Family Games

Ticket To Ride London

February 28, 2024 by Penny Leave a Comment

It’s years ago since I first wrote about Ticket to Ride here on Penny Plays. Since then our TTR collection has grown extensively, but over the weekend we sat down with friends who had never played before. As time was short we instead pulled Ticket to Ride London off the shelf as a way to introduce them to the game.

The Ticket to Ride London box showing an iconic London red bus and four London characters.

Ticket to Ride in miniature

Ticket to Ride London is one of the TTR city games that have been released alongside the main base games and the numerous map expansions. Each city game is a stand alone game that doesn’t require a base game and in that way they are perfect to play when time is short, or if you’re taking the game with you somewhere. From my experience of the London game, they’re not as complicated as the maim TTR game, and definitely not as some of the expansions are, but they are nice in their own way.

What do you have to do in Ticket to Ride London?

The basic idea behind Ticket to Ride London is very similar to the main base game. You have to collect transportation cards (more in a second as to why these are not train cards) to enable you to be be able to claim routes in central London. You get points based on how long each route you claim is. You’re trying to make journeys that are on your destination tickets. If you finish what is on a destination ticket by the end of the game then you get the points. If not then they are deducted from your total. The winner is the person with the most points. You score as you claim routes with a scoring track round the edge of the board and at the end work out how much more you need to add or subtract for destination tickets.

The TTR London board with various destinations marked on it.

Destination Districts

Also on the board are five destination districts. Confusingly to Londoners, these are nothing to do with the tube zones that we all know and love. If a player connects all the stations in a zone then they also get extra points corresponding with that zone number. So if you connect all the stops in zone 3, you get three extra points.

Where have the trains gone?

Ticket to Ride is known as being a train game and the most obvious thing in Ticket to Ride London is that the trains have been replaced by buses!

A game of Ticket to Ride London in action. On the board are several claimed routes and on the table around the board you can see an array of transportation tickets featuring a black cab, a yellow submarine, a blue milk float, an orange car and a pink racing car.

Instead of train cards you get transportation cards where each colour is a different mode of transport and the locomotive card is replaced by a rainbow version of the iconic London double decker bus.

With London being a city known for its underground network it seems such a shame that it doesn’t feature in the TTR version of the city. I’m guessing it’s something to do with licensing from Transport for London, but I know that a properly licensed TfL version of TTR would absolutely fly off the shelves. Not only could you have destination tickets, but if you perfectly mapped part of the tube network there is so much you could do with bonus points for completing different lines and taking into account where lines run in parallel etc. The possibilities are huge. And little plastic tube carriages would also be incredibly cute and collectors items in their own right!

What we thought of TTR London

There’s no doubt that Ticket to Ride London isn’t as involved as one of the maim standalone TTR games and if you’re after a meaty game to play this isn’t it.

However, if you want something simpler and quicker that requires less table space then TTR London is perfect. I also think it’s a good stepping tone between Ticket to Ride First Journey (which my five year old is currently enjoying) and the maim game. It introduces scoring which isn’t in First Journey, but (with the exception of the zones) the rest of the game is quite similar.

Destination zones to us are a bit of an afterthought. Players generally seem to focus on completing tickets and the if they happen to complete everything in a zone they realise when adding up scores at the end. Most of the locations used on the board are logical, but the inclusion of The Charterhouse seems a bit of a weird one. Admittedly it’s a historic site, but not one of the top tourist attractions that’s knows by most visitors/.

The smaller cards (both transportation cards and destination cards) are a bit fiddly when you’re used to regular sized ones, and for the colour blind friend we played with the symbols on the coloured bars on the board could do with being more distinct, but these are relatively minor things. The biggest problem for us was the lack of trains! But, if you’re a TTR fan then you end up being a TTR collector, and as a collector based near London, Ticket To Ride London simply has to be in our collection.

What other Ticket to Ride city games are there?

At the time of writing you can get standalone TTR games covering Amsterdam, New York, San Francisco and Berlin as well as London. A Paris version is also due to be released in March 2024.

London is the only one of these that I have played so far, so I whilst I can’t imagine them being that different, I’m unable to say how each of them plays, or what the differences between them all are. I believe Amsterdam and Paris are set in different eras, but I’m going to have to add them to my wish list to find out.

Mists Over Carcassonne – a cooperative Carcassonne

March 26, 2023 by Penny Leave a Comment

There’s many a reason why Carcassonne is such an award winning game and known by board game fans across the world. The classic design and ease of playing the base game, combined with a huge number of expansions makes it an incredibly varied game that works for all ages and skill levels. Despite all the expansions and standalone versions what has been missing until now though is a co-operative version of the game. Well, at least that was the case until Mists over Carcassonne came along.

The box for Mists over Carcassonne showing mist, various characters, smiling ghosts and a typical Carcassonne castle in the background.

What is a cooperative game?

I’ll be totally honest and say that the answer to this questions wasn’t totally obvious to me when I started my venture into board games. Whilst in most regular games you compete against other players, a co-operative game is one in which you are trying to win against the game itself. You work as a team together – quite a novelty when you’re usually trying to beat people. One of the most famous cooperative games (even before Covid!) is Pandemic in which players are working together to try to save the world from a deadly pandemic that is sweeping across it.

In a cooperative game you all win, or you all lose. And there’s generally less falling out – regardless of the outcome.

Mists over Carcassonne Overview

The basics of Mists over Carcassonne play very much like the regular game of Carcassonne in that players take turns in laying land tiles, joining up roads and cities as they do so. Where the game differs is that some of the land tiles contain mist. Mist can cover fields or roads, but never cities. Ghosts (in the physical form of incredibly cute little ghost maples) live in the mists and you must try to pacify the ghosts during the game.

Tiles making up the game board of Mists over Carcassonne. Visible are several mist patches - some complete, some not. There are plenty of ghosts on the board, some completed cities and a yellow guard meeple stood on a section of road.

There are six different levels to Mists over Carcassonne which get increasingly more difficult. Each level has a different goal score that you have to try to reach. The main aim is that you need to reach your goal score without running out of tiles or ghost meeples.

Players have “guard meeples” which are placed on roads or cities as normal meeples are in the regular game of Carcassonne. You can think of these as being like regular meeples and this is how you score in the game.

The Mists over Carcassonne 2x2 starting tile. This features a castle, two city sections and two areas of mist. One mist has one side on a tile edge with a road coming out of it. The second mist area has two edges on tile edges. One of these has a road coming out of it. The first has one ghost symbol on it. The second has two ghost symbols.

The starting tile in Mists over Carcassonne is a large 2×2 sized tile which contains two city sections, road sections emerging from the mists and two different mist areas with ghosts in them. When you start the game you need to place ghost meeples on these ghosts.

Placing Mist and Ghosts

When placing a new tile in Mists over Carcassonne you obviously need to make sure that all roads and cities line up, but you also need to think about any mist. Mist covered roads or fields can be placed next to other roads or fields that do not have mist. If you do that though it does mean that a mist bank can never be finished. And finishing, or closing, a mist bank is one way of removing ghosts from the game. As you only have a maximum of 15 ghost meeples (and actually play with less in higher levels) clearing ghosts is incredibly important.

A game of Mists over Carcassonne in play showing several mist banks - some completed and some not. You an see some ghosts in the uncompleted mist and three different guard meeples in cities or on roads.

When you place a tile containing mist you also need to place ghosts on it. The general rule is that you place as many ghost meeples as there are ghost symbols on the tile, but, if you have extended an existing mist bank, then you actually place one fewer than there are symbols. In this case, if the tile shows only a single ghost then you don’t have to place any ghost meeples.

Should you run out of available ghosts to place then you immediately lose the game.

Placing Meeples

You can never place a guard meeple in the mist. They can be placed on road or in a city on a tile that also contains mist, but not on a road that is in the mist. Usual rules apply to not placing a meeple on a road or in a city that already has a meeple on or in it. There are no farmer meeples in Mists over Carcassonne.

Level 1 – getting acquainted with the game

The first level of Mists over Carcassonne is relatively simple – especially in comparison to the later levels. All you need to do is score 50 points before you run out of tiles or ghosts. Points are scored collaboratively, so you simply choose a meeple of a colour you’re not using as the scoring meeple. All 15 ghost meeples are used and all the land tiles are simply in one pile.

Thinking cleverly about how you can maximise scoring on cities is important in this collaborative game. As all players score together it can be possible to have two or more of you all scoring on the same city if you happen to place meeples on city tiles that end up joining together. Until we had cracked how to do this on as many cities as possible it was hard to progress through the game.

Level 2 – castles and cemeteries

This is where the game starts to get more complicated – mainly through the introduction of castles and cemeteries. The castles are a bit like monasteries in the main game, but with the twist that you only score the tiles around it (when all 9 are in place) that have mist on them. Cemeteries however are far more complicated and start messing with ghosts.

When you first draw a cemetery tile, you just play it as normal making sure that roads are connected. That cemetery is then considered open and it stays open until tiles have been laid on all four sides of it. Whilst there is an open cemetery in play you need to add a ghost to it each time that you have to add at least one ghost to any piece of mist that is played. If there is more than one cemetery open at a time you can choose which cemetery to add ghosts to each time you have to add one.

Tiles in the game particularly showing two buried meeples on cemeteries - denoted by two lying down meeples on these tiles which are both surrounded on four sides by other tiles.

When all fours sides of a cemetery have been connected up with new tiles you are able to close a cemetery. You do so by taking a meeple from somewhere else on the board and “burying” it in the cemetery. i.e. lying a meeple down there. You can then remove all ghosts from that cemetery and return them to your ghost meeple pool.

Cemeteries can make the game incredibly tricky and on many occasions we found ourselves running out of ghosts very fast once a cemetery was open. It seems that thinking very very carefully about where you initially place a cemetery so that you can close it quickly can really help your game.

A mists over Carcassonne game in progress. One tile can be seen as having 7 ghost meeples on it. This is an open cemetery.

The other challenge in Level 2 is that you now need to score 75 points to win. It’s fair to say that this took us a while to master. Mainly due to those pesky cemeteries!

Levels 3 and 4 – releasing the hounds

The intermediate Mists over Carcassonne levels introduce the idea of splitting your land tiles so that you have to reach certain scores by the time you are a prescribed number of tiles into the game. Getting past this really can be all dependent on the order that the tiles are drawn.

The scoring track for the game showing Hound tokens at the 15 and 50 squares on the board. Also shown on the 50 square is a greyed out version of teh goal token. This is because you have to turn this over the first time you pass 50 as the actual goal on this round is 100. There is a red guard meeple on the 10 square.

The other new twist is Hounds that can help you pacify ghosts in the game. Once you’ve reached a certain point on the scoring track a hound is released. This involves placing a hound token next to a non-buried meeple on the playing board. This allows you to move a number of ghosts from adjacent tiles. It takes a few plays with the hounds to fully understand how you can maximise their effect. As you approach a certain score marker on the scoring track you really need to make sure you have a meeple in a convenient position on the board so that you can add a hound to it. Otherwise you risk just wasting the hound’s powers.

Once you’ve mastered the power of the hounds in level 3, level 4 has you playing with less ghost meeples and also having to reach higher scores before you can release the hounds or win the game.

Levels 5 and 6 – haunted cemeteries and separate scoring

We’ve not yet managed to even reach levels 5 and 6 of Mists over Carcassonne yet and I hope that tells you something about how challenging the game is, rather than about our playing ability!

By level 5 the cemeteries have become haunted and need to be surrounded by 8 tiles before you can close them. But, to add to the complication, cemeteries also play very differently. When you lay a cemetery down you have to add a ghost to each surrounding tile that has mist on it – even if that mist bank is already finished! That isn’t all though.

Haunted cemeteries cause you to lose tiles. This happens by players having to draw an additional tile face down if there is at least one open haunted cemetery in play. That face down tile is then placed adjacent to the open cemetery. It doesn’t matter what it is next to as it just means that feature is not finished. These face down tiles only count towards closing the haunted cemetery.

Level 6 adds a further twist in that each player now score separately. Yes, you read that correctly, Mists over Carcassonne is still a cooperative game, but in level 6 you need all players to reach a goal, and also all players to have reached certain scores to be able to release the hounds to pacify ghosts. My brain hurts just thinking about this.

Two player Mists over Carcassonne

A game in progress showing lots of different tiles containing mist but notable in the foreground are two open cemetery tiles each with one ghost on them.

The only thing that is a bit different in a two player version of Mists over Carcassonne is that each player has two different colours of meeple. This is to help with being able to score more than once for each city that you complete. With each player having two colours it makes this more likely, and in theory you could even have all four colours scoring a city in the two player version.

Mists over Carcassonne – our thoughts

Wow! There is no doubt that having a cooperative version of this game mixes things up a lot, and makes going back to the original game and its expansions a bit painful for the old grey matter. Once you’ve got used to working together when you lay tiles, it can take a bit of getting used to when you can’t discuss where a tile should go before laying it.

We’ve been playing it for a good few months now and I really like how challenging it is. We could move on to level 2 easily enough, but after that the challenge gets more and more intense and you need to adjust how you play with each level to try to win.

A panned out view of a whole game of Mists over Carcassonne. As well as closed mist banks you can also see open ones with ghosts in them. Also present are three open cemeteries. Two have no ghosts on them whilst one has three.

As you would expect with Carcassonne games, the quality of all the tiles and meeples is top notch. The incredibly cute ghost meeples are an added bonus! There are enough familiar mechanics from the base game to make it feel like regular Carcassonne, but at the same time there is also so much new to get your head around that it feels different. Like more of a step change than just adding an expansion to the base game.

The game contains a handy level summary card to help you keep on to of what you need for each level and what you’re trying to do. This is so valuable as otherwise I don’t think many people will manage to remember everything they need to, especially if you’ve been playing other games in-between.

Mists over Carcassonne as a regular Carcassonne Expansion

If you decide that a cooperative game is really not for you then don’t worry – Mists over Carcassonne also includes instructions so that you can use it as an expansion to the original competitive Carcassonne base game. In the version ghosts work differently and rather being added to mist they instead attach themselves to regular meeples. If a meeple has ghosts attached then it means points can be subtracted from your score.

This expansion version also includes cemeteries and castles, but again these are played differently from in the cooperative game. Completed cemeteries give you extra guard meeples (who don’t attract ghosts) and completed castes score points if there is mist around them.

Where to buy Mists over Carcassonne

Mists over Carcassonne is available to buy online from Amazon here. If you prefer to buy from a board game shop then this site shows you who has it in stock and their prices. At present the English language version is produced by Hans im Glück who are responsible for all the German versions of the game. I believe that Z-Man is planning to produce a version on the UK market, but I’m unclear about when that is due.

If you liked this…

Why not take a look at my thoughts on the Tower Expansion for Carcassonne.

Disclaimer…

All games mentioned in this post are ones that I have bought with my own money. Some of the links in this post are affiliate links and if you go to Amazon via them and purchase anything I receive a small commission. It will cost you no more than if you had arrived at Amazon on your own. Many thanks for any purchases that you do make. Your support is very much appreciated.

The M25 – A Game of Bumper to Bumper Bollards, Breakdowns and Botheration!

October 3, 2022 by Penny Leave a Comment

The box for the M25 game showing a cartoon style picture of three cars full of people with comedy number plates (NERD1 and HOG1) and surrounded by bollards going in all directions.

The M25 – A game based on the UK’s most expensive practical joke. Now you too can experience the frustration and botheration of the country’s most hated motorway. Who do you know that experiences the 127 miles of the M25 – you can now share with them their tale of woe from start to finish.

The game is easy – all that is required of you is to keep a level head and get from the start to the finish; as to be expected your journey will be impaired because you have to use the M25. During the course of your journey you will be required to lip read what other drivers are trying to say to you; gesticulate in the form of a mime what you may think of player’s driving or draw a phrase which you may feel describes other drivers or the M25.

The back of the box blurb above pretty accurately describes The M25 board game. Quite why anyone would be so frustrated sitting in traffic on the M25 that they decided to make everyone else endure the same pain by making a board game of it, I just don’t know. But that’s exactly what they did.

Aim of the game

The aim of the M25 game is to go all the way round the M25 one way, go round the M11 access roundabout and then go back the opposite direction before arriving into central London and trying to find a parking space there. It’s the sort of thing that brings most drivers out in a cold sweat. And bear in mind that as a 1980s game this was all before the congestion charge was introduced. Or the ULEZ. Yet it still looks and sounds as daunting as it does today!

The M25 game board showing London in the middle of the board and two directions of the M25 looping round. The River Thames comes in from the right hand side of the board and the motorway goes into a tunnel under it. There are various slip roads and roundabouts for junctions with other motorways and cartoon versions of some famous 1980s landmarks.

M25 Cards

This is obviously designed as a party game as it’s designed for 3 to 12 players, although what sort of dinner parties ended in an agreement to play a game like this is also beyond me.

Players get to move their counters around the M25 based on how well they do on the M25 cards in the game. The die is only used for starting the game and when players are on slip roads.

There are four types of cards altogether. Simple ones that tell you to do something relating to your motorway journey. Then three more types that give the game its party flavour: lip read, charade or draw cards. Basically it’s like playing charades, trying to lip read or play Pictionary within the game. Depending on what type of square you’re on when you take the card determines which clue on the card you need to get others to guess. And if a player does guess correctly both of you get to move a number of spaces further forward on the board. If no one guesses correctly you still get to move, just not as far.

Five example M25 cards showing two where players are given instructions as to how to move - or not. The other three are an example of the lip read, draw and mime cards.

Both the board and the box have a cartoon style to their artwork, giving the game an overall very 80s theme.

Our thoughts

Whilst this might work well as a bit of a joke game for anyone that does have to use the M25 on a regular basis, I can imagine that joke wearing thin quite quickly. If you’re after a decent party game then you may well do better with a game that focusses more on one of the guessing elements – lip reading, drawing or miming.

A close up section of the M25 board showing the motorway as to come out off the north of the Dartford tunnel and the junction for the M11 including a road about and a loopback to get onto the other carriageway.

If a game about roads is more your thing then take a look at what I thought of the classic vintage game Motorway instead.

About The M25 board game

For 3 – 12 players, age 10 to adult.

Contents: Board, 168 M25 cards, 12 playing pieces, 1 dice, pad and pencil, full rules

Distributed in the UK by B V Leisure Ltd, St Ives, Cambs.

Available secondhand online here.

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Carcassonne – The Tower Expansion

July 27, 2022 by Penny Leave a Comment

It’s a while now since we as a family finally picked up a copy of Carcassonne and found our selves completely hooked on this immersive tile laying game. One of the wonderful things about Carcassonne though is that whilst the standard base game is a thing of beauty in itself the various expansions and mini-expansions that are also available take it forward in whole different dimensions. Literally in the case of The Tower expansion.

Carcassonne Base Game

Rewinding a little bit – let’s start with a few words about Carcassonne itself for any readers who are unfamiliar with it. The basics of the game is that players lay tiles to build up a map of a medieval landscape, with the name of the game coming from the French Medieval Fortified Town of Carcassonne. Each square tile in the base game may have on it a road, part of a city, a monastery or just green fields. When you lay a tile it has to have a side adjacent to an already laid tile and you have to make sure that all features line up correctly.

A view down at a table showing a game of Carcassonne in progress

Players also have meeples; little wooden playing pieces resembling people. After you have laid a tile you may be able to add a meeple in a specific role on one of the features on your tile with the aim of scoring points as the game progresses or at the end of the game. Meeples might be positioned on roads, in cities, in a monastery or on a field and different points are allocated to each depending on how a feature is either completed or how it is at the end of the game.

Mini-Expansions in the Carcassonne Base Game

Some of the Carcassonne expansions introduce different meeples as is seen with the mini-expansion that comes with the base game in the form of an Abbot meeple who can be placed (and removed) from Monastery or Garden tiles. Also included in the base game is a second mini-expansion: The River. The river tiles are played at the start of the game and give some added variety to the medieval landscape that you build.

A close up view of the river tiles in the middle of a game of Carcassonne.

Other Carcassonne Expansions

In addition to the base game there are a number of Carcassonne Expansions which all always require the base game to play them. These expansions can be played alone, or joined together with other expansions to make an even larger game. We’ve slowly started collecting expansions when we see them on special offer, or by buying them as gifts for each other. So far we have: 1. Inns and Cathedrals, 2. Traders and Builders and 5. Abbey and Mayor, but it is expansion number 4 The Tower which I received for my recent birthday that I want to share here.

Introducing The Tower

The Tower expansion contains two key things, the first of which being more of a playing aid than a key part of the game itself. A large cardboard tower is the need for The Tower’s box to be a different shape to make of the other Carcassonne expansions, and it gives an alternative way for players to pick up tiles to lay rather than just using piles on the table or a cloth bag. We’ve found that this works really well for a two player game, but if there are more of you it can sometimes be a bit more tricky to reach it depending where on the table it is, or having to pass it round players when it is their turn.

Building Towers

The second part of the expansion is what you need to play: 18 land tiles with tower foundations on them, and 30 wooden tower floors. The tiles all work in the same way as regular Carcassonne tiles and just all feature a space for a tower to sit on them. The wooden tower floors are shaped so that they can be stacked on top of each other to form a stable tower, and also so that a meeple can stand on top of the tower without falling off.

A plan view of a game of Carcassonne with several towers and tower base tiles visible.

The number of players in your game determines how many tower floors each player receives at the start. The tower tiles are then shuffled in with the other Carcassonne tiles and play commences as usual.

When a player draws a new tower base land tile they can lay it inn exactly the same way as they would other tiles in the game. Once laid they have a choice as to what to do next.

Players can just place a meeple on one of the features on their tile as they would normally do, or there are three different things that they can do with the tower tiles.

Firstly they could place a tower floor on ANY tower base tile that has already been played. It doesn’t have to be the one that has just been played. They could instead place a tower floor on any existing open tower in the landscape. There is no limit to how tall a tower can be in Carcassonne. Finally they could place a meeple on top of any existing tower, closing that tower.

Capturing Meeples

Whilst this all may sound very straightforward you may be wondering what the purpose of the towers is. Towers enable you to capture meeples, adding a whole new dimension to the game of Carcassonne. Whenever you place a tower floor you may capture one meeple from surrounding tiles. The height of the tower that you have built on determines which tiles you can capture a meeple from. If the tower is only one floor high you can capture a meeple from the tower tile itself, or from one tile in any direction horizontal or vertical, not diagonal. If the tower is three floors high you can capture a mettle from the tower tile itself, or from three tiles in any direction horizontal or vertical.

A close up view of some tiles in teh game of Carcassonne. Three of the tiles shown have towers on them with varying numbers of tower floors. Also visible is one tower base without any tower floors added.

It’s also worth pointing out here that you can capture your own meeples as well as those belonging to there players. Particularly useful if you have one that is no longer serving a purpose and that you want to return to the game to be useful and score you some points.

Meeples on Towers

Once a tower has a meeple on top of it, it is classed as closed, meaning that players can no longer place more tower floors on it. However, that’s not necessarily the end of the tower, as a player can capture a meeple on top of a tower if they build floors on another one within striking distance.

Meeple Exchanges

When two players have captured meeples belonging to each other you have to exchange them immediately and then those meeples go back into your stock to be played again as the game continues. If you don’t have a meeple to exchange with, but you want one of yours back you can buy it back with points. Each meeple costs you three points and so you remove three points from you, and add them to the player that you are buying the meeple back from. If you do not have at least three points then you can’t buy your meeple back.

The Tower and other expansions

In the way that all Carcassonne expansions are beautifully designed to work with each other, there is a whole page of the rule booklet explaining how you combine expansions and with details of which meeple types can and can’t be placed on a tower, and which ones you can and can’t capture from the board. There are also other wonderful lines in there about dragons being able to eat meeples on towers and how a fairy does not protect a meeple from capture. It almost makes me want to get the Princess and Dragon expansion just so I can quote rules like this at the start of a game!

What we thought of The Tower

Oh how this expansion has changed our game! I think that so far The Tower has to be my favourite Carcassonne expansion. The ability to disrupt another player’s game is actually huge. It doesn’t just mean you can stop other players gaining points, but it really makes you think about where to risk placing your meeples so that they are not in danger. With just a handful of games under our belt so far we are yet to combine it with other expansions, but again I think the impact will be great. You have to be so much more strategic in how you play and think ahead about what might happen further on in the game. It’s made me re-think how I play and breathed new life into the game yet again.

Buying the Carcassonne The Tower Expansion

With more and more toy and book shops selling the Carcassonne base game you have to look a bit further to find the expansion packs. Specialist game shops often have a great selection, but otherwise many independent shops sell online, or you can pick them up online easily enough from Amazon. Just be careful when ordering from there that you ensure you are getting the correct language version of the expansion. An English version of The Tower is available here.

Disclaimer: All products mentioned in this post have been purchased with my own money. The links to Amazon in this post are affiliate links. If you go via them and make any purchase I receive a small commission, but it costs you no more than if you’d arrived there under your own steam. All commissions are very gratefully received. Thank you.

Azul

May 3, 2022 by Penny Leave a Comment

Our family board gaming has taken a twist away from some of the much loved vintage games lately, and on to some of the more modern games that appear to be finding their way on to the high street via various book and game shops. After seeing a video describing gameplay on YouTube Azul quickly jumped to the top of my want list, mainly due to the tactile nature of the game.

Azul – Aim of the Game

The main aim of the game Azul is to tile a wall in pretty Portuguese style coloured tiles – which in this game are just that; incredibly tactile physical tiles which feel lovely to touch and play with. The way in which you tile your wall dictates your score and at the end of the game the player with the highest score wins.

Azul – How to Play

Azul works for 2 to 4 players and each player has their own double sided playing board and a scoring marker. On one side of the board there is a wall template to follow, whilst the other side has a blank wall for you to tile. At the top of each playing board is a scoring track and each player keeps track of their own score will a small black scoring cube. All players start on zero.

All the Azul tiles are kept in a lovely cloth bag and there are additionally a total of nice circular card discs which represent the factories and a first player tile.

The number of players dictates the number of factories in the game and it should be twice the number of players plus one. So in a two player game you have five factories and in a four player game all nine factories. The required number of factories are placed in the middle of the playing table in a circle and the player who is going first takes the first player tile and then draws from the bag four tiles for each of the factories in play.

Once the factories are set up the first player can choose one factory from which they want to select tiles. In one go they can only take tiles from one factory, and they can only take tiles of one colour at a time. All remaining tiles in a factory are then placed in the space in the centre of the factories. Once they’ve taken their first tiles the first player also places the first player tile in the middle of the factories, alongside the additional tiles.

Once a player has taken tiles they then place them on the area to the left of their playing board where it looks a bit like a ladder wall. Tiles can only be placed on one row of this at a time and at the end of a round only completed lines on this section will allow tiles to be placed on the final wall. For the top row of the wall you only need one tile, but the bottom row requires you to have all five tiles in place by the end of the round.

Players then continue in turn to draw tiles from the factories, or if they prefer, they can take tiles from the space in the middle of the factories. The first player to draw from the middle is also forced to take the first player tile. This means that they go first in the next round, but this tile also has to go on the Factory Floor on their playing board. At all times players must only take tiles of one colour and they must take all tiles of that one colour in that location.

Factory Floor

In addition to the first player tile mentioned above, if, after drawing tiles you have any tiles that you can not place on the left hand side of the board then these fall to the “factory floor” where they are rendered useless and deduct from your score at the end of the round. The factory floor is depicted by the space at the bottom of your playing board. This might happen if you take more tiles than you need to complete a row, or if you are forced to take a colour that you can not accommodate in your final wall design. Each row and column of your wall can only contain one tile of each design and colour.

End of the round and scoring

No more tiles left denotes the end of the round and this is the point at which players can start tiling their wall. It is only possible to move a tile over to your wall if you have completed the whole corresponding row on the left hand side of your playing board. This means that you’re much more likely to complete the top row of your wall (which only requires one tile) than the bottom one (which requires five). Starting with the top row you move one tile over if you can and you score then one by one. Each tile moved over is one point but if it is horizontally or vertically adjacent to any other tiles then you also score an additional point for those tiles as well. It therefore pays to try to tile your wall in a specific order if the tiles allow.

If you have moved a tile over to your wall all remaining tiles in that row go back in the box. If you do not have a complete row you leave the tiles in place on the left hand side of your board and they carry over to the next round.

Players with tiles on the factory floor also have to deduct from their score accordingly and these tiles also go back in the box with the exception of the first player tile.

Further rounds

Once all scoring in the first round is complete play continues, starting with which ever player has the first player tile. Play continues in this way until one player has completed tiling a horizontal row on their wall. At the soonest this will be after five rounds as it is only possibly to lay one tile in each round and the row is five tiles wide. If you have exhausted all the tiles in the bag then the tiles that have been returned to the box are moved to the bag.

End of the game and final scoring

After the scoring in the final round players carry out the end of game scoring, adding on to their original scores. At this stage each horizontal line adds an additional 2 points. A vertical line adds 7 points and if a player has managed to use all five of one colour tile on their wall then it is an additional 10 points.

Azul hints and tips

When you start playing Azul and use the pre-planned side of the playing board it can just be a case of trying to add whatever tiles you can and not really thinking about the order in which you are collecting colours or laying them on your board. Once you get familiar with the game mechanics players start to plan ahead and look at which colour tiles could gain them the most points at the scoring stage of the game and how they might be able to get vertical lines or even all tiles of one colour to help bag extra points at the end of the game.

Azul is not played in isolation though and the best players are also keeping an eye on what goes on around the rest of the table. Is it possible for you to pick up something that forces another player to take a colour that will end up on their factory floor? As each game progresses players’ choices become more limited in terms of what they can place on their wall and it is possible to sabotage another player’s game.

Counting tiles can also help, especially in a two player game when you might only go through all the tiles once if the game is completed in five rounds. There are 20 tiles of each colour in the game and if at the end of round four you can see that 18 of one colour have already been pulled from the bag there’s no point trying to fill your bottom line with that colour in the fifth round as there simply won’t be enough tiles.

Azul – what we think

As soon as it was out of the box Azul became an instant hit in our house. The two player game can take less than 30 minutes making it perfect for us to fit in between tea time and the youngest’s bath. We’ve even trained her up so she can help us with drawing the tiles from the bag and placing them on the factories at the start of each round. A perfect way for her to practice counting to four and also her fine motor skills too.

The older two kids (9 and 11) really enjoy the game too and it’s a great way for me to have some one on one time with each of them whilst the other is having a shower or doing some homework.

Azul Expansions and other versions

There are many different expansions and other versions of Azul on the market now that I’ve got my eye on. We treated ourselves to Summer Pavilion when we had some Amazon vouchers to spend and I’ll pop up a separate post soon on how we found that. Whilst it has some of the same mechanics as the original game it’s also quite different. It’s worth noting that Summer Pavilion is a stand alone game not requiring the original Azul to play it.

Another standalone version is Azul Stained Glass of Sintra which looks like a bit of a mix between the original Azul game and Sagrada which is also seeing a lot of regular play in our house at the moment.

When it comes to pure expansion versions, I’m yet to try the Crystal Mosaic Expansion which requires the original Azul game, or the Glazed Pavilion Expansion for the Summer Pavilion version of the game. If money were no object then they’d definitely both be on my shelves.

I’m also really keen to get my hands on the Queen’s Garden which is the newest standalone version of the game. Friends who have already played it tell me it’s well worth buying so I’m hoping to try it out for myself one day soon.

Disclaimer:

I purchased all versions of Azul that we currently own with my own money and have received nothing in exchange for this post. Links in this post connect to Amazon and are affiliate links. Any purchases that you make through these links cost you no more than if you had arrived on Amazon’s site independently, but I receive a small commission from any purchases you make. I am incredibly grateful for any purchases you do make. Thank you.

Expedition to the Himalayas

March 10, 2021 by Penny Leave a Comment

I get very excited when I find a vintage board game that I haven’t seen before. I love seeing what some of the old ideas for games were and enjoy researching them. It’s therefore exciting and frustrating to find a game that I can’t find out anything more about. That seems to be the case with Expedition to the Himalayas, which came in a bundle of board games that I bought via someone on Facebook.

Expedition to the Himalayas – the game

Expedition to the Himalayas Board Game Arthur Haynes Nicholas Parsons

The box proudly states:

Join Arthur Haynes and Nicholas Parsons (TV’s popular pair) in an Expedition to the Himalayas

It goes on to say: Beware of the abominable snowman. Can you avoid him. He is lurking everywhere.

Those descriptions on the box basically give you the premise of the game. The board, which is neatly set in the base of the box, is a simple path showing steps from two base camps at the bottom to the summit of the mountain. Overlapping with the path are the footsteps of the abominable snowman.

Game characters and playing pieces

The game is designed for 2 to 4 players with two of the playing pieces being Arthus Haynes and Nicholas Parsons. The other two remain unnamed. The fifth playing piece is that of the abominable snowman himself.

Each is formed of a coloured piece of card with a character on it and a small wooden base for the card to be held in. I have no idea if the bases are original or not, but the characters are not a tight fit in them and hence they’re a bit useless as if you try to pick them up by the card it just comes clean out!

Game spinner

Rather than a die, players are supposed to spin a “tent” on a spinner to see how many spaces they are to move on the board. Players can spin from 1 to 6. I’m not sure if it’s due to age or rust in the pin (or both!), but our spinner doesn’t seem to spin freely at all and so we chose to use a die instead.

On each turn a player spins the spinner and moves their playing piece the same number of places. They also move the abominable snowman the same number of places along his footprint trail. This crosses the players’ path at several points and if a player ends up on the same square as the snowman they are sent back too basecamp.

Once the snowman reaches his finishing point he turns around and comes back down the mountain. Once he’s back at his starting point he turns around again and goes back up.

Hazard spaces

If a player lands on a pink coloured square it means they have encountered a hazard. They must count what number hazard it is from the start and multiply that number by 6 (who knows why!) to read from the hazard card as to what their instructions are.

To win the game a player needs to reach the summit exactly. If they overshoot then they have to bounce back and try again.

This game is in essence a simple roll and play game which a few hazards thrown in. Nice and easy for kids and the whole family.

Why Arthur Haynes and Nicholas Parsons?

The question has to be asked though as to why on earth this was produced. Whilst Nicholas Parson’s was generally well known until his death in 2020, Arthur Haynes isn’t someone I was that familiar with. Looking him up I’ve found that he was very famous back in the 1950s and 60s as a comedian and had his own comedy sketch show on ITV. In the late 50s and early 60s Nicholas Parsons also became a household name when he appeared in some of Haynes’ sketches and then became a regular playing opposite him.

What my research hasn’t yet shown is if they were ever in a sketch together about mountain climbing, the Himalayas or anything to do with the abominable snowman. I’m guessing that they must have done for it to have inspired this game, but if so then I’m yet to find it.

The Granda connection?

There is no date anywhere on the game itself and the box just tells us that it was produced by “The Granada Novelty Co, London, England”. I’m guessing that Granada relates to the Granada TV company, but from what I’ve found his TV show was actually produced by ATV not Granada, so I’m again wondering if he did something else with Granada that I’m yet to stumble across. I can find no mention online of The Granada Novelty Co and certainly when I look at a history of Granada TV’s other ventures I can find no mention of it. Another mystery.

Haynes and Nicholas Parsons stopped working together in 1964 which suggests the game must date from between 1957 (when I believe they started appearing together) and 1964, but I’m yet to narrow down any more.

If you know anything at all about this game, the Granda Novelty Co or why someone decided to put Arthur Haynes and Nicholas Parsons into a game in the first place then I would love to hear from you!

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