Keep Fearing The Kraken

I'm not sure what went down at IpBoG last week, I was ill and couldn't make it. I imagine board games were played, that's usually the kind of thing that happens. This week we got around 17 people, maybe a couple more. It was hard to count, people seemed to be coming and going all evening. However many it was I don't think we met the rarest of beasts that is over 20 people.

I started off with a game of Abyss with the Kraken expansion. Except last week my friend painted the kraken miniature it comes with. You can see it at the top of the page in all it's colorful glory. Tim and I draw for first place. There's probably some kind of tie break condition but I totally forgot to check at the time. It's probably to do with pearls. It probably also means Tim would have won. Let's say Tim won.

I got a win in my next game anyway which was Hanabi. Hanabi is a cooperative game though so really it was a win for everyone. And with only minor accidental cheating which is almost unavoidable. I nearly messed up one of the runs by discarding a blue 5 but we were playing with the wild cards and manged to play a wild 5 on the blue instead. I don't think I've ever played with wilds before it seemed to make the game a quite bit easier.

My final game of the night was Flip City. Last time we played it we didn't manage to get through a whole game. This evening we did and I managed to win it.

One table table played Skull, Spyfall, Chinatown and Splendor. Another spent the evening playing VivaJava: The Coffee Game. I actually left a little early this week so no doubt they played something after. Maybe Red 7 but in all honesty that's a total guess. I did see Alex had brought it though so maybe.

Fear The Kraken

Time for another weekly Ipswich Board Gamers update! A bunch of new games hit the tables with the likes of VivaJava, Mysterium and The Big Book of Madness.

Although not a new game in itself I'd brought along Kraken, the new Abyss expansion. This adds a new race that act as wilds and a new currency in addition to pearls that give you negative points. There are a couple of other things in the expansion (tokens for reserving and a push your luck exploration mechanic) but you need specific lords and locations for these to come into play, none of which came up in our game. I came first by a nautical mile.

After that we squeezed in a VivaJava: The Coffee Game, as you my have guessed a game about blending coffee. It has a team up kind of mechanic where each turn you choose who to join forces with to blend the best coffee. Much like in real life the quality of coffee is based on poker hands of bean colors. Dan came first by a non-nautical mile.

Another table played a whole host of party style games. They started off with Mysterium which made it's IpBoG debut. They managed to work out who the killer was which is pretty good going for a notoriously hard game. I'm told it was the first win in four games. Afterwards they played some Spyfall and some Codenames.

Another table played The Big Book of Madness. I don't know how it went but it's some sort of cooperative game so I guess everyone either all won or all lost. I also saw some Star Realms being played.

Twenty Sixteen

A new blog post and a new year.  And the first IpBoG in two weeks as we were closed for Christmas last week. This week everyone came along armed with their Christmas gift board games.

I brought along Port Royal and we started with that. It's a little push you luck card game. Alex won. After that we played a few games of the IpBoG staple Love Letter.

Mike had brought along 504, the big new game from Friedemann Friese. It's got a modular setup of mechanisms that give 504 possible games. We played the intro setup (combination 123). I think it fell a little flat for everyone. Mike ended up winning. However there are 503 different other combinations that could be better. I'll be interested to see how other setups differ and how different each combination feels.

Over on another table Dixit was being played. Such a deceptively hard game. This was followed by Lords of Waterdeep which Gemma won. I finished off the night with Flip City but only got half way through the game before Cult was closing and we had to leave.

No Kittens Were Harmed In The Making Of This Blog

The last IpBoG of the year. For me it was all about dice games. I'd brought Quarriors along with the Quartifacts expansion. I played a couple of games over the evening. It's basically Dominion with dice. For me that almost takes away any strategy and turns it into a bit of a luck-fest.

I also brought and played Tiny Epic Galaxies. Another dice game and, although it can be a bit luck dependent, I think there's more strategy than with Quarriors. It's also a bit shorter so there's a better luck to length ratio. Or maybe I'm just feel like that because I won this game but lost both of Quarriors.

Cath brought some friends along and they played Betrayal at  House on the Hill. I think the scenario has something to do with kittens. I guess some kind of scary, evil kittens. They also played Coup and Skull. No kittens were involved.

Other people played Red7, Chinatown and For Sale. Next week is Christmas and Cult is closed so we'll be skipping IpBoG for a week. See you all next year.

The Thomas Wolsey

Last week I turned up to Cult to find a Gospel band playing. Cult were kind enough to reserve some tables for us but it was too noisy for board gaming so we opted to go somewhere else. We tried Isaacs but it was pretty busy that night so ventured on to The Thomas Wolsey. Again, it was pretty busy but we didn't want to turn the night into an impromptu pub crawl so we made do and settled there for the night.

I didn't stay for too long that night but I did manage to fit in a game of the United Kingdom version of Ticket To Ride. I was just ahead on the score track when the game ended and there were just the tickets to score. We revealed the tickets and  I was feeling reasonably confident. I had not only completed all my tickets but also completed more tickets than anyone else. However my confidence was misplaced as I came in last. The others played Cosmic Encounter and I'm pretty sure some other games were played in my absence.

This week we were back at Cult and things were back to normal. We started off with a couple of games of Red7 and then launched into a game of The Bloody Inn while the others played Codenames. We played the longer version of The Bloody Inn and I got my highest ever score. I think this proves that Priest is an overpowered card. It's probably being removed from my copy of the game from now on.

Afterwards we played Mai-Star, a small card game by Seiji Kanai of Love Letter fame. This was not only the first time Alex had played it at the club but also the first time he had ever played it. The game is played over three rounds. In the first round I did pretty badly. In the second round I took a big risk on scoring one of the high value cards and failed. I was in last place. For the third round I chose to take an even bigger risk, trying to play the highest scoring card in the game. It was going to be all or nothing for me. Somehow I managed to pull it off and a smile even crept across my little face. I think the scores were something like 18, 19, 20 and 45. A pretty crazy card.

We finished off with a game and a half of Pandemic: The Cure which is pretty much Pandemic: The Dice Game. The first game didn't go too well. Not only in the sense that we did badly and lost easily but also in the sense that Alex didn't like the game. I feel how well you do on the game is dictated a lot by the characters you use so we cheated a little, hand picked our characters and tried again. We fared better this time but Cult was closing so we had to abandon mid-game.

Mike brought along the Reiner Knizia classic Samurai which made its IpBoG debut and Danny ran a game of Chinatown and I think I caught a game of Quaridor being played.