresses to the player on the left.

Endgame
Play continues until 1 of the following 2 criteria are met:
A player has no tokens on their stand.
Or
There are only 1 or 0 city tiles left on the board.
In either case, the game ends immediately!

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
If you were to look at a game of Babylonia in progress, you'd be forgiven for thinking that with all these tokens in play at the same time that it's a complicated game but it's not.
From the rules write up above there's not too much to learn but like all good games, there's a lot to think about.
Right from the start Babylonia provides players with meaningful decisions to make and several paths to scoring VPs which can be prioritised. Often these will vary in value contextually and in relation to other decisions. There will be short term and long term goals.

Take ziggurats for example, a player may put tokens next a number of different ziggurats to score points as efficiently as possible but may also choose to concentrate on a single one in order to secure a card. However, taking too long to gain majority on a Ziggurat may lose you some actions.

Cards themselves will change in importance, those with continuous ability will be most exploitable in the early game and those with once-only bonuses will be important in the late game - provided of course, that someone else hasn't beaten you to the punch. 

Farms and cities have an interesting relationship, getting cities quicker than other players can earn a lot of VPs when some farms are scored or more city tiles are acquired. But city tiles need to be surrounded to score - unlike farms which can score immediately. Sometimes It may also take more actions to surround a city; if it looks like a player is going to get majority in a city (Or ziggurat actually.) other players wont be incentivised to complete it early for another player's benefit.

Finally, there's the network of tokens that players will create, their trade routes. Finding ways to connect nobles to matching city tiles on other parts of the board can be a good source of points. Especially if a noble can be connect to multiple cities, a city can only be scored once so getting another use out of already played token is useful.
It's here small token plays can have big outcomes.
Sometimes players will want to put specific nobles into player or sometimes use farmers for rapid expansion. All of this is dependant on what tokens get drawn though. It's likely that something will not go to plan thanks to other players. Adapting to circumstances can also be important.

Paying attention to what other players are doing is also vital since - apart from what's on a player's stand - everything is open. It means that it's likely that getting majority will eventually become a race as players' objectives clash and anticipating those objectives can make a difference.

With straightforward rules and a brisk playing time, Babylonia is fairly accessible but also provides players with meaningful decisions.
I enjoyed it and would recommend it.

15th January 2022

It's Wogglecon and the final game of the day was Ginkgopolis.
What's a Ginkgopolis? Good question, I guess it means Ginkgo city but what does Ginkgo mean? It's a type of tree, so Ginkgopolis must mean tree-city.

In Ginkgopolis, players take on the role city planners in tree-city and attempt to manage it's expansion, both outwards and upwards.

What's in a game?

• ​Cards: Gingkopolis makes use of several different types of cards.
  Urbanisation cards: These 12 cards are labelled A-L and are used when expanding the city outwards.
  ​Character cards: These 27 cards provide players starting resources and they depict a personality, they may also confer bonuses when performing certain actions.
  Building cards: These cards come in 3 colours, red, yellow and blue and each relates to 1 of the game's key currencies, resources, building tiles and VPs respectively, (VPs can be spent as a currency in Ginkgopolis.).
  ​​Each set is also is numbered 1-20, thus there are 60 in total.
  At the bottom of each kind is a bonus it can confer on the owning player.
• Building tiles: There are also 60 building tile, also in the same 3 colours and each numbered 1-20. Buildings tiles are tied directly to their card counterparts.
• Tokens: The game uses several different types of token.
  Urbanisation tokens: These round tokens tie directly with the the urbanisation cards and thus are also labelled A-L.
  New hand tokens: The small round tokens show a hand of tokens and can be traded in by players to gain a new hand of cards during the game.
  Success tokens: VPs by any other name. These green tokens are stylistically shaped like the crown of a Ginkgo Biloba tree, a theme continued across the game.
• Screens: Each player will have a screen to hide their resources from other players. These are pretty standard three-fold card screens and on the outside, a futuristic undeveloped landscape is depicted, inside an iconographic guide displays the basic game rules.
• Resources: There are 25 wooden resources in each player colour and they are shaped like octagonal tubes, while they're not little cubes, octagonal tubes will do in a pinch.
• Meeples: The game makes use of pretty unique wooden crane or construction (The industrial sort, not the bird!) shaped meeples (Creeples?). These meeples are used to track construction over a round.

That's it for most components.

Ginkgopolis has solid components, the tiles and tokens are constructed from suitability thick, chunky card as are the screens, while the meeples and resources are wooden which is always appreciated.

The game makes good use of colour, effectively mixing primary colours with green and emphasising the ginkgo tree motif employed throughout.
Ginkgopolis' artwork is high quality, character cards are well illustrated with slightly cartoonish, colourful individuals that follow the game's red-yellow-blue and green theme, the same is true of the building cards/tiles which depict various different types of structures.

The iconography in Ginkgopolis is a bit strange, there's not too much of it and it's fairly simple to understand. However, due to Ginkgopolis' almost counter-intuitive rules, getting to grips with it took a little time. Nothing too bad though.

How's it play?
Setup

• Starting tiles: Take the 9 building tiles numbered 1-3 in each colour and randomly put them into a face-up 3x3 grid.
  This is essentially represents what buildings there are at the beginning of the city.
• Building tiles: Shuffle the remaining build tiles into  any number of face-down stacks.
• Urbanisation tokens: Take the 12 urbanisation tokens and place them around the perimeter of the 3x3 board in alphabetical order.
• Starting deck: Take the 9 building cards numbered 1-3 in each colour (Identical to the building tiles setup in the 1st step.), then take the 12 urbanisation cards and shuffle them all into a face-down deck.
• Building cards: Take the remaining building cards, sort them by colour and put them into ascending order by their numbers.
• Players: Give each player the screen in their player colour and 2 new hand tokens, which should go behind the screen. Players do not initially get any resources, instead these are put into the central playing area.
• Character cards: Shuffle the character cards and deal 4 face-down to each player. All players choose 1 character card to keep face-down and pass the remaining cards leftwards.
  Continue until all players have 3 character cards, unselected cards are discarded out of the game.
  Players now reveal their 3 character cards which should be placed in front of their screen. Once these cards have been revealed, players gain starting items as indicated on the card. These could be resources, VP tokens or building tiles are all kept behind each player's screen.
• First player: Determine a first player. After this deal 4 cards from the building deck to each player face-down.
• New Hand: When a player is dealt cards, they may discard a new hand token to draw a new hand.

On to play

In the basic flow of actions in Ginkgopolis, players simultaneously put down cards and then resolve them in turn order.

• Play card: Each player puts a face-down card in front of their screen, they may also choose to play a face-down tile on top of that card. When all players have done that, play progresses to resolution.
  It's not quite as simple as that however.
• Resolution: ​Players now all reveal their cards which are then resolved in turn order.
  The action a card performs changes depending on whether a tile has been played with it or not.
• Playing a card without a tile: This action basically allows the player to gain one of the game's currencies.
  Urbanisation card: When this card is played without a tile, the player can gain a single resource token or building tile from the supply and place it behind their screen.
  The urbanisation card is then put into the discard pile.
  Building tile: If one of these is played without a tile, then the building on the card (Which will be on the grid of tiles.) is 'activated' and the player gains the related resource, be it resources, building tiles or resources. Furthermore, the 'taller' the building, the more resources the player acquires. More on building upwards below.
  The building card is then put into the discard pile
• Playing a card with a tile: This allows players to build outwards or upwards, depending on the card played.
  Urbanisation card: Playing a building tile along with a urbanisation card allows the player to build outwards. The tile is placed on the space with the urbanisation token that matches the letter on the urbanisation card that was played. Thus, if the D urbanisation card is played, the tile is played on the D token.
  The token is then moved further outwards, the city must always be ringed by the urbanisation tokens.
  Finally, any tiles orthogonally connected to the tile just played are immediately activated and the player acquires the related resources.
  The urbanisation card is then put into the discard pile.
  Building card: If a tile is played with a building card, then this allows the player to build upwards on a already existing building tile. There are some rules that govern this.
  The tile that was chosen must be played on top the building tile that corresponds to the building card that was played. If there are any resources on the tile about to be covered, the are returned to the owner's personal supply.
  The player must put resources of their own on the tile they are playing equal to the new level. If a building is going up to level 3, then the player must put 3 of their resources on top of it. If the tile being played is a different colour​ from the current tile, then the player must discard 1 resource to the central supply.
  Additionally; If the value of the tile being played is lower than the current tile, then the player must spent VPs equal to the difference. If a level 8 tile is played on a level 10 builds, the player would need to spend 2 VPs.
  Finally, it's very important that a construction meeple is placed on the newly built building tile and the building card is played in front of the player's screen and not put into the discard pile.
  Districts: When 2 or more buildings of the same colour are orthogonally connected, they form a district. Districts are very important for the end game scoring.
  
• Bonuses: Once a card's action has been resolved, the player should apply any bonuses they gain from the cards in front of their screen.
• Continue: Once all players have completed the actions on their cards, play progresses on.
  All players pass the 3 cards they did not play to their left, the first player card should be passed on.
  1 card is dealt from the building deck to all players, so everybody now has 4 cards again.
• Next round: Turns continue being played out until the building deck is depleted, in this case the following immediately occurs.
  ​All construction meeples are removed from the tiles they' were placed on and the card that corresponds to the tile is added to the building card. If a meeple was removed from the red 8 building tile, the red 8 building card is added to the building deck discard pile.
  All the building cards are then shuffled into a new building card deck, cards are dealt out as required and play progresses.
• Depleted building tiles: When the supply of building tiles becomes depleted for the first time, the following action occurs once only.
  ​Each player can donate building tiles to a new supply and receive a VP for each tile they donate.
  

Endgame
There are 2 ways in which Ginkgopolis can end.
If the building tile supply is depleted a second time or if a player has put all resource tokens on to the city.
In either case, the current round is resolved and the game goes to scoring.

VPs come from various sources in Ginkgopolis.

• VP tokens straight-up score their value.
• Cards with end game bonuses on cards may also score VPS.
• Each unused new hand token is worth 2 VPs.
• Finally, each districts is scored, that is areas where 2 or more buildings of the same colour are connected. This can be slightly complicated.
  All players with resources in a single districts count them up. The player with the most resources scores VPs equal to all the resources in that district. 2nd place gains VPs equal to the resources in that district of their colour only.
  If a district only has resources of 1 colour (I.e., from 1 player only.), then that player scores VPs for both 1st and second place, which means scoring 2 VPs per resource!
  

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
​Firstly, one small fascinating thing about Ginkgopolis is how the game almost operates like a machine! Cards played to build something must not be put into the discard pile, otherwise they'll end up going back into circulation and later, players will end with cards in their hands that can't be used to either get currencies or build upwards.
Further to this, new buildings must be given a meeple so that players can track which new cards must be added to the building deck as again, it would leave players without cards to gain currencies or build.
Get this wrong and like a machine losing cogs, the game will begin grinding to a halt!
I don't know what kind of fevered imagination dreamt up this mechanic but it's both convoluted and brilliant!

​Ginkgopolis' rules are definitely a little counter-intuitive.
For example; when you play a card, that's not what you're building but what you're building on top of. Or after building something, getting to keep the card you used to build something.
Additionally; it took a little bit for me to wrap my head around the game. Remember:
Playing a card without a tile earns currencies.
Playing a card with a tile allows a player to build a tile.
I would also say Ginkgopolis is little fiddly for beginning player but none of this a dealbreaker, it's more an indicator of how Ginkgopolis feels a little unusual compared to other games I've played and I don't consider this a bad thing.

While there are various avenues to follow for scoring, I feel that the biggest source of VPs would come from controlling districts because it's possible to not only score your own resources but those of other players' too!
It can be quite hard to plan ahead though due to the card drafting and they'll be times when you'll want to play more than 1 card from your hand. It pushes you to make hard decisions (And hope the other cards come back around.), it means you have to adapt and spot situations you can exploit. It also means watching your neighbours and trying to gauge their objectives. There's quite a lot of player interaction that goes on and putting the right tile into play at the right time can dramatically alter the landscape. 

There's also an interesting strategy when deciding which tiles to put in the city. Putting a 20-value tile down makes it harder for other players to build over it, they'd have to pay VPs to build a lowered valued tile, or an extra resource to play a 20-value tile in a different colour.
On the other hand, keeping a 20-value tile back can give a player the opportunity to build over other higher value tiles later in the game.

The building outwards or upwards mechanics provide plenty of scope here. Expanding outwards can be easier (Provided a player gets the right urbanisation cards.) because a player need less resources and will also earn currencies when doing so. The downside is that it's easier for other players to build over your tiles.
The opposite is also sort of true, building upwards tends to be costly, but it's also more costly for other players to build over them.
Building tiles also puts the related card (And it's bonus action.) in to play in the player's personal area, creating the opportunity to combo actions into bonuses.

Players will need to balance the need to acquire currencies with the need to build tiles. However, as the city landscape and a player hand changes, so can the options to do either of these. Adaptation is vital and every decision can be critical

This made my choices feel meaningful when playing Ginkgopolis, which is always good. I'd say that Ginkgopolis is a mid-weight tile laying game with some fairly interactive area-control gameplay that gives players interesting and changing options.
It took a little time to warm to Ginkgopolis but I enjoyed the game and think it's worth giving a try.

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!