2025 Session Reports

8/6/2025 – Berkshire Gamers Session Report #25-31

An even dozen for a request night 8/6/2025 at the UNO Park Community Center in North Adams. Zach had requested more card games be played, so we declared August as card game month….with all openers being of that genre’. Zach is a happy camper.
8/6/2025 @ UNO Park Community Center
IN: Steve & Sandy, Tim, Armando, Zach, Chris, Tony, Rob, Danny, Julie, Danny, Sean K
ON OUR TABLES:
Parade (led by Tim) 2007 card game where players are putting on a parade of characters from Alice in Wonderland.  In turn, cards are placed (from a 5-card hand) to the end of the parade. Unfortunately, that card might cause other cards to walk off the parade. These cards count as negative points in the end. The length of the parade line is important. If the number of the card you just played is less than the line length, a player may receive the excess cards (counting from last played to the first of the line). But players don’t take all the relevant cards, only the cards that meet one of these requirements:

1. the color is the same as the color of the card just played, or
2. the number is the same or lower than the card just played

The game ends when the draw deck is exhausted or when one player has collected all six colors in their point piles. Then everyone plays one last card. From the four cards remaining in their hand, players choose two cards to add to their point piles. The player who has the least negative points after this is the winner.

Scoring:
Normally, negative points are the same as the number on the card. But if a player has the most cards in a certain color, each of their cards of that color counts as only 1 negative point!

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/56692/parade

David & Goliath (led by K-ban) 1997 trick taking game with a few quirky twists. There are five suits and players must follow suit, if they can. However, the winner of the trick is the highest card played, regardless of suit. The winner gets all the cards from the trick, minus the card he won it with. That card is given to the player that played the lowest card. After all tricks have been played, the scoring begins. Players score the face-value of the cards in the suits that they only collected one or two of, and one point per card for suits with more than two. The player with the most points after a number of hands wins the game. We played 3 hands after completing a practice hand.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/44/david-and-goliath

Rebel Princess (led by Zach) 2023 trick-taking card game with variable powers.  Snow White, The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, and many other fairy tale princesses are celebrating a five-day party. The prince charmings, who haven’t  been invited, will try to infiltrate the ball to propose marriage to the girls. As a princess, you have to avoid marriage proposals and remain single and independent after the celebrations. The game takes place over five rounds and each round has a special rule that makes each game totally different. The general mechanisms are those of trick-taking games, in which each player plays a numbered card into each trick, following one of the four suits in the game. The player with the highest number of the suit that started the trick takes all the cards of that trick — but that’s not necessarily good as players want to avoid taking cards with prince charmings, who each bring one marriage proposal, aside from the enchanted frog who brings five proposals. The player with the fewest marriage proposals after five rounds wins. Each player assumes the role of a different fairy tale princess and has a special ability that they can use once per round.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/381249/rebel-princess

Grand Carnival (led by Armando)  2020 game where players compete to create the most impressive carnival by carefully planning their 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. 

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/289081/grand-carnival

Bomb Busters (led by K-ban) cooperative game with limited communication among players trying to defuse a bomb by cutting pairs of numbered wires that won the coveted 2025 SdJ (German Game of the Year) award. To clear the bomb, players need to collaborate with their team of bomb disposal experts by using the wires on the tile holder in front of them and try to figure out their teammates’ wires. If the team inadvertently cuts red wire: BOOM! Use equipment earned wisely to meet the varied challenges which get harder and harder. There is a set of 48 normal wire cards numbered 1-12 (4 of each value) with some yellow and red wire cards. These are dealt out. Each mission is different, but the goal is always the same: go through all 12 numbers without blowing up! Players place the tiles on their stands and then take turns pointing at each others’ wires and guessing their values. If the guess is correct, the wires are cut. If not — the detonator advances! If you manage to cut all wires without blowing up — good job, the mission is completed! But if the bomb goes off – Try again! Our skillful quintet successfully defused bombs on a single try for training missions 4 and 5. The game comes with 66 missions to explore with surprises awaiting after the 8 training missions are completed.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/413246/bomb-busters

Bus (led by Zach) 1999 Dutch pick-up and delivery networking game that utilizes action points. The object of the game is to deliver as many people to their destinations as possible. To accomplish this, players place route markers on the board to connect passengers to their destinations. However, the destination types (work, bar, home) vary from turn to turn, so you can follow certain passengers as they make their way through the daily grind. Players may buy more buses (they start off with one), build onto their bus route, bring new passengers to the city (via the trains), expand the city by adding more buildings, and run their buses. There is another option, the clock. The action board has one other clever feature. On some actions, route expansion and building, the first player to choose that action actually gets to execute the action last! Which leads to some interesting games of chicken and some painful decisions. Buying more buses allows a player to carry one more passenger every time they run their buses – hence scoring, in the best case, one more point. Depending on how the city gets built, however, finding lots of passengers on the street can be tricky.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/552/bus

Bohnanza (led by Tony) 1997 Uwe Rosenberg bean trading classic game that has been reprinted several times and expanded even more. There’s a recent re-theming , Dahlia’s, with flowers instead of beans (Sean has that edition) In the game, players plant, then harvest bean cards in order to earn coins. Each player starts with a hand of random bean cards, and each card has a number on it corresponding to the number of that type of bean in the deck. Unlike in most other card games, you can’t rearrange the order of cards in hand, so you must use them in the order that you’ve picked them up from the deck — unless you can trade them to other players, which is the heart of the game. On a turn, players must plant the first one or two cards in their hand into the two “fields” in front of them. Each field can hold only one type of bean, so if a player must plant a type of bean that’s not in one of their fields, then they must harvest a field to make room for the new arrival.  Next, two cards are revealed from the deck, and the player in turn can then trade these cards as well as any card in their hand for cards from other players. After all the trading is complete — and all trades on a turn must involve the active player — then the turn is ended by drawing 3 cards from the deck and placing them at the back of one’s hand. When you harvest beans, you receive coins based on the number of bean cards in that field and the “beanometer” for that particular type of bean. Flip over 1-4 cards from that field to transform them into coins, then place the remainder of the cards in the discard pile. When the deck runs out, shuffle the discards, playing through the deck two more times. At the end of the game, everyone can harvest their fields, then whoever has earned the most coins wins. The key to this 45-minute classic is the trading. If you haven’t played it, give it a try.
Steve

An even dozen for a request night 8/6/2025 at the UNO Park Community Center in North Adams. Zach had requested more card games be played, so we declared August as card game month….with all openers being of that genre’. Zach is a happy camper. 8/6/2025 @ UNO Park Community Center IN: Steve & Sandy, Tim, Armando,…

An even dozen for a request night 8/6/2025 at the UNO Park Community Center in North Adams. Zach had requested more card games be played, so we declared August as card game month….with all openers being of that genre’. Zach is a happy camper. 8/6/2025 @ UNO Park Community Center IN: Steve & Sandy, Tim, Armando,…

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