29th June 2019

​Gaming afternoon continues at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking and we concluded with 'Tiny Epic Galaxies'.
I've written about Tiny Epic Galaxies before here.

23rd June 2019.

Gaming day continues at 'The Sovereigns'.
The next game of the day is 'Celestia'.

Celestia is very similar to another game called 'Cloud 9', in fact both games are designed by the same person.

You can see my thoughts on Cloud 9 here.

​Celestia is a fantasy-themed push your luck game about making a journey. 

What's in a game?

Celestia contains a skyship placing piece that needs to be built. Annoyingly, when constructed, it does not fit in the game box! This means it must be constructed before and then deconstructed after every game session. Otherwise it's quite a nice prop for the game.

There are is a set of 'city' markers and several sets of small decks of 'treasure' cards for each of the cities.

There is also an 'equipment' deck of cards used to 'travel' in the game. Most of the cards in the deck contain symbols identical to those from on the dice (See below.). Some cards are 'power' or 'turbo' cards that give a different benefit.

There are 'event' dice; these are 4 custom six sided dice used to represent obstacles or events that must be overcome during the journey. Each die is identical and has 4 custom symbols on 4 sides and blank faces on 2 sides.

And finally there are 6 meeples for the players.

The components are pretty standard. But I feel I must add that the art on all of the cards and markers is excellent.

How's it play

Before play begins, the cities markers are set out in a specific order (From lowest to highest scoring.). Then the associated smaller treasure decks are placed next to each city marker.

The purpose of the game is to reach the last city (If possible.) to score maximum points. But if the skyship crashes along the way, then no points are scored by the passengers.
Players will be given the choice to abandon the skyship early and earn less points.

This is how play goes.

• At the start of the game equipment cards are dealt to each player.
• The skyship is placed on the beginning destination marker. Every player's meeple is placed in the skyship.
• The active player assumes the role of 'Captain' for the round. The captain takes 2 event dice and rolls them (Later on, the further along the journey the skyship is, the more dice are rolled.).
• The other players decide whether to stay aboard or abandon ship. If a player chooses to abandon ship, they remove their meeple from the skyship model.
• When a player abandons the skyship, they take a treasure card from the deck associated with the destination marker the skyship is currently on.
• The value of the card is dictated by the city the skyship was on when the player abandoned it. Earlier cities give lower somewhat scores in a random range (6+ or 9+ for example.). Additionally, the earlier treasure decks also contain power cards. The last cities give a fixed value for each card. When a treasure card is acquired, it should be kept hidden face down.
• Once all the other players have made their choices and abandoned the skyship or not: The captain either must play the equipment cards from their hand matching the symbols rolled on the dice, or announces that they cannot do so. If the captain cannot overcome the event dice, then the skyship crashes! Crunch!
• If the captain plays the required cards, the skyship moves along to the next city marker. And the next player becomes captain. Any player who has abandoned the skyship cannot become captain in the current journey and is skipped if they are next.
• If the skyship crashes, (And believe me, it will, frequently!) the skyship is returned to the first city marker, all players' meeples are put back in it and everybody draws an equipment card.
• If the skyship reaches the last city, this journey is completed. Everybody aboard takes a treasure card (Worth 25 points!). The skyship is returned to the first marker and gets back aboard and each player collects another equipment card.

​Endgame.
When a journey ends for whatever reason and before another begins: If one or more players have accumulated 50 or more points, they must declare it. Then all players tally their points, highest score wins.

Overall
Celestia is an easy to play and accessible push your luck game. It is a competitive game, but there are elements of co-operative play here. Because to reach the further destinations you will likely need other players to co-operate with you. This is doubly true if one player is rushing ahead in the scoring.

Comparisons with Cloud 9 are inevitable, they are both very similar, with similar strategies and mechanics.

But Celestia has a few tweaks that gives it a bit more depth.

Firstly, in the equipment deck, the 4 different types of card required to overcome obstacles from the event dice are not represented in equal numbers. This means it's less likely that certain cards will be dealt into players' hands. And this means that certain types of obstacles are harder to overcome. It's something to pay attention to. 

Secondly, some of the power cards allow you to mess with the other players. Although in this game it seems strangely antagonistic. I've rarely seen these types of card used, possibly because of hidden scores means it's hard to know who to target.

And finally, hidden scores. In Cloud 9, there is a scoring track, so when a player reaches 50+ points, everyone else knows they need to push it in order to have a chance of winning. But in Celestia, with its hidden scores you can never know exactly what another player's score is. You can't afford to be complacent and need to keep accumulating your score.

It doesn't take too long to play either, meaning that it's a nice filler game. It's one to play.

in Deep Sea Adventure each player is a treasure-hunting diver who is looking to score big. The game is played over 3 rounds and the player with the most valuable treasures after the end of the 3rd round is the winner.

Deep Sea Adventure packs a whole lot of push-your-luck fun into a little box.

Whilst this is a competitive game, it sneaks a co-operative little mechanic into the rules which in turn players can try to twist to their own advantage.

The game begins with all the players' meeples in a submarine. Beneath the sub is a winding trail of face down markers. Each marker represents a treasure that can be collected by a diver. The value of the treasures also vary, but the deeper you dive, more valuable the treasure. The more sides a marker has, the more potential value it has.

​Play goes like this:

• During a player's turn, they dive into the deeps. This is done by rolling 2 dice (both numbered 1-3, giving a range of 2-6 and an average of 4) and moving that many spaces down the treasure markers.
• When a diver moves, they 'hop' over other divers (don't count the space the other diver is on), this means that sometimes movement is very unpredictable.
• When a player stops on a treasure marker they can choose to pick it up (and place it still face down in front of themselves). If they do pick it up, it is replaced by a 'blank' marker.
• At the start of their next turn, the player can choose to continue diving for more treasure or turn around and head back to the sub. Rolling both dice to move up or down. Once a diver begins their ascent, they can't turn back down again.

And that's it, that's it for the rules.

Ok, there's a bit more.

• At the start of a player's turn, if they are carrying one or more treasures, then they must lower the sub's oxygen level by the number of treasures they are holding.
• Oxygen level? WTF is that? Did I forget to mention the sub's oxygen level? Well, the submarine has an oxygen level that is communally shared by all the divers. When the oxygen level reaches zero, all the divers not back in the sub will.... well you get the idea.
• After rolling the dice to move, the number of treasures carried is also deducted from the dice result. Carrying treasures will slow divers down, possibly down to zero movement.
• Thus carrying treasures consumes oxygen and slows movement. A potentially lethal combination.
• A player does not score points for the treasures they collect until they safely return to the submarine. If they don't make it back to the sub, then the treasure's are dropped and to the bottom of the track and pile up in piles of three. When a treasure plie is picked up, it only counts as one treasure for purposes of movement and oxygen, even though it actually be three treasures. Very tasty if you can get to it!
• After every diver has returned to the sub, or as is more likely the oxygen runs out. Then the round ends. All the blank markers are removed (thus the trail is shortened and the deeper treasures become more accessible). The oxygen level is set back to max and the next round begins. There are 3 rounds to a game.

And that really is it for the rules. Deep Sea Adventure is all about pushing you luck.

Pushing your luck in picking up treasures (so tempting to pick up one extra treasure, just one little treasure - it won't make much of a difference, right).

Pushing your luck in movement. The hop mechanic can prove helpful or can push you way too deep into the depths.

Finally, pushing your luck with the communal oxygen supply. This is the game's best mechanic. This is what turns it from a 'OK' game into a 'good' game. The communal oxygen means that you have watch what the other players are picking up. It forces you to try and think a whole round ahead.

When playing Deep Sea Adventure, there comes a point when oxygen starts to matter. For a couple of turns, no one picks up treasure. Everyone wants something a little better and is willing to dive a little deeper to get it. But then, it all changes, as treasures are picked up, oxygen is used up. The change may seem quite subtle, but can actually be quite dramatic. No oxygen being used, to suddenly 4-5 every round.  Being able to spot and react to this change is key to winning in my opinion.

In a six player game, at some point every player will have picked up at least one treasure, that means six points of oxygen will be used up before your next turn. That's about a quarter of all the available oxygen.

Some players will try and load themselves with treasures to burn up oxygen as they return to the sub, (this is in itself a risky strategy as it also slows movement - several times I've seen loaded down players one or 2 spaces away from the sub and not move at all until the oxygen runs out).

All of this means that you can never be complacent about the oxygen supply and this Deep Sea Adventure is good fun and a good game.

17th April 2019

It's 'kebab night' round at my place. What's kebab got to do with gaming?

Well Matt has bought his copy of Kingsburg round to my place for us to play we did!

Kingsburg is a dice/worker placement game where each player has their own board to track personal advances.
It is a fantasy themed game that casts the players as provincial advisors who are seeking to influence the king, battle with invading armies and gain personal power.

Kingsburg is played over 5 'game' years and each year has 4 seasons and 4 'inter-seasonal' phases as well. So a total 40 'phases'. Although in reality players only get to do stuff in 3 seasons a year. So players only get 15 'actions' per game.

How does it play?
Each year is divided up into 8 phases. I'll describe the even phases and then the season phases - 3 of which basically function identically.
Phases 1, 3, 5 & 7 are events.
Phases 2, 4, 6 & 8 are spring, summer, autumn and winter respectively. Player actions all occur in the first 3 seasons. Something different occurs during winter. During winter... there is war. Which is about the stupidest time to wage war. Maybe the designers are fans of Game of Thrones (Urggh, felt a little dirty mentioning that!)

• Phase 1 - Bonus die; the player with the least amount of buildings gets a bonus die (explained below). It's a strange thing to start a game with. But there you go.
• Phase 3 - Victory Point Reward; the player with the most buildings at this stage gains a victory point.
• Phase 5 - Extra Action Marker; the player with the fewest buildings gets the marker - which they can only use in the next season. This allows them to do one of the following: Influence an advisor that has already been influenced or in the building phase, build an extra building.
• Phase 7 - Recruitment; players have the opportunity to spend resources to increase their military strength in the face of upcoming war.

 
Seasons

• Phase's 2, 4 & 6 - spring, summer & autumn. This is where most of the game takes place.
• Every player rolls their 3 dice (and bonus dice, if they have any), this determines order of play AND which advisors they can possibly influence.
• How does this work. Let's say that it has come to my turn. On the 3 dice I rolled a 3, 4, 5. How do I use them to influence advisors. You will remember that earlier I explained how the game board has 18 advisors numbered from 1-18. I simply put dice equal to the value of an advisor on to that advisor's space.
• I could all 3 dice on space 12 (3+4+5=13).
• I could put the 3 on space 3, the 4 on space 4 and the 5 on space 5.
• Or the 3 on space 3 and the 4 and 5 on space 9 (4+5=9).
• Or any combination of the dice.
• If you have any bonus dice, they can be played with your other dice, but never alone.
• You can only influence 1 advisor at a time regardless of how many dice you do or do not use and play goes around the table in the turn order. Furthermore an advisor can only be influenced by one player at time. Only dice from one player may occupy a space at a time.
• So if you have a 5 and an opponent has a 5 amongst their dice, you may want to place your dice first, locking theirs out!
• Play continues until all dice have been placed (or discarded).
• Then going in order of the advisor numbering, each player space-by-space take their Resources for each of their dice.
• Resources include, gold, wood and stone. As well as military strength, bonus tokens and the opportunity to look at the invading army card, (More about this later). Once all the resources have been collected, then play progresses to the next phase.

​

• The next phase is building.
• Each province sheet has 5 rows of 4 buildings.
• You can construct buildings in any row. But only the left-most building can be built. Thus if you want the 4th building in a row, the first 3 must be built beforehand. The last building in a row tends to be pretty good.
• Buildings have a cost in gold, wood and stone. Unusually here, stone is the most valuable and hardest to acquire resource: Gold and wood appear twice in the first 6 spaces. But the earliest space in which stone actually appears is 7. This means that it requires at least 2 dice to get stone, (barring usage of a +2 token or special ability off of a building you have built). This feels strangely counter-intuitive and is probably a deliberate design decision.
• Once constructed, a building will give you some sort of benefit, these can be one off like victory points or some sort of continuing in game benefit.

 

• The final season (and final phase of the year) is winter.
• Every winter without fail, one of the kingdom's enemies will attack, zombies, orcs or whatever. And every province must join the battle.
• How's this done? It's pretty simple actually. First a die is rolled and it's result is added to every player's military strength to give a final score.
• Each year has 5 different invader cards, one of these is randomly revealed and will have a type of enemy and a military strength. Each player compares their strength to that of the card
• If the player's strength is higher, victory. And to the victor, go the spoils. In Kingsburg, this will probably be a victory point or two or some resources.
• If the strength scores tie, then the enemy is driven off and there's no reward or loss.
• If the player's strength is lower, then they lose. This will mean losing something. This might be resources of even a building (losing a building must really suck).
• That's all ther is to it! Well, there's 2 other things worth noting about the battles.
• At the end of each year, every player's military strength is reset to zero. Those supposedly loyal soldiers never hang around for more than a year.
• The strength of the invading armies increases year after year.

And that's it for a general overview of the rules. As always I've left some stuff out.

How does it play?

Well... Well it plays... OK.

I'm trying to think of something I liked about Kingsburg and something I hated. I came up with zero for both. It's just... sort of... OK.

So the central mechanic is interesting, but seems quite weird. Being quite luck based, sometimes it could be infuriating. But conversely (and strangely), frequently it would feel like it didn't matter what I rolled, because there would be multiple routes to get what I needed.
I found this strange mix of sometimes needing luck and sometimes luck not mattering not very compelling.

Constructing a building doesn't feel like an accomplishment much of the time, nor does it feel like the bonuses it grants change the game much.
It's fairly straightforward to construct the first and maybe second buildings in a row, but because of the slightly haphazard way in which you gain resources, planning for the buildings further along is much trickier and your well-laid plans can easily be scuppered by a bad dice roll. The later buildings can be much more useful, but by the time you get to building them, the game will 80% over, thwarting their usefulness. You really need to plan to get these  buildings, but the game seems to scupper plans. Quite often your forced to choose between trying to save resources for even longer to get a building, or giving up on it and getting something else instead.

Choice is always good as I've said in this blog before. But the choices here tend to be about choosing between the least undesirable option. It feels negative and leaves a little bitter taste in the mouth.

War in the winter season seems not so well thought about. Quite often I would completely ignore/forget about it and the dice roll alone was enough to defeat enemies in the first couple of years. During the 3 other seasons, you would probably get some military strength as a by product of playing. So I never felt the need to invest in military strength.

Overall, I don't think Kingsburg is a bad game by any stretch and if asked if I wanted to play it, I wouldn't immediately say 'no'. But I might ask what else they had to play.

9th April 2019

Tuesday has come around again, so it's time for some gaming at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking.

Perennial favourite amongst many people I play with and a good starter for the evening is Port Royal.
You can read my blog about it here.

2nd April 2019

The second game of Tuesday at 'The Sovereigns' was an old favourite - Port Royal.

You can read my blog about it here.

26th March 2019

Another Tuesday comes round and another evening of pleasant gaming at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking.

We begin the night with Pandemic: The Cure.

Pandemic is a popular board game that was released a while ago. It's a co-operative game in which the players travel the globe against the clock in the search for cures before the hideous diseases ravage the world.

Pandemic: The Cure is another co-operative game. It replaces the game's movement and actions with dice and a push-your-luck mechanic. It also replaces the global board with an errr acrylic ring?!?

The set up

So the acrylic ring is placed in the centre of the play area. 2 pegs are placed in holes in the ring to represent the infection rate and number outbreaks.

6 'region' discs,  numbered from 1 to 6 are placed around the ring. Each disc representing a different region of the world.

The 4 diseases are represented by 4 sets of different coloured six sided dice. They are all put into a bag. When you need disease markers, you blindly draw the required number of dice from the bag and then you roll them and place on the relevant. This gives you both the type and location of disease markers.

It's worth nothing that even though these are six sided dice, they are not regularly numbered from 1 to 6. For example one colour might be missing 3 and 4 and might have an extra 5 and 6. This means that certain types of diseases are more likely to appear in certain regions. This is something important to remember.

Some event cards are laid out, during the game these can be bought to grant the action described on the card.

Just like in the board game, each player assumes a different role like a dispatcher or a scientist. Each role has it's own set of custom dice, a card granting them a special ability or two and a meeple. Before the start of the game, each player places their meeple on to region disc 1.

Gameplay

• At the start of the game a number disease dice equal to the infection rate are drawn from the bag and rolled.
• ​They are placed on the relevant region disc, so  all dice numbered '1' go to region '1' and so forth.
• Some dice may come up with a 'first-aid' symbol. These dice are placed to the side. They can be used to purchase the event cards. Each event card cost 1-3 first aid dice. When spent, these dice are returned to the bag.

Player action.
When a player takes their turn, the first thing they do is roll their dice. This will give them their choices. You 'spend' a die to perform it's action.

• Reroll: At any time during their turn, a player may chose to reroll any number of their unspent dice. There is an exception (see below).
• Biohazard: If any of the results are biohazards they cannot be rerolled. The infection rate is increased for every biohazard symbol that comes face up.
• Ship: A die that comes up as a ship, then the player can move their meeple to an adjacent region disc.
• Plane: A plane result allows a player to move their meeple to any region disc.
• Syringe: The syringe action allows a player to move a disease die from the location that their meeple is on into the middle of the ring. Or they can move a disease die from the middle of the ring back into the bag. Why is moving them back into the bag important? - See below for why.
• Research: This die can be used to try can cure one of the 4 diseases. The die is placed on top any disease die that is on the same region disc as the player's meeple. The die will stay on top of the disease die until that disease is cured, meaning that the player will have less actions from their next turn onwards. Both the research die and disease die are removed from the region disc and placed on the players' role card to indicate this.

Those are the basic actions, each player will have actions unique to the role that they are playing, but there's no need to list them all here.

Once a player has spent all their dice, there are some other actions they will perform.

Give research.
If you are on the same region disc as another player, you mave give them all the researched disease dice of one colour - and your research dice along with them!


Cure disease.
If a player has any disease dice (and research dice) on the role card. Then they can attempt to cure a disease once in their turn.
To do this the player takes all the dice of one colour (of their choice if there are more than 1 colour available) and rolls them and adds them up.
If they get 13 or more then the disease is cured, otherwise not. It's worth noting here that it will normally take at least 3 dice to get 13. Some colours of disease dice may not have higher numbers such as a 5 or 6, that means it will require even more dice to stand a chance of curing a disease.

Spread infection.
The final action of a player is to spread infection!
The players draws dice from the dice bag, the amount that they draw is equal to the current infection rate.
The player rolls these dice and then allocates them to respective region disc.

That's it for what players can do. There are some other rules to note such as:

When things go bad.
There are a couple of things that can go wrong.

• Epidemic: As explained above, biohazard results increase the infection rate. There are several thresholds on the infection rate track. When one of these is crossed; it triggers an epidemic. When this occurs, the active player takes all the dice in the centre of the ring and draws a number of dice from the bag equal to the new infection rate, rolls them and adds them to the region discs (Now you know why it's important to return dice to the bag!).
• Outbreak: If more than 3 disease dice of the same colour are on the same region disc, they 'explode' and spread clockwise to the next region disc, this can trigger multiple 'explosions'. Additionally, every time there's an outbreak, you move the outbreak counter on the ring up by 1.

How you lose the game.
​There are 3 ways to lose this game.

• If the infection rate reaches its maximum, YOU LOSE.
• If the outbreak counter reaches its maximum, YOU LOSE.
• If you need to draw dice from the bag and there's not enough dice, well, I guess, YOU LOSE.

How you win.
The players win the game, if they manage to research all 4 diseases.

That's it for the rules.

Is it a good game?

I like how Pandemic: The Cure manages to replicate some of the 'feel' of the original and also how it replicates the kind of decision making that will be familiar to players of Pandemic.
I also like how they've managed to incorporate a push you luck mechanic.
The game small and portable and has a small footprint on the table.

But...
But, there seems one glaring issue with this game. It seems a bit too easy.

Whenever I've played Pandemic, there's always been a feeling of apprehension that you could lose the game!

After a couple of initial losses, we've never lost the game since really.

Tonight we played the game twice, once on moderate difficulty and the second time on the hardest difficulty.

We won the game both times, I think the second victory seemed even easier.

Maybe we were lucky, maybe we've gotten good at his type of game. I don't know.

But I do know that Pandemic The cure is a good game that is a little disappointing.

9th March 2019

Gaming night at Matakishi's continued.
The session of Oubilette had been short as it only part of chapter and the continuation of chapter 1.

This gave enough time to play something else. We elected to play a favourite of everyone; Port Royal.
You can find my blog on Port Royal here.

5th March 2019

It was gaming Tuesday at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking.
It was also a night of playing several small games instead of one long one.

We kicked off with 'Cloud 9', a sweet (both literally and figuratively) little push your luck board game. 

The premise of the game is that all the players are passengers/pilots in hot air balloon. The higher you go, the more points you score.

How is it played.

The first thing to do is set up the board: The game board is long and thin, it depicts a column of clouds, dice and scores are depicted in every cloud cloud and the scoring track runs along the outside. Unusually it appears to made be of vinyl and smells suspiciously like being in old car!

The game also has a nice looking little model to represent the wicker basket. The basket has 6 spaces to hold up to 6 meeples (Cloud 9 supports up to 6 players).
When all the meeples required at placed into the basket, the basket is placed on to the lowest cloud on the board.

The game's custom 'Cloud 9' dice are 6-sided dice. However 4 sides on each die shows 1 of the 4 different colours. The remaining 2 sides are blank.
There are 4 Cloud 9 dice, these are placed into the playing area

One player is assigned to be 'The Pilot' at the start of the game.

Cards are then dealt out to all players. The remaining cards form a draw pile. There are 2 types of card:

• Balloon cards; there are 4 different colours of balloon card. These correspond to the colours on each of the dice.
• Wild Cards: Explained below.

​​The rules are basically quite simple:

• The pilot rolls the relevant cloud 9 dice.
• The pilot now checks if they can match the result of the dice roll with their cards, (see below for how this is done). The pilot MUST NOT SAY whether they can match the dice or not yet.
• The passengers who can also see what the dice roll was then decide whether they want to stay in the balloon or jump out. If they jump out, (and presumably parachute to safety) - this scores them points based on the cloud they were on when they jumped. when jumping out, the player removes their meeple from the basket (this is a clever little visual cue).
• ​Once all the passengers have made their decisions, the pilot reveals if they can match the dice roll with their cards or not. 
• If the pilot can match the dice, they discard relevant cards as necessary. Then the balloon rises to the next cloud. The player to the pilot's left now becomes the pilot and play continues.
• If the pilot cannot match the dice, the the balloon crashes back to earth. and everybody still in the basket scores 0 points. All players are returned to the basket all players draw a card from the draw deck and the player to the pilot's left now becomes the pilot and play begins again.

How are the dice matched by the pilot's cards.
​

• After the pilot rolls the relevant number of dice, they look at the cards in their hand.
• If they have the corresponding cards in their hand. They must discard the cards to raise the balloon to the next cloud. If any dice show a blank face, then no card needs to be played for that die.
• Thus, if the dice show 1 red and 1 green, the pilot must discard 1 red and 1 green card from their hand. 
• The pilot cannot choose to deliberately fail if they have the relevant cards.
• Wild Card: If the pilot has a wild card, it can be played in place of ALL required colours to raise the balloon. Thus only 1 wild card is ever played at once.
• Unlike the balloon cards, the pilot is not required to use a wild card to match the dice roll.

As the balloon rises, there are more points to be scored when jumping out from higher clouds. When the balloon reaches the top cloud, everyone still aboard earns 25 points and the trip ends. The basket is returned to the lowest clouds and everyone returns to the basket for the next trip.
Talking of points, when a player earns 50+ points it triggers the end game. This means that the current trip continues until it ends (or crashes) and all final points from the trip are added: The player with the most points, wins!

And that's it for rules. There are some rules for what happens if only the pilot is in the balloon when it rises, but it's not really necessary to talk about them here, you get the gist of the game.

As a game it's simple to learn, it's a good introduction game for people who haven't played that many board games.
But it has some depth too. You need to think about how many cards the pilot has before making a choice to stay or jump. you can even try to remember what they did in a previous turn. EG, if they could not match a dice roll that included red and their current dice roll includes red, have they managed to pick up a red card from the draw deck?
Also; you need to remember if any wild cards have been played and by whom (there's 4 wild cards in the deck).
Another thing to remember is that when you're the pilot, you cannot jump out (unless you're alone in the basket). This means that you have to roll the dice even if your hand is empty! Well each die has 1/3 chance of coming up blank...
Finally, Cloud 9 has a curious element of co-operative play. It's actually hard to get to the higher clouds alone and you must work with other players to do it. Quite often after a couple of players have jumped, the remaining players will suddenly starting playing those wild cards to try and push it further - excluding the early jumpers from extra points.

Cloud 9 is a nice push-your-luck game that is a good starter or finisher game that plays with up to 6 players.

2nd March.

Another evening of gaming at Matakishi's place.

We started evening with a firm favourite; Port Royal
This is the 3rd time I've played it this year.