From Chieftain to King

Another bank holiday, another IpBoG. About 18 people or something through the doors which is pretty standard for a bank holiday as numbers seem to drop a little. Although two IpBoG members were at Cult for the whole afternoon playing Magic so maybe they should count double?

In case you hasn't guessed it from the title, the hot new game this week was Isle of Skye. Well, not that new but new to IpBoG. And hot because it recently won the Kennerspiel des Jahres award. It's kind of Carcassonne (by which I mean it's a tile laying game) crossed with Castles of Mad King Ludwig (by which I mean you price up your tiles for other people to buy). Unlike Carcassonne however, everyone is building their own layout rather than one single shared one, kind of like in Karuba. It takes about an hour to play and is simple to learn but with a decent amount of meat to it. I don't love tile laying games but I didn't hate this one, I'd put it up there with Caccao. by that I mean, Alex thrashed everyone.

Afterwards I had a lovely time playing The Bloody Inn. Lovely because I won, games are, of course, nothing but a cruel, slow, torture any other way, Other people played Archaeology, Archaeology, Captain Sonar and the obligatory Good Cop Bad Cop. Some of the people had a lovely time but statistically most of them must have had a terrible time.

Yo Ho Ho And A Bottle Of Rum

I turned up a bit late to Cult this week to find everyone mid-game. People were playing Seasons, Magic: The gathering, Splendor and, of course, Secret Hitler.

After a bit of a wait I managed to join the group that was finishing up Slendor. I played Sea Of Clouds and Paperback, both making their IpBoG debut.

Sea Of Clouds is a flying pirate themed game. It makes use of the Winston Drafting mechanism created by Richard Garfield for Magic: The Gathering combined with a  bit of set collection and a bit of push your luck. It has a kind of a 7 Wonder feel about it. It's pretty light but pretty fun and plays in under and hour.

Paperback is a deck builder where the cards have letters on them. The aim of the game is to spell words with the cards in your hand. generally more letters will give you more money to spend however some of the cards give you points for positioning or allow you to draw extra cards. There are also a couple end game goals and I managed to score both of them, just seeking into the lead. It's a pretty interesting take on deck building but with four people it seemed to drag, taking a couple of hours. Not the quick half an hour games I'm often used to with Dominion.

A bunch of other games were being played that I didn't get a chance to see but I'm pretty sure I spotted Mexica at some point.

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!