The Yanks come over and help to save the world (except that this time - they really do........!!!!!!)

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Players: Gareth, James, Woody, Scott, Barrie, Emma, Jon, Paul, Barry, Vicky, Maynard, Ian, Johan, Noel, Tonio, Amelia

16 happy gamers turned up to the IBG tonight, including another of Paul’s friends, Amelia, who had come all the way over from Rhode Island in the US of A. She was actually a friend of Paul’s wife, whom he had hijacked to come along tonight, but to be fair, Paul needs to claim all the friends he can get. As Amelia sticks sharp implements into people’s bodies for a living, so we were careful to keep our distance….

Ticket to Ride is having a much-overdue renaissance at IBG, and combined with the usual fare of dice-rolling, auctions and random card games, it was another fun-packed evening. Oh, and we also herded up some elephants and saved the planet for good measure….

The early arrivees were 'rewarded' by being persuaded by Gareth to use up a number of precious minutes of their life to play -

5 Alive (thanks James)
Before I start can I just mention that Woody won this game… that’s WOODY… it just felt very important to make sure that everyone was aware of this fact early on in the session report. That’s all.
So, the game formally known as “5 Alive” (Board Game Rank: 5964) but recently rebranded as “Gareth’s Game” was brought out to start the evening for the lucky 5/6 people who’d turned up early enough. You would think by now everyone would have learned to disappear at the first sign of Gareth opening his bag and uttering the phase ‘I’ve got something new with me that I’ve not brought along before’… but as everyone was still scoffing their dinner any negative responses were muffled by the sounds of chips being devoured and so it was too late to hide under the table before the cards were being dealt. Pausing only to complete the weekly ritual of double checking Gareth’s rules explanation, and correcting 25% of them, the game commenced.
You remember that old card game… on your turn you play a card and then the next person plays either a matching number or suit etc… etc… etc… ? The one where everyone thinks they know the same game but it always transpires that they all play a different set of rules (So, Aces reverse the order… no, aces mean the next player picks up 3 cards… no, aces mean you can play another card unless the previous card was a 2 in which case the next player can only play the 7 of diamonds unless they’re jewish… etc)…? Well, this is that game but the designers also wanted to include a blackjack element so you have to play cards so that the total doesn’t go over 21. In a way, a nice analogy for the maximum age group that might be interested in playing this.
Everyone has 5 lives (nicely over-produced in the shape of 5 stick men on a plastic stand that don’t stand up properly anyways and so rend themselves pointless unless the players can’t count up to five… admittedly a risk in America where the game is made.....) (apologies to all our transatlantic blog-watchers....) and by doing things in the game such as going over 21,… or breathing… you lose a life. Play continues until someone loses 5 lives or no one is left breathing….
So, did I mention that Woody won yet ? Well it should come as no surprise that he was doing well in the early stages… and by mid game he was still ahead… not by much it should be said, but still winning… then as the end game approached Woody was looking more and more confident in his position before the final round. And then, while everyone else started to consider the option of losing through the stopping breathing end game scenario… Woody raced ahead to triumphantly seal first place and in a way I guess gain a sort of immortality at being best at ‘Gareth’s Game’…
Congratulations to Woody. The King of ‘Gareth’s Game’.
Woody won and the rest of us came 2nd to Woody

Avoiding Gareth’s ‘interesting’ card game, Jon produced his new copy of –

Botswana

This was a present from Jon to his 7 year-old daughter last weekend, but dad managed to sneak it out of the house to bring along this evening. It is a re-theming of Quandary / Loco, although the gameplay is exactly the same. However, it replaces those boring single colour tiles from Quandary, with a selection of nicely-sculpted miniature wild animals. Definitely an attractive feature for 7 year-old girls, and also apparently to Emma, who nearly fell off her chair in delight when she saw them. Sorry Emma – you had already signed up to Gareth’s ‘interesting’ card game – you’ll have to wait for another time to play with the animals…..
This game was played in 4 rounds, the first scoring incredibly highly (most of the animals ended on ‘5’), with Amelia shooting into an early lead. The next 2 rounds scored much lower, helped by Barry finishing the round off, even though his animals scored practically no points.
By this stage, Jon, Paul and Amelia were within a few points of each other, but in the last round, Paul just managed to manipulate the cards to his advantage and came out on top.
Paul 75; Jon 72; Amelia 67; Barrie 52

With a dreadful record at IBG of having played 4, lost 4, it was time for another go to cure some killer diseases –

Pandemic
This was new to Amelia, but Paul, Jon and Tonio managed to cobble together a rules explanantion that left her only slightly confused. Paul had chucked in one of the elements of the ‘On the Brink’ expansion, which identified one disease as ‘virulent’ and made it slightly worse every time an epidemic card was pulled out. But the easiest level was chosen, so spirits were high.
Things started well for the Anglo / Italian / American team, as they swiftly cured, and then eradicated the blue disease. The first epidemic card was drawn, and although it didn’t cause too may problems, it identified ‘Red’ as the virulent disease, which started to grow in intensity. Hotspots were breaking out in Johannesburg and Sau Paulo, but the team focussed on the black disease, which was also cured.
Meanwhile, the red disease was starting to spread wildly across Asia, and 3 members of the team were dispatched to the area to prevent a disaster. It was a battle that was on the edge, as at one point, the red cube supply sank to zero, and there was a desperate flurry of activity to treat the disease and get some cubes back into the supply. Tonio then came up with a master plan that would see himself and Paul fly to Bogata in order to swap some cards, with a view to curing Red and Yellow in a few turns time. Amelia was also shipped to this destination (leaving Jon to fight off the continent-engulfing red disease on his own) so that she could use her special ability to furnish Tonio with more cards.
The scene was now set – there were 2 diseases to be cured, but the world could be saved in 3 turns. However, there was still a final epidemic card to be revealed and only 6 cards left in the deck. Jon got lucky and after treating the red disease (think – sticking plaster on gunshot wound) he managed to avoid pulling the epidemic card, or causing any more Outbreaks (currently on 6). Tonio cured the Red disease and also avoided causing another epidemic, so it was left to Paul to relocate everyone in the same location for a team hug and cure the Yellow disease.
This had come down to the wire, as there were no cards left in the deck, and the bottom one was the elusive 4th Epidemic. And so it was proved – this game IS beatable (just) – and it’s a lot of fun into the bargain. Maybe it’s time to ramp up the difficulty and throw in a dastardly Bio-Terrorist for good measure……..
Amelia, Paul, Tonio, Jon – all won

And now time for a classic -

Ra (thanks Woody)
Barry, Emma & Woody sat down for a game of RA. Woody had never played and it was clear Emma & Barry were a little rusty on the rules. There were a few incidences of ‘oh, I nearly forgot’ and ‘another thing’ .... anyway, RA’s were everywhere and the first two rounds were over in shot .. which loosely translates into ‘Woody was very slow on the uptake and was still thinking of making his first bid when Round 2 was over’ ... a quick and low scoring game saw Emma win.
Emma 34; Barry 23; Woody 6!!!

After an enjoyable game through the islands of Venice in San Marco, Gareth, Barrie and Noel moved north for -

Ticket to Ride: Switzerland (thanks Noel for this report)
All had played several times online and on IPads before without the inconvenience of holding 47 cards (Barrie), placing trains, counting score or knowing exactly how those tunnel cards worked (Noel, Barrie).
Initial card selection gave Noel a couple of high scores if he completed the long journey from Austria through to France while Barrie and Gareth tried to get from Austria and Germany south to Italy.
Perhaps jaded from all the direct conflict earlier in San Marco this was a gentle affair with no aggressive blocking manoeuvres despite it definitely crossing Gareth's and Noel's mind on several occasions. Barrie stockpiled cards but failed on 3 occasions to get through a green tunnel with particularly unkind draws requiring 2 or 3 additional cards.
Tunnel cards were scarce during the latter half of the game but when Noel picked up two to complete his crossing into Austria he shortly after finished the game with two random 4 train routes, leaving Barrie and Gareth with an uncompleted route and trains in garage. Some non-automatic scoring after gave the win to Noel.
Noel 119; Gareth 82; Barrie 75

It's been a few weeks since we played this great card game -

7 Wonders (thanks to Maynard for this one)
This was new for Emma and Barry. James and Maynard explained the rules, and we started a quick round.
Maynard aimed for his favourite topic: the sciences. Nobody else seemed to be going for them and he amassed 28 points for these. A last-minute arms race avoided too many military losses, and he finished with a total of 49.
Vicky had a more balanced strategy, picking up quite a few blue VP cards, the three wonders and a few armies, also finishing with 49.
Emma was initially learning the various symbols, and ended up with 20 blue points, a set of sciences for 10, some military victories and one wonder, finishing on 40.
James took a pacifist approach, only building armies at the end, but not enough to avoid defeat from Barry and Maynard. He also had a more balanced strategy, including a purple card that leeched science card points from Maynard. This left him with 42 points.
Barry went for the aggressive military strategy (with help from his second wonder) and gained 18 points on red. A balanced selection of almost everything else gave a winning score of 53.
Barry 53; Maynard 49; Vicky 49; James 42; Emma 40

With the world-savers having waited for the 7 Wonders crew to finish, there were now a number of IBG’ers looking for something fun to do. And what is nore fun than rolling a shed-load of dice to determine who should be the –

King of Tokyo

This was a 6-player game which meant that Tokyo Bay came into play, allowing 2 monsters to potentially be in Tokyo at the same time. The game started in a predictable fashion, with some hit-and-run raids into Tokyo. James decided that card-accumulation was the name of the game, and managed to purchase a card that allowed him to heal other players in return for a non-negotiable 2 energy cubes. This had the twin effect of keeping everyone’s health up, whilst allowing James to purchase even more cards.
Amelia and Barry were focussing on collecting points, but Tonio was the first player to allow his health to fall to a dangerously low level. Jon was without mercy and rolled the requisite 4 attack symbols to finish him off.
The next time round, Paul and Jon were both in Tokyo, and it was James who was down to only 3 health points (despite having a veritable deck of cards in front of him.) Jon only needed to roll 3 attacks in 18 dice but failed to roll a single one! James, Amelia and Barrie heaved a sigh of relief, as a combined attack from both Jon and Paul could have wiped them all out, but James used his lucky survival to punish Paul and kill off his character.
However, all this macho behaviour was in vain, as Barry was only 3 points from victory and had a card which effectively gave him 3 re-rolls. He proved to be a far better dice-roller than Jon and sealed the points victory with a roll to spare.
This was a fun game again, and the fact that any of the players could have been eliminated near the end kept it tense and interesting. As long as James keeps bringing it, I think that it will get played…
Barry 20 points (5 health); Amelia 14 (8); Jon 10 (3); James 5 (3); Paul – dead; Tonio – dead

It was 10.45pm, and Barrie vetoed The Resistance, and so the final game of the evening to hit the table was –

Felix the Cat in the Sack

Rather than play with James’ slightly dubious Chinese version, Jon had brought along his newly acquired German copy, where, for some reason, Felix is called Filou.

Anyway, the long and the short of it was that Jon bid too high too early, and effectively put himself out of the rest of the game. Barry spent much of game collecting coins, and despite then picking up a zero-value collection of cards for 12 coins, he finished with a flourish, picking up 20+ points for a song.

But it was James who came out on top, after having not picked up a single card, but simply taken coins all game. Just goes to prove – there is more than one way to skin a cat……..

James 50; Barry 47; Paul 41; Jon 33; Amelia 23

Also played tonight, but with no details were:

Ticket to Ride: Europe

Gareth 119; Scott 118; Maynard 108; James 101; Vicky 83

San Marco

Barrie 70; Johan 60; Noel 56; Gareth 50

Revolution

Ian 187; Barry 111; Johan 89; Noel 72

Alien Frontiers

Ian 11; Woody 8; Scott 7

And that was it - the bar-staff were collecting glasses and it was time to wend our merry way home. For some, a short skip across Isleworth, for others, a 3316 mile trip across the ocean. Whatever – we’ll be back again next week….

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Monster Raving Loonies.....

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Players: Gareth, Philip, John, Scott, Jon, Paul, James, Paul A, Andy, Barrie, Woody, Emma, Tonio, Amanda

14 IBG’ers assembled for some more dice-rolling, token-flicking, card-collecting, cube-manipulating fun. It was a very warm welcome to our latest recruit, Amanda, who was dragged along by Scott. However, she stayed for the whole evening and even made noises about returning again, so we obviously didn’t frighten her too much. Scott even chose not to play anything by Martin Wallace, to make sure that she was broken in gently…..

Tonight was the night when the 2011 Formula D season got underway (the 2010 season was rather truncated, so we’ll see how this one goes….) and the dice were also in evidence in many of the other games. There was also the introduction of a monster-ravaging filler based in Japan, and James sulked because he didn’t have enough flicking to do. Ho hum……

Tonio had press-ganged the early birds into playing Terakh, and I think that James may be telling about this ‘experience’ at a later date…. The next few to arrive sat down for some good old-fashioned dice-rolling fun -

Perudo
This was new to Amanda, who did very well to pick up the concept and concentrate on the game whilst also trying to eat her dinner. Jon proclaimed himself to be ‘rubbish’ at it, but then proceeded to do rather well. Scott started strongly but then called Amanda a liar once too often and paid the price (and lost some dice into the bargain…..) Paul A was the first to lose all his dice, closely followed by Scott, then Amanda. At this point, Gareth had 2 dice, Jon 1. With Gareth rolling two 4’s, and Jon a 6, Jon had nowhere to go and Gareth was duly victorious.
Gareth -1st; Jon – 2nd; Amanda – 3rd; Scott – 4th; Paul A – 5th

After last week’s successful (if rather long) introduction, James had brought back –

Catacombs
This time, Paul and Jon teamed up to defeat James as the Dungeon Master, controlling his hordes of evil minions including the Gorgon. Paul and Jon worked well as a team, blasting their way through the early rooms without much trouble. James looked on patiently. Paul and Jon then bought some new equipment and fought through another room. James looked on impatiently. Paul and Jon then used their cash to heal themselves, almost back to their starting levels. James looked on in a kind of apathetic sulk.
Then came the final room. James came out of his stupor and brought out the Gorgon, whose special ability meant that she could incapacitate an adventurer on one turn, then kill them on the next. Jon’s Barbarian went beserk straight away, but made the almost fatal mistake of not picking on the Gorgon, but instead took out some of the lesser monsters. This meant that James was able to then kill off the Barbarian and the Thief, before the Wizard summoned forth a helpful skeleton to distract the Gorgon and allow the Archer to get in a final killing blow.
Several things were evident from this game:

• There is not a lot for the DM to do in the earlier rooms if the Adventurers are semi-competent.
• The game is still a bit long for what it is.
• We (and by ‘we’, I mean ‘James’) got a couple of rules wrong which favoured the Adventurers.

The general post-game discussion concluded that maybe the game would be better (and quicker) if just the last 2 rooms were used, and the Adventurers started on slightly less health. This would give the same game experience, but might help alleviate the problem of sulky Dungeon Masters….
Jon and Paul (Adventurers) – victorious; James (sulky DM) – not victorious

And now time for some serious dice-rolling -

Formula D (thanks Scott for this report)
Gareth finally got to restart his wish of starting a Formula D tournament, maybe one day we will get past the basic rules, but for this one with 7 of us and most new to it, even more streamlined rules were used. We each got a car with 18 points of damage to use up which you can use however you like so you haven’t got a specific allocation for tyres and engine etc.
Playing in starting position order Gareth (how convenient he rolled a 20), Woody, Tonio, Scott, Paul, Amanda, Emma.
Like usual it can be quite tricky to change your positioning in the game unless someone rolls far too high for a corner and loses some momentum to allow you to overtake; unless you are someone like Gareth who rolls exactly what he needs to reach the next corner and he stayed in the lead throughout. He was crowned victorious with ease, the rest of us had some other racers to deal with and it would often end up quite clogged on the corners and most of the straights with lots of dice rolling to see if you’d damaged your neighbour. Much to Emma’s disappointment, to take damage you need to get 1-4 on a D20 - she always looked to see if the number 4 had slipped out of the damage area every time she rolled one.
Woody has been awarded with most disappointing racer for starting in second and then slipping back a place on almost every corner, perhaps he wanted to be next to Emma who he tussled with on and off the track. Perhaps it was the complicated rules that after reading them for 5 seconds realised that we had explained all the information he ever needed to know - change gear up or down, roll dice, move car. Repeat.
Scott came under Tonio’s fire early on for not taking Amanda’s turn for her (something Woody had been hounded for, “Don’t move my car” was Emma’s favourite saying of the night) and letting her decide for herself how adventurous she attempted to be on the corners. It looked like it could all go pear shaped at the start but it soon reined in and she competed with Tonio for third place after Scott was hot on Gareth’s heels. Sadly, Tonio got the third place and his smile was firmly planted as he got to stand on the podium.
Paul managed a consistent race starting and finishing in fifth place although at some points he was gaining and others falling far behind but Woody and Emma did a good job ensuring they were in the bottom two. Emma tried to overtake Woody on the last corner (with a 0% chance of success as Woody was a step ahead having already stopped twice on the last corner) and having quite a battered car anyway it was death or glory. Emma picked death.
Gareth – 1st; Scott – 2nd; Tonio – 3rd; Amanda – 4th; Paul – 5th; Woody – 6th; Emma – Did not finish

This was the last outing for the GOTM –

Troyes (thanks to Philip for this one)
A four player game, three of us had played before. The new player, Barrie, was starting player, followed by me, John and Andy. Initial setup saw me taking 2 White and 2 Yellow, Barrie taking 2 Red and one of each, John 2 Yellow and one of each and Andy 2 White and 1 of each.
The cards were revealed, and the events removed one of Barrie’s meeples from the Palace and lost everyone 3 money. Barrie saw off the one Black die and attacked the money losing event. I bought into the Miller, as did John. Andy used the Archer. Barrie also used the Archer, finishing off the event he was fighting. There was a rush to get cubes into the cathedral and I placed a 3rd meeple in the Bishopric.
Second round cards were Templar (1 White die to 2 Red dice) Blacksmith (Boost red dice) and Hunting (get influence from Red dice). The events knocked a grey meeple out of the Palace (effectively locking us out from the 1,2,3 palace spaces) and a cube off the Cathedral- mine as it happened.The Black dice defeated, I raised some money through the Miller, now giving me 6 gold for every 4 Yellow pips. Archery continued, Andy taking a couple of events and Barrie one. I bought into the Priest. The others favoured the Blacksmith, one of them Hunted, and there were various meeples entering buildings and pushing out other meeples. One of the pushed out meeples was one of mine in the yellow building, and I spent my last influence rerolling a yellow die to put him back in.
Third round cards were Pilgrimage (points from dice of any colour) Joust (points for having most red dice in front of you) and the Sculptor (Yellow dice to VPs). The events included lose 2 influence, which didn’t affect me, but zero influence was still not a good place, so I bought some red dice and went Hunting, pulling a meeple from the Yellow building. Having Hunted I was able to go into Sculptor, using the Priest to boost my VPs. The others continued their onslaught on the event cards, with Andy taking Templar for future use. I was able to reoccupy the Yellow building later in the turn.
That set the course for the rest of the game. My white dice were used on Priest and to get me 3 cubes in the Cathedral (fortuitously, one on each level). Yellow dice raised money with Miller If necessary but mainly went into Sculptor, earning 7-8 VPs per batch with the +9 boost from Priest. I used Hunting one more time when low on influence and also invested in Pilgrimage. Everyone else merrily fought the event cards, with some diversification into Pilgrimage and Sculptor. On turn 5, with the lead coming up, I put a meeple in the Palace to fight off the Black die. The game ended awash with money and with the other three players high in influence. John had also placed one cube on each level, but Andy and Barrie had only one level taken and so lost 4 VPs each. The character cards were Cubes in the Cathedral (me), Money (John) , Event cards (Andy) and Influence (Barrie).
Philip 50; Andy 47; Barrie 45; John 40

This game saw a clash between two styles of play that have been denounced as broken on BGG, the Archer and the Sculptor+Priest (Or Monk). Despite the apparent victory of Sculptor, I would observe that most of the players were concentrating on red dice and event fighting, while I had little competition for yellow and white dice- in particular no one tried to dislodge me from the Bishophric.

And now - yet more dice -

King of Tokyo (thanks again Scott)
The game of giant monsters battling it out over Tokyo, their traditional stomping ground. At this point Paul decided he would get going  (he has a long drive back to Isleworth and all...) leaving the remaining six of us from Formula D to take arms against each other.
There are two ways to win the game - be the last monster standing or the first to 20 victory points. On your turn you roll six dice and you get two chances to re-roll. There are 1’s, 2’s, 3’s, energy, healing and attack on the sides. The numbers are easy; if you get three or more of them you score that many points plus 1 point per extra dice, four 1’s will get you two points. Each dice with a heart heals one damage up to your maximum of 10 (you can’t heal if you are crushing buildings inside Tokyo), you can collect energy which can be used to purchase special power cards (extra dice, bonus actions/healing/ VPs etc. – it’s a huge deck, you’ll probably not see all the cards in even a handful of games).
The attacking is very strange, as you don’t pick a player to attack as such. If you are the first person to roll attack symbols then you go into Tokyo (you get 1VP for entering Tokyo – the board that comes with the game is purely to stand up your creature and clearly show that he’s in Tokyo), after that if anyone rolls attack dice then they attack everyone inside Tokyo (except if they are in Tokyo and they attack everyone outside Tokyo), with 5 or 6 monsters alive there is room for two in Tokyo and after that point only one. If you get attacked in Tokyo you have the option of running away, allowing you to heal and less likely to be targeted but if you are brave enough to stick around you get 2VP at the start of your turn if you are still in Tokyo.
We all selected our monsters and began (they look different but they all operate in the same way). Emma quickly selected the ‘cute’ dragon despite it being called Mega Dragon, the shame that Emma has now inflicted upon his reputation will see him shunned from anywhere half decent worth fighting over.
At first we all seemed quite eager to attack, that was until Tonio started collecting cards to hurt us more and successfully rolling lots of attacks, after which point we spent most of the time recovering from Tonio’s fiery breath (*insert your own joke here*). Gareth built up some extra healing and after an early stint in Tokyo for points was then just sitting by the wayside rolling 3’s and hearts.
Scott spent most of the game collecting energy for cards and keeping alive from all the attacks but by the time he had a fist full of special powers the game was nearly over. Amanda did her best impression of an evil monster performing regular attacks on Tokyo but quickly fleeing to heal.
Emma’s cute dragon didn’t fare very well and was the first to die, we suspect of shame. Woody dealt the final blow and this was quickly followed by Woody’s demise at the hands of Tonio - those two just can’t play nicely...
The VP totals were getting quite high and it was close between those alive - well not Scott, who forgot about the winning conditions while he was getting juiced up.
In a bizarre twist of fate, we let Gareth win yet another game; this makes three in a row and some sort of record most likely. Scott blamed the dice since they had been a vital feature in all the games thus far this evening.
Gareth 21; Amanda 17; Tonio 15; Scott 6; Woody & Emma - Deceased

After reading John’s session report from 2 weeks ago, Jon had asked if he could have a go at -

Biblios
This game was new to both Barrie and Jon, so John did a good job of explaining the relatively simple rules. During the game, not a lot of positive church cards came up, so the dice tended to lose their value rather than gain. This is a difficult game to play well on a first outing, as it is not clear how many cards of each set you need to pick up to ensure a majority. There is a player aid on the inside of the box lid describing the card distribution, but it is the most ridiculously obtuse aid I’ve ever seen, and may as well have been giving directions to the nearest McDonalds for all the sense I could make out of it.
Anyway, when push came to shove, Barrie misunderstood the scoring, and collected tons of just one colour, Jon tried to collect 3 colours (but not enough of any of them to score) whilst John and Philip scored with 2 colours each. However, John’s colours had higher dice values which mean that he had won. Some interesting mechanics, and a quick play time, so definitely worth another outing.
John 7 (3+4); Philip 5 (2+3); Barrie 2; Jon 0

We now hopped on the IBG merry-go-round, and when it stopped, Paul and James hopped off together -

Yomi (thanks Paul)
Paul had been wanting to play Yomi for a while, due to Tom Vasel's rave reviews on the Dice Tower and had arranged for a couple of decks to be shipped from the US with some incoming friends. In the meantime, James magically came up with a full set so they met early with the aim of playing the two player game before anyone else arrived. Tonio was there early too, and being the kind hearted peeps they are, fell for his sob story and agreed to play the game that he has been asking people to play for weeks.
Later on that evening, P&J managed to manoeuvre themselves into a place where they could play the two player game without feeling too antisocial.
Yomi is a fighting card game. The word means 'reading' in Japanese - like 'reading you opponent's next move'. Each deck is a character and is filled with attacks, throws, dodges and blocks. It is unashamedly 'rock, paper, scissors' (as played by 2 potential candidates in this week’s “Apprentice”) in as much as each move will beat something else, but also be beaten by something else. Players can also throw combos together and of course each character has their own special ability to be able to, well do something rather special.
Each player starts with 100 hit points, and the first to bring their opponent down to zero of less wins. In Paul's case his character could play three aces and inflict 45 damage.
James decided to play the part of a gambling panda, so his special ability was to do random stuff if he managed to inflict damage, so piling on the misery.
Only one round was played and it was a learning experience. There is a good mix of luck and skill, but both left thinking that to play really skilfully, you'd need to know how to really get the best from your deck in terms of combinations and also to know the weak points in your opponents deck. There is a lot to it that wasn't apparent from the rules, but was very apparent when confronted with two decks of unfamiliar cards.
Paul ended up winning as he managed to unleash his 45 point attach mid-game, and although James made a valiant effort to claw back, it was never going to be sufficient. But the scores were really incidental, and only after a few games would they be really worth counting.
Paul 12 points left (won); James -6 points left (lost)

And with not a single die in sight -

Skull and Roses (thanks for this to Scott again)
To wrap up the night, the survivors from King of Tokyo (all 6 of us) tried our hand at bluffing each other for the win instead of just rolling the best dice. This seemed at particular odds with Gareth who managed to keep his record of being first but this time he was first out of the game having pushed his luck far too much.
For the rest of us we were locked in a battle of trying to figure out who had their skulls left. Initially you would think that Emma only had skulls and she would always seem to play it, this had been bad news for Gareth but Woody finally figured out the best time to select it and managed a successful reveal with Emma. Scott and Tonio were still from time to time trusted to not put their skulls in the mix but people never learn, Amanda seemed to always play roses but people had already fallen foul of someone else before finding out whether she had played her skull or not, or even if she had one left.
Woody, with his early lead and dwindling set of tiles, was eager to get in the win and not let the others play too many tiles. This had the effect of bids getting quite high to almost always trying to turn over everything successfully. This rarely panned out and eventually everyone (well not Gareth who had left the table some time ago) was on a half-win with the next successful call the winner.
Because it was his game, we let Woody have the honours of bidding five when the rest of us had just played one tile, he slowly turned them over to reveal that we had all had the intentions of winning the game this round, he was just hustling us earlier and we fell right into his trap.
Woody – winner; Amanda, Scott, Emma, Tonio – half-way; Gareth – Out of tiles

James had been frustrated by bringing this along, only to see other people having fun playing it whilst he was sulking in his catacombs. No matter, he was able to summon up a few volunteers just before the end of the evening to play –

King of Tokyo
Scott did a good job of quickly explaining the rules, and so the dice-rolling fun was soon underway. After a number of conquering and re-conquering forays into Tokyo City, Barrie was finally killed off, followed soon after by James. It was therefore left to Philip and Jon to duke it out, and when Jon failed to roll the requisite dice to score the 3 points needed for victory, Philip killed off his final 3 life points for victory with his next roll. Lots of fun, and a perfect filler for the end of the evening. Could well be a keeper.
Philip – won; Jon - 2nd; James – 3rd; Barrie – 4th

And with Philip, fresh from his Tokyo-stomping victory, rushing out of the door to catch his lift, that was the end of another successful evening of boardgaming with the Isleworth Boardgamers. Catch up with us next week to experience more of the same…
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Flicking Good Fun at IBG...........

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Players: James, Emma, Keith, Paul, Jon, Johan, Noel, Andy, Mark, Scott, Philip, Ian, Tonio, Gareth, Barrie, Maynard, Woody

17 IBG’ers again rocked up to the finest public house on the north bank of the Thames, to pit their wits against each other in a selection of the finest board and card games on offer today. This included a welcome return to our token Irishman, Noel, after a few weeks away, and the continued presence of Maynard who is obviously making the most of his pre-infant freedom. One of the IBG’ers also had a birthday tonight, but I promised not to mention who she was……. (ooops….)

Tonight saw a real variety of games played. There were a few abstracts, a couple of auctions, some ‘classics’ as well as some newer fare. There was even the opportunity to get up out of your chair, stare a zombie straight in the face and utter in a blood-curdling scream – “I’m gonna flick you to kingdom come!” (That is, if you could decide which is your best flicking finger, of course…..)

First up was a new game to IBG -

Catacombs
Keith, Paul, James and Emma were already underway in this game when Jon walked in, but as Paul was taking control of 2 characters, he generously offered one to Jon so that he could join in too. This is a ‘dungeon crawl meets maual dexterity’ game. Really? Yes, really!
One player plays the dungeon master (I really tried not to use that term, but never mind…), and as it was his game, that privilege fell to James. The other 4 adventurers work together to attempt to travel deep into the dungeon, fighting all kinds of despicable monsters as they go. The dungeon is made up of a series of rooms, which are essentially game boards with wooden obstacles sticking out of them. The adventurers start at one end, and the monsters at the other. Each individual adventurer or monster is represented by a wooden disk, and these are flicked at each other in turn, in order to try to cause damage points. The adventurers have special abilities which they can call on at certain points, which, if used effectively, can help overpower the numerous despicable foes in front of them.
When Jon joined the game, the adventurers were still in the first room, which was only occupied by 4 monsters. They had obviously been ruminating for some time, as James was becoming a little frustrated – “Hurry up - this is an EASY room – you’ve only got 4 monsters to beat – wait until you get to the room with 13 in it – I’ll have you all for breakfast…!” Stung by this criticism, Paul invoked his “go bananas” special ability, and attacked 4 times in a row without stopping. Nice.
And so it went on. This game was characterised by a number of things:

• The adventurers took a long while to plan their strategy, only to realise that when push came to shove (or flick), they didn’t actually have the manual dexterity skills to pull off their plans.
• Emma doesn’t know which finger she favours when flicking
• Emma doesn’t like being given advice
• Keith has a tendency to flick his disk about 3mm only. Not useful.
• Jon’s wasted childhood of endless games of Subbuteo finally paid off as he threaded his disk through the eye of a needle to take out some stubborn zombies
• Paul enjoyed getting in a rage

By the time that the final room turned up (James was licking his lips in glee), the adventurers had started to get a feel for the game (but were still rubbish at flicking). However, a combination of Paul’s rage, Emma’s arrows and Jon’s magic spells (and despite Keith’s attempts to shove Paul into the firing line) managed to see off many of James’ monsters before they could use their numerical superiority to good effect. Their rotting corpses were soon strewn all over the dungeon floor, and the adventurers congratulated themselves on their reasonably straightforward victory.
James decided that he had played a sub-par game as the DM, but I’m sure that he will spend every waking minute between now and next week, brushing up on his single-digit disk-propelling skills.
Emma, Keith, Jon, Paul – all won; James – lost (big time)

The looong game of the night was -

Power Grid (thanks Johan for this one)
Only Andy and Johan had played PowerGrid before, so the evening started with explaining the rules. We played Germany. As with most people who are PG virgins… there was a lot of cautious auctioning and buying.
Noel at one stage was in a very good position having acquired two windfarms and a nuclear plant, but stalled due to the unavailability of good powerplants that would take him further. Mark was initially very coal dependent and often in front, so he had to fork out quite a bit of elektros to power up his plants. Johan and Andy played quite conservatively, where Johan initially was able to power up four cities, but then was overtaken by the others due to their buying.
Step three was reached with all players being able to power up 8-10 plants. After another round, Johan had acquired sufficient elektros (250) to build up to 17 cities and power 16 of them (13 elektros left) . Noel was able to light 15, Mark 14 and Andy 10. Andy thought there would be another round and did not buy enough resources to power up all of his cities. He would have had 15 as well. Congratulations to Mark and Noel who played PG for the first time and played it well!
Johan 16; Noel 15; Mark 14; Andy 10

On another table, the current GOTM was played -

Troyes (thanks Philip for this report)
Following on from my rather embarrassing misreading of the rules a fortnight earlier,  I embarked on a 4 player game with three players who hadn’t played before: Scott, Tonio and Ian. The victory condition cards in play were Influence (Tonio) Cards (Scott), cubes in the Cathedral (Ian) and meeples on cards (me).
I drew Start player and, after explaining the rules, and examining began placing meeples. I ended up not getting any yellow dice, with 2 white and 2 red. In a related development Ian had 3 Yellow dice and 1 white. Tonio had 2 yellow, 1 white and 1 red and Scott had 2 white,1 red and 1 yellow. The Greys of course had the 2 remaining red dice, spots 1+2.
The cards were revealed as Archery (roll black dice, 3+s get you hits on event cards), Tithing (collect 1 Yellow die from each opponent for free to form a group of Yellow dice) and Journeyman (swap influence for deniers). The event deck got off to a flying start with heresy (everyone loses 2 influence).Ouch!
After seeing off the black dice, I paid 2 deniers for Tonio’s red 6 and slammed it straight into Archery, getting 2 hits off three black dice. The first round continued with several cubes being loaded into the Cathedral, Ian fighting the starting event with his yellow dice (Journeyman seeming unattractive given low influence levels) and my buying a yellow die and pushing Tonio out of the yellow building. Someone polished off Heresy and Scott and Tonio and me were able to pass out early while Ian continued for a round, getting us needed cash.
Turn 2 saw the cards Tax Collector (collect money from people in the Yellow building), Chivalry (turn one White die into 2 Red dice) and Blacksmith (boost a group of red dice by +5). The events were Succession Crisis, which kicked Scott out of the red building, and the one that makes everyone lose 3 deniers. Tonio had rolled a red six and a white six, and after much deliberation put the white six in the Cathedral. Of course, someone bought the red six from him. Not sure what else happened this round. Tonio pushed me out of one of my spots in the red building. The Cathedral continued to be popular.. Ian invested in the Blacksmith. Scott went into Archery, killing the 3 deniers event...everyone ended about the same time.
Turn 3 saw Captain (1 VP per event card you have a cube on, does not include completed events(?), Pilgrimage (use dice of any colours to get VPs, is free to enter but the divisor is 7 making it tough to get a good return) and Goldsmith (get VPs and Cash). Event cards saw Scott kicked out of the Grey and the Red building. Tonio invested in the Goldsmith, as did I. Scott collected some cash from everyone with Tax collector and Tonio kicked a grey meeple out the Red building. Scott also went into the Blacksmith. I bought some dice and went on Pilgrimage, and kicked Ian out of the yellow building.
In turn 4 the events kicked Tonio out of the red building and Ian out of the grey building and added a couple of cubes to two event cards, but they moved back in at my expense, bringing me down to 2 yellow dice and 1 white die. Scott finished off the event that was chucking people out of the grey building. Ian spectacularly failed his Archery (1 hit off 5 dice!), and Tonio joined the crowd at the Blacksmith. I was able to put a single white die into Tithing.
Turn 5 saw me as Start player again, up against 3 Black dice, which hurt both me and Scott (sitting next to me and having rolled three ones on his 1 white and 2 red dice). I was however able to recover a little with Tithing, putting the dice into the goldsmith. Having seen Tithing at work Ian also invested in it, and I became the last player to use the Blacksmith. All of us were using the Blacksmith against the events quite successfully. Tonio used Journeyman to get some cash form his influence.
In Turn 6 Ian was able to tithe into the Goldsmith while I scattered some arrows over the events. However, Tonio’s archery then finished off the events I had started, while Scott took the Captain slot, so I changed plans and went into Chivalry. But there were no white dice left by the time it got round to me again, so I went into Journeyman instead, making 1 influence into 6 gold. My influence had been low all game and lowering it would make no difference to the influence card , but if the deniers card was out there 6 deniers would make a difference… The others were mostly fighting events and finishing the Cathedral.
I lost 2 VPs on the Cathedral and scored nothing for cubes in the Cathedral or influence, but got the full 6 VPs for meeples on cards. Scott had the 6 Vps for influence but was also hoping for the deniers card to be out there.
 Philip 39; Scott 35; Tonio 35; Ian 29

In retrospect Archery proved pretty disappointing given all the hype about it on the geek. Tithing was probably a better idea for the first turn, but neither I nor anyone else saw it. Journeyman proved unpopular due to low levels of Influence. Blacksmith and Goldsmith are strong, Pilgrimage seems weak (although useful for the meeples on cubes card).
Scott was definitely unimpressed with the game- he particularly disliked the randomness of what got victory points at the end. Ian said the game was a bit too complicated for what it was. Tonio had been complaining all the way through the game but I think that might just mean he likes it!

And now, Gareth had decided to bring out some of his back-catalogue -

Hare and Tortoise (thanks Woody for this one)
A pretty decent family game and one to get the kids learning maths .... so therefore, a group of adult board game players struggled ! ... only joking. Object is to get from the start to the finish, moving places according to how many carrots you eat. Must get rid of your three lettuces at certain points around the course before you can finish. Finally, must finish with less than a certain number of carrots. Various other features to make the game more strategic and interesting, so worth a try.
Woody shot off like a hare. Gareth had a clear plan of attack and Maynard decided he wanted to roll the dice as many times as he could and try to get a ‘1’ .. meaning he would miss a turn! Positions chopped and changed with Woody managing to get home far quicker than his skill and understanding of the game should have allowed. Gareth’s strategy got him home in a close second. Despite Woody shouting ‘1’ every time Maynard rolled the dice and him getting said ‘1’, he followed home in third with Barrie an unfortunate last!
1st - Woody; 2nd - Gareth; 3rd - Maynard; 4th - Barrie

And Gareth's second offering of the evening -

Member’s Club (thanks again Woody)
An interesting card and betting game where you the braver you are, the better the returns. Careful selection of which order you place your cards and how many of each ‘suit’ is required to try and make your bets pay. Worthy of another game, perhaps with more players.
Gareth 21pts; Maynard 12; Woody 5!

After a period of waiting due to other games not finishing at the same time, Jon, Barrie and James finally sat down to a 3-player game of –

Small World Underground

After last week’s rather mammoth 5-player game, there was a determination from all concerned to move this one on a bit quicker. This was achieved, although the game still took well over an hour. I failed to keep a detailed record of who did what this week, but these are the highlights:

• The river running down the middle creates an interesting dynamic, with often having one player on one side, and two on the other, which can unbalance things a little.
• Barrie unleashed the Balrog at one point, which spent most of the first part of the game decimating Jon’s races, before coming to rest in a region that then became unconquerable.
• Jon decided to experiment a bit with the race combinations, so spent 11 coins over the course of the game (and passed up the opportunity to pick up 5 coins on another race) in picking what he deemed to be the ‘most interesting’ combinations.  (That was one of his excuses for scoring so poorly, anyway…!)
• On the last turn, Jon had to decide whether to attack Barrie or James with his new active race. He chose to give Barrie a little bit of a hiding, which as it turned out, probably gave the game to James – which I hope that James remembers.

Overall, this was a fun game, although it still suffers from the problem of having too many powers / effects to worry about at the same time (eg race / special power / relic / popular place) – which slows the game down and makes it difficult to get a handle on who is in a strong position. The original game is often characterised by players trying to subtlely suggest who is doing well, and should therefore be the next target (“Ooooh – 12 points in one round – well done!!!”) However, there wasn’t any of that going on in the 2 games of SWU that I’ve played so far. Maybe it was due to unfamiliarity with the new races and powers etc, but I suspect that it may also have something to do with not easily being able to assess how strong a position each player is in.
Anyway, it’s probable that I’ll sway more towards the original game (with the excellent Tales and Legends event deck thrown in) for my Small World fix in the future….
James 97; Barrie 90; Jon 74

Now, it was gateway game time -

Ticket to Ride:Switzerland (thanks Paul)

With three people left to play something, Keith, Emma and Paul pulled together the trains and train cards from Ticket to Tide with the map and modified rules from the Switzerland edition - a simple three player game where all players were familiar with the base game.

The few minor modification for this version include only having 40 trains, only being able to use locomotives tunnels (although in Switzerland that wasn't much of a draw back) and picking locomotives like they were normal cards. With Switzerland being land locked there were also long route cards from countries bordering the Swiss with multiple choices of routes for big points.

Scoring was done using Keith's chosen variant, by scoring all track points at the end.

Zurich was quickly established as the 'hub' city where all players needed to go, and managed, although maybe not in the most efficient way as is often the case with Ticket To Ride.

Emma did leave herself exposed by making one route plan very obvious by placing track at either end of a short hop and some unclaimed 'joining track' in the middle - but claimed that it was a bad way to play by taking it from her, and as it was her birthday both Paul and Keith decided to play nice. On any other day of the year...

Paul got loads more routes quite early on and quietly set about linking all countries. Keith got his routes once a bit more committed later and gambled on being able to link the east and west. Emma's newer routes later required less of a gamble.

Paul eventually wiped the floor with everyone else, closing out the game, claiming the longest route, the highest track points and completing all of his routes. Emma got nearly all of hers and Keith failed on a couple of biggies bringing him down by 25 points.

Paul 134; Emma 88; Keith 54

Maynard was looking to make an exit, so Paul and Keith tempted him with a short game of -

Ingenious (thanks again Paul)

It was indeed short and gave Keith an opportunity to avenge his defeat at Ticket to Ride with a resounding victory. The game was new to Maynard, but very simple to pick up, which he did in no time. Paul had played a bit before, but as it he found out, was a total novice compared with Keith, who reached the end of his board with all colours apart from one, while Paul and Maynard were battling it out for second place from very early on. In fact Paul managed to pip Maynard for second by a point, even though his average for each colour was much less than Maynard's, one colour held Maynard back.

Keith 14; Paul 9; Maynard 8

And for the second time tonight -

Ticket to Ride: Switzerland (thanks James)
A rare occasion where a games gets 2 plays in the same evening, but Gareth was very keen to squeeze this into the last hour and Barrie and myself more than happy to indulge, even if it did mean missing a game of Resistance at the table next door.
Barrie and Gareth had both played copious times before on their ipads and were professing a sound knowledge of the game (whilst bemoaning that they actually had to shuffle cards themselves rather than pushing a button to do this… what kind of lightweight gamers are they?) In their defence we were using the teeny-weenie cards from the original US edition, but still, you’d think they’d never played Dominion before….
Basically it’s vanilla TTR rules, but with some route cards involving countries instead of places, and some offering a choice of multiple destinations. Pretty simple and very little opportunity for even Gareth to get the rules wrong… although he did pull a fast one early in the game proclaiming that there was a typo on the board (Brig instead of Brio on the card) and used this to take a new route card… hmmm, hmmm…
So what happened… Lots and lots of cards in the early rounds… everyone up to about 20+ before the first train was laid. Not sure about anyone else but I found I wasn’t paying that much attention to the other trains on the board whilst collecting my own sets. Unlike the Nordic’s map which is more compact and far more prone to blockage, this map felt big enough to accommodate 3 strategies and so routes could be taken in order rather than having to grab the bottlenecks early and try to fill in the gaps. Having a couple of country to country cards from east to west I was spreading across the middle while Gareth and Barrie seemed to be building routes in the north.
To be honest, not much happened during the game, apart from few tunnels failing to get completed. No one really interfered too much with other tracks and everyone seemed to be getting to where they needed to be…
I was the first to collect more route cards, always a promising sign to judge how you’re doing compared to others and it looked promising that I’d like France to Austria. Then, as things started to approach an end game Barrie suddenly went on a route collecting spree I think picking up new route cards 5 for 5 goes in a row… trying to make up for the shortfall in points gained with routes from all the bonuses with the cards. Gareth then brought things to a close taking a couple of small 2 and 1 routes to use up his last trains.
Gareth counted first and hit 96, I started off with -9 for failing to complete a route to Lausanne (cursing the lack of red cards available towards the end) but having picked up a few lucky (already completed) routes from my new routes collection I ended up with a whopping 113... all eyes turned to Barrie who had almost a full deck of route cards to work through. Not a promising start as he noticed that Martigny was not in Italy (the clue is in the name Barrie) and begun by going backwards… in the end a lot of the cards were low value and although he’d completed more cards than anyone else he could only ruffle up 97 points… enough to pip Gareth…. until Gareth added on 10 for his longest route.
So the moral of the game would appear to be that iPad victories are worth nothing in the real world… and that shuffling is for real men.
James 113; Gareth 106; Barrie 97

There were some valiant efforts to get enough players together for a final game, which only eventually succeeded when Emma revealed that it was her birthday, therefore everyone should play -

The Resistance

Emma needed a rules recap, but then proceeded to play a masterly game, brazenly claiming that Woody was a liar after he had looked at her played mission card. As Woody is such a good bluffer himself, that did add an element of doubt to a game that was characterised by Ian not sending himself on any mission (his protestations of “I always play like that” were met with cries of “yes, and you’re always a spy!”)
Paul also managed to drop himself in it by claiming that both himself and Scott were good, when it soon became clear that at least one of them was a spy. With the scores at 2-2, Jon was left to decide between Emma and Woody as the final spy and chose…..wisely. Emma was indeed the 3rd evil one, and their plot had been foiled at the last.
A quick check on an i-Phone also revealed that that is the last time until 2016 that we will have to play this game, as that is the next time that Emma’s birthday falls on a Wednesday…….
Woody, Jon, Scott, Philip (good guys) – won; Emma, Paul, Ian (spies) - lost

Also played tonight was Quandary and Perudo.

See you next time!
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