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Bermuda Triangle

September 28, 2022 by Penny Leave a Comment

After a childhood fascination with the Bermuda Triangle this particular game was on my want list since I first saw it in a charity shop (at a stupidly expensive price) years ago. I then managed to pick up a copy for a much more reasonable price online, but I always assumed it would be incredibly complicated to play and so it sat on the shelf for ages. When we finally got it down to play though we realised just how wrong our assumptions were. It’s actually an incredibly straightforward game, but one with a lovely random mechanism to keep you on your toes.

The box of the board game Bermuda Triangle from MB Games

Aim of Bermuda Triangle

The aim of the game is simple enough – follow a route through the sea, around 4 different ports and collect goods as you do so. The first to have goods (sugar, timber, oil and bananas) worth £350,000 wins the game. But, and it’s a large but, the ports are around the bit of the Atlantic Ocean where boats and planes have disappeared. In what is known as the Bermuda Triangle.

The board for Bermuda Triangle. Most of the board is sea with a track of boat shaped "squares" going round in a route, touching 4 ports on land. In the middle of the board is a grid and on this sits a strange plastic cloud shape which is the Bermuda Triangle in the game.

The Cloud

The way the Bermuda Triangle manifests itself in the game is in the form of a large plastic storm cloud that can rotate around a circular base on the map.

A close up of teh plastic cloud on the grid.

After each round a spin of a spinner dictates how the cloud both rotates and moves around the board. In the centre of the cloud is a small viewing hole, and through this you can see the grid underneath. You physically move the cloud along this grid as dictated by the spinner, and then rotate it. In doing so it might knock players’ boats off course, or even make them disappear entirely. Each of the little boat playing pieces has a small magnet on top and the base of the cloud contains sections which also contain magnets, meaning the pieces can be picked up by the cloud.

A cardboard spinner showing three rings. The inner one with a letter A-G. The second with a number: 4, 7 or 10 and then an outer one showing N, S, E or W. At the main compass points the second and third rings are merged and just say North, South, East or West.

The route around the board is simple enough, but with a limit on how many boats are allowed in a port at any one time there can be a nice bit of strategy in terms of trying to block ports for your opponents. The swirling cloud and its movements are so unpredictable though that in just one move it can easily take out everything at a port or several boats at sea. Depending on where it is positioned it can also stop players from moving in the directions they want.

What we thought of Bermuda Triangle

We really enjoyed playing Bermuda Triangle and found it a nice simple, quick game at the end of a busy day. The cloud element made it so much more interesting than a simple roll and move game, and being a map lover I also really enjoyed the vintage map design on the game board.

A corner of the board for Bermuda Triangle where it shows the name of the game. a couple of ships in port, some cards and the cloud covering part of the route.

We initially played a two player version and found that great fun, but adding in the kids for a 4 player version adds even more fun. Players can get strategic and try to block another player from a port, but at the end of the day the randomness of the Bermuda Triangle itself will help dictate who wins and who loses. The kids certainly love it as a quick before bed game, and it’s taught them all about the Bermuda Triangle too.

Where can I get hold of the Bermuda Triangle board game?

Originally published by MB Games in the UK in 1976 it’s easy enough to pick up a second hand copy online from either eBay or Amazon. Copies do also appear in charity shops, but not all that often.

Are you a fan of vintage board games?

If you’re interested in vintage board games then why not head over to Facebook and join our new vintage board games group.

For more vintage board games and toys here on Penny Plays take a look here.

Waterworks – Parker Brothers Leaky Pipe Card Game

September 26, 2022 by Penny Leave a Comment

There is absolutely no doubt that the world’s best known board game is Monopoly. Over the years there have been thousands of different versions of this classic, but what do you know about spin off games? When I picked up a small box containing the Parker Brothers card game Waterworks in a charity shop I wasn’t really sure what I was buying, but that’s often the excitement with buying vintage games.

The box for the Parker Brothers vintage game Waterworks.

Waterworks and pipework

Released by Parker Brothers in 1972 the card game Waterworks was named after the Water Works space on the Monopoly board. The link with Monopoly goes no further than the name though. The aim of Waterworks is to build a pipeline of a specified length (depending on how many players are playing) and that it has to start with a valve (a tap) and end with a spout. The cards have on them pieces of pipe – either straight or bent – and some have junctions and caps on them. All pieces of pipe come in three different types –

copper, which can never leak
lead, which is vulnerable to leaks, and
lead which is already leaking

The overall objective of the game may sound simple, but as the length of the instruction leaflet shows, it’s anything but simple at first.

How to play

All players start with one spout and one valve with which they will start and end their pipeline. They are then dealt five more cards which will be their playing hand. In addition they receive two small metal wrenches, which wouldn’t look out of place as weapons in a Cluedo game!

Players take turns in which they have to try to lay a card. This can be either adding a piece of good (i.e. non leaky) lead or copper pipe to their own pipeline, or they can add a leaky piece of pipe to another player’s pipeline. Should the player not have a suitable piece of pipe to use then they can discard one of their hand. Players draw a new card at the end of their turn, so that they always have 5 pipe cards in their hand – in addition to the already played tap and spout saved for the end of the game.

Cards always have to be played in a portrait format on the table meaning that you can easily end up in a situation where you just don’t have the right card to be able to play.

A section of pipework laid out in card form in the game waterworks. Also seen in teh picture is the plastic bathtub for drawing and discarding cards.

Leaky pipes

When it comes to leaky pipe cards, I’ve already mentioned that these are played on other player’s pipe lines, but they can either be added to the pipe line as the next card, or placed on top of the last card played in their pipe line, as long as it is a lead pipe (remember copper pipes can never leak). This helps delay the other player in making their pipeline of the required length. Leaks always have to be sorted out before players can add further to their pipeline. Even in a multiplayer game there can be no more than one leak in any player’s pipeline at a time. Also, once a pipe has been repaired it can’t leak again.

How to fix leaks

So, how do you repair the leaks? There are two ways to do this. Either by playing a good pipe card (of the same shape) on top of the leaky one, or by placing one of their metal wrenches on top of the card with the leak. This fixes the leak.

If a player does not have the right card or a wrench to fix their own leak then they can’t add any more good pipe to their pipeline. On their turn they can either just discard a card and draw a new one, or they can add a leak to another player’s pipeline.

Ts and Caps

As if things didn’t sound confusing enough already, the game also incudes cards with T junctions and caps on them. As is the case with these in real life plumbing, Ts and Caps can also leak.

With a T added to a pipeline the water can technically flow in more than one direction, but we don’t want this as the aim of the game is for water to flow from the tap to the spout. If a player uses a T card they will then need to also use a cap to cap off one of the directions. Cap cards have four different types of cap on them, but it is wise to cap a route as soon as possible with a good cap as otherwise another player could add a leaky cap to a long route of pipe flowing one direction from the T and as your final pipe length is only counted between the tap and the spout this could render some cards useless from a length perspective.

Water flowing uphill?

A final note about finishing your pipeline. When you add your spout you must make sure that the water is flowing down out of it! Water doesn’t naturally flow up.

The bathtub

In the description of the game I’ve spoken of taking cards from a draw pile and discarding them. What I’ve haven’t mentioned until now is the gimmick in this game of there being a lovely small bathtub shaped tray to hold the cards. You take cards from one half of the bathtub and then discard them into the drain. A lovely small touch that you don’t need to play the game, but fun all the same.

What we thought of Waterworks

Our family was a little bit split on Waterworks. My son absolutely loves the game and would play it at every possible opportunity. There is great scope in the game to really sabotage another player’s game if the cards play in your favour.

The thing that I disliked about Waterworks though is that you need an absolutely massive playing space for it! We’ve a pretty big dining table that we use to play board games on, but even with just three of us playing we often had to rearrange pipes so that we weren’t falling off the table. With each card playing card size they really can take up a lot of space, even in a two player game as you’re trying to make your pipeline contain at least 15 cards excluding the tap and spout.

A top down view of a tangled mess of cards showing two players pipelines in the game waterworks.

It is generally a fun game though, and not too difficult for older kids to pick up. The bathtub is cute and I like the retro tie in with Monopoly too. It will definitely stay in our game collection, but I can’t promise it will get played too often – unless we buy a much bigger table!

Waterworks – the facts

The game contains 110 pipe cards, 1 bathtub and 10 metal wrenches. It was originally published by Parker Brothers in 1972. A modern version of it was released by Winning Moves and is still available online now, but without the wonderful bathtub!

Are you a fan of vintage board games?

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For more vintage board games and toys here on Penny Plays take a look here.

Uno Flip – Flip the deck, change the game

August 24, 2022 by Penny Leave a Comment

After sharing some of our disappointment in Uno All Wild it only seems fair to balance that out with our thoughts on Uno Flip which we bought at the same time.

What the flip?

In Uno Flip all the cards are double sided with a light side and a dark side to them. The light side of the cards plays like a regular game of Uno with the familiar red, blue, yellow and green number and action cards and expected wild cards. There is one additional action card in the pack though – the flip. Once the flip card is played all players need to turn over all the cards in their hand and the draw and discard piles on the table are also flipped.

Play then continues as before using the dark side of the cards, but whatever is now on top of the discard pile is taken as the last card played instead.

The Dark Side

When you flip the cards over to their dark side it isn’t just a case of the familiar red, blue yellow and green being replaced by stylish teal, orange, purple and pink. The cards take on a darker feel with new action cards. Instead of draw four for instance you now have to draw 5. There is also the addition of a skip everyone card and a “draw colour” card which requires you to keep drawing cards from the draw pile until you draw one of the colour specified by the person playing the card. It is quite frankly cruel and can result in a player having to draw a whole handful of cards sometimes. Or, they may pick up the required colour first time. It’s down to the luck of the draw. Literally.

Changing the game

Flipping in Uno Flip changes the game far more than I imagined it would. Just the fact that you very suddenly are faced with a whole different hand can actually be quite jarring, and just when you might be on a run to get rid of all your cards you just need another player to play a draw 5 card and it can all change again. And then there’s the prospect of having to flip back to the light side again too – which is completely possible if someone plays a dark flip card.

In the foreground of teh picture is a hand of Uno cards showing teh dark side of teh cards in the game Uno Flip. In the background you can see a draw and discard pile on the table.

What we thought of Uno Flip

Can you improve Uno? It’s such a classic game that whilst there can be many different versions most people normally agree that the classic is still the best. Although with Uno Flip I fear that opinion may be flipped on its head.

We took both original Uno and Uno Flip on our recent camping trip and Uno itself never came out of the box, such was the demand from the kids to play Flip instead. It really does change the game so much, and adds an extra level of excitement to it too.

It’s not all perfect though. I have to be honest and say that whilst flipping the cards in your hand over is easy enough, having to flip the draw and discard piles too is a bit more of a faff. The dark side of the cards looks fantastically stylish, but unfortunately that makes the light side look slightly cheap and tacky in comparison. Something that I didn’t think possible with a classic like Uno.

As with Uno All Wild, I have the same complaint that the box is a terrible design (although we did take a Uno Carry Case camping with us – more on that soon) and the cards themselves are cheap feeling compared to the vintage Uno cards that we usually play with.

My final comments though have to be about scoring in Uno Flip. Oh dear…

Uno Flip Scoring

Regular Uno players will know that number cards are scored at face value, coloured action cards are 25 points each and all wild cards are 50 points each. In Uno Flip the scoring system is insanely complicated.

Number cards: Face value.
Draw One: 10 points.
Draw Five, Reverse, Skip, Flip: 20 points.
Skip Everyone: 30 points.
Wild: 40 points.
Wild Draw Two: 50 points.
Wild Draw Color: 60 points.

Basically an action card could score anywhere from 10 to 60 points. Trying to remember what everything is worth when playing the game is nigh on impossible and at the end of each game we kept having to get the instruction sheet out so we could look it all up. A card in the pack with the scores on might have helped a bit, but it still just seems far more convoluted than it need be.

Once you have worked out scores though it can again be a very high scoring game. In a multiplayer game it is definitely possible for someone to get the 500 points required to win in a single hand. I would definitely suggest that families have some house rules here as to what score they are going to play to as 500 just doesn’t seem high enough.

Final thoughts

Uno Flip has definitely won a place in our family’s gaming hearts. We’ve already been taking about removing the flip cards and maybe playing a dark side only version to remove the faff of having to flip the draw and discard piles.

We also think it should be possible to play on Zoom or Skype in a very similar way to how we play Uno with our friend Gary. As long as all parties have an Uno Flip deck it should be straightforward with just always declaring outlet what we’re playing and what is on the top of the discard pile after flipping.

Flip is definitely here to stay!

Where to buy Uno Flip

We picked up our copy of Uno Flip in Smyths Toys, but have also seen it for sale in Asda locally. You can pick up a copy online here.

Disclaimer: We paid for our copy of Uno Flip and all opinions remain my own. This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. If you go to Amazon via them and make a purchase it will cost no more than normal, but I will receive a very small commission. Thank you for any purchases you do make. They are greatly appreciated right now.

Uno All Wild – Uno where every card is Wild!

August 16, 2022 by Penny Leave a Comment

Let’s take a look at a new version of Uno – Uno All Wild

Uno is very much our go to family game in this house. If we have time to spare and want to play something quickly then the cards come out – in our case a lovely vintage Waddingtons set from the 1980s, more on that significance later – and the four older members of the house can be playing quickly without anyone having to explain any rules. Over lockdown it’s also become a standard game to play on Skype with a long distance friend. We have a pack each and just say what we’re playing as we lay down a card and tot up points at the end of each round. Beautifully simple and a brilliant way of being together when we can’t physically be.

I was excited to spot a couple of next versions of Uno in a supermarket when I was in the middle of looking for school uniform for three kids. We’re already familiar with things like the Minecraft version of Uno and alternative games like Phase 10 and Dos, but Uno All Wild and Uno Flip hadn’t been on my radar before. I went home and did a bit of research and then the next day I was passing a toy shop and popped in for copies of both Uno All Wild and Uno Flip to add to our holiday games stash for the summer.

Here I’m going to be taking a look at Uno All Wild, but a separate post on Uno Flip will be coming very soon.

What is Uno All Wild?

Well, much as the name of the game suggests, all cards in All Wild are Wild Cards. That goes to say that there are no colours in Uno All Wild. Any card can be played on top of any other card. Instead of all the red yellow, blue and green number cards you just have standard generic wild cards. In addition to these you then have Wild Action Cards. There are the standard ones translated from the regular Uno game: Reverse, Skip, Draw Two and Draw Four but you then also have some additional ones that really start to change the game.

Additional Wild Action Cards

Wild Skip Two is pretty self explanatory as a card and works well if you have more then two people playing, but where things get really exciting is with the Targeted Draw Two and Forced Swap cards.

With Targeted Draw Two (on the left on the picture below) a player lays this down and says who they want to pick up two cards. Play then continues with the next player round the table, even if that is the player who just had to draw two. This is particularly useful if someone has just declared Uno and you want to stop them, even if they’re not sat next to you.

Two cards from Uno All Wild. On the left a targeted plus 2 card, and on the right a forced swap card.

Forced Swap (on the right in the above picture) is a slightly more complicated card to use. With this you choose another player when you play it and you have to swap cards with them. And also remember to say Uno if you are taking a hand that just has one card in it. Quite when is the best stage in the game to play this is something we’ve been experimenting with. It can be a very powerful card, but at the same time you don’t want to leave it too late in your hand or else there may be no one left with a hand smaller than yours. Leave it far too late and you could end up with that being the only card left and if you play it we interpret the rules as meaning that you then pass victory on to a player of your choice. Whilst this might be useful to stop another player winning it might also be a cruel twist in a family game.

Stopping another player

I’ve already mentioned how useful the Targeted Draw Two card can be if you’re wanting to stop another player from winning the game, but there is also another way your could do this.

As all cards are Wild and you can literally play anything on top of anything else, you don’t ever have a situation where you can’t go. But, you are allowed to just choose to draw a card from the draw pile on your turn and then use it or not if you want to. This means that if someone else has called Uno and you have nothing in your hand to be able to stop them you can draw a new card in the hope that it is a Draw card that you can use on them. Useful.

Game end and scoring

Uno All Wild ends in the same way as a regular Uno game with the first player getting rid of all of their cards. That player then receives points based on what all the other players have left on their hands at this point. In All Wild any regular Wild card scores 20 points, and any Action Wild Card scored a whopping 50 points. This makes for some very high scoring games. When we first played my daughter won on one hand with 560 points in a four player game. The instructions say to play until one player scores 500, but if you are after more than just one hand of play I suggest you up this to at least 1000.

Our thoughts

We have a few conflicting thoughts on Uno All Wild.

Whilst it is great to find a new way to mix up our regular family Uno sessions the huge number of standard Wild cards in the pack (think about it – they’re replacing all the red, yellow, blue and green 0-9 cards) can make the game a bit boring, especially if you have a whole handful of them.

A game of Uno All Wild in progress. In the foreground is a hand containing mainly standard wild cards, but in amongst them is on skip two card. In the background you can see a draw and discard pile for the game.

At the same time though the swap hands and targeted draw two cards add a level of excitement and if anything make the game feel even more competitive. You can be quite tactical with how you deploy some of the action wild cards to really block other players from victory.

Uno All Wild Player Numbers

We have so far tried playing Uno All Wild with between two and four players and I thought it worth commenting on player numbers as the box states that it can be for 2-10 players.

Whilst three and four player games work brilliantly, and we can see the tactical targeting elements of the game being particularly good for even more players, two player games simply don’t work. As with regular Uno and two players, the Reverse and Skip cards are just an easy way to get rid of cards. Even more so here as you don’t even have to wait for the right colours to come up to be able to do so. Skip Two just passes play to the next player as if you’d played a regular Wild Card and Targeted Draw Two becomes just the same as a Draw Two card.

The Forced Swap card is useful in a way, but by then we were so bored with just laying down Wild Card after Wild Card that we felt a bit bored anyway. Yes there is the option to draw an additional card and hope it works in your favour after the other player has called Uno, but chances are you’ll just get another standard Wild Card.

Box and Card Quality

Finally, I feel I have to talk about the box that Uno All Wild comes in. We’re lucky in that we have a vintage set of Waddingtons Uno cards that have a lovely quality playing card feel to them and they come in a box with a lift off lid and a nice tray where the cards sit beautifully. Uno All Wild, like modern versions of Uno, instead comes in a cardboard box with a hole in the top section for them to be hung up on sale in a shop. You have to feed the cards into the box one half at a time, and they are known to get caught on the flaps of the box and you end up with bits around the lid flap tearing quickly with repeated use. If you’re taking the cards travelling with you then the flap bit at the top of the box tears easily and generally just gets in the way. The cards themselves also feel somewhat flimsy and even after just an evening of playing some of the cards were showing a degree of wear and tear.

I’m guessing that Mattel who make Uno these days want a cheap way of packaging it and having it hanging in shops makes it the sort of thing that people might quickly pick up as an impulse purchase. Especially as the price point is quite low. Fine, but not great in terms on longevity of a card set. Already our cards and box are showing signs of wear and tear more than the vintage set of Uno cards that have been used for over 20 years. I can easily see them getting torn in a bag at some point and then cards falling out and getting lost – as has happened with my daughter’s Uno set that she takes to Scout camps. What we really need is a more sturdy box. Or even a plastic one. I know you can go onto something like Etsy and buy this sort of thing custom made or they sell an Uno Carry Bag, but I just wish Mattel would do this in the first place as a way of upping the companies green credentials and reducing landfill.

After a bit of shopping around we found a £3 difference in price between stores for Uno All Wild, which is quite a difference in just one town for something with a low price point. However, we would have happily paid £3 more had we had a better box for the cards.

Where to buy Uno All Wild

Uno All Wild is available to buy online from Amazon, but we also found copies for sale in our local Asda supermarket and even cheaper versions in Smyths Toys.

If you like Uno…

… then you might also like to read about Uno Rummy.

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.