MCM Haul

Danny returned from MCM London this week with a bunch of new games. Eight Minute Empire, Time Stories and  Codenames. I don't think Time Stories got a play but Eight Minute Empire certainly did.

Ever since GenCon this year people have been going crazy about Codenames. To me it sounded kinda like an average word association game. But people had been saying that's exactly how they felt until they played it. So I played it. It played exactly how I expected, an average word association game. I ditched out after a single round but others kept on playing. I'll probably give it another go at some point, I can't make a real judgement at this point. I still think Spyfall is the king of party games. Especially spy related party games.

Alex finally got to play Takenoko but Gemma beat us all by miles. I played The Bloody Inn and No Thanks along with a couple of games of For Sale.

Mike came armed with Mexica, a reprint of a classic Kramer and Kiesling game. One of Mike's friend has started a company reprinting classic Euro games and this is their first release. To be honest, they've pretty much nailed it. It looks amazing and the components are second to none. It's a pretty rare pressing though with something like only 144 copies being brought to the UK. Apparently there's a lot of screwing people over in the game. Dan must be ruining some friendships because he won, beating Phillip by a single point.

I also saw games of Keyflower, One Night Revolution and Seven Dragons being played.

Language Independent

When I arrived some people were playing Smash Up. I think this was probably its IpBoG debut. I scurried off to find a table and play an evening of fillers.

I started off this week with The Bloody Inn, a game I'd recently picked up at Essen. At Essen I also picked up the new French version of For Sale from Iello. The updated artwork is pretty great and it's language independent for the most part. There are some French words on the cheques but I'm pretty sure that these are just the word versions of the numbers so that's probably not required, right? We played three games in a row. Alex won all three.

The new game for me was Founders of the Empire, a tile laying game that Alex had recently purchased. It looks like it's maybe Russian because I don't recognise some of the letters on the box but for the most part it's pretty language independent. I think the words on the box are just the title of the game so that's probably not required, right? Dan won. Afterwards I realised that if I'd have used my tokens properly I could have probably won. Or at least drawn. Sometimes I suck at board games.

Start as you mean to go on, that's a rule I pretty much live my life by and, as such (ignoring the part in the middle where we played other games), we finished off the night with another game of The Bloody Inn.

As usual other people played other games but, as usual, I don't know much about that. Danny played Chinatown again. Tragedy Looper seems to have fallen out of favour for now. I also saw games of The Manhattan Project and Forbidden Desert being played. Or maybe Forbidden Island, I can't tell the difference. Forbidden something, anyway.

All The Debuts

It's been a while since the last post but fear not, IpBoG is still alive and well. Except for one week where we abandoned Cult due to the overwhelming number of freshers. Cult is sort of the unofficial (i.e. ex) student union bar. I'm going to blame the lack of updates in part due to Essen. Allegedly I had some sort of preparation I had to do for it. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I'll start with this week as it's the freshest in my memory. It was a week of firsts whith a bunch of games making their IpBoG debut. I came armed with one of my purchases from Essen, The Bloody Inn. A card game with a bunch of interesting mechanics that work together well, an interesting theme and great art work. I predict this is going to be one of the big hits from the Essen releases along with 7 Wonders: Dual (which, although I did mange to play a demo, sold out in English before I could get my hands on a copy).

I also played Mission: Red Planet, a game that Alex finally managed to get hold of after Amazon had been messing him about with his pre-order. I think Mike had the same experience but gave up altogether in the end. It was a pretty fun action selection, area control game. I did terribly. Like really terribly. It was embarrassing.

Mike brought Chaos in the Old World and Danny played a game or two of Chinatown.

The chances of me remembering even half the games that have been played over the previous couple of weeks is incredibly slim but here goes. Luckily I have a small amount of photographic evidence to help jog my memory.

I played a couple of games of Takenoko. The first of which I forgot half the rules and it didn't really work properly. Mike played a couple of games of Cosmic Encounter. The first of which he won in the second round or something and it didn't really work properly.

Mike's Kickstarter copy of Blood Rage came through the post on Monday morning and he brought it straight to IpBoG that night. King of New York made it's IpBoG debut. The general consensus was that it was very slightly better than King of Tokyo.

Eminent Domain made its IpBoG debut. People also played Pandemic, The Resistance, Love Letter, Hanabi, Dobble and Fluxx. I've probably missed a bunch of games but I'll do my best to get back into updating the blog weekly as my life gets less hectic and I can concentrate on the important things in life. Like pushing wooden cubes round a sheet of cardboard.

Back at Cult

With the water issues fixed we were back at Cult this week. We're slowly migrating to the other side of the bar where the lighting tends to be better. We're also more toilet adjacent. If that's a good thing or not I've yet to decide.

When Mike brings a game it's usually one of two things, some sort of stock market manipulation game or a "Sid Sackson classic", As far as I can tell Compounded is neither of these things. If anything it's a bit of a push your luck, trading game.

I was play-testing The Five Families some more, trying out some slight rules variations. This will probably be much of what I end up doing for the next few weeks. The new tweaks were for the worst but that's sometimes how it goes. Dan won, but I'm blaming that on the rules.

I finished up the night with a couple of games of Sushi Go. Dan won both, I guess I can't blame that on the rules. Except we did forget to reverse the turn order for each round so yeah, I'm blaming the rules again!

Pandemic got played. I think with an expansion. Probably On The Brink. I think it was a pretty easy win and the viruses were easily eradicated.

There was also a bit of Citadels and a couple of games of Love Letter going on.

Danny has brought Chinatown to Cult before but I'm not sure I've ever seen it played before. I'm not even certain they got through a whole game. When I left for home they were still less than half way through. 

Pump & Grind

Due to some sort of water supply problems Cult was unexpectedly closed this week. Instead we arranged an last minute change of venue to the very accommodating Pump & Grind. A fair few IpBoG regulars heard about the venue change one way or another and the night continued as normal.

I'd brought along my game prototype that has the working title of The Five Families. Play-testing went down pretty well and feedback was mostly positive although Dan was understandable angry that he'd spent his time playing a game that there is no Boardgamegeek entry for so he was unable to log his play. Expect more play-testing over the next few weeks though.

Afterwards I played Biblios. It finished in a tie with everyone on the same amount of points however Alex had the most money winning him the tiebreak and the game.

Joanne had brought along her favorite game but she'd lost the box a long time ago and didn't know the title of it. It has something to do with numbers, that's all I know. I guess there was no Boardgamegeek logging of plays for this game either. Afterwards King of Tokyo got played. Johnny got eliminated pretty early on and the game took an unusually long time. Justine emerged victorious. This was followed up by a few games of Dobble.

Another group was playing Dead of Winter. The main objective was completed as were all the personal goals of the good players. Only the traitor didn't manage to complete their objective.

I'm sure by next week the water issue will be fixed and we'll be back at Cult as usual.