There's Cardboard in Them Thar Hills

Back up to 22 people again this week. So close to breaking our attendance record! Maybe February is the month it'll happen. Only time will tell.

Everyone loves a bargain, right? And everyone loves a board game. So everyone must love a board game bargain. I managed to pick up a game with a tenner off because of a dented box. I'm living the actual dream! As hinted at by the title of this blog post the game was Gold West, a lovely little euro game. It's as if Stefan Feld made Kingdom Builder. It was touch and go towards the end of the game and I thought Johnny was going to come first but I managed to take pole position.

It seem like, although we had a lot of people, only a few of them brought games this week. One group played pretty much entirely fillers. Rattus Cartus though which I would say it almost out of filler territory. They started with Timeline and went on to play Patronize, Sushi Go and Eight Minute Empire. Afterwards I joined them for Biblios (Dan won, I was the only player to get no points at all) and Flip City (Matt won).

Danny recently acquired Mafia de Cuba which made its IpBoG debut this week. I also saw him playing Chinatown which is no surprise, he plays it almost every week. It must be close to hitting the top spot of most played game at IpBoG. Although the top two are currently Coup and Skull, both of which Phillip played today.

I saw a group playing Dixit followed by the Dixit-like Mysterium and another group playing Spy Fall. I'm sure I must have missed a couple of games but there were so many it was extra hard to keep track this week.

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.

Pirates of the Caribbean

We got a low turnout this week with just ten people. Surely this is the calm before the storm and next week we'll hit the mythical twenty one.

I started off with a couple of games of Biblios, winning the first and getting beaten by Alex in the second. We followed this with Eight Minute Empire. I went hard on carats. At least, as hard as I could. Dan seemed to be doing his best to keep them for himself. Alex earned himself his second win of the evening.

While we were playing these the others played Dixit and Get Bit! Both their first showing at IpBoG. They followed this up with Skull, a game that seems to be having a bit of a renaissance here recently.

Previously Alex brought Libertalia along for me to try but I ended up having to teach a game to some newcomers, so it was played without me. Only a few months later, Alex got round to bringing it again, finally making good on his promise. I started off well in the first couple of rounds, leading the game. My final round however was not so good, I played my highest value card, wanting to get first pick of the booty and not paying attention to the action I would have to take. I ended up coming last with Cath sailing into the lead for the win.

The others finished up the night with the classic co-op, Pandemic and saved the world once again, much to the jealousy of Cath, who is still yet to beat the game.