18 on 5 tables at the Uno Park Community Center on January 31 for Polyomino Night

Our February 7 session will celebrate the Lunar New Year as we enter The Year of the Dragon…. with games about Asia.
Expect games from among: In The Year of the Dragon, Bonsai, At the Gates of Loyang, Sushi Go Party & Sushi Roll Dice, Steam Up, Wok & Roll, Shikoku, Bamboo, Miyabi, China Rails, Kanagawa, Shogun No Katana, Formosa Tea ….and more

Please use our new Google Forms RSVP system (thanks Sean for setting this up as well as creating and updating our group’s website) We have discontinued our Meetups Group as few were using it and the flow of new members was barely a trickle.

Click on the link that follows if you will be joining us and fill in the blanks concerning your attendance. It will generate an email to Sean and me so we can plan for your arrival. Please indicate refreshments you will be bringing, since the same handful of gamers have been bringing snacks/sweets for the entire group to share

RSVP for February 7 Berkshire Gamenite
Any feedback on this new system would be appreciated

January 31, 2024 at UNO Park Community Center

IN: Steve & Sandy, Sean & Wendy, Ethan & Amy, Nicole & Gus, Tim, Armando, Drew, Tony, Matt, Danny, Reimi, Chris W, Annie, Jim

ON OUR TABLES:

Cathedral 2x (led by Tim & Drew) 1978 2-player abstract where each player has a set of pieces of a different color that are in the shapes of buildings, covering from one to five square units. The first player takes the single neutral Cathedral piece and places it onto the board. Players then alternate placing one of their buildings onto the board until neither player can place another building. Players capture territory by surrounding areas that are occupied by at most one opponent or neutral building. A captured piece is removed and captured territory becomes off-limits to the opponent. The player with the fewest ‘square units’ of buildings that can’t be placed wins.
BGG link

Blokus Duo (led by Danny) 2005 tense but quick 2-player version of Blokus using the same pieces and a much smaller board.
BGG Link

Patchwork (led by Wendy) 2014 two-player Uwe Rosenberg (Agricola, LeHavre, Bohnanza) classic. A leapfrog race to acquire various shapes of quilting material, placing them onto one’s board, trying to to be the first to create a large complete square. There’s an interesting mechanic of money vs time, which can really leave players struggling to make the right decisions for their own quilt, without allowing their opponent to get too much for too little. Plays very quickly but remains full of interesting decisions on when to take income and when to buy expensive, but rewarding pieces of quilt.
BGG Link

Junk Drawer 2x (led by K-ban & Sandy) 2023 quirky puzzle game where players are placing the same items into the 4 quadrants of their junk drawer with each quadrant having different scoring values. The rub is that 4 items are called out each round but players must place one item in each quadrant. Once a player can’t place a piece the game abruptly ends and points get scored. A 20-minute gem.
BGG Link

In the Hall of the Mountain King (led by Matt) 2019 game where players are Trolls, rebuilding their abandoned kingdom under a mountain. With muscle and magic, players unearth riches, dig out collapsed tunnels, and carve out great halls as they raise the toppled statues of their ancestors to their places of honor at the heart of the mountain. Gameplay is driven by the innovative cascading production system. Players are working on a communal game board, digging a competing network of tunnels by spending increasingly valuable materials to lay polyomino tiles onto the map. The goal is to extend your tunnels to connect with buried gold and materials, with workshop locations that can transform resources, and especially with toppled statues.
BGG Link

Tenpenny Parks (led by Tim) 2022 game where players compete to build the best amusement park. Worker placement of actions including like removing trees, building concessions and attractions, and buying more property in order to make their growing theme parks as attractive to visiting people (VP tokens) as possible. At the end of each month, rewards are given to the player with the fairground that best exemplifies certain raw emotions, and after five months the player with the most VP tokens wins. Stunning table presence.
BGG Link

The Grand Carnival (led by Sean) 2020 game where players compete to create the most impressive carnival by carefully planning your carnival’s layout, building attractions, hiring staff, and managing the crowds. Each turn, players cover a number on their player board, then select an action. The covered number determines the effectiveness of their action — and won’t become available again until the next round. The 3 possible actions are:

• Place a Foundation Tile to place on your fairground. Each tile is a 2×2 grid and is made up of construction sites and walkways. Attractions can be placed only on construction sites, whereas guests can move only on walkways.

• Build an Attraction: Select a polyomino attraction and place it on the construction sites on your fairground. The size of the attraction you can select depends on the number you cover. Larger attractions can collect more tickets (and can be worth more points), but can be difficult for guests to move around.

• Move a Guest: Select a guest token and move it along the walkways on your fairground. The distance a guest can move depends on the number you cover. If a guest moves next to an attraction, place a ticket token on that attraction. If you move enough guests, you can hire a carnival barker; barkers help guests move quickly through your carnival, but take up precious space in your fairground. Players also race to be the first to achieve group bonuses that bestow additional abilities.

After seven rounds, the game ends. Players earn points from sets of the same size attractions, sets of each size of attraction, carnival barkers, guests that move all the way through your park, and their tickets. There is a penalty for empty construction sites.

This game was a very pleasant surprise especially due to the unique selection mechanic employed and quick turns.
BGG Link

Isle of Cats (led by Armando) 2019 competitive, medium-weight, card-drafting, polyomino cat-placement board game where players are rescuing felines from an island.
BGG Link

Project L 2x (led by Sandy) 2020 charming combination of puzzle solving with engine building. Players start with 2 acrylic puzzle pieces and earn additional shapes by completing puzzles. Players select from among several actions – drafting puzzles, upgrading pieces, placing pieces and the important master building action.
BGG Link

NMBR9 (led by Tim) 2017 tile placement/layering game where 20 cards numbered 0-9 twice are revealed one at a time bingo-style and eighty tiles numbered 0-9 with each number tile composed of squares in some arrangement. When numbered cards are drawn, players take a number tile matching the card and place it on the table. With each new card drawn after that, each player takes the appropriate number tile, then adds it to the tiles that they already have in play, with each player building their own arrangement of tiles.The new tile must touch at least one other tile on the same level along one side of a square. A tile can also be placed on top of two or more other tiles as long as no part of the new tile overhangs the tiles below it; new tiles placed on this same level must touch at least one other tile, while also covering parts of at least two tiles and not overhanging. Scores are calculated by multiplying the number on a tile by its level on the table.
BGG Link

Barenpark (led by Tony) 2017 Phil Walker-Harding game of constructing the finest Bear Amusement Park with victory points earned for Bear enclosures, completing park sections and erecting their resultant Bear statues as well as VPS for achieving 3 communal goals. Fast paced and straight forward.
BGG Link

Blokus 2x (led by Sandy) 2000 abstract strategy game with transparent, Tetris-shaped, colored pieces that players are trying to play onto the board. Pieces placed may not lie adjacent to your other pieces, but instead must be placed touching at least one corner of your pieces already on the board. When no longer able to place pieces, players count up the number of individual squares on their polyomino pieces with LOW SCORE winning.

BGG Link

Steve