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.