A Tale of Two Meeples

Will do, if we get the chance! Good to know that about the loans, thanks. We played Takenoko wrong for years too. We all make mistakes, glad people were nice about it!

Why did this game feel so familiar? Bus & Stop, from Saashi & Saashi, has you take on the role of a busy bus driver, picking up and dropping off passengers. You try to gather up people heading to the same place, let them off in big groups, and score points for being efficient. Problem is, you can't stop people getting onto the bus that want to go somewhere else. At each stop you onboard all travellers with the same colour background, no matter their destination. They sit there, clogging up your seats, until you find a way to get rid of them! We found it to be a quick and clever filler game, with lots of fun moments. You're constantly balancing the need to take on passengers with the desire to only collect specific destinations, as well as racing to drop groups off and claim the best points possible for them. The game ends when you run out of scoring cards, so some clever late game drop-offs got me the win, while the others were still trying to unload bigger groups. We're only played the once, and at three rather than our usual two. At this player count there was plenty of fighting over specific cards, and a lot of laughs and table chatter as we dropped people off to Tennis, the Library or a shopping trip. I really enjoyed it, and not just because I won. About halfway through I realised that it shares a lot in common with Jaipur, in terms of managing which cards you take, what you leave for the other players, and when you decide to cash in for points. Given that's a favourite of ours, it's no surprise that Bus & Stop was a hit as well. With the very cute artwork that this designer is known for and a fun theme, it's one we'd recommend trying if you get the chance. #boardgames

We've played Azul dozens of times over the years, but one thing never changes - we don't force the endgame. Happily filling our boards, piling up points and collecting bonuses might not be the best way to win, but it's what we enjoy. It's only when the tiles leave us no choice that the game finishes. Imagine our shock when a friend quickly placed the final tile in a row, yelled "Zerg Rush" (too much playing Starcraft I think!) and grabbed an early victory, leaving us wondering what just happened. It's a totally valid way to play, but the way we felt about it taught us something. We learnt that we like knowing exactly how many turns are left in a game. We like to plan ahead, maximise each move and to build for a big finish. If the game ends abruptly we can feel kind of cheated of that experience. It's not that we can't handle a game with a variable end condition, and there are plenty we love that end when a certain score is reached or are a race to achieve something. It's just that if given the choice, we'll take a set number of turns over any other way of ending a game. What about you, do you prefer games with an end game condition or games with a set number of turns? #boardgames

First day of a convention, as everyone is rushing in, making a heap of noise and greeting old friends, is the perfect time to try and learn a game like Fields of Arle, right? 😂 It's a 2 player worker placement euro with a big table presence. Over 9 half-rounds we tried to be successful farmers, raising animals, adding buildings and trading the goods we produced We've already played a bunch of Uwe Rosenburg’s games with this theme, so were expecting more of the same - and in some ways, that's exactly what we got. In other ways it very much surprised us Your farmland starts quite small, with limited natural resources, so you have to carefully manage it. Whether that's by cutting peat to both clear land and warm your home, or building dykes to push back the water from your fields, it's a big part of the challenge in this game There is also a heavy emphasis on training, where you upgrade your skills or tools in certain areas to make them more powerful when you next take them. If your strategy relies on repeating an action it can really pay off Steph’s strategy was to focus on production, turning raw materials into valuable goods, then trading them with her horse and carriage. This put her in a great position both resource and point wise, and let her buy buildings I couldn’t afford I went with setting up pastures and raising animals. It gave me a steady supply of food and wool but I struggled to turn that into something really useful because I’d been neglecting the trading aspect of the game While it would take more plays to fully get to grips with all of the strategies you can take, we got to do a little bit of everything over the course of our play. We saw how much depth there is on offer and loved getting to try it out Steph may have taken the win, but we both had a great time. We just have to remember not to schedule this sort of game first up because with the frequent (and very welcome) chat breaks our 90 minute play took nearly four hours! #boardgames

Even messed up the rules to a game? We have, but rarely as badly as when we tried to learn Brass Birmingham! Set during England's industrial revolution, Brass has you trying to build up a network of transport and industry, using it to make profit and expand even further. Set up your empire of coal mines, iron smelters and transport links and watch the money roll in…well, that's the idea anyway. Money is where it all fell apart. For some reason we thought that each age was a single round, and so didn't collect income for the first five or six turns. I blame it on fatigue, we'd already spent the entire day learning games, and should have known better than to tackle something as big as this at night. While we got a lot of things right - we figured out how to build, how to consume resources, how to link towns to each other, and pretty much everything else, this one mistake put us in such a hole that the game turned into the sort of grind you should only endure if you’re a WoW player. I’m sure it’s not that way normally, or at least I hope not! We only played through the canal era, as suggested in the rulebook for the first play, and I would have liked to see what the higher level buildings and rail links added to the experience. Despite all the issues, there were brief moments when I did feel clever, like when placing one building managed to flip two others at the same time. I would have loved to see more of that but it wasn’t going to happen during this play. Will we give it another go? It’s hard to say, as it was pretty rough going this time around, but who knows. If we do we’ll make sure to play it correctly, and to give you our second impression! #boardgames

Interesting, you rate it above A Feast for Odin? We really enjoyed that too