Isleworth Boardgamers

"Playing Card He Lightly Chooses"

2012-01-31T19:07:00.000Z

Ora et Labora

Another three player game, with Gareth the only person who’d played before. Rules explanation was fairly swift and Gareth was randomly determined as starting player. He began by chopping wood, Andy took peat, and I also chopped wood (using the Joker), then Gareth built the ‘Cloister Courtyard’ which allows you to turn 3 different goods into 6 goods all of the same basic type.

Andy now built the Priory, which allowed him to use a building occupied by a Prior- the Cloister Courtyard being the only available choice. I built the Spinning Mill, which gives coins for having sheep without using up the Sheep.

I was looking to spend my coins on an extension to my property, but Andy was faster. Play continued with me planning to place all my workers before buying another building. In this I succeeded, and after buying a bit of seaside was able to build and use the House Boat (a relative of the House Goat in Agricola?). The others were building away too- more rapidly than me because not so concerned about recovering all their workers.

Soon we got to stage ‘A’, one of five stages in which everyone can place a building from their hand which costs food and fuel. I built a Fishing Village next to my House Boat. The game continued with Gareth building the Stone Merchant, which is the only way to get Stone in the early game- unsurprisingly both me and Andy were soon paying Gareth for its use. Andy beat me to the ‘False Lighthouse’ and I ended up buying a monastic building which converted clay and stone to pottery and wrought Iron, both worth VPs. Gareth meanwhile had bought some hills and mountains and a Peat Charcoal Kiln.

As stage ‘B’ appeared, with me building an Artist’s Quarter next to the Fishing Village, Andy and Gareth stormed ahead of me on the building front, with stone circles, shipyards, scriptoria and the like. I concentrated on accumulating basic goods- particularly Sheep to help my spinning mill. I was able to take Sheep myself using ‘Joker’ and pay Andy to take Sheep in the following round, leaving me with 12 sheep at one point, several of which went into making the Hamlet in stage ‘C’, just above the Artist’s Quarters.

The appearance of the Quarry heralded a new source of Stone, if someone could afford to build it- it would cost 5 coins to buy the mountain required and another 5 to build the Quarry. I started saving coins by use of the Spinning Mill, and by building the Fuel Merchant, but Andy built the Quarry ahead of me. I was now making frequent use of other player’s buildings since they had built more than me- I picked up some books from one of Andy’s at about this time.

Stage ‘D’ came and I built the Village- it was already apparent that Andy was a little behind in this area of the game as he hadn’t saved enough food and fuel and had to be content with less valuable settlements. I piled up even more Coins on the 10 I had saved for the Quarry and purchased a 20 Coin building which allowed me (for a whisky, which I’d obtained from Andy’s False Lighthouse a little earlier) to use an occupied building- including other people’s without paying for them as a quick rules check clarified. In fact I used it for a very mundane gathering of Grain via Gareth’s Farmyard. Shortly afterwards Gareth built the Whisky Distillery, increasing costs on using buildings.

We were now getting into the final stages of the game. Andy built the Castle, allowing him to play another card from his hand. Gareth concentrated on building as much as possible and also on gathering sheep and grain so he could turn them into meat via his slaughterhouse- a technique I also used- both of us looking to build the Hilltop Village at stage ‘E’ for 30 food (and 3 fuel).

Going into the final turns Andy built a valuable Round Tower, forcing me to build the Guesthouse instead. Actually the Guesthouse won me the game- it allows you to use one of the unbuilt buildings, and I was able to activate it twice, first to turn 6 different goods into an 8vp chalice and then to turn chalice, wrought iron, pottery and book into a 30 VP sacred painting. Both me and Gareth played the Hilltop Village, while Andy had to be content with Shanty Town.

Gareth 191 Andy 198 Philip 202

Ticket to Ride: Asia (thanks Jon)

This was a 4-player game played using the ‘Legendary Asia’ side of the board. The unique feature of this map is that when building sections of track through mountains, the danger of this process is simulated by having to give up a certain number of extra trains. However, you do receive 2 points for each of these trains, so there is probably a viable strategy in using these routes to burn through a lot of trains and finish the game before other players have completed their routes.

Also, in order to humour Paul, we allowed him to use the rather strange “Alvin & Dexter” expansion, which introduces aliens and a Godzilla-like creature to the board. Actually, this does add some interesting new strategic options, and could be quite cut-throat if you know what the long route cards are.

As no-one was familiar with the route cards, no player took any extras, despite Jon and Dan both finishing off their initial hands with several trains left. Shamu suffered from this being only his second experience of TTR, and failed to achieve 2 of his routes, which, had he completed them, would have given him a competitive score. Dan’s 15 point bonus from moving Dexter the most proved to be decisive, as he came out on top by 9 points from Jon. Paul was a further 12 points behind, but was just glad to have been able to bring his new toys to the table….

Dan 121; Jon 112; Paul 100; Shamu 72

Last Will (thanks Jon)

Another of John’s games, which as usual, he explained clearly and succinctly. Although with this game, however clear the explanation is, you need to play it a second time after you’ve eventually worked out the best card combinations.

Jon majored on properties, and managed to lose all his money (the object of the game!) with one round to go. However, he fell foul of the ‘can’t go into debt whilst you still have property’ rule, and was forced to waste a couple of his last actions. Dan had a more mixed portfolio of loss-making activities, and managed to also go into debt in the last round. David and Shamu fared less well, and were left with money in the bank at the end of the game. John used his inside knowledge and took a card which, combined with multiple actions, allowed him to blow a stack of cash in the last round, and come out on top. And to be fair, it probably should be the case that an experienced player wins against newbies, so Dan and Jon can hold their heads up high that they got as close as they did!

John $-8; Dan $-2; Jon $-1; David $12; Shamu $15

Outer space next...

Eminent Domain (thanks James)

More deck building goodness (now I think about it I wonder if the word domain was chosen in the title for its proximity to Dominion ?). I managed to *finally* find time to learn the rules to his during the week so brought it along, and Noel, Paul and David were all up for the inaugural game.

So, it's a space themed deck building game. Each turn players take 2 actions, one just for them, and one which others can also do as well. These basically involve discovering planets, colonising planets, raising an army to invade planets, trading or researching. As the game develops planets get settled which gives bonus's or research uncovers more powerful cards and each player’s deck grows differently. During the game you can trade for VP, and settled planets (and some research) also get VP... Most VP at the end wins!

There's more a touch of Race for the Galaxy in this rather than Dominion-style deck building. It's quite simple once you get the concept down, although seemed to play a bit clunky (probably us more than the game).

So, right away I was struggling...unable to colonise in the first round while everyone else was it felt like catch up from the start. David seemed to be on a colonial frenzy, while Noel and Paul were both researching and improving their decks. Paul seemed to be playing a 'pick up 3 cards' action every other turn. The part of the game where you get a chance to repeat another players 2nd action suggests a good strategy is to make sure your tactics are close to other players (so you can take advantage of this)... This seemed to pass me by as I decided to go for a warfare strategy on the basis that no one else seemed to be doing it... or maybe I'm just naturally anti-social?

Despite themes of warfare and trade there is VERY little interaction in the game apart from the 'repeat' action phase. I found myself wondering if you could almost play this solo with little difference, which is not really a positive thing to be thinking... I'm sure that future expansions will aim to modify this as there is little point having cool spaceship bits if you can't invade someone else’s space... I mean I'm hoping to play this with Jon one day, and how's that gonna look if we can't plan to spend the game picking fights with each other?

The game ends when 2 decks ran out, and Noel brought this to a close taking the last research while David had previous used up the colonise deck. One last round (again, I was 4/5 towards trying to do something and was scuppered by this quick finish) to maximise points and that's it.

David took the win, and seemed to be ahead for most of the game from my perspective, Paul nipped me into 3rd place and I was surprised to see I was ahead of Noel as I'd thought he was doing well... hard to say for sure though as the game does feel like multi-solitaire and so you're not focused much on other players while you try to work your own 'game engine' into shape.

It's quick, maybe this 1st game took a tad over an hour, but to be honest I'm not sure anyone other than David felt too enthusiastic about it (and he won, so his opinion doesn't count ) I think a 2 or 3 player game would be better... less downtime, less chaos... but the game really does need some interaction. Even Dominion has curse cards!

Scores David 21, Paul 18, James 17, Noel 15

A little painting follows

Fresco (thanks James)

Despite a previous weeks less-than-enthusiastic game of Pastiche, the painting theme hadn't put people off. Noel showed an interest in the game, and I'm always up for this one so with the addition of both Pauls we quickly abandoned the rest of the club to fighting over wills and set this up on the table with the best light before anyone else could get there first...

I've explained this game several times already, so it's not too hard to teach. The theme works so well that you just tell the story of the game and it all seems to click. With the complexity of Stone Age and great components, this game really should be in everyone's collection.

After a quick double check of the rules we just added the extra paints expansion as this adds to the game but with minimal extra rules... and we were off.

Noel quickly finished a tile in round 2 before realising that it affected turn order... it's something you need to adjust to in this game as there is a price for taking the lead early. However soon everyone was grabbing the high cost paints and trying to take the higher value tiles before they all went. I think I managed to nab the big 24 in the middle, but everyone seemed equal early on as the lead switched several times.

The middle game was a bit cat and mouse... the odd tile here, some early starts, to grab the best tiles from the market... the tiles were being slowly removed but no one seemed ready to make a move.

Then Paul decided enough was enough and made a dash for the finish line completing 3 painting tiles in 1 turn and taking a healthy lead... and from here on it was a game of catch up as there would only likely be 1 or 2 more rounds and existing paints needed to be used up. At the other end of the scale the other Paul had run out or paint cubes at this stage, and Noel seemed to keep the pace, but in the last round I managed to convert all my remaining cubes at the altar to pull within a few points. So it all came down to money...

I thought I had a shot, but as it turned out Paul had been sitting on a nest egg, and managed to steal the win by 3 points.

Great game, always fun to play and lots of decisions going on. I'm going to put Paul's win down to beginners luck... anyone up for a rematch next week?

PS. I've left it for you to work out which Paul was which. Mainly to protect one of them from the humiliation of the scale of his loss...

Paul #1 108, James 105, Noel 70, Paul #2 58.

More Euro goodness...

Santiago De Cuba (thanks Tom):

John B had brought along Cuba's little sister, Santiago De Cuba, and managed to find willing participants in Tom & Louise - Tom being halfway through a game on Yucata despite having no idea what he was doing!

Despite making somewhat of a hash of his one and only property purchase (whilst John B cornered a particular colour, including the all important shipping building), Tom managed to keep up with the others through a focus on the black and red commodities. However, Tom's chances of a win were somewhat thwarted by John's decision to send out a ship with no cargo, leaving Tom left with 4 lonely black blocks in his warehouse.

In the meantime, Louise slowly accumulated victory points through an intelligent use of the various vendors. This coupled with a tidy 8 VP haul for the sale of a large batch of citrus pushed Louise into a unassailable lead with John and Tom tying for second.

Louise 47, John B 41, Tom 41

And finally another deckbuilder...

Ascension - Storm of Souls (thanks Tom)

John had also brought the new expansion to Ascension, which Tom was willing to try out having played the original (plus The Fallen) on iOS. This made Louise the only one without any experience of the deck builder. Not that this stopped her from wiping the floor with the other two.

Taking advantage of a continuous stream of monsters in the centre row and a void event granting an additional honour for each centre monster banished, a large pile of red honour tokens had soon accumulated before her. John's strategy of accumulating constructs soon began to bear fruit and Tom managed to eventually create a decent draw engine using The Dreamer's Glass; however, it was soon clear that their efforts were again a case of too little, too late with Louise winning at a canter.

Louise 67, John B 60, Tom 56

P.S “Playing card he lightly chooses” is a quotation from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Grand Duke [The person who draws the highest value card wins the duel, a slightly simpler game than the ones described above...]

"Shepherds and Ploughmen"

2012-01-24T18:42:00.000Z

We abandoned Eclipse for some rather more down-to-earth subject matter...

Agricola (Thanks Andy)

Agriholics Phil and Andy were joined by Tonio, who hadn't played this game for almost a year, for a bash at some 17th century farming. The early rounds played out with Phil accumulating enormous amounts of building material using his Resource Seller occupation. Andy getting a bundle of clay due to his Clay Worker and Tonio putting out his Mushroom Collector, which gives two food in return for leaving behind a wood each time you take wood. But then he didn't really take that much wood, which held him back later in both room building, which stopped him growing his family, and putting up fences.

Andy took the first fireplace and bagged some sheep, which gave him a handy food bonus, and Phil, despite having the House Goat, which gives an extra food each harvest, ended up scratching around a little for food. Tonio used his Raft to get the supplies he needed. Phil then more than made up for his early feeding problems by taking the first Cooking Hearth and snatching the next herd of sheep and soon he had something ridiculous like about 18 food, which solved his feeding woes for a while. Family growth appeared in round five and Andy managed to take it first, before Phil built two rooms and quickly moved to four family members. Andy renovated early and Tonio revealed his masterplan by playing the Wet Nurse, which allows him to take family growth when he built a room, and the Spinney minor improvement. This, much to the disdain of Andy and Phil, meant that he would take one of their hard-earned units of wood each time they used the three wood space. Humph.

Andy continued accumating minor and major improvements and made a late attempt at getting some baking going, taking the Clay Oven from under Tonio's nose. Tonio managed to avoid begging by eating some raw grain but he built two rooms and immediately gained an additional two family members meaning things were finely poised heading into the last few turns. Phil played a rather belated Woodcutter and Wood Deliveryman which just about provided sufficient wood for his fences.

But Andy played a last round Braggart, which gives bonus points for the number of improvements the owner has put out, and he managed to pip to the post Phil, who had a much more rounded farm (he had animals!) but a couple of empty spaces. A thoroughly enjoyable game.

Andy 40, Phil 37, Tonio 26

Another game by the same designer was played on another table...

Ora et Labora (Thanks John)

Three Isleworth Board Gamers decided to lay the newish Uwe Rosenberg game. Scott had never played before, John had played twice and Gareth had the game but had been put off by what looked to be five different rule books in the box.

The first thing to do was decide whether to play the Ireland or France version of the game. John mentioned that he thought the Ireland version was a bit easier, so of course Scott wanted to play France. Cooler heads prevailed and off to Ireland they all went.

Unlike Agricola and Le Havre resources are fairly easy to come by, the trick to doing well is having the right resources. Scott soon got a pretty good resources engine up and running and for most of the game had a big pile of various resources including plenty of cash. He soon expanded his land and quickly had plenty of room to spread. John spent most of the game with a comfortable amount of resources and land but always lagging behind Scott. Gareth went for a more minimalist approach with less resources and less land that the other players.

Scott concentrated throughout the game on getting as many settlements built as he could and although it was John who built the Castle it was Scott mostly using it to build new settlements. He eventually got all but one settlement in play.

John also tried to go for settlements but focused so much on making sure he had the 30 food for the final settlement that he did not have the energy to build it, doh.

Gareth had gone more for lots of building that created goods worth victory points, though he also managed a couple of good settlements.

The game ended with everyone wanting another turn or two.

First up you score the settlements, Scott 134, Gareth 87 and John 84

Then the buildings, Scott 82, Gareth 80 and John 63

Finally goods, Scott 6, Gareth 45 and John 13

Which meant Scott had won.

So congratulations to Scott who despite spending half the game with his head in his hands muttering 'There are just too many choices' managed to win in the end.

Scott 222, Gareth 215 and John 160

A rather lighter game was played elsewhere...

Ticket to Ride Asia (Thanks Paul)

Ticket to Ride now has several additional flavours - one of the latest being a joint expansion "Ticket to Ride Asia - the Team game" and "Ticket to Ride: Legendary Asia". The former was the more unusual and, although Jon and Paul had given it one outing already, the fact that there were four people looking for a game and as there are teams of 2, it needed 4 or 6 to play - too good an opportunity to miss.

It was thought to be a good idea for Jon and Paul to play on separate teams as they were the only others to have played this version before. Maynard, it transpired was a TTR veteran on the iPhone, whilst Woody hadn't played any form of the game before. Jon and Paul had in fact been on the same (losing) team in their previous game and James (one of the previous victors) couldn't resist the opportunity to shout over from another table that it would be a competition to see who the consistent loser would be.

The rules certainly add a new twist or two. As well as the new board spanning from Western Pakistan to Eastern China and the necessary new route cards to match it is a team game. The players in each team of two must sit next to each other and place a rack between them. Both the route cards and the train cards may then be held in an individual’s hand, allowing only that person to use them, or be placed in the team rack, allowing either team member to make the most of them. The location of the cards is determined by a few simple rules and there is the opportunity to take a whole turn to place up to 2 personal route cards in the team rack.

Both team members have 27 train pieces to place; the game ending when the total combined trains within a team is 4 or less.

One interesting facet of the game is that play is carried out in a clockwise direction and therefore each team has two moves before the next team has a chance to play. With careful coordination this can be used to good effect, particularly when blocking. But tactics cannot be discussed and the contents of a players hand must be kept secret from their team mate, therefore coordination is key to the game, and it was difficult to get right.

The game started with Paul and Woody laying many more bits of track, but their coordination went awry part way through, with Jon and Maynard usurping them quite easily and finishing with only one piece between them, having completed all six routes quite significantly ahead. Paul and Woody had just managed to complete all six routes but still had quite a bit of unused track, to little avail as the experienced team were far too far ahead.

Jon therefore escaped being the only one to lose two games in a row - kindly leaving that honour to Paul. He pretended not to care too much as he was pleased to get his new game to the table, but is only too aware that he's on a rather long losing streak in all games that needs to be dealt with soon.

Scores: Jon and Maynard: 146, Woody and Paul: 109

From trains to WWII...

Memoir ’44 (thanks Jon)

Due to the arrival of the Winter / Desert board from Santa, Jon was finally able to break out his Eastern Front (ie Russian) expansion with James this week. Apart from having a snowy board / tiles, and new minis, the major change is that the Russians have a slightly different method of sending orders to the troops. In order to simulate the Russian ‘Political Commissars’ who dictated to the generals what should be done, the Russian player must decide a turn in advance what card to play. This makes it almost impossible to react quickly to what your opponent does, and forces you to make a slightly longer-term strategy. Jon chose to play the Russians, and James manipulated the Axis forces (which, unusually, were Finnish). This scenario saw the Russians in a strong defensive position within a couple of Finnish towns, but there were numerous Finnish ski-troops to contend with who could move 3 hexes and still battle. There was also a contingent of Russian troops and armour in the South-Eastern corner, trying to break through a Finnish road-block by a frozen river.

The ski-troops made a swift attack on some isolated Russian troops and armour in the North-West of the map, but were unable to deliver a killer blow. Fortunately, the Russian Political Commissar had foreseen this move, and was able to counter-attack with some success. Combined with some withering support from a bunker on the edge of town, the Russians were able to scoop up 3 early medals.

However, Jon had run out of any left sector command cards, which allowed James to finally pick off 2 of the weakened Russian units. The Russians then concentrated on attacking the road-block, but the heavily-sandbagged position was proving tough to break through. The Finns then opted to move through the trees to counter-attack, and whilst taking out another Russian infantry unit, they left themselves rather exposed and were quickly annihilated.

It was beginning to look bleak for the home team, and despite trying to bring their artillery within range of the last remaining Russian armour, they had enough weakened units to allow the Russians to close in with a decisive blow, picking up the 5th and 6th medals. However, had the dice fallen a little more kindly (or luckily…) for the Finns, then they were certainly still in with a shout of victory too. Fun to play with a new board and army – I’m sure there will be ample opportunity for James to take his revenge!

Russians 6; Axis (Finns) 3

One card game to another...

6Nimmt (thanks Jon)

8 players – 15 minutes to kill – ideal conditions for a long overdue return for 1 round of this game of high skill and strategy, where the most astute and intelligent player is usually rewarded with victory… And so it proved to be, with Jon playing his cards to almost perfection, picking up only 2 bulls’ heads in the process. Groans and cheers in equal measure as always.

Jon 2; Dan 5; Woody 7; Paul 17; Maynard 18; James 20; Tonio 22; Soren 33

More cards...

Verrater (thanks Jon)

3 weeks running now, and it seems that this game has finally clicked with Woody. He scored in every round bar one, and held the lead from round 4 until the end. Maynard did very well in his first game, scoring heavily in the first 3 rounds and picking up just enough points in the following rounds to hold onto 2nd place. Jon went for the offices at the end, but even those 6 points gained were not enough to trouble the leaders. And the least said about Paul’s efforts the better (except that he made another valiant effort to pick up 15 points in one round, and only just failed. One day, Paul, one day…..) Lots of fun and head-scratching again.

Woody 24; Maynard 19; Jon 18; Paul 12

Cards again ...

Gloria Pictoria

The fox was once again among the chickens as the four of us settled down for Gloria Pictoria. I don’t have the scores but I remember winning!

Philip 1^st, Tonio, Scott and Andy other.

P.S "Shepherds and Ploughmen" is a quotation from Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore.

"The guns that go Boom! Boom!"

2012-01-17T18:55:00.001Z

To begin in space...

Eclipse

We were so excited about playing Eclipse with the Alien races that we set up Andy’s position for him before he arrived. I chose the Planta, Scott, opposite me had the Orion Hegemony, David the Hydra Progress and Andy (by random selection) the Mechaenama.

In the first few rounds my double Explorers kept landing me with Ancients while Scott, who was itching to fight, couldn’t find any. David was happily researching away and both me and Scott made first contact with Andy. Andy gave Scott an alliance after looking at his powerful ships but rejected my alliance offer with scorn.

I picked up a fair few discovery tiles fighting the ancients. Two of them were cruisers, which was just as well given my losses. More interesting was Conformal Drive and Shard Hull, both of which I placed on my Cruisers, which were also equipped with Plasma Cannons as well as the Ion Cannons.

Meanwhile Andy, playing an AI Race, had gone for multiple Computers- giving less firepower but greater accuracy. He also had Improved Hull. Our ship designs were soon tested against each other as I launched 4 cruisers at the Galactic Centre. Andy took advantage of this to attack the sector the cruisers had come from, cutting them off from the rest of my Empire. I was forced to panic build Starbases to prevent Andy spreading out into my systems and taking them over (Planta’s disadvantage is that it is very easy to take its undefended systems). Andy defeated my starbases and dreadnought, destroying the latter before it could fire any of its impressive array of weaponry. I destroyed the Galactic Centre defence enemy with no losses- again firing first proved decisive.

So now I had the Galactic Centre and a small empire, severed from each other by Andy. I offered Andy an alliance, but he continued to refuse me, so I brought my four cruisers back to his sector. Andy researched and built Starbases, but Scott’s moment had come as he occupied an undefended Galactic Centre and a couple of lightly defended Mechaenama sectors. He now had the Traitor card for -2VPs, but since he’d just gained about 7 Vps in the process he wasn’t worried.

Andy’s ship design proved superior to mine and my Cruisers were destroyed- though his losses were heavy enough to stop him going further. The game now moved into a rather uninteresting stage for me and Andy. The only route out of my space lay through the sector Andy had conquered, which had a few Starbases in it. But Andy himself had been beaten up by Scott and was equally out of contention.

Scott and David now faced off. David’s technological advantages against Scott’s military and (given the sectors he had conquered from me and Andy) economic might. Both of them had Antimatter Cannons and Computers, so it was basically a question of which ship fired first- but Scott took the initiative by attacking David so he wasn’t losing systems. David had just perfected a defensive build that took Scott’s ships out before they could fire when the game ended.

Scott 43 David 36 Me 33 Andy 26

From space to the skies...

Airlines Europe (thanks Noel)

Noel, Woody, Jon and Paul ambitiously decided at 10pm to squeeze a game of Airlines in that final hour. As Noel and Jon had played before it wasn't quite up there with Gareth's all newbie game of Egizia starting at 1015 (without any previous rules reading). However, at 1130 we all agreed it had been worth it, though perhaps not the next morning.

We decided to develop a unique IBG variant by dealing each player a mixture of 3 short and 5 long routes to eliminate some lucky initial draws of lots of smaller airlines which appear to be most beneficial. Jon started things off by collecting 8 million from the bank on Round 1. A different strategy from his multiple share collecting last week? Noel quickly expanded and collected the bonus and majority in the Grey airline before the first scoring round. Paul established a 1 card majority in the purple and black airlines which stayed at the lowest points of the share index until right at the end of the came and also developed an early majority in Orange. Woody levelled up with Paul on the Orange and dealt in plenty of brown. No surprise there! :D

Noel and Jon were the first to buy Air Abacus, producing some 'Aha's' from newbies Paul and Woody, and led on this at the first round. When Noel won the majority in Air Abacus on round 2 with 4 Shares Jon not so subtly suggested that he would definitely win out the big points on Round 3 'Unless some-one challenges him for it...'. Paul stepped up and some frantic buying later could have taken the 3rd round points if the final scoring round had come up before it did. As it was Noel retook the lead in Abacus shares and pushed on with the Grey airline. Jon had a massive hand of cards in round 3 and steadily pushed up what had previously been a small but high scoring portfolio. The final scoring card was the last card in the deck and at final counting Noel won with 95, Jon 2nd on 88 and Paul & Woody tied with 75.

A fun, well presented light-medium game with some interesting decisions. The final scoring card in the last 11 cards does add some uncertainty to the final rounds which I'm not sure is mitigated for by the 1,2 and 3 VPs handed out at the start to everyone but the start player and perhaps a few tweaks are needed. That said, one person's random card draw is another's high tension. It is also questionable whether there is enough depth of strategy to explore and therefore do the card draws and the random scoring rounds become all important, but thinking too much about it probably isn't what this game needs! Fun, well presented and with a play time, probably (!), around an hour, I’m sure it'll get plenty more plays. Thanks also to James for picking up the Flight Ban Expansion which adds more underhand possibilities. Look forward to trying it out!

Noel 95 Jon 88 Paul 75 Woody 75

Before Airlines, some rather more local travel had occurred...

Letters from Whitechapel (Thanks Jon)

A pre-arranged early-doors start for this game, where Jon played the role of Jack, with Paul and James playing the policemen. Jon started off by picking a fairly central position for his first murder, and quickly used a couple of coaches to melt off southwards before the police could close on the murder scene.

Rather than running straight for place that the murder was committed, to pick up a definite trail, the police chose to close in more slowly, in what they described as a ‘dragnet’. The only trouble was, there was a gaping hole in the net which Jack had exploited, which meant that he slipped quietly through the thick cordon of policemen (or was that ‘cordon of thick policemen’?) Jack then turned North, and with a shimmy through some alleys and a gentle jog, he was back at his hideout in time for tea and crumpets. This had taken 8 or 9 turns and the police had found only a single solitary clue.

The second night began with a murder on the far West of the district, which made it harder for Jack to get away, as there would be less escape routes to choose from. Again, he used one of his 2 coaches for the first turn, to slide around the edge of the district. The police were quicker to pick up the trail this time, requiring Jack to use an alley token to try to put them off the scent. It was at this point that James’ misunderstanding of the rules (his game – no sympathy!) mean that the police miscalculated exactly where Jack could be.

Although they were only a single street away, they failed to spot Jack darting across a badly-lit intersection, from where he hailed another coach to once again melt into the night. Meanwhile, all 5 policemen converged on an area the size of an i-Pad, convinced that Jack must be trapped, and waved their truncheons about trying to arrest what turned out to be no more than shadows.

By now, PC Noel had turned up to lend a hand to the hapless buffoons in blue, but even his softly spoken words of wisdom could not prevent Jack from calmly stopping to light a cigarette before ambling through the front-door of his hide-out.

The third night would see 2 dastardly murders committed, but where would Jack be – North or South-East? Using logic and deductive reasoning, the police concentrated their forces on the South-East murder scene, only for Jack (in the North) to take 2 turns before sending the Peelers a cheeky text – “Got back to hideout and now having a lovely bubble bath.”

Paul and James now realised that their goose was well and truly cooked, and the 4th night was a formality. Jack had left the closest murder scene to last, and needed only 2 turns to once again stroll back to his dastardly lair. The police will be hearing his maniacal laughter haunting their nightmares for many weeks to come.

Playing as Jack is very different to being on the side of the police. You get to do very little, and have no-one to discuss your fiendish plans with. However, it’s a bit like being a GameMaster, where you have a large say in how the game plays out and the experience that the police have. However, short of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs, or having a giant neon sign above Jack’s hideout (which was incidentally at location 78), I don’t think that these particular police would have ever succeeded, as they seemed singularly incapable of finding their own buttocks with both hands and a map. Maybe next time….

From detection to betrayal...

Verrater (thanks Jon)

Woody and Jon were both keen for another go at this little German card game, and also roped Paul in for a second outing. Being a game about traitors, Noel was easily persuaded to take up the vacant third spot. Jon slipped into an early lead, and Paul soon found himself on the wrong side of a 3:1 split. However, he almost pulled off the coup of the century by playing his entire hand of cards, which would have won him a whopping 15 points, had Woody not taken one for the team and played his own hand of supply cards out as well.

There were very few points in it going into the final round, but as Jon was the start player, he was able to pick the appropriate action card to ensure his victory (just), thanks to a maximum 6 points from the offices. Another great game, and thanks to its portability, will be tucked into the games bag for the foreseeable future.

Jon 26; Noel 23; Paul 22; Woody 16

Believe it or not this was actually quite a well attended night- but at least half a dozen of the games played failed to be reported...

P.S “The Guns that go Boom! Boom!”... is a quotation from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Princess.

"What Progress has been made in Modern Gunnery"

2012-01-08T17:19:00.000Z

An action-packed evening...

Memoir ’44 (thanks Jon)

First up, an early doors session of Memoir ’44. This was played using the Omaha Beach scenario, with Paul playing the heavily dug-in Axis and Jon playing the gallant Allies. Having not played the game for a couple of months, Jon needed to constantly reference the terrain cards which explained the different workings of the barbed wire, hedgehogs, bunkers etc, which definitely slowed the game down to an almost Real-Time simulation…

This is one of those scenarios which is completely ‘attackers vs defenders’. The Allies have to try to break through the gaps in the cliff to get to the victory medals in the towns behind, before the Axis forces obliterate them from the safety of their cliff-top bunkers. This resulted in the rather odd situation where Jon launched very few attacks, but instead tried to use the maximum range of his infantry to push forward on both flanks. As in real-life, Paul’s forces simply sat in their bunkers and took pot-shots at Jon’s exposed troops, hoping to achieve the 6 medals victory condition before the inevitable breakthrough happened.

Although, this felt like an impossible task for the Allies, they eventually broke through in relative strength on the right flank, but with only one infantry member on the left. After mopping up a couple of Axis units, they were within one hex of 2 towns which would have given them the victory, but Paul called on his off-board big guns and launched a barrage at the horribly exposed Allied infantry, wiping them out within smell of the baguettes and soft cheese that would have greeted an Allied victory. A long game (sorry Paul!) but looking back, it was actually well-balanced and incredibly close. As Santa was on the ball this year, the next game may bring the Russians into the war…..

Paul (Axis) – 6 medals; Jon (Allies) – 4 medals

A card game followed

Verrater (thanks Jon)

If appearances are anything to go on, this game shouldn’t even see the light of day. For starters it is simply a small deck of cards, but takes 45 minutes to play. Secondly, it is completely in German. Thirdly, it only really plays with 4 players. However, underneath there is a great little game involving conflict, bluffing and the obligatory traitor. Players start out representing opposing factions (Eagles / Roses), and each round there is a conflict between landscape cards controlled by each faction. Each player gets to secretly select a role to help them each round, which includes the traitor who switches sides at the last minute. The role selection element to this game is identical to Citadels, but feels a lot more subtle, as there are less roles which directly affect the other players. Woody was the unfortunate soul to find himself on his own after one of the other players (Paul) played traitor, which was compounded when he played all his supply cards in an attempt to score big points, only to fail by a single point. This left him short of supply cards for a couple of rounds, which meant that there was no real incentive for any of the other players to play traitor. James cleverly got himself ahead by several points going into the last round, by turning traitor at an opportune moment, but had to choose his final role carefully, as there was still the possibility that Jon or Paul could overtake him. James chose to build an office (giving him 3 points), whilst Paul switched sides (again!) which meant that allied with Woody (who by now had a massive stash of supply cards) maxed out his potential score. Jon gained maximum points (6) from his 2 offices, and along with the points from taking the Strategist role, he came within a hair’s width of catching James – but not quite. A really close finish. Personally, I really enjoyed this game (although Woody may have a contrary opinion) – simple, interactive and with plenty of difficult choices. Once you’ve learned the different roles, the German text makes no difference, and it feels more like a board game rather than a card game. Not bad for something that is small enough to slip into your pocket!

James 28; Jon 26; Paul 25; Woody 15

Painting next...

Pastiche (thanks James)

So, by a equal measure of cunning and threatening to throw a strop if it didn't happen I persuaded Paul, Woody and Tonio to try out one of my new Christmas games... Pastiche... a game i've been after for a while and that I had high hopes for given the relativly simple rules, family friendly theme and quality components... read the review below to get a feel for my optimism for this game.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/630712/a-comprehensive-p...

So... it's never a good sign when you go over the rules, and although quite simple keep discovering little extras as you review. Generally a sign of tweaking... and generally adding needless complication.

Players play hex tiles to match up primary colours and create secondary and tertiary colours. The aim being to have the right colours to finish masterpieces and earn VP (first to 35 triggers the end game). There's also a bit of trading involved (other players and the bank) and some bonus end of game points. There's a slight settlers vibe to the game, but we quickly realised that the trading element seemed a bit superfulous with other players as it was hard to get the 'hard to get' colours and so no-one was really up for trading them.

Tonio enthusiastically (have those 2 words ever been used together before in a session report ?) started creating minor masterpieces... a degas here, a rembrant there... quickly building up a small gallery but not banking a great deal of points. I was focused on the more complex but higher scoring paintings (for some reason the Mona Lisa is not a high scoring picture in this game?). You can switch potential paintings with a gallery of 4 to try and target specific colours or artists, but I think I was the only person to remember this rule (or more likely forgot to mention it in the rules) and so noone else seemed to be taking advantage. The spirit of Gareth lives on!

Paul was also going for the high scoring pictures, but Woody seemed to be struggling with his painting. His Da Vinci's looking more like Kandinsky and his Van Gogh more like Vandalism...

It's not a long game. 45 minutes on the box and I think we took about an hour. I brought the end game on finishing my 3rd picture and hitting the 35 point level sopt on. At this stage Tonio only had 24 on the table and Paul and Woody not much less. Bonus points are awarded for anyone with pictures by more than one artist (not a good rule in reality as the paintings available are pretty random, and chances are noone will complete more than 3/4 during a game). No one had anything here. however the other bonue allows payers to partially complete any of their paintings with paint in hand. This took my score to 38 and Tonio suddenly realised he couldn't made some bank deals on his last go which would've given him a score of 38 as well... history doesn not sadly record what happened next but lets say that in one alternative reality Tonio indeed scored 38 points for a tie of first place... but in the real world he came a gallant 2nd... Paul 3rd with 32 and Woody by this stage was doodling stickmen on postit notes and trying to win the Turner prize.

So, for me disappointing. Tonio seemed to like it (apart from the ending), but overall a kinda meh feeling... the mechanics look great, but in reality it's hard to plan ahead so there was a lot of downtime during turns, and the number of colours available made each move quite hard to see when choosing what tile to play to match what colours. Could be a good 2 player game I think (less downtime, easier to plan ahead), but fell flat with 4.

James 38, Tonio (real world) 34, Tonio (alternative) 38, Paul 32 Woody 24

From paintings to aristocrats...

St.Petersburg (thanks Noel)

Noel joined Tonio, Barrie and Laurent who was preparing for his first game at IBG. St Petersburg was a good choice, easy to pick up, some interesting decisions and strategy and quick playing. And so it proved. Noel started slowly in the points department and was still on 3 when all others were clustered around 20. He had however been steadily building his cash flow with green workers, helped by the mistress of ceremonies. Tonio decided to pursue an alternative cash poor strategy and some grumbling later collected plenty of workers to earn the benefit from the tax man...which unfortunately stayed unplayed in his hand of cards until the end of the game. Barrie and Laurent developed a balanced collection of each cards with Laurent upgrading to a useful palace for points and cash. After 4 or 5 turns Noel's cash flow allowed him to buy up the best buildings and upgrades and he shot past the group. The momentum was with him and when the end of the game came quicker than expected due to a clear out prior to the aristocrat phase he took the win. Noel 96, Laurent 70, Barrie 66, Tonio 61.

A very quick card game next.

Loco (thanks Noel)

The same group also played a 2 minute game of loco. This ended even quicker than expected with no one realising the end game conditions of one colour completed except Tonio.

Noel 25, Tonio Barrie and Laurent all had 23

A rather longer game was in progress elsewhere.

Eclipse

Scott, Andy, me and Amanda played as Terrans- my faction had the Planta on the reverse, cue various jocular remarks on sentient plant life being the most attractive part of the game.

The usual exploration began with all of us coming across habitable systems and no aliens on the first turn. Andy picked up a discovery tile worth 8 cash, which allowed him to expand a little faster than others. Pretty soon Andy and Scott ran into each other and agreed an alliance. Amanda researched shields and plasma cannons early while I saved up and bought advanced economy and later advanced labs. By now the Aliens were appearing and with a couple of cruisers I was able to defeat them, one ship at a time. Amanda had a little more difficulty against groups of two Alien ships but her shields protected her sufficiently.

As booty from the Aliens I found a Conformal Drive (move 4 hexes, cost 2 energy) and an Axion Computer (+3 to hit, costs no energy), both of which I installed on my Cruisers. I was now preparing to attack the Galactic Centre, I just needed an Antimatter Cannon. Andy bought the first one to become available and before I could buy the next one Amanda had entered the Centre and destroyed its guardian.

Meanwhile Scott had been fitting out his ships with Improved Hull, Plasma Cannons and Proton Computers. Benefiting from a timely Artifact Key for +15 raw materials, his large fleet successfully drove Amanda from the Galactic Centre on the penultimate turn.

For the final turn Scott began to invade my territory. However, Amanda counter-attacked at the Galactic Centre, paralysing Scott’s invasion fleet. I was able to gather all of my fleet (4 Cruisers and one Interceptor which I’d started the game with) against about a quarter of Scott’s (one Dreadnaught one Cruiser) and the battle was still quite close, with my Antimatter Cannons certainly showing their worth.

Back in the Galactic Centre Scott defeated Amanda. Andy had stayed out of the battles, since he could only reach Scott and he didn’t want to be the Traitor. Meanwhile I had ploughed my spare science and raw materials into researching and building 2 Monoliths for 3 VPs each.

Philip 40, Scott 30, Amanda 29, Andy 23

From Space to Sky...

Airlines Europe (thanks Jon)

Noel had brought this Union Pacific re-make along, and found 3 willing newbies in the shape of Barrie, Jon and newcomer Lauren. It is pleasantly simple to understand and play, with only 4 possible options each turn. It has a slight feeling of Ticket to Ride (card drawing and routes) Chicago Express (share collecting) and Alhambra (scoring rounds). And it plays in around an hour – which is just about right for the weight of the game.

Noel used his prior knowledge to start laying shares into his portfolio, as well as starting to increase the value of his holdings by expanding a number of routes. Jon and Barrie completely misjudged how quickly the first scoring round would come up, and both of them had only 2 shares in front of them at this stage. Jon’s grand total of points after 1st round – 1!!! The game skipped along at a fair rate, with Noel extending his lead and Barrie and Jon gradually clawing their way back in to it. The last scoring round held off just long enough for Jon to squeeze out the majority in the valuable Abacus shares, which gave him 2nd place by a tie-break from Lauren. The result was actually very close (apart from Noel being way above in the clouds…) Well worth another play.

Noel 90; Jon 56; Lauren 56; Barrie 52

Not air but time travel next...

Mansions of Madness – Forbidden Alchemy (thanks Tom)

Following a brief but satisfying game of Penguin Party between Tom, Jeff and Andy (who was visiting from his regular jaunt at the Epsom Games Club) – Jeff mentioned that he had brought along Mansions of Madness, together with its new expansion, Forbidden Alchemy. Being the one game that Tom really wanted to have a crack of the whip at, Tom eagerly agreed, with Andy brought along for the ride.

Due to Dan’s absence and the lure of Eclipse and Pastiche (although the latter didn’t appear to be particularly satisfying for its participants in the end), a three player game was begun with Tom and Andy (both new to MoM) as the investigators, and Jeff the “Mansion Master”, if you will, due to his knowledge of the game mechanics.

The scenario chosen by Jeff was “Lost in Space and Time”, a phrase that will cause dread to any erstwhile Arkham Horror players. This was preferred over the two other new scenarios introduced by Forbidden Alchemy, “Return of the Reanimator” and “Yellow Matter”.

In brief, the scenario revolves around a mysterious Dr Sine, who during a conference in 1925, introduces to the public the ability to bring the dead back to life, not by way of any elixir (as favoured by Herbert West, the Reanimator himself), but by the manipulation of time and space.

Having put together the modular game board (and been informed by Jeff of the controversy surrounding the various errata in the FA expansion), Tom and Andy chose their investigators. Having been informed by Jeff that a good balance of health and sanity was necessary, Tom stumped for the hobo, Ashcan Pete, and his trusty dog sidekick, Duke (with his excellent +2 modifier to strength and dexterity for combat). Andy, on the other hand, adopted for the equally balanced, Vincent Lee (a new investigator to the MoM game), picking the Field Medic and Grays Anatomy cards in the process.

Upon our intrepid odd couple entering the mansion’s garden, the investigators were informed that they had stumbled upon an open grave showing signs of gruesome operations having been undertaken upon human subjects. Tom’s obvious Hobo response was to jump in the grave and try and solve the puzzle box located therein – this would prove more difficult than originally anticipated due to an unlucky tile draw, coupled with Ashcan Pete having a few IQ points less than Duke.

Whilst Pete tried to open the box by repeatedly bashing it on the gravestone, Vincent (i.e. Andy) began to investigate the garden area, ultimately heading into the western entrance to the Mansion. The Mansion being roughly designed in a linear U shape, Tom and Andy had decided that they should split up to investigate the two halves of the layout.

Finally, Pete’s repeated bashing of the box brought him to the attention of a flesh eating zombie. The zombie was easily despatched by Pete (with the assistance of his canine pal) through that trusted combination: rip off left arm; claw eyes; rip off right arm. No need to destroy the brain here. Soon after, the box was opened, revealing a very useful combat knife.

In the meantime, Vincent located an old safe that had been looted of its contents, with a large hint being dropped that its contents may be accessible in the past. The safe would have to be left to its own devices for now. Further ahead, Vincent came across a stone slab in the floor of the generator room of such size and weight that the only acid would burn through it. With no acid to hand, he was forced again to leave this tantalising aspect behind.

Having obtained a completely useless magic slate (Hobo’s are notoriously useless at magic), Pete moseyed up the attic stairs only to find them shape and shift underneath him, sending him hurtling back down headfirst. This not only resulted in damage to his health but the onset of schizophrenia. It was at this time that Pete heard the voice (sounding rather like Jeff, who was being nice to the newcomers) that perhaps the laboratories or operating room may be worth visiting, considering the human experiments and so forth.

Vincent and Pete then begin to head towards the laboratory area, whilst Jeff continued to draw and place trap cards, and generally to try and throw the investigators off the case with various interruptions, such as illusions of never-ending hallways. One of these interruptions resulted in Vincent becoming a bit overzealous. After having searched most of the rooms in the area (including a surprisingly quick solution of another picture puzzle by Pete), a time machine was located by Pete in the laboratory, giving rise to the unique mechanic of this particular scenario: the ability to travel between three separate time periods of the past, present and future.

Upon discovery of the time machine, a rather blatant clue was dropped in respect of the kitchen – leading the investigators to conclude that the clue was in the looted safe. Luckily, Pete had somehow come across the combination to the safe on his travels. A trip to the past was therefore in order but it was decided that this should wait, in case any monsters appeared on the way – one of the side effects of time travel being that any monsters must stay in their current time period.

It was decided that Vincent would make the trip to the kitchen whilst Pete would mooch around investigating the hallway outside the hidden laboratory. The combination, together with two magical items, was handed over to Vincent with a couple of evade related items passing the other way. This would prove to be a mistake on Vincent’s part, although he wasn't to know it at the time.

Thanks to a Mythos card, Jeff triggered an event which caused a flying Byakee to appear on the rooftop ready to ambush Vincent as soon as he stepped outside on the way to the kitchen. Vincent was duly ambushed and the risky decision was made to stave off going back in time, with the intention being to let Vincent try and kill the Byakee with his newly acquired Plague of Locusts spell. Having duly failed his horror check (and in the process acquiring the debilitating new mental affliction of rage), Vincent’s Plague of Locusts spell was a bit of a damp squib, leading to his being roundly pummelled by his winged assailant.

Whilst Andy was busy rolling to avoid Vincent being ripped to shreds, Tom’s idle curiosity got the better of him as he asked Jeff what the card was that costs a healthy three threat points (threat being the Mansion Keeper’s currency that must be paid to undertake any action). Reading the card, it was noted that if the card was played in the same round as a change of time, a Hound of Tindalos could be put on the board at any locked door. Jeff duly set aside three threat tokens in his stockpile with undisguised glee.

Soon enough, Vincent could take no more punishment and it was decided that the time machine should be activated, sending the investigators back into the past. Although Vincent was saved for the time being, Pete was in a whole world of trouble.

Cue a real humdinger of a fight as Pete went head to head with the Hound of Tindalos in the storage room adjoining the hidden laboratory. The fight was going rather well for Pete due to his having done some decent damage with his handy knife when Jeff decided to spice matters up by introducing to a Cult Leader to the board... in the same room as Pete and the Hound. The Cult Leader went immediately to his special attack of a fireball, which Pete dove out of the way of. The room was now on fire, which immediately did two damage to both the Hound and the Cult Leader. A stab to the side by Pete and the Hound was dead; unfortunately, the room was still on fire and Pete hot-tailed it out of the room (passing his evade check). He was quickly followed by the Cult Leader who threw another fireball. The fireball was again avoided and the hidden lab was now on fire as well. This was getting ridiculous! Fortunately, the Cult Leader had been hoist by his own petard and soon perished in the flames, allowing Pete to escape to the hallway and safety.

The only problem was that there was a potential clue in the storage room, which Pete could access but only with the consequence of four fire damage, which would probably leave Pete with only four health remaining. The bullet was bitten, the clue was obtained and it was a locked cabinet... to which Vincent had just obtained the key. Disaster! The decision to draw the Cult Leader into the hidden lab (although the best option at the time) had proved very costly indeed.

Whilst this battle for the ages went on, Vincent came across a chemical trap in the hallway to the kitchen. Having solved the puzzle with ease, Andy simply had to roll a seven or below to avoid it. A nine was rolled, curses were yelled, and Vincent had gained a nasty mutation. Luckily, Andy had a card that would let him remove any such side effects and the mutation didn’t hang around long.

In the kitchen safe, Vincent found a seed together with a clear hint that the next clue would be on the rooftop and accessible in the future. 2+2 = plant the seed in the garden next to the rooftop and climb up the plant in the future. This was duly done, allowing Vincent to scamper up the beanstalk to a vial of acid and a clue relating to the generator room. “Back to the stone slab!” was the cry.

Unfortunately, it was here that the investigators’ quest ended. Just prior to the necessary shift to the future, a Mythos card had been turned which placed some disembodied hands in the past, two cultists in the present and a massive Shoggoth in the future. Jeff naturally placed this behemoth in the same room as poor ol’ Ashcan Pete, who by this time had acquired some very nasty internal bleeding. The Shoggoth charged. A willpower roll of 6 was required. The die was rolled. It teetered for seconds on the edge between 2 and 8... before landing on 8. Hit by the bulldozer charge, Pete took four damage and died. At this point, Tom enquired about the health of Duke and got no reply. The assumption was made that Duke was absolutely fine and would enjoy his time in this post-apocalyptic future, listening to Bob Marley – like the dog in I Am Legend.

As this point, having read out a rather gruesome description of Pete’s death at the amoeba-like appendages of the Shoggoth, Jeff revealed that he had satisfied his winning condition which was to feed one of the investigators to his pet Shoggoth in the future period.

The intrepid investigators never really found out why it was necessary for Dr Sine to turn them into the equivalent of Shoggoth Pedigree Chum, but it was still a rather satisfying conclusion to an adrenaline pumped game. “Return of the Reanimator” next time anybody?

Rounding off the evening...

Code 777 (thanks Jon)

It was 10.45pm, and there was time for something quick to finish the evening. Jon suggested Code 777, as it was very quick to explain, and nobody knew differently in order to put up any objections. With the benefit of hindsight, this was maybe the right game, but definitely at the wrong time, as it takes more brain burning than is generally acceptable at this time of night. The basic premise is that each person has a 3 digit code which they are trying to guess. You can see each other player’s code, but not your own. Each player takes it in turn to read out a question and give the answer from what they can see (eg can you see more red numbers, or blue numbers) The other players then use this information to start deducing what their own code is. The trick is in how you record the information that you have gleaned on your notepad – and it wasn’t until about halfway through that the penny dropped about the most effective way of doing this – by which time it was too late! Hence, we have learned: 1) Don’t play this at the beginning of the evening; 2) Remember to distinguish between tiles that you have seen, and tiles that have been deduced; 3) Don’t trust Jon to pick an appropriate game at 10.45pm.

Jon 2; Noel 1; Barrie 1; Lauren 0

P.S “What Progress has been made in Modern Gunnery” has been taken from the song of the Major-General in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance. Antimatter cannons are currently top of the range J

"Hold on high their shameless heads"

2011-12-30T14:20:00.000Z

After our Christmas meal the week before, only six people turned up for the meeting before Christmas. Light games were the fare.

Gloria Pictoria

Jon, James and me began with this fairly simple card game. Build up sets of cards in various colours, score points for having the most cards in a given colour during the 3 scoring rounds (whose timing is unpredictable), lose points at the end for cards in hand. The one complication is the fox, who prowls around rendering useless one set of cards. On your turn the fox starts with you and automatically joins your neighbour when your turn ends, however you can send him on ahead for a price.

In fact, the price never seemed worth having and, as chance would have it, the fox struck a different player each scoring round, roughly evening out the bad luck. Jon was ahead early but once I realised the importance of starting as many sets as possible I was able to take the lead...(scores may not be totally correct).

Philip 17 John 14 James I 12

From foxes to guns...

Ca$h 'n' Gun$ [thanks Andy]

Our festive funsters settled down for a game about shooting your friends and running off with all the loot. What could be more seasonal?

It quickly became apparent that if you want to do well at this game you should play with people that others would really like to plug with a bullet. So it proved as James, Jon and Gareth all found themselves staring down the barrels of numerous revolvers and the brave (Gareth) quickly found himself nursing injuries while the cowardly picked up shame tokens.

Paul's Bang Bang Bang card gave Andy a wound while he was preparing to finish Gareth off, thus saving Thomason's skin. But when it came down to the final reckoning Andy had kept his head down long enough to accumulate just enough cash to win.

Final scores: Andy $70,000; Gareth, Phil and Paul $65,000; James $50,000 and Jon $45,000

Not robbers but Indians next...(postive numbers in Coyote are Indians).

Coyote (thanks Jon)

As this was ‘party-game’ night, there wasn’t too much grumbling when Jon brought out a game that involved everyone wearing a headband to attach a card to their heads. Nice.

The game is basically a deck of cards which mostly have numbers from 1-5 on them, but also have some 10’s, 20’s and wild cards (-10 / - highest other card etc). Each player takes a card, and without looking at it, attaches it to his head, so that everyone else can see it. Therefore you can see every card apart from your own. Players then begin bidding an amount which they think that the total of all the cards doesn’t exceed, until someone decides that it is too high and challenges the previous bid ( a la Perudo). Players who have bid or challenged incorrectly then take a token (also attached to their head!) and when they have 3 tokens, they are eliminated. Last man standing wins. It sounds simple, and it is, but there is something very amusing about seeing another player with a “-10” on their head which they don’t know about, but something equally as frustrating about not knowing what’s stuck to your own forehead! Philip and James were the first to depart the game, closely followed by Gareth and then Paul. It was then left to a showdown between Jon and Andy, which Jon won in the final round.

This is actually a really fun game, and one that I enjoyed more than Perudo, as there is a lot more knowledge available. Definitely an enjoyable way to pass 20 mins, and worth it just to see Philip wearing a red headband.

Jon – won; Andy – 2nd; Paul; Gareth; Philip; James

Less bluffing, more fighting in our next game....

King of Tokyo (thanks Jon)

At the beginning of this game, there was a general rumble of discontent as several players appeared to be playing for the ‘points’ victory, rather than beating seven bells out of each other in Tokyo. However, this eventually changed when Andy was able to take out 4 other players in a single turn, leaving him in a fight-to-the-death with Jon, who was currently on 14 points and 3 health. However, a fortunate roll of the dice allowed Jon to pick up 3 points from rolling 3 two’s, getting another point for not attacking, and having enough energy to buy a card that gave an instant 2 points in return for losing 2 health. 6 points in one turn, and the victory was his. So much for having disdain for points victories……

Jon – won; Andy – 2nd; James; Gareth; Phil; Paul – all died

Linq (thanks Jon)

Trust James to bring along an obscure little word game that is actually rather good – although I’m not sure that Gareth was that impressed… Anyway, the concept is simple – players are secretly dealt a card, which either contains a word, or ??? on it (only 2 players have a word, which is always the same). Players then take it in turns to say a single word, and then a second word, and that’s it! The trick is that the 2 players with the words are trying to locate each other, whilst the others are trying to locate the ‘wordists’ whilst trying to get others to incorrectly identify them. Think - Dixit meets the Resistance (sort of….) We only had time (or the inclination) to play 3 or 4 rounds, but I really enjoyed it – a neat twist on word games. Can’t remember who won, but it wasn’t me……..

P.S "Hold on high their shameless heads" is from Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore

"In for a Penny in for a Pound"

2011-12-13T20:08:00.002Z

For me the whole evening was bold as...

Brass

I was eager to play this Martin Wallace game again, and Keith who had brought it was of the same mind. We roped James II and Shamu as new players. Keith explained the rules and I noted any little differences from my previous understanding.

Shamu was randomly chosen to start and, as Keith suggested, developed while Iron was cheap. So did James, while Keith and I built cotton mills.

I think Keith played the first Ironworks and he also made the first cotton shipment to the external market, neatly timed to balance his loan. I endured a couple of turns negative income before shipping two cotton mills at once, one to my port and one to the external market. Meanwhile Shamu shipped using James II’s port.

The canal age proceeded more or less prosperous with me and Keith putting down several level 2 structures and James II putting down a level 2 port. In fact my port, James’ port and Keith’s cotton mill were all flipped during the canal age, thus scoring twice. James II was clearly ahead after the first scoring, but his income was looking low.

With the coal mines already in place, railway building made an early and rapid start, especially as I had funds enough to build 2 railways in one action on a number of occasions. James II took out a second loan and began constructing shipyards, by dint of considerable effort cranking two out before the game ended. Meanwhile the Iron and Coal disappeared and indeed fell so low that I was able to replace one of James II’s Coal mines with one of my own as almost the last move of the game.

The final scoring revealed that my strategy was too heavily income-biased, while James II’s Shipyards paid off handsomely. Scores may not be totally accurate- James II took the scoresheet!

James II 110 Keith 103 Philip 100 Shamu 96

BRASS (thanks James).

A couple of weeks ago my friend Jess came over to see me. Among other things, she wanted to play a board game. She liked the box art on Troyes and said she'd like to try it. I said (for her being a non-gamer) it was quite complicated. Nonetheless I set the board up and proceeded to explain the rules. Jess has the shortest attention span of anyone I know and five minutes in she got bored and started to throw the pieces at me. So, the day after, it was good to go to The London Apprentice and play a game with some actual gamers.

Keith had brought along Brass. Now a game based on the industrial revolution in the north of England isn't one I'd normally jump at due to the theme, but it did indeed look interesting.

The game consists of two phases – The canal era and The rail era. It's played on a map of the north of England and players score points by developing industries in the major industrial centres of the time. To start with, only certain types of industry can be built. These in turn can provide resources (some of which can also be purchased from the open market) to develop more advanced industries. These can also go on to provide goods which can be moved along canal or rail routes to be sold for revenue. Also, your industries exist in a stack. As you develop industries and progress through the stack, the industries available to you become more valuable. The play is partially card-driven. The cards that you possess (more are drawn in each of the players turns) determine which industries you are allowed to build and the locations in which you are allowed to do so. If you want to expand your empire (and do not have an appropriate location card), you must use your already built canal (rail in the second phase of the game) routes to move your your industrial influence to another location on the board. These routes, as I mentioned before, can also be utilised to move goods. The difference between these two actions is that to expand your empire to a new location, you can only use routes that you have built. Where as, when moving goods, you can use routes that other players have put in place. Thus building routes is an advantage to progressing in the game. In addition to this though, at the end of each of the two phases, canal or rail sections give you points. The more industries they link to, the more points you get.

At the end of the game with the final scoring taking place, I managed to secure a slim victory, I think due to developing a couple of ship yards in the last few turns, which I fortuitously had the appropriate cards for.

James (me):112. Keith 104.Phil:100.Shamu: 97.

That game took all evening, but others had wisely started with a filler...

Felix the Cat in the Sack (thanks Jon)

The first 5 arrivees had a go at this popular filler. To my shame, I didn’t record all the details at the time, but I do remember scoring exactly the same as I started with. Paul, Noel and Andy also played and scored varying amounts of points (one of them scored less than me – but I can’t remember which one….!) but Mark was the victor, dropping out quickly in a number of early auctions only to collect a whole load of cats later on. Sack-tastic!

A little more brain burning in our next title...

Tikal (thanks Jon)

I don’t get to play this very often (which is probably ‘cos I don’t bring it along – it’s right at the bottom of my pile of games and would take an engineering degree to get it out…) However, it is definitely my ‘overall’ favourite game. It just seems to work beautifully – the rules are simple: place a tile, take 10 action points, score your position 4 times during the game. The theme fits really well, and the pieces look great (hence the background to our blog title). It is also a work-out for the brain, which can result in some serious AP if you’re not careful. Anyway, that’s enough gushing……

In this particular game, Paul and Andy were both brand new to Tikal (hence not playing the auction variant), but picked it up really quickly. All 3 players collected similar amounts of treasures, but Jon used his experience to cap a couple of early temples without losing too many workers. This resulted in him being about 12 points ahead of the others after the second scoring round. Paul and Andy both set up camps further into the jungle, and used these to good effect, to take control of nearby newly-discovered temples. When the last scoring round occurred, the rule of ‘last place scores first’ was used, which is a neat little ‘catch the leader’ mechanism. This resulted in Jon going last, but thanks to the last-minute placement of a camp and temple tile, and the fact that Andy had run out of new workers to bring onto the board, he was able to do a swift last turn and win by a few points. It had been a long game (c 2 hours) but very enjoyable and engaging. Note to self: must play it more often……

Jon 112; Andy 105; Paul 103

Our final report, is, after all...

Small World (thanks noel)

On noel's arrival mark was eagerly setting up Small World anticipating the arrival of dan, Lou and tom. Noel joined to make a possible 5 but despite the early prep we ended up with just Mark, Noel and Dan contesting the small world. Noel asked lots of reminder questions and was then deemed first to go by duty of his undoubted leprechaun lineage. Firstly he chose the Stout sorcerers and duly scored and used their special ability to immediately decline, picking up the seafaring skeletons. Mark started with the Trolls and established lairs in the north which were to give him some regular early victory points. When mark declined the trolls a turn later he picked up the pillaging amazons, putting him into an obvious early lead and a target on his races. Dan led the onslaught on the amazons with his wizards and giants while Noel got his seafaring skeletons to conquer the lakes, giving a regular additional 3 points per turn, before declining to pay full cost for the Bivouacking Ratmen. The Ratmen were able to decimate the remaining amazons which were still hanging on and there was too much to do for Mark’s flying dwarfs to regain the lead. Victory for the rat swarm.

Noel 111, Mark 96, Dan 92

NB: "In for a Penny in for a Pound" is from Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe. If you take a loan in Brass, you'd best take the biggest loan you can!

"When there Was Any Fighting"

2011-12-06T19:16:00.001Z

The evening kicked off with some monstrous action...

King of Tokyo

I arrived slightly late and took on the role of Alienoid, while Tonio began a gruelling round of staying in Tokyo- he made it but at the price of very low health. My arrival as fifth player added Tokyo Bay to the mix and everyone was soon flitting in and out, earning Vps. Someone managed to roll four threes for four VPs, and there were a few card purchases although I removed Wings from the agenda by refreshing the cards- I’d heard Wings was broken... (and support for this can be seen in a later session report)

Anyway we reached the stage where everyone was on fairly low health and on my turn a fire blast (costs three energy, does 2 damage to all other players) became available. I quickly bought it, immediately killing Tonio and Paul and damaging the others enough to make finishing them off easy.

Another game followed, without me

King of Tokyo (Thanks Scott)

With new arrivals dropping through the door every minute, we started up a quick game before anything else.

Barrie, Paul, James II & Scott were keen on King of Tokyo and newcomer Shamu was roped in to join us.

Apparently Paul is an expert at this game, if only dying as quickly as possible was the goal, I hear he had about three turns in two games, after this game where his triumphant effort of being greedy in Tokyo early on led to a very swift death; Scott was riding Paul’s coattails to earn some points from Tokyo but left the battle just in time to recover some much needed health, then shortly after he set everyone back by buying a card to deal a nice chunk of damage to everyone, killing Shamu who had just had a spell in Tokyo, with James following soon behind with an aggressive Barrie on the loose.

The battle then changed and Scott was soon fully healed with Barrie keeping his head above water through his bonus healing abilities and it became a race for points, Scott had the advantage of some wings to avoid damage and enough health to sit tight in Tokyo. So despite Barrie’s best efforts to lose Scott points through cards, Scott soon acquired the 20 to win with Barrie stuck at around 13.

Scott 20, Barrie 13, James II (dead) Shamu (dead) Paul (dead – very quickly)

From Monsters to Real Estate...

For Sale (thanks Scott)

With more main games being started, Andy, Barrie and Scott decided to wait for the Kingdom Builders to finish, with Jon and James playing we should have anticipated it would take a while.

Rule 1 of For Sale: Don’t play with Barrie.

It was quickly observed between Andy and Scott that Barrie was going to be a real wildcard (and even Barrie admitted he was a crazy For Sale player), spending all his starting cash on just a couple of properties leaving Scott and Andy some tastier morsels for cheap as Barrie was handed the lowest cards for nothing because he had no money left to bid for half the property auctions. Fortunately for Scott, he had also grabbed some good properties early on so Andy had a balanced portfolio, Scott a reasonably good one and Barrie’s pretty poor.

This reflected in the cheque phase with Scott winning the majority of the top ones but there were some close calls, particularly the 26 that went for a song, poor Andy.

1st Scott – 99, 2nd Andy – 82 3rd Barrie – 66

From Real Estate to dice...

Perudo (thanks Scott)

Continuing with the lighter games for a moment longer, Andy hadn’t played Perudo before, we tried to explain that it was a bit like Nanuk but he hadn’t played that either so a quick rules summary and we were off. Andy was quick to lose his first die but got it back immediately with a successful call of “Exact”. Barrie and Scott were doing particularly badly while Andy held his own, Scott was first to a single die but survived long enough to see Barrie lose all his dice. Andy had 4 to Scott’s 1 and with a call of one four, Scott thought it would be safe to call exact but sadly, Andy had two of them.

1st – Andy 2nd – Scott 3rd – Barrie

Meanwhile, I had set off in a rather different gaming direction from Scott- long and rich rather than short and simple...

Android

Players, from first to last in the turn order Dan (Louis), Mark (Rachel) Tom (Floyd), Louise (Caprice), Me (Ray)

Dan had played before and everyone except me had a basic grasp of the rules. Dan explained them to me and we started with the standard scenario. The game consists of 12 turns or days, with each character getting 6 units of Time to spend each turn (well except for Floyd who has 7 and Caprice who fluctuates between 5 and 7). Time is spent moving about the vast board, which shows locations on Earth, the Moon, and a space elevator between the two called the Beanstalk. The characters are investigating a murder. The idea is not so much to find out whodunit as to plant the evidence on the suspect you’ve already fingered as guilty. There is also a Conspiracy to unravel, which works a bit like a jigsaw puzzle.

Characters also have their own individual subplots and their own decks of light and dark cards. Light cards are played by your character for his/her benefit, dark cards from a particular character deck are played by the other characters to that character’s detriment. A neat little mechanic means you want to be playing dark and light cards with roughly equal frequency.

My character, a troubled private investigator who is struggling to deal with the suprising appearance of an old flame, has a special ability allowing him to draw 2 cards for 1 time once a turn- normally it costs 1 time per card. I used my ability almost every turn and always drew 1 light card and 1 dark card (rotating the latter between my opponents' characters). The increased card flow meant I played cards more often, which in turn meant I was messing with the other characters more often- which quickly made me unpopular.

For example on Dan’s turn 2 I played a light card which enabled to follow up a lead Louis was investigating. Later on I played another card which caused Louis to forget his wife’s anniversary and lose valuable favours. I forced Tom’s character (Floyd) to lose 3 time (half a turn) chatting to a priest, and also to jump off a building (Floyd is an android or ‘bioroid’ so he wasn’t injured, but it damaged the street!). Mark’s character Rachel is a bounty hunter and I was able to force her to lose money a little, although Floyd also helped out here by making Rachel lose an entire turn! I was less successful with Lousie's character, Caprice, because she was cautious about managing her cards.

Of course, I attracted a similar amount of fire against me, losing my entire turn, getting beaten up, being moved to the middle of the Beanstalk, and so on. Meanwhile the investigation into the murder and the conspiracy continued apace. My strategy tips said I should concentrate on the conspiracy. I did, but since everyone else was as well my efforts were not very effective. I wasted a couple of chances to place on “digging deeper” which allowed me to place a theoretically better piece. The conspiracy occupies a quarter or so of the vast board, starting with a piece in the middle with an ominous looking eye (which Mark claimed wasn’t present in his edition).

From the eye the conspiracy radiates outwards to locations on the edge which give a VP boost to certain things if they are connected to the centre. Also, any completion of a row of 5 pieces is worth 4 VPs to the person placing the final piece.

The conspiracy grew rapidly and was soon connected to most locations and became impossible to expand further. However, one of my light cards allowed me to rotate a piece before placing a new piece, which meant I made it possible to place pieces again, at the price of cutting off the conspiracy from the “VPs for political favours” location- cue anguished howls from Dan and Mark who had been collecting those favours. However, the new lease of life didn’t last very long as shortly afterwards Dan placed the last piece.

This was rather annoying since my subplot gave me “good baggage” for placing conspiracy pieces. All subplots accumulate baggage and if good baggage outweights bad baggage on the day the subplot resolves (usually 3, 6, 9 and 12) you get a better subplot and (at the end of the game) a hefty chunk of VPs.

Meanwhile the murder investigation went badly wrong for me when I was a little too obvious with my setting up and my evidence was revealed by a reporter hired by Caprice. Since everyone now knew who I was fingering for guilty, I abandoned the struggle and concentrated on obtaining good baggage the only way possible for me- buying favours at one location and spending favours at another for baggage.

A brief moment of hope surfaced when one of the suspects started hacking the police computers, threatening to wipe out all the evidence planted so far, but despite Rachel’s best efforts Caprice was able to apprehend the miscreant.

The game ended just before the pub closed and scoring commenced. The suspect I wanted to be found innocent was found guilty so I scored no points on the murder investigation. I did however complete my subplot, telling the old flame to leave, which got me more than half my VPs. Dan and Mark had been weighed down by bad baggage, some contributed by me, and it was Tom and Louise who competed for the victory.

Dan 31 Mark 28 Tom 61 Louise 59 Philip 25.

More Science fiction on another table...

Core Worlds (thanks John)

Although it's a deck building game it does not feel so much like one. You play ten rounds only and at the end of it, whoever has the most points win. You get points from acquiring cards either by buying them with energy or invading them if they are planets. You won't get to see most of the cards you acquire during the game more than a couple of times.

John, Scott and Andy settled down to play, what was a first game for all of them. Each player gets there own starter deck, which is the same apart from a hero card, which is different for each faction.

The game is a constant struggle to get military units into play and invade worlds which get added to your war zone and increases you energy. (The currency of the game). John was the first to get a second world (you all start off with a home world). All this meant though was that Scott and Andy got an extra energy from their power surge cards.

Everyone seemed pretty close at the end of the first sector. (There are five sectors, you play two turns in each). In the second sector a really juicy world came up. John could have taken it but he got greedy and tried to use a medibot as well which allowed Scott to snatch it away from him.

By the third section John and Andy had managed to get a lead in the energy stakes from Scott, but Scott was not too worried as he was getting more of the high scoring cards.

In the fourth round the players found they almost had more energy than they could spend, John and Andy not being able to use all of it.

The fifth sector is pretty different from the rest as it's the Core Worlds themselves and all about points. As well as some big scoring worlds there are lots of bonus points available. Even though the bonuses are written on the player boards no one had really looked at them closely and planned for them. Everyone grabbed as much as they could and then the game was over.

Scott's tactic of just going for the highest scoring card every time paid off in the end. Andy commented it was the third game in a row that John had finished with 1 point more than him.

Scott 36, John 24, Andy 23

Back to Earth now, but beware the Monsters!

Ticket to Ride with Alvin and Dexter (thanks Paul)

Having bought along my newly acquired Alvin and Dexter expansion the previous week, with no takers, I was prepared to do some convincing if I was going to get it to the table.

After all, Ticket to Ride is an excellent game in so many ways, which are recognised by its many fans, but one couldn't accuse it of being frivolous with its theme. After all, building railways is building railways and this game does it just fine, so why on earth would the official designer and publisher want to introduce an expansion that involved an alien in a flying saucer called Alvin and a godzilla-like creature named Dexter? Let's keep railways to Ticket to Ride, and creatures of that ilk can stay in games such as King of Tokyo. That'd obviously be the sensible thing to do, and after all, being sensible is what playing games is all about isn't it?

Certainly that seemed to be the consensus as Paul's invitations to join in were met by many unbelieving looks and 'well, it's just wrong...' comments.

However Paul was thrown a couple of lifelines by newcomer Shamu who was up for anything and also James who was a confessed Ticket to Ride fan and Paul had a suspicion that he'd be open minded enough to welcome the unusual mix of themes. So the three started to lay the board out and then benefited from Johan arriving and being very happy to join in with the game.

The rules for Alvin and Dexter are pretty simple. After the normal set up they are placed on cities chosen by the last and penultimate players in turn order. Once a city is occupied by the alien or monster they are then officially a 'city on chaos' and no track can be built to or from that city. Either can be moved on a players turn, in addition to a normal move by playing one or two locomotive cards and then moving the creature up to three or six spaces, respectively. Each time this happens the player that moves the monster collects a card for their efforts and at the end of the game the players with the most Alvin cards and the most Dexter cards receive a bonus of fifteen points. Also at the end of the game any routes that contain Alvin or Dexter have their points halved - both positive if the route has been achieved and negative if it has not.

Apart from being good clean bit of 'theme mixing fun', the expansion does add quite a lot to the strategy of the game. There is the obvious additional 'gotcha' element, but locomotives become far more valuable and there are more ways to win points.

These additional points actually swung the game for James as he ended up with the most Alvin cards and tied for the most Dexter cards with Paul - a haul of 30 which allowed him to take the game.

This time the game was actually fairly 'bitty' with no hugely long networks being created and North Eastern Europe in particular becoming very crowded. Alvin and Dexter occupied Central Europe for most of the game, making a few diversions to London and then over to Warsaw.

Shamu was new to the game and got into the swing quickly, being the first to take new routes. Johan made the only 8 track route collecting the whopping 21 points for doing so.

Before the final points were totalled up Johan was well in the lead, followed by Shamu, James and then Paul.

In reverse order Paul totalled up first, having achieved quite a few routes, the longest route and picking up one 15 point bonus, managed to put himself into a very healthy position. The other three didn't do as well with their routes, actually achieving a lower than typical total. The overall winner was James, who surprisingly only managed 2 small routes, but had picked up good points for laying long track, had no negatives and then picked up both Alvin and Dexter bonuses to give him the victory.

Overall it was agreed that the new expansion did add a lot to the game although we didn't really explore it fully and all players said they'd certainly play it again. Most of the naysayers from earlier did pay a visit to the game as it took place to casually ask how it worked and was it good, with some tell-tale looks that they may in fact enjoy it when they saw what it was all about.

James: 106, Paul 100, Johan: 89, Shamu 78(ish)

More fantasy for our last session report- after all, it is a...

Small World

Small World came out in the second half of the evening. The Ticket to Ride players were joined by Amanda so five players were competing for the overcongested world.

It was new to Amanda and Shamu, who after having played King of Tokyo and Alvin and Dexter must have thought that all of our games were monster themed. It's not true Shamu - hope you come back and find out.

Johan started off with some ghouls that stuck around for a long time in this game. He therefore declined his civilisation at the first opportunity and started to rake in large points.

Poor Amanda was nailed from, both sides, more by poor luck than vindictiveness. This is more than can be said when the players took Jon's advice (no he wasn't playing, but did display an uncanny sixth sense in pointing out to all players that Johan was on to attack), which everyone seemed very happy to do as he did take some good points hauls early on.

The momentum shifted to James who then started racking up big points, although it was obviously fun attacking Johan as he was still the main victim of attack.

Paul's points were never spectacular but were never low.

Shamu was in his first game of Small World but had played a lot of risk before, which may have stood him in good stead as towards the end of the game he was the one who strung together many rounds of 13+ points.

The end game proved decisive as Shamu racked up a win in his first trip to IBG.

Shamu: 88, Paul: 84, James: 73, Johan: 71, Amanda: 67

"When there was any fighting" is taken from Gilbert and Sullivan's the Gondoliers. Sadly there is no evidence Gilbert and Sullivan based their lyrics on King of Tokyo.

"Much I'd Spend to gain my End"

2011-11-29T21:04:00.002Z

Perudo (thanks Scott)

Kicking off the night was the usual treat of Perudo with Scott, Amanda, Philip & Emma. Philip who usually employs a risky strategy of bidding very high and hoping everyone rolled the same number but today was a different tact and instead lady luck said no, even with reasonable bids he would be called out and just miss out by one die or call exact and there would be 5’s in abundance (five’s were called quite regularly). So despite the change of tactic, Philip was out first and in a bizarre twist of fate Scott had lost his touch, too many weeks without Perudo and was soon out next. Leaving Amanda and Emma to battle it out, but Amanda had the edge with the number of dice and would usually be telling the truth, much to Emma’s demise as she had been expecting otherwise.

We moved on to another light game beginning with P...

Pinguin Party

Actually I have almost no memory of this game. The usual pile up of different coloured Penguins ensued, with the Purple Penguins getting pushed out early in the first game because “you don’t want miserable people at a party”. Everyone took chips most games. There was one game I didn’t take any chips, which probably contributed to my eventual victory.

Philip- 4 chips Scott, Amanda and Barrie- 5 or 6 chips.

Last Will

Amanda and Scott were keen to play Last Will which was recently new to them (although Amanda almost deserted us to play Puerto Rico which she is also addicted to); Andy and Philip were convinced to join and make us up to a nice complement of 4, Philip and Andy both being new to the game and a quick run through of the rules ensued.

Unfortunately for all they were not warned to be wary of Scott (possibly this is written in the Isleworth gamers rules and regulations), Philip had a great start, a steward to look after his pair of farms and plenty of animals, however it all came unstuck when he need to start selling them off while Scott and Andy were ensuring the prices stayed high on farms, which was bad for Amanda too who was also frittering away her money in farmyards. Andy and Scott had gone to house where Scott had his chef, lady and gardener stripping his assets while Andy just let his rot away and depreciate.

It all seemed to be going quite smoothly but as we got down to the selloff, Scott had ensured he kept some hectic days and a large ball to attend to just break the bank sooner than everyone else expected who all wanted another round and still had a property on their books (Scott had missed explaining the rule about houses being worth 5 more at the end of the game but everyone was in the same boat so it didn’t affect the standings).

Scott – minus 2, Philip – 19, Andy – 27,Amanda – 31

Oregon

After Last Will, Andy was keen to play his copy of Oregon that he had acquired in the works sale for a mere £8 and needed someone to teach him the game, so Scott kindly agreed after a little persuasion, this was new to everyone else. Amanda seemed most confused about the rules and confessed they just went in one ear and out the other (she’s started tuning Scott out already!) but seemed to survive okay with a few pointers along the way.

Scott got off to a great start by showing everyone else what they should be doing when a railroad, a saloon and a boatyard all ended up together, using extra turns and jokers to maximise the turn and then re-flipping the extra turn and joker markers to do the same thing all over again next time. Andy was quicker off the mark to join in and make most use of the spaces before Scott took them all, leaving Amanda and Philip a little in the dust.

Philip made a good comeback and assisted Andy and Amanda along the way by getting himself some big scoring while also scoring them a little too. Not good for Scott who was clinging on to his early lead by a thread. Scott rushed his cowboys as quickly as possible and soon enough had all 14 in play with just enough points in mine tokens to clinch the win.

Scott – 66, Andy – 63, Philip – 58, Amanda – 44

Elsewhere was another Euro...(thanks James)

Asara

I picked this up for a song a few weeks back, and after a trial run with the Missus (who beat me as usual) I thought it would be safe to unveil on a Wednesday as it hit the sweet spot of several gamers... quick rules, plays in under and hour, nice looking board... ok as it happens only 33% of these plans worked out, but still... it’s higher than my usual average...

A game of tower building, using worker placement, but with coloured cards instead of meeples. Players can choose to buy tower parts, obtain gold, or build... pretty simple but for one interesting extra. Once a coloured card is placed in a zone, only cards of the same colour can be used in that zone for the rest of the round... and this makes the game pretty intense as you’re trying to maximise the cards you have but not wanting to get cut out of an area by waiting too long.

So, a slightly harder game to explain than I’d thought, but we got there eventually and with only one rule being screwed up (again, better than my average) we started. Jon immediately recognising the value of white towers started spending big... but quickly ran out of cash. Emma went for black (closet Goth you know), Paul red and I took green... and so it began.

Round 2 and Paul and Emma both started building brown, while Jon was sticking to White with a Green tower to compliment. Some tower tiles were embellished with gold which earned bonus points. Jon, showing his previously hidden fetish for bling was snapping these up left right and centre to create a building fit for JayZ.

Round 3 and the end game started to loom. I was trying to make sure I only built once each round but used 5-6 pieces and had by now managed to construct a green tower to rival Jack’s beanstalk. Emma was completing with this, while Jon had come unstuck with the white tower strategy as it kept running out of cash... his new tactic to counteract this was to stock up with as much money as possible... as would become apparent at the end. Paul had decided that he was going to compete with my Green tower and was building a Red tower of similar height. After the last round there were several bonuses available for bigger tower, most towers etc, so plans were starting to be set for the end game

Last round and there was a building frenzy... apart from Jon who was trying to gather enough funds to buy Northern Rock. Emma and James both completed their 5th towers and Paul extended his red tower to match my green one (‘Tower’ envy is nothing to be proud of Paul...)... but It was clear at this stage that only Emma and James were in the race for the victory.

Final scores are sadly lost to the winds of time (or less romantically a trouser pocket at home somewhere), but I clinched victory with bonus points over Emma in a close 2nd. Paul was making up the numbers and Jon had learnt a valuable lesson that bling might get you noticed, but shouldn’t be taken as an alternative for substance.

So, I like the game, (and not only cause I won )... it's definitely in the family arena in terms of complexity, but there is enough going on for gamers to be interested. And despite being 1 1/2 hours for a first time run through, it should be under an hour for future games. Better I think with 4 than with 2, as the decisions seem a lot more intense. will have to bring along again for a rematch, although I'll wait a few weeks so I can savour the win a bit longer

Elsewhere the fare was lighter still...

Montego Bay (thanks Jon)

£7.99 from The Works – with lots of nice-looking bits so was worth an outing. This is quite a novel little game, where players have 2 workers that they use cards to control their movement around some dockside sheds. Depending on where the workers end up will dictate their ‘rewards’ in the form of barrels of goods, and possibly coins. The trick is that all movement is decided simultaneously, and workers that end up on the same square often end up being relocated. Players then use their barrels to load ships at the docks, and score points based upon majorities in each vessel.

The game claims to be playable in 45 mins, and this turned out to be exactly right. The ships leave the docks in a fairly swift fashion and the endgame is soon triggered. Although the decisions that players have to make aren’t particularly deep, there is enough in the game to cause some head-scratching (especially for Paul….)

It turns out that Jon was the best docker, but only by one point from Paul, with the last round being crucial in terms of scoring points.

I’m definitely going to bring this along again, as it fits into the ‘45 minutes with a bit of meat to it’ category, which is always a bonus.

Jon 41; Paul 40; James 33; Emma 25

Another light game...

Diamant (thanks Jon)

Long-time-no-see for this fun little gem-hunting push-your-luck game. We used to play this a lot at the end of the evening, but these 8-player games don’t seem to have come out quite as often recently. Never mind, this was rectified tonight, and we were soon reminded of why we used to enjoy it so much.

First up we have Gareth (on a rare pre-twins visit to IBG). His modus operandi is known as the ‘run screaming out of the mine like a little girl as soon as possible’ strategy. For the first few mines, he sat smugly back after he had collected 4 or 5 gems, as other more adventurous souls ventured further on, only to be often hit by misfortune and disaster. Barrie and Jon were the bravest gem-hunters, often dancing hand-in-hand into the darkness, only to be confronted by an effusion of foul-smelling green gas (maybe Gareth had ventured this way after all…..)

In the final mine, Gareth was joined in his usual early exit by 2 others, resulting in a paucity of scavenged loot. Once again, Jon and Barrie were the last ones left in, but this time fortune favoured the brave and they were rewarded by myriad gems. They both jumped ship after a particularly rewarding cave, which was not quite enough to give the victory to Jon, as Johan had quietly amassed a small fortune in precious stones in previous rounds. The other 5 players were separated by only 2 points, with Gareth coming in joint last. Maybe next time, he will be brave enough to venture into the mine with everyone else……..

Johan 44; Jon 35; Emma 25; Barrie 24; Paul 24; James 23; Gareth 23

Another push your luck game...

Nanuk (thanks Jon)

The evening finished with the game that, once upon time at IBG, used to be the closer of choice. In honour of Emma’s last appearance at IBG, it was rolled out again, to send her on her way happy (even if she did come last). Tonight’s game was characterised by 2 events – Gareth was devious every time (no surprise) and Jon played it honest all the way through (maybe slightly more surprising). During one round, an unlikely alliance of James and Jon were left to try to source 8 deer by themselves in 3 days. With only 4 in their hands it was looking unlikely, although the first 2 cards from the deck did indeed turn out to be deer. However, the miracle hunt did not transpire, much to the relief of the other 7 players.

James then chose to side with Gareth in not going on the final hunt, which turned out to be an even bigger mistake, as it proved successful and profitable. The final scores demonstrated that honesty had paid off for Jon, with a narrow victory.

PS – if anyone can think of a better and quicker way of scoring this game, then please speak up – the current method is appalling…….

Jon 9; Dan 8; Barrie 8; Gareth 8; Lou 7; Tom 4; James 3; Mark 3; Emma 3

P.S The title is a quotation from Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe.

"In First and Foremost Flight"

2011-11-22T20:32:00.001Z

After an unreported game of Perudo, I gravitated to…

Eclipse

Jeff was back, and as usual he had a shiny new game to play. Eclipse is a space empires game of the “4X” variety: Explore, Expand, Ex… and Exterminate. Players start in control of their own home system and take it in turn to take actions- you can take any number of actions but the more you take the more it costs.

The game began with everyone (Jeff, me, Barrie and James II) exploring neighbouring systems. Some systems were available for take over straight away- Jeff seemed to get lots of these- while others contained hostile aliens called Ancients- I was particularly favoured with these, though Barrie and James also had a fair few. Systems also contained bonus tokens- worth 2VPs or some other benefit such as extra cash or a bonus piece of kit for your ships.

Exploration continued in subsequent rounds, but we also conducted research and built and upgraded spaceships. Barrie was the first to attack the Ancients, with a fleet of Interceptors equipped with extra Ion Cannons. Unfortunately the Ancients blasted Barrie’s fleet to smithereens, but he received a VP token as a consolation prize. A little later I attacked a different Ancients’ system using two Dreadnaughts. Their greater size meant they could survive the Ancient attacks and win the day. The bonus token for that system gave me a Cruiser.

Meanwhile both Jeff and Barrie were running into overstretch problems due to having too many systems and not enough cash (In a clever mechanic, each system you control uses an action token, permanently increasing your costs). Jeff managed to survive by not doing very much, while Barrie was forced to lose systems to pay off his debts.

Technology tiles filled up three rows on a display near the board, with more tiles appearing each turn. One way to earn VPs was to buy lots of tiles in a particular row- a strategy I ended up following though more by luck than judgement.

Jeff and Barrie both researched Plasma Cannons- twice the damage of a conventional Ion Cannon- and Jeff and James developed shields, reducing the chance of his ships being hit. Due to some lucky bonus tokens, Barrie ended up with an extra strong hull and an Axion Computer on his cruisers- the Computer increasing his odds to hit. I developed Fusion Engines for twice the movement but never got round to installing them on my ships!

My Dreadnaughts and Cruiser next tackled a system with 2 Ancient’s ships in, losing the Cruiser but winning the battle. In order to reach the next Ancients system in one move I developed Wormhole technology- but then realised I could use said technology to attack Jeff’s temptingly defenceless system. 2 Dreadnaughts and 4 Cruisers sailed in. Jeff built 2 Star Bases, which proved their worth at static defence by taking out twice their cost in ships and leaving me with too few ships to take the system.

I decided to leave Jeff alone and return to the fight against the Ancients- which James and Barrie had also got involved in. Jeff then offered me an alliance- worth a VP and boosts both sides’ economies. I accepted and James and Barrie swiftly formed their own alliance.

Jeff launched a fleet of interceptors against the central system, defended by a massive computer core, which easily shot down most of his ships- those who survived fled.

I was gradually making my way along the lowest technology row, picking up such things as Advanced Science (extra science income) and the ability to build Orbitals (extra science or money income) and Monoliths (each Monolith worth 3 VP).

In the penultimate turn James toyed with the idea of attacking his ally Barrie, but was discouraged by the 2 VPs Traitor card. In the last turn Barrie decided to get his retaliation in first and attacked James, prompting me to attack him.

Barrie was everywhere victorious, his Plasma cannon, super-improved Hull and Axion Computer equipped Cruisers destroying my unimproved Cruisers and causing my Dreadnaughts to flee (ironically…). Barrie’s fight with James was closer but still a victory. If there had been any turns remaining his fleets might have conquered the galaxy.

As it was however the game ended just in time…

Philip 32 Jeff 21, James II 21, Barrie 18

Meanwhile more earthly terrors were found on other tables…

Letters from Whitechapel (thanks James)

A dark night in smoggy London town and something strange, someone otherworldly is stalking the streets for victims.... the sobbing and screams of god-fearing women and whimpers of hysterical bystanders lie in the mythical creatures wake. Grown men reduced to tears and battle-scared veterans left wondering how something so vile could exist on god's own earth...

Oh, no, easy mistake to make... it’s just James with a moustache on his way to Isleworth.

Noel, Jon, Emma and James all liked the look of this relatively new game which is basically a Jack the Ripper re-theme of the classic Scotland Yard premise. One player is the criminal Jack, who murders a new innocent victim (somewhat disturbingly called “wretch” in the game) and needs to get back to their hideaway. Everyone else plays the inspectors looking for clues and aiming to trace Jack’s path to discover his base and make an arrest.

As I’d read the rules in advance it was decided I would play Jack for the first game as it requires the most knowledge... not sure I really qualify for that status but it was too late to make changes and I chose 87 as my base... mainly cause it was just off centre which seemed like a good idea at the time.

Night 1 - So after some hidden placement mechanic for the police and victims I made my first murder (death by haloumi fish and chips) and started a getaway. I was playing it simple to start with, and perhaps in the long run this was a mistake. The main clue detectives have early is where the murder took place, so the quicker Jack can get away from there, the better. Next time I’ll use coaches in the first two turns to get as far as possible but this time I was taking little steps, and spend most of the night with the detectives hot on my trail. I did try a few ‘sneaky’ moves towards the end but despite making it quite safely home I had given a lot of clues to the main area of the hideout.

Night 2- Everyone knew what they were doing this time round, and to try something different I chose to make my second murder (death by setting up one of Phil’s games with 10,000 pieces) on the far left so that few inspectors were near me at the start and to try and push attention away from the hideout. Early on this worked and I managed to give the impression of going north while shooting back south to take a central route... until some Columbo like detective paused, and changed the area to investigate and caught whiff of my tracks.. From here on it was a case of trying to throw them off the scent while making sure I could get back, and again I nearly managed it only to leave some clues behind (a few moustache trimmings perhaps) 2 squares from home which effectively pinpointed my base to 1 or 2 locations... A last attempt was to take an alley to get to the base to make them think it was nearby... however this move was to come back and bite me on the 3rd night...

Night 3 ... the double murder night... By this stage I realised that the game was probably up so wanted to keep close to the base to try and close this one quickly... However this rather obvious tactic was quickly revealed by the inspectors and despite playing coaches early in the move the net was closing in. Then, 2 places from home a hitherto unseen rule was discovered saying Jack couldn’t play a special move (coach, alley) to reach home... and given I’d done that last round I was forced to recant and reveal my crimes from the previous night... and from here all was lost. Jon, Noel and Emma quickly narrows by base down to 2 circles, and encamped inspectors around them leaving me with nowhere to go... I did try to slip Emma a bribe that I would bring along next week my game with cute baby dragons but to no avail. Jack was arrested, confessed everything and sentenced to either a lifetime in prison or a single game of Battlestar Galactica,... whichever ended soonest.

So, thoughts... it’s a good game. Very good in fact, although I’m not sure if it’s a 2 player game, or a 6 player one. Certainly 2 players would work just fine, 3 might allow for some debate, but 4 already started to feel like perhaps there wasn’t enough ‘action’ to go around for the inspectors. I’d like to play again, both as the inspectors to see what life was like on the other side, and also as Jack as I really didn’t do the role justice and have a much better feel for what to do (and not to do) next time.

Now I just need to work out who to accuse of being a Cylon so I can complete my sentence and I’m off... no, what’s that... The sentence has been revised to a best of 5 set of Battlestar.... ??? Noooooooooooo...

A slightly different perspective on the same game…

Letters from Whitechapel (thanks Jon)

This was played with 3 detectives (Jon, Noel and Emma) and 1 Jack (James). James had read the rules and did a good job of communicating them to the newbies.

At first, it seemed really difficult for the detectives to get anywhere near Jack, but it soon dawned on the detectives that during the first 2 nights it was less about actually catching Jack, and more about narrowing down the position of his hideout. During the first night, the detectives picked up a good scent, and tracked Jack somewhere into the middle of the board where he disappeared and declared that he had reached his hideout. The second night saw the miscreant hot-foot it off in a carriage, leaving the detectives with a mere whiff of where he had been. However, they then converged on a large intersection and discovered the trail. Detective Leprechaun (Noel) had a feeling in his water that Jack was at a certain location and tried a daring arrest – but sadly failed, as Jack had changed direction and was heading South. With one detective chasing him, 2 others tracked around to try to cut him off. 2 turns later, they searched for clues and found Jack’s current location as he tried to sneak past. Jack moved once more and then declared himself ‘home’ – leaving a mere 5 locations as possible hideouts. James then realised that he had made an error, and used a special token to do his final move (even though he didn’t have to) which narrowed his possible hideout location down further to only 2 spaces. Consequently, the detectives quickly threw a cordon around this area during the next night, which Jack was unable to penetrate and was arrested within yards of his devilish lair.

Playing the detectives in this game was quite fun – discussing the possible routes that Jack may have taken and the best ways to track him down. It was often difficult to mute this discussion whilst James considered his moves, which was the sign of us being totally immersed in the game. We talked afterwards about it probably working best with 3 players, which would make it a bit quicker but still give a good co-op experience for the detectives. Definitely worth a re-run soon.

Elsewhere the game was rather less subtle…

Blood Bowl: Team Manager – The Card Game (thanks Tom)

Dan was keen to show off his new purchase of Blood Bowl: TM, a card game adaptation of the Games Workshop staple. Tom was eager to give it a try and Ian was roped in from the horde looking to play Letters From Whitechapel.

The players set down to choosing from the six teams available. Tom immediately picked up the Dwarves, Dan stumped for Skaven, and Ian ended up with Chaos after a brief flirtation with Orks, ultimately being won around once Dan had reassured him that he would have a Minotaur in his deck. Soon after, John B turned up and chose Humans, leaving Elves and Orks to be sampled another day. Lots of tackles, cheating and general rough-housing followed, during which Ian tried to draft in new blood, Tom drew an extremely useless four Dwarven Longbeards in one hand, and Dan steadily accumulated staff upgrades and team upgardes (a tactic which would ultimately pay off).

Having establishing an early fan lead after the first two rounds, John was unfortunately called away and the game dropped down to three. The game then descended somewhat into a grudge match between the Dwarves and Skaven with one particular highlight card being swamped by both teams, whilst Chaos was left to easily pick up some fans elsewhere. Unfortunately for Tom, Dan’s one successful attempt to use his Assassin ability on Tom’s star player, coincided with another Dwarf being sent off for cheating and Dan’s Skaven Blitzer pulling off a 3 star cheat, leaving the Dwarves bloodied and broken on the Blood Bowl field.

This left Dan and Ian to battle it out for Blood Bowl supremacy and Chaos briefly looked to have won it. In the battle for the Blood Bowl trophy itself, it looked to all that Chaos had triumphed by a point. However, rather belatedly, Tom realised that he got an extra star point for any downed player drawing him level. Dan having the tiebreaker button, naturally deemed the Dwarves to have triumphed, depriving Chaos of three fans.

In the end game, Dan revealed his card that granted him an additional fan for each staff and tactics card in his possession, which took him into the lead with 46 fans… three more than Ian. Despite the Dwarves having won the Blood Bowl trophy, Tom came third; a pyrrhic victory of sorts.

A fantastic game which looks like it will become even more fun once the players get used to the strengths and weaknesses of the various teams, Tom has already asked for a copy in his stocking this Christmas with a New Years’ resolution to better his micro-management skills.

Dan – 46, Ian – 43, Tom – 38, John B – 17 (DNF)

The players now enlarged their ambitions from Sport to world domination, in the same setting…

Chaos in the Old World (thanks Tom)

Having now had a taste of the Warhammer universe with Blood Bowl, the unholy trinity of Tom, Dan and Ian set down for a game of Chaos in the Old World. Dan and Ian were both seasoned players whilst Tom had never played it before, although he was eager to give it a try.

Whilst Tom gamely worked through some Isleworth Apprentice Roasted Pistachios (TM), Dan and Ian explained the rules and set up the board, despite Tom’s assertion that he could pick up the rules as he went along. Oh, sweet naivety.

Perhaps it was a clever ploy of Dan and Ian to have Tom play as the subtle manipulator and politicker, Tzeentch. Then again, they may simply have overestimated his tactical nous as first turn, Tom steamed into Bretonnia, despite Bretonnia being subject to the Skaven, restricting the number of chaos cards playable in the region. When Ian playing as Khorne, naturally, pushed some of his minions into Bretonnia in order to try and obtain some easy dial ticks by killing Tom’s cultists, Dan and Ian were perhaps even more surprised when Tom countered this, not by moving away, but by placing down his Lord of Change, based on the fact that he was a pretty imposing looking figurine. Dan commented that he had never seen anyone play as Tzeentch this way before; there was good reason for this as Khorne routed all in its path.

With Tom on his mad frolic, a more interesting tactical battle was taking place in Tilea with Dan as Slaanesh trying to flood in cultists with a view to ruining the province. He was ultimately successful taking 10 victory points, with Ian taking second place easily as Tom had not even sought to contest the province, engaged in his own brand of quixotic justice in seeking to ruin Bretonnia. Finally, Tom tilted at enough windmills that he succeeded but this had all been to Ian’s great benefit.

Dan sought to rectify the balance by gaining a stronghold in Estalia but to no avail, Ian obtaining the required 50 victory points after only four turns. Despite the somewhat baffled expressions on Ian and Dan’s faces, good fun was had by all and Tom certainly would be keen for a rematch, if only to occupy The Badlands so that he can make some poor Springsteen based puns.

Ian – 1st, Dan - 2nd, Tom - 3^rd

After Letters from Whitechapel, looking for something reasonably meaty to fill the last hour was the order of the day. Jon didn’t want to learn anything new, so he forced Noel and Emma to learn –

Mykerinos (thanks Jon)

This is a fairly straightforward area control game with a few twists thrown in. Emma went slightly overboard in placing cubes to claim a couple of parcels of land each turn. Consequently she didn’t quite have enough patrons for points or special abilities. Fruity Noel picked up a few Lord Lemons, whilst James majored on Lady Blackmore. Jon picked up some early Sir Browns, and then used their special ability to reserve the ‘5’ space in the museum for them.

In the last round, James had shed loads of cubes, and was about to toss his final one away as useless, when Nol reminded him that he had a spare Sir Brown and could therefore place in the last spot in the museum. This increased his final score by 2 points and forced a tie with Jon, which could not even be broken with a tie-breaker. Rejoicing in their shared victory? Probably not……..

James and Jon 51; Noel 40ish; Emma 30ish

P.S "In first and foremost flight" is from the Gondoliers by Gilbert and Sullivan.

"And his legs will take Root and his Fingers will Shoot"

2011-11-15T19:43:00.002Z

A brief prelude…

Memoir ’44 (Thanks Jon)

Jon and Paul got to the pub early for a pre-arranged WWII adventure. This was a classic Normandy scenario, with Jon playing the well dug-in but sparse Germans, whilst Paul commanded the plentiful, heroic Allied forces. Both players had rather bad luck in terms of cards drawn (Jon had no cards on the left flank so couldn’t use his artillery or infantry outpost, and Paul kept all his forces in the centre and left – and then drew mostly right-flank cards.)

Paul’s first intervention was a successful air-strike, which wiped out half of the German forces in the middle section. Jon therefore decided that waiting to be over-run wasn’t going to be much fun, so he advanced to the top of the cliff to try to repel the invaders. The Allies quickly climbed the left flank cliffs but then appeared to get stuck, which gave the Germans an opportunity to take some pot-shots at the forces sruggling in the shallow water of the mid-section.

The Germans quickly gained 2 medals, so, in an attempt to press home the advantage, and in a complete deviation from the history books, they descended the cliffs, advanced onto the beach and engaged the Allies at the water’s edge. This proved to be successful, and they were soon only one medal from victory.

However, there were now no German troops at all in the mid-scetion at the top of the cliffs, so the Allied forces who had successfully climbed the cliffs now pushed across to try to claim the medals in the forests at the SW corner of the battlefield. This was almost successful, but as their thrust took them into range of the German artillery, they were unable to complete their mission. Which left Jon’s troops to celebrate their emphatic victory with a BBQ on the beach

Jon (Axis) – won; Paul (Allies) – trounced

The evening for those of us not starting with WWII began with a quick game of Skulls and Roses. About which the less said the better (at least from my perspective!). Unfortunately for me, Jon did a report…

Skull and Roses (thanks Jon)

It’s been too long since we played this simple but fun game that Woody introduced to IBG. It’s also been too long between playing the game and writing this report, which means that I’m not entirely sure who won.

It wasn’t me (even though I successfully scored a point in the very first round), and I’m sure that it wasn’t Paul (who lost his skull early on and then was a little more cautious about bidding). Also pretty sure that it wasn’t Philip or Maynard, which by process of elimination leaves Woody. Actually, that makes sense, as his world-reknowned poker skills make this an ideal game for him. It was fun though…….

Next up…

Betrayal at House on the Hill

Skulls and Roses completed, I suggested Betrayal, as James II ha brought it again. Barrie made the fifth player to the four who had played a few weeks ago-and he knew the rules as he owns a copy so we jumped straight in. Emma played the young woman, Barrie the little girl, me the little boy, James II the old man (Professor Longfellow) and Alex the young man (Ox).

Exploration proceeded in all directions, with my character running up the stairs, exploring the Upper floor, finding the Mystic elevator which landed him on the ground floor and ending up in the basement when the floor collapsed underneath him. Meanwhile 2 others had reached the basement , James was on the ground floor, and Emma on the Upper floor.

Emma was looking for the toy monkey she had found in the previous game. She found a lucky rabbit’s foot and a picture box which she couldn’t open- and it was taken away due to an event happening to James when he looked in the closet…which seemed to exercise a strange fascination.

Anyway, Alex’s strategy of exploring the omen-rich Basement paid off and he triggered the haunt by finding a flower in a book. The scenario, “Offspring”, called for the player on the left of the haunt finder to become the traitor. That was Emma. She wasn’t too pleased but went away to read her secret instructions.

This scenario featured an “Evil Plant”. Perhaps the plant was originally a human being…in any event it was sending out dangerous spores that inflicted 1 die of physical damage on player characters. To destroy it we needed to bring the flower Alex had found to the room with the Evil Plant and use our Knowledge to defeat it (the Plant, that is).

The first challenge was to get out of the basement, since the basement stairs had yet to be located. However, they were found relatively quickly and soon the heroes were charging towards the Evil Plant on the ground floor, holding their breath to minimise Spore damage.

The Traitor? She was still upstairs searching frantically for the Toy Monkey. All she found was various dangerous events and items, which killed her… the Evil Plant was on its own (apart from the Spores of course).

It proved relatively easy to reach the plant and pass three Knowledge checks, Professor Longfellow being gifted in that area and also wearing a Mask which increased knowledge but lowered Sanity…

The victory description for this scenario describes the stench of blood and burning human flesh- confirming my earlier suggestion of lost humanity.

More horror…

Panic Station (Thanks Jon)

Jon was the only player to have played before, but James came over and explained the rules (which are complicated further by having an official and updated official version).

Jon was the host, and after a little pussy-footing around, he decided not to give a gas can to Noel, thereby heaping suspicion on himself. He then managed to manufacture a situation where he got to trade 3 times in quick succession with Maynard, depleting him of gas cans and then infecting him. Unfortunately, Maynard did not try to bluff that he had been infected, so it was now obvious who the bad guys were.

Meanwhile, Johan had managed to get himself trapped in room with several parasites, and had his butt chewed off. Woody took himself off to a quiet area of the station by himself (don’t ask…) whilst Noel tried (and failed) to blow Jon’s brains out.

Maynard then had to leave us, so James took over. This resulted in Noel and Johan both being infected, and as Woody had no human left, the game was over. Even though Johan claimed that he wasn’t infected (slight misunderstanding with the rules!) this had not affected the end result.

This is definitely a game to play a bit more often with the same players, to try to develop some strategies of how to win. It appears to be difficult for the host to infect someone without drawing attention to himself, but we’ll have to see if that’s still the case after a few more plays.

Elsewhere a rather less horrific scene was unfolding...

Oregon (Thanks Woody)

Woody and Tonio had clashed before and with Woody arriving complete with crisp new copy, Paul and Johan (1st timers) were on board for a four way game.

Oregon is a people and building placement game with a card & grid operating model. Points are awarded for placing your people next to buildings and visa versa. Clusters of three of your people together also gains bonuses. Finally, points at the end of the game are disclosed for any mining activity completed.

Rules explained, game on ... Tonio was off to a flying start, maximising use of this joker and extra turn cards a couple of times. Paul was quickly mining and gathered undisclosed bonus points. Johan tried to cover the whole board whilst Woody made steady progress. In the latter stages, Tonio's lead was whittled away and when Woody placed two churches in successive moves, he jumped ahead. As Tonio played the closing moves, Paul was some distance behind: However, his mining points brought him within 1 point of Tonio.

Woody93, Tonio 71, Paul 70, Johan 66

Two of those players now moved on to…

String Railway (thanks Paul)

After filling up the available space with multi coloured spaghetti last week with a five player game of string railway, James, Tonio and Paul found out what is was like with three.

Actually Paul and Tonio were waiting for James to explain the rules of another game to another bunch of people, so they had a crack at a two player game first, but Paul got the special two player rules wrong (which involve each player using two colours) and it was abandoned near the end. Tonio might have been winning, I couldn't be sure.

James suggested that they make the playing area a triangle, so after some debate about it being equilateral or isosceles, the mountain was placed in the middle and one river between Paul and Tonio, which discouraged either from crossing it for the whole game.

It was a pretty close thing for most of the game, with most of the action in the spaces between James and Tonio and James and Paul, due to the above mentioned river.

Paul had saved his long string until his last move and managed to eke out enough points for a very close victory, due to landing on James’ base station, and then in James' last move he gifted Paul a point.

It was noted that it isn't a game for high level competition as the nature of the string doesn't lend itself to precision and there will always be a few question marks over the little movements in a string or the fact that a station was moved slightly, but overall it was agreed that it is a very fun game.

Paul: 31, James: 30, Tonio: 29

Meanwhile, the evil plant safely disposed of we decided to do some farming…

Agricola

Despite Andy’s misgivings, Emma was correct in thinking we could play both Betrayal at House on the Hill and Agricola in one evening. Me and Barrie made up the four for Agricola and we mixed the decks and dealt 10 cards of each type to everyone, discarding down to 7. Emma and Barrie hadn’t played for some time (over a year in Barrie’s case), while me and Andy were more experienced.

Barrie started by taking the Wood, while Andy played the Wood Cutter. Emma played the Resource Collector and I played the House Goat. Barrie played Reed, Stone Food, Andy plowed, Emma took some Wood, and I took 2 Clay.

In the next round I played the Charcoal Burner and built the Fireplace, while others gathered Wood. Barrie played the Fishing Rod.

The third round saw Barrie lead with Village Elder while I picked up 3 Reeds and played the Dock Worker. After that my memory fades. I managed to roast sheep for the first harvest, while Emma was building early stables. Andy had a huge pile of resources. Barrie fished in the first harvest, but somehow ended up 2 food short at the second harvest, taking 2 Begging cards. I was perhaps more puzzled than the others at this point, since I held the Mendicant!

Meanwhile I played my third and fourth occupations- Bread Seller (who proved completely useless as no one baked bread the whole game long) and Market Woman (who earned me 6 Grain over the course of the game). I was also able to expand by 1 room and be the first to grow my family (family growth arriving as late as possible). My minor improvement with my 3^rd family member was the Animal Pen- 2 food a turn for the rest of the game=14 food! It requires 4 Occupations hence my haste to put them down although it has to be admitted I’m usually keen on Occupations anyway…

Andy was next to expand his family, having built 2 rooms at once, and produced a third and a fourth family member before I could get my fourth and fifth. Emma and Barry picked up a third family member at around this time. Meanwhile the food accumulated on the remaining round spaces as Barrie pulled off his Well/Water Carrier combo (but not before taking a third begging card!) and added a Herb Garden to it, and I played a Swan Lake. Emma had purchased a Cooking Hearth, Andy had gone from Simple Fireplace to Cooking Hearth minor improvement and added a Clay Oven at the end, but Barrie steadfastly refused any sort of Cooking improvement.

I was only able to plow two fields (in which I sowed Vegetables), but managed to build all my fences with the help of Mini-Pasture (also used by Barrie), and a couple of stables with the help of the Dock Worker. I picked up one of each animal and the main defect in my farm, that I had not renovated, was fairly solidly compensated for by the Wooden Hut Builder. I also built the Basketmaker’s Workshop which allowed me to eat Reed in the last two Harvests.

Andy had meanwhile built a substantial farm with no empty spaces, the approved variety of livestock and a four room stone house. Emma and Barrie were rather further behind, despite Barrie’s use of the Swing Plow and Emma exploiting that with the Punner. When the game ended it was found that me, Barrie and Emma all had 5 improvements, Andy having less, so the 3 VPS from Village Elder were not awarded to him.

Philip 45 Andy 38 Emma 24 Barrie 17.
Finally, a cathedral in France...

Notre Dame (thanks James)

So, despite the appearance of several shiny new games in the pile of boxes the older classics are still getting to the table, especially with the Work’s recent sale pushing copies of a few of them into new and eager hands. I think Woody brought this along, but it was Noel, Jon, Maynard and myself who played... Andy was all set to be the 5th until someone flashed a copy of Agricola his way, and before your could say ‘major improvement’, in a puff of smoke, he was gone. Still some would call this a minor improvement on the Notre Dame table as the game would be quicker with 4. First time for me, but everyone else had played before so trying not to hold things up too much Noel breezed through the rules and off we went.

Early strategies seemed to be to gather cubes, being new I was trying to follow everyone else but after a while I liked the idea of ferrying my wagon around the board to steel other peoples bonus points. Noel and Jon shared the first Notre Dame bounty due to a selfless act of sabotage by Jon... hmm, Jon, selfless... not sure those words have been used together in a game report before ! round 2 was more of the same although by this stage Maynard’s love of rats was getting the better of him and he spent most of the rest of the game struggling to keep below the penalty level of 9. Perhaps Paul should bring Rattus along next week where I think rats are actually a good thing to have ?! The last round and strategies changed to turn whatever anyone had into points. I was still crusing around the board, while Jon and Maynard seemed to be piling all their pieces into the bonus sector. Noel had already claimed the bonus VP sector a while back and was making the most of it. The final hiring round was a bit of an anti climax as virtually n rats appeared. Probably good given nearly everyone was on or around 9 and maxed out, but could’ve been interesting with 5/6 rats in the last round when everyone would be panicking to change their focus back to rat extermination.

So final scores... Jon and Maynard has realised they were out of the running a few rounds earlier, but when Noel and myself counted we both had 62... I’m pretty sure the tie breaker included something about victory going to the eldest player, but sadly that bit of the rules had gone missing.

P.S “And his legs will take root and his fingers will shoot” is from the Nightmare Song in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe. The unfortunate tradesman being transformed into a flowering plant then produces useful groceries rather than harmful spores, however…

"Capacity for Innocent Enjoyment"

2011-11-08T19:32:00.000Z

A few games played tonight, lets start with some contagious diseases…

Pandemic (thanks Paul)

Tom and Louise were welcome newcomers to IBG but had not played any of the games on show before. Tonio and Paul were the only others not in the middle of another game and they only knew a handful of the games on display. Pandemic was plumped for as they decided it wouldn't be worth risking putting off our newcomers by not knowing the rules very well (a trap Paul falls into a touch too often). And a co-operative game is a nice way to start with a married couple - not giving them a chance to 'do a Vicky and Maynard'. [classic example of ‘doing a Paul’ here, ed]

Although they hadn't played huge numbers of games like this before, both Louise and Tom were up to speed in no time, which although Paul would like to think was down to his well crafted explanation, it was probably more down to the fact that said actuary and lawyer were very sharp.

East Asia was first to look vulnerable so we duly dispatched Louise's heroic medic, but after some attention in Ho Chi Min City and Bangkok, West Asia was starting to look a little too covered in black cubes.

In the first part of the game, cubes were kept well under control, but no cures had been found. This was noted, so more effort was put into discovering cures, with a black cure coming first courtesy of Tom's scientist. However the cards were being used very freely and half way through the deck only one cure had been found.

Red and black continued to wax and wane throughout the game, whilst blue and yellow were more or less under control until close to the end. With the last epidemic out of the way, cures for both red and blue were still needed. A plan was hatched, tweaked and discussed to put an end to the red disease, but the stack of cards was running low and while the outbreak counter was about half way, there were a lot of cubes on the board in dangerous areas. Tonio's 4 turn epic plan of shuffling cards around to the right person and lining up the optimal route to a research station was commenced, but as the turns went by chain reaction followed outbreak and this was followed by another chain reaction.

The result was that the game was lost due to excessive outbreaks even before the third cure was found, let alone being able to think about the final one.

An empty feeling all round, as the world wasted away under the scourge of black and blue contagion, but a good time was had by our failing disease specialists and we don't think that Louise and Tom were put off despite defeat.

Scores: Paul, Tonio, Louise & Tom - all lost

Something a little more constructive…

Kingdom Builder (thanks Jon)

True to his word, John had brought a whole bag full of Essen goodness with him, and when asked to select his favourite, he picked this one. Jon jumped on board and Andy (eventually) arrived to make up a trio. The rules are very simple, and John did a good job of concisely explaining them in under 10 mins. The modular board contains a number of terrain types, and on a players’ turn, they must place 3 settlements in a terrain type dictated by the turn of a card. Pretty much the only placement rule is that you have to place each settlement next to a previous settlement if you can. Players score points based on 3 ‘points rules’ cards which are drawn randomly at the beginning of the game, ensuring that each game plays out differently.

John gave some wise advice at the beginning of the game (“Be careful where you place your first settlement. Best to avoid that massive desert in the middle of the board.”) Jon, displaying the memory of a goldfish, promptly forgot that advice and placed his first settlement bang slap in the middle of said desert. (Actually, he should have built in a Chasm first, but mis-read the first terrain card…….)

Anyway, the game moved on at a fair pace – the first few turns were spent trying to pick up some action tiles, whilst trying to place settlements in places that gave you the most future options as well as scoring the most points. The scoring conditions in this game were: 1) 1 point for each distinct group of settlements; 2) 1 point for each 2 settlements in your biggest group; 3) 1 point for each horizontal row that you had a settlement on. The interesting thing was that the first 2 conditions were almost opposite – 1 encouraged multiple groups, whilst the second required one big group.

The game ends when someone has placed their 40^th settlement, which comes around sooner than you might think, and then the points are totted up. A combination of Jon having a settlement on every horizontal line, plus a massive 32-settlement group in the middle of the ‘forbidden’ desert was enough to give him a reasonably comfortable victory , with John just pipping Andy into second place.

Opinion? Fantastic game! Easy to explain and understand but tricky to play. Perfect weight-gamelength ratio (45 mins). And plenty of replayability with differring scoring conditions and boards each game. Bring it again John!

Jon 51; John 37; Andy 36

They now turned to real estate…

For Sale (Thanks Jon)

Looking for a quick filler whilst other games were finished, For Sale fitted the bill perfectly. Newcomers Tom and Louise (as well as first-timer Andy) were quickly inducted into the straightforward rules and the game was on.

Louise proved adept at picking up some good bargains, whilst Tom rather overpaid ($10k) on the ‘29’ card. Paul constantly roved his inability to count up to 6, whilst Andy and John seemed to somehow part with hardly any cash at all. Jon also overpaid for both the ‘30’ and, bizarrely, the ‘1’.

After the second round had concluded, Louise had achieved her first triumph at IBG, with John pipping Andy for second place for the second game running. Paul confided that he had tried the Jon tactic of not picking up the ‘zero’ cheques. He ended up picking up both of them….

Louise 54; John 48; Andy 47; Jon 42; Tom 34; Paul 32

Meanwhile I was venturing into a distinctly unreal realm…

Mage Knight

Again I was slightly late this evening and missed out an opportunity to build robots. Instead I found Jeff setting up Mage Knight, an obviously fantasy game with an intriguing map and model of a dragon-like creature that I assumed was the final bad guy.

There was a slot spare so I reserved a seat and ate my croque-monsieur while we waited for Dan.

My meal finished and Dan still wasn’t there so Jeff explained the basics of movement and combat, which took long enough that Dan arrived so he could explain it all over again. Each player has a deck of cards, from which he draws a hand of five cards. Playing the cards allows you to move, fight, heal, and influence the locals. Each card has a normal effect and a special boosted effect you can trigger by paying an appropriate mana cost.

Mana is available in a dice pool for everyone and also in the form of tokens and crystals which belong to particular players. Tokens evaporate at the end of the turn, crystals don’t. Two of those new to the game misunderstood Jeff’s explanation and thought crystals were permanent resources usable once a turn, rather than being one shot items. This emerged about halfway through the game with no visible harm done.

We were assigned our characters- mind turned out to be the dragon model I’d noticed earlier. The characters get painted plastic models, the monsters are just cardboard tokens. This was an exploration scenario, starting with just one piece of the map visible. I was last in the (randomly determined) turn order. Players entered the map through a magic portal. Dan started by recruiting some peasants, defeating some orcs and quickly levelling up – getting an extra card in his deck, a special ability, and the right to command more troops. This led to him capturing a Keep, putting his flag on it, and recruiting more followers. Meanwhile the other players made slower progress, exploring and occasionally fighting. Everyone managed to level up before nightfall. Jeff was mauled by an Orc that summoned a bigger monster and generally had bad luck with his cards.

Night fell when Dan’s cards ran out. During the night movement rates change (easier to cross deserts, harder to cross forests) and gold mana cannot be used while black mana can be. Also, it is impossible to tell what enemies look like except by attacking them…

Turn order changed, with me going first. I captured a Wizard’s tower at the cost of a couple of wounds, earning me a spell (a healing spell, for obvious reasons) and a flag on the tower.

Meanwhile Rob looted a monastery (appropriately), gaining an artefact, and Dan went down a dungeon, flagging it and gaining another artefact. Most of us managed to level up again – this time getting extra armour and a new ability. Then Rob found a City- which was the end of the exploration scenario. It was now 10pm, so the game had taken at least 2 hours for one day and one night of the introductory scenario, nevertheless we were all keen to play again another evening!

Dan 1^st Rob 2^nd Philip 3^rd Jeff 4th

We were just in time to watch the conclusion of …

String railway (thanks Paul)

This is a Japanese curiosity which had entertained James, Barrie and Paul one evening last Essen, but had been extremely difficult to obtain. James was the only one of the three to hit Essen again this year and he ensured that he picked up a copy.

The game is, as the title suggests, about players building railways from bits of string. It is probably something hatched in a school playground many years ago, only to have now been brought into the gaming world by Japanese games inventor with a good memory and the ability to turn it into a fun and utterly different game.

There is string and some tiles and a few cubes. But mainly string. The game area is defined by a very long black piece of string knotted to form a loop. Players add two blue bits of sting to form a couple of rivers and another knotted loop to represent a mountain - wherever they like in the playing area. Each player is allotted four short bits of string and one long piece, in their chosen colour, which form the rails in the players network.

Each player takes turns on drawing a station tile, each having different characteristics dictating how many other players may pass through that station, how many points are given out to the player laying the tile and then subsequent passes through by other players, and if there are any positive or negative effects to the original station owner when other players use their station. Once a tile is drawn the player puts the tile anywhere in the playing area and then places one of their bits of string down, starting at their base station in the first turn, but always maintaining a connection with their own network in subsequent turns. The players may twist and turn their string as much as they like picking up points for all of the stations that they connect. Points are deducted for crossing over other bits of string (a river, the edge of the mountains or another track).

A bit like Carcassonne, it's a landscape creating game, which starts off with little more than some rivers and a mountain, but at the end of the game there are many stations and tracks that were created through the game, which must make every game completely unique and gives a great feeling of satisfaction (to me at least). Actually, maybe most of the satisfaction is part way through the game, as with five players the game really does resemble multi coloured spaghetti towards the end.

Paul started with a station in the mountains - a double edged sword that gave some points but that he never did capitalise on later.

Jon and Alex were sat next to each other and occupied one end of the playing area, somewhere that neither would break free of throughout the game, choosing to focus on inflict damage to each other instead of seeing the sights of the rest of the board.

In Emma's first turn she set the scene for dominating the rest of the game by diving in with her long string and connecting both Paul and Alex's high scoring stations and taking a commanding lead. In doing so she did actually accidentally pass over the knot in the mountains. She gallantly did the right thing and gave up a point for it.

James plugged away next to Emma starting to build up his only network.

These themes continued throughout. Emma showed us just how to build a rail network in purple as she wiped the floor with us. Jon and Alex were in their own string world and didn't benefit from it. The main battle was for second place between James and Paul. The scores as they were counted up after James' final string were even, although it was pointed out that he'd ignore a string over the knot on the outside of the board (which may or may not have happened after it was placed - no one will ever know). The scores give James the benefit of the doubt and also show clearly that it didn't matter a jot to Emma - she was too far in the lead.

Emma: 28, Paul: 23, James: 23, Jon: 21, Alex: 19

“Capacity for innocent enjoyment” is from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance

"Maturing his Felonious Little Plan"

2011-11-01T21:57:00.000Z

I arrived rather later than usual and was immediately asked to explain and play…

King of Tokyo

There were already 4 players, but fortunately Cyber Bunny was untaken. Little explanation was needed and soon Andy and James were in Tokyo and Tokyo Bay respectively. My first turn did 4 damage but neither player left Tokyo. A few turns later both were dead and Alex was striding towards victory. Between me and Emma we managed to kill him off, but he had earlier invested in “It Has a Child!” so reappeared with 0 Vps. Somehow he then proceeded to get to a winning position all over again, and we couldn’t stop him from eating a final skyscraper to win the game.

We then moved on to another highly-themed game…

Betrayal at House on the Hill

James explained this haunted house game- it has two parts. In the first the players explore the house together, drawing tiles from a pile of possible rooms and causing events to happen, items to be picked up, and omens to be discovered. When enough omens have been found the second part of the game triggers- one player betrays the rest and a specific scenario (depending on which omen triggered the ‘haunt’ in which room) is enacted. A variety of ages and genders are represented by the available characters. I took an old man (Father Reinhard), Alex a young man (Ox) and James a small boy (Peter Akimoto). Emma took a young woman (I’ve forgotten her name, call her Emma). Father Reinhard went first, finding a chapel with a safe in it, and promptly damaged his already frail physical health trying to open it. Ox then discovered the Coal Chute, sliding down into the basement where he spent the next several turns until the haunt started: Alex had played before and knew basement rooms were more likely to be Omens. Emma and Peter and Father Reinhard explored the ground floor- no one bothering to go upstairs. This isn’t your typical semi-detached: there are rooms reaching round and back on the entrance, one of them is a graveyard, and horrible things keep happening. Emma discovered a Mystic Elevator, which landed her in the basement, just moments before I arrived in the basement via a collapsing floor (which did further damage to my frail physical health). My arrival in fact triggered the haunt…

This scenario (A Little Night Murder), starred me as the traitor, who having murdered the house owner now needed to murder the other players before dawn to claim the inheritance. I had three servants to assist me- but I was going to poison them afterwards, mwa-ha-ha!

Unfortunately my felonious little plan was cut short by Ox wielding a spear, which killed Father Reinhard on the very first turn of the haunt. Perhaps the game should have ended there, but relying on the literal wording of the rulebook, I declared that I could still win, even though dead, if I managed to kill the others.

At this point the peculiar topography of the house came into play. With only half the rooms explored, there was no way out of the basement except via the unreliable mystic elevator. On the other hand Peter Akimoto on the ground floor had discovered a secret door the servants couldn’t operate…

The surviving players decided to trap the servants in the basement. Unfortunately (for them) they succeeded only in trapping themselves in the basement with the servants. So they set about exploring, looking for the basement stairs. Peter Akimoto was ambushed by the servants in a smoke-filled room and battered to death, but the servants proved unable to defeat Ox, who repeatedly stunned them (servants can’t be killed, apparently) while Emma finally found the basement stairs (across a chasm??). The game actually ended a turn early since Ox had stunned all three servants and they would take a turn to recover. Interesting game, I’d prefer a scenario with less emphasis on brute strength…

Alex- Alive and Won, Emma-Alive and Won, James II, Dead but Won.Philip-Dead and Lost

My choices out of game now proved little better than my choices in game…

Tournay

With 90 minutes left I reckoned there was plenty of time to play a 60 minute game which no one knew the rules for. I obtained the owner (James I)’s permission to borrow Tournai and set about explaining the rules after a brief skim through. Emma was pretty suspicious of the game anyway, since there seemed to be “maths” involved, and she was relieved when I had to halt halfway through the rules explanation because I had no idea how Characters worked- so we gave up on this one. Maybe another day…

Kablameo

(Sorry, no picture!) Instead we went for this coloured shells game. Simple to play- each player has a secret colour of a possible 6 colours, place shells on top of each other to change the colour of a pile, two shells of the same colour on a pile disappear into the ether…

Didn’t go quite smoothly though- firstly James guessed Alex’s colour before the game started, so Alex drew a new colour, but then he couldn’t work out what colour it was- it was clearly Purple when others looked at it- finally Alex settled on a third colour and the game began with random drawing of shells. Shells were being piled up and disappearing with abandon and the eventual winner was James on the tie-breaker (highest pile in his colour). I was somewhat handicapped by having no shells in my colour, but that’s the way the cookie (seashell?) crumbles.

James 6 shells (pile of height 3) Alex 6 shells (pile of height 2), Emma 5 shells, Me 4 shells.

On another table several hours earlier the mysterious east was in play…

China (Thanks Scott)

With loads of new games sitting around but no-one who knew any of the rules we opted for whatever we could find that someone would teach. This turned out to be China which neither Woody or Johan had played before, Scott allegedly had played before but wasn’t very hot on the rules and we stumbled through the first couple of actions and skimming of the rules before it all came flooding back.

The house scoring was the easiest for Johan and Woody to grasp and they set about populating the whole of China in a continuous loop for more points while Scott placed his emissaries focused I none corner while Woody and Johan played the odd one or two but not getting many majorities.

The game was over pretty quickly and was all fairly even going in to the scoring but Scott ran away with the emissary scoring while Johan made slightly more on the houses to grab second place.

Scott – 57 Johan – 45 Woody – 42

A third table decided to go with the ever-popular cathedral building in medieval Europe theme…

Notre Dame (Thanks Noel)

After much group dithering Noel and Andy convinced Maynard to join them for 3 player Notre Dame. The first round cards showed up 5 rats which had everyone struggling from the start to keep their rats under control. As such it was difficult to build early coin or cube momentum and everyone had a fairly balanced start. Andy and Noel shared notre dame in the first round and Maynard made sure he was involved in rounds 2 and 3. Andy and Maynard had fairly steady points gathering from the start through use of the carriages and the Park. It was only when noel switched his completed cube collectors into the hospital and quickly built up the points scoring sector, in which he had 6 cubes by the end that he began to catch up. A final full donation to notre dame by Noel gave him just enough VPs to pull level to Maynard and take the game on the tiebreak (number of cubes and coins in personal supply), which had been checked up just minutes before. Thankfully no shared victories here, and, note to Jon, no shared 'moral/imaginary' victories either.

Noel 56(plus 2), Maynard 56(plus 0), Andy 54x

Meanwhile, others had turned to dexterity…

Turmbauer (Thanks James)

Or Cornerstone Essential for those not speaking German. I‘ve been after this game for 18 months and was very happy to finally see a copy available at Essen this year. Basically a cross between 3D Tetris, Jenga and the Climbers. Players roll a dice which indicates what blocks they can use. Blocks are placed to grown the tower and your meeple can then climb up with the restriction they can only use their own or neutral colours. Jon, Scott, Maynard and myself were all intrigued to see how the game played (Scott, despite a roll of the eyes once dice were mentioned!). SO early on rules were a struggle as there is no official English translation yet so I’d only managed to work out how to play from a Google translate of the German rules added to some reviews of the original Cornerstone. As a result you can be sure we got some parts wrong, but it all seemed to fit together during the session. I managed to take an early lead while Maynard’s little fella seemed stranded after just a couple of turns. Every turn at the start Scott seemed to roll 6’s and so only have large blocks to place... as a result the tower was growing high at an alarming rate making it hard to get our meeples to the top. Placing blocks is also tricky as one sure way to lose the game is to knock the tower over. A few blocks can be misplaced and corrected but a Jenga style collapse is game over. Which as it happens is how this game ended with Jon destroying our finely crafted tower in a fit of un-coordination. So I think Scott might’ve won... the rules say the highest placed meeple at the time of collapse is the winner, but I’m not sure if I can remember who that was... Not me, that’s all I know for sure.

So thoughts ? It’s a different kind of dexterity game. A combination of luck (dice), dexterity (placing blocks), strategy (where to place) all mixed together.. I think the only conclusion we all came to was that it needed a flatter surface than the one we were playing on !

Thence to cows…this was about the time others were contemplating Tournai, and Emma was quite fascinated by the strange cow noises from the other table…

MOW (Thanks James)

Or 6 Nimmt with cuter cows. A nice little find this for me at Essen for 5e complete with soundbox providing an authentic MOO sound whenever a player feels the urge... which seemed to be quite often based on the initial gameplay. A very simple filler whereby players place cows at the end of a line higher or lower than the previously played cows, with some super cows providing a few rule tweaks and a chance to reverse the turn order. If at your turn you can’t play a card then you take the herd and it all starts again. Final scores are based on the number of flies on the cows J. I think we had 7 involved in the inaugural game. Scott, Woody, Maynard, Barrie, Johan, Dan and myself. And after a few minutes when everyone played with the automatic moo generating box we started.

Not sure if he wasn’t listening to the rules but Maynard started out on a mission to collect as many cards as possible.... A fine strategy in other games for sure. Several rounds in and I also decided that perhaps I’d misread a few lines after all and so decided to see if I could outscore Maynard. Woody had up to this point remained cow free but soon enough he started to join in the collecting frenzy... Interestingly all 3 of us were next to each other and it became a game of 2 halves, with seemingly different rules depending on which side of the table you were sitting. As the cow supply started to dry up a few stragglers in the herd were shared around and the game was over. The end game is quite harsh as your hand of cows gets smaller and you have fewer options each turn...

So final scores... we had two 1st places really.. the most points and the least points... I leave it up to you to decide who was the real winner.

James 38, Scott 26 Maynard 20, Barry 19 Woody 17 Johan 8

Mad scientists were the theme for James in…

Nefarious (thanks James)

Another new Essen game. This one by Mr Dominion himself so coming with great pedigree and a nice theme. I mean, who doesn’t want to be a mad scientist? Ever since my physics teacher got the whole class to join hands so he could give us all an electric shock I think the idea has appealed to me J Sadly no shocks in this game (other than Scott not winning, which is always a shock of a kind). Johan, Barrie, Scott and myself we the guinea pigs for the first run, and luckily it’s not so complicated a game so I think we might have even gotten all the rules right first time round. A very simple mechanic to this one. Select one of 4 actions (3 relating to money and 1 inventing stuff). Create inventions that generally have good/bad outcomes for you and the other players. and the first to 20 points is the winner. It feels like a filler in a big game box to me, not enough weight to really carry off the box size, but too much going on for a simple filler. Hmm.

So as to the game, can’t remember much detail I’m afraid. Scott and Barrie quickly realised the money making powers of speculating, while I just started trying to play invention cards. At mid game I think we all suddenly realised that 20 points wasn’t actually that many to get so everyone started inventing things like crazy. I lucked out with some replicating inventions that enabled me to have a hand of about 10 inventions and bags of cash and so despite Scott making it to 22 points with his final card I managed to invent some kind of death ray to get to 23 points and take the win.

Jury’s out for me on this one, doesn’t feel like enough going on, but then again it easily plays in under 30 mins, so maybe that’s ok ? Needs a few more games I think to form a proper opinion.

James 23 Scott 22 Johan 21 Barrie 18

From Mad Scientists to Robots pursued by Sharks…

Get Bit (Thanks James)

Woohoo... so 2 weeks late but I finally manage to play my game! 6 players (so sadly no chance to try out the new pink 7th player I’d picked up at Essen...). This is about as filler a game as you can get. Fantastic components, plays 2-7 1 minute rule run through and maybe 20 minutes to play. And who doesn’t want to play a game where you can pull arms and legs off opposing players. I’ve played several games of Resistance when I’ve had that kind of urge... but this game actually lets you do it! I think we had Woody, Scott, Dan, Barrie, Johan and me in this one, but I could be wrong. No idea how the game progressed but I’m think I won... which is the important bit.

James 1st Johan 2nd Dan 3rd Maynard 4th Scott 5th Woody 6th.

There were a couple of games which were scored but not reported:

Coloretto

Barry 30 James 22 Woody 20 Dan 18

Felix: The Cat in the Sack

Andy 57 Woody 52 James 43, Jon 24

“Maturing his Felonious Little Plan” comes from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance.

Bring it again Dan or "You get a good spadesman"

2011-10-25T22:05:00.001+01:00

The evening began with a dice game, but for a change it wasn’t Tumblin’ dice (although the distribution of winners and losers ws not dissimilar)

Perudo (thanks Jon)

Ian won with 4 dice left

2nd – David; 3rd – Emma; 4th – James II; 5th – Jon; 6th – Scott; 7th – Philip (with the most amazing over-bidding ever seen!)

Next on the agenda (for me) was a bit of Terry Pratchett.

Discworld: Ankh Morpok

By now several others had arrived, including Tonio, who showed interest in Discworld. I tried to gather a couple more players, and was initially spurned, Jon going so far as to pretend not only that he couldn’t hear me but that I didn’t even exist, but finally managed to find three wiling extras. Since the game doesn’t take five, one of us had to bow out, and Ian was first to do so, leaving me with three new players.

The game was soon underway and much amusement was found in the cards from Tonio and David, who are Pratchett fans, though not so much from James II, who isn’t. I of course had seen the cards before. This time I heeded my own warning about keeping $5 spare, but James didn’t so I saddled him with Dr Whiteface (reduces your hand size permanently). I encouraged the others to stop me winning by pointing out when I was getting close. Despite the assistance of Gaspode the Wonder Dog, I proved unable to combat the efforts of all three opponents and was soon not close to winning at all. Both David and Tonio drew lots of cards early and found themselves saddled with too many poor quality cards.

A fair number of random events happened over the course of the game, including Explosion and Earthquake (both ineffective), Trolls (who became a target for assassination), Bloody Stupid Johnson (who rendered James’ newly built Scours apartment useless) and a Fire at the end (which destroyed 2 buildings). At one point I had a decent hand and hopes of playing for the win in a turn or two, only to see Tonio play the Chair of Indefinite Studies and swap hands with me.

The merry dance continued with everyone thwarting everyone else’s chances of winning, until the deck ran out, making James the winner as Commander Vimes.

Galaxy Trucker

Looking round for our next game, my eye alighted on Galaxy Trucker, which Tonio had taught me and James a few weeks ago. Tonio was predictably eager to actually play his game, and David was quickly taught the rules. The usual mixture of Meteorites, Pirates and Planets with valuable commodities ensured, and everyone was doing pretty well until round 3 when the Pirates started having ridiculous requirements, like ten guns (ok, Tonio managed to meet them…) Damage swiftly accumulated, with James losing most of his batteries to a single pirate encounter. The game ended with a triumphant win for Tonio.

While we were playing Discworld, others were excavating…

Pergamon (thanks Jon)

Noel had brought this out for a couple of weeks running, and Jon had been sufficiently intrigued to request another outing. Ian was also attracted by its Euro appearance, and Dan chose it as the lesser of 2 evils rather than Power Grid.

The game revolves around a selection phase which provides cash to excavate, and the necessary permissions to excavate to certain depths (with more valuable artefacts being deeper). This is followed by a mini-jigsaw phase, which results in sending exhibits to the museum – and maybe giving them a spit and polish for good measure.

Ian took a risk early on and was rewarded with a wallet full of cash. He used this to good effect and soon had a couple of valuable exhibits in the museum. Dan started out in bold fashion, slapping down his meeple on the highest cash value square – only to be retracted a few seconds later as he decided that his cojones weren’t quite as large as he first thought… Noel was using his previous knowledge to carefully accumulate artefacts, whilst Jon decided to exhibit little and often.

There are 12 rounds, but they fairly rattle along, and before long the final scoring round was reached, and it was no surprise that Ian had come out on top. It was a surprise that the experienced gameowner Noel had come third, although maybe he was just being nice to the newbies (probably not…) All in all, one of those games which feels like a reasonably meaty Euro, but in the golden ‘sub-60 minute’ timeframe.

Ian 25; Jon 22; Noel 18; Dan 9

They then turned to dice:

Quariors (thanks again Jon)

Shed-loads of small dice. Monsters. Plenty of symbols and text. Dominion with Dice.

Dan had played before, so explained the rules, which are not particularly complex. As is common with deck-building games, a first play is always affected by players’ unfamiliarity with the cards (or in this case dice). Therefore, at least 3 of the players followed the rule of ‘if it’s expensive it must be good!’ Noel was plagued by some rather unfortunate dice-rolling (his monsters never seemed to get into play), whilst Ian brought out a couple of meaty chaps that quickly totted up his points. The game ended when the requisite number of dice pools had been exhausted, with Ian just pipping Dan to the win.

My opinion? If I feel the need to build decks, I think I may prefer Dominion. If I feel the need to roll dice, I’ll stick to Tumblin’ Dice. If I feel the need to roll dice and fight monsters, I’ll take King of Tokyo. What it is to have such choice…..

Ian 9; Dan 8; Jon 6; Noel 4

And finally to cards…

Wyatt Earp

Ian had exited, but the remaining 3 had time for something else, so Dan brought this nice little rummy variant out of his bag. It is easy to pick up, and plays quickly, so was ideal for the end of the evening. The game end condition is when someone gets to $25k, and after a big second round, Jon had reached $24k. However, Noel played a judicious Hideout on Jon in the third round, and as all the Wyatt Earp cards had apparently disappeared from the deck, he couldn’t remove it until it was too late. This gave him an appalling 3rd round score of $4k, allowing Noel to squeeze past him for the victory. Nice card game – bring it again, Dan.

Noel $30k; Jon $28k; Dan $18k

Meanwhile Electricity and Egypt had been the themes on Scott's table (thanks Scott)

Power Grid

Despite Emma’s best efforts for Roborally, everyone else jumped in to other games and left Scott, Barrie and Emma. Barrie suggested Power Grid and we were all happy enough to play.

We picked China seeing as Emma did well at that last time and thought she might do again. We began and the Garbage plant was hotly contested and Emma couldn’t get it after Scott bid a fortune for it. Then Andy walked in and with no other game to play we restarted with four players.

Scott was less interested in garbage this time and Emma was happy to get herself a bargain, and no sooner had we completed the first auction (again) but then John walked in and we set-up a 5 player game!

This time there was more interest in the garbage plant but Emma stuck to her guns and won the rubbish, then when any other rubbish plants came up later in the game she was first to buy them, earning herself a reputation of hanging around the bins a lot. Scott went cheap with oil and started in the middle of the board, Emma tried to secure the cheap corner of the board for herself but Andy thought he would share it with her, much to her discontent, especially since the rest of the board was rather crowded with Barrie in the middle and John to the South, John had himself a nice wide open space but the connections were quite expensive.

We trundled along nicely until John finally could afford 7 cities while the rest of us were quite squeezed in our area of the map.

Step three took a while to come and there was a real lack of high capacity plants, this was good for Scott who got one early and was poised to end the game shortly, John bid very high to get himself enough capacity but fell short on the city building front as a result. Andy and Barrie got themselves big plants too but couldn’t match the full 17 of Scott. Emma had benefited from limited competition from the rest of us and some good plants but not quite enough capacity.

Scott – 17, Emma – 16 (30 cash), Barrie – 16 (15 cash), Andy – 16 (5 cash), John – 15

That’s the scores I remember anyway, they are open to dispute from anyone else’s memory.

Something else we could all agree on, having side-stepped Roborally a second time. This didn’t go very well for Scott due to his uncanny ability to find the Ra tiles from the bag. In the first round, Emma got herself a lead in Pharoahs while Barrie focussed on Monuments, John was diversifying while Scott tried to get a bargain and with two Ra spaces left managed to draw two in quick succession before any positive tiles came out.

In the second round, John got the pharaoh lead and some nice floods, Scott got a nice hand of river tiles but sod all to water them with.

Towards the end, Barrie kept his monument focus as the rest of us had won very few of them and despite not scoring well earlier he ran away with the game with a huge end game score. John was close behind with high suns, pharaohs etc. while Scott and Emma never seemed to get the bargain they were looking for. Emma maybe could have done a little better after her highlight of purchasing one flood tile for the 13 just to stop Scott (who later picked one up that round)

Barrie – 1^st,John – 2^nd ,Emma – 3^rd,Scott – last

P.S “You get a good spadesman” is from the Nightmare song in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe

Their Finest Hour or "So Adventurous a Tale"

2011-10-12T19:30:00.036+01:00

The evening once again began with Tumblin’ Dice, first a three player and then a five player game

Tumblin’ Dice

Game 1: James II 95; Jon 88; Paul 53

Game 2 was remarkable mainly for the immense enjoyment Woody (who wasn't even playing) derived from seeing me miss shot after shot....

Game 2: James 75; Paul 73; Jon 72; Emma 47; Philip 25

Then we moved on to a massive eight player game of Emma’s new purchase…

Dixit: Odyssey (Philip’s version)

The familiar game is enlivened by a board and some special cards to indicate guesses- and with 7 or more players everyone can make two guesses (bonus points for a correct single guess). Soon the cryptic clues were being considered, the cards were revealed and the guesses were made.

Both Jameses were playing, but James I left after one round, having attempted to guess card 9…, while James II went from strength to strength, successfully guessing other’s clues and also attracting plenty of wrong guesses to his chosen cards. Jon’s “Their finest hour” turned out to be a Rooster getting 1^st place on the podium rather than an attack by fighter planes or a rabbit landing on the moon (complete with specially adapted helmet). My own clue “Prosperity” had apparently been used for the exact same card when Emma played the game at Tringcon. Not surprising for Dominion fans, since said card shows a Cornucopia (for some unexplained reason, one trapped in a block of ice). The cards continued with such clues as “Apocalypse” and “ain’t so Artful now”- the latter being guessed by almost everyone as a picture of a street kid down on his luck. By the time we got round to the final player –Emma- we had exhausted the pack and were drawing the cards again, so it was perhaps just as well that James II guessed correctly for the 6^th time and reached the finish line.

As a special treat, we have an alternative narrative of the same game. It is the same game, though you might not have guessed it…

Dixit Odyssey (same game, from Jon’s perspective)

Emma had brought along this new version of this creative game, and then announced that she had to leave at 9pm. So, we humoured her and joined in a 7-player game. The difference with this version is that it can now handle 12 players (supposedly) and you can vote for 2 different cards instead of just one.

The first point to note is that the voting chits have been replaced by voting ‘cards’ that you place 2 pegs in to indicate your choices. Except that the pegs do not stay in the cards. Classic schoolboy error. The worst design decision since Olaf the Hairy, High Chief of all the Vikings, accidentally ordered 80,000 battle helmets with the horns on the inside.

The second point to note is that working out the scoring takes forever. FOREVER. And the art isn’t as good either. Hence, the game was willed to as quick a finish as possible, with James I managing to exit prematurely, and Jon and Woody casting mournful expressions after him. I can’t remember who won, but several of us lost (45 minutes of our lives…)

The players now divided, with Andy, me and Alex diving into Andy’s newest purchase…

Cuba

Only I had played before, so I explained the rules as the components were spread out over the table- just as well that I had appropriated a large and well lit surface.

I adopted a rather obvious strategy of building the Hotel (activate for 2VPs) on turn 1 and trying to score 2 VPs with the Architect on other turns. Alex went for a Dam/Golfcourse combination which was soon earning him 3 VPs a turn. Andy played more subtly, shipping goods and keeping a close eye on the Parliament.

This allowed him to enact suitable bills, including a Water subsidy which netted him 6 VPs before I spent my last money on bribing it away. By this time I had added the Inn (activate for 1VP), since Andy had scored 2 Vps with the Architect earlier in the turn. I was apparently in the lead at this point- but the others had built more buildings…

Andy prised me from the Parliament building to enact a Money Subsidy- giving three VPs to Alex and none to himself. In the final turn Alex spent his money on Rum and shipped it for 6VPs, which lead to a narrow victory.

Alex 68, Phil 66, Andy 65

The three of us played a quick filler…

Get Bit

This simple and silly game features robots getting eaten by a shark. Each turn you play a card and move your robot. The robot furthest behind loses a limb and picks up his cards. Lose four limbs and you are out of the game. After an initial round where Alex discovered that low cards were bad I lost three limbs in quick succession, and the fourth shortly thereafter. Andy only lost one limb the whole game, leaving him the inevitable winner.

Alex now sat out while me and Andy played…

Penguin Party

In the two player game many cards are removed to keep up the uncertainty. Both of us seemed to have fairly balanced hands and with the pyramid base being only 7 cards it didn’t take long for some colours to be blocked off. The scoring was very close in both games and ended in a tie.

Going back in time both actually and thematically, while we were enjoying Dixit: Odyssey, Noel, Johan and James I were doing a spot of digging in Ancient Greece.

Pergamon (thanks Noel)

On Noel's arrival, James needed no persuading to jump out of Dixit and Noel set up Pergamon which he had brought and played before. After one quick rules run through and a promise of a 30minute game, Johann arrived. After a second rules run through (please note 2nd rules run through including the end game scoring bonus) and still promising a 30 minute game Johann, James and Noel started excavating treasures and displaying them for points.

Johann and James displayed plenty of tat for regular VPs while Noel focused on high quality older artefacts focused on collecting the bonus points on each of the 4 scoring rounds. This took him to the win with 28 points, with James on 27 and Johann on 22 asking for a 3rd rules run through to try to get that final point. James in particular had the longest and most polished exhibit and thought he should get extra points for that... but that must be one of his different games.

Noel 28, James 27, Johann 22

The same three joined up with three more from Dixit for…

I'm the Boss (thanks again Noel)

After going unplayed last week, several IBG'ers were keen to get Im the Boss played and with 6 free gamers after a slightly longer than promised Pergamon, this pure negotiation game was brought out. Paul and Johann who had played before reassured everyone despite the slightly concerning 1-4 hr time frame on the box.

After a few rounds of card taking, Johann got the negotiations going and concluded the first deal with a small profit. This made him an immediate target and Noel used some cards to take his investor card and James did the same to Paul, continuing a 'healthy' rivalry from last week. Noel and James I used these early to get in as minority investors in most deals. Jon and James I played for the big deals and Paul and Johann card collected to try to get their investors back. The game finished quickly in 45 minutes, mainly due to a rule interpretation that deals could be concluded quickly by grabbing and slamming down the deal counter. As such, offers were made and accepted quickly. Snooze you lose in this game.

Checking through the geek pages suggests that most play with a 'Going once, going twice, gone' conclusion to a deal. Certainly this would give more strength to the negotiation aspect of the game rather than quick deal sealing which did quicken the game but felt a bit unsatisfying.

At the end of this frantic game, Noel and James II shared the win with $40, with Jon on 39 and Johann on 30. James I & Paul both lost. If only they could work together...

Noel $40 James II $40, Jon $39 Johann $30, James I <$30, Paul<$30

The group now abandoned Capitalism for Revolution…

Revolution (thanks James I)

So, after a short deliberation over what to play next Noel took out his copy of Revolution plus un-punched expansion and the thought of being allowed to pop out fresh counters from cardboard drove Jon into such a frenzy that he’d already torn apart the expansion wrapping before anyone could stop him. The effect of fresh smelling cardboard on a grown man can never be underestimated !

So while Paul, James, James II and Johan held back Jon until the foaming had subsided, Noel started to set up.

6 players, new boards, some new bits and a whole new building to colonise. Fun stuff indeed. No really change to the rules, but 4 more roles to select each turn and with 6 players a strong likelihood of more conflicts which is really where the fun part of the game hits home.

Early on James (II) took the initiative, managing to place several counters and pick up lots of bonus points, James (I) was close behind with a run of 3 rounds when he managed to play to Force-Blackmail-Force tactic successfully… For some reason Jon’s pawns were the early target of a few moves which I’m assuming were due to long standing grudges likely from previous games of Small World or the Resistance. It’s possible Johan had spent the first ½ dozen rounds at the bar as he was still on 0 points around a third into the game.

By mid game Noel and James (I) were contesting the Harbour and Courthouse, James (II) was in full control of the Cathedral and the new building (the palace) and the Guardhouse was generally preventing anyone from extracting revenge. Jon, Johan and Paul were playing the long game (or perhaps had fallen asleep, it was hard to tell) and had pawns spread about but not attracting too much attention.

This game generally starts out slowly as pawns get placed and then from mid game on folks realise that the end is just around the corner and the more interaction options start to get selected moving other pawns on and off the board and switching things around. And this game was no exception. Jon had a few rounds where he was manoeuvring to control the Town Hall and the Market, James (II) continued to rack up support over pawns and kept control of a few buildings. Noel took firm control of the Harbour… to be honest not sure what buildings Paul was owning at this stage, the portaloo perhaps?

So to the end game… it took a few turns where people could’ve ended the game but chose to move different pawns, and this played right into my benefit as for the last round I had a dozen forces and blackmails to use. With literally the last move of the game I managed to not only take control of the Town Hall but split control of the Palace and thus deliver no points to both Noel and James (II) who’d been squabbling over this for most of the game. As points were tallied this move totally annexed any opposition and I managed to win by a landslide, with Jon sneaking into 2nd place ahead of James (II), and Noel slipping back to last place. I guess you’ll not be bringing along next week then Noel ?

James (I) 142, Jon 105, James (II) 97, Johan 77, Paul 57, Noel 55

At some point earlier in the evening, there had been another game of …

Get Bit (thanks Paul)

Get Bit appeared on the games pile, courtesy of James. Jon, James II, Emma and Paul asked James nicely if they could play it as it was small and there was only a small time period to fill. He said 'no' so we took that as a 'yes' and dived in for some 'sharks chomping swimming robot' action.

A very simple game with a fun, although unnecessary theme slapped on top. Four robots are out swimming one day when an apparently iron-deficient shark decides that they'd make a tasty snack. The robots obviously lacked some team spirit, when swimming away from the shark keep leaving their mates behind to get chomped.

The game is actually supplied with a plastic shark that has a flip-top head that snaps shut with a satisfying snap, and robots that actually do lose limbs when the shark has its fill.

The robots line up in front of the shark and the players try hard to keep them from being in last place. The mechanism for doing this is to play cards with numbers on - all players start off with the same set. All players decide on a card to play, setting it face down in front of them. When the cards are revealed, the lowest card swims to the front - safe they think - but no, as the next highest then swims in front of them, with the distinct possibility that they end up at the rear again as fish food. However if two players play the same number, both cards are discarded and the robots swim nowhere.

So it is a bit of bluffing, a bit of working out which payers are likely to play what and yes quite a bit of luck.

In this game James II was first to have all four limbs chewed from him, hitting Davy Jones’ Locker with a clank. Fairly shortly after one hand meant that either Jon or Paul would go out, but either option would leave Emma as the winner. As luck would have it Jon got bit first, leaving the scores as:

First: Emma, Second: Paul, Third: Jon, Fourth: James II

Well, the sharks were out tonight… and that was just the players!

P.S “So Adventurous a Tale” is from “Behold the Lord High Executioner” in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado.

A New Grudge Which is Born Today or “The Shares are a Penny”

2011-10-11T19:24:00.002+01:00

Another week, another meeting...

The evening started off with Tumblin Dice:

Game 1 Woody 127 Jon 116 James 91 Paul 71

Game 2 James 28 Jon 28 Woody 26 Noel 23 Paul 19

Which was followed by a quick game of Coloretto: I sat out setting up my latest acquisition (see below) instead.

Coloretto Scores James 28 Jon 28 Woody 26 Noel 23 Paul 19

More players had now arrived and various games were brought forward. We’ll start with another light dice game (thanks Paul).

Quarrriors

Quarriors was just some of the 'hotness' which John B brought along, raved about by Tom Vasel and climbing the rankings.

It has been simply described as 'Dominion with dice' which isn't far off the truth. Everyone starts off with the same set of dice which are stored in a pouch. Each turn they pull out six and roll them, and then act on the results, which may include rolling more dice, buying more dice, casting spells or launching some creatures (which need to be paid for with other dice from their roll). A monster which is put forward automatically attacks any other creature on the table that has previously been put forward by anyone else.

Points are scored by putting forward a creature that was rolled and paid for, and having that creature survive until that player’s next turn, i.e. having them survive all attacks from the other players. If a monster survives, the player not only gets points, but gets to discard any dice that they don't want and therefore make their aggregate rolls more powerful.

So instead of managing a stack of cards, players manage a bag of dice.

In this game, John kicked off and it took a while for Dan to become the first with points on the board as most of the 'starting' creatures were put forward and then killed off by the others before a round had passed.

Paul had managed to buy one of the big beasties which had the ability to take the attack and defence characteristics of any other monster on the table. This, more by luck than judgement, got him the first big score of the game.

John followed suit with a starter creature. Paul made some nice rolls and managed to put himself into quite a commanding lead, with Dan and John keeping him in their sights as they also managed to keep some of their creatures alive.

You may be forgiven for thinking there were only three players in the game, but you'd be mistaken as James was also playing. Knowing this, you might justifiably assume that James was playing a different type of role to everyone else - maybe the games master - and therefore didn't score points or do anything of note. No - actually James was in the same boat as the rest of us, it was just that...well, James hadn't scored any points or done anything of note. A reviewer with a kinder heart might have simply neglected to mention this and let James' lack of scoring go unnoticed, but, well, I'll let you draw your own conclusions. Whatever conclusions they are let me categorically state that it has nothing whatsoever to do with the grudges that James holds and brings back to the table weeks later (although it might well have something to do with a new grudge that is born today).

So the game progressed along a similar vein with Paul pulling further into the lead as he'd managed to ditch some of the lower value dice, and Dan and John vying for second place.

The general consensus was that there was a good dollop of luck in the game and that it'd take a few games to work out how to 'play' the luck, but if a player gets a healthy lead then it is difficult to catch up.

Consequently, when Dan had the option to extend the game or to bring it to a close, and he chose the latter, mercifully putting James, still on zero, out of his misery.

Even James admitted that it was quite fun, and even Paul couldn't quite bring himself to say that it was all pure skill, although it certainly didn't take anything away from the feeling of pure pleasure that he will get when typing in the scores below.

Paul: 11, John: 4, Dan 4, James 0

Meanwhile, on another table a metaphorical world away…me reporting this time.

Ankh Morpok

Martin Wallace’s latest design, featuring the Discworld’s most famous city. Players take on a secret identity and place minions, build buildings and cause trouble. I’d played it twice on Saturday at Tringgcon but was happy to play it again. Alex was also keen, being a Discworld fan. Woody, with no knowledge of Pratchett’s works gallantly joined us to even out the numbers…

The first game saw me as Chrysoprase (objective: make money) verus Alex as Lord Selachii (objective, control areas) and Woody as Lord Rust (same objective as Lord Selachii). I quickly selected the Scours as the cheapest area to build in which would get me an income. Alex spread out rapidly, and soon I was trying to stop Alex as much as meet my own goal. Woody professed confusion. Possibly it was a cunning plan, but we never found out, as I soon proved unable to stop Alex winning.

For the second game, Alex dropped out, leaving me and Woody.

I was Lord Vetinari (get agents in 11 areas, a tall order as there are only 12 areas in the game). He was Dragon King of Arms (get trouble markers in 8 areas). I had a shrewd idea of his identity quite early on as he not only went out of his way to cause trouble but also built the one building that allows the owner to generate trouble (appropriately in the Shades). I wasn’t doing too badly, having managed to make a large amount of money via “Harry King”, and both of us being quite close to winning, when I foolishly played Rincewind, causing a Random Event to occur. The event was “Demons from the Dungeon Dimensions” Alex correctly observed that the Things in the Dungeon Dimensions aren’t Demons. Nevertheless the effect was devastating for me, as the Demons occupied 4 areas, causing trouble and meaning that the areas did not count for my objective. Fortunately Demons are susceptible to assassination. In a tactic I should have pursued earlier I now built the building that allows its owner to remove trouble markers- but even so Woody was able to outpace me and win easily.

Not trouble but trains was the focus on the next table- though it seems Noel managed to cause plenty of trouble just the same (thanks to Jon).

Chicago Express

After last week’s successful outing, Noel did not need much persuasion for another. And with Andy just turning up, that made a happy band of 3 aspiring train barons.

This game turned out very differently from last week. Firstly, there were only 3 players, which made the distribution of shares completely different. Secondly, we had a spoiler in our midst, whose sole aim in life was not to see the glorious expansion of the infant locomotive transport system, but instead, to sabotage it at every possible opportunity.

Despite warnings from last week, Jon again managed to obtain 2 red shares, with Noel picking up the other. Andy quickly picked up a couple of blue shares, and this paid dividends (literally) in the first 2 rounds as his income grew.

By the middle of the game, Andy had majority shares in both blue and yellow, whilst green was shared out equally (causing the line to stall just after its starting point). Noel had one share of each company, and Jon simply had his 2 red shares and a green. It was at this point that Noel realised that it wasn’t particularly in his interest for any of the lines to get to Chicago, and systematically either blocked them off or drove them into the unforgiving mountains (boo hiss…….).

Anyway, the final share was issued, bringing the game to an end. Andy had undoubtedly been earning vast quantities of income during the game, the only question being, had he paid too much for the numerous shares that he had acquired? The answer turned out to be ‘no’, as his final tally was in 3 figures. The other 2 players were within a few dollars of each other, with ‘the rotten spoiler’ just pipping Jon for second place.

I’m really enjoying this game, so I think that it may well turn up at IBG again in the future…

Andy 107; Noel 93; Jon 89

Although a fourth table (Gareth’s) played in the Year of the Dragon and St. Petersburg, there are no reports of what happened. Meanwhile the Ankh-Morpok and Chicago Express players rounded off the evening with everyone’s favourite game starring Rowan Atkinson…(thanks again Jon).

Bohnanza

5-player Bohnanza to close out the evening. Nice. Woody had only played once, so a rules explanation was required. Apparently he had hated it the first time round. I’m not sure that his opinion changed much following this experience either…

A quick summary of the playing styles of the various competitors:

Noel: Calculating and calm, in typical Irish fashion. A twinkle in his eye, but a dagger in his hand….

Woody: Refused to trade (with Noel!) at the beginning. Realised this clearly wasn’t working and accumulated a huge hand of cards. Went trade-crazy towards the end. Card-playing interspersed with a variety of expletives…

Philip: What you see is what you get. No games here. “I’ll trade this for that.” End of. Refreshing… (came last though…)

Andy: An English version of Noel without the Irish charm…

Jon: A happy, carefree trader, just seeking to help out his fellow-players wherever possible, regardless of the cost to himself. (Disagree?! You should have written this report then….)

Jon 18; Noel 13; Woody 12; Andy 10; Philip 8

“The Shares are a Penny” is a quotation from the Nightmare Song in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe.

Of Her Own Free Will, or From Cough Mixtures to Cables

2011-10-04T19:35:00.000+01:00

The meeting began with me and Emma appearing, but neither of us had brought any games, so we had to wait for others. Paul, James, Jon and Tonio arrived in quick succession and we decided to play one of the few available short 6 player games

Santy Anno (thanks Jon)

No-one could remember the rules properly. Paul and Emma hated it, hence it finished one round early. Everyone else was thankful that Dan wasn’t playing.

James 12; Tonio 11; Jon 10; Philip 9; Paul 1; Emma 0

Jamaica now made her appearance (cue “she went of her own free will” joke from Jon) and five of the six Santy Anno players embarked on it.

Jamaica

Another night, another family game courtesy of James. Actually, this was one that Jon had shown an interest in recently, and along with other willing recruits – Emma, Paul and Tonio – they made up a band of 5 bloodthirsty pirates.

The gameplay is simple enough – it’s basically a race game around an island, picking up treasures, doubloons and goods along the way. These latter goods are used to pay your way from port to port, and the doubloons and treasures are also used to calculate part of your final score. Movement is decided by the start player rolling 2 dice and deciding which will be the ‘morning’ number, and which the ‘evening’ number. Players have 3 cards in their hands which have a variety of actions for morning and evening, and they simultaneously decide which to play. Actions are then resolved in a clockwise order. Any pirate ship landing on a space with another ship instantly battles, with the loser usually losing goods. The first player ‘home’ gets an extra 15 points, with everyone else scoring points depending upon how far round the island they had travelled.

Jon managed to misunderstand the rules at the beginning (probably ‘cos he was stealing James’ chips at the time) and finished his first turn no further forward but having lost all his starting goods. Tonio and Paul got quite a bit of wind in their sails and were soon halfway round the island. James had managed to take part in a number of naval engagements, and had not fared well. Emma was drifting along enjoying the view.

We had just got through our deck of cards once (cue rules discussion on how to proceed) when a double 6 was thrown. Jon was the only player to have his ‘move forward morning and evening’ card in hand, and shot forward 12 spaces in a single turn. Moving forward a further 6 on the next turn was enough to bring him into Port Royal and finish the game. Everyone else was still languishing outside of the scoring zone, which, despite his lack of treasures, gave Jon a comfortable victory.

Jon 23; Paul 13; Tonio 12; James 12; Emma 5

Meanwhile I had bailed out of Jamaica to play Pergamon…

Pergamon

Noel and his brother Paul had some experience playing this 2-player while I was new, which is at least some excuse for my dismal performance. The game is about digging for and exhibiting Ancient Greek Artefacts. The deeper you dig the more money you have to spend, but the most valuable artefacts are buried deepest.

Turns proceed with, first, a curious quasi-auction for money and turn order- more money meaning later position, but if you get greedy you can end up getting less money and going last.

Secondly players have the opportunity to dig. The artefacts come in several different types (mask, vase, etc) and have to be joined together in a one-dimensional jigsaw puzzle to make a complete exhibit. Exhibits go into a kind of hall of fame where they earn vps but gradually sink in value as newer, more valuable exhibits appear and with each scoring round.

By the first scoring round Noel and Paul had completed 15-20 (4-5 Vps) fame exhibits (and Noel an additional 4 fame (1VP) one) whereas I had only managed about 8 fame (2 VPs). The game went on in much the same way for the remaining rounds, although in the final round I was able to “polish” my exhibit with my remaining money, which pushed it up to a reasonably high value.

Paul P 39 Noel P 31 Phiilip 21

I now wandered over to the erstwhile Jamaica table and ended up in space….

Galaxy Trucker

Tonio had mentioned the possibility of Galaxy Trucker earlier and so when I saw Alex, Lexia and James (III) eyeing up the box I was quick to nudge Tonio into teaching the game to all four of us, none of whom had played before. Unfortunately this meant he had to sit out, it being only a four player game.

The game has two distinct phases, one in which the players construct space ships out of tiles depicting various components and the cables connecting them and a second in which the spaceships are tested to destruction as they hurtle through space getting hit by meteorites and attacked by pirates (and also picking up goods for delivery (possibly including cough mixtures...), if they make it through the course). The two phases occur three times, with progressively larger spaceships and more dangerous obstacles.

In our first voyage we quickly discovered that loose connector cables (going into empty space) are bad- they cause components to be knocked off by small asteroids, slow you down when you encounter space dust, and the person with least loose connections at end of voyage receives bonus points. However, most of survived with nothing more than minor damage- the exception being James when the Slavers took all his crew, leaving a derelict hulk floating in space. Alex was ahead in the race when the music stopped and picked up the bonus for least loose connectors.

The second voyage was even more successful than the first, with everyone finishing the course and only taking minor damage. High points were scored for delivering goods by everyone except me- I decided to try for speed instead, but still only managed second to Alex’s third.

In the third voyage we were allowed to use Aliens, who needed extra life support and occupied crew slots in exchange for boosting guns and engines. Tonio had left us to our own devices now and our ships soon came under heavy fire. Components were blasted off, taking other components with them, batteries ran out, and an epidemic devastated the crew, alien and human alike. The ship with the least engines came under heavy fire twice- the first time it was James who took the punishment, but by the second time James had already lost all his crew and was out of the race so Alex got shot up, losing almost a whole wing of his spacecraft. I was able to finish first with a hefty cargo and win least loose connections, but Alex’s points in the first couple of rounds were still enough for the win.

Alex 47 Lexia 39 Philip 30 James 17

Meanwhile a few of the remaining Pergamon and Jamaica players had fused for some light games, starting with a train game.

Chicago Express (thanks Jon)

Encouraged by Noel, Jon brought out this train / investment game which has seen a couple of outings at IBG in the past. With none of the players actually having played the game before (although James had cunningly tried out the i-Pad version), there was uncertainty about how much was an acceptable bid for shares at the beginning of the game. However, everyone was in the same boat. Jon managed to pick up 2 of the 3 red shares on offer early in the game, with James picking up the third. Noel and Paul II were soon auctioning off a number of other shares and soon had a multi-coloured portfolio. James opted to purchase only one other share for the whole game – a tactic which wasn’t going to win him the game but did allow him to do surprisingly well.

Jon and James worked together to drive the red company all the way to Chicago, picking up some tidy dividends along the way. Noel and Paul pushed the blue company along too, but as Jon also had a share, there was less incentive to focus on expansion in quite the same way. The other companies got stuck in the mountains and did not get far.

The game ended surprisingly quickly with 3 companies running out of shares, and when everything was totted up. Jon had romped away with it, with James’ circumspect approach having secured him second place.

All agreed that it would be good to play again, although next time, there would be a concerted effort to stop one player getting a majority of red shares.

Jon 76; James 62; Noel 50; Paul II 48

By now Tonio had taught the players Galaxy Trucker and was able to join in a new game.

Sultan (thanks Jon)

Another new filler courtesy of Jon. Basically a blind bidding game / set collection game where each round there are 3 jewels of varying values on offer, and players play bidding cards face-down onto the jewels that they want. As there are 3 jewels on offer, and 5 players, there will always be competition for at least one jewel, whilst at least one other will always be uncontested.

The funniest moment came when Tonio had pulled out 3 diamonds (the least valuable jewel) and played his first card. Paul was next, and rather place his card on one of the 2 identical empty spaces he chose the same one as Tonio. Cue much mirth from the other players, and much gnashing of teeth from Tonio.

When the dust had settled, Noel’s quiet collecting of the diamonds had earned him a tidy bonus, and with it, a runaway win.

Noel 61; Jon 36; Paul II 32; James 28; Tonio 24

The evening was rounded off with IBG’s favourite dice dexterity game.

Tumblin Dice

So with Jon’s home baked board (and I’m pretty sure he’s built in a few modifications to assist his own game play) once again coupled with my dice (can’t be too sure about Jon’s dice anymore either) we had a couple of fun evening ending runs with Tumblin Dice. Such a great game really, and worthy of more than an end-of-evening filler like status.

Game 1 was Paul P, Noel, Jon and myself but despite some newcomers to the game there was no taking of prisoners. Jon and myself shot into the lead, while the brothers battled out for bragging rights at the breakfast table. After 2 rounds Jon was ahead by 9 and Noel by 6. In Round 3 I managed to cut Jon’s lead to 7 while Paul took the lead to 2: couldn’t be closer ! Was a strange last round as everyone scored big and with totals of 33,32,40 and 33 you can see how close things were. Noel ended up ahead by 96-93 over Paul for 3rd place, while James , despite initially fearing for the worse managed to drag back the 7 points for an honourable (?) tie with Jon.

James 131 Jon 131 Noel 96 Paul II 33

Realising we could sneak in another game before the pub set the dogs on us, Jon and me decided to try and resolve the tie. And once again it was neck and neck over the 1st three rounds. I took a good lead after 1, but after 3 rounds there was just 1 point between us and on the last round, 3 dice in it was still anyone’s game.

Then disaster (or did Jon manage to sneak in one of his home made dice I wonder) struck. I took aim at a cluster of Jon’s dice that were simply begging to be dispatched, but instead took out a couple of my own dice. Now, I can’t be sure but I might’ve caught a glimpse of Jon’s hand under the table manipulating a few switches as my die made an almost imperceptible 10 degree change of direction away from his dice hmm or lets be generous and say perhaps it was just the lighting But from here there was no way back for me. Jon dribbled his last die in for a score and took

the title.

Jon 126 James 96.

P.S "From Cough Mixtures to Cables" is taken from the Nightmare song in Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe.