30th May 2021

It's a Sunday and I'm logged on to Board Game Arena on my PC, time for the first game of the night.

Monk Tybor Kwelein had spent his life cataloguing the 4 kingdoms of plants, fungi, insects and animals in the pages of the titular Codex Naturalis. Now he is no longer with us, will one-to-four other people take up the mantle and carry on his work in the form of a neat little card game.

What's in a game?
Codex Naturalis is a card game and unsurprisingly, has a lot of cards. All the cards are about half the size of normal playing cards which is sensible, as otherwise the game would have a massive footprint, most of the cards share some similar features.

• Starter cards: These cards are double-sided, each side will have 1-4 'visible corners', which is to say these are corners which are 'colourless', 'hidden corners' are corners where the card's art fills the corner.
  Each side will also contain symbols which represent 1-4 of the 4 kingdoms, which may be on the visible corners or in the 'middle' of the card.
• Resource cards: Also double sided; on the 'front' side there will be 2-3 visible corners which may or may not contain kingdom symbols, they may or may not also contain 'objective' symbols. These are a quill, inkpot & manuscript, more on them later. Occasionally, resource cards will score a point.
  The 'back' side of resource cards always have 4 visible corners and a kingdom symbol in the middle of the card.
• Gold cards: As the name suggests, these cards are actually decorated with gold foil and again, they are double sided. On the front they will also have 2-3 visible corners, generally there are no kingdom symbols in the corners, although there may well be objective symbols.
  All gold cards have a requirement in kingdom symbols before they can be played, thus if a gold card displays 3 plant symbols, then the active player must have 3 symbols visible in their playing area before the card can be put down.
  Additionally, all gold cards score points and there are a variety of ways to score.
  Finally, identical to resource cards, the backs of gold cards have 4 visible corners and a kingdom symbol in the middle.
• Objective cards: These are the only cards which are not double sided, the front will show objectives that score extra points at the end of the game if the conditions are met.
  ​There's 2 varieties of objective, some require players having certain resource or objective symbols displayed in their area at the end of the game. The other type requires cards to be placed in specific order and colour, these can be quite tricky to achieve.
• Scoring board: A standard board for tracking player scores.
• Tokens: Standard wooden discs used with the board.

The scoring board and tokens are pretty standard quality game components and perfectly acceptable.
The cards feel very thick and sturdy (Maybe because of the smaller size?) and seem to be made to a high standard, all the gold cards and numerous resource cards are embossed in actual gold foil, which is a really nice touch and despite their small size, most of the cards all have charming, highly detailed monochrome illustrations themed by their colour. Finally, all the cards are coated in a glossy finish.
The only criticism I have is of the small symbols at the bottom of the gold cards, they are quite small and some players have complaint that it can be hard to discern between the symbols, particularly the blue and the green.
Otherwise, these are some of the highest quality card components I've seen and it all comes wrapped up in a compact tin.

How's it play?
Setup

• Shuffle the resource cards and deal 2 into the centre of the play area, the remaining resource cards should be placed adjacent in a face-down deck.
• Shuffle the gold cards and deal 2 into the centre of the play area, the remaining resource cards should be placed adjacent in a face-down deck.
• Deal a starter card to all players, each player can choose which side to use as their starting card.
• Each player now draws 2 resource cards and 1 gold cards from the respective decks.
• Shuffle the objective cards into a face-down deck.
  2 objective cards should be drawn and placed into the playing area face-up, these are common objectives, all players can earn points by completing their requirements.
  2 objective cards should then be dealt to all players, these are secret objectives, each player should select one to keep and discard the other to the bottom objective deck. These cards should be hidden from other players, the owning player can earn points by meeting their requirements.
• Determine a starting player.

On to play
The objective in Codex Naturalis is to create an expanding spread of overlapping cards in their playing area. The basic process of actions to achieve this in Codex Naturalis is simple, a player plays a card, then draws a card, of course there's more to it than that. 

points, this card probably scores the most if you can manage to fill the doughnut hole!​

• Draw card: Once a card has been played, the active player must draw a card, this can be any of the 4 face-up cards or drawn blindly from either the resource of gold face-down decks. A player can never have more than 3 cards in their hand.
  If a face-up card is taken, it's immediately replaced by a card from its respective deck.

The player to the left then becomes the active player.
Play continues one player's score reaches 20 or more, then the endgame is triggered.

Endgame
After the endgame is triggered, the current round is completed, then one final round is played.
After this, players count the score from the cards they've played and then calculates the score they get from completing both common objectives and their secret objective.
Score are tallied and highest score wins!

Overall
Codex Naturalis has simple rules, but also a fairly deep level of gameplay. Despite only having a hand of 3 cards, players are given a wide variety of choices and strategies to pursue when placing cards.

A lot of this comes from the objectives, you'll obviously need to play gold cards to score but it's important not to ignore objectives, scoring from the gold cards will generally put your score into the low-to-mid 20s, but objectives which are scored after the end and can push your score higher, especially since they can be scored multiple times. That everyone has a secret objectives means that the final outcome is not known until the final scoring and keeps the stakes high.
Players must also learn to manage their hands and objectives, there are 4 colours of card, but only 2 of each type of card is ever displayed face-up, it's likely that player's won't always see the cards they need.
Codex Naturalis can also give players agonizing choices because they'll frequently be given the option to cover up a resource or objective symbol with the corner of another card. When that symbol is covered up, it's gone for the rest of the game, forcing players to choose which to prioritise. Only symbols that appear in the middle in of a card cannot be covered.
Finally, because face-up cards never have more than 3 visible corners, players will need to think how to place cards with future placement in mind, the visible corner of a card can be 'locked' by placing another card with a hidden corner adjacent to it. This essentially ends that line of expansion, which can limit options later on.

Codex Naturalis is a little too long for a filler and perhaps a little too short for a main game, which is only a minor quibble really. Otherwise, I found it to be a solid, easy-to-learn, mid-to-light game with good replay value and high production values.
Definitely worth a try.

21st March 2021

It's a Sunday lunchtime and I'm logged on to my PC in the living Room and signed into Board Game Arena.

The first game of the day was Takenoko, a game about gardening in Japan... and pandas.

Caveat: We played this game online, but I own a physical copy which I've set up for the photos.

​What's in a game?

• Tiles: Hexagonal tiles to be precise, they represent plots of land.
  Pond: This blue tile is the starting tile.
  Plots: Plots come in 3 colours, green, pink and yellow. There are 9 in each colour and some of the plots come with hexagonal improvement symbols (more about improvement symbols below.) that confer special rules. The artwork on these tiles is uniformly bright and colourful. The tiles are printed in thick board and feel sturdy.
• Bamboo segments: There are 3 types of bamboo, green, pink and yellow, corresponding to the 3 types of plot. These are designed to stack up, representing the surging upwards growth of bamboo. Unlike the plot tiles, there is NO even distribution between the different coloured bamboo, green bamboo is the most common and pink is the least common.
  They're made of colourful pieces of plastic and are designed to slot into together, it's a little fiddly as the pieces feel slippery but it's not a deal breaker and they do make the game look nice.
• Irrigation tokens: These little blue wooden sticks are used to track which plots have been irrigated or not.
• Improvement chits: These hexagonal little chits confer special rules when placed on a plot, they are identical to the symbols that come printed on some plot tiles. They are pretty standard quality chits with functional art. There are 3 types of improvement.
  Enclosure: The panda cannot eat bamboo on a plot with an enclosure.
  Fertilizer: When bamboo grows on a tile with a fertilizer improvement, it grows twice as quickly
  Watershed: A plot with a watershed improvement does not require irrigation.
• Objective cards: These cards are smaller than typical playing-card sized cards and are standard quality, the art is fairly functional but continues the game's is bright and colourful art direction. Completing objectives is how players earn points. There are 3 types of objective:
  Plot objective: When plots are placed into the game area in a certain manner (For example; 3 green tiles in a row.) and irrigated, it can be claimed as completing the objective, 
  Gardener objectives: To complete a gardener objective bamboo must be grown to a certain height.
  Panda objective: The panda must eat a certain amount of bamboo of certain colours to complete these objectives cards.
• Emperor card: This is the only other card in the game, it is worth 2 points and the player who triggers the endgame will earn it.
• Action markers: Two of these round wooden markers are used by each player to track their actions each turn.
• Weather die: This is a very nice largish wooden die with rounded corners and special symbols on each face.
• Player boards: These boards are used to track player actions and store bamboo, irrigation and improvement token acquired. They are colourful and nicely illustrated.

How's it play?
Setup

• The starting pond tile is placed in the centre of the play area, the panda and the gardener are both placed on it.
• The plot tiles are shuffled and placed in a face-down stack.
• Each type of objective card is shuffled and placed face-down in its own deck.
• Each player takes a player board and 2 action markers.
• One of each objective card is dealt face-down to each player, these should be kept hidden in hand and only revealed when completed.

Now we're ready to go.

On to play
​After a starting player is chosen, play proceeds clockwise.

• Weather die: Other than in the very first round, at the beginning of their turn each player must roll the weather die, this will usually give the active player a bonus of some sort.
  Sun: When the sun face comes up, the active player can take 3rd action in their turn which must be different from their other 2 actions (More on this below.).
  Rain: The active player may place a bamboo segment on the irrigated plot of their choice.
  Wind: The active player may chose to perform 2 identical actions instead of 2 different actions.
  Storm: The active player can place the panda on the tile of their choice, the panda will eat a segment of bamboo as per usual (See below for more information.).
  Clouds: The active player may take an improvement chit of their choice, this can be immediately put on to a plot tile or on to the player's board to be used later.
  ?: If the ? face comes up, the active player can choice one of the 5 other weather results to apply.

Once the weather die has been rolled, the active player can then take 2 different actions from a choice of 5, depending on the result of the weather die, they may get 3 different actions or a choice of 2 identical actions.
Actions

• Draw plot tile: The active player draws the top 3 plot tiles, keeps 1 and returns the other 2 face-down in any order they choose. Then they must place the tile they kept down in the playing area; either it must go next to the starting pond tile OR next to 2 other tiles.
  The tile will immediately grow a bamboo segment of its colour if it is placed next to the pond OR adjacent to an irrigation token. This can only ever happen once for a tile.
• Take an irrigation token: After taking an irrigation token, the active player may put it on their board for use later or immediately place it on the playing area as per the rules.
  Other than plots directly adjacent to the pond or with watershed symbols, all plots need to need to be irrigated to produce bamboo.
  When placing an irrigation token, it must either start from the pond tile or continue previously laid irrigation token. When laying this token, it runs along the edge of a plot tile or between 2, however it never runs along the edge of the pond tile.
  The token will irrigate the 1 or 2 plots it touches, as per usual, if this is the 1st time a plot is irrigated, it will grow a bamboo segment of its colour.
• Move gardener: The active player can move the gardener. The gardener can only be moved in a straight line and 'through' the 'face' of the hexagonal plot tile, thus there are a maximum of 6 ways he can move. He can move as far as the active player decides and can cross any number of tiles, he cannot however move through any gaps encountered.
  Bamboo will grow on the plot tile that the gardener stops on, additionally bamboo will also grow on any adjacent irrigated plots of the same colour.
• Move panda: Moving the panda follows the exact same rules as moving the gardener. When the panda stops in a plot tile, he will eat 1 segment of bamboo from that tile if available. The active player takes that segment and places it on their player board.
• Take objective card: The active player may take a single objective card of their choice from one of the 3 objective decks into their hand. Players have a 5-card hand limit.

Free actions
Some actions do not count towards the usual 2 action limit. The active player can carry out any number of free actions at any time during their turn.

• Complete objective: The active player may complete one or more objectives by placing the card(s) out of their hand into their playing area.
• Place irrigation token: The active player may place any number of irrigation tokens that are reserved on their player board, following the normal rules for irrigation.
• Place improvement chit: The active player may place any number of improvement chits that are reserved on their player board, following the normal rules for placing  improvement chits.

Endgame
The endgame is triggered after someone has played a certain number of objective cards, dependant on the number of players.
The player that triggered the endgame immediately take the Emperor card and conclude  the rest of their turn normally. Then continuing in clockwise order, every other player has one more turn.
After this, scores are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Firstly I'll mention how the game is uniformly nice, presentation is excellent and component quality is good, nothing to criticise here.

Since there are always objectives to work towards in Takenoko, there are generally always meaningful decisions to make.
The game's player interaction comes from conflicting objectives such as one player getting the gardener to grow bamboo and another getting the panda to eat it.
This is also a game about recognising opportunities and adapting to the card and plot tiles you draw and to a lesser extent the results from the weather die and not about strategizing too much.

There is some strategy regarding the uneven distribution of bamboo (Generally objectives that involve the less common bamboo score more points.) but that's about it. I suppose there could be a high level strategy where you watch what other players are doing and try to anticipate what objectives they're going for and try and scupper them but you'll probably scupper yourself as well in the end.
Optimising your actions per turn seems to be very important.

Takenoko is a relatively simple and straightforward game to play, the concepts behind it should make it a fairly accessible crossover game. For dedicated gamers there might not be enough meat on the bone to satisfy them though.
Ultimately Takenoko is a light somewhat gentle game that you shouldn't take too seriously if you play it. ​If you want something heavy on strategy and direct interaction, it's probably not the game for you. However, if you're in the mood for an undemanding game, it's a reasonable diversion. 

26th November 2019

Tuesday gaming night at 'The Sovereigns' is here.

The first game of the evening was 'Nine Tile Panic'.

Nine Tile Panic is a game that comes in a little box that delivers a lot of stress!
This is a game all about building a city but not just building a city. It's a game about building a city in a strict time limit!
Thinking about it, maybe we should get real city planners to play this game? You won't find any unoccupied roadworks in Nine Tile panic let me tell you.

What's in a game?
'Nine Tile Panic' has few components:

• ​Tiles: 45 double sided tiles, 5 identical sets of 9 cards for each player. The tiles depict different types of roads such as crossroads, T-junctions etc. The tiles also depict dogs, men-in-black, aliens, ufos, burgers, buildings etc.
• Objective cards: 26 cards that have objectives that need to be met each round.
• Order markers: There are 5 of these that are used to rank the finishing order at the end of every round.
• Scoreboard: Tracks scores!

The components are reasonably colourful with simple illustrations.

How's it play?
Before playing, give each player a set of tiles.
Nine Tile Panic is played over a series of rounds. Each round is scored before play proceeds to the following round.
A round goes like this:

• Set out order markers, according to the number of players.
• 3 objective cards are drawn. These objectives tend to be quite diverse and unusual. Each objective has variable levels of success. The better each objective is completed, the more points are earned. An objective might be 'have as many men in black pointing their guns at aliens as possible.
• Players now have to place their 9 tiles down in a 3x3 grid in such a way as to maximise scoring from the objective cards (Both sides can be used.). Players must however, follow this rule: Any roads on the tiles must enter and exit the 3x3 grid and must be connected to each other as required, there can be no 'dead ends'.
• Players can choose when to 'stop' building their city. The first player to 'stop', takes the highest value order marker and turns over the hourglass timer.
• All remaining players have 90 seconds to complete their cities. When a player stops building their city, they take the next highest value order marker. This continues until all players have taken an order marker, or the timer runs out.
• Once the 90 seconds are over, any player who has not claimed an order marker is eliminated. Furthermore, any city that does not meet the criteria for connected roads is eliminated from that rounds scoring.

Scoring:

• Scoring is based on the number of players participating. For a 5 player game, scores vary from 1 to 5, for a 4 player game it's 1 to 4 and so on.
• Each of the 3 objectives is scored separately. The player who has achieved the most of an objective will score the maximum points for it (5 points for a 5 player game.), the second best player to achieve the objective will get the second highest score. This continues until the lowest achieving player receives 1 point. Obviously, players who were eliminated in this round will score 0 (In all objectives.). Ties are settled using the order marker (Highest value wins ties.).
• This is done for all 3 objectives. Thus; in a 5 player game, a player who gets highest in all 3 objectives would score 15 points.
• Once all 3 objectives have been scored, a new round with 3 new objectives will begin.

Endgame
Play continues until the score limit has been reached. For a 5 player game this is 25 points.
Final scores are tallied, highest score wins. 

Overall
Nine Tile Panic is a small, quick to learn and quick to play game. A game can be 20 more than 20 minutes.

The game is supposed to be fun, but it should be called 'Nine Tile Stress!'. Why? Because there will always be that one player who's going to finish their city too quickly just to watch the other players suffer! That's why. Always!
You'll be swearing under your breath as any strategy you've concocted will fly out of the window and you'll just be trying to make any city you can!

And seriously, that's what makes Nine Tile Panic a good game and fun too.
If you have friends who like real time games, you should play this with them.
And if you have friends who hate real time games you should definitely play this with them!

24th November 2019

Sunday at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking. The 50 Fathoms hiatus continues, so it's board games instead.

We began with 'Tsuro: The game of the Path'.
And that's what Tsuro is, a game about paths, quite figuratively. It's also quite abstract and there's not much to say about the theme.

What's in the game?
The game comes in a small package.

• Board: The board depicts a 6x6 square grid. Along the outside the perimeter of the board, each grid square is marked with 2 'entry' paths that lead into the board.
• Path tiles: There are 35 of these square tiles. Each side of a tile has 2 entries/exits and a total of 4 paths that enter/exit the tile. The paths on the tile twist and turn so that the 4 paths can enter and exit in many different combinations.
• Player markers: These are designed to look like stones.

The board and tiles are well made but pretty much standard components. However, the player makers are quality; the game could have easily used tokens are markers, but the game goes ahead an extra step in providing little 3D stone (Plastic actually!) player markers.

How's it play?
Set up is quick and simple.

• Shuffle the tiles and randomly deal 3 to each player forming a hand. The remaining tiles become a draw stack.
• Give each player a player marker. Now each player places their marker on one of the entry paths on the board's perimeter.

​Now the game can begin.

• The active player places a tile from their hand on to the board on the grid adjacent to their marker. The tile can be placed in any of the 4 orientations.
• Then they move their marker along the path that they have connected to. If this connection causes them to leave the board, then that player is eliminated from the game. A player cannot deliberately make their marker exit the board, but may be forced to do so due to circumstances. When a player places a tile, it may move another players marker and cause it to exit the game - eliminating that player. Furthermore, placing a tile may cause one marker to crash into another marker, in this instance, both markers are eliminated from the game.
• Finally, the active play draws a new tile to bring their hand back up to 3 tiles.

As you can see, the rules are simple and straightforward.
Endgame
Play continues until one of the following conditions are met:

• Only 1 marker remains on the board, in which case that player is the winner.
• If, for some mind boggling reason, players manage to place all the tiles down and there are 2 or more markers still left on the board. Then all remaining players share a tied victory.
• If all remaining players are eliminated at the same time, then those players all share a tied victory. ​

Overall
Tsuro is a small game, quick to setup, quick to learn and quick to play.
It is essentially a light 'programming' game that requires a small amount of scrutiny and forethought to try and predict your moves.
The real danger in the game however, comes from the other players, it's impossible to predict what tiles they will play and its impact on you. Essentially you can't rely on planning more than 1 move ahead and have to adapt to other player's moves as they occur, this is particularly true later in the game as the board becomes fuller and options become smaller.

All this unpredictability makes Tsuro fun, as long as you don't try and think too much about what moves you can make.
Additionally, Tsuro plays with up to 8 participants, combined with it's accessibility make it a good choice for party games and fillers. 

29th October 2019

Tuesday night gaming at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking with the board game club continues.

The final game of the night was 'Grand Austria Hotel'.

It doesn't take much imagination to realise that this is a game about running a hotel. That's right, keep those restaurant customers happy. Manage all those hotel rooms. Maintain the prestige of your establishment. All the fun!
Joking aside, Grand Austria is pretty good game. The rules are fairly straightforward to learn, but there's a lot of things to think about and take into consideration. A lot of things! 

What's in a game?
Grand Austria Hotel has a lot of components. They are all quite colourful and well made.

• Game board: The main game board has a few things going on. A scoring track, a prestige scoring track and a turn track. Space for 3 objective cards, space for 3 prestige reward/penalty tokens and finally 5 spaces for guest cards.
• Action board: The action board determines how many of the 6 the game's actions will be available in any particular given turn.
• Dice: These are normal six-sided dice to go with the action board.
• Personal hotel board: A hotel board is given to each player. The board displays a money track, 3 spots to place guest cards in your restaurant and a place for food and drink. There are also 20 hotel rooms that come in 3 different colours, blue, red and yellow. These hotel rooms are also grouped into sets of 1 to 4 rooms. These boards are double sided, one side is identical for all players, the other is different for all players.
• Room tiles: Used to indicate if rooms in a hotel are; not ready, prepared or occupied. There are the same 3 different colours as the hotel rooms
• Staff cards: Staff cards that can be bought by players. They give a benefit or advantage, staff cards can be a one-off, once per turn or always active. Some staff cards provide bonus points during the endgame instead.
• Guest cards: Guest cards are acquired by players. They have a need. If the player fulfils that need, then the player is given a reward. Then the guest will go into a prepared room that matches the guest card's colour. Guest cards come in 4 colours, blue, red, yellow and green (Green is a wild colour.).
• Turn order tokens: Actually very important in this game.
• Little wooden cubes. Yep, it's a quality game if it has little wooden cubes! They come in 4 colours to represent the food and drink needs of guests in restaurants. Brown is for strudel, white is for cake. Red is wine and black is coffee.

How's it play?
We begin with setup.

• Give out the hotel boards. ​Players decide on whether they want identical of unique hotels and use the relevant side.
• Shuffle and place 3 objective tokens on their relevant spaces on the board.
• Shuffle and place 3 prestige reward/penalty tokens on their relevant spaces.
• Shuffle the guest cards and place 5 on to their relevant spaces on the board. The remaining cards will form a draw deck.
• Shuffle the staff cards and deal 6 to each player. 
• Give one of each of the 4 coloured cubes to each player to put on to their hotel board.

Turn order
The turn order is a little unusual in Grand Austria Hotel. Every player gets 2 turns in a round. All players are given a token with 2 numbers on it - which is when their turns will occur.
Turns proceed clockwise until all players have had their first turn, then goes back anticlockwise so that the last player was also the first player.
In a 4 player game, the first player will have a token that shows '1/8' and the fourth player will have a token showing '4/5'.
Actions
The first thing the active player can choose to do is to take a guest card from the main game board. Depending on which card is taken, the active player may have to pay for it. 
The further the card is to the left, the more it costs. Gaps in the row are replaced by sliding cards from the left to the right and adding new cards on the furthest left. This is a 'conveyor belt' mechanic.

Action board
Actions in Grand Austria Hotel are determined by dice. The number of dice used depends on the number of players. In a 4 player game, 14 dice are used. The first player rolls all the dice and and places them as required on the action board.

There are 6 columns on the action board. After the dice have been rolled, they are placed in their relevant space. If 3 1's have been rolled, they are placed into the '1' column, this is done for all 6 columns.
​
This determines both the effectiveness and number of each action that can be performed. The more dice there are in a column the more effective that action is and the more often it can be performed. Every time an action is performed, a die from that column is removed. If a column has no dice, that action cannot be performed (Unless performing the 'copy action' action!).
The 6 actions are:

1. Take food: For each die in this column a food (Cake or strudel.) cube can be taken by the active player and placed on to their customers in their restaurant or into their kitchen area. However there's a twist here. The active player can never take more cake than strudel. Thus if there were 4 dice in the column, the active player 2 of each, but not 3 cake and 1 strudel.
2. Take drinks: This is identical to taking food, except it applies to wine and coffee cubes. For drinks, the active player cannot take more coffee than wine.
3. Prepare rooms: For each die in this column, the active player may prepare a room on their hotel board. This means they can place the relevant number of room tiles with the 'prepared' side up on their hotel board. Depending on which rooms are prepared, they may be other requirements such as cost.
4. Gain prestige/money: Gain prestige or money equal to the number of dice in this column. 
5. Recruit staff: The active player may pay to recruit a staff card from their hand. The number of  dice in this column deducts from this cost.
6. Copy action: Finally, copy action - as the name suggests, allows the active player to copy any of the 5 other actions. The dice used to determine how effective this action is comes from this column.

One other choice the active player can make is to 'pass'. When a player passes, after all other players have taken both their actions, the remaining dice (Minus 1 die.) are re-rolled and put back on the action board according to their new numbers. Then the players who passed can now act.
Additional actions
As well as the actions listed above, players can perform some extra actions.

• Increase action dice score: The active player can pay to increase the action dice in a column on the action board by +1 for their next action only. This can only be done once per turn.
• Serve customers: The active player can pay to move up to 3 food and drink cubes from their kitchen to customers in their restaurant.
• Use staff card: If a staff card that has a 'once per turn' ability, the active player can use it.
• Move guest: A guest in your restaurant can be moved to their room, provided that their needs have been met and there is a prepared room for them. When they are moved into a room, the room tile is flipped to occupied. As mentioned above, the rooms on a hotel board are grouped into sets, when all the rooms in a set are occupied by the active player, they receive a reward of money, prestige or points.

That's pretty much it for actions.

Endgame
Grand Austria Hotel is played over 7 rounds, thus each player has 14 turns to use.

Prestige is scored at the end of rounds 3, 5 & 7. During prestige scoring, before prestige is scored each player's prestige score is lowered by 3, 5 or 7 in each related round. Prestige points translate in victory points, but if a player's prestige points are too low, that player will lose victory points instead.
Additionally, if a player is above the prestige threshold, they get a bonus, if they are below, the receive a penalty. This depends on the 3 prestige reward/penalty tokens that were placed on to the main board.
 
At the end of the 7th round, points are scored from various sources, such as staff cards, occupied rooms, remaining food, drink & money, objectives and prestige tokens.
Any guests left in your restaurant loses points.
All points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
So Grand Austria Hotel is a game about acquiring customers, fulfilling their needs and  preparing rooms for them in your hotel.
The game is quite a balancing act as it forces players to juggle preparing rooms and fulfilling the needs of their customers.
Players also need to pay attention to the prestige track, as failing to acquire enough prestige can be seriously detrimental.
The bonus objective can earn quite a lot of points.
Money too can be a problem, it's quite hard to accumulate money and is also something you need to think about.

Whilst there's a lot going on in this game, the rules aren't too complicated.
Optimising strategies is really important here. But the available actions and their effectiveness is unpredictable.
So Grand Austria Hotel forces players to both think ahead and be adaptable, whilst providing players with lots of meaningful decisions.

These are things that make Grand Austria Hotel a good game.

26th October 2019

Saturday evening has rolled round again and we're at Matakishi's for some gaming goodness.

​Tonight we played '1830', or to give it its full name; '1830: The Game of Railroads and Robber Barons'. As you will have surmised, this is a game about railroad building. Actually, it's probably fair to say it's the game about railroad building.

What's in a game?
1830's components are very 'old-school' and clearly favour function over form.

• Game board: The 1830 game board is split into 2 halves. The top half contains a grid filled with numbers, this is used to manage the stock market in the game. The bottom half of the board depicts a hex map of north-eastern United States from Chicago to New York.
• Hex tokens: These tokens show the railway lines that will connect towns and cities. The tokens come in several different colours to represent improvements in technology. As the game progresses, players will gain access to more and more complicated rail layouts and junctions that can be used to 'upgrade' previously played hex tiles.
• Share certificates: There are several 'public' companies in the game and there are shares for each of them. Each certificate is for 10%, except for the first certificate which is the 'President's certificate' and is worth 20%. That's 9 certificates for each company that equal 100%.
• Private company certificates: As well as public companies, there are a number of smaller privately held companies in the 1830.
• Company boards: Each company has its own board. The board has room for the company trains and funds, each board also comes with come some 'station' tokens.
• Train cards: These double sided cards represent train technology and are numbered from 2-6. The higher the number the better the trains that can travel further and make more stops.
• Money: 1830's currency is obviously U.S. dollars, this depicted with paper money. That's right, actual paper money! Haven't seen that in a board game for a long time, as I said 'old-school'.

How's it play?
Setup
1830 was originally published in 1986. The version we played was published in 2011 by Mayfair Games. There was some head-scratching during set up as it turns out in this edition there are several variants of the game. We had been trying to set up the 'basic' version of the game, which apparently is different to the 'classic' version (Which is what we wanted to play.).

The basic version of the game should be the classic version, do you hear Mayfair Games!

​Anyway, on with setup.

• The game board is set out, as are the train cards,  private companies and company boards.
• The share certificates are put out into stacks for each public company. The president's certificate goes on top.
• $2400 is divided amongst the players.

That's pretty straightforward.

Bidding
Bidding only occurs once in the game (Right at the start.).

Players have to bid for the right to buy one of the private companies.
Auctioning is actually very straightforward. One player makes a starting bid (Whoever is nominated as 'The Banker' should start.), then proceeding clockwise, each player has to make a higher bid or pass. If a player passes, then they are out of the auction permanently.
When everybody has passed, then the player who was the highest bidder, gets the 'privilege' of choosing which private company to buy first (Yes, even though you may have bid loads of money, you still have to pay to buy a private company!), also the highest bidder gets to take the 'Priority' card for the first stock market round. Second highest bidder gets second choice of buying a private company and so on until all the players have a private company.

Stock market and operating rounds
This is where the majority of the game takes place.

At the beginning of the game there will be a stock market round followed by an operating round.
Later on, there will be a stock market round followed by two operating rounds.
Even further into the game, the stock market round will be followed by three​ operating rounds.

Stock market round

• The stock market rounds begins with the player who has the priority card and proceeds clockwise.
• Players can choose to buy and sell shares or pass. Obviously, this early in the game, there will be little if any selling of shares. The stock market round continues until all players has consecutively passed. Finally, the priority card is given to the player to the left​ of the last player to buy or sell a share.
• At the start of the game there are no public companies operating, so the starting player can only buy shares.
• When buying a share in a company for the first time, two things happen. Firstly the player who is buying the share sets the price of the stock, this is called the 'Par' and ranges from $67 to $100 for each 10% certificate. Secondly, the president's certificate must be bought before any other certificate (At twice the par cost too! Since it represents 20% of the company). After this, certificates in that company are bought at the normal 10% per certificate.
• Any shares that are sold by a player are put into 'the bank' and are not returned to the stack it was bought from. Selling shares will lower the value of the shares on the stock market, but it does not affect the 'par' price. Player may choose to buy shares from the bank (At the stock market price.) or from the stack (At the par price.). No player may own more than 5 stock certificates in any one company. This includes the president's certificate, so a single player can earn up to 60% of a company.
• When 60% of the shares in a company have been bought (From the stack at the par price) by players, the company has been 'floated', see more below about this.
• At the end of a stock market round, if all the shares in any company have been bought by players, then the stock value of that company increases.

Company flotation
When a company is floated, the following occurs:

• Whoever has the most shares becomes president of the company. If this is not the player with the president's share, then it is swapped for two shares with the player who has the most shares. 
• The president receives the company board, this will include station tokens and 'operating capital' equal to ten times the par value.

Operating rounds
So now we're on to the operating round(s). The following occurs:

• The private companies pay out to the players that own them. They're a useful source of income early in the game, but eventually they disappear from the game as the publicly held companies come to dominate.
• Next the publicly held companies operate. They do this in order of the stock value, the most valuable company goes first. They can carry out the following actions.
• Lay track: The president can put down a hex token on a part of their rail network to expand it. If the he goes over 'rough terrain', it incurs a cost that must be paid out of the companies operating capital, sometimes going into another city also costs. If this is the first operating round for a newly floated company, then it will have it's own unique starting hex, players must start their expansion from this hex. As the game progresses, more and more advanced hex tokens become available that allow more complicated junctions to appear on a hex token, these can be used to upgrade previously placed hexes.
• Run a service: Starting from the company's home hex (Or a station token that has been paid for and placed by the company.), the president must run a rail service. The number of stations that the service can stop at is dependant on the train cards that the company owns. If a company owns a 3 point train card, then the service will stop at a maximum of 3 stations. A company may run multiple services if they own multiple train cards, but they cannot use the same rail lines again in the same round.
• Income: Once the service has been run, the president calculates how much income the service makes. Then the president decides whether to add the money to the company's operating capital or pay it out as a dividend. If it's paid out as a dividend, then all players who own shares in the company will receive a percentage of the profit according to the stocks they own. If a company pays out a dividend, the stock market value of the company rises, if the income is given to the company, the stock market value drops.
• Purchase trains: You will have noticed that trains are bought after running a service; this means during a company's first operating round, it cannot run a service! There's a nasty twist in the rules here, because as improved trains come into player, older trains become obsolete. So when the first 4 point trains is bought by a player, all 2 point trains are removed from play. If a player isn't careful, the train(s) of a company that they control will removed in someone else's turn. Then the player cannot buy a train until after running a service! Nasty!
• After the operating rounds have completed. Play returns to the stock market round, beginning with the player who currently holds the priority card.

There are more situational rules in the game, but there's no need to go into too much detail here.

Endgame​
Play continues until all the money from the bank has been paid out to the players.

Winning is determined by who has acquired the most personal wealth.
Players add up all the personal money they have accumulated and the combined stock market value of all the shares they own. The operating capital of any companies that the player may control is not added to the final tally.

Highest score wins.​

Overall
It's a testament to 1830's design that 30 years on, it's mechanics and rules are still totally solid and watertight.
The stock market round is well balanced so it has enough depth to be engaging and interesting, but is not head scratching in complexity.
I really like it that player's money is entirely separated from the money needed to run a company. I also like how in order to maximise your personal profitability, you'll also need to invest in companies run by other players. Because no player can own more than 60% in a company, this will happen.
The operating rounds give players plenty of choice and options when expanding their companies. Eventually there will be sets of intricate and convoluted rail networks interacting and criss-crossing with each other.
​Players also need to pay close attention to the money that their companies maintain as having a company go bankrupt will have serious consequences for the stock value.

On the box of 1830, it says that it takes 3-6 hours to play and that's no exaggeration. It is the only drawback to 1830 is that I can think of.

1830 is a classic and there's no doubt about it. There are plenty of other rail building games and many of them are good. But if you've got the hours to spare, none are as good as 1830.

It only remains for me to say that it seems that the game was last in print a few years ago. It's criminal that it's still out of print now, considering just how good a game 1830 is.

16th July 2019

It's a Tuesday and the 3rd and final game of game evening at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking is 'Honshu'.

Wikipedia describes Honshu as 'the largest and most populous main island of Japan'.

Honshu the game describes itself as a 'trick-taking, map building card game set in feudal Japan'.

So, there you go!

What's in a game?

• 60 map cards, each card has 6 'squares' and each square represents a type of terrain. The cards are numbered 1-60.
• 6 starting province cards, these are double sided. So you can have identical starting provinces or asymmetrical ones. Like the  map cards, they have 6 terrain spaces.
• 40 resources equally distributed in 4 different colours. These are depicted by tiny coloured wooden cubes. You know it's a proper 'Euro' when you get wooden cubes!
• 8 end of game scoring objectives.
• 5 turn order cards.

How's it play?
The objective of Honshu is to lay down map cards to create your province. When laying a card, generally the objective is to lay cards in such a way that matching terrain types are next to each other.
First thing though, is set up.

• Randomly deal a starting province to each player. This is put into the player's are and is the first part of their province.
• Randomly deal a turn order card to each player.
• Randomly deal 6 map cards to each player.
• Randomly select an 'end of game' scoring card (This is an optional rule, but it's worth mentioning.).

A turn is divided into 2 phases, 'trick-taking' and 'map-laying'.

Trick-taking

• Each player plays one of their map cards into the central area, this is done in the turn order that was randomly determined during set up.
• Once all players have played a card, a new turn order is determined. As explained above, all cards are numbered, the player who put down the card with the highest number is now first, the 2nd highest is not 2nd and so on.
• Once the new turn order has been determined, beginning with whoever is first can now take any of the cards that were played by any of the players.
• This means that the order the cards were put down will not be the same when they are picked up.
• In later turns, players can spend resources (That they have accumulated.) to increase the value of the card they have just played by 60!

Once everyone has collected a card, we go on to the map-laying phase. When players put down their map cards, there are certain rules that must be followed.

• When laying down a map card, at least one of its 6 squares must overlap another of the player's map cards (Or starting province in the first turn.).
• A card may be placed underneath another card instead of overlapping on top of it.
• Squares that contain water cannot be laid underneath other cards.
• At least 1 square of the new card must remain visible.

That's it for map-laying.

Play continues for 3 turns. Then before the 4th turn, players pass their 3 remaining cards to the player to their left.
Once the 6th turn is completed, the players will have run out of cards. 6 new cards are randomly dealt to each player and play continues.
After the 9th turn has been completed, players pass their 3 remaining cards to the player on their right.
After the 12th turn, the game is over and we go to scoring.

Endgame
So once the 12th turn is over, it's time to score. There are several different terrain types and each type scores differently.

• Forests: All visible forest square scores 2 points each.
• Towns: Only the single biggest town district in a province scores points. Each square in the biggest town district is worth 1 point. A town district can be created (And increased in size.) by connecting town squares orthogonically. 
• Lakes: Larger lakes score points, whilst the smallest lakes score none. Each connected square in a lake other than the first is worth 3 points. Thus a lake consisting of 1 square is worth 0 points. A lake consisting of 3 squares will score 6 points.
• Fallow: Fallow squares score 0 points.
• Productions: There are some squares that are called production squares. These squares will produce 1 good in one of the 4 colours as shown on the production square is the map card. A cube in the relevant colour will be placed on the production square
• Factories: Some tiles will have factory squares on them and and like resources, factories come in 4 colours. During the endgame, if players can move resources from production squares to factory squares (Of the same colour.), then they can score points for it, the value of the score is dependent upon the individual factory.
• End game scoring cards: Finally the end game scoring card is scored. There are 8 different end game scoring cards that each provide varied ways to score additional points.

Overall
Honshu is a small game that packs a lot in.
It has a trick-taking mechanic that can be exploited to good use if you're canny, as well a a drafting mechanic​. Which is quite interesting.
The map-laying phase gives the player quite a lot of flexibility when putting map cards down, so you get a lot of choices and decisions to make.

Honshu reminds me a little bit of 'Isle of Skye', both games are broadly divided into a acquisition phase and a map laying phase.
Both games give players options for strategies (And both games allow you take another player's map tile/card!).

Honshu is a little simpler, but quicker to play.
And like Isle of Skye, I think Honshu is a good game and definitely worth trying.

12th July 2019

It's time for the second game of 'not WFRP' night. 

The second game of the night is 'Kingdomino'.

Kingdomino is a tile placement game that's about creating a kingdom with dominos. Hence the name kingdomino - those professional 'board-game-namers' earned their wages with Kingdomino eh?

What's in a game?
Unsurprisingly, the main component of Kingdomino is... dominoes.

• Dominoes: There are 48 dominoes. These are not typical dominoes. Instead of 2 sets of dots, the dominoes depict different landscapes such as forest, field, lake, etc. Some dominoes will have crowns on them. The other side of each domino is numbered from 1-48.
• Castles: There are castles and starting tiles in 4 colours.
• Meeples, there are 8 meeples in the same 4 colours as the starting tiles and castles.

That's it for components. It's worth adding that all of the components are cheerful and bright with colourful illustrations on the dominoes.

How's it play?
First there is set up.

• Each player is given a starting tile and matching castle and meeple (2 meeples are only used in a 2 player game.).
• Shuffle the dominoes: The amount of dominoes used is equal to the number of players multiplied by 12. Take the required number of dominoes and put them into a draw deck face-down. Any remaining dominoes will not be used for this game.
• Draw a number of dominoes equal to the number of players. Keeping them face-down, lay them out in a line, arranging them in ascending numerical order. Then turn dominoes over so their fronts are showing.
• Determine a starting player.

Now you are ready to go. There are 2 stages to a round. Firstly selecting and dealing dominoes and then laying dominoes. Selecting and dealing dominoes is explained below.

• Beginning with the starting player and going to the left, each player puts their meeple on a domino that they want (A starting player is only determined for the first round, after that meeple placement determines turn order.).
• Once all players have chosen a domino: As described deal a second line of dominoes face-down, then rearrange them in ascending order and turn them over.
• Now; in ascending order, each player takes back their meeple and the domino it was placed on. The domino is placed in the player's 'kingdom'  and then the player puts their meeple on to a domino they want in the new row.
• Once all players have selected dominoes again, a new row of dominoes is dealt again as described above.
• This is the method for dealing and taking dominoes.

Next are the rules on how dominoes are placed to create a player's kingdom.

• The face-up side of each domino has 2 halves that depict landscapes. some of the landscapes will have 1 or more crowns on it. This is for scoring and is explained below.
• The first domino must be placed with any one of its 6 sides against the starting tile.
• Subsequent dominoes can be placed against the starting tile or against another domino.
• When a domino is placed against another domino, the sides that are 'touching' must have matching landscapes.
• The objective of the game is to create the biggest 'regions' of the same landscape type. So you want to match landscapes as much as possible.
• All the dominoes must be placed (Along with the starting tile.) within a 5x5 grid. If placing a domino would make the kingdom bigger than that; then it must be placed in a way to not exceed that limit. Otherwise it must be discarded.
• Play progresses until the deck of dominoes has been depleted.

Endgame
Now that all the dominoes have been placed, it's to score them.

• For each 'region' count the number of spaces in that region. Then multiply the number by the number of crowns in that region.
• If a region has no crowns in it, it scores no points.
• A single space is still a region and has a size of 1. Thus if that space has 2 crowns, it would score 2 points.
• Tally points for all regions.
• Highest score wins.

Overall
Kingdomino is a clever and unique game that seems to genuinely draw some inspiration from dominoes.

Players are usually always given a meaningful decision to make.
Which tile to take?
How to place a tile in your kingdom?

Kingdomino also has an interesting mechanic to determine turn order. The  most important dominoes (Those with crowns on them.) have the highest numbers on their backs. This means that taking a valuable domino in one turn will result in being further down in the turn order in the following turn. It's a clever balancing mechanic and something to think about when selecting dominoes.

There's also a potentially higher level of play. Watching your opponents gives your the opportunity to try and anticipate their moves and guess which landscapes they want to prioritise. Although, as with a  lot of games, you have to be careful not to scupper yourself when trying to mess with other other players.

Kingdomino is a small, colourful, quick to play and easy to learn game. Perfect for a start or finisher to an evening of gaming.

It has enough depth and variation to give it replay value. And that's a good thing.

2nd July 2019.

​The second game of gaming night at 'The Sovereigns' was 'Isle of Skye'.

In my imagination, one day someone was playing 'Carcassonne' and they thought. 'Y'know what this needs is more depth. Oh and it needs to be set in a remote part of Scotland!'.

And the result of that thought was 'Isle of Skye'.

In reality the link to Carcassonne is fairly superficial, both are landscape-based tile laying games and that's about it for similarities
Isle of Skye also contains an intriguing trading mechanic.

What's in a game?

• A large bag comes with the game.
• A stack of square tiles. These depict various types of landscape such as mountain, field and water, as well as other features. These tiles are placed in the bag and randomly drawn during the game.
• A main game board. This board tracks player scores and the turn counter. There are also 4 spaces for 'scoring tiles'.
  
• Scoring tiles. There are a number of these. They are shuffled and 4 are placed on the main game board.
  
• A screen for each player.
  
• And err... axe for each player?

How's it play?
First, there's the set up.
The scoring tiles are shuffled and 4 of them are placed on the main game board. Each tile has a different method or way of scoring points.
Each player is also given some currency (Which they keep hidden behind their screen at all times.).

The game is played over 5 turns and the game is scored at the end of these 5 turns: In each turn different scoring tiles will used for scoring. In the 1st turn, one tile is used, in turns 2 & 3, two tiles are used and in turns 4 & 5 three tiles are used.

Once set up is completed, the game begins. There are 3 phases to every turn.

Income
Each player draws currency from the gold supply.

Trading
The trading mechanics in Isle of Skye are like no other game I've played. Each turn, all the players will acquire some tiles and must sell them, but they use their own money to do so!

• First, every player blindly draws 3 tiles from the bag and hides them behind their screen in a line.
• Then the players decide which 2 tiles to sell and which one to discard.
• When selling tiles, the player can decide how much they want for each tile for. To do this, they must use their own money. This is done by putting coins on the tile equal to the cost you want the tile to be. Thus if you want to price a tile at 3 gold, you must put 3 of your own gold on the tile. Tiles have a minimum cost of 1 and obviously cannot be more expensive than the gold you have.
• The third tile must be discarded. You indicate this by putting the axe counter on it (It gets axed - geddit!).
• Once everybody has done this, we go on to the next stage.

So next everybody removes their screen and reveals their choices to each other. The following occurs.

• All tiles marked with an axe are discarded back into the bag (And the bag is shaken to 'shuffle' the tiles.).
• Each player can then buy one tile from another player (Players cannot bu their own tiles.). Player can pass it they have to.
• Play progresses until all players have had the opportunity to buy a tile.
• If one of your tiles is bought, then the player buying it pays you the cost you indicated, you also get back the gold you put on the tile.
• If one or both of your tiles are not bought, the you must buy them yourself! Paying the cost with the gold that you placed on the tile earlier.

Playing tiles
Once all of the tiles have been bought, players have to lay their tiles.

The rules for laying tiles is pretty straightforward. Tiles can be placed down in any orientation, but must honour all the other tiles that it is adjacent to.
Each player creates their own 'map' independent of all other players.

Overall?
I Liked Isle of Skye.

I particularly like the mechanics for selling tiles. You given some intriguing and risky strategies to use.

If you draw tiles you don't want, you can try to sell them at a low price to get rid of them. But underselling the tiles may help someone else with very little benefit to yourself.
Conversely, putting a high price on tiles may them price them out of other peoples' ranges. Ending up with you paying a high cost for tiles you don't want.
Additionally, because you use your own funds to put a price on tiles. If you price your tiles too highly, you will be left with little gold to buy other player's tiles.

There's lots of potential decisions here and that's good.

When laying tiles, there's lots of decisions to be made too.

As well as the 3 land types, field, mountain and water, there are also features such roads, lighthouses, farms etc.
All of these can be used in scoring, but they will do so differently over the rounds. So you need to prioritise how you lay tiles to maximise scoring.

So like I said I like Isle of Skye and it's been added to 'the list'.