Because no car goes like a cargo goes

This week Paul made the long trek up the M4 (and other roads too) in order to join us, with his own creation Cargo! In his hands.

Five of us began the evening- me, Paul, Sam, Joe and Adam. We ooohed and ahhed as we unboxed Paul’s game, marvelling at the containers, the cards and the credits. Then Paul talked us through the rules, and we were off on a non-leaderboard adventure with heavy goods vehicles! We quickly decided that having plenty of lorries was a good idea, but then we got stung by road tax! Oh no! Also, different value cards were good, if you wanted to avoid the fate of Adam, who had two routes needing similar scores and could complete neither of them.

Andrew 45
Paul 44
Sam 40
Joe 19
Adam 15

At this point Sam gave in to his persistent illness and so Paul and I took him home, leaving Adam and Joe to play the game of Fit The Game Back In The Box. Once Paul and I returned, we perused Joe’s games cupboard and decided on Skulls and Roses and then Santiago as being new for Paul, and also easy to teach.

Skulls and Roses is like a simple version of Perudo, without all the clattering. We bet on whether we have skulls or roses on the underside of our beer mats. It’s a game of bluffing, which I’m very bad at. Paul, though, with his steely glare and poker face did very well, winning the requisite two rounds. Joe and Adam managed to win one each, while I was played for a fool, and didn’t win any at all.

1. Paul
2= Joe
2= Adam
3. Andrew

Santiago got another outing, again without the presence of Sam. We will play it one day when he’s here, honest. I tried to be as mean as possible when I was the Canal Overseer, and Adam seemed to go through the whole game with almost no money at all. Until the last round when I bribed him a lot to save one of my fields and lose one of his.

I bemoaned my fate of twice taking potato tiles, only for them to lose its only man or go arid that same go: “These potatoes have been a curse to me. You could say they’ve been a blight.” Oh, I’m hilarious. In the end, Adam took first place comfortably.

Adam 77
Andrew 67
Paul 58
Joe 54

Not much movement on the form table, except Anja edging upwards and Paul taking his place among us.

						Points
Steve	1	1	2	2	1	7
Adam	1	2	3	2	4	12
Anja	2	2	5	2	2	13
Sam	3	2	3	3	2	13
Hannah	3	5	1	1	3	13
Andrew	2	3	5	3	1	14
Joe	4	2	4	1	5	16
Quentin	1	3	5	5	5	19
Jonny	2	2	5	5	5	19
Paul	3	1	5	5	5	19
Sally	3	5	5	5	5	23

Bracknell's new recruit

Bracknell's roving reporter reports...

Wow!

Last week went by in a blur. So much so I didn't have hardly any time to do anything let alone write up the games played, which was a shame because Cargo! was tabled for a second time. With rules refined and money/credits now printed out via the colour printer I gave Paul the game is starting to take shape. Depots are reduced to just the players home areas and now it costs to place containers into your opponents spaces and to take containers out. After my defeat last time I decided to beef up on lorries to maximise my route potential. This tactic and a few fortuitous card draws brought off my first win!

We also played 2 games of Roll Through the Ages and a quick game of Mummut all won be me but the real amazing moment of the week came today on my non game week. Driving back from Peppa Pig world with the family my wife Jacquie (confirmed board game disliker), announced that she quite fancied playing a board game this evening. After successfully not crashing into the central barrier I realised that this was probably one of those things people say on a whim like "I think I shall take up archery", and then as quickly as it popped in to their head it vanishes. However, after the bed time routine had come and gone and we had watched another episode of Breaking Bad, the question of a game came up again. I was concerned. This was an opportunity not to waste. Pick a game too nerdy and I could kiss any further requests goodbye. I chose Roll Through the ages as it is quick to learn and has a play time of around 30 minutes.

In a scene redolent of Blackadder teaching Baldrick advanced mathematics, statements such as "No look, it's quite simple" and "OK, don't worry about that" were aired numerous times and at one point the game was completely packed away, only to be unpacked again after brief discussion.

With Jacquie wearing a face like one reacting to the cat litter tray in the morning we proceeded. 20 minutes later Jacquie had proceeded to beat me by 15 points...I mean how does that even happen?

I got my revenge in the rematch but here's hoping to maybe another session one day...

I like Trucking and I like to Truck

So Paul finally made good on his long awaited promise of bringing his game to table this Tuesday. Previous weeks had been filled with intriguing comments like "Almost there", "Needs a few tweaks" and "I wish I had a colour printer" but now the teasing had stopped and I was presented with Cargo! (Intentional exclamation mark. See it as emphasis rather than surprise..).

So what is Cargo! you all chorus in prefect harmony. Well Cargo! is a game of freight transportation around Britain linking such nebulous hubs as Croydon, Bracknell and Eccles. Paul had cleverly spotted that lorries had been scandalously omitted from the games market and since trains had been done to death (And were quite expensive to buy) it was a natural theme to adopt (Plus Paul has a ton of beautifully crafted mini train containers). The central mechanic of the game is to create routes between the six depots via a route selected from your hand of cards to place next to your haulage companies lorries. The route cards have numbers at the bottom which in combination generate a number to be rolled (On two dice) to enable your cargo to be delivered. The depots hold all of the cargo and essentially you are removing one of a 20 or 40 foot container to be placed on your lorry complete with route to await delivery. When loads are delivered money is paid out for the size and type and where it was delivered.

Each player gets two actions per turn, whether that be buying or selling lorries, creating routes, obtaining cargo, rolling for delivery or replenishing your card hand. There are two scoring paths calculated at the games end. One is money you still have in your bank and the second is for route cards collected and totalled.

It didn't take us long to get into the swing of it and as with all home designed games getting it's first play, there were some rule changes on the fly. The most difficult bit to grasp, for both parties, was that due to limitations of the game components available to Paul, the container specific money colour didn't match the containers. Therefore we were constantly having to refer to the crib sheet for information.

Who is playing Cargo!? It's Paul!

Not that it detracted from a nice flowing game that saw me race up to 4 lorries in my fleet and amass a lovely pile of dosh. However, Paul had been able to make a lot more deliveries in the game in more locations and consequently scored more for his routes. There was a lovely moment when we had to decide who had won a particular route as Paul had one card for it but it was a minus 1, I didn't have any so technically a zero. Did having a minus number beat someone without a card? We decided the route wouldn't be scored as no cards meant no score and the minus cards were meant to be punitive. My money scoring couldn't quite make up the difference so Paul won the first play of his game…..

Paul 69
Chris 64

After the strenuous activity of delivering our loads I suggested we take on another new game, Mammut. After 10 minutes struggling with the rules and repeated glances at the clock it was put away again for another day and the more familiar Dominion was tabled. Even my desperate knocking beer all over the table couldn't prevent Paul from registering a comfy win.

Paul 50-odd
Chris 37