All The Tabletop Games

Twenty people through the doors this week, a bit down from last week but I'll hold in the tears, maybe we'll get a few more next week and we'll beat our record.

Here at Ipswich Board Gamers, although our name may imply it, we don't just play board games, we play all the tabletop games. In fact I spent the entirety of this week playing card games. The jokes on me because I bloomin' love a card game. I started with Nyet!, a twist on classic trick taking games. Like Bridge there is a team element. And  the  twist is before every tick you collaboratively decide on the rules of the round (i.e. colours of trumps, who is the starting player, etc.). I did terrible and came last with Dan stealing first place from Alex.

On to my second card game and we played Rattus Cartus, a card game that, although set in the same theme as Rattus, is nothing like it's namesake. At the end of the game, if you have more rats than nuns you're disqualified. The nuns are semi-secret and Alex ended up with too many rats. It was a pretty good card game though, I enjoyed it. But I would say that, I won.

My last card game was Mai-Star. We had to cut it short after two rounds instead of three but again I was doing terribly. Alex made up for his disqualification in the last game by winning this one. So although I like card game, maybe it turns out I'm not very good at them.

After playing Chinatown last week Mike brought along Genoa (which used to be called Traders of Genoa), another negotiation style game but by his own admission probably not as good. Being Mike's game it's of course more of a classic euro. Although I couldn't see a score track and apparently there's no resource conversion so I'm not sure it counts. I think they had to cut the game a bit short because they still had a while to go when I left.

Forbidden Island was played, the group lost. Kingdom Builder was played, Matt won. Codenames was played, everyone had fun. Timeline made it's IpBoG debut. I also saw people playing Star Realms,  Hey That's My Fish! and Bang!

Terra Mystic-agh!

It was a good turnout this week. As if last week's blog was a premonition, this week we breached the 20 people mark. I think there were 22 in total. Its not record breaking but its pretty close.

As you may have guessed form the title of this post my entire night was filled up with Terra Mystica. David has been promising to teach me Terra Mystica for probably over a year but whenever he brings it I seem to be tied up teaching a game. This time I was resolved to playing it so play it I did. It's well knows the be one of the best of the euro style games and it didn't disappoint. The first few rounds plodded along but the turns progressed my stress levels increased. Trying to optimise your turns on the final round can be an logistical nightmare. I was sure I was going to come in second with David wining but after the final scoring, although David was ahead of me by a single point Johnny had beaten David by two points. It was a tight finish.

Cath brought along The Downfall of Pompeii. The game comes with what looks like a fully functioning volcano. Unfortunately it's actually a fully non-functioning volcano. William did his best to avoid being preserved in an ash sarcophagus and won the game.

Laurence brought Betrayal at House on the Hill. It was some sort of treasure hunt scenario I think. The took a long time, over two hours, but Joanne finally won. They finished off the night with a few games of Spyfall.

Alex started off the night with Founders of the Empire. After that Mike turned up with Danny's copy of Chinatown. I'm pretty sure it was all legitimate and Danny had lent it to Mike, nothing untoward. That was played and Dan won. In classic Mike style Mike had brought along a classic. This time it Through the Desert, a game from Reiner Knizia's tile-laying trilogy. That's actually a thing, I guess that proves just how much of a classic it is. The other two games in the trilogy are  Samurai, which Mike brought a few weeks ago, and Tigris & Euphrates, which he'll no doubt bring in a few weeks time.

I also saw some Machi Korro being played and no doubt some other games were played that Iv'e missed. I left while Through the Desert was in full swing and a few others were starting a game of Resistance. My brain was too fried from Terra Mystica for any more board gaming that night though.

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.