Isleworth Boardgamers

Listen?  No, Lyssan.  What?

 

Attendees; Tom, Ravi, Woody, Neil, Gareth II, Paul, Jon, Barry, Noel, Andy, Sean, Alexa

 

Games Attempted; Kingdom Builder, Lyssan, Tzolk'in, Mogel Motte, Hanabi, Geistesblitz

 

Kingdom Builder (thanks Jon!)

4 players - Sean was new but picked up the rules quickly and asked less questions than last week! The goals were to build in a horizontal line, build a big clump and surround the castles and other tokens.

Jon started a quick horizontal line build, but Sean quickly cut him off, causing him to relocate to the bottom of the map, where there were few opportunities to surround castles etc. Sean went on to build a massive clump of settlements in the centre of the map, with a nice long horizontal line to boot. Paul was more spread out, but built next to all 4 castles, whereas Noel managed a bit of everything, but majored on surrounding the castles etc which gave him shed loads of points and a comfortable victory.

Noel's wife doesn't much like the game, but there's plenty of love for it at IBG so it's worth keeping! (I’m with Mrs Noel. ed.)   

Final Scores; Noel 65; Sean 54; Paul 53; Jon 47

Lyssan

Tom had literally forced Neil to buy this recently, great production.  They had planned a full campaign with Ravi and Sean but the latter was so busy trying to bring a young lady along that Gareth II stepped forward gallantly.

The game weighs in at around 180 mins apparently so we were keen to get going. There’s a round of area control where each knight; The Vulture (Gareth), The Hawk (Tom), The Wolf (Neil), and the Council of Orgasms, I mean, Orvanic (Ravi), places two castles with a priest and spy in, plus two nobles and two knights.  Each round is split into seasons and Spring begins.  Influence cards are then dealt to each player and the first of the Triumphs (winning targets) is revealed. In our case we were looking to have a majority of Vassal-Courtiers in play (one of the three different types of Influences).  With it so far?  Ravi wasn’t.

In summer time each player gets to take as many actions as he possibly can before the turn moves round.  Random turn order meant Tom led the way and his knights caused a bloodbath immediately, mainly at my expense. Gareth went for his Vassal Courtiers and also spread his knights and nobles around. Ravi decided on Tom’s strategy and by the time it was me to go I had lost three of my six-man team, wow.  Feeling a little bit picked on and deflated I realised my initial distribution of the team had been woeful!  I attempted to withdraw and set up a defensive wall.

Autumn is pretty similar to summer, and I have to say that the round played out very similarly for me!  Tom and Gareth in particular were spreading their men far and wide from some secure bases.  Ravi also had a good base but Gareth started getting amongst his fellows.  Winter.  I just wanted to hibernate.  Here comes the ‘shame’.  All your killed men attract shame and this needs to be resolved before you can continue.  Mainly by throwing in your Influence cards or taking debt.  Having an aversion to the latter I chucked all my good cards in, another faux pas!

Before we knew it Spring was here and Gareth had picked up the first Triumph, good effort!  Next target was to control the majority of Farmland, pretty bloody difficult if you only have one knight with which to control anything!  Summer and Autumn came and went I think, still in a blur and still trying to work out where I should have placed my realm at the start, I defended impressively, only losing one more noble. 

We played another round, I’m sure we did.  Moves were happening pretty swiftly and suddenly Gareth took a second Triumph, and therefore won the whole game.  Wow.  At least one of us knew what he was doing even having to move his car towards the end didn’t stop his determined campaign!  Good effort.

So, will need to take stock, re-examine the rules and sort my life out before coming back to Lyssan once again.  But when I do, oh boy, DO NOT GET IN MY WAY, I’m going to be awesome, oh yes!

Final Score;  Victory to Gareth II, the Vulture!

Hanabi (cheers again Jon, enjoy the sangria)

New to Paul and Sean, but they soon picked up the general idea. Jon had a blind discard about halfway through (WHAT??? ed.), and unfortunately picked the last white 3, effectively reducing the maximum score possible to 22. However, the team played out everything else almost perfectly, and only the late arrival of the final '5' reduced the score further - leaving the fabulous 4 on a very creditable score of 21. Not bad boys!

Noel, Jon, Paul, Sean – 21

 

Mogel Motte

Right, we started off as five but Alexa was stolen away by Sean so the same four as for Lyssan moved to this German card game full of ants, mosquitos, cockroaches and spiders, plus the cheating moth of course.  Basically you’re looking to get rid of your hand.  The only way to get rid of the cheating moth is to, yeah, you guessed it, CHEAT!  But you have to do this under the watchful eye of the Guard.  Ravi didn’t cheat very well, neither did Tom and Gareth.  I managed to chuck two moths onto the floor undetected.  It was the other cards I wasn’t getting rid of very well.  Tom looked to be in control, until Gareth suddenly emptied his hand, where did that come from??  Nice, colourful little game.

Gareth II. Played 2, Won 2. Time for bed.

Geistesblitz

Meanwhile Tom brought out another German filler; ghost blitz.  Like a blitz those Germans.  This one comes with five objects that get lined up in the middle of the table; a white ghost, red chair, green bottle, blue book and grey(ish) mouse, all made from wood and very tactile. 

A deck of cards is then revealed one at a time. The picture is always of two of the items.  One of them will either be the actual item, or you have to identify which item is missing from the drawing – so if the card contains a red book and white mouse, the green bottle has not been depicted in any way - and it’s then a grab to take that item from the table.  Winner takes the card, most cards at the end wins. Simple, brilliant!  Any wrongly grabbed items cost the player a card.

Tom had played this before.  Boy was he was reeling in the cards, especially when the mouse was involved.  Then I started getting a bit of a run although lost several cards with wrong guesses too.  Ravi was happy watching!  Until, he got one, then another… good stuff.  Anyway, you need a bit of practice, and then to play a few rounds and it’ll be close, nice and competitive.  I bought a copy in the week, Geistesblitz 2.0… different items, that’ll get him!!