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.

The Crutch of the Matter

First things first, we got 23 people this week. I'm pretty sure that's record breaking. Let's see if we can keep it up! Second things second, Mike made his triumphant return to IpBoG, albeit on crutches. Some sort of incident involving his son's scooter and a misplaced sense of youth. Probably best not to ask.

We took over a lot of tables this week, snaking our way across Cult.  One table I think spent the whole night playing the worker placement classic Stone Age which made it's IpBoG debut this week. Another table played Mysterium followed by Ca$h 'n Gun$.

Danny was back to playing the mastermind in Tragedy Looper. He lost on the last turn, still unable to claw in his first victory in that game. Afterwards another game was played where he was tutoring Johnny on how to play as the mastermind followed by a game of Betrayal at House on the Hill.

I started off the evening with Kingdom Builder. I'm pleased to say that I came first in both games beating Matt twice. He often beats me at that game and after my terrible losses last week it was nice to have some wins under my belt.

Afterwards we played The Bloody Inn. I think Matt came first in that one. We also played a couple of games of Forbidden Island. We lost the first game in the first couple of rounds but managed to beat it the second time round. We spent the rest of the night playing a few games of No Thanks!

The Felixstowe guys played a couple of games of For Sale before Mike turned up. Mike had brought with him his new acquisition Royals, a game from 2004. I was shocked, this wasn't a classic euro, but Mike assured me it was actually a reimplementation of an older game, Heads of State. After they were done with that they finished off the night with a few more games of For Sale.

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!

First Things First

So last week I was in London for work and I went straight to Cult as soon as I got back into Ipswich. This meant no camera and, as has been established many times before, no camera means no blog. So this week there will be only a week's worth of pictures but two week's worth of words. But don't expect twice the amount of words. Words are hard.

The first week first! Alex ran a six player game of Mission Red Planet. I don't really know what happened but I imagine it was pretty chaotic. Afterwards he ran a six player game of Shadow Hunters. Again, no idea what happened.

I finally got round to playing Mexica. It was a game of bridge stealing. Dan said that it's had a different feel every time he's played it. Philip won.

Afterwards we played Biblios which I won by beating Philip twice on ties, taking the dice. I felt a bit mean because he ended up with no dice and dice are points. But I didn't feel that mean because, of course, it's just a game and therefore doesn't matter at all.

The second week! I brought along Kingdom Builder. Kingdom Builder has three randomly assigned ways of scoring. After we'd scored the second I was way ahead of everyone but I'd neglected the third. Everyone caught up and Jill took the lead. Afterwards we played For Sale and I managed to win that one.

Tim brought along Rum and Bones. He won it in some kind of Frostgrave tournament which is probably some kind of war game or something. I hear Tim does that kind of thing on the side. And I guess he's okay at it because he got some kind of prize. Anyway, I didn't get to play the game but from what I understand it's mostly a two player game but you can play it as two teams of two which is what happened. And although it works, the guys said it's mostly like a two player game.

Alex had brought along a new game called Patronize. It's a new one by AGE set in the world of Love Letter. And from the picture I took it looks as if it has cubes and cards. That's all I know about it. Alex's table also played For Sale.

After this the few stragglers that were left over finished the night with Codenames. My team did terribly. Phillip claims we didn't win a single round. I think we may have won one. But yeah, we did pretty terribly.

Oh, also someone brought Pop-Up Pirate. That someone was Danny.

Rock, Paper, Scissors on Steroids

This week was a bank holiday. As I say every bank holiday, bank holidays are weird. I think we managed 15 people.

I started off with Mike's new Kickstarter, the boardgamegeek published mini game I Hate Zombies. It's a pretty strange little rock, paper, scissors on steroids style game. I totally won at it but if I'm honest I wasn't surprised, I'm very slightly better than average at rock, paper, scissors and luckily that's all you need. I followed up with a couple of games of Lost Legacy.

The other tables played Terra Mystica (maybe with the expansion, I saw the box there at least) and Relic. I think both games took them all night, they're both pretty epic games.

I played some Liar's Dice or, as some people like to call it, Perudo. Or as I like to call it, Bad Skull And Roses because I would always prefer to be playing Skull and Roses.

Afterwards we played Kindom Builder followed by the triumphant return of Takenoko. That game hasn't appeared on a table at IpBoG since the very first meetup. As I left that night Terra Mystica and Relic were still being played, maybe I'll get there next week and they'll still be going on. But probably not.

Adjacent When Possible

Numbers dwindled to just 12 this week. With next week being our one year's anniversary I'm guessing this is just the calm before the storm.

This week we started off with three groups. Dan brought Cutthroat Caverns which I was totally interested in playing again but totally missed out on. At the end of the game there was all to play for, whoever killed the next monster would win but it was Dan that made the fatal blow.

I'd brought Kingdom Builder. We played a couple of games with me winning the first and Matt storming ahead in the second. At another table Joe destroyed his opponents in King of Tokyo, winning five games straight.

Afterwards, we played 7 Wonders with Babel, an expansion where you have the ability to place tiles that affect all players. I did terribly, not being able to get the resources I needed from my neighbours and coming last. At the end of the game everyone thought Matt had won, having played about ten resource cards but when we totalled up the scores, we found Adam had beaten him by two points and Dan had beaten Adam by another point.

While this was going on Mike had been playing Quantum. I left before it ended so I don't know who won but I'm pretty sure it wasn't Alex. Sorry Alex.

Next week will probably be some sort of King of Tokyo tournament (Joe is probably banned). More details to follow!

Braaaains!

Today was a pretty good day at IpBoG, 15 people showed up and David gave me an onion ring!

Sam arrived with Zombicide and Johnny's new Betrayal at House on the Hill. Johnny arrived a few minutes later after making the trip home from work to pick up Betrayal only to find it wasn't there. Sam and Johnny launched straight into a game of Betrayal. The Craig was the betrayer and the haunt was zombie related, so out came the Zombicide figures onto the Betrayal board. Good prevailed and zombies were defeated. But not for long because straight after Zombicide was set up and played.

New guy Steve brought Food Fight along and that was played by another group follow by Citadels which was won by Dan although he was the only person playing that had played it before.

I brought Kingdom Builder and, similarly to Dan, I won at my own game. Next we played Splendor, my second play but it's debut at IpBoG. Phillip won and I came in last. It's been causing waves the last few months and I like the game, but I don't love it like a lot of people seem to. Maybe I'll like it more when I don't suck at it. The final game we played was the new Days of Wonder game Five Tribes. I'd heard mixed reviews about it and when Alex was explaining the rules it all sounded a bit complicated and daunting but after a couple of runs I think we'd all quickly got the hang of it. It turns out the game has a pretty unique mechanic picking up and placing meeples of certain colours which activate certain powers. Still, I did terribly at it and there was another case of the owner winning at their own game with Alex pulling off some pretty impressive moves (if board game moves are able to be impressive) to gain him the victory.

The Big Box is Back

So we got a respectable 15 this week. There's some sort of RPG group that usually happens on a Monday but they were between campaigns or something so we had a couple of newcomers from there.

I managed to haul my Kingdom Builder big box down along with Trains, which I was borrowing from a friend. We split into three groups. One played Munchkin. I hear it turned into a bit of an RPG and never really finished. I've never played Munchkin or an RPG so I don't really know what this means. I can only assume the newcomers were trying to assimilate us and they seemed to be doing a pretty good job at it. After they released the board gamers from their clutches they got in a game of For Sale.

I started off with Trains. I thought I had this game in the bag but I didn't realise how close Steve was to using all his stations and ending the game. I went into whatever the Trains version of duchy panic time is and started buying the low value victory point cards. Still, it was too late and Steve beat me by a single point, winning the game.

The others played Small World which Sam won. After that they played Level 7 [Omega Protocol].

We played Kingdom Builder. Again just the base game, I've still not had time to read the expansion rules and in all honesty I'm not in a big rush to, the base game has plenty of game left in it yet. Steve somehow manged to obtain about five chits giving him way too many special moves for anyone else to compete with. He wiped the floor with us for a double whammy of a win. We played a second game and things were much more balanced. And by much more balanced I mean I won. I think it's worth noting that Dan did incredibly badly and scored less than half what I got. Sorry Dan.

We're Gonna Need a Bigger Box

With a couple of new recruits and our fair share of regulars we mustered 16 attendees this week.

My Kickstarter of the Kingdom Builder Big Box Edition finally arrived. It was waiting for me when I arrived home on Monday so I took it straight to Cult, opened it, punched out the pieces and spent the rest of the evening playing it. The box is as big as the name implies, filled to the brim with expansions but we just kept to the base game for now. I got in three games but didn't manage to win any of them. Matt got in a double whammy before ducking out to play Small World and Cathy won the other. For a game that often gets mixed reviews it was very well received by those that played it. How often I can muster the strength to carry a box of that size down to IpBoG is another matter.

A couple of copies of Munchkin were brought along and two games were going on in parallel while the others played Cosmic Encounter which Steve ended up winning. Some Love Letter and half a game of Alhambra (I'm not too sure what happened there) were also played. I left while a few stragglers battled it out for supremacy in Small World.

My plan for the long promised King of Tokyo tournament is to have it in two weeks' time. Pencil it in your diaries and start spreading the word!