Buccaneer (1938)

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3084/buccaneer

Game Box

Well this weekend we decided on a classic game originally published in 1938! The version that we played was a much later version dated 1975. This Waddingtons game was actually manufactured right here in New Zealand by Thos. Holdsworth in Auckland.

The original version of this game catered for up to 6 players, but this one was only up to 4. Not so great for modern larger families.

Game Board and components

Anyway in this game you are a swashbuckling pirate on the high seas collecting booty (treasure) from around the board. There are a number of ways to do this and each treasure has a value to it between 2 and 5 points. the objective is to be the first player to have 20+ points in your home port!

Sailing Strength 13, Fighting Strength 7

So you start off in your home port with an empty boat and a motley crew to sail your vessel to steal and pillage. Your crew is made up of numbered cards with between 1-3 crew on each card. The total value of crew is your sailing strength and represents the maximum squares you can sail (in a straight direction only) on each turn (there are NO DICE!!!). The crew are either red or black in colour and the difference in value between your red and black crew represents your fighting strength. In a battle on the seas the winner of a fight is the player with the greatest fighting strength irrespective of sailing strength. More of that later.

Trading Goods / Crew

There are six ports on the board, four player home ports and two trading ports. At the beginning of the game a small amount of crew and treasure are loaded into the two trading ports and  both crew and treasure is available to any player to trade with (once in the port) in exchange for either crew or other treasure of the same value. This allows you to re-jig your crew colour wise or swap treasure to a more desirable type.

Treasure Island / Chance Cards

So you start off sailing to Treasure Island in the centre of the board to pick up chance cards that generally are either good or bad. The good ones allow you to pick up treasure or crew cards and the bad ones usually result in loss of either of those and sometimes result in movement of your boat away from Treasure Island. Once you've loaded up your goodies (max of 2 treasures per trip) you return to your port to deposit them. 

Treasure 'Safe' Chest

If you manage to get three of one type of treasure in your home port you can then move them into a safe chest that prevents any other ships sailing into your port and trading them away. This is quite important as once the game gets going one of the safest ways to get treasure is to trade excess crew for treasure in a port. The other way is to pirate it from any other ship that you like on the board. If you manage to sail your ship on an intercepting course with another you can challenge it to a duel. the winner (with the greatest fighting strength) gets to keep all the treasure (or up to two crew cards), any excess treasure going overboard back to the island.

Sailing off to plunder some booty

So there is some strategy to this game and despite the amount of luck with the cards the games tend to be quite close. As a competitive game the players are always aware of how well the other players are doing and it is often a case of ganging up to stop the leading player (as much as you can) to hinder their progress in the game. 

So component wise this version of the game doesn't do so great compared to the earlier versions. Unfortunately for this review I actually owned a much earlier version of this game and the components in that version were some of the best play components I have ever come across. I won't go into detail here but do check out the photos of some earlier games on the link above to see what I mean. This copy of the game was obviously produced to a price point and the quality of the components is not good, but they are just playable. Small plastic boats and jewels along with very thin cards. 

Blue Galleon with Rum & Gold

Well onto the two games we played. The first one to be fair was more about how the game played and the advantages or disadvantages of various strategies. The second game was more cut throat or at least it was for one of our players whilst one of the others just got on collecting her treasure and subsequently won the game! Play time was approx 45 mins per game so quite reasonable.

I would say overall a good game for all the family, with the pirate theme enjoyed by all. Although the grandeur of the earlier versions have now been well and truly watered down the mechanics of the game still mean it is a good game. Considering this game is nearly 80 years old it has stood the test of time really well.

The Good Points

• Easy to understand rules and board
• Great card mechanics and no dice (remember this was designed in the 1930's!)
• Cool pirate theme
• Fairly balanced close game play.
• A fair bit of player interaction and commenting on the fate of each ship!

The Not So Good Points

• Only 2-4 players on this version
• Questionable component quality and maybe not enough crew cards
• Can be a bit confrontational for some players (could be good, could be bad!)

So votes from the Family

John 6.5/10

Joanne tba/10

Michael 8.5/10

Rachael 8/10

Andrew n/a

Overall average 7.7

Bermuda Triangle (1976)

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2296/bermuda-triangle

Game Box

Well it was another wet weekend again and so this week we decided on another 70's classic, Bermuda Triangle.

As there were only four of us for this afternoon it was a good opportunity to play this 2-4 player game.

Based on the mysterious area in the Atlantic Ocean where literally dozens of ships have disappeared over the years, you are the owner of a shipping line moving your vessels between ports around the board. Once you reach a destination you are rewarded with payment for the commodity you have just delivered.

Board Setup Ready to Go

This payment varies per delivery although you always know what the next arriving ship will receive for their cargo. There are four ports and four commodities. The commodities vary in value, the most valuable being oil which to deliver you need to sail through the most dangerous part of the board, more details to follow! There is a bonus of $20,000 for each ship that gets to the home port on the board which is addition to commodity payment. The winner of the game is the first player to receive $350,000 in payments.

Cloud Spinner

So this is a fairly simple roll and move game with a standard die, where you decide each move, which of your four ships you should move. Once a round after everyone has had a turn the Bermuda Triangle Mystery Cloud gets to move. This is achieved by a spinner deciding how much and in what direction the Cloud will move this round.

The Dreaded Cloud

The Cloud is a large plastic vari-shaped object that sits, initially, in the centre of the board. Underneath and out of sight the cloud has two magnets attached to it which when moved over the board may (or may not) pick up a ship that unluckily gets in the cloud's way.

Yellow Ships THUNKED!

Oh did I not mention, each ship has a strong magnet attached to the top of it?!!! So if the Cloud moves over or near any one of your ships during its move everyone at the table tends to go very quiet awaiting the dreaded THUNK of magnet upon magnet as the unlucky ship is out of the game!

Board Showing Ports and Ships (And Cloud!!)

There is some strategy involved in the ship movements. If you land exactly on another ship you get to send this ship back to the previous port. Also you can block ports by deciding NOT to sail from that port and effectively forbidding entry by any approaching ship, including your own so be careful! Also as everyone can see the amount the next ship that docks at any of the ports will receive, you can therefore decide which ports to target first to receive the better reward.

Ships and Port

So component wise the game does fairly well. Good quality plastic ships with magnets. Sturdy cards and simple instruction sheet. Typical quality for 70's board games and has fared well 35 years on.

Well onto the two games we played. The first was to $200,000 (short game), the second to $350,000 (full game). Game-play was straightforward although we had some discussions over exactly how quickly the Cloud should be turned or moved as well as where on the board EXACTLY some ships were before the Cloud moved. The Cloud can also pick up ships in ports, so port docking positioning also became important, oh how competitive some games can become, Michael!

Both games were fun but the second became slightly too long, although the fact that some ports were empty of rewards before the end of the game meant that tougher decisions were needed to decide which ship to move.

Guess Who Won???

Andrew's Winning Hand

In the end Andrew triumphed, much to his delight he had beaten his father, and promptly exclaimed "that was the best game ever!" The rest of us thought it to be an okay game.

I would say overall a good light game for all the family, the short game better for excitement and closeness, and a game we will probably play again. Rules simple and the whole mystery Cloud eating ships mechanic seemed to amuse everyone except when it was one of their ships being disappeared(!)

The Good Points

• Easy to understand rules
• Nice colourful board with good quality components
• Although mostly luck, there is SOME strategy involved in each move
• FANTASTIC mystery Cloud with randomness of magnet
• Short game is fast and fun
• A fair bit of player interaction and commenting on the fate of each ship!

The Not So Good Points

• Not a huge amount of strategy involved, lots of luck
• Full game a bit too long
• Can be difficult to catch up if you are some way behind especially if being targeted by other players
• The bonus payment made no sense

Ready to Play Again?

So votes from the Family

John 6/10

Joanne tba/10

Michael 7/10

Rachael tba/10

Andrew 10/10

Overall average 7.7

(Some votes still to come!)

London Cabbie Game (1972)

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1581/london-cabbie-game

Game Box

Saturday afternoon, weather not great, perfect time for a family board game! Billed as "The Family Game in which players drive cabs around Central London", how could we resist!

On the box it has the following (taking up a third of the available space!)

A game for the whole family. And up to 6 players. You're a cab driver, driving your cab around an illustrated map of the centre of London. London as it really is. You'll have to be pretty smart at steering clear of the traffic jams. And keeping an eye out for the one-way streets. But if you pick up a measly tipper you'll just have to grin and bear it. Playing this game is almost like driving a cab for real, in fact. (There are no dice.) When a London cabbie, John france of Stoke Newington, was shown the game, he said "It's like the real thing alright. It's the last thing I'd like to play after a hard day's driving around town!"

Well they don't market and sell games like that any more!! This game is another one from the games vault and dates from 1972 game from Intellect Games (what happened to them?!). We got this game, I think, from a car boot sale at probably no more than $5.

So how does a game that is nearly 40 years old fare in the 21st century?

Game Components

First the component facts.

The box is a big solid box and in common with games from this time is designed to be the footprint of the folded board with the components contained in a large void under the board. The board itself is solid and well made, and boy is it big! The board folded out, ready for play, measures 58cm x 86cm!! You need a big table to play this game on.

The rest of the components are paper, card and plastic. There is paper money bills, plastic coins, good quality plastic coated cards as well as 12 really cute wee london taxi cabs (2 each of six colours). There are also 2 road block "traffic jams" signs.

All Ready to Go!

After a quick read of the rules, we were off. The main objective of the game is to accumulate money from picking up passengers from various points around London and then dropping them off at a place or landmark. Each player choses a starting place at the side of the board and starts with one cab (a second is available later in the game).

Then five random collection points are generated through "passenger" cards and each player races to collect the "fare" before another player. Once "picked up" the passenger then reveals his destination (by card again) and when you "drop" them off you get payment. This payment is made up of a fixed fare (on display on the board surface) as well as a random tip (generated by another card turn).

Trouble Ahead at Trafalgar Square

On each round of turns another random card generates a "traffic jam" blocking mechanic at up to two junctions on the board. Thus you can be blocked from moving through a junction you need to travel to get to your destination or indeed be blocked from moving at all if the jam is at a junction that you are presently at. (Joanne particularly enjoyed this aspect of the game as it caught her three times in a row at one junction!!!)

Rachael on the move!

So everyone has 20 moves per turn, each move equaling one square on the board. You can pick up and drop off as many times as you like per turn but you must move 20 squares. The only exception is if you are blocked. As you cannot pass another cab this ensures that early on you cannot deliberately block another player.

Once you have two cabs it is a different story! You also have to pick your route carefully as there are quite a few one way roads that can really annoy you, believe me! And as you can only turn around at a junction this means that you can travel quite a few extra squares than you need to if you get it wrong!

So you travel 20 squares per turn moving around the board collecting fares and tips. That's basically it. The game we played took around 90 minutes and would have been quicker if

Michael the Cabbie drops off at Victoria and claims victory!

1. The players were more familiar with the places on the board. It sometimes took us a minute or two just to find where the pick ups were!
2. The players thought a little more ahead, working out where their next fare was likely to come from BEFORE dropping off the existing fare!
3. One of the players wasn't cooking dinner at the same time!

Anyway the agreed victory condition was met in the end, and it was quite a close finish from three players, by Michael. (He then scored the game 9/10!!, I wonder what it would have been if he had not won???)

Overall not a bad family game.

The Good Points

• Easy to understand mechanics of movement
• No dice!!! Yeah!
• Big colourful board with good quality components
• Playable by up to 6 players.
• You set the victory conditions, either time based or money value.
• Different currency (GB Pounds) always good for discussion.
• Reasonably close competion throughout, no-one really had a big lead.

The Not So Good Points

• Not a great deal of strategy involved, a little more later in the game.
• Not so much player interaction, most of the turns you were only concentrating on your move.
• You need an understanding of London geography to better appreciate this game.
• There were some disagreement over u-turns being allowed or not.
• Tighter control of passengers and cabs when in two cab mode.

Andrew happy with the photo, not so much with the game!

So votes from the Family

John 6.5/10
Joanne 7/10
Michael 9/10
Rachael 7/10
Andrew 5/10

Overall average 6.9

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (2000)

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4077/who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire

Tonight we attempted to play "Who wants to be a millionaire". The board game of the game show that started in the UK and went on to become a worldwide hit. The version we played is based on the original version and so the questions were biased towards the UK and the monetary values were in £ (sterling). We picked this up at a charity shop or boot sale some years ago in the UK and it had been in game storage since.

In the game players rotate as "host", and after everyone has taken a turn as host, winnings are totaled. Players answer multiple-choice trivia questions of increasing difficulty, or may choose to stop and keep their winnings up to that point in the game as per the TV show. You may only accumulate winnings while NOT the "host" so in the rotated roles, just remember that if you are last to be "host" then that's it as far as your cash total.

The board game has replacement mechanics for the "ask the audience" and "phone a friend" features. These allow the board game to function similar to the actual TV and the rules for this appeared to be fairly straightforward. There are cards supplied to simulate both of these scenarios and if followed correctly the rules do a fairly good job at this. However during the game this evening these mechanics seemed almost impossible to follow in any structured format by those playing and, to be honest, proved to be a little frustrating particularly as this led to the opportunity for some to exploit the misunderstandings of others. Perhaps on another playing the format may work better, but the combination of youth (son and daughter playing alone) and age (mother-in-law) along with myself and Joanne resulted in a less than smooth gaming experience. There is also an opportunity to disrupt your fellow players, if you wish to, during these parts of the game.

As to the game itself. Played between 4-5 individuals or teams of similar levels of general knowledge and with a greater willingness to actually get on with the game, this would probably be a fairly quick light game. Probably 30-45 mins in total if played with attention, not the 90 minutes it took to slug our way to the end! Best played as a warm up in relaxed environment not the ultra competitive, win at all costs, fest that eventuated at the table tonight. 

The questions did get harder as the money went up and no-one on this play got higher than £125,000 which is probably about par for the difficulty of the game. The fact that the "money" was never real did detract a little from the game, after all it wasn't really £93,000 you were about to loose if you got the next question wrong!

Component wise the quality is okay. The plastic card holders that contain the question and answer (on the reverse) worked fairly well although someone did notice that even when placed face down on the table it could be possible to see if your opponent had selected a specific answer by the amount of orange that could be seen through the answer hole on the back! These card holders double as selection markers but again this was a little confusing as to whether the selection was the letter you had covered or left uncovered. (Uncovered if you're wondering). The cards are standard stock and easy to read. Double sided for two questions per card. The money is coloured depending on value and a good size. All components fit neatly and are organised well in the box.

Overall an average 5 out of 10. Might play again in a party setting with an older group, probably stick to something simpler and easier to play/understand with younger players.