Ghost Ship

Alex was kind enough to bring a bunch of games he owned that he knew I was interested in playing. I jumped straight at Libertalia. We'd just set up a game when three new guys arrived. We could hardly leave them playing on their own and they expressed an interest in Ghost Stories so I dropped out to teach them that. Libertalia would have to wait for another day. I guess we got around 17 people this week so a pretty good turn out. Term time starts soon so there will probably be a bit of a drop as people leave for university.

It had been a while since I'd played Ghost Stories and I wasn't a hundred percent sure on all the iconography on the cards but apart from a couple of minor mistakes I think we got by without too much accidental cheating. As it was the other guys' first time playing we chose the easiest setting. A couple of rookie mistakes that I was as much a part of as anyone else meant we got a few haunted tiles pretty quickly but we managed to flip them back using the blue monk's double action ability. In the first third of the game the board was looking pretty overrun and I thought we were at the point of no return but with a few lucky dice roles we managed to clear most of the ghosts from the boards. One of the guys had to leave but the nice thing about a co-op like Ghost Stories is that we could just continue with a player down, democratically taking his moves for him. As Wu Feng appeared I took a hit for the team and my monk was killed. Wu Feng's incarnation required four reds to be destroyed. The plan was for the yellow monk to use his bottomless pockets power to grab a bunch of red tao tokens and head over to Wu Feng to take him out. We set Circle Of Prayer to red to make the exorcism easier but before the yellow monk made it over the blue monk made a perfect roll (well, a red and two wilds) and took out Wu Feng on his own, stealing the glory for himself. We did pretty well in the end and I think we would have probably beaten it on the normal difficulty rather than initiation.

I hear Libertalia went well. Dan said he enjoyed it but he won so he would have enjoyed it. It's a kind of pirate ship themed role selection game. I'm hoping Alex will bring it another week. After that they played Coup. Pandemic and Ticket To Ride was at other tables.

Mike turned up with Taluva, a game he'd been promising to bring for a while. He'd likened it to Kingdom Builder; an interesting, slightly abstract strategy. The game didn't disappoint. For a start it looks great and the tiles are so thick and chunky, the kind of components that beg to be touched. First I played it with four players and it was a quick, fun little game with a bunch of interesting choices. Towards the end it could have been anyone's game and everyone did their best to block the next player from getting the final move they needed to win but pretty soon there was nothing that could be done and Adam claimed victory. After this I played it two player, head to head with Mike. Maybe it was just because I had a feel for the game, but it really seemed to shine with two players. Instantly I could see how my decisions really impacted the game. After a strong start in the early game I made a couple of mistakes. I was sure Mike was going to win but before I knew it the last tile had been drawn and the game was over before Mike had managed to make a comeback.

On the table next to me there was a game of Space Cadets: Dice Dual and some more Coup. Next week is freshers' week so we'll have to wait and see if there's enough room for students and board gaming nerds, or if we've been shunned for the night by the cooler kids.

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.

Die Fighters

We split into a few groups playing Gloom, Level 7 [Omega Protocol] and Space Cadets: Dice Duel.

Using the power of facebook Dan announced that he'd be bringing Space Cadets: Dice Duel, a real time dice rolling game played by two teams. I got suckered in to watching the instructional video which in turn suckered me into being nominated as the captain. We threw together two teams of four and commenced battle. Initially we played the basic game without asteroids or crystals. I would like to say I led my team to victory but that would be a blatant lie. We were obliterated. After some quick mutiny, Andy became the captain of our team and I was relegated to helm and shields. We added in the asteroids and crystals and launched into a second battle. My helmsmanship was as bad as my captainmanship, and we ended up losing the second battle too.

After Space Cadets we separated into two groups. I played Revolution! while the others played Forbidden Desert. Revolution! is a game of blind bidding. Initially I had no idea what I was doing but after a few rounds I started to get the hang of it. It was looking like the game was mine until my general lack of attention meant I attacked Dan when really I should have attacked Steve. This left Steve with enough points to edge in front of me, winning the game.

I had to leave before the end of the night but no doubt a bunch of other games were played too. Probably The Resistance.