Bi-weeky Blogging

Welcome to what seems to be fast becoming the bi-weekly Ipswich Board Gamers blog! Although the group is still weekly I've found myself with less and less time recently to write up between meet ups. You'd be surprised how long it takes to bash out a couple of hundred words and then not proof read them at all.

Let's get right to it. Last week I played Carcassonne. It's an okay game but I'm not it's biggest fan. I'm also not its best player and it showed - I came last. I think maybe Alex came first. He always seems to come first at games, so yeah, let's say it was Alex. We played it with the full complement of five players, I think maybe it's a bit of a weird game with five players. None of us could really complete any castles bigger than two or occasionally three tiles.

Anyway, next up was The Sheriff of Nottingham. I spent my sheriff turns doing my best sheriff impressions and forgetting to watch what cards people were swapping out. I don't think I came last in this one but I definitely didn't come first. I'm putting that down to my lack of attention.

We finished off with a couple of games of No Thanks! I think I actually managed to win one of them. Dan pointed out the fact that the cards were not well worn, but showed signs of use. I think this is a testament to what a great game it is. Such a quick, simple game but one of my favorites.

I'd by lying if I said I could remember what anyone else played last week. Oh, except Fluxx, some people were playing that. I guess if I'm not going to do a blog every week I really should note down what games are played. I guess on to this week...

I started off with Tuvalu. In true Alex style, Alex won. He's since bought himself his own copy and I'm pretty sure he's been thinking up strategies on his own, like some sort of chess grand master. While we played this, others were playing The Resistance, Love Letter and Fluxx.

Afterwards I played Abyss. I think a couple of the lords might be overpowered. I think I might have got both of them. No one else stood a chance. I gathered my lords and bided my time before obtaining a location at the last possible minute, making sure my lords' powers remained in effect as long as possible.

After, a game of Power Grid was being set up but I think it was soon packed away again, it was getting too late in the evening to start a game of that length. Instead, Citadels came out. Although this game can take a deceptively long time to play, this is only usually with a high player count.

I ended the night with a seven player game of Shadow Hunters. This game was actually in danger of taking too long. People were playing conservatively. I was a shadow and managed to take out a hunter but soon after one of my fellow shadows was also killed. Before anyone else was revealed Dan triggered his neutral ability, winning him the game.

All Hail The Kingmaker

Two weeks since the last blog, this means you'll be getting a double dose of IpBoG goodness this week! The weekend before last was the UK Games Expo and a few IpBoG regulars attended. Johnny and Danny had both picked up new games while they were there, both of which I think are by English designers.

Johnny had picked up Frankenstein's Bodies and Danny had got Luchador! Mexican Wrestling Dice. I played Luchador while the others played Frankenstein's Bodies. Luchador comes with the option of laying a flat two dimensional wrestling ring or a full IMAX 3D ring. Naturally we donned our 3D glasses and and played in the maximum number of dimensions the game would allow. Games last about ten minutes and I lost both games I played. The game is a kind of Yatzee style luck-fest. But a fun luck-fest never the less.

Afterwards we played Modern Art. It's an auction game and a pretty pure one. It was Mike's game and he was the only one that had played before but towards the end of the game he'd hardly won any auctions. However, it turns out he knew exactly what he was doing. Everyone else had been vastly over valuing the items and Mike had wiped the floor with us.

The others were knee deep in Lost Legacy. I'm not sure which one, I think Alex may have bought a new version. Or perhaps two new versions. So we played a few games of The Resistance. Some people said some things, some stuff happened. You know? The Resistance.

Now on to the the next week. Danny had brought along Luchador and some more of that was played followed by Tragedy Looper. Danny was the bad guy as always but this time he was foiled in his evil deed. Danny had pimped Tragedy Looper since the last time it had appeared at IpBoG. The cardboard tokens had been replaced by wooden cubes imported from Germany. That's dedication!

Mike once brought Taluva for me to play as he thought I'd like it. It turns out I did and wanted to get myself my own copy but it was pretty hard to get hold of. Well, I finally managed it and so brought my copy along. It almost feels like an abstract game although it's not abstract, it has a sort of island settlement building theme. It's so nice, we played it twice! The first time it was either going to be me or Alex to win and it was basically up to Dan. If he blocked me Alex would win but if he didn't I would win. He blocked me, thanks a lot Dan. In our second game it was getting to the last round of the game and it looked like Alex was going to win but on my final turn I managed to play all of two types of building which ends the game and is an instant win.

We finished up the night with Blueprints which made its first appearance it IpBoG. It's a game where you build towers out of dice and Danny is actually some sort of real life architect. This must have helped in some way because he ended up winning by a mile.

The Great Old Ones

In what can only be describe as some sort of Bank Holiday Miracle I've managed to do a blog two weeks in a row. You are truly blessed.

Tim is usually busy on Mondays but usually has bank holidays off from his usually non-board gaming duties. This bank holiday was no different and he came baring Cthulhu Wars and had brought along Steve for good measure. Steve is a human and not a board game. Matt soon joined and we had four players, the required amount. Although Tim wasn't so happy because allegedly Matt always wins. We got off to a quick start and the game instantly reminded me of Chaos in the Old World. It's pretty asymmetric and my faction was Hastur (chosen because he had a creepy mouth).  As far as I could tell a decent strategy for me was to desecrate the land to gain power. Unfortunately this meant I didn't control many gates and this left me trailing behind on the score track with Matt just ahead while Tim and Steve were far off in the lead. Matt spent the beginning of the game summoning monsters and biding his time. I guess we were both playing the long game, whatever that was.

Matt was Cthulhu and as it turns out one of his abilities was to submerge and appear anywhere on the map, letting him perform surprise attacks wherever he liked. So after gaining enough power to summon Cthulhu, that is exactly what he did. At around the same time I managed to summon Hastur which gave me victory points every time I desecrated a new area.  Matt also realised that he got victory points every time he summoned Cthulhu which meant he started sending him on as many suicide missions as he could. One of the criteria for winning was to have all the spells in your spell book. One of my spells required me to award three victory points to a player of my choice. I chose Matt as he was furthest behind. Well, except for me and of course I couldn't award them to myself. The game ends at the end of the round where a player scores over 30 victory points. After this happens we added up everyone's points. Everyone made it across the line except for me, but I was on 28 so not as bad as it could have been. And it ended up Matt had the most points with 32. So it seems Tim was right, Matt does always win. Although I did feel slightly responsible, I did award him that three points. I'm counting it as a joint win.

Of course, other games were played. Definitely Coup and definitely Discworld: Ankh-Morpork. Two games of Discworld in fact. Also Alex had brought something which I think was almost definitely Elasund: The First City. It was definitely some sort non-Catan based game with a Catan kind of theme. So either that or Candamir: The First Settlers. But my money's on Elasund.

Trans Siberian Express

It's been a while since the last blog. I was away for a couple of weeks so I don't know exactly what happened but I hear people still managed to turn up and partake in board gaming without me so all is good in the world of IpBoG. Last week I went straight to Cult from work so didn't have my camera with me and, as has been mentioned many times before, no one wants a blog without pictures so I've saved up two weeks of excitement into one double packed blog post.

Most weeks there's a big new and exciting game to try and last week was no different. Mike had come armed with Russian Railroads, a big Euro style game allegedly about trains but seemed mostly about year 8 maths homework. It's pretty worker placementy which I know is usually a turn off for Mike so I was interested in playing one that he actually liked. Although he'd only played it online previously, taking half an hour per turn (Mike obviously took his maths homework seriously), he manged to transition the game play to the physical realm with ease and reduce his turn time accordingly. In my usual style for worker placement I panicked, stared at the vast array of choices, froze up and eventually decided on the worst possible move. I repeated this process throughout my turns but got more of a feel for the game as we progressed and, through some sort of train related miracle, ended up steaming ahead of the other players (yes, it's a train pun). Like Mike I'm not usually a huge fan of worker placement, but this one I didn't mind as much. Maybe winning helped but the next day I found myself thinking about different strategies I could apply, which can only be a good thing, right? It is a pretty long game though and we only just managed to squeeze it in before closing and as such I'm not entirely sure what other games were played. But onto the next week...

The big new game this week was Flash Point: Fire Rescue, a cooperative game about, you guessed it, fighting fires. We found out pretty early on that having a specialist in the fire engine really helped keep the fires under control. This left the other players free to mostly ignore the fires and rescue the people. The paramedic helped revive the people and get them to safety quicker. My job, it seemed, was to get the people the last few meters to safety, stealing all the glory. Functioning like a well oiled machine we were keeping well on top of everything. The thing about well oiled machines is they're kind of boring, no one enjoys being a cog. Towards the end, in an act of heroic defiance, Andy left his post on the fire engine to break down a well and save a couple of people. This was all good, the people were brought to safety, but we'd let a rampant fire get out of control near another character; the family dog! But ever a member of New York's Bravest, Andy chopped down another wall with his axe (walls are often made of wood in America for reasons I've never understood, so I assume this is vaguely possible), braved the inferno of a room, and took the dog to safety, winning the game by rescuing our seventh character.

I also played Abyss where everyone told me I'd got the rule wrong about the monster track but I insisted I hadn't. In hindsight I almost defiantly had. Felixstowe Dan played a stellar first game and won by a long shot.

Some guys played Discworld: Ankh-Morpork. There were also the common staples of IpBoG: The Resistance, Coup, Skull and No Thanks! I doubt there's a week that goes by where at least one of those games isn't played. I'm sure I've missed a bunch of other games but some weeks it's hard to keep track.

I've written quite a lot and not proof read anything so let's hope some of this makes sense! I hear it's bank holiday next week so some people might be turning up an hour or two early. Keep and eye on the Facebook group for more details.

Diceni

If you're bank holiday weekend is a little lacking in board game goodness you can always pop over the border into Norfolk for Diceni.