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.

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.

Italian Cowboys

Fourteen people turned up this week, splintering off into three groups. One playing Relic, an updated version of Talisman set in the Warhammer 40k world. In this game there were no winners. Or losers. Mainly because the game lasted such a long time they didn't manage to finish it. A draw perhaps? Perhaps not.

A couple of new faces pitted themselves against Theo in a game of Clash of Cultures, a tech-tree based, civilisation building game. Theo ended up winning, hopefully not putting off the new members too much.

The rest of us embarked on a 7 player game of Citadels. Johnny pulled off a surprise win on his final turn, playing the bell tower, a card which allows a player to end the game with 7 districts instead of 8. Having this card in his initial hand I suspect he was quietly confident throughout the game, although the last time I played Citadels I started with the same card and somehow finished close to last. Johnny, you have truly bested me, Sir.

Staying with the 7 strong group, we donned our ten-gallon hats to play Bang, an Italian game of hidden roles set in the wild west. Revealing my alliance with the outlaws early by shooting at the sheriff I was quickly taken out. It looked like an easy win for the forces of good but Matt was able to dodge most of their shots by hiding behind a barrel and managed to pick off the sheriff for a victory to our team of murderous bandits.

It's bank holiday next week but Cult is open and IpBoG is going ahead. In fact there's talk of starting in the afternoon and making a day of it. I suspect Darren just wants to get a full game of Relic in. If you're interested let us know on Twitter or Facebook and we'll arrange something.