Well, it’s one for the bunny

Saturday at Sam’s saw three eager visitors (me, Chris, Matt) arrive for some board games. When I arrived, Sam, Chris and (Sam’s son) Joe were playing Karuba the card game, a neat little encapsulation of the original. I don’t remember who won, but I’m pretty sure there were two of them.

Matt arrived and, after the usual ritual of polite but brief conversations and blank staring at the choice of games, we went for Bunny Kingdom. This game only made its debut a few days ago, but I was happy to give it another go.

Bunny Kingdom's handy cheat sheet to work out scores

Matt was a feisty one, playing one bunny very early on that separated my only two bunnies on the board. I got him back later on by taking a territory that he had camped on. Chris had a seemingly huge fiefdom, but it was split in half by a stream of lava. Sam, distracted by the pressures of parenthood, kept misreading cards.

In the end of game scoring, I had a huge pile of scrolls, Chris was smart enough to have the cards that copied a scroll of a player on his left AND his right. Matt sneakily kept hold of the Opportunist, giving ten points to him if he ended in second. This was enough to put him in first.

Matt 115
Sam 107
Andrew 103
Chris 91

Then I requested a game of Billabong that Sam had recently got in a trade. I was amazed that anyone would want to trade away a game this good. We bounced around the dirty brown track, leaping over our opponents, and I found one of my kangas being left behind. Matt was in a position to finish in first with his next move, so Sam warned us of this. As it happened, the player who profited most from our attempts to foil Matt’s plan was Sam himself.

Sam
Chris
Matt
Andrew

Then we played Catacombs and Castles, a team-based flicking game whereby each character has different abilities and also two special shots that they can charge up using hit points stolen from the other team. I can’t say I cared for it, since there are other flicking games that do strategy (Ascending Empires) or comedy violence (Cube Quest) better.

Sam & Matt win
Chris & Andrew lost

Then we played the mind. Our first round begun with us sitting in stoic silence, waiting for the others to play because our card couldn’t possibly be the first. Sam rejected my suggestion of a shuriken and, eventually, the first card was played.

After this, things didn’t get much easier. We battled through to round six, and then tried again, reaching round seven.

And with that, we were done. Another late one for me, but worth it. Cheers all.

Gambler placement

Monday, and with all GNN potential candidates otherwise engaged, I invited our old pal Andy Mosse over for a wee game. And fortunately, Ian also found himself available at late notice. So at 8.30 we sat down around the table to play Fool's Gold.

This is - as the name suggests - a game about gold-digging, with the inevitable down-sides of finding fool's gold, or maybe just a big pile of mud. It's worker placement, but unlike Lords of Waterdeep or Agricola, your worker may end up with nothing!

Everyone starts with a few workers in the year 1849. Dice are rolled to determine where the best spots for gold are reckoned to be - hills, forest, river, mountains or lake. Hills, we found, are notoriously shit for gold. Then players can send their workers to dig in said places, or gather a bit of cash. However many workers at a location multiplied by the dice there equals the amount of cards that get flipped for that location - BUT, around half the cards are either silt (ineffective) or actively bad, robbing you of cards. So it's quite possible your worker ends up with hands full of nothing...

another year, another worker placement

...in which case they can gather two more coins for the cause, or pan a bit more through the less rewarding winter months. Coins are helpful during play but worthless at the end, and winter could pay big, but is more likely to hit you hard.

 there's gold in them hills

After five rounds the game ends and you get hit with penalties for not getting gold from all the areas, and your most-collected gold is iron pyrites - worth nothing! Andy forgot this vital rule and only realised halfway through his stash of River cards was worthless. However he still managed to beat cash-rich Ian into third, as I claimed the debut win:

Sam 36
Andy M 25
Ian 24

We later agreed it was our favourite game of the evening; not dripping with theme in the sense of panning, but certainly loaded with risk. We found Pharaoh's Gula Gula a lot of fun, but the board and pieces were essentially appendages hanging from the fun of taking-balls-from-a-bowl...

Sam won

balls

then

Ian won

...and Billabong was great for a while, but just seemed to last for ever! Possibly we were all drunk at this point. Well, not possibly - we were. But also the AP factor was kinda mad, and Andrew was right that more players seems to equal more mind-melding.

boing

Overall though, an enjoyable evening and notable for the debut of a couple of games and welcome return of Andy.

Threes

Earlier this week, to celebrate the confirmation of a bit of work (us self-employed types know how to live) I wandered into Area 51 and, 20 minutes later, wandered out with Kremlin under my arm - a feisty, screw-heavy game of political manoeuvring that, having brought home, I realised with it's multiple chits and health-score charts, was probably not going to be my cup of tea. A read of the rave reviews of Mombasa later, and I exchanged games.

The next night I watched a play through of Mombasa and realised that, despite it's high rating on BGG, it looked rather too Feldy even for me. So today I took that back and exchanged it - this time for two (one new, one second-hand) games that Andrew and I played tonight. I also rented a game that the ship refused to sell...

Here's how the games rated with us.

sniffy chieftain

Pueblo was a Kramer and Kiesling creation from the early 90s that was possibly inspired by Tetris. The players are constructed a 'pueblo' for tenancy and the chieftain strides around the complex making sure you're not making your own colours (rather than his preferred neutral colour of beige) stand out too much. Despite the potentially high AP factor it played reasonably quickly - I did well during the building, but at the end of the game the chieftain makes a final inspection, and at that point I came spectacularly undone:

Andrew - won convincingly
Sam - lost convincingly

Next up was Billabong, the rental. This is like a less-boring Chinese Checkers - or a less random Camel Up - as players race their kangaroos around an oasis, trying to be the first to get all their kangaroos 'home'. Kangaroos can move one space at a time, but they can also jump. The catch - or the advantage - here is that they can jump over another kangaroo for as many spaces as they are behind it - thus (as long as there is space on the board) a kangaroo three, four or six spaces behind yours can jump three, four, or six spaces in front of it. And as you can jump backwards, diagonally, and multiple-y, it was deceptively thinky too.

go let it out

Sam - won by about two kangaroos
Andrew - lost

The final newbie was Knitwit, Matt Leacock(Mr Pandemic)'s attempt at a Codenames-style word association - without clues this time. Players add a loop to an expanding board with a word attached, and after that, a spool - each spool ends up with at least one (or two, or three) word to define it. Players then write a definition of each spool: for instance, my living, slow and moving word was Sloth. My electrical word was Dishwasher. And so on. But speed also plays a part, and Andrew defined all the words way before I did:

Andrew 12
Sam 9

words

We both really liked it, but thought it'd be better with more players.

There was just time to bash through that snappy game of Russian Railroads (I won) and several games of Cube Quest (Andrew won most of them, although I beat him once by trying to flick his grunt off and careering down the table into his King...) before calling it a night.