A pucking good time at IBG

Contributors: Daniel, Tom


There was some sort of shouty-shouty musical chairs game going on when I arrived. The music stopped, but I have no idea who went home with the cheap plastic whistle. Meanwhile, Neil and co. were having a ring-a-ding-ding time with Cash-a-Catch, holding onto plenty of reserve despite the racket being kicked up by the hooligans next door.
Moving onto the main events for the night, our table of four settled down to Burgle Bros, wherein we managed to fail spectacularily twice in a row. In the first game we quickly split up onto different floors to better handle the movement of the guards but Soren's propensity to fall off the walkways on the upper floors broke our carefully laid plans. The second time was hilariously awful with Tom's extended acrobat tumbling in the camera gallery of doom confusing the heck out of the guard. Thinking back to it, the set-up we had with adjacent camera rooms could have caused the guard to move in an infinite loop. Crikey, breaking game designs yet again. I really think that this doesn't work very well with four players, there is just too much going on with the guard movement. It might be better served if half the team were to start on the second or third floor, otherwise I'm beginning to think that two or three is the only reliable way to play this.

Some well earned rest was being enjoyed during Power Grid, fortunately the snoring didn't interfere with anyone elses evening. Five players in for the whole night and not a peep about how the game went, so it must have been scintillating. Further up the room, Cultures were Clashed between Tomtoo, Dom, and Phil (who I will now refer to as Pom). I commented that this looked like Terra Mystica, only with plastic bits instead of wood, Pom's news-flash response was "no, not really".

Some train game was smuggled in again by Jon, some muttering about tickets and track was overheard. Something else as well before that I think? Guess we'll never know.
After our failure to slip away with the treasure in Burgle Bros we moved onto flipping a different type of dough in Sole Mio, the upgrade to the barely tolerable Mamma Mia. The verdict? It's better, for what that's worth. We had fun all the same. The 'Grail Games' take on Circus Flohcati also saw some table time, damn thing looks possessed by some freakish Cronenbergian nightmare. Haven't played this for a couple of years now; it did it's thing I guess, sort of a lightweight Port Royale. I think I prefer the weird flea-men to dockside dublooning.
More Loony Questing to close the night out. "That's easy!" says Tom, before realising the catch and quickly eating his words. It's only right and proper, after struggling so hard with the first level, to then immediately jump to level six for even greater amusement. We gave up on the scoring after a while, it's not that kind of game, although it was pretty clear that Soren won and James came last after being docked eighty four points for excessive rules lawyering.

Oh, and then we played "Tantrum Pucks" or "Throw Tom's game on the floor (again)" or whatever it was called, which probably shouldn't have had three out of the four players all playing from the same table edge. Bring back Tabletop Curling, I say.

.....

Coloretto was played! It was enjoyable but giving the cards a shuffle before setting up the deck may have resulted in more tense decisions!

The shouty game was Space Team, the card game version of the much loved (or so I hear) app. Silly but not quite silly enough and seems quite difficult to play well unless you have a certain group. The Alien Probe card did make me giggle though.
I only have one word to describe Burgle Bros: Doodley-doo!

Had a chat with Soren about Mamma Mia. Agree with his that Sole Mio has more control than Mamma Mia but actually the barely contained chaos of MM adds to its charm. Both are surprisingly different all told.

Circus Flohcati did its job as a 10 minute filler. They seem to have downgraded the nastiness of the original card powers but as someone who quite enjoys being a backstabbing shit (okay, I love it) that makes me a little sad. Lovely package and I will continue to pick up future additions to the Mike Line. Really need to give Matcha a whirl.
Apparently, in Tantrum Pucks (better known as Push It) you lose two points if you knock the puck off the table. So Dan got Minus 1 Billion Points as he almost hit the thing into the Thames.

Number of Games Played Whilst Others Played Power Grid: Six.