The Elasund in the Room

So I have no idea what games people that went played this week. At least Bang, Lost Legacy, Codenames and, I think, The Resistance. Although almost definitely lots more.

So I finally got round to playing Tragedy Looper. I dunno if it's just me being dumb but I found the rules pretty confusing. About half way through I got the hang of it. Basically if the mastermind doesn't manage to kill someone in a loop we win. At least for the scenario we were playing.  The game is pretty much 90 percent deduction and 10 percent luck. Luck must have been on our side because we managed to deduce who the killers were and guarantee a success, moving everyone away from them. It was a strange game of confusion and cross referencing. I'd probably enjoy it more the second time now I actually get what's going on.

Afterwards I played Elasund: The First City. If my board game history is correct, when the guy that made Catan first made Catan it was a much more complicated game but the publishers made his simplify it. Elasund is kinda all the stuff that he took out. And it feels like Catan for sure. Again there's dice rolling and if a 7 comes up bad stuff happens. But instead of placing roads and buildings you're placing walls and, urm, buildings. We let Dan get a big lead and tried in vain to stop him all too late. He hit the victory condition when everyone else was about half way there. More board gaming nonsense next week!

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.

Black Monday

There were a bunch of new games at IpBoG this week including Spectre Ops although I don't think it got played. Personally I hope to get to play it myself soon. Instead Shadows Over Camelot was played, making it's IpBoG debut.

I'd brought along Ca$h 'n Gun$, my own new purchase but didn't get a change to play it either. It was played by another table however and I think they had a pretty good time with it. The rules are so simple they could read them there and then and get playing in no time.

So it turns out we've been playing Abyss wrong. When exploring the depths you have to offer the card up before being able to take it yourself. We'd been playing it so that you could take it before offering it up. This time we played  with the real correct rule. It was pretty similar but had a bit of a different feel to it. Alex won by a single point. I lost hard. Everyone else scored in the 70's and I was somewhere in the 50's.

After Abyss I played Black Friday, a reasonably serious stock market style game with strangely cartoony animal art. When Mike was explaining it I don't think anyone understood what was going on but after a couple of turns we'd gotten the hang of it for the most part. Toward the end of the game me and Alex both invested big in the yellow stock. It didn't pay off, we did terribly. Mike won by a mile.

Danny ran a game of Tragedy Looper and was the bad guy as usual. He also lost as usual. I think maybe he's just the nice kind of bad guy and lets people win so that they have a good time playing his game. I guess we'll never know. There was also a bit of Eight Minute Empire action going on along with some Lost Legacy.

Six Tribes

Alex had brought the new expansion for Five Tribes that, among other things, adds an extra tribe. It also adds a bunch of extra tiles, expanding the size of the playing area, and walls that can be placed between tiles to block movement. And probably some other things.

This week I came armed with 7 Wonders and got straight down to it. We played just the base game as it was new to some of the people. There were five of us playing and it ended up with me and Gemma tying for first place. We played our second game with Philip and Mike joining us for the full compliment of seven players. It was Philip's first ever game but he ended up winning it. Afterwards he admitted that maybe he'd made a couple of mistakes and played some cards that maybe he shouldn't have been able to. But everyone makes mistakes and it's only a board game so who cares, right? Because everyone had fun and winning is just a thing that happens after the anti-climax of adding up the scores. The others were playing Spyfall, One Night Ultimate Werewolf and Warewolf.

Afterwards 7 Wonders we played Spyfall ourselves. Has it already lost some of the appeal that it'd had last week? I'm not sure, maybe a little, but it's still very good. There were a few games where the spy got caught out straight away. For example we were on the train and by total luck within the first few turns the spy was asked if they were moving and they said no. It was immediately obvious they were the spy and the game was over. But that's not necessarily a problem, it creates a funny moment and we just start a new game.

Afterwards we played a quick game of Coup followed by a quick game of Yardmaster Express which I'd recently bought the Caboose expansion for, which, although doesn't add much, adds some well needed variation to the caboose cards that add bonus points for creating certain combinations of carriages, etc.

I left with Mike, Alex, Dan and Joe finishing up a game of Quantum.

Game Of The Year

Another two weeks, another blog. And in the past two weeks the Dice Tower Awards have come and gone. Dead of Winter picked up three awards including best game so in its honor I brought it along. I was the betrayer but never got a change to do any betraying because the game beat us too quickly. So many deaths and so little morale. It was a harsh winter.

Demetri made his not so triumphant return to IpBoG, where he played Citadels and was assassinated for something like five turns in a row while Alex had a run away lead.

Alex brought Rattus, which made its IpBoG debut. I played a quick Sushi Go before finishing off the night with a few games of Lost Legacy. Matt won all of them. Others played Luchador!, Fluxx and Tragedy Looper.

This week the stars finally aligned and Gemma came on a night that I'd brought Abyss so she finally got to play it again. For some reason I quite like winning at Abyss. I think Dan does too and this time he won. I scraped second place. His turn came just before mine and he kept sweeping in and recruiting the lords I'd planned on getting.

But this was to be the end of Dan's winning streak and the start of mine. We played Blueprints next and I won by a mile. Followed by Biblios which I won by another mile. And then a couple of games of Sushi Go which I won both of.

Danny was playing his usual affair of Luchador! and Tragedy Looper. I hear rumours of people playing Pandemic although I didn't witness it myself. This week also saw Zombicide, a game that's not made it to IpBoG in around a year.

The night was finished off with a few games of The Resistance including the Hostile Intent expansion. If there's a correlation between how loud a group is being and how much fun they're having (which sounds pretty likely) then Hostile Intent must be the funnest expansion around.

All Hail The Kingmaker

Two weeks since the last blog, this means you'll be getting a double dose of IpBoG goodness this week! The weekend before last was the UK Games Expo and a few IpBoG regulars attended. Johnny and Danny had both picked up new games while they were there, both of which I think are by English designers.

Johnny had picked up Frankenstein's Bodies and Danny had got Luchador! Mexican Wrestling Dice. I played Luchador while the others played Frankenstein's Bodies. Luchador comes with the option of laying a flat two dimensional wrestling ring or a full IMAX 3D ring. Naturally we donned our 3D glasses and and played in the maximum number of dimensions the game would allow. Games last about ten minutes and I lost both games I played. The game is a kind of Yatzee style luck-fest. But a fun luck-fest never the less.

Afterwards we played Modern Art. It's an auction game and a pretty pure one. It was Mike's game and he was the only one that had played before but towards the end of the game he'd hardly won any auctions. However, it turns out he knew exactly what he was doing. Everyone else had been vastly over valuing the items and Mike had wiped the floor with us.

The others were knee deep in Lost Legacy. I'm not sure which one, I think Alex may have bought a new version. Or perhaps two new versions. So we played a few games of The Resistance. Some people said some things, some stuff happened. You know? The Resistance.

Now on to the the next week. Danny had brought along Luchador and some more of that was played followed by Tragedy Looper. Danny was the bad guy as always but this time he was foiled in his evil deed. Danny had pimped Tragedy Looper since the last time it had appeared at IpBoG. The cardboard tokens had been replaced by wooden cubes imported from Germany. That's dedication!

Mike once brought Taluva for me to play as he thought I'd like it. It turns out I did and wanted to get myself my own copy but it was pretty hard to get hold of. Well, I finally managed it and so brought my copy along. It almost feels like an abstract game although it's not abstract, it has a sort of island settlement building theme. It's so nice, we played it twice! The first time it was either going to be me or Alex to win and it was basically up to Dan. If he blocked me Alex would win but if he didn't I would win. He blocked me, thanks a lot Dan. In our second game it was getting to the last round of the game and it looked like Alex was going to win but on my final turn I managed to play all of two types of building which ends the game and is an instant win.

We finished up the night with Blueprints which made its first appearance it IpBoG. It's a game where you build towers out of dice and Danny is actually some sort of real life architect. This must have helped in some way because he ended up winning by a mile.

Tournament Day

We got sixteen people this week, so last week wasn't really the calm before the storm I was expecting. Unless you count the downpour of rain but I was talking about more of a proverbial storm.

As promised we started with a King of Tokyo tournament. We has three games going on at once. Everyone played a couple of rounds with their position in each game gaining them a certain amount of points. The five players with the most points played a final, winner takes all game. I personally did terribly, getting only a single point in both of my games. This, unsurprisingly, did not secure me a position in the final. Adam, Andy, Alex, Teacher Dan and Danny all got in but it was Teacher Dan that won that game, winning the tournament. Felixstowe Dan and I did the worst in the whole tournament and had to share our booby prize of a leek, generously provided by Teacher Dan.

Mike and Johnny turned up too late for the tournament and launched into a a game of Medici vs Strozzi which seemed to take them the whole evening.

After the tournament I played a game of Biblios. Dan won by a landslide, obtaining three of the five dice. Afterwards we played No Thanks! and Phillip won that one.

The others played Pandemic with the On The Brink expansion and Lost Legacy. Me and Dan finished off the night with Star Realms and I won my first game of the evening, but it was Dan's first ever time playing it so I can't be too smug.

Next Monday is a bank holiday but IpBoG will still be happening. 7:30 start as always.

All Filler No Killer

So depending on who you believe, this week we either had 17 or 22 people this week. I say only 17 count but Dan disagrees. Apart from the potential extra 5 that Dan is counting I don't think we had any new attendees this week but it's getting a little difficult for me to keep track.

Last week Gemma said she wanted to play King of Tokyo, so as the super nice guys both Dan and I are, we'd both brought it in. I lead King of Tokyo while Dan set up Kemet. We played standard King of Tokyo without Dan's extra expansions because, to be totally honest, I couldn't remember exactly how they worked. I got taken out quickly after rolling all 6 dice three times and failing to get a single heart.

I was in fact out so quickly that Dan was still teaching the rules to Kemet. I think Dan is channeling some Egyption gods because he's winning every game of Kemet he plays recently and this week was no different. Note to self: make sure we gang up on Dan next time I play. The others had lowered the usual upstanding and civilised tone of the evening by playing Cards Against Humanity.

After King of Tokyo we split into two groups with one playing Splendor and the other playing Machi Koro, another dice rolling game of luck mitigation. In the same way it can go in King of Tokyo, due to no fault of his own, luck was not on Alex's side and he got left far behind. I thought I was bound to win, needing less than ten coins to buy my final landmark. The main contender to my victory was Demetri but he needed over twenty coins. I rolled a nine which would give me five coins and him ten. Instead of re-rolling I let Demetri get the ten, sure that no one else would roll another nine before his turn. How wrong I was, another ten was rolled giving us both the money required to win but his turn was before mine and my victory was stolen from me.

Mike arrived at his usual 8:30 and we launched into a game of No Thanks! followed by For Sale. Contrary to last week's success, Alex continued his losing streak, coming last in For Sale. I'm pretty sure I ended up winning but I played so many games I'm having a hard time remembering who won anything..

After this we played Hanabi. I'd played this a couple of times before but always with two or three people and I'd found it fiendishly hard. This time we were playing it with five people and found it much more enjoyable and forgiving.We actually ended up doing pretty well, playing all the cards and scoring something like 22 points but with a bit of accidental cheating when people let on more than they meant to. It's easily done in this game though.

After that we joined with a few other stragglers and played a seven player game of No Thanks! Strictly more players than the game can support but we removed five cards instead of nine and started off with less tokens and it still played pretty well.

I can't be sure of every game that was played this week but I know Johnny was running a game of Betrayal at House on the Hill. I also know Lost Legacy was played with two sets of the game in play. I know this because there was a drink related accident. Someone had split their drink all over the table, drenching Alex's cards. Luckily to avoid too much awkwardness it was James, Alex's brother, so I guess sibling rivalry dictates a series of headlocks and Chinese burns as punishment. Either that or James buys Alex new copies. I think that's probably what they're going with. This is the second drinks related accent that I'm aware of, the previous one involving my copy of Citadels but in that case the cards came off relatively unscathed. I guess we should try and make sure we put drinks on the sides, not on the tables to avoid such mishaps in the future.

Finally the mystery of the extra five players. Towards the end of the night some passers by borrowed Cards Against Humanity and played that for a while with Craig. I'm not counting it because they didn't come specifically for the club, it was just a happy accident. If they're back next week to play again then I'm counting them!

All Hail the King

Turnouts are getting back up to speed again. With the addition of three newcomers this week we managed fourteen attendees.

Last week Alex asked me if I could bring Citadels along for him to try so this week I did. We started off with this as our first game. We played with four people because, although this game supports up to 7, it can drag with a high player count. Adam made off with a good start building 5 districts while everyone else only had two or three. Gemma quickly caught up and took the lead, building some districts worth 8 or 9 points. It ends up that Alex was the first to build 7 districts giving him the extra bonus points to win the game, beating me by a single point. While we played Citadels the others were playing Arctic Scavengers and Splendor.

After Citadels we broke out Skull and Roses. Again this was won by Alex. Alex owns both the Flying Garden and Starship variants of Lost Legacy. We played the Flying Garden version while another group played the other. I tried my hardest to hinder him but it was to no avail, not wanting to ruin his winning streak Alex won this game too. All hail Alex, king of board games.

When we were done with this the others were finishing up games of Carcassonne and Yardmaster Express so we joined together and combined both sets of Lost Legacy to play one final double sized game before leaving for the night.

The Last Draft

This week was a good week, we finally got back into double figures. With two newcomers we made it to 11 people.

I arrived to find some people already playing Munchkin. I'm not sure what variant it was, maybe zombies. This left seven of us so the only sensible plan of action was to play 7 Wonders. I started off slowly with neither me nor my neighbors having any wood or stone at all but in the third age I really lucked out getting a lot of free builds due to my previous cards. Dan and I went research crazy and both managed to get five of the same kind of symbol. I also managed to get one of each type of symbol too which edged my score above his, winning the game. Often with 7 Wonders if only one or two people go for research you can score pretty highly but it's a risky move because if people catch on they can block you by discarding research cards or using them to build wonders. A few research of different types is nowhere near as good as lots of a single kind.

After 7 wonders we split into three groups. Alex played Five Tribes, Dan played Kemet and I played another drafting game, Among The Stars. Among The Stars is pretty much a space based 7 Wonders. That is space in theme where you're building a space station as well as space in mechanism where you're arranging cards spatially. In this game there are two types of cards, those that trigger immediately and those that trigger at the end of the game. Dan and I had played mostly immediate cards whereas Johnny had gone for a more delayed approach. Johnny was sure he was losing but when it came to the final scoring he'd beaten us by a mile.

By the time we'd finished Among The Stars, Dan had already finished Kemet, a game that took us over two hours when I played it last. It seems Dan had devised a pretty decent strategy and made it to the victory condition in no time. Also there were less people playing it this time so that might have contributed.

Alex had won Five Tribes and had finished up the same time as Dan. By the time we were done with 7 Wonders everyone else was just finishing a game of Coup. I taught a couple of guys how to play Yardmaster Express while the rest played Lost Legacy. Unfortunately I taught Yardmaster Express incorrectly. Instead of drawing a card, playing a card and passing your hand to the next player I taught it like a 7 Wonders/Among The Stars style drafting game where everyone would play their hand in unison. Luckily the game still worked pretty well for the most part. I guess that's what happens when you play too many drafting games in one night.