This week it was Ivory’s turn to share his pizza with everyone, while Blue and Pink shared ice creams with Purple and Black.With the food over, Blue explained how we were going to prepare for our birthday next time, by “wrapping parcels” for Crappy Birthday.This is a silly party game that we play every year to celebrate the anniversary of our first meeting in 2012.Basically, players take it in turns to have their birthday, and everyone else chooses a gift from a hand of five cards.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t really lend itself to playing online, but as so many things have been cancelled this year, we didn’t want this to be one of them.So, to get round the difficulties, we decided to play it over two evenings:firstly wrapping cards, then opening them two weeks later.Each player had a set of electronic files containing cards.Everyone opened the first file and chose a card to give to the player whose name was drawn out of the box lid, making a note of what they were giving and to whom.
When people had gifted two parcels, they closed the file and opened the next one which included the same cards as the first file and a couple of new ones, thus simulating drawing two more cards.Once everyone’s name had been drawn, everyone emailed the list of gifts to Blue for her to arrange delivery ready for next time.And then it was on to the “Feature Game” which was Welcome To….
Welcome To… is another “Roll and Write” style game, though without the colouring-in element of some of the games we’ve played recently, and as a result is a bit more complex.In this game, players are planing and building housing estates in 1950s USA.This time, the player board depicts three rows of houses and a scoring table.The idea is that there are three decks of double sided cards with a house number on one side and an action on the other.At the start of each round, the top card is turned over to show the action side.Players then choose one of the three house number/action pairs to use.
Players must write a house number on any one of the three streets, but the numbers can only feature once on each, and must be ascending from left to right.Players may then carry out the associated action, which could be building a fence, building a swimming pool or park, adding a number a second time (“Bis!”), modifying the number by one or two (using the Temping Agency) or increasing the value of houses on “Estates” of certain sizes.
At the end of the game, players score points for building swimming pools and parks, having used the “Temping Agency” the most, and also for different sized “Estates”.An Estate is a continuous group of houses (i.e. no gaps) with a fence at each end.Estates of size one up to six score different numbers of points and one of the actions players can use is selectively increase the value of some of these.
Additionally, players score points for completed “City Plans”.These are three cards revealed at the start of the game. which give points to people who complete their requirements.The catch is, a bit like Noch Mal!, the first person (or people) to be successful get more points, usually around double that of anyone who finishes them later in the game.This is also one of three “game timers”, with the game ending when someone completes all three Plans.
The game also ends if someone manages to fill in all the houses in all three streets, which is not easy.More likely, players are going to find they cannot build any of the three houses being offered.If this happens, players player take a “Building Permit Refusal”—when someone takes their third, that also triggers the end of the game.
There are lots of little rules that make the game more complex than most of the “Roll and Write” games we’ve played.For example, players can build fences anywhere, but parks must be on the street they built their house on, and pools can only be built in the garden of the house if it was on the plan.That said, it is not actually difficult, but there is a lot to think about and if players are going to score well.
There were a lot of questions from the group, and people clearly found it difficult to understand, not helped by the difficulties of learning a game over MS Teams.Nevertheless, teaching and learning through a computer is a skill lots of school teachers, pupils, university lecturers and students have had to develop this year, and it turns out it is useful for gamers too.So eventually, Pink finished shuffling and turned over the first set of cards to start the game.
Everything went quiet as people put their “Game Face” on and concentrated.It wasn’t long before the silence was broken by Burgundy sighing, Pine grumbling and Blue checking how people were getting on.To reduce the waiting and questions whether everyone was ready, we used the “hands up” function to indicate when players had finished writing.This was really helpful to keep track of things with so many people playing.
The City Plans in play were all from the basic game (and we weren’t playing with roundabouts either), so all three were based on estate sizes:1) two of size four; 2) a six and three ones; 3) a four and a three.Green was first to complete a City Plan taking number three, and was soon followed by Pink and Ivory taking the lucrative second Plan giving them eleven points each.
Gradually, as the game progressed others claimed more City Plans and there was a feeling that the game was coming to a close.Increasingly, people found their choices were becoming more limited adding to the tension.This feeling was heightened when Purple became the first to be unable to play, and took a Building Refusal Permit.A few rounds later, and Mulberry ended the game by completing her third City Plan and everyone started adding up their scores.
Despite people finding it difficult at first, the scores were surprisingly close with a winning score of ninety-five and most of the group not far behind.It is definitely a game that rewards a little experience especially as it is quite different to the other games we’ve been playing recently, so it wasn’t surprising that Pink ran out the winner.Green ran him close though, with an excellent ninety-two.There was a bit of chatter while some said their “good byes” and the rest of the group decided to play Saboteur on Board Game Arena.
The game is easy to play and everyone knows what they are doing, so it is always quick to get started.Each player has a hand of cards and take it in turns to either play a tunnel card, or play an action card.The aim of the game is to help the team build a tunnel to whichever of the three terminal cards holds the gold.Unless you are a Saboteur of course, in which case, your aim is to hinder the efforts made by everyone else, but without being spotted…
Saboteur is usually better with more players, but the group had sort of decided they were going to play it before they realised how many people there were left.With just six there were either one or two Evil Saboteurs and the rest were Lovely Dwarves.This makes it hard for the Saboteur team and they have to get their act together quickly to make the most of what little time they have.
In the first round, Pine made it very clear he was going to make the most of his time and bluntly said he thought Blue was a saboteur and broke her pick axe for her, preventing her doing any tunnelling.This was apparently in response to her playing a map card in her first turn which he decreed was “A very Saboteury Move”.Everyone else felt that Pine’s move was much more “Saboteury” and jumped on him in response.Everyone except Purple that is, who ran to his aid.
It wasn’t long before Purple’s true colours were flying when she joined Pine and blocked the tunnel with dead-ends.However, the Dwarves, now knowing there wasn’t a traitor hiding in their midst, got their act together, dealt with the blockage and headed for the gold.Before long, it was 1-0 to the Dwarves.
The Evil Saboteurs were a little more cagey in the second round.Purple looked at the bottom card and indicated it was Gold.After last time, nobody trusted her so first Pink and then Pine double checked and all concurred.The Dwarves were one card away from an easy run to the Gold when Burgundy’s rockfall card told everyone else which side he was on.It was too little too late, however, and nothing he or his partner in crime, Black, could do could prevent the Brave Dwarves repainting the tunnel and finding the gold.
Early in the third and final round, Burgundy started by looking at the middle card which he claimed was coal.By this time, suspicion was a currency everyone was rich in, so Pink double-checked and concurred, then checked the bottom target card.Burgundy claimed suspicion and immediately verified that they’d found Gold.Purple announced that she thought Pink was behaving suspiciously and broke his pickaxe for him—an extremely Saboteury move!
Burgundy attempted to redeem his behaviour in the previous round by repairing Pink’s tools, while Black repaid Purple by smashing Purple’s lamp.Although Purple was able to fix it herself, it looked like the Dwarves were home safe and sound until Pine’s turn.As discussed with the team, he played a card between the middle and bottom cards, but when it connected the carefully dug tunnel to the middle, coal, everyone was sure that they’d found the second Saboteur.
Pine protested that it was incompetence rather than malice that meant he’d put the card in upside down.The Dwarves had to fix his “mistake” though, and their cards were running out.Black discarded a card and Blue had no choice but to smash some more of Purple’s tools, leaving it down to Pink to finish things.
In the end, it turned out that the Saboteurs were Black and Purple, and Pine just had a sausage-finger-moment.That left Blue as the “winner”, but the scoring is very random and highly dependent on turn order, so really all that can be said is that it was 3-0 to the Loyal Dwarves.There was time for something else before Pink’s bedtime, and given the shortage of time, the group bowed to the inevitable and moved on to 6 Nimmt!.
This has become one of our favourite games, especially since we’ve been forced to play online as it is light and fun and fast to play, and helps us to forget the current situation.The game is so simple, and yet so much fun, with almost no downtime.Players simply choose a card and Board Game Arena does the rest.Of course, everyone like to think they have control and their strategy is working, right up until it isn’t.
The idea is that the card chosen is played on the end of one of four rows, with players trying to avoid placing the sixth card as that means the points on the other five cards are deducted from their total.So the aim of the game is to try to second-guess what everyone else is doing and stay safe.Recently, we’ve been playing the “Professional” variant which allows players to add cards to either end of the rows, adding more “strategy” and more chaos, and a whole lot more fun.
Things started to go wrong Blue first, when she cheered thinking she’d got away without a pick-up, only to discover she’d got nine “nimmts”.Purple picked up nine in the same turn, however, while Blue managed to stabilise her game, Purple’s went from bad to worse when she managed what might be a new record, picking up nineteen nimmts in a single turn!
Fairly inevitably, Purple triggered the end of the game, but the other end was less clear.That was until the end of the game, when Blue, who had somehow managed to avoid picking up anything else, just pipped Burgundy to the win.With that, Pine and Pink bade everyone else good night and the remaining foursome looked for something else to play.
There were a few options, but they were limited by the fact that nobody wanted to play anything long or too intense. In the end, they decided to give Sushi Go! a try.This is a game we’ve all played before, but nobody had played on Board Game Arena.is a pure card drafting game: players start with a hand of cards and keep one and pass the rest on.The aim is to collect cards in combinations to give them points.
In Sushi Go!, it is all about collecting the right cards at the right time.For example, three Sashimi cards are worth ten points, but two are worthless. There is also a significant “hate drafting” aspect though.This is where players take cards to inconvenience others rather than to benefit one’s own game.This is mostly because Maki Roll and Pudding points are awarded to those with the most cards, but can also be because causing another player to finish with worthless cards can sometimes be as effective as scoring points oneself.
The first round was one of rediscovery since it was a very long time since anyone had played it.Blue rediscovered the perils of trying to collect Sashimi, when she got stuck with only two which scored her nothing.Burgundy, on the other hand, just before her in turn order, collected three and claimed ten points.Purple collected lots of Nigiri and Black made hay out of Maki Rolls.So, going into the second round it was pretty much a three-way tie with all to play for.
In the second and third rounds, Black and Purple made a lot of points from playing Nigiri cards after wasabi cards which is a multiplier and can be very lucrative.Although Black was in the lead going into the final round, the fact Burgundy took two Wasabi/Nigiri combos meant he took a fine victory.The game plays so quickly though and the Board Game Arena rendition is so good that everyone fancied trying giving it another go.
The second game was much closer, the competition for Wasabi and Maki Rolls got more intense with everyone now well aware of how lucrative they could be.Although it was very close, in the end, Burgundy just managed to keep his crown, beating Black into second place by a single point and everyone else just a couple of points behind.With such a tight finish, a third game was inevitable.Blue who had come last in the previous two games was determined not to this time.However, a grotty starting had meant she was forced to start with lot of puddings.
By this time, everyone was looking more carefully at what they were passing on, so Blue finished with a bit of hate-drafting, ensuring that Burgundy couldn’t get a full set of Sashimi and that ensured she avoided the wooden spoon.Purple and Black started out with Wasabi and really managed to make their cards count.In the end, there were still only two points in it, but this time it was Black and Purple fighting out for first place, which Black just took.And then it was definitely time for bed.
Learning Outcome: Swimming pools are not as common as you might think.