There's Cardboard in Them Thar Hills

Back up to 22 people again this week. So close to breaking our attendance record! Maybe February is the month it'll happen. Only time will tell.

Everyone loves a bargain, right? And everyone loves a board game. So everyone must love a board game bargain. I managed to pick up a game with a tenner off because of a dented box. I'm living the actual dream! As hinted at by the title of this blog post the game was Gold West, a lovely little euro game. It's as if Stefan Feld made Kingdom Builder. It was touch and go towards the end of the game and I thought Johnny was going to come first but I managed to take pole position.

It seem like, although we had a lot of people, only a few of them brought games this week. One group played pretty much entirely fillers. Rattus Cartus though which I would say it almost out of filler territory. They started with Timeline and went on to play Patronize, Sushi Go and Eight Minute Empire. Afterwards I joined them for Biblios (Dan won, I was the only player to get no points at all) and Flip City (Matt won).

Danny recently acquired Mafia de Cuba which made its IpBoG debut this week. I also saw him playing Chinatown which is no surprise, he plays it almost every week. It must be close to hitting the top spot of most played game at IpBoG. Although the top two are currently Coup and Skull, both of which Phillip played today.

I saw a group playing Dixit followed by the Dixit-like Mysterium and another group playing Spy Fall. I'm sure I must have missed a couple of games but there were so many it was extra hard to keep track this week.

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!

Snap on Steroids

It was a pretty busy at IpBoG this week with around 22 attendees. We had about five games going on at once. I started off with Ca$h 'n Gun$ but was eliminated in the first few rounds. A couple of others were eliminated just before the end of the game and Danny claimed the victory.

After I was taken out I joined Alex and Joe who were playing Dobble. It's a speed game, a bit like snap on steroids. Each card has eight symbols and each two cards have a single symbol in common. One of my favorite classic card games is a speed game Spit, so unsurprisingly I liked Dobble quite a lot. I was sure I was doing well at it too until it came to count up the cards and I'd come last.

Next I played Splendor. I felt I was doing pretty well but Matt just beat me to fifteen points, winning him the game.

A few weeks ago Alex brought Rattus, this week he turned up with the card game version, Rattus Cartus. After bringing Black Friday last week, Mike brought another stock market game, Hab & Gut.

After Splendor I played Evo, a game about evolving dinosaurs which comes with actual dinosaurs. Well, not actual dinosaurs but small wooden ones. We ended with a double tie, two players had 39 points and two players had 26 points.

I finished off my night with Eminent Domain: Microcosm, a two player little microgame. I got my revenge against Matt for Splendor, beating him at this game.

Plenty of other games were played. An abstract called Quaridor, Citadels, Black Fleet, Ventura, a couple of games of King of Tokyo and more Dobble.