Mull & Money - aka - Industrial Waste

This quiz picture is one that I expect to get several hits on there is also the perfect cryptic answer to this one. The artwork is from the box lid.

The last quiz picture was Supersell  by Condor quite a light buying and selling game where you are trying to invest in the correct cars to sell at a profit wherever the “seller” ends up. From the 1970’s it was a little different to the mainstream games of the day.

The guys had packed up Super Rhino before I took a photo so here is one of game from some months ago.

Camel Up about a 1/3 into the game.

Table 1 - Rhino Hero, Camel Up, Captain Sonar, One Night Ultimate Werewolf

Small World - three of us played on the 2 player side - it was a very aggressive game but still worked quite well

The Yspahan board, a bit fuzzy due to a sand-storm.

 Table 2 - Small World, Q.E., Camel Up, Mull & Money (aka Industrial Waste), Yspahan

The spotlight this time is on Mull & Money a very popular game from 2001 and in my mind under-rated on the geek however it still stands at a creditable 6.8. In the game each player is the owner of a factory which they try to improve and use to produce products to sell at a profit, the aim of the game is to have the most victory points at the end of the game which are garnered from 3 separate areas, the first is from the improvements on your individual player board, the second from the sale price of your goods, the last is half your cash total.

The central board showing the red factory with 2 workers, should reds mechanization level be 3 or more they would not be allowed to make a contract, they would not have enough workers. The top row shows the selling price for each of the factories (red gets 16 for a contract). The game end trigger is ANY factory reaching a price of 20.

A players’ board shows their Factory, it has 3 areas of improvement each of which has a level 5, 4, 3, 2 & 1 and Victory points for attaining each level of 1, 3, 6, 10 & 15 respectively. The first is mechanization, the better the improvement the fewer workers needed in the factory, the next is how much raw is required to fulfil an order, the last is how much pollution is created when completing an order. The bottom bit of the board is where pollution is stored, it has 3 zones, the green area is safe whilst the yellow and red zones attract penalties if you have too much pollution when the inspector calls.

The game is played in a series of rounds, in each round sets of 3 cards are laid out (1 more than the number of players) each in turn then take a set of cards, each round the start player moves on a space, after taking cards players take turns playing one card at a time and on your turn you must play or discard a card until you run out or pass with only one card in hand which may be kept for the next round.

My player board showing that I am now fully mechanized and need only 1 employee in my Factory. It also shows a pollution level of 7, should I make another contract now it will add another 5 pollution to my store putting me in severe danger of penalties.

There are 10 different cards 1) Make a single improvement in your factory (costs 5 cash). 2) Sell raw materials based on the second row in your factory and this is once round the table you get the cash from the purchaser unless you buy your own and the money goes to the bank. 3) Remove three pollution from your cellar. 4) Lose one pollution every other player gains one pollution. 5) Complete a contract – costs raw equal to your factory level and produces pollution equal to your factory level and gives the player cash as shown on the central board. 6) Increase the price of your goods on the central board. 7) Fire an employee (or on a rare occasion hire one). 8) Insurance against Inspection, 9)  x2 multiplier which doubles the ability of the card it is played with and is also needed to pay off loans 10) the Inspector card.

Some of the cards in Industrial Waste

Should an Inspector card be drawn during the deal there is a short break in play, those whose pollution is in the yellow zone pay a fine of 5 cash and lose one off the value of their goods whilst those in the red zone have double the effects of the yellow zone, an insurance card costs 1 cash to play and negates only the fine, in my experience players who reach the red zone rarely do well.

The dreaded Inspector card on the far left, there is only 1 of these in the deck whereas there are multiples of all the other cards.

Overall this is a great game it has quite a bit of depth without being over-complicated sadly the explanation of the rules above does not really help with getting a feel for the game and overall hints at a rather dry experience, this is NOT the case I promise you. There is more maths involved than you would otherwise get in a game of this level but no more than say Power Grid and it is all part of the planning and play of the game so most of the time you do not notice you are doing it, there is plenty of player interaction and decision making, a lot more than you realise from a simple selection of three cards and decisions are often dependent on plays your opponents make and although each round is separate events in one round will affect your card selection and how you play in the next round which will be altered again when you see what cards your opponent selects. Give it a try, I promise you will not be disappointed.  

Expedition: Famous Explorers, Wildlife Adventure

This quiz picture is another oldie but goody.

The last quiz picture was Vivarium an interesting take on the deck building idea and initially you can draw a parallel between it and Dominion however money collected from cards is usually spent on things other than extra cards such as breeding and moving your animals around the board.

The games played this week were :-

Kashgar - a players board (at game start) for keeping track of commodities

Table 1 Tigris & Euphrates, Citadels, Kashgar: Händler der Seidenstraße, Timeline, Why First?

Kraftwagen, a great game, this shows the "action line" on the left and the race track on the right

Table 2 Kraftwagen, Expedition: Famous Explorers, Thurn and Taxis, Port Royal

Thurn & Taxis early in the game

Table 3 Thurn and Taxis, Port Royal, Harald

Codenames - midgame

Table 4 Cockroach Poker, Codenames, Secret Hitler (x3)

The spotlight this time is on Expedition: Famous Explorers although I will be explaining the advanced game we only played the basic game, the board depicts a map of the world with lots of locations marked on it and these locations are joined by dotted lines to one another to represent valid routes, for each “picture location” there is a card in the exploration deck which shows a picture of the location and some text about it and its significance. In addition to the picture locations there are others represented by either red or green spots and linked to the picture locations and each other via dotted lines. The other main components in the basic game are 135 arrows (route markers) in 3 colours (45 of each) these during the game will be laid on the board on the dotted lines linking locations.  

Some of the location cards I was dealt at the game start.

At the start the players are dealt some picture location cards (9 in our 4 player game) a further 6 are laid face up at the side of the board, each player also has 4 bonus markers to place on some of the locations on their cards. The aim of the game is to score points, these are obtained by reaching your various locations as given on your cards, you get 1 point for each location you reach and a bonus point if your bonus token is on it, any cards left in your hand at the end of the game are subtracted from your score as are unreached bonus tokens.

The board with the routes spreading from Sweden

The game itself is played round the table with each player taking one action of laying an arrow of any colour on the board with the following restrictions, the first arrow of any colour must start at the start location, if a coloured route has already been started the arrow MUST be placed so that it runs from the head of the last arrow of that colour played, no branches are allowed nor may a route back-track on itself or run parallel to an arrow of the same colour on the same dotted line although different coloured arrows may share the same dotted line. If due to anybody’s play an arrow reaches a location you have in your hand you may reveal it to score, this may also be done retrospectively later in the game. This is all fairly basic, you place arrows hoping to manoeuvre the route towards your locations now onto the bits that make this a more interesting game.

The Blue route is where I got my extra turns, America to Africa in one turn (see bottom of next paragraph)

First off if in your turn you reach one of the 6 face up location cards you can claim them for a point, secondly you can spend a maximum of 2 travel tickets in a turn each can be used to extend a route by one arrow, remove an arrow from a route end or to swap out a card in your hand for one from the top of the deck (choice from 2 cards drawn), very nice except you start the game with only 3 tickets and you can only pick up extras when you hit a red spot and then only 1 ticket. Hitting green spots allows you to place a second arrow on any route and lastly should you create a complete loop you get to place another extension (as a branch) anywhere off that loop. In this way you can place many extra arrows to manoeuvre the route in your favour (in one turn I laid about 8 arrows through completing loops alongside a zig-zag route taking the route halfway across the board to where I wanted it).

The SE corner of te board, the red dots on the right edge are points at which the map wraps around - instant transfer from one side of the board to the other

Now for the bits we did not play, 6 cards from the “Explorers deck” are also dealt at the side of the board at the beginning of the game, these can be bought with 2 tickets but only 1 per turn, these are replaced with cards from the “Event deck” which can be similarly bought for 1 ticket, the former can give game-end bonuses if achieved. Extra rules for advanced play are that only 1 location can be retrospectively revealed each turn and tickets cannot be used to reach red dots, the last part of the advanced game is that 2 of the face up location cards are played face-down, players can look at them by forgoing the green dot bonus.

On the whole it is a nice game, and I am sure it will have wide appeal however I cannot help compare it to the original game from which this is derived Wildlife Adventure which was released in 1985, WA has lovely artwork of rare and endangered animals from around the world with interesting facts, the game-play is similar with the major difference being that a player reaching a red spot draws a chance card from a deck.

Some of the cards from Wildlife Adventure by Ravensburger

EFE has been simplified by removal of the chance deck and simplifying the “ticket” system (this latter for the better), but if you have WA I see no incentive to get EFE. There is another version of this game Expedition  released in 1996 but never having played that game I cannot comment or compare it to either is predecessor or successor.

Q.E. and Kingdom Builder

The box cover excluding 99% of the name

This quiz picture is a game that arrived a little while ago but got its first airing yesterday.

If you like Dungeon Bash or exploring style games this is a must for you

The last quiz picture was of course The Sorcerer's Cave, probably one of the earliest Dungeon Crawl games, I used to enjoy playing this in a school hall where we used stacked tables and chairs as well as the floor to denote the different levels of the dungeon, a proper 3D game.

The games played this week were :-

Clockwork Wars play area

Table 1 Clockwork Wars, Sushi Go Party!, Camel Up, BANG! The Dice Game, Blue Moon

Potion Explosion mid-game

Table 2 Potion Explosion, Harald, Tiny Epic Galaxies

Peloponnes

Table 3 Q.E., Kingdom Builder, Peloponnes

Kingdom Builder has been around since 2011 and has a few expansions, however it plays quite well as the basic game in about 45 minutes and is for 2-4 players. The idea of the game is to gather as many victory points as possible from the houses (you have 40 of them) that you place on the board, the game ends when a player has placed their last house and the round is completed so each player has the same number of turns then scoring begins. The board is of a modular form and a random four of these are placed together to form a rectangle (there are 8 to choose from in the basic game), each board is a hex-board overlaid with a number of features, the first is that each board has a Citadel, you receive 3 points for each citadel you get at least one of your houses next to, there will also be one or two special towns which give in-game bonuses for placing adjacent to them, there are 5 basic terrain features in the game (Forests, Flowers, Fields, Hills, Plains)  There are also 2 impassable terrains (Rivers and Mountains).

Terrain such as water blocks. Small village has given yellow a bonus token

Before the game starts three victory point cards are revealed – these apply to all players and are the goals for the game, the expansion we played with added an extra victory point card from an expansion deck, these cards may say things like 1VP for each house next to a Mountain, or 2VP for each house in a chosen row, the expansion card we had gave 7 points for getting 7 houses in a continuous diagonal line. Each player is dealt a card from the terrain deck which features one of the 5 basic terrains then the game starts.

Sample of the terrain cards and a points card

On a turn the player whose turn it is reveals their card and must place three houses, one on each hex of the terrain shown, the rule for placement is that you MUST make all placements adjacent to houses that you have already in play, of course your first house can be placed anywhere showing the chosen terrain. It may be that in your turn you have no houses in play adjacent to the chosen terrain in which case you may place anywhere on the board in that terrain. Houses may only be placed in the terrain shown and the hex must be empty.

Sample of the bonus tokens from the base game

Normally after placing three houses the turn is over, however if you have placed next to a special town and there is a town chit available, you take the chit (there are 4 of each in the basic game, this is reduced to 2 each in the expansion game) in future turns you may activate the chit once at the beginning or end of your turn. The chits have many abilities but generally permit you to add or move houses, in our game I picked up more of these than anyone else which should have given me greater flexibility, but I only achieved last place in a 4-player game. After your turn is over you draw your card for the next turn.

Our game towards the end

The game trips along at a fair pace as you can usually plan ahead for your turn unless someone blocks what you have planned for, there is some decision-making but after your first placements your options become channelled by the cards you draw, again helping to make this a quick game. This for me falls into the medium-light (family) category of game, the question of luck can be a factor as it is probable at some point that you need a particular terrain card and if you do not draw it you can be stuck similarly drawing the same terrain card as your previous turn can also be frustratingly limiting but everyone is playing with the same probabilities so perhaps recognising the limitations of the board layout is key to doing well. This is a game I would always be happy playing but would rarely be a first choice unless playing with fluffy gamers.

Now I know I said only one game review each posting but I feel a need to also tell you about Q.E. (Quantative Easing) which was delivered last week and despite its “home-produced” appearance I was able to persuade 3 others to join me and give it a try. It is from a small company called Cubiko, they launched this on Kickstarter and got only 43 backers however it was sufficient to get the game published. Cubiko are a British company and their games are all hand made from wood so highly durable and definitely “different” and of very limited print runs.

The board is square its my camera that gives it the skewed appearance.

Q.E. is a trading game, there are 16 “businesses” which are put up for sale over four rounds – 4 in each round, on a turn the start player for the turn makes an open bid on a dry-wipe surface of a price they are willing to pay for the company, the other players all make secret bids which are only seen by the start player who writes the winning bid on the back of the company and then handing it to the wining player. All players get their bid chits back unseen by the other players, the next player round the table auctions the next company and so on. Now although you bid with money, there is no actual cash in the game and you are effectively bidding with loan chits (the companies in front of you), this continues until all 16 companies have been purchased then scoring takes place.

Some of the wooden tokens in the game, the two middle are company tiles.

Companies have 3 pieces of information on them, first between 1 and 4 victory points, second one of 4 industry types and third one of 4 countries indicated by a flag symbol. Players earn the Victory Points on all the tiles they own and they get extra points based on companies they own matching their country flag (secretly dealt at the start of the game), for sets of like Industry symbols and for having 3 or 4 different Industry symbols. Now comes the sting in the tail, everyone reveals the bids they made on all the winning tiles, the player with the highest total automatically loses all their points and the lowest total gains 6 points. The game plays quickly (once the rules are known about 30 minutes), there is a memory element to the game, the fun of the game though is in the bids you make, tactically deciding when to bid high, low or not at all, trying to raise the price on certain companies without getting stuck with something that gives you a small return on points. Overall a lovely game, beautifully (if rustically) produced and worth getting hold of if you can. The rules say it plays 2-4 but I think it will only be at its best as a 4 player game; if you get a chance to give it a try I am sure you will be pleasantly surprised.

Peloponnes

This picture quiz should be easy for the more mature of us, answer next week.

I am back (of sorts) illness has had the better of me for nearly 3 months, nothing major but horribly debilitating. That is enough of me on to the Blog, the last quiz picture was of course Colonists a game which (in November) I had only just obtained and it rapidly entered my top 10 games of 2016.

The format is going to change for a bit until I get myself together again, it will just be a list of games played with a review of only one of them as opposed to my many mini reviews of the past.

Table 1 – Secret Hitler, Bohnanza, Firefly Fluxx

Table 2 – Peloponnes, King Lui, Medieval Academy

Table 3 – Star Trek Frontiers

Peloponnes  by Bernd Eisenstein is a much under-rated game of empire building based around the early city states of Greece however it is not a war-game and there is no military, instead it is a game of resource gathering, building your City, expanding your lands and trying to protect yourself from the five disasters that will happen. The aim of the game is to score the most points however each player has two running scores and it is the lower one that is used, one of them is the points shown on all your tiles collected in the game, the other is 3 x your population level.

The player board for red showing current stocks - population is 6 giving a cash income of 3

Each player has their own board for keeping a tally of wood, stone, wheat, luxury goods and population, they also start with a random city-state tile detailing their starting goods. On a turn players bid for tiles in a display, each may obtain only 1 tile in a round and there are only 9 rounds (8 in the base game) so at best at the end of the game you will have 10 tiles including your starting tile. Tiles can have up to 7 pieces of information, a) minimum bid price, b) victory points, c) instant bonus on purchase, d) special power, e) cost to build (if a town tile), f) production, g) tile type (whether a town tile or a terrain tile). 

Pylos is the start tile here - this is a mock up just showing layout, the wheat field could not be played here as there is no matching production symbol on it and the adjacent tile. The Port tile required 3 stone and 1 wood to build, came with an instant 2 population and a choice of 1 income from any of the 4 base commodities. The wheat field gives an income of 3 wheat.

A round consists of a) bidding for tiles, b)collecting tiles you were successful on, c) adding them to your display and collecting the instant reward, d) collecting resources (money is dependent on how large your population is), e) revealing 2 disaster tokens and dealing with any effects. Simple so far and now for the complications that make this a tight and highly interesting game. First off any terrain tile you take must be placed next in line to the last terrain tile you bought and at least one production symbol must match on both tiles, secondly any town tiles you purchase must be built with resources in hand if not one of your spare coins must be placed on it, thirdly when overbid on a tile you may move your bid to any other tile, you may also stay where you are and raise your bid. With any bid you make you can add money but you may never reduce the size of a bid. You may pass on the bidding phase completely and receive 3 cash from the bank, however if you bid but later decide to withdraw from the bidding round you only receive 1 cash as compensation.

I mentioned disasters, there are 3 tokens for each of the 5 disasters and 3 blanks, 2 tokens  are drawn at the end of each round, when the 3rd of a specific disaster is drawn that even takes place immediately and they can be game losing if you have not accounted for them, for instance plague reduces your population by 1/3, early in the game not too much hassle but later when you have your population up to 12 (36 VP) and you lose 4 that is a loss of 16VP and needs to be countered. Other disasters destroy terrain tiles, town tiles, luxury goods or food stocks, fortunately a small number of tiles provide defence against the various disasters.

The top right town tile gave me immunity from plague (middle bottom symbol), it has a coin on it denoting I had not yet paid the 3 stone and 3 wood to build it. Note the common income symbols on adjacent land tiles.

If that were not bad enough 4 times during the game there is a feeding session, these come out as follows :- one between rounds 4 and 6 (inc), one on either round 7 or 8, one in round 9 and another at the end of the game. A feeding session takes place immediately a tile with the relevant symbol is revealed (this is done at the very beginning of a round), population must be fed 1 food each, any not fed are lost, secondly any town tile with a coin on it MUST be built or lost. Sounds easy, but if you get a famine as a disaster depleting your food stocks at the end of one round and a feeding at the start of the next you lose a big chunk of your population. Another example (from our game) was the destruction of luxury goods followed by a feeding session, with all my luxury goods gone I could not build a building which was defending me against plague, so I lost it, its power, its production and the victory points it had and later in the game I lost 3 people (9vp).

Overall this is a lovely game, its mechanics draw you in and there is a lot to think about, it is thematic but perhaps is not as “pretty” as some would like being just tiles and counters, it is highly interactive in the bidding phase and once you know the game it plays quite quickly in about an hour, it is more of a “strategy game” than a “family game” every play giving you lots to think about with plenty of decision making and the rules are such that . I was gratified that everyone at the table said they would like to play it again not a normal response to some of the games I bring to the table and with the different city states available it has a high replay value. I strongly recommend Pelopones,

The star Trek Board played on Table 3

NORMAL SERVICE WILL RESUME AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

So, in case anyone's been wondering why we've not had an update since November, it's because our esteemed official chronicler, Kent Gamer, hasn't been able to make any posts for a while.   We hope he'll be back on form in the near future, but in the meantime here's a list of games we've played in the last couple of months...

7 Wonders Duel

Abyss

Adrenaline

Aeons End

Archaeology: The New Expedition.

Artificium

Attila

Bang: The Dice Game

Barony

Betrayal at House on the Hill

Biblios

Blood Rage

Cacao

Carcassonne

Cheating Moth

Cinque Terre

Citadels

Ciub

Cockroach Poker

Cockroach Soup

Codenames

Colt Express

Cottage Garden

Coup

Deep Sea Adventure

Die Holde Isolde (AKA Medieval Academy).

Dominion

Dragonwood

Firefly Fluxx

Five Tribes

Fluxx

Forbidden Desert

Fuji Flush

Game of Thrones: Hand of the King

Gloom

Great Scott!

Hansa

Hellas

House of Borgia

Hyperborea with Light and Shadow expansion

Imperial Settlers

In the Shadow of the Emporer

Inis

Jaipur

Jump

Junk Art

Lancaster

Lotus

Metro

Midnight Party

Mission: Red Planet

Mottainai

One Night Ultimate Werewolf

Order of the Gilded Compass

Patchwork

Phalanxx

Schotten Totten

Scythe with expansion

Shogun

Skull

Skull & Roses

Small Star Empires

Splendor

Spyfall

Stone Age

Takenoko

Terra Mystica

The Voyages of Marco Polo

Ticket to Ride

Tiny Epic Galaxies

Tobago

Tongiaki

Turf Horse Racing

Via Nebula.

Waggle Dance

Wiz War

Wizwar

Yspahan

Zombie Fluxx