UK Games Expo 2015

This weeks IpBoG took place the day after the 2016 UK Games Expo and a few people from the group attended.

One of those people was Mathew and he came back with a copy of the Spiel Des Jahres nominee Imhotep. I didn't play this at the club but I did manage to get a demo at the expo. Although it look similar to Container from last week it plays quite differently. It's a simple little game where your choices are to restock your quarry, put a brick on a boat, or send a boat to a harbor. Your bricks go on a the board and you get points for different patters in different harbors. The catch is that other people send might send your bricks somewhere where it doesn't help you at all. It's a pretty simple little game but pretty fun.

Alex brought along Season, a game I played once a long time ago but have since pretty much forgotten all about. It's a kind of drafting game but, as it was (mostly) our first time we played with preset cards. I remember the first time I played this I won. This time I came last.

As well as this we played Love Letter. But not just any Love letter, my super limited edition Love Letter with artwork by Ken Niimura. I hear this has just got a non-limited edition release so naturally I'm super disappointed by this. Nevertheless it's a fun game. Well, it usually is, this time Alex won every single round.

We finished off the night with some No Thanks! Other people were of course playing Secret Hitler and Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, the two most popular titles right now in the group. There was also some Choson, Codenames and Dominion. Some people were even playing Magic: The Gathering!

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.

Board Games

Board games! You want 'em? We've got 'em. You want to play 'em? Well, come along on Monday night and then you can play them too! Right, enough question and exclamation marks and on with the blog.

Most weeks there's a board game debut and this week was no different, Race For The Galaxy made its IpBoG debut. Tim said he owned the game but had never figured out how to play it. The rule book can be a bit daunting so I offered to teach it to him. It's quite quick once you get the hang of it so we played a couple of games.

After playing Mexica last week Dan rushed out and bought himself a copy and brought that along to play this week. Now there are even less copies of this rare version of the game in the UK, with well over 1% of them belonging to IpBoG members. That seemed a lot more impressive in my head before I wrote it down. 

After that Dan played Mission Red Planet which he won and I played The Bloody Inn which I won. Another table played Eight Minute Empire: Legends, Love Letter and Citadels.

Towards the end of the night I thought I'd give Codenames another try. I can see its potential but we seem to have problems finding links between words. No one wants to give a clue for a single word but that seems to be what happens a lot of the time. Basically it seems a little hit or miss, if you can find a good link it's a fun game, if you can't then it's very lackluster. Maybe we're just no good at it.

All The Debuts

It's been a while since the last post but fear not, IpBoG is still alive and well. Except for one week where we abandoned Cult due to the overwhelming number of freshers. Cult is sort of the unofficial (i.e. ex) student union bar. I'm going to blame the lack of updates in part due to Essen. Allegedly I had some sort of preparation I had to do for it. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I'll start with this week as it's the freshest in my memory. It was a week of firsts whith a bunch of games making their IpBoG debut. I came armed with one of my purchases from Essen, The Bloody Inn. A card game with a bunch of interesting mechanics that work together well, an interesting theme and great art work. I predict this is going to be one of the big hits from the Essen releases along with 7 Wonders: Dual (which, although I did mange to play a demo, sold out in English before I could get my hands on a copy).

I also played Mission: Red Planet, a game that Alex finally managed to get hold of after Amazon had been messing him about with his pre-order. I think Mike had the same experience but gave up altogether in the end. It was a pretty fun action selection, area control game. I did terribly. Like really terribly. It was embarrassing.

Mike brought Chaos in the Old World and Danny played a game or two of Chinatown.

The chances of me remembering even half the games that have been played over the previous couple of weeks is incredibly slim but here goes. Luckily I have a small amount of photographic evidence to help jog my memory.

I played a couple of games of Takenoko. The first of which I forgot half the rules and it didn't really work properly. Mike played a couple of games of Cosmic Encounter. The first of which he won in the second round or something and it didn't really work properly.

Mike's Kickstarter copy of Blood Rage came through the post on Monday morning and he brought it straight to IpBoG that night. King of New York made it's IpBoG debut. The general consensus was that it was very slightly better than King of Tokyo.

Eminent Domain made its IpBoG debut. People also played Pandemic, The Resistance, Love Letter, Hanabi, Dobble and Fluxx. I've probably missed a bunch of games but I'll do my best to get back into updating the blog weekly as my life gets less hectic and I can concentrate on the important things in life. Like pushing wooden cubes round a sheet of cardboard.

Back at Cult

With the water issues fixed we were back at Cult this week. We're slowly migrating to the other side of the bar where the lighting tends to be better. We're also more toilet adjacent. If that's a good thing or not I've yet to decide.

When Mike brings a game it's usually one of two things, some sort of stock market manipulation game or a "Sid Sackson classic", As far as I can tell Compounded is neither of these things. If anything it's a bit of a push your luck, trading game.

I was play-testing The Five Families some more, trying out some slight rules variations. This will probably be much of what I end up doing for the next few weeks. The new tweaks were for the worst but that's sometimes how it goes. Dan won, but I'm blaming that on the rules.

I finished up the night with a couple of games of Sushi Go. Dan won both, I guess I can't blame that on the rules. Except we did forget to reverse the turn order for each round so yeah, I'm blaming the rules again!

Pandemic got played. I think with an expansion. Probably On The Brink. I think it was a pretty easy win and the viruses were easily eradicated.

There was also a bit of Citadels and a couple of games of Love Letter going on.

Danny has brought Chinatown to Cult before but I'm not sure I've ever seen it played before. I'm not even certain they got through a whole game. When I left for home they were still less than half way through. 

Bi-weeky Blogging

Welcome to what seems to be fast becoming the bi-weekly Ipswich Board Gamers blog! Although the group is still weekly I've found myself with less and less time recently to write up between meet ups. You'd be surprised how long it takes to bash out a couple of hundred words and then not proof read them at all.

Let's get right to it. Last week I played Carcassonne. It's an okay game but I'm not it's biggest fan. I'm also not its best player and it showed - I came last. I think maybe Alex came first. He always seems to come first at games, so yeah, let's say it was Alex. We played it with the full complement of five players, I think maybe it's a bit of a weird game with five players. None of us could really complete any castles bigger than two or occasionally three tiles.

Anyway, next up was The Sheriff of Nottingham. I spent my sheriff turns doing my best sheriff impressions and forgetting to watch what cards people were swapping out. I don't think I came last in this one but I definitely didn't come first. I'm putting that down to my lack of attention.

We finished off with a couple of games of No Thanks! I think I actually managed to win one of them. Dan pointed out the fact that the cards were not well worn, but showed signs of use. I think this is a testament to what a great game it is. Such a quick, simple game but one of my favorites.

I'd by lying if I said I could remember what anyone else played last week. Oh, except Fluxx, some people were playing that. I guess if I'm not going to do a blog every week I really should note down what games are played. I guess on to this week...

I started off with Tuvalu. In true Alex style, Alex won. He's since bought himself his own copy and I'm pretty sure he's been thinking up strategies on his own, like some sort of chess grand master. While we played this, others were playing The Resistance, Love Letter and Fluxx.

Afterwards I played Abyss. I think a couple of the lords might be overpowered. I think I might have got both of them. No one else stood a chance. I gathered my lords and bided my time before obtaining a location at the last possible minute, making sure my lords' powers remained in effect as long as possible.

After, a game of Power Grid was being set up but I think it was soon packed away again, it was getting too late in the evening to start a game of that length. Instead, Citadels came out. Although this game can take a deceptively long time to play, this is only usually with a high player count.

I ended the night with a seven player game of Shadow Hunters. This game was actually in danger of taking too long. People were playing conservatively. I was a shadow and managed to take out a hunter but soon after one of my fellow shadows was also killed. Before anyone else was revealed Dan triggered his neutral ability, winning him the game.

Farmville

This week we got 16 people. This number seems so common it could quite well be the mean, medium and mode.

Agricola made its first ever IpBoG showing this week. It came fresh with a custom made foamcore token holder that Anthony had made just a couple of days before. From what I hear Danny mostly ignored farming and went big on improvement cards. This worked out well for him and he won the game.

I started off with Abyss. It looked like Dan was storming ahead, being the only player to get two locations. We totalled up the points and it ended up being closer than we thought, with Dan beating me by just two points.

While that happened Alex lost his first ever game of The Sheriff of Nottingham. Adam beat him, smuggling all sorts of contraband. Afterwards they played Skull and I think Adam won that too.

Afterwards we played a three player Star Realms. Although we only have a single deck, we reduce the starting cards to five scouts and a single viper and it still plays fine. I'd recently bought all four of the Crisis expansions and we mixed them into the deck. As well as adding extra ships and bases it also adds heroes, where the card isn't shuffled into your deck and you can trigger it once at any time, and events where, as soon as they're drawn, the event triggers and the action must be followed. Rather than using the  supplied cards for keeping track of the player's health, we used the Rounds app. It does a way better job. And while we're on the subject of apps, quite a lot of IpBoGers use Chwazi for choosing the starting player.

There was a game of Shadow Hunters where so many green cards were played they had to recycle the deck. Sadly I wasn't part of this game. Shadows ended up winning.

I finished up with a few games of No Thanks! while others played Love Letter. I don't remember who won No Thanks! but in one game Dan and I drew and both rejoiced in a shared victory.

Transitive Determination

When I turned up Cult was pretty empty. It looked like the freshers hadn't arrived yet. We had about fifteen people turn up, enough to hold our own. Sam had brought A Game of Thrones and started setting it up on his own before gathering players. I think it has a bit of a reputation of being a very long game and no one thought they could get through it before closing so it never got played. Instead I saw a game of Bang! and Love Letter being played on top of the laid out board.

This week Alex had brought along Shadow Hunters. No Libertalia for me this week! But I didn't mind because Shadow Hunters is another game I'd been wanting to play. It's a hidden role game with three teams; the shadows, the hunters and the neutrals. In a lot of ways it's a lot like Bang! which I've never been a huge fan of. I know a lot of people enjoy that game so maybe it's just me that doesn't get it but to me it's just too random and can really drag on, especially as there's player elimination. With Shadow Hunters there's still player elimination but there's one important difference. On your turn you draw a card and these will either buff your character or, if you draw a green card (and this is the game changer), it can reveal information to you about another player. This means you can figure out what team they are likely to be on and, by seeing how they interact with other players, which team the other players may be on. It's all about transitive determination. I was taken out of the game first due to no fault of my own. Okay, a little of my own fault because my character's power was the ability to lie about the green cards which I totally didn't realise. I then spent the rest of the game agonising (not whining) about why people weren't attacking Craig (he obviously had a hidden agenda) and why people weren't drawing enough green cards. That game is so all about the green cards! An interesting twist is that none of us knew any of the character powers or win conditions. I guess after a few games they'd all be learnt which would add an extra dimension to the game.

After Shadow Hunters I played Ghost Stories. This time I'm pretty sure we broke no rules. As usual we were playing on the easiest setting but the game beat us pretty hard. As Wu Feng came out of the deck three of our monks were down to their last tao token. It wasn't long before the three were dead and there was no way we could reclaim the board. The third tile was haunted and the game ended with only one monk left standing and a full board of ghosts.

While I was playing Ghost Stories others were playing Fluxx and Small World. Steve won Small World and we finished up with a couple of games of Coup with Dan winning one and someone else winning the other. Maybe Steve. Let's say Steve. There's rumors of Adventure Time Munchkin next week. Mathematical!

I Fought The Law and the Law Won

With the help of first timer Alex about twelve people showed up this week. Not a bad attendance but far from the dizzying heights of twenty that I dream of.

I started off playing Trains which has kinda become my modus operandi recently. This time we had the Tourist Train in play which awards an extra victory point every time it's played but is only worth a single unit of generic game currency. I bought a couple along with everyone else. I think Demetri bought most and ended up winning with his CopyCat Rails company. I stayed on for another game planning on going hard on a Tourist Train strategy to see how that worked out. However Tourist Trains cost 4 and I kept drawing 5 which meant I couldn't resist buying Holiday Timetables. I was soon cycling through my deck in two or three turns but this wasn't enough. Again I'd only bought a couple of Holiday Trains. Joni had bought a few more more and ended up beating me by a single point.

While I was playing Trains the others were playing Bang! They got in a couple of games with the law winning both times. I hear rumors all of the outlaws were killed without any of the law being taken out at all. After Bang! the group split into two with Dan playing Small World with this new expansion Be Not Afraid. The rest played an assortment of small games; Fluxx, Love Letter, Zombie Dice and Carcassonne.

After Small World was done I played a three way game of Star Realms with Dan and Steve with those who were left played Coup. Star Realms doesn't really thrive with three people as everyone just tends to attack the person with the most health. This means it doesn't really matter how good your strategy is, all players will end up with around the same health and it's just a matter of luck as to who stays in last. With Steve out first it came down to me and Dan and I took him out with only a handful of health left to my name.

Battle Stations

I couldn't make it last week but things still ticked along without me. I hear a couple of new guys came and brought Relic with them. The game came down to a race between Steve and Dan to roll a 6 and win the game. In order to finish the game because closing, everyone else forfeited their turns. Steve ended up rolling the 6 before Dan.

This week was a bank holiday which always has a low turn out but we still managed to muster around ten people. We started off with Dice Dual. We had an odd number of people so my team had 3 people and the opposing team had 4. This meant I was not only the captain but also in charge of engineering. This is almost an impossible task and for the most part I left it up to the other players to decide on where they placed their dice. Unlike the last games we had played, this game lasted longer and seemed more tactical. To the layman observer it might have looked like we knew what we were doing. In truth we were frantically rolling dice and trying to make our ship go vaguely where we wanted it to. My team ended up taking the victory but I don't think we can take all the credit, at one point our enemies teleported themselves onto a mine they'd placed earlier.

During Dice Dual a few more people arrived and we split off, playing Train, Revolution and Alien Frontiers. I played Trains. Everyone started off in different areas of the board and there was very little crossover of people on the same space. Towards the end of the game I'd built myself a pretty good engine of the cards and bought myself a bunch of skyscrapers. Adam ended the game by building the last station but it was too late, I'd got myself a run-away lead and finished with the top score.

In Alien Frontiers it looked like the game belonged to Dan, but just at the last minute Corey took the lead from him. After Revolution, the guys went on to a game of Pandemic where they successfully cured all diseases, saving the world from infection. After Trains I played Love Letter, and everyone else finished up with Coup.

Eliminating the Impossible

I arrived to find some regulars mid way through a game of Love Letter. Someone's new purchase, I think. Everyone should own a copy as far as I'm concerned.

More people arrived and we split into groups. I honestly don't remember what was played this week. I think some people played Cosmic Encounter but I know for a fact I played Sucking Vacuum, a game where you have to grab your space suit, and be the first pair to make it to the escape pod. Unless you happen to have the auto-pilot which can substitute for a second player. I picked up the auto-pilot on my first turn. Keeping this information to myself, Theo soon loaded fuel data into the pod. After goading another playing into attacking him, I finished Theo off, stole half his space suit and ran for the escape pod. I get the feeling most games probably last a lot longer but I had luck and deviousness on my side.

Some of the other guys were playing The Resistance, this time with the additional plot cards to spice things up a little. Dan managed to get a game of his favorite, Power Grid.

I played A Study in Emerald, a Martin Wallace game, based on the Neil Gaiman story of the same name. It's a kind of Sherlock Holmes and Cthulhu mash up. And also a kind of deck builder and area control mash up. But it's not the simplest of games and we made the mistake of no one learning the rules before hand. We fumbled our way through but ultimately the game was ended when Mike totally misunderstood the win conditions and assassinated me, securing himself a guaranteed fail. I think the lesson to be learnt here is to make sure at least one person knows how to play the game beforehand.

I left just are the final few people were finishing a game of Werewolf. I'll be back next week nice and early though, for that King of Tokyo tournament I've been hearing so much about.

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!

Go Big and Go Home

A solid 14 turned up this week. I started off playing Havana while the others played Bang!. I don't know much about what happened in Bang! except that Rhys was out almost straight away.

In Havana there was all to play for in what was going to be the last round. Everyone was evenly matched and was most likely going to claim their winning card. Well, almost everyone, Andy failed to get a single point in the whole game. I saw my opening and took it but Ryan had also seen his. He had also played the Siesta meaning his action was first. He got his card and scored the extra couple of points he needed to win himself the game.

More people arrived and we split into three groups. We played Firefly, 7 Wonders and Cosmic Encounter. 7 Wonders was won by Andy using the classic getting-all-the-research-cards technique. His board was awash in a sea of green. As they were finishing up we were still getting to grips with the rules for Cosmic Encounter. 7 Wonders can be a fiendishly quick (in a good way) game. Especially if everyone already knows how to play. They grabbed my copy of Coup and played a few games of that.

Cosmic encounter is a game of cosmic negotiation. There were five of us and I quickly made sure I had two of the players as allies, effectively reducing my chances of winning from one in five to one in three. It was a clunky start with a few first time rule faux pas but it looked like Lizzy was going to win. She went big hoping to attack for the winning point but her allies betrayed her and her attack lost. The game should have carried on but Lizzy had to go home. Something about Game of Thrones and an early start. I guess we can call her the honorary victor.

The rest of us played a quick game of Love Letter while Firefly finished up. Andy had also bought himself Love Letter recently, and they were playing it too. In Firefly on the last turn Craig sold a single piece of fuel to Sam for about 10 times its worth. It didn't really change anything in the game, Sam still won and was always going to. I think it was just to stick it to Johnny somehow.

Don't Talk About Dungeon Crawling

With a few new faces numbers reached 14 this week. I arrived early to find I'd been beaten to the post by some IpBoG regulars. Eager to start they were already finishing up a game of King Of Tokyo. I was greeted by Muir telling me that I still needed to write that game up on the blog, probably because he'd won.

More early arrivals came and Muir attempted to teach another of his prey how to play Netrunner while we launched into a second game of King Of Tokyo. It came down to a tense last round with all to play for. Dan and I were pretty much neck and neck, if I didn't score 4 on my attack and kill his monster he would get two victory points for staying in Tokyo and win the game. Despite my best efforts I only managed to roll three damage and Dan was victorious.

We split into three groups, one playing Terra Mystica, another playing Lords of Waterdeep and the final playing Level 7 [Omega Protocol]. I was torn between Terra Mystica and Level 7 as I've been wanting to try my hand at both for a while now but opted for the latter. However the full allocation of six players is probably too much as the downtime dragged and we got bored, disregarding the first rule of dungeon crawling - always stay together. Splitting into two separate groups the alien hordes has no problem picking off our commandos.

After Waterdeep a few guys squeezed in a couple of rounds of Love Letter before heading home. Drained from our defeat, I left as Terra Mystica was winding up. I'm not sure who was winning but Dan was coming last. Not victorious this time, Dan!

Beaten by Innominate Objects

This week was a bank holiday so we started in the afternoon, a few hours earlier than usual. We whipped out Ghost Stories, a cooperative game where Taoist monks are trying to save a village from being overrun by ghosts. This is a notoriously hard game and, although we were still in the game when Wu-Feng was incarnated, we didn't manage to destroy him before all our monks were killed. Even on the easiest mode this game is tough.

More people showed up so a few of us played Smallworld while a couple of guys played Netrunner. Johnny was off to a good start in Smallworld but probably too good. Often an early lead can mean you're picked on by the other players. Johnny ended up coming in last with Enga finishing first. Muir was beaten twice at Netrunner but he'd only brought along a standard starter deck, hoping to teach some new recruits. His opponent had cards from the latest expansions made into a strong custom deck. Muir never stood a chance. After Netrunner they teamed up to take on the cooperative card game of Space Hulk: Death Angel, but Muir continued his losing streak and they were beaten by the game.

As the evening approached a few more people turned up. Matt had appeared half way through ghost stories and was watching intensely. Sure he could beat it, he rallied the troops and started his attack while I gave Elder Sign a go. Like Ghost Stories, Elder Sign is also a dice rolling, cooperative game where players attempt to destroy monsters before an evil incarnation is summoned but unlike Ghost Stories it's set in the world of the Cthulhu mythos. You can win the game by either stopping the final incarnation from being summoned (which we were so close to doing), or by defeating it after it is summoned (which we were so close to doing). Unfortunately two nearlies still amount to a loss. Matt was over confident and also lost Ghost Stories but, ever determined, he reset the game and started again. We were not doing well against the board games tonight, being beaten every time by inanimate objects.

While I played King Of Tokyo and Love Letter, Matt was calculating every move and lead his team to victory against Wu-Feng. As people headed home we finished up with one final game of King Of Tokyo, this time with Dan's Power Up expansion. Some games of King of Tokyo end pretty quickly where as some take a while. This one was the latter. Matt however must have used all his board gaming skills on Ghost Stories because his monster was taken out in the first half the the game. I stormed ahead after a slow start using all my dice rolling skills (along with the Jets card, allowing me to take no damage when I yielded Tokyo) for a surprise win.

Back to the normal 7:30 start next week, board game fans.

Are You The Baron?

I should probably start by relieving any unwanted tension and letting you all know that Dan turned up at the correct time this week. Unfortunately, true to form, our ratmen from last week has gone into decline with only 10 attendees this time but a lot of new faces making up the replacement race. Probably forest elves or something. If you've not read last week's blog you'll have no idea what I'm talking about.

We started off with a 9 player game of Mascarade. Matt won by being the cheat. But only as in the character, not by actual cheating. Unless you count being the only person to have an actual game plan cheating. In that case he is guilty of carefully tracking cards while everyone else fumbled around trying to remember who they were while claiming hopelessly that they are in fact the king.

Mike arrived and we split into two groups playing 7 Wonders and Cutthroat Caverns. Mike looked like he was going to win Cutthroat Caverns, racking up a lot of prestige early on but Inka somehow managed to keep almost all her health until the end of the game, finally stealing victory as the only surviving player.

While the others settled into a game of Bruxelles 1893, a worker placement, Art Nouveau themed game, I played a few rounds of Love Letter. Mike had an easy win, gaining more tokens of the princess' affection than the rest of us put together. Matt had some more beginner's luck, going on to win Bruxelles 1893 for his second victory of the night.