What's this blog all about?

"Board games? You play board games?" I hear you say... yes, but not unlike any board games you've probably ever heard of. Monopoly? Cluedo? Guess Who? Battleships? No, not by a long shot. One day someone introduced me to a great little game called "Carcassonne" - named after a French medieval town of rambling streets, walls and sections - where the aim is to score the most points using little random squares of road, walls and cities.
I was hooked and so began my, then our - the Bradshaw Tribe, adventure into Euro- and Ameritrash- gaming...

Friday 22 April 2011

Bank holiday! What does that mean?? Games! and Buy a new one too!


Bank holidays ahoy! Buy one bank holiday, get one free, even if you don't watch the Royal Wedding! Which we might. Anyhow, with a BHM and a holiday Friday so close, if you take three days off in the middle, you get eleven days off in total! Wowzers - so what does this mean for us and gaming? Well, an opportunity to nip into BattleQuest Games for starters, and to play some games.

Andy was celebrating one year since opening (wowzers again, really??!) and we celebrated with him by buying a new game ;) This one is a filler named Mow (A unilateral language word for Moo I think, being the manual is in a million and 3 languages.) - a card game based on cows and flies. I kid yee not. The basic premise is that each player gets 5 cards, each card will have a picture of a cow, a number from 0 to 16 and some or no flies. There is also a turn direction indicator, showing the flow of players; this is decided by the first player.

Each player in turn selects a numbered card, for example 8 with 4 flies and places it on the table. The next player has to then place a card higher or lower than 8. If they place 12 for example, all numbers between 8 and 12 (9, 10, 11) are now locked out and the 3rd player must place a card lower than 8 or higher than 12. If they cannot, they must pick up the cards on the table. These cards are put aside for counting up later.

There are some numbered cards with 0 flies, but as the game is based on the idea of winning by having as few flies as possible at the end of the game, it is better to retain these than a card with flies on.

As each player puts down a card, they must also pick up one from a deck to retain a hand of 5 cards. Some cards are special which allow for example two of the same number to be placed, a locked gap number to be used etc. These are few and fair between but are useful. They are also useful for allowing the player to change the player flow - eg a player who has just picked up 5 cards could get stung again with another load of cards.

Play continues until the deck has run dry and the cards on the table have been collected by an unfortunate player. The players then count up the flies on the cards in their hand and any they have been forced to collect. The winner is the one with least flies.

This is an exciting little filler to start an evening or between games. It's backstabbing nature and ease of play is of great appeal to us.

We then played 7 Wonders just for the heck of it :)

Sunday 17 April 2011

Bring out an old favourite - oh, and go on then, 7 Wonders

With the weekend nearly over, having spent most of it at the in-laws celebrating a joint birthday for Maya and her cousin Anusha, we decided to use up the rest of the Sunday afternoon/early evening playing some games. Firstly I grabbed an old favourite that hasn't been played in a while, Zooleretto. It has been some time since we last played this and I, and probably all of us, had forgot how much we enjoyed it. 

The premise of the game is to build and run the most successful Zoo - each player starts with a zoo board with three locations for animals, a 6 animal spot, a 5 animal spot and a 4 animal spot. There is also a Barn on the board for spare animals that cannot be located. 15 tiles are also separated from the bag and placed aside for the End Game. 

Each player receives a "lorry" - a wooden container with three slots. These are placed in the middle of the table and a black bag is passed around from which the player draws a tile and places it on one of the free slots on a wooden lorry. The tiles could be an animal (elephant, tiger, panda etc), a coin for financial deals (the player starts with 2) or a Refreshment Stand. 

The lorries gradually fill up, with players trying to place animals and other tiles in a combination that they want but hope no one else wants. Play continues, with drawing of tiles, until a player decides they want a particular lorry - at this point, they pass on the bag without drawing and simply take the lorry of their choice - this can be a lorry with one, two or all three spaces filled. 

Once the player has taken a lorry, they take the tiles and either place them in empty animal spots (the same animal can only go into the same enclosure - no flamingoes into the tiger pen, as much as we want to!), into their own money supply or as a refreshment stand for an enclosure. If the player has no room for an animal tile (or more), then that spare animal has to go into the Barn. Animals in the Barn cause negative points at the end of the game. 

Each enclosure has two point values (well three actually) - a Full value, a Only One To Go value and Only a Few Animals + A Refreshment. This sounds complex, but in reality it isn't. 

For example, the 1st Enclosure with 6 animal spaces scores 10/6 - this means if you fill it with 6 pandas for example, you get 10 points at the end of the game - only 5 pandas, you get 6 points at the end of the game. If you say for example put in only 3, but you have a Refreshment Stall in the bottom right of the enclosure, the player is allowed 1 point per animal e.g. 3 points in this case. No Refreshment Stall = 0 points! 

So the aim is to fill those enclosures - some enclosures also give coins for filling them up; coins can be used to open up a new 5 space enclosure, buy animals from other players Barns (1 coin to them, 1 to the bank), remove an animal from your own barn etc etc. It's all down to management of the Zoo as well as picking the animals, but it's done on a very simple level that even Maya can appreciate. That's not to say its too simple for adults. 

Animals can also have offspring, for example some animal tiles come with a Male and Female symbol, which when placed in the same enclosure, produces a small round baby animal tile which can be used to bolster an enclosure number. Animals can only be paired once, so a new male or female would need a new male or female tile to produce a 2nd child tile. 

Finally, when all of the tiles are used up, the tiles from the 15 separate ones are used for 1 round then the game ends. 

Scoring is based on the following: 
Successful filling of enclosures;
Number of similar refreshment types = 2 points per type (eg three apple carts = 1 type = 2 points)
Number of similar animal types in the barn = -2 points per type (eg 1 camel, 2 tigers, 2 pandas = 3 different types = -6 points). 

This is a highly enjoyable game to play and the final winner is hard to determine until right until the end. It's loved by every one in the family and they are always up for a game. It's full of strategy and management that's not too hard to handle, so fun for everyone! 

Afterwards we also had a game of 7 Wonders just because we love it so much! It's hard to think we'll ever find a game to replace it!