I'm The Fool

This week I got straight into Beasty Bar, one of Alex's new purchases. It's a pretty simple little filler where you're lining animals in a row trying to get them into a bar. There are twelve different animals and each animal has a different power like moving ahead in the queue, flipping the queue, removing other animals from the queue etc. Dan assured me I'd get the hang of the powers after a few turns. I did not. But with the rule book as a reference and luck on my side somehow I managed to win.

Afterwards we played Venture, a Sid Sackson classic. It's a sort of rummy, set collection game with a company building theme. I did terribly. I'm pretty sure more of my companies got taken over than everyone else's combined. Mike got some huge scores in the last few turns and ended up winning. It was an alright game but for the amount of time it took I found it a little simple and repetitive, with too much down time. We were playing with five players though, perhaps with less players it shines a little brighter.

Danny played Tragedy Looper which seems to happen pretty much every week recently. I think he spends a lot of weeks playing the first scenario because he's playing it with new people. I've still not played it so he'll probably have to play the first scenario again at some point.

Another group played Coup, Skull and a couple of games of Mascarade. Philip won both games of Mascarade by managing to keep track of the cards while everyone else just got confused. I finished off the night with a 10 person game of Mascarade. I think it fell a little flat, 10 people is probably too many. The problem I find with Mascarade is that it's too easy to get into a run of people that know who they are, so instead of swapping their cards they use their power. The next person then does the same, followed by the next person. This is why I always include the fool when I play even if it's not in the official list for that player number. His power is to swap the cards of two other players. I find that even if you're not the fool you can almost always claim to be him and no one will challenge. Although we had the fool in play, with 10 players this still wasn't enough to avoid the issue.

And Michael managed to fit in a last minute game of Guilds of Cadwallon.

Game Of The Year

Another two weeks, another blog. And in the past two weeks the Dice Tower Awards have come and gone. Dead of Winter picked up three awards including best game so in its honor I brought it along. I was the betrayer but never got a change to do any betraying because the game beat us too quickly. So many deaths and so little morale. It was a harsh winter.

Demetri made his not so triumphant return to IpBoG, where he played Citadels and was assassinated for something like five turns in a row while Alex had a run away lead.

Alex brought Rattus, which made its IpBoG debut. I played a quick Sushi Go before finishing off the night with a few games of Lost Legacy. Matt won all of them. Others played Luchador!, Fluxx and Tragedy Looper.

This week the stars finally aligned and Gemma came on a night that I'd brought Abyss so she finally got to play it again. For some reason I quite like winning at Abyss. I think Dan does too and this time he won. I scraped second place. His turn came just before mine and he kept sweeping in and recruiting the lords I'd planned on getting.

But this was to be the end of Dan's winning streak and the start of mine. We played Blueprints next and I won by a mile. Followed by Biblios which I won by another mile. And then a couple of games of Sushi Go which I won both of.

Danny was playing his usual affair of Luchador! and Tragedy Looper. I hear rumours of people playing Pandemic although I didn't witness it myself. This week also saw Zombicide, a game that's not made it to IpBoG in around a year.

The night was finished off with a few games of The Resistance including the Hostile Intent expansion. If there's a correlation between how loud a group is being and how much fun they're having (which sounds pretty likely) then Hostile Intent must be the funnest expansion around.

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.