While I Was Away

I've been away for three whole weeks so no pictures but here are some reports of what's been played in my absence.

Week 1

Tim:

I'll start. Quite a few of us arrived early so a nine player Secret Hitler game to start. Gloriously unembarrassed about identifying Nazis in a public space. Hitler was identified and stopped at the last possible moment. Then four player Celestia. New game I picked up. For a simple and pretty game its quite tense and tactical. Lot more fun than I expected. We felt like poker players.

Sacha:

Secret Hitler - as mentioned. For Sale, Pandemic, Quarriors, Chosŏn,Sheriff of Nottingham, Star Realms of course. Debuts from Spartacus and Imperial. Imperial we didn't completely finish but will try again another day. In other news, blog stylee, the Porter was off.

Week 2

Sacha:

Tottenham played Chelsea and wished they hadn't, Phillip kindly taught me star realms and now i can kick y'all's asses at that (yeah right!), played Mexica with Dan, Mike and Alex and drank too much Shiraz. Bar closed early due to bank holiday hours. 

Nathan:

Mike, Matt, Alex, Juliet and I played Dungeons and Dragons the board game, and Mafia de Cuba with Rebecca, Will and Danny.

Johnny:

Me, Sabrina, Danny, Rebecca and James played Pandemic (and lost, badly). Then Rebecca busted out an intricate little Korean steampunk deckbuilder called Chosŏn, and the Asian dream team (Danny and Sabrina) won that one. We played Danny's new Hong Kong CSI game Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, where Danny was the Forensic Scientist who steered the rest of the detectives into successfully determining that I was the murderer, and that I done it using tea leaves so I could steal the victim's scarf.

Week 3

Phillip:

Dan, Alex, Joe and I played castles of burgundy, other than that I saw Codenames and secret Hitler.

Nathan:

Mike, Myself, Jonny, Matt, Callum, Elliot and Rebecca played Coup, & when joined by Matt, James, Danny and Alex we played Secret Hitler. I believe Danny played Deception: Murder in Hong Kong.

Thanks to Sacha, Tim, Nathan, Johnny and Phillip for helping out. Back to the regular style updates from next week.

No Kittens Were Harmed In The Making Of This Blog

The last IpBoG of the year. For me it was all about dice games. I'd brought Quarriors along with the Quartifacts expansion. I played a couple of games over the evening. It's basically Dominion with dice. For me that almost takes away any strategy and turns it into a bit of a luck-fest.

I also brought and played Tiny Epic Galaxies. Another dice game and, although it can be a bit luck dependent, I think there's more strategy than with Quarriors. It's also a bit shorter so there's a better luck to length ratio. Or maybe I'm just feel like that because I won this game but lost both of Quarriors.

Cath brought some friends along and they played Betrayal at  House on the Hill. I think the scenario has something to do with kittens. I guess some kind of scary, evil kittens. They also played Coup and Skull. No kittens were involved.

Other people played Red7, Chinatown and For Sale. Next week is Christmas and Cult is closed so we'll be skipping IpBoG for a week. See you all next year.

Cthulhu's Cultists

Bank holidays are always a strange one for attendees; some of the usual suspects can't make it but conversely some people that aren't usually free on Mondays have some spare free time. All in all we managed to pull together eleven board gamers.

Tim is one such guy that is usually busy on a Monday but he came this week armed with Cthulhu Wars. It was a mammoth box, many times the size of a regular game. My understanding is that it also cost many times the price of a regular game. I don't know much about it it except that it's a mini-heavy Kickstarter affair, with some minis so big they can hardly be called miniatures.

I started off with Machi Koro, a game I own but am not overly keen on. This time I didn't mind it too much though. And Gemma won it, obtaining her first ever win at IpBoG.

Afterwards we played Biblios where Gemma and I drew for first place. This was followed by a few games of Skull. Continuing her winning streak, Gemma also won one of those games. We finished off the night with a game of Quarriors. Determined not to let her winning streak continue, I used by best dice rolling skills to win that game.

The others played Dead of Winter. Teacher Dan and Alex both won. Despite his victory, Alex pretty much hated the game.

Don't forget that this Saturday is Tabletop Day. No doubt some IpBoGers will be attending.

Festive Break

I turned up to Cult last week to be greeted by a lonely Craig. Usually there are a couple of people that arrive before me. As time passed we became increasingly worried that no one else would make it so close to Christmas and it would turn into some sort of awkward, online dating gone wrong scenario. Luckily a bunch of people turned up. Two of them berating me for not writing the blog for last week, so this will be some sort of combined entry for the both.

In the last post I said something about if the cards against humanity players turned up next week I'd count them in the numbers. Well, as it happens they did turn up so true to my word I'll include them. That meant about 19 people two weeks ago and about 13 last week.

In all honesty I can barely remember what happened a week ago let alone what happened two weeks ago. I do have a small amount of photographic evidence to jog my memory though. It kind of goes a bit like this; Cards Against Humanity, Dominion, Betrayal at House on the Hill, The Resistance, Lords of Waterdeep and Settlers of Catan.

I won Dominion, which I was pretty pleased about. I'm always pleased when I win Dominion. I started off strong in Waterdeep but ended up coming last, if memory served. I think Dan came first. Mike declared it one of the few worker placement games he didn't hate so if anything it's a win for the game itself.

Surprisingly it was the first showing for Settlers of Catan at IpBoG, the game which inspired its logo. I'm sure other games were played but I don't remember what. However I do know a drink was spilt, but this time not over a game, just a bag. We have to start paying attention to the drinks on the table rule.

So last week we started off with Fluxx while we waited for people to arrive. The rules explicitly allow people to join part way through so it seemed like a good choice. After a while we had a terrible rule set where we could play only a single card but that card had to be chosen at random by another player. This started to drag so when Dan got a chance he dealt one of his keepers to me, winning me the game. Sometimes Fluxx outstays its welcome and just has to be ended.

Other Dan had brought Eight Minute Empire. I jumped at the chance of a go at this. It was a pretty fun little area control/set collection game. I've heard people call it a 4X game but it really isn't. It also isn't 8 minutes, at least with the full compliment of players. It's still pretty quick at around half an hour.

We played another 5 player game of Hanabi and did very well again (23 points, I think). Dan wasn't sure if there was a rule change for more players but we didn't think so because we hadn't played it differently last time with 5 players. I've more recently been told that we have less cards in our hands with more players. I've not verified this but it sounds likely. We probably accidentally cheated both times, it was kind of easy.

Quarriors made its first appearance. We only made it about half way through the game before closing time. Again so many more games were played but I don't have photos of them so I forget what they were. I'm pretty sure Johnny played Bang! However I do know a drink was spilt again, but this time not over a game, just a crotch. We really have to start paying attention to the no drinks on the table rule.

We'll be taking a festive break from IpBoG next week (the 29th) as Cult is closed. We'll be back with a vengeance in the new year, no doubt with a whole host of new board games we received for Christmas. See you there!