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Saturday 27 December 2014

Festive Break

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Lords Of Waterdeep

I turned up to Cult last week to be greeted by a lonely Craig. Usually there are a couple of people that arrive before me. As time passed we became increasingly worried that no one else would make it so close to Christmas and it would turn into some sort of awkward, online dating gone wrong scenario. Luckily a bunch of people turned up. Two of them berating me for not writing the blog for last week, so this will be some sort of combined entry for the both.

DominionIn the last post I said something about if the cards against humanity players turned up next week I'd count them in the numbers. Well, as it happens they did turn up so true to my word I'll include them. That meant about 19 people two weeks ago and about 13 last week.

In all honesty I can barely remember what happened a week ago let alone what happened two weeks ago. I do have a small amount of photographic evidence to jog my memory though. It kind of goes a bit like this; Cards Against Humanity, Dominion, Betrayal at House on the Hill, The Resistance, Lords of Waterdeep and Settlers of Catan.

Settlers of CatanI won Dominion, which I was pretty pleased about. I'm always pleased when I win Dominion. I started off strong in Waterdeep but ended up coming last, if memory served. I think Dan came first. Mike declared it one of the few worker placement games he didn't hate so if anything it's a win for the game itself.

Surprisingly it was the first showing for Settlers of Catan at IpBoG, the game which inspired its logo. I'm sure other games were played but I don't remember what. However I do know a drink was spilt, but this time not over a game, just a bag. We have to start paying attention to the drinks on the table rule.

FluxxSo last week we started off with Fluxx while we waited for people to arrive. The rules explicitly allow people to join part way through so it seemed like a good choice. After a while we had a terrible rule set where we could play only a single card but that card had to be chosen at random by another player. This started to drag so when Dan got a chance he dealt one of his keepers to me, winning me the game. Sometimes Fluxx outstays its welcome and just has to be ended.

Other Dan had brought Eight Minute Empire. I jumped at the chance of a go at this. It was a pretty fun little area control/set collection game. I've heard people call it a 4X game but it really isn't. It also isn't 8 minutes, at least with the full compliment of players. It's still pretty quick at around half an hour.

Eight Minute EmpireWe played another 5 player game of Hanabi and did very well again (23 points, I think). Dan wasn't sure if there was a rule change for more players but we didn't think so because we hadn't played it differently last time with 5 players. I've more recently been told that we have less cards in our hands with more players. I've not verified this but it sounds likely. We probably accidentally cheated both times, it was kind of easy.

Quarriors made its first appearance. We only made it about half way through the game before closing time. Again so many more games were played but I don't have photos of them so I forget what they were. I'm pretty sure Johnny played Bang! However I do know a drink was spilt again, but this time not over a game, just a crotch. We really have to start paying attention to the no drinks on the table rule.

We'll be taking a festive break from IpBoG next week (the 29th) as Cult is closed. We'll be back with a vengeance in the new year, no doubt with a whole host of new board games we received for Christmas. See you there!

Wednesday 10 December 2014

All Filler No Killer

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Cards Against Humanity

So depending on who you believe, this week we either had 17 or 22 people this week. I say only 17 count but Dan disagrees. Apart from the potential extra 5 that Dan is counting I don't think we had any new attendees this week but it's getting a little difficult for me to keep track.

King of TokyoLast week Gemma said she wanted to play King of Tokyo, so as the super nice guys both Dan and I are, we'd both brought it in. I lead King of Tokyo while Dan set up Kemet. We played standard King of Tokyo without Dan's extra expansions because, to be totally honest, I couldn't remember exactly how they worked. I got taken out quickly after rolling all 6 dice three times and failing to get a single heart.

I was in fact out so quickly that Dan was still teaching the rules to Kemet. I think Dan is channeling some Egyption gods because he's winning every game of Kemet he plays recently and this week was no different. Note to self: make sure we gang up on Dan next time I play. The others had lowered the usual upstanding and civilised tone of the evening by playing Cards Against Humanity.

SplendorAfter King of Tokyo we split into two groups with one playing Splendor and the other playing Machi Koro, another dice rolling game of luck mitigation. In the same way it can go in King of Tokyo, due to no fault of his own, luck was not on Alex's side and he got left far behind. I thought I was bound to win, needing less than ten coins to buy my final landmark. The main contender to my victory was Demetri but he needed over twenty coins. I rolled a nine which would give me five coins and him ten. Instead of re-rolling I let Demetri get the ten, sure that no one else would roll another nine before his turn. How wrong I was, another ten was rolled giving us both the money required to win but his turn was before mine and my victory was stolen from me.

HanabiMike arrived at his usual 8:30 and we launched into a game of No Thanks! followed by For Sale. Contrary to last week's success, Alex continued his losing streak, coming last in For Sale. I'm pretty sure I ended up winning but I played so many games I'm having a hard time remembering who won anything..

After this we played Hanabi. I'd played this a couple of times before but always with two or three people and I'd found it fiendishly hard. This time we were playing it with five people and found it much more enjoyable and forgiving.We actually ended up doing pretty well, playing all the cards and scoring something like 22 points but with a bit of accidental cheating when people let on more than they meant to. It's easily done in this game though.

After that we joined with a few other stragglers and played a seven player game of No Thanks! Strictly more players than the game can support but we removed five cards instead of nine and started off with less tokens and it still played pretty well.

Machi KoroI can't be sure of every game that was played this week but I know Johnny was running a game of Betrayal at House on the Hill. I also know Lost Legacy was played with two sets of the game in play. I know this because there was a drink related accident. Someone had split their drink all over the table, drenching Alex's cards. Luckily to avoid too much awkwardness it was James, Alex's brother, so I guess sibling rivalry dictates a series of headlocks and Chinese burns as punishment. Either that or James buys Alex new copies. I think that's probably what they're going with. This is the second drinks related accent that I'm aware of, the previous one involving my copy of Citadels but in that case the cards came off relatively unscathed. I guess we should try and make sure we put drinks on the sides, not on the tables to avoid such mishaps in the future.

Finally the mystery of the extra five players. Towards the end of the night some passers by borrowed Cards Against Humanity and played that for a while with Craig. I'm not counting it because they didn't come specifically for the club, it was just a happy accident. If they're back next week to play again then I'm counting them!

Tuesday 2 December 2014

Expand, Exploit, Exterminate

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Carcassonne

Just like last week we got three newcomers and fourteen attendees. We've been getting quite a few newcomers this week so maybe we'll hit the mythical twenty-one.

No Thanks!
Mike had mentioned on the facebook group that he'd be coming at 8:30, armed with Quantum. I really wanted to try this game out so I started off with some small filler games so I could pounce on Quantum as soon as it arrived. I started off playing No Thanks! but the deck wasn't shuffled very well so it was easy to get runs. In this game lowest score wins and I won by hardly taking any cards and having a few tokens, resulting in a minus score. We shuffled the deck (properly this time) and played another game. I managed a double win, getting the lowest score in this game too. Afterwards we played Yardmaster Express with Dan winning. Mike arrived and joined us for another game of Yardmaster with Dan getting a double win himself. Yardmaster is a pretty cool game but it comes with caboose cards which are shared goals and there are only four of them. The game really needs more caboose cards to add some variation.

Yardmaster Express
While we were playing our fillers, Johnny was running Power Grid. I don't think he realised how little of the rules he remembered and had to spend the first half of the game buried in the rule book. Although it took a bit longer than expected, Johnny ended up winning.

Alex was running a game of Inkognito. Last week he said it was the game that Cludo should have been but when he described it to me it sounded more like Guess Who. Guess Clue, maybe? Apparently it's good but needs exactly four people and you play in pairs. Alex was paired with Cathy who ended up winning.

QuantumMike had arrived and so brought out Quantum. It does a maximum of four people and we had five but it was getting late  and Gemma had to get going. That was until Alex came over to pick up Carcassonne and she jumped at the chance to play it. As soon as the Quantum box was opened everyone was far too excited about the dice. They're so big, like King of Tokyo dice, and all translucent. And the game! Well, it's sort of like a 4X game except not really because there's not much exploring. I guess it's more of a 3X game. I really enjoyed it but I could be biased as I won. It was a close game between me and Dan but I managed to place my final cube on what would have probably been the turn before he managed to. It would be a contender for one of the best games of 2014 if it wasn't for the fact that it was released in 2013.

Wednesday 26 November 2014

All Hail the King

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Citadels

Turnouts are getting back up to speed again. With the addition of three newcomers this week we managed fourteen attendees.

Carcassonne
Last week Alex asked me if I could bring Citadels along for him to try so this week I did. We started off with this as our first game. We played with four people because, although this game supports up to 7, it can drag with a high player count. Adam made off with a good start building 5 districts while everyone else only had two or three. Gemma quickly caught up and took the lead, building some districts worth 8 or 9 points. It ends up that Alex was the first to build 7 districts giving him the extra bonus points to win the game, beating me by a single point. While we played Citadels the others were playing Arctic Scavengers and Splendor.

Lost Legacy
After Citadels we broke out Skull and Roses. Again this was won by Alex. Alex owns both the Flying Garden and Starship variants of Lost Legacy. We played the Flying Garden version while another group played the other. I tried my hardest to hinder him but it was to no avail, not wanting to ruin his winning streak Alex won this game too. All hail Alex, king of board games.

When we were done with this the others were finishing up games of Carcassonne and Yardmaster Express so we joined together and combined both sets of Lost Legacy to play one final double sized game before leaving for the night.

Tuesday 18 November 2014

The Last Draft

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Yardmester Express

This week was a good week, we finally got back into double figures. With two newcomers we made it to 11 people.

KemetI arrived to find some people already playing Munchkin. I'm not sure what variant it was, maybe zombies. This left seven of us so the only sensible plan of action was to play 7 Wonders. I started off slowly with neither me nor my neighbors having any wood or stone at all but in the third age I really lucked out getting a lot of free builds due to my previous cards. Dan and I went research crazy and both managed to get five of the same kind of symbol. I also managed to get one of each type of symbol too which edged my score above his, winning the game. Often with 7 Wonders if only one or two people go for research you can score pretty highly but it's a risky move because if people catch on they can block you by discarding research cards or using them to build wonders. A few research of different types is nowhere near as good as lots of a single kind.

Among The StarsAfter 7 wonders we split into three groups. Alex played Five Tribes, Dan played Kemet and I played another drafting game, Among The Stars. Among The Stars is pretty much a space based 7 Wonders. That is space in theme where you're building a space station as well as space in mechanism where you're arranging cards spatially. In this game there are two types of cards, those that trigger immediately and those that trigger at the end of the game. Dan and I had played mostly immediate cards whereas Johnny had gone for a more delayed approach. Johnny was sure he was losing but when it came to the final scoring he'd beaten us by a mile.

Five TribesBy the time we'd finished Among The Stars, Dan had already finished Kemet, a game that took us over two hours when I played it last. It seems Dan had devised a pretty decent strategy and made it to the victory condition in no time. Also there were less people playing it this time so that might have contributed.

Alex had won Five Tribes and had finished up the same time as Dan. By the time we were done with 7 Wonders everyone else was just finishing a game of Coup. I taught a couple of guys how to play Yardmaster Express while the rest played Lost Legacy. Unfortunately I taught Yardmaster Express incorrectly. Instead of drawing a card, playing a card and passing your hand to the next player I taught it like a 7 Wonders/Among The Stars style drafting game where everyone would play their hand in unison. Luckily the game still worked pretty well for the most part. I guess that's what happens when you play too many drafting games in one night.

Sunday 16 November 2014

Scooby Dooby Doo

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Pandemic

Again only nine people this week. We seem to be having trouble making it into double figures recently. I have my fingers crossed for next week!

Machi Koro
Johnny started off with another game of Betrayal at House on the Hill which seems to have become a bit of an IpBoG staple recently. I was playing Machi Koro at the time and Demtri turned up unexpectedly at our table. It turns out he was the betrayer but even he was no match for those meddling kids and was defeated before he got his evil way.

Machi Koro is a game of tableau building and dice throwing. It's pretty luck based but still pretty fun. I usually do pretty bad at it but I won for the first time. Maybe there is some skill involved after all!

After Machi Koro we played Yardmaster Express, a little fifteen minute card game of making trains. It's pretty simple but pretty fun. Maybe even more pretty fun than Machi Koro.

221b Baker Street Afterwards I played Pandemic while the others played 221b Baker Street. 221b Baker Street is a Sherlock Home themed deduction game. From what I understand it involves finding and solving crossword style clues and Dan used his awesome crossword solving skills to win.

Pandemic was a strange one. The starting diseases were all clustered in one area. I still don't know if this was a good or bad thing. Towards the end it looked like we were going to make it but then we realised we were going to run out of player cards. But then even before that we had a couple of chained outbreaks and the outbreak limit was reached.

Afterwards we played Machi Koro again. Philip had gone strong on red and purple cards allowing him to take money off other players. This ended up working well for him with the other players unable to get a decent amount of money and him quickly getting enough to build all landmarks, winning the game.

Tuesday 4 November 2014

Egyptian Gods

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Kemet

Only nine again this week. Maybe it's the weather or perhaps board games are just seasonal. Or maybe next week everyone will come at once and we'll finally get over 20.

Betrayal at House on the Hill
I started off with Kemet, an area control game of Egyptian gods. I was some sort of blue crocodile. I got off to a slow start and thought I'd fallen too far behind but with a few sneaky moves I managed to hold my own. Steve was the first to 8 points (in fact he had 9) but it was at the end of the night and you need them at the end of the day to win. We spent our last turn trying to claw the victory points back off him but couldn't quite manage it. Both him and Dan finished with 8 but Steve had earned more through attack wins in a tie meaning he won Kemet two weeks in a row.

Although playing the short game it took us over two hours. The others got a couple of games of Betrayal done in that time. Once with Frankenstein and once with something else that I've forgotten. Both times the betrayer lost. I left a bit earlier than normal but some more games were played. I think Coup and maybe some others.

Saturday 1 November 2014

Haunted Houses

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Five Tribes

It was a slow night this week with only 9 attendees.  It's been a long time since we've had single figures. Only two tables of games this time. A few people had turned up early to get an early start.

Betrayal at House on the Hill
Dan had had a birthday and had brought a bunch of new games with him. I arrived at 7:30 and a game of Kemet was being set up. They were playing the short game which is up to 8 points, but Steve managed to get all the way to 10 points on his final turn, the score needed for the long game,  making him the victor.

With Halloween approaching I started off with Betrayal at House on the Hill. It was Cathy's first game and she ended up being the betrayer. This can sometimes be a bit confusing if you've not played before but she managed well. She was controlling a poltergeist and we were attempting to exorcise her. Usually with Betrayal the build up lasts about half an hour and the game after the haunt is over quickly. In this game the haunt dragged on a little and became a bit of a monotonous, dice rolling race but in the end good overcame, the ghost was exercised and the explorers all went home safely.

Kemet
Dan set up a game of Zeppelin Attack, another of his new games and I played a game of Five Tribes. I played it for the first time last week and really enjoyed it even though I did quite badly. It has a pretty unique mechanic that I've heard called worker displacement, which is a pretty nice pun. This time Alex scored a respectable 60 points for collecting the full set of cards. I thought he was onto a winner and he hastily placed his remaining camels to end the game. My strategy had been the same as last week, to get the most yellow guys but also to only put in low bids for turn order. This really boosted my score ending with over 60 points worth of coins. I ended up getting the top score so I came out liking this game even more than last week.

In non board game  related news Sam's made an IpBoG Steam group if people are that way inclined.

Thursday 23 October 2014

Braaaains!

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Zombicide

Today was a pretty good day at IpBoG, 15 people showed up and David gave me an onion ring!

Betrayal at House on the HillSam arrived with Zombicide and Johnny's new Betrayal at House on the Hill. Johnny arrived a few minutes later after making the trip home from work to pick up Betrayal only to find it wasn't there. Sam and Johnny launched straight into a game of Betrayal. The Craig was the betrayer and the haunt was zombie related, so out came the Zombicide figures onto the Betrayal board. Good prevailed and zombies were defeated. But not for long because straight after Zombicide was set up and played.

New guy Steve brought Food Fight along and that was played by another group follow by Citadels which was won by Dan although he was the only person playing that had played it before.

Five TribesI brought Kingdom Builder and, similarly to Dan, I won at my own game. Next we played Splendor, my second play but it's debut at IpBoG. Phillip won and I came in last. It's been causing waves the last few months and I like the game, but I don't love it like a lot of people seem to. Maybe I'll like it more when I don't suck at it. The final game we played was the new Days of Wonder game Five Tribes. I'd heard mixed reviews about it and when Alex was explaining the rules it all sounded a bit complicated and daunting but after a couple of runs I think we'd all quickly got the hang of it. It turns out the game has a pretty unique mechanic picking up and placing meeples of certain colours which activate certain powers. Still, I did terribly at it and there was another case of the owner winning at their own game with Alex pulling off some pretty impressive moves (if board game moves are able to be impressive) to gain him the victory.

Thursday 16 October 2014

Crossroads

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Small World

I was pretty excited when Reace turned up with Dead of Winter. This game has been getting a lot of buzz recently and I've been wanting to play it for a while. Dan and I both jumped at the chance but it looked like we were the only people that had brought games this week. Luckily Johnny turned up at his standard five minutes late time and offered (there was no forcing) to run a game of Small World, again playing with Dan's expansions.

Dead Of Winter
Dead of Winter has some of the nicest artwork I've seen on any game but would the gameplay live up to it? I was worried the game might play you instead of the other way round. As it turned out there were plenty of important choices, many of which we made totally incorrectly. Our scenario started off with the colony full of zombies. We passed the first couple of events and we even managed to raise moral. Things were looking good and I was secretly pleased that I'd completed my personal goal in the first turn. However we were less lucky on the third event, we failed miserably and the colony and locations became overrun by zombies. Many of our characters died and, although they were replaced by new characters, we were unable to recover and our moral soon dropped all the way to zero.

Ghost StoriesAfter Small World the others played Ghost Stories. I think for most of the players it was their first time so it's no surprise that they lost to the unforgiving game.

I was coerced into a game of Cosmic Encounter. I've not really enjoyed this game in the past. This time I enjoyed it a little more, but still not that much. It's such a well liked game and I try so hard to like it but it just ends up that I don't really get it. To my luck we were running late and Cult was closing. We had to cut the game short with Ryan in the lead, claiming victory. Same time next week, board game fans.

Saturday 11 October 2014

Worlds Apart

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Discworld: Ankh-Morpork

About 10 people braved the wind and rain to turn up at IpBoG this week.

TrainsI went straight into a game of Trains while Dan's table started off with Diskworld: Ankh-Morpork. After only a few minutes I was told the game was about to end but everyone pulled together and managed to stop the end conditions from being met. The game lasted twice as long before it was finally won.

The cards picked for this game of Trains included four green cards (I think this must be all of them) which are variations of lay rails trains. I think only a couple of them were picked. I went for my usual strategy of aiming for the cards. Alex went hard for laying rails. Luckily my engine (of the card, and not locomotive variety) kicked in just before Alex played all his rails. I'd already got a few skyscrapers in my hand and managed to scrape a win.

Small WorldAfter Diskworld, Dan got out Power Grid. I headed over just as they were finishing up. Craig showed me his wads of cash, telling me he had it in the bag. As it turns out he wasn't wrong and he won the game.

I played Dan's copy of Small World along with a couple of the expansions (Cursed and Be Not Afraid, I believe). The new races and powers were too confusing for me. I stuck to my comfort zone, picking only the base components. We had to cut it a bit short, partly because the bar was getting ready to close but also because it was Dan's game and we didn't want to make him sit and watch for 15 minutes waiting for his game back. We cut the game two rounds short and counted up the coins with Duncan claiming victory.

Wednesday 24 September 2014

Transitive Determination

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When I turned up Cult was pretty empty. It looked like the freshers hadn't arrived yet. We had about fifteen people turn up, enough to hold our own. Sam had brought A Game of Thrones and started setting it up on his own before gathering players. I think it has a bit of a reputation of being a very long game and no one thought they could get through it before closing so it never got played. Instead I saw a game of Bang! and Love Letter being played on top of the laid out board.

This week Alex had brought along Shadow Hunters. No Libertalia for me this week! But I didn't mind because Shadow Hunters is another game I'd been wanting to play. It's a hidden role game with three teams; the shadows, the hunters and the neutrals. In a lot of ways it's a lot like Bang! which I've never been a huge fan of. I know a lot of people enjoy that game so maybe it's just me that doesn't get it but to me it's just too random and can really drag on, especially as there's player elimination. With Shadow Hunters there's still player elimination but there's one important difference. On your turn you draw a card and these will either buff your character or, if you draw a green card (and this is the game changer), it can reveal information to you about another player. This means you can figure out what team they are likely to be on and, by seeing how they interact with other players, which team the other players may be on. It's all about transitive determination. I was taken out of the game first due to no fault of my own. Okay, a little of my own fault because my character's power was the ability to lie about the green cards which I totally didn't realise. I then spent the rest of the game agonising (not whining) about why people weren't attacking Craig (he obviously had a hidden agenda) and why people weren't drawing enough green cards. That game is so all about the green cards! An interesting twist is that none of us knew any of the character powers or win conditions. I guess after a few games they'd all be learnt which would add an extra dimension to the game.

After Shadow Hunters I played Ghost Stories. This time I'm pretty sure we broke no rules. As usual we were playing on the easiest setting but the game beat us pretty hard. As Wu Feng came out of the deck three of our monks were down to their last tao token. It wasn't long before the three were dead and there was no way we could reclaim the board. The third tile was haunted and the game ended with only one monk left standing and a full board of ghosts.

While I was playing Ghost Stories others were playing Fluxx and Small World. Steve won Small World and we finished up with a couple of games of Coup with Dan winning one and someone else winning the other. Maybe Steve. Let's say Steve. There's rumors of Adventure Time Munchkin next week. Mathematical!

Tuesday 16 September 2014

Ghost Ship

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Alex was kind enough to bring a bunch of games he owned that he knew I was interested in playing. I jumped straight at Libertalia. We'd just set up a game when three new guys arrived. We could hardly leave them playing on their own and they expressed an interest in Ghost Stories so I dropped out to teach them that. Libertalia would have to wait for another day. I guess we got around 17 people this week so a pretty good turn out. Term time starts soon so there will probably be a bit of a drop as people leave for university.

It had been a while since I'd played Ghost Stories and I wasn't a hundred percent sure on all the iconography on the cards but apart from a couple of minor mistakes I think we got by without too much accidental cheating. As it was the other guys' first time playing we chose the easiest setting. A couple of rookie mistakes that I was as much a part of as anyone else meant we got a few haunted tiles pretty quickly but we managed to flip them back using the blue monk's double action ability. In the first third of the game the board was looking pretty overrun and I thought we were at the point of no return but with a few lucky dice roles we managed to clear most of the ghosts from the boards. One of the guys had to leave but the nice thing about a co-op like Ghost Stories is that we could just continue with a player down, democratically taking his moves for him. As Wu Feng appeared I took a hit for the team and my monk was killed. Wu Feng's incarnation required four reds to be destroyed. The plan was for the yellow monk to use his bottomless pockets power to grab a bunch of red tao tokens and head over to Wu Feng to take him out. We set Circle Of Prayer to red to make the exorcism easier but before the yellow monk made it over the blue monk made a perfect roll (well, a red and two wilds) and took out Wu Feng on his own, stealing the glory for himself. We did pretty well in the end and I think we would have probably beaten it on the normal difficulty rather than initiation.

I hear Libertalia went well. Dan said he enjoyed it but he won so he would have enjoyed it. It's a kind of pirate ship themed role selection game. I'm hoping Alex will bring it another week. After that they played Coup. Pandemic and Ticket To Ride was at other tables.

Mike turned up with Taluva, a game he'd been promising to bring for a while. He'd likened it to Kingdom Builder; an interesting, slightly abstract strategy. The game didn't disappoint. For a start it looks great and the tiles are so thick and chunky, the kind of components that beg to be touched. First I played it with four players and it was a quick, fun little game with a bunch of interesting choices. Towards the end it could have been anyone's game and everyone did their best to block the next player from getting the final move they needed to win but pretty soon there was nothing that could be done and Adam claimed victory. After this I played it two player, head to head with Mike. Maybe it was just because I had a feel for the game, but it really seemed to shine with two players. Instantly I could see how my decisions really impacted the game. After a strong start in the early game I made a couple of mistakes. I was sure Mike was going to win but before I knew it the last tile had been drawn and the game was over before Mike had managed to make a comeback.

On the table next to me there was a game of Space Cadets: Dice Dual and some more Coup. Next week is freshers' week so we'll have to wait and see if there's enough room for students and board gaming nerds, or if we've been shunned for the night by the cooler kids.

Friday 12 September 2014

I Fought The Law and the Law Won

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With the help of first timer Alex about twelve people showed up this week. Not a bad attendance but far from the dizzying heights of twenty that I dream of.

I started off playing Trains which has kinda become my modus operandi recently. This time we had the Tourist Train in play which awards an extra victory point every time it's played but is only worth a single unit of generic game currency. I bought a couple along with everyone else. I think Demetri bought most and ended up winning with his CopyCat Rails company. I stayed on for another game planning on going hard on a Tourist Train strategy to see how that worked out. However Tourist Trains cost 4 and I kept drawing 5 which meant I couldn't resist buying Holiday Timetables. I was soon cycling through my deck in two or three turns but this wasn't enough. Again I'd only bought a couple of Holiday Trains. Joni had bought a few more more and ended up beating me by a single point.

While I was playing Trains the others were playing Bang! They got in a couple of games with the law winning both times. I hear rumors all of the outlaws were killed without any of the law being taken out at all. After Bang! the group split into two with Dan playing Small World with this new expansion Be Not Afraid. The rest played an assortment of small games; Fluxx, Love Letter, Zombie Dice and Carcassonne.

After Small World was done I played a three way game of Star Realms with Dan and Steve with those who were left played Coup. Star Realms doesn't really thrive with three people as everyone just tends to attack the person with the most health. This means it doesn't really matter how good your strategy is, all players will end up with around the same health and it's just a matter of luck as to who stays in last. With Steve out first it came down to me and Dan and I took him out with only a handful of health left to my name.

Tuesday 2 September 2014

Space Stations

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I guess the rain might have driven people away today as only around eight people showed this week. At first there were only seven of us and Andy had bought 7 Wonders so it was the natural starting game. I rarely play with the full complement of seven people. It's quite a different game as you never get to see the cards from a single hand again. One advantage is at least you know which cards you definitely aren't going to get to play. I ended tying with someone (I forget who) for second place. Adam came first. He'd done well with military, beating the player on either side of him every time and then getting a guild card that gave him an extra victory point for every military victory.

Johnny arrived and we split into two groups. I played the first deck builder of the night, Trains. I didn't notice at the time but the random cards we drew included Garage, Wagon Factory and Control Room. These were the same three cards I used in my strategy from last week. Yeah, I guess I could have gone for a different approach but the rest of the cards kinda sucked and I don't really tend to go for the board in a big way, especially when I'm isolated from everyone else which I ended up being in this game. But anyway, I went for the same strategy and won by a hefty margin the same as last week.

The others played a couple of games of Skull & Roses. Craig claimed to be no good at bluffing but managed to win both games. After Trains it was our turn to play a few games of Skull & Roses. I think everyone playing manged to win at least a single game. After Skull the others played Small World. I hear Craig was doing a bit too well and some sort of alliance was set up against him but it was too little too late. Points wise he draw with Johnny but apparently in the case of a draw it comes down to who has the most area which put Craig in the lead.

Last week I'd asked Monkeys With Fire if they were getting Star Realms in any time soon and they said they were away at the moment but would have a single copy the next week (perhaps they were at GenCon?). They said they'd save it for me if I liked and I certainly did like. It arrived earlier this week. I'm pretty into deck builders so it's not that surprising that I'm pretty into this game. Recently I'd been playing the digital version pretty hard. It's mostly a two player game, especially with a single deck, but there are multiplier variations. We adjusted the starting hand and tried out a three player game. Andy started with a strong blob deck (I probably needed to shuffle the deck a little better) and so initially we aimed out attacks towards him, but Cory soon built up a decent federation deck, healing on most turns. My deck was a slow starter but ended up being lean and defensive with a lot of outposts. Towards the end it could have been anyone's game, we were all down to the low teens. Cory was taken out and it was down to the luck of the draw between me and Andy. I was down to about four health but drew a strong hand and managed to take out Andy. I'm sure if I hadn't manged to he would have destroyed me on his next turn.
 
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