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Wednesday 30 July 2014

King of Kings

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So this week we finally had the King of Tokyo tournament. Three copies were brought in so we had three games on the go at once. Although the official rules have a one hour limit on game length we shortened that to half an hour. It's King of Tokyo after all, games usually last about 20 minutes. Everyone played a total of three qualifying rounds with the top players playing a final game to decide the overall winner. Again the official rules say there should be four qualifying rounds but there's only so much dice rolling you can do before it gets a bit repetitive. The official rules can be seen here if you're interested.

Things were looking promising for me, coming first in my first two games. This meant people ganging up on me in my third game and I was the first to be taken out. This still gave me enough points to be in the final along with Demetri, Dan, Jonny and and Ellie. Dan and Demetri went into Tokyo and Tokyo Bay and launched a full on assault against the rest of us, eliminating us all in the same turn. Demetri got himself a card that allowed him to heal at any time using two energy cubes. This meant he could sit in Tokyo and rack up enough victory points to end the game before Dan was able to kill his monster. Well done to Demetri for being the king of King of Tokyo. And commiserations to Corey for getting the lowest overall score. But he did win himself a courgette, generously donated by Dan.

While the final was going on some people continued to play King of Tokyo. After getting knocked out of the final, Johnny joined in and won that game. Apparently not everyone gets bored of dice rolling. After the tournament was over Dan roped me into play testing his new prototype which he's calling Fabrika (I think). It's a hidden role game with a communist Russia kind of theme. While I played that, the others played Revolution!, a game that is probably about revolutions but really I have no idea. I've never played it.

Back to normal for next week. No tournaments, just lot and lots of board games.

Saturday 26 July 2014

Eliminating the Impossible

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I arrived to find some regulars mid way through a game of Love Letter. Someone's new purchase, I think. Everyone should own a copy as far as I'm concerned.

More people arrived and we split into groups. I honestly don't remember what was played this week. I think some people played Cosmic Encounter but I know for a fact I played Sucking Vacuum, a game where you have to grab your space suit, and be the first pair to make it to the escape pod. Unless you happen to have the auto-pilot which can substitute for a second player. I picked up the auto-pilot on my first turn. Keeping this information to myself, Theo soon loaded fuel data into the pod. After goading another playing into attacking him, I finished Theo off, stole half his space suit and ran for the escape pod. I get the feeling most games probably last a lot longer but I had luck and deviousness on my side.

Some of the other guys were playing The Resistance, this time with the additional plot cards to spice things up a little. Dan managed to get a game of his favorite, Power Grid.

I played A Study in Emerald, a Martin Wallace game, based on the Neil Gaiman story of the same name. It's a kind of Sherlock Holmes and Cthulhu mash up. And also a kind of deck builder and area control mash up. But it's not the simplest of games and we made the mistake of no one learning the rules before hand. We fumbled our way through but ultimately the game was ended when Mike totally misunderstood the win conditions and assassinated me, securing himself a guaranteed fail. I think the lesson to be learnt here is to make sure at least one person knows how to play the game beforehand.

I left just are the final few people were finishing a game of Werewolf. I'll be back next week nice and early though, for that King of Tokyo tournament I've been hearing so much about.

Sunday 20 July 2014

King of Tokyo Tournament

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So in just over a week this will finally be happening. If you own King of Tokyo it would be pretty helpful if you could bring your copy along so that we'll be able to have as many games going on at once as possible. We'll be playing the official tournament rules.

If you're not into King of Tokyo then don't dispair, you can still come along and play whatever board games you like. It'll be just like a usual night except slightly more people than normal will probably be playing King of Tokyo.

Tuesday 15 July 2014

We're Gonna Need a Bigger Box

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With a couple of new recruits and our fair share of regulars we mustered 16 attendees this week.

My Kickstarter of the Kingdom Builder Big Box Edition finally arrived. It was waiting for me when I arrived home on Monday so I took it straight to Cult, opened it, punched out the pieces and spent the rest of the evening playing it. The box is as big as the name implies, filled to the brim with expansions but we just kept to the base game for now. I got in three games but didn't manage to win any of them. Matt got in a double whammy before ducking out to play Small World and Cathy won the other. For a game that often gets mixed reviews it was very well received by those that played it. How often I can muster the strength to carry a box of that size down to IpBoG is another matter.

A couple of copies of Munchkin were brought along and two games were going on in parallel while the others played Cosmic Encounter which Steve ended up winning. Some Love Letter and half a game of Alhambra (I'm not too sure what happened there) were also played. I left while a few stragglers battled it out for supremacy in Small World.

My plan for the long promised King of Tokyo tournament is to have it in two weeks' time. Pencil it in your diaries and start spreading the word!

Tuesday 8 July 2014

Radioactive Myans

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An ever growing 18 people turned up this week. We might even make the dizzying heights of the first ever IpBoG sometime soon and have 20 attendees. What we did to drive people away that first week I'll never know!

This week we split into four groups playing Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar, The Manhattan Project, Bang! and Elder Sign. For me it was a toss up between Tzolk'in and The Manhattan Project, both games I'd wanted to play for a while. In the end I opted for The Manhattan Project with Steve and Dan. It was our first time playing for all of us unless you count Steve's solo run through to learn the rule. I kind of do because he slightly knew what he was doing whereas Dan and I were just playing with uranium like Duran Duran was still in fashion. The first half of the game went badly for me, I didn't get the right combinations of buildings early on and no new buildings were coming in. I did my usual worker placement analysis paralysis of not knowing what to do because all choices looked equally bad to me. Steve was racking up yellowcake and Dan was racking up airstrikes. Not considering me a threat, Dan concentrated hard on bombing Steve while Steve furiously tried to construct replacement buildings. This brought in new buildings for me and I managed to get an engine going at last. It came down to what looked like the last round or two where either Steve or Dan were going to win. Just to be on the safe side Dan called in an air strike and bombed my uranium enrichment plants. It came to my turn and I used the espionage track for the first time in the game, allowing me to send a worker onto another player's building. I sent him onto Steve's uranium enrichment plant giving me enough uranium to build two bombs in a single turn winning the game, although perhaps a little underhandedly. It was my poor playing at the start that made me seem like so little of a threat and I'd by lying if I said that was my plan all along but a win's a win never the less.

Andy had brought in Tzolk'in, a highly rated Euro with spinning wheels. I don't know much else about it except that it was a close game with Andy being beaten to first place by a single point.

Newcomer Will played using his expert dice rolling skills to lead his team to victory in Elder Sign. Proving you can never have enough dice rolling, after Elder Sign they launched into what turned out to be an hour long game of King of Tokyo. Games of this length are normally unheard of with King of Tokyo, usually playing out in under half an hour. Proving his dice rolling skills were no fluke, Will won that game too.

The others played Bang! with Johnny winning as the Sheriff. This was followed up by The Resistance. Proving that you can also never have enough hidden role games, they followed this with Werewolf, a game that seems mostly to be about drumming on the table with your eyes closed. After a game or two some others joined as their games finished. I don't know how many games were played in total but there certainly was a lot of drumming.

When we were finally done with The Manhattan Project we played a couple of games of Coup before heading home. There are still plans for a King of Tokyo tournament soon, probably not next week but maybe the week after. We've just got to hope Will can't make it that week or no one else will stand a chance.

Tuesday 1 July 2014

Ice Age

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With what seems to be a pretty standard number these days, 15 people made it down this week.

Ever since the gushing review from Shut Up & Sit Down, fans of internet based board game reviews everywhere have been over excited about the idea of owning the hard to obtain Arctic Scavengers. After Rio Grande paid some product placement money to get it in the background of Silicon Valley surely this could only mean one thing - a reprint! But then, from nowhere discount copies started appearing in The Works. Like the true fans of internet based board game reviews we are, both Dan and I turned up with a copy this week. We set up our games next to each other and had two games on the go at once. In my game Guru got a quick head start and snowballed into the lead while I was left in the cold, trailing behind in last place. Dan won in his game (I'm all out of snow puns).

The others played a couple of games of King of Tokyo. Cathy won one and Johnny won the other. After we were done we split into two groups. I joined Theo for Triassic Terror. Andy had just acquired the Lords of Waterdeep expansion Scoundrels of Skullport and set that up for his first play through, which he ended up winning.

Triassic Terror is a dinosaur based area control game very similar to El Grande. I think it's safe to say no one really knew what they were doing in the first couple of turns except for maybe Mike who had read the rules in advance (cheating if you ask me!). I certainly didn't have a clue and chose an action where my only real option was to attack Dan. He took it personally and retaliated, attacking me on his go. From there on in the game was divided, Dan and I were just playing to do as much damage to each other as possible. Half way through the game the scores so far are tallied up. Both Dan and I were trailing way behind everyone else, my only goal was to make sure Dan didn't beat me. However, in the second half of the game I somehow managed to claw myself closer to victory and still make sure Dan came last. I didn't quite make the lead, finishing in second place to Mike's first.

There's talk of holding a King of Tokyo tournament in the next week or two along with our standard games. If it happens there will be more details to follow.
 
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