19th Mar 2026 - Angel's Share
by Robin. Fri 20 Mar (Updated at Fri 20 Mar)There seem to be plenty of wars going on nowadays. Not generally a happy topic, but in the meantime it has been nice to see James, Michel and others getting a regular wargames group together at the club. Newport Pagnell Euro Games Club no longer! It was Conquest Of Paradise this week, but there have been various COIN and other GMT games featuring this year, and we now have Axis & Allies being advertised for the next games day.
Anyway, back in Euro land... I've actually got a new game to write about this time! For what else to do in a time of war but commodity speculation? Black Gold might be the most topical commodity, but not the most tasty. For that, we have Angel's Share, a game all about investing in whiskey.
When I first saw this game, I thought/hoped it would be one about making and/or drinking whiskey. It's actually a trading game, all about investing in "stock" and selling it at the best price, but it does share the kind of aging mechanics familiar from the winemaking games. So, part Vinhos, part 1830. For me, this is a good combination: like many trading games, it's very much about playing the other people, not playing against the game; but there are enough Euro mechanics in there to give you lots of options.
Karen had to drop out, but fortunately the others all made it - which meant we were speculating on Scotch, whereas for 2 or 3 players we'd have been in Kentucky speculating on Bourbon. As it was, we were travelling around the Scottish highlands, visiting distilleries and deciding whether to buy their whiskey. And that meant deciding whether their whiskey was going to go up or down in value.
In this game, there are broadly three things that determine the price of each whiskey: the age, the amount that's sold, and the quality of the whiskey. Visiting a distillery allows you a sneak preview of the quality of that year's whiskey (that's my excuse, anyway), which no-one else knows. And of course you have to visit the distillery to buy the whiskey. The value of what you've bought increases (usually) as it ages, but if subsequent outputs from that distillery are crap, the value will go down. And that's the rub: if (purely hypothetically) I have invested all my capacity in the red whiskey, and Matthew visits and discovers the latest output of the red distillery is crap, he can buy it and promptly sell it again, and crash the value of my investments. Who would do such a thing? I'll remember.
Ultimately, we're all trying to make the most money, so it comes down to that longstanding controversy at the club: is it more important to do the right thing for yourself, or to ruin it for others? If game theory is worth anything, you have to assume we're all trying to win the game to some extent. So you make your moves based on what everyone else is least likely to have a vested interest in ruining. That's why I (and Dave and Marko and hopefully others) are fans of games like Panamax and Chicago 1875, and very much why I like this game too.
Angel's Share seems to be a relatively low-profile new release, and so its rating on BGG is still skewed by the couple of angry people who gave it 1 out of 10. Not so for the other new game at the club this week, Recall, which has been given the thumbs-up by a much bigger band wagon. I'm sure it's lovely. All the usual suspects at the club have bought a copy. Looks like Terra Mystica but I'm sure that's just superficial. We also had Druids Of Edora at the club this week - not sure if it was a first visit? - but I didn't see it so can't offer any sarcastic commentary on that one.
Also saw old Euro favourite Autobahn and (very) old area-control favourite El Grande. And apparently Arcs was going on somewhere as well. Newport Pagnell Euro Games Club? Who said that?