Don't marry your sister, and don't eat her either, okay?

Contributors: Daniel, David, Jon


To 'kick off' the evening, my mighty Brazil came from behind for a late equalizer against Tom's fantastic France in Soccer 17, having had an early penalty stopped by the 'keeper then uselessly punting the rebound over the bar. Tom demonstrated that there are no depths of rules-lawyering he is not afraid to plumb, even when the rulebook is only a few lines of large-print text, god bless 'im.
We moved on to "Jane Austen: the don't your sister game", currently in the running for GotY for David. It's a game where you send your coquettish ladies to elegant balls and then unleash a bunch of rogueish cads to seduce them. Something about discarding and drawing cards depending on money and influence, and, erm, other stuff with hearts and arrows, something something. I still don't know how you're supposed to play this game, but at least I finished just a point behind the most eligible batchelor James so I must be a natural pimp-daddy at heart. There is also, god help us all, a zombie expansion for this game so that you can play at Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, wherein I can only guess at the fun times to be had.
A quick round of Tumblin' Dice for the merry matchmakers (rules explanations for two other games were still going on at this point so the phrase 'dodged a bullet' comes to mind - although this will surely have ironic connotations later in the evening), and onto the rather raucous Magical Athlete. The first couple of races were fairly pedestrian but the fourth and final one was an absolute clustermug of hilarious combos. David was content just to inch his way along using his necromantic tractor beam to pull everyone back, which was then creating chain reactions as the other racers abilities were firing off each time they were sharing spaces or passing one another. Of particular note was Tomtoo's Gladiator whose frequent cries of "Challenge!!" were causing the table to devolve into fits of laughter. Ridiculous good fun, we need more games like this on the table please.
Guillotine followed, my first go at this one which is odd as it's been around for a while rather like myself I'm sorry to say. It's okay, a nice filler alternative to stuff like No Thanks! and I'm surprised it isn't played more often at the club. Glad we ditched that broken no-fun card before we played though. The piss-boy lived to see another day, so there was a happy ending for all concerned. Well, apart from all the toffs we beheaded that is.

The lure of Sentinels called in both Tash (The Wraith) and Gareth (Bunker), and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to play, picking up the mantle of Tachyon. Ken joined us as Parse and we made short work of Ambuscade in the Ruins of Atlantis after a very brief moment of concern where the French movie-star-cum-superhuman-trophy-hunter temporarily had the upper hand. 

We set up again, upping the difficulty by using a team of villains this time, and as Ken needed to make an early exit he chose the environment and the villain team for us but didn't field a hero himself. 

Citizens Hammer & Anvil, stalwarts of the mutant army, Sergeant Steel and his crew of government funded anti-mutant operatives, and Greazer the hepcat intergalactic bounty hunter with his impeccable pompadour, all came together with one aim in mind: to murderate the three of us. We took on this motley bunch in the toxic atmosphere of the Pike Industrial Complex, so a hard as nails team of villains in one of the nastiest environments. Great, this was going to go well!

Tash went for the irrepressible fourth-wall breaking Guise (cough, Deadpool, cough), Gareth chose robot from the future Omnitron-X, and I plumped for magnificent mystical muso The Argent Adept. This turned out to be a ridiculously poor selection as they all have limited damage dealing and have a long set-up time, so we really struggled to make an impact until the point where it was too late to make a difference. Rather predictably we were absolutely hammered, only managing to take out Greazer before we all ended up incapacitated.
Then we finshed off with a big game of Bang! the card game the dice game the wtf game, wherein we argue the semantics of irony.

Positions!
Loaders - load!
Winders - wind!
Steady now..... and... launch catapult!

peeeeeeewwwwww ........ (splash)

Other things seen: Sons of Anarchy (lots of fun on that table by the look of it), a never-ending game of Greed (not so much fun by the look of it), Kingdom Builder with four newbies and the director's cut version of a rules explanation (how could you possibly have more fun that?).


.....


James B and I also played a quick two-player game of WWE Superstar Showdown at the start of the evening. There is something very fun about moving a wrestler around the ring, bouncing off the ropes and diving from the turn-buckle before pinning your opponent and claiming victory. James made a great start charging straight at me and delivering a series of blows before throwing me out of the ring. I grabbed this chance to position myself a little better and climbed back in to try and claw some ground back, after a couple of back and forth position moves I took my chance and delivered some powerful moves that left James reeling. Unfortunately it wasn't enough as James snatched an opportunity to pin me and I failed to tap out giving him the win.

I'm not sure how it would play with more people in a tag team but it looks like there would be a lot of downtime. There needs to be an expansion with more wrestlers and better options for more players but as a two player game it's extremely cheesy fun. Currently down to £5.87 on Amazon. 


.....

 
James, Neil, Paul & Jon had vowed to play through an entire season of Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 - although it must be said that it probably won't happen at IBG on Weds nights, due to its exclusive nature. However, the inaugural playing took place this week, with lots of excited noises by the players (mostly Paul) at all the envelopes and stickers and cards to be opened as the game progresses. Probably the most relevant envelope was the one that said "To be opened after you have lost 4 games in a row." That won't stay intact for long.....

The game starts in the same manner as regular Pandemic, although on this occasion, every disease in the universe seemed to be concentrated in the region of Asia. If this wasn't bad enough, as soon as the second outbreak took place (which didn't take long) a card was drawn which meant that xxxx xxxx xxxx xxx xx x xxxxx xxxxx and xxxx xxxxx xxx x xx, which as you can imagine, was a bit of a bummer!
As he was the medic, James stayed in Asia to battle the vast mountains of red cubes on the board, whilst the other players tried hard to get as many cards to Paul as possible, who was single-handedly curing diseases.

In true Panademic fashion, the game first of all kicks you in the nuts, then just after you've got your breath back and think that you might be in with a chance, it tweaks you in the nipples, pulls out your nose hair and rubs your face in the dying remains of diseased continents. Basically, we ran out of cards in the draw pile and the game ended before we could cure the final disease.

But fear not - we get (potentially) another 23 opportunities for ritual nut-kicking - which is nice.....

Tumblin-Dice - this time James brought along some large, square-cornered dice to play on Paul's board, and consequently there were players other than Paul who managed to keep dice on the board.

James scored a massive 55 in the first round, but then rather lost his mojo and ended up coming last - even beaten by Paul, who had only scored 9 points after the first 2 rounds. But with a level playing field (well - as level as Paul's board can get), Jon romped to victory. Dice-tastic! Jon 177; Paul 142; James 138