Two Weeks Of Gaming

I may have forgotten to bring my camera last week and, as we all know by now, no one wants a blog with no pictures so here's two weeks worth of gaming in one easy to swallow blog post.

Last week Michael made his triumphant return to the group after his hiatus, bringing with him two great games, Quadropolis and Roll For The Galaxy, both making their IpBoG debuts. I played Forbidden Desert for the first time (we lost) along with Archaeology: The New Expedition, Kingdom Builder and Zany Penguins. A whole host of other regular games were played including Black Fleet, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong and Machi Koro.

The eagerly awaited Scythe Kickstarter orders were arriving in the UK this week. Stephen had backed the deluxe version and was kind enough to let me join his first game of it. It was pretty fun and the metal coins and upgraded resources probably almost made up for that empty void in Stephen's wallet. From the start of the game I think it was clear James was going to in. By the end the scored were pretty close for the most part but no one could quite take Jame's lead.

Mathew brought along Via Nebula the new Martin Wallace game with great production values, bright colours and a low barrier to entry. You wouldn't think it was by Martin Wallace at all.

A bunch of other games were played, as usual. Some the new Magic: The gathering, Saint Petersburg, Kingdom Builder and, of course, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong as well as a bunch of other stuff I didn't see.

All The Deduction

It's been two weeks since the last update. I didn't make it last week but board games were played interspersed with disappointed football fans.

I made it this week though and brought a couple of new games with me. One was Archaeology: The New Expedition, the new version of Phil Walker-Harding's Archaeology card game. It's a small push your luck-ish, set collection game. It's good but no Sushi Go! in my opinion.

I also brought Age of Assassins, a drafting micro game I picked up in Japan. I finally got round to pasting up the translations and so brought it along. It's a race to 15 points and I managed it after only two round. Matt ended up with zero. Sorry Matt.

We also played Sea Of Clouds. Phillip did well on pirates and amassed an incredible amount of money. None of us stood a chance.

Social deduction games are as popular as ever with people playing Deception: Murder in Hong Kong Night Ultimate Werewolf and Good Cop, Bad Cop which seems to have replace Secret Hitler for the moment.

Black Fleet also made an appearance and Nathan brought Codinca, an abstract game he'd picked up at the UK Games Expo. I left a bit early so there were probably a bunch of other games I didn't see.

Snap on Steroids

It was a pretty busy at IpBoG this week with around 22 attendees. We had about five games going on at once. I started off with Ca$h 'n Gun$ but was eliminated in the first few rounds. A couple of others were eliminated just before the end of the game and Danny claimed the victory.

After I was taken out I joined Alex and Joe who were playing Dobble. It's a speed game, a bit like snap on steroids. Each card has eight symbols and each two cards have a single symbol in common. One of my favorite classic card games is a speed game Spit, so unsurprisingly I liked Dobble quite a lot. I was sure I was doing well at it too until it came to count up the cards and I'd come last.

Next I played Splendor. I felt I was doing pretty well but Matt just beat me to fifteen points, winning him the game.

A few weeks ago Alex brought Rattus, this week he turned up with the card game version, Rattus Cartus. After bringing Black Friday last week, Mike brought another stock market game, Hab & Gut.

After Splendor I played Evo, a game about evolving dinosaurs which comes with actual dinosaurs. Well, not actual dinosaurs but small wooden ones. We ended with a double tie, two players had 39 points and two players had 26 points.

I finished off my night with Eminent Domain: Microcosm, a two player little microgame. I got my revenge against Matt for Splendor, beating him at this game.

Plenty of other games were played. An abstract called Quaridor, Citadels, Black Fleet, Ventura, a couple of games of King of Tokyo and more Dobble.