Our 11/30 session will feature games about plants, trees and gardens from among: Verdant, Living Forest,  Planted, Photosynthesis, Zen Garden, Miyabi, Flourish and a couple of games from the Kodama series.

Drew is willing to lead Dominare for our first Saturday GameDAY at Berkshire Adventurers Guild in North Adams (11 AM start) on December 3, with Steve, Amy & Sean all unavailable. Kindly let me know if you intend to participate.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/122889/dominare

IN: Steve & Sandy, Drew D, Amy, Drew Z, Annie, Ben, Lou

KuhHandel/You’re Bluffing (led by Drew D) 1985 Classic bidding and bluffing game. The deck consists of sets of farm animals, 4 cards per animal. Players auction off the top animal of the deck, or try to complete their set by trading with another player. Highest bid wins, but the auctioneer always has the choice to buy the animal for the same price as the highest bid.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1117/youre-bluffing

Cahoots 3x (led by K-ban) 2018 co-op. We beat the game at the beginner level (on the very last card) and lost by a card twice at the standard level.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/246761/cahoots

Tonga Bonga (led by Drew D) 1998 Stefan Dorra design ( For Sale, Turn the Tide, MarraCash, Kreta) where each player pilots a ship around a little group of islands with the goal of visiting four of the five remote islands and returning to Tonga Bonga Bay. Winning the race does not win the game, however. In addition to the payoffs for visiting each island (lower the more players who have visited it before you), money is also made on each turn when you roll your three dice and assign them as movement points to your opponents’ ships. The better “salary” offered, the more likely you are to attract the best dice rolls to your ships — but then, you’ll have spent more money. And most money is what wins at the end of the game. There is more than one balancing mechanism in play, with opportunities aplenty to hit the leader. It’s a lighthearted dice fest, but with interesting decisions and no obvious best strategy. Drew Z’s smack talk entertained everyone at Purple Dragon Games.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/322/tonga-bonga

Zen Garden (led by K-ban) 2020 open tile drafting with point salad scoring, as the Emperor’s preferences for Japanese Garden design change from game to game. A 4×4 puzzle with conflicting goals and interesting choices over 16 turns. I needed a dry run before next week’s garden/trees/plants theme night.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/296557/zen-garden

To Court the King (led by Drew D) 2006 Tom Lehman (Race for the Galaxy, Jump Drive, Fast Food Franchise, Roll Through the Ages) design where players are petitioners at the royal court, trying to gain the King’s favor. To do so, they must first gain the help of the servants and petty officials at the court, who can then help them gain access to the nobility, who, in turn, can help to reach the king. On their turn, a player will gather their dice, roll them, set aside at least one, and roll the remaining dice again, until all dice have been set aside. After that, they select a character who will help. Each character requires a certain combination of dice (such as two pairs or dice that show at least 30 points). The character will give the player some benefits on later rolls, such as an additional die or the ability to modify the results of a roll.

The game ends when a player gains the support of the Queen (and temporary favor of the King, winning ties in the final roll-off). Now, all players try to gain a dice result of as many equal dice as possible (7x 2s, 8x 6s, etc). The player who gets the longest, highest result gains the favor of the King and wins..

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/21632/court-king

Habitats (led by K-ban) 2016 Corne’ van Moorsel design (Factory Fun, Power Boats,Roll to the Top, Tweeet!) re-implemented by Boardgametables.com. Each player builds a big wildlife park without cages or fences. The animals in your park need their natural habitats: grassland, bush, rocks or lakes. Each player starts their individual park with an entrance tile, and they are each represented in the marketplace of animal tiles by a wooden Jeep. On a turn, a player takes the tile to their left, right or front; moves their Jeep to the space just vacated; then draws a tile to the place where their Jeep started the turn.

The new BoardGameTables edition contains both XL Expansion and Double Expansion and improves the components and artwork…. and is entirely replacing the previous editions. Same game was later tweaked by Uwe Rosenberg with a different tile selection mechanism as Nova Luna in 2019.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/200853/habitats

 

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