UK Games Expo 2018

Some of you may have heard that there was some sort of Games Expo that happened over this last
weekend. It’s no big deal or anything but it was the premier event for board and card gaming
representation in the UK, so yeah there’s that.
Some of you may have even been lucky enough to have attended UKGE this year and if you were,
I feel safe in saying that you probably weren’t disappointed.

Geistes Blitz

Geistes Blitz, also known as Ghost Blitz in the U.K., is a German game brought to us by 999 Games.

Geistes Blitz is a recognition game, akin to snap. Instead of waiting for two of the same number in a row hitting the pile, there are five objects that you need to grab before your opponents. The five objects consist of a white ghost, a green bottle, a blue book, a red chair and a great mouse.

The setup of this game is simple; set out the five objects between all players, ideally in the centre of the table and remember to leave a little gap between them in case of knocking them off. Then shuffle the deck of 60 cards and then the first player flips the top card over.

The idea is to then grab the corresponding object that the image on the card either shows or doesn't show. You see, each card has an image involving an array of the objects on the table, the trick is that the objects on the card won't always be the same colour as the same object on the table.



Shown in both the images above is the ghost, one is white and one is blue. If the card with the white ghost is flipped over then each player will attempt to grab the white ghost object in the middle of the table. Pretty straight forward in a recognition game. If the card with the blue ghost is flipped over is when the challenge comes in. This cards image also contains a grey chair, which means you would need to grab the object not shown on the card in shape or colour, in this case it would be the green bottle because you have a blue ghost and a grey chair representing an aspect of each other object.

Whenever a player takes the correct object when a card is shown that player receives that card and then flips over the next card on the deck. If a player takes the wrong object, they then forfeit one of their cards and the player that took the correct object receives any of those cards in addition to the flipped card. The player with the most number of cards when the game is over wins.

Geistes Blitz is a brilliant little game that promotes fast reactions and recognition. It's quick and easy to learn, good with younger players with a cute little art style and colourful aesthetic and still challenging to older players requiring quick thinking. It plays best with three or four players but works well as a heads up game with an increase in tension dramatically. Definitely recommend it for a nice family game for gamers of all ages.

Forbidden Island

Forbidden Island is a cooperative treasure recovery game brought to you by publishers Gamewright.

In Forbidden Island, 2-4 players take on different roles to try and retrieve hidden treasures that had been stowed away on an island before the island becomes submerged and you drown.

Set Up

First of all, you need to set up the 24 tiles you have in a random order like so: 2 tiles at the top, beneath them you place 4 tiles, then 6, then another 6, then 4 and finally 2 in a diamond arrangement. These tiles represent the island that you and your friends are on.

Take the Flood metre and set it to what difficulty you would like to play; novice, normal, extreme or legendary. This denotes how many cards from the top of the flood deck will be flipped over at the end of the turn.

Next, shuffle and place the orange or Treasure deck and the blue or Flood deck next to the Island tiles. The Treasure deck contains cards showing a picture of the four different treasures on the island; there are five copies of each card for each treasure. It also contains Helicopter cards, Sand bag card and Water Rising cards (three Waters Rise, three Helicopter Lift and two Sandbag) which I'll get to later. Each player is dealt two cards from the Treasure deck and then the top six cards of the Flood deck are flipped over to show which tiles start submerged.

The Sandbag card allows that player to shore up a tile anywhere on the island at any time.

The Helicopter lift allows that player to move any player to any tile on the island. This card is also necessary to win the game by getting you off the island.

The Water Rise card means that the flooding is gonna get worse. When a player draws a Water Rise card it's immediately discarded and you put the Flood Metre up one notch, along with taking all the flipped cards from the Flood deck, shuffling them and placing them on top of the Flood Deck. Lastly you flip the number of Flood cards from the top of the deck equal to the number on the Flood Metre, possibly resulting in sinking a tile and removing it from the game.

Each player then picks a role, each role having an ability that could help your team of explorers;

Navigator: The Navigator's ability is that they can move another player two adjacent tiles for just one action.

Messenger: The Messenger is able to give any other player on the island a Treasure card, in exchange for one of their actions for the turn, no matter where they are, so you don't have to be on the same tile.

Pilot: Once per turn as one of their actions, the Pilot can fly to any tile on the island, very useful for gathering Treasures.

Engineer: The Engineer can use their ability to shore up to two tiles up as their action. You do have to be able to shore them both up so you can't choose one in front of you and then one diagonally or on the other side of the island.

Diver: The Diver is able to move one or more spaces through a flooded or missing tile but must end up on a shored tile at the end.

Explorer: The Explorer is able to move  and/or shore up diagonally as their actions for the turn.

and takes the matching coloured playing piece. Players then place their coloured playing piece on the corresponding starting tile which will be represented by having the coloured playing piece in the bottom corner.

Gameplay

Each player has three actions in his or her turn and they can choose from a selection of four;

Moving: Each movement counts as one action. You can't move diagonally

Shoring up: If a tile has started to sink, it's flipped and showing the greyed out side, you can choose to use one of your actions to shore it up. You do so by flipping it back to its coloured side.

Give a Treasure card: You can choose to give a Treasure card to one of your team mates, maybe if they have more of one Treasure or are closer to the tile your need to get it, in which case you can make one of your actions giving them a treasure card from your hand. You must be on the same tile to do this

Acquire a Treasure: If you find yourself with four of the same Treasure card and on the corresponding tile to acquire it, you can do just that by discarding all four of the Treasure cards and taking the Treasure.

At the end of that players turn, they draw two cards from the Treasure Deck and the top two cards from the Flood Deck are flipped over revealing which tiles will start sinking. Players can only have a maximum of five cards in their hand so if you draw above five you must discard the difference. If a player is on a tile that needs to be flipped over, that player must swim to a adjacent tile, if they can't, the drown.

You win the game by gathering all the Treasures, all players getting to Fools Landing and using a Helicopter Lift cards to escape. Beware, you lose the game if;

- Both tiles with a matching unclaimed Treasure sink.

- Fools landing sinks.

 
- Or a player drowns.

Thoughts

I love this game, it's easy to set up, easy to learn/teach and it's a beautiful game. Yes, it's not as challenging as other games but it's good for all ages and if you need a challenge, try bumping the starting water level higher. Ultimately I think most players will enjoy Forbidden Island even if it's just it's charm and art style and I would definitely recommend it even just on re-playability.


If you want to try Forbidden Island for yourself, head down to your local games and hobbies store and I'm sure they'll be happy to oblige. In the mean time, keep checking back to Game Changers for more gaming news and updates.

Carcassonne

 

Carcassonne is a tile based board game made now by Zman Games but in the past was published by Rio Grande. Carcassonne is one of the best board games I have ever played and I feel it still is one of the best board games out there despite being around now for seventeen years. It won the Spiel des Jahres and the Deutscher Spiele Preis awards back in 2001 and since its release has gained many expansions.

In Carcassonne, players take turn to place tiles creating roads, castles and monasteries to then place followers on them gaining points. Other than that there isn't much more to say, but the beauty of Carcassonne is that its simple to understand and almost impossible to master.

Getting Started and game play:

Each player chooses a colour and takes all the followers of that colour, there should be eight of each.
To start with, there is one start tile placed face up in the middle of the table with 71 other tiles shuffled and placed face down. Players then take it in turn taking a tile from the face down pile and connecting it to already placed tiles; you must find a place to connect the tile you have drawn correctly for example, a road can only be attack to another road, castle piece to a castle and grassland to other grassland. If you don't think a tile can be placed, all players have to agree to this and then the tile is put back and another is drawn. This element of the game ensures that no two games of Carcassonne will ever look the same resulting in variety and constantly changing game play challenges.

When players place the tile they have drawn, they then have the option of placing a follower on that tile (followers can only be placed on the most recent tile that player laid). There are four forms of placing your followers:



Standing on a road; This means that the follower you have placed is now a thief. Once the road is complete, meaning once it has two ends, any thieves on the completed road are removed and points are scored.

Standing in a castle; These followers are knights. Once the castle that they have been placed in is complete, the knights are removed and points are scored.

Standing on a monastery; The followers placed on a monastery tile are called monks. Once a monastery has been surrounded by a 3x3 grid of tiles, the monks are removed and points are scored.

Laying down in a field or on grassland; These followers are called farmers. Once you play a farmer they don't get removed until the end of the game when points are scored.

Scoring Points:

Points score differently for different followers and the number of tiles as seen below:
(Banners are represented by a little shield on some of the tiles)
    

 Completed during play points:

Castle: 2 points per tile + 2 points per banner.

Road: 1 point per tile.

Monastery: 1 point + 1 point for each surrounding tile.

Fields: Not scored.

Game End points:

Castle: 1 point per tile + 1 point per banner.

Road: 1 point per tile.

Monastery: 1 point per tile.

Fields: 3 points for each completed castle bordering the field.

                    
If more than one coloured follower occupies a castle, the player with the most of their coloured followers occupying that castle gets the points. If players are tied for the number of followers occupying the castle, the castle is contested and the points are split.
Similarly for thieves. Most of the time there cannot be more than one thief per road, however if a player places a tile and then a thief upon it and another player places a tile that is unconnected also with a thief on it, if the two pieces road become one road it is then contested and the points split.

Thoughts:

As I said, I feel that Carcassonne is one of the best board games you will ever come across and stands up as one of the greats of all time. Its simplicity and aesthetic is very engaging and the game itself is very rewarding, being able to find the perfect place to put your tile for maximum points and even playing a longer game with your farmers to give yourself a massive points boost at the end of the game. I have played many a game of Carcassonne and still go back for more and with the many expansions, ranging from a more basic Inns and Cathedrals to Abbey and Mayor to Princess and Dragon to Under The Big Top, there is so much to keep the game fresh with each expansion adding more followers, tiles and some, like Under The Big Top, adding new elements like animal pieces and a circus tent. I can almost guarantee that you will have a lot of fun with Carcassonne and the replayability is fantastic as, like I said, no two games of it are the same, with different branching roads, vast fields for your farmers to lazily lie in or weirdly shaped castles for your knights to wonder around. I would urge lovers of board games that haven't already picked it up to go and get Carcassonne, you wont regret it.

I hope this look at Carcassonne has given you some insight into the game if you haven't had much experience with it before and maybe the need to try it out for yourself. If so head down to your local games and hobbies store and I'm sure they will be more than happy to give you a demo of the game, but until then, keep checking back to Game Changers for more gaming news and updates.

Century: Spice Road

Century: Spice Road is the first game in a series were 2-5 players act as merchants that trade in mysterious and lucrative spices, traveling along the spice road in their caravans looking for trading opportunities.

Setting up:

First, shuffle and place the orange backed cards in the center of the table between all players and reveal the top five cards, placing them in a row to the left of the deck. These cards are the points cards and will have numbers on them relating to how many victory points they reward you with.

Above the card on the far left place gold coins equal to two times the number of players, for example in a 2-player game you would place four gold coins above it, and above the card to its immediate right, the second in line, place the same amount of silver coins. 

Next, just below the row of five points cards and the orange deck, shuffle and place the purple backed cards, this is known as the Merchants deck. First remove all the purple bordered cards in the deck depicting two yellow cubes and two grey cubes with an upwards arrow (there should be five of each). Reveal the top six cards and place them in a row below the points cards. 

 

Then place along the side next to the cards four bowls filled with different coloured cubes representing the spices you will be trading in the game, making sure to keep them in order, Yellow at 

the bottom, or to the left, then Red, next is Green and finally, Brown.

 

Take the purple bordered cards, five with two yellow cubes and five with two grey cubes and an upward arrow on them, that you removed previously and give one of each to each player, these cards are each players hands. 

To decided who goes first, there is a selection of five grey backed cards called the caravan cards, each with ten spots for cubes on them and one with a symbol in the bottom right hand corner. Take as many cards as needed, making sure to include the card with the symbol on it, equal to the number of players, and remove the rest. Shuffle the caravan cards and get each player to pick one. The player who picked the caravan card with the symbol in the bottom right hand corner of the card is player one.  

Player one receives and places on their caravan card three yellow cubes, then moving clockwise, each player takes cubes corresponding to the numbers below


 

Each cube takes up one space on your caravan card.


 

Playing the game:

The aim of the game is to get the most victory points from the points cards you can purchase with spices you have collected. You do this by using the cards you have in your hand, at the start it is just the two cards purple bordered cards, to gain and upgrade spices. You can gain cards from the Merchant card row to boost abilities you can do and provide you with more spices to use. In each players turn, that player can choose one of four actions,

Acquire - On your turn you may pick up one of the cards in the Merchants row, allowing you access to more spices. You can either take the first card, the card farthest to the left, for free or, if you wanted something else in the row, you can place a spice on each card to the left of the card you want. For example, if I wanted the third card in the row, I would have to place two of my spices from my caravan card onto the first and second card, one on each, of the Merchants row. If a player would pick up a card in the Merchants row with a spice on it, that player gets the spice in addition to the card. You can pick up as many Merchant cards throughout the game as you like. When a card has been taken from the Merchant row, slide all the cards to the right of that card up, creating a gap on the far right hand side of the row and then reveal the top card from the Merchants deck to fill the space.

Play - To play a card, you take it from your hand and place it in front of you, action the effect of that card represented in the top left hand corner. As long as a card is in front of you, you cannot replay it, but it will allow you to gain more cards.

Rest - Instead of playing a card or acquiring a card, you can pick up all cards that you have previously played to use in the coming turns.

Let's take a look at the two cards you start with.



Every time you play this card in your turn you are able to pick up and place on your caravan card two yellow cubes.

When you play this card, you can use the spices you have on your caravan and turn them into other spices.

There are three types of card you can play;

A spice card - These cards are represented by an amount of cubes in the top left corner of the card and it indicates how many spices you can take from the bowl, like one of the cards you start the game with. For example, if a card has four yellow cubes in the top left corner, that means you can take four yellow cubes, putting them on vacant square on your caravan. Your caravan has ten spaces for spices so if you end up having more than ten, you must put any excess back of your choosing.


 

An upgrade card - The upgrade cards are indicated by an amount of cubes in the top left of the card with an arrow pointing upward. These cards allow you to take a number of cubes, corresponding to the amount on the card, and replace them with other cubes. For example, if a card had two cubes and an arrow pointing up, like the other card you start with, and you have two yellow cubes, you can take both of them and replace them with two red cubes. Alternatively, you could take just one of your yellow cubes and, instead of going to the next spice up, move two bowls up and take one green cube. Obviously, this doesn't mean you always have to upgrade yellow cubes, the upgrades apply to to all coloured cubes and the number of cubes on the upgrade card corresponds to how far you can go up the chain as well as how many you could take.


 

A trade card - Trade cards are shown by two amounts of cubes in the top left corner of the card separated by a downward arrow. What this means is when you play a trade card you can take the cubes, corresponding to the ones above the arrow and replace them with the ones underneath the arrow. Trade cards are similar to upgrade cards, but where they only let you gain cubes from up to the next two above whichever you chose to upgrade, trade cards could net you some extra cubes and of multiple different colours. Trade cards can also be used multiple times, providing you have the necessary cubes, in the same action they were played. For example, if you play a trade card that depicts two yellow cubes above the arrow and one green cube below the arrow, you can trade two yellow cubes for one green cubes. Then if you have two more yellow cubes, you can immediately trade them in for another green cube, this must be in the same action as playing the card and cannot be done again later until you play another trade card. You can acquire trade cards from the bottom row of face up cards.



A point card - Point cards are what you need to win the game and can be acquired from the top row of face up cards. Each point cards has an amount of coloured cubes along the bottom of the card, this is the cost to acquire them. For example, if a point card has two yellow cubes, one red cube and one green cube at the bottom of the card providing you have all the correct cubes, you can spend them to acquire a point card. Any cubes spent on these go back into the corresponding bowls. If you acquired the card beneath the set of gold coins, you get one of those gold coins with the point card and the same is true for acquiring the card beneath the silver coins. When a point card is acquired by any player, you must slide the other point cards to the left and replace the empty space at the far right with a card from the top of the orange deck.

Once a player has acquired a fifth point card in a four or five player game, or their sixth card in a two or three player game, each other player then gets one more turn before the game ends.

Scoring:

Each player totals the number on all the point cards they have acquired and adds three points to the total for each gold coin and one point for each silver coin they have also acquired. Players also gain one point for each spice they have on their caravan that isn't yellow. The player with the most point wins and just in case there's a tie, the tied player that last took a turn wins.

Thoughts:

I absolutely love this game. I think there is a lot going on here, between keeping track of what point cards and merchant cards your opponents have acquired and managing your spices, Century does keep you on your toes. The game is really intuitive however, being very easy to grasp with everything set out in visual form and the colours of both the cards and spices add a nice aesthetic to everything. I would highly recommend Century: Spice Road to people looking for a game full of variety and forward thinking along with a lot of replayability. Any board game player will be very happy with Century: Spice Road and its very easy to get your friends into as I said above, its very easy to grasp and easy to teach.

I hope this look at Century: Spice Road has given you a look into the experience of the game and maybe even made you want to pick it up for yourself. If that's the case, head to your local games and hobbies store and inquire. Until then though, keep checking back to Game Changers for more gaming news and updates.