11 for a request night at the UNO Park Community Center in North Adams. Welcome back Khalid.

IN: Steve & Sandy, Tim, Armando, Zach, Chris, Nicole, Julie, Reimi, Rob, Khalid

Quandary/Flinke Pinke/Loco/Botswana/Thor/Wildlife Safari (led by Armando)  We played the 1994 Milton Bradley 4-player version of this Knizia classic, described as a game of placement, shares and nerves. This edition has chunky heavy tiles. Players in turn lay numbered/colored tiles on tracks curling to the center, and then take a Quandary tile share in any color. The round ends when a single track is filled. Scoring is based on a player’s total shares multiplied by the value of the final tile played on each track. Perceived value with brinkmanship blended in….a very subtle game that keeps getting reprinted/rethemed because it simply works!

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/398/wildlife-safari

Drive (led by Nicole) Michael Schacht’s 2005 2-player set collection card game (2003 Crazy Chicken) expanded for up to 4 players rethemed to vintage automobiles instead of chickens.  Each turn, players draw two cards – from the two draw piles or two discard piles, with each card coming from a different pile – then either discard one card or lay down a set of cards. To lay down a set, you need at least two cards if that type of car hasn’t been played or more cards than are already on the table if it has been played. Any cards of the same type on the table are discarded onto a single discard pile. The round ends when one player has five types of cars with 3 players, all 9 types of cars are on the table, or only one draw pile remains. Players then earn points based on which types of cars they own. 

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6137/drive

5ive Straight (led by Sandy) 1958 card and pegboard game originally called The Game of 99.  The plastic board has 100 holes, numbered in an often reversing spiral with 1 in the center. A deck of numbered cards from 1-100 is shuffled and players start with 4 each. Players may either play a card and stick a peg in, or draw a card, the hand limit being 4. Players are trying to get five of their pegs in a row to win. Simple, except that playing a card allows a player to place a peg in that number, or any empty number above. So with a 60, a player can fill a space from 60 to 99, the outside rows effectively, but with a 6, a player can play practically anywhere, especially the key locations in the center area. The game is for 2-3 players, but works even better when played in partnership, as partner’s play of card vs location pegged can reveal important information to your partner. This is a wonderful game for playing with family and non-gamers.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/369/5ive-straight

Cosmic Frog (led by Zach) 2020 game of collection, combat, and theft on a planetary scale. Each player controls a two-mile-tall, immortal, invulnerable frog-like creature that exists solely to gather terrain from the Shards of Aeth, the fragments of a long-ago shattered world. The First Ones seek to use the lands from the Shards to reconstruct the world of Aeth, and your frogs are their terrain harvesters.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/295905/cosmic-frog

Fishing (led by Tim) 2024 Friedemann Friese (Power Grid, Fool – and many others all beginning with an ‘F’) trick taking card game where players try to catch as many tricks as possible over eight rounds, with each card caught being worth 1 point. You then use your caught cards for the next round — and if you didn’t catch enough tricks to fill your hand, you’ll draw fresh cards from the ocean stack, which will introduce new cards for the fishers to fight over. At the start of each round, players have 8-13 cards in hand, depending on the player count and the round. In the first round, the cards go from 1-10 in four colors. Standard trick-taking rules apply, with players needing to follow the color led and the highest card of the led suit winning the trick. New cards come into play from the ocean stack in waves, with higher-value cards in the four colors, a green trump suit from 1-16, 0 cards that let you snag a card from the trick, and special-powered buoy cards that can always be played into a trick regardless of what you have in hand. With buoys, you can steal the lead or determine which color must lead the next trick, force players to pass cards or lose points; you can even steal all other cards in a trick, ideally netting yourself huge fish for use next round. At the end of each round, score 1 point for each card caught and whoever lands the most points after eight rounds wins. As usual this game designer, with his green hair, is quite innovative.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/419195/fishing

The Gang (led by Armando) 2024 co-operative version of Texas Hold’em where players bet on how good they think their hand of cards will be relative to the other players, then try to make their predictions a reality. Early in a round, without talking to each other, each player chooses a chip indicating how good they think their hand is. Then they begin dealing cards into the middle of the table and have a chance to reassess their hands as more cards are revealed. At the end of the round, players see whether they correctly evaluated their hand. If all players did, you get to open one of the bank vaults! If not, you trip the alarm! If you manage to open three vaults before you trip the alarm three times, your gang wins! The Gang has become our group’s closer game of choice.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/411567/the-gang

Around the World in 80 Days (led by K-ban) 2004 Michael Rienick (Pillars of the Earth, Palasgefluster) designed game that is inspired by the Jules Verne novel. Players are following in Phileas Fogg and Passepartout’s footsteps, attempting to travel around the world in 80 days on a map with Victorian-era decorations. A player, in turn, chooses one of the face-up travel cards. Each card comes with a bonus action (getting to be first player in the next round, for example), and then decides whether to travel to the next city.  A player can either wait until the next round in hopes of better cards, or make their journey now. To move requires matching travel cards. The two transportation types are trains and ships. For example, 2 ship cards are required to travel from Suez to Bombay, so 2 ship cards must be played; train cards won’t help in this instance. Time is spent each step of the way in the form of days, and (while meeting certain other requirements) the winner is the player who spends the fewest number of days getting around the world. The number of days depends on the travel cards used, plus help from special cards, hindrance from the meandering detective, and so on.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12005/around-the-world-in-80-days

Moonlit Alchemy (led by Chris) – a trick taking game – one of Chris’ prototypes being playtested.

Steve