Terra Mystic-agh!

It was a good turnout this week. As if last week's blog was a premonition, this week we breached the 20 people mark. I think there were 22 in total. Its not record breaking but its pretty close.

As you may have guessed form the title of this post my entire night was filled up with Terra Mystica. David has been promising to teach me Terra Mystica for probably over a year but whenever he brings it I seem to be tied up teaching a game. This time I was resolved to playing it so play it I did. It's well knows the be one of the best of the euro style games and it didn't disappoint. The first few rounds plodded along but the turns progressed my stress levels increased. Trying to optimise your turns on the final round can be an logistical nightmare. I was sure I was going to come in second with David wining but after the final scoring, although David was ahead of me by a single point Johnny had beaten David by two points. It was a tight finish.

Cath brought along The Downfall of Pompeii. The game comes with what looks like a fully functioning volcano. Unfortunately it's actually a fully non-functioning volcano. William did his best to avoid being preserved in an ash sarcophagus and won the game.

Laurence brought Betrayal at House on the Hill. It was some sort of treasure hunt scenario I think. The took a long time, over two hours, but Joanne finally won. They finished off the night with a few games of Spyfall.

Alex started off the night with Founders of the Empire. After that Mike turned up with Danny's copy of Chinatown. I'm pretty sure it was all legitimate and Danny had lent it to Mike, nothing untoward. That was played and Dan won. In classic Mike style Mike had brought along a classic. This time it Through the Desert, a game from Reiner Knizia's tile-laying trilogy. That's actually a thing, I guess that proves just how much of a classic it is. The other two games in the trilogy are  Samurai, which Mike brought a few weeks ago, and Tigris & Euphrates, which he'll no doubt bring in a few weeks time.

I also saw some Machi Korro being played and no doubt some other games were played that Iv'e missed. I left while Through the Desert was in full swing and a few others were starting a game of Resistance. My brain was too fried from Terra Mystica for any more board gaming that night though.

The Elasund in the Room

So I have no idea what games people that went played this week. At least Bang, Lost Legacy, Codenames and, I think, The Resistance. Although almost definitely lots more.

So I finally got round to playing Tragedy Looper. I dunno if it's just me being dumb but I found the rules pretty confusing. About half way through I got the hang of it. Basically if the mastermind doesn't manage to kill someone in a loop we win. At least for the scenario we were playing.  The game is pretty much 90 percent deduction and 10 percent luck. Luck must have been on our side because we managed to deduce who the killers were and guarantee a success, moving everyone away from them. It was a strange game of confusion and cross referencing. I'd probably enjoy it more the second time now I actually get what's going on.

Afterwards I played Elasund: The First City. If my board game history is correct, when the guy that made Catan first made Catan it was a much more complicated game but the publishers made his simplify it. Elasund is kinda all the stuff that he took out. And it feels like Catan for sure. Again there's dice rolling and if a 7 comes up bad stuff happens. But instead of placing roads and buildings you're placing walls and, urm, buildings. We let Dan get a big lead and tried in vain to stop him all too late. He hit the victory condition when everyone else was about half way there. More board gaming nonsense next week!

All The Debuts

It's been a while since the last post but fear not, IpBoG is still alive and well. Except for one week where we abandoned Cult due to the overwhelming number of freshers. Cult is sort of the unofficial (i.e. ex) student union bar. I'm going to blame the lack of updates in part due to Essen. Allegedly I had some sort of preparation I had to do for it. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I'll start with this week as it's the freshest in my memory. It was a week of firsts whith a bunch of games making their IpBoG debut. I came armed with one of my purchases from Essen, The Bloody Inn. A card game with a bunch of interesting mechanics that work together well, an interesting theme and great art work. I predict this is going to be one of the big hits from the Essen releases along with 7 Wonders: Dual (which, although I did mange to play a demo, sold out in English before I could get my hands on a copy).

I also played Mission: Red Planet, a game that Alex finally managed to get hold of after Amazon had been messing him about with his pre-order. I think Mike had the same experience but gave up altogether in the end. It was a pretty fun action selection, area control game. I did terribly. Like really terribly. It was embarrassing.

Mike brought Chaos in the Old World and Danny played a game or two of Chinatown.

The chances of me remembering even half the games that have been played over the previous couple of weeks is incredibly slim but here goes. Luckily I have a small amount of photographic evidence to help jog my memory.

I played a couple of games of Takenoko. The first of which I forgot half the rules and it didn't really work properly. Mike played a couple of games of Cosmic Encounter. The first of which he won in the second round or something and it didn't really work properly.

Mike's Kickstarter copy of Blood Rage came through the post on Monday morning and he brought it straight to IpBoG that night. King of New York made it's IpBoG debut. The general consensus was that it was very slightly better than King of Tokyo.

Eminent Domain made its IpBoG debut. People also played Pandemic, The Resistance, Love Letter, Hanabi, Dobble and Fluxx. I've probably missed a bunch of games but I'll do my best to get back into updating the blog weekly as my life gets less hectic and I can concentrate on the important things in life. Like pushing wooden cubes round a sheet of cardboard.

Back at Cult

With the water issues fixed we were back at Cult this week. We're slowly migrating to the other side of the bar where the lighting tends to be better. We're also more toilet adjacent. If that's a good thing or not I've yet to decide.

When Mike brings a game it's usually one of two things, some sort of stock market manipulation game or a "Sid Sackson classic", As far as I can tell Compounded is neither of these things. If anything it's a bit of a push your luck, trading game.

I was play-testing The Five Families some more, trying out some slight rules variations. This will probably be much of what I end up doing for the next few weeks. The new tweaks were for the worst but that's sometimes how it goes. Dan won, but I'm blaming that on the rules.

I finished up the night with a couple of games of Sushi Go. Dan won both, I guess I can't blame that on the rules. Except we did forget to reverse the turn order for each round so yeah, I'm blaming the rules again!

Pandemic got played. I think with an expansion. Probably On The Brink. I think it was a pretty easy win and the viruses were easily eradicated.

There was also a bit of Citadels and a couple of games of Love Letter going on.

Danny has brought Chinatown to Cult before but I'm not sure I've ever seen it played before. I'm not even certain they got through a whole game. When I left for home they were still less than half way through. 

Shaken Not Stirred

This week people started off with Betrayal at House on the Hill, Citadels and Nexus Ops followed by Food Fight. I think it was the first time Nexus Ops has been played at IpBoG but certainly not the first time for Citadels or Betrayal, although it's been a while since I've seen Betrayal come out. There was a time when it seemed to get played every week for a few months. I know in this case the haunt was some sort of evil twin scenario where there was no single betrayer. I guess either no one was the betrayer or everyone was.

This week I played Tzolk'in for the first time. Although Alex had the expansion with him we played just the base game. Apparently the expansion is a bit fiddly for a fist timer. It's a medium-heavy game; worker placement, resource conversion, victory points - that kinda thing. But with big plastic wheels that rotate and move your workers into different positions that allow them to take different actions. The game is all about timing when you put your workers on and take them off, and making sure there is some sort of efficient engine going on. Half way through the game there is a big scoring turn. I had a single point but everyone else was in the 20's. Either I was biding my time and playing the long game or I had no idea what I was doing. Obviously I had no idea. But in the last couple of turns I managed to build a temple that scored me a bunch of points for my tech track. I don't remember where I came but it wasn't last. Probably one from last. Dan was the winner. He'd made good use of the god track and had a good lead in the start which just snowballed towards the end.

The big news of the night though was that Danny had obtained a copy of Spyfall. That's pretty impressive going as it's notoriously hard to get a hold of at the moment. Danny played a few games and said that it kinda fell flat with his group. I think maybe he made the mistake of playing with the roles straight away because I played it a bit later with a group of six and it went down incredibly well. After a couple of rounds we got into the swing of things and a few rounds later three of us were talking about buying the game for ourselves. That's a pretty good ratio. It's probably my favorite party/deduction game. For me this is everything The Resistance wants to be, although I'm sure hoards of pitchfork wielding people would disagree with me. We added the roles which changed up the game quite a bit, I'm not sure for the better or worse. Without the roles the game seems to be about trying to keep your questions and answers vague enough, whereas with the roles it almost seemed to be about asking and answering questions until the spy slipped up. The roles made things harder for the spy and drew out the game a little longer. It's nice to have the options of both though, to add a bit of variety but I wouldn't say the roles are the definitive way to play, which the rule book seems to imply. I've not been so impressed by a new game in a long time and it definitely deserves all the praise it's been receiving recently.

Game Of The Year

Another two weeks, another blog. And in the past two weeks the Dice Tower Awards have come and gone. Dead of Winter picked up three awards including best game so in its honor I brought it along. I was the betrayer but never got a change to do any betraying because the game beat us too quickly. So many deaths and so little morale. It was a harsh winter.

Demetri made his not so triumphant return to IpBoG, where he played Citadels and was assassinated for something like five turns in a row while Alex had a run away lead.

Alex brought Rattus, which made its IpBoG debut. I played a quick Sushi Go before finishing off the night with a few games of Lost Legacy. Matt won all of them. Others played Luchador!, Fluxx and Tragedy Looper.

This week the stars finally aligned and Gemma came on a night that I'd brought Abyss so she finally got to play it again. For some reason I quite like winning at Abyss. I think Dan does too and this time he won. I scraped second place. His turn came just before mine and he kept sweeping in and recruiting the lords I'd planned on getting.

But this was to be the end of Dan's winning streak and the start of mine. We played Blueprints next and I won by a mile. Followed by Biblios which I won by another mile. And then a couple of games of Sushi Go which I won both of.

Danny was playing his usual affair of Luchador! and Tragedy Looper. I hear rumours of people playing Pandemic although I didn't witness it myself. This week also saw Zombicide, a game that's not made it to IpBoG in around a year.

The night was finished off with a few games of The Resistance including the Hostile Intent expansion. If there's a correlation between how loud a group is being and how much fun they're having (which sounds pretty likely) then Hostile Intent must be the funnest expansion around.

Bi-weeky Blogging

Welcome to what seems to be fast becoming the bi-weekly Ipswich Board Gamers blog! Although the group is still weekly I've found myself with less and less time recently to write up between meet ups. You'd be surprised how long it takes to bash out a couple of hundred words and then not proof read them at all.

Let's get right to it. Last week I played Carcassonne. It's an okay game but I'm not it's biggest fan. I'm also not its best player and it showed - I came last. I think maybe Alex came first. He always seems to come first at games, so yeah, let's say it was Alex. We played it with the full complement of five players, I think maybe it's a bit of a weird game with five players. None of us could really complete any castles bigger than two or occasionally three tiles.

Anyway, next up was The Sheriff of Nottingham. I spent my sheriff turns doing my best sheriff impressions and forgetting to watch what cards people were swapping out. I don't think I came last in this one but I definitely didn't come first. I'm putting that down to my lack of attention.

We finished off with a couple of games of No Thanks! I think I actually managed to win one of them. Dan pointed out the fact that the cards were not well worn, but showed signs of use. I think this is a testament to what a great game it is. Such a quick, simple game but one of my favorites.

I'd by lying if I said I could remember what anyone else played last week. Oh, except Fluxx, some people were playing that. I guess if I'm not going to do a blog every week I really should note down what games are played. I guess on to this week...

I started off with Tuvalu. In true Alex style, Alex won. He's since bought himself his own copy and I'm pretty sure he's been thinking up strategies on his own, like some sort of chess grand master. While we played this, others were playing The Resistance, Love Letter and Fluxx.

Afterwards I played Abyss. I think a couple of the lords might be overpowered. I think I might have got both of them. No one else stood a chance. I gathered my lords and bided my time before obtaining a location at the last possible minute, making sure my lords' powers remained in effect as long as possible.

After, a game of Power Grid was being set up but I think it was soon packed away again, it was getting too late in the evening to start a game of that length. Instead, Citadels came out. Although this game can take a deceptively long time to play, this is only usually with a high player count.

I ended the night with a seven player game of Shadow Hunters. This game was actually in danger of taking too long. People were playing conservatively. I was a shadow and managed to take out a hunter but soon after one of my fellow shadows was also killed. Before anyone else was revealed Dan triggered his neutral ability, winning him the game.

All Hail The Kingmaker

Two weeks since the last blog, this means you'll be getting a double dose of IpBoG goodness this week! The weekend before last was the UK Games Expo and a few IpBoG regulars attended. Johnny and Danny had both picked up new games while they were there, both of which I think are by English designers.

Johnny had picked up Frankenstein's Bodies and Danny had got Luchador! Mexican Wrestling Dice. I played Luchador while the others played Frankenstein's Bodies. Luchador comes with the option of laying a flat two dimensional wrestling ring or a full IMAX 3D ring. Naturally we donned our 3D glasses and and played in the maximum number of dimensions the game would allow. Games last about ten minutes and I lost both games I played. The game is a kind of Yatzee style luck-fest. But a fun luck-fest never the less.

Afterwards we played Modern Art. It's an auction game and a pretty pure one. It was Mike's game and he was the only one that had played before but towards the end of the game he'd hardly won any auctions. However, it turns out he knew exactly what he was doing. Everyone else had been vastly over valuing the items and Mike had wiped the floor with us.

The others were knee deep in Lost Legacy. I'm not sure which one, I think Alex may have bought a new version. Or perhaps two new versions. So we played a few games of The Resistance. Some people said some things, some stuff happened. You know? The Resistance.

Now on to the the next week. Danny had brought along Luchador and some more of that was played followed by Tragedy Looper. Danny was the bad guy as always but this time he was foiled in his evil deed. Danny had pimped Tragedy Looper since the last time it had appeared at IpBoG. The cardboard tokens had been replaced by wooden cubes imported from Germany. That's dedication!

Mike once brought Taluva for me to play as he thought I'd like it. It turns out I did and wanted to get myself my own copy but it was pretty hard to get hold of. Well, I finally managed it and so brought my copy along. It almost feels like an abstract game although it's not abstract, it has a sort of island settlement building theme. It's so nice, we played it twice! The first time it was either going to be me or Alex to win and it was basically up to Dan. If he blocked me Alex would win but if he didn't I would win. He blocked me, thanks a lot Dan. In our second game it was getting to the last round of the game and it looked like Alex was going to win but on my final turn I managed to play all of two types of building which ends the game and is an instant win.

We finished up the night with Blueprints which made its first appearance it IpBoG. It's a game where you build towers out of dice and Danny is actually some sort of real life architect. This must have helped in some way because he ended up winning by a mile.

Some Sort of Title

Hi, and welcome to some sort of blog post. This week some people came and we played a bunch of games. Pretty much the same as every week.

This time we I started off playing Diskworld: Ankh-Morpork. In this game every player has a hidden role and different roles have different win conditions. You are trying to complete your condition without giving away which role you are, whilst trying to work out other players' roles and stop them from winning. With a lot of the roles, you have to satisfy the condition at the start of your turn. This proves hard when there are a bunch of other players' turns before it comes round to you again. We were about to run out of cards and come to the end of the game. In a last all or nothing attempt to satisfy my conditions I accidentally satisfied Felixstowe Dan's conditions. His turn came directly after mine and having no one between to fix my mistake I won him the game.

While this was going on others were playing The Resistance and Bang! Another group were playing Pandemic and, from what I understand, beat it on the medium toughness.

After Diskworld we played a four player game of Star Realms. Teacher Dan got himself an unbeatable combo, playing all the cards in his deck on every turn. He'd gone for the blue faction and was not only dealing about twenty damage on every turn, but also healing himself by twenty every turn too. As is usually the way with unbeatable combos, he ended up beating everyone else and won the game.

Towards the end of the night Danny was going through the rules of Tragedy Looper. The first play through will no doubt come next week.

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!

Eliminating the Impossible

I arrived to find some regulars mid way through a game of Love Letter. Someone's new purchase, I think. Everyone should own a copy as far as I'm concerned.

More people arrived and we split into groups. I honestly don't remember what was played this week. I think some people played Cosmic Encounter but I know for a fact I played Sucking Vacuum, a game where you have to grab your space suit, and be the first pair to make it to the escape pod. Unless you happen to have the auto-pilot which can substitute for a second player. I picked up the auto-pilot on my first turn. Keeping this information to myself, Theo soon loaded fuel data into the pod. After goading another playing into attacking him, I finished Theo off, stole half his space suit and ran for the escape pod. I get the feeling most games probably last a lot longer but I had luck and deviousness on my side.

Some of the other guys were playing The Resistance, this time with the additional plot cards to spice things up a little. Dan managed to get a game of his favorite, Power Grid.

I played A Study in Emerald, a Martin Wallace game, based on the Neil Gaiman story of the same name. It's a kind of Sherlock Holmes and Cthulhu mash up. And also a kind of deck builder and area control mash up. But it's not the simplest of games and we made the mistake of no one learning the rules before hand. We fumbled our way through but ultimately the game was ended when Mike totally misunderstood the win conditions and assassinated me, securing himself a guaranteed fail. I think the lesson to be learnt here is to make sure at least one person knows how to play the game beforehand.

I left just are the final few people were finishing a game of Werewolf. I'll be back next week nice and early though, for that King of Tokyo tournament I've been hearing so much about.

Radioactive Myans

An ever growing 18 people turned up this week. We might even make the dizzying heights of the first ever IpBoG sometime soon and have 20 attendees. What we did to drive people away that first week I'll never know!

This week we split into four groups playing Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar, The Manhattan Project, Bang! and Elder Sign. For me it was a toss up between Tzolk'in and The Manhattan Project, both games I'd wanted to play for a while. In the end I opted for The Manhattan Project with Steve and Dan. It was our first time playing for all of us unless you count Steve's solo run through to learn the rule. I kind of do because he slightly knew what he was doing whereas Dan and I were just playing with uranium like Duran Duran was still in fashion. The first half of the game went badly for me, I didn't get the right combinations of buildings early on and no new buildings were coming in. I did my usual worker placement analysis paralysis of not knowing what to do because all choices looked equally bad to me. Steve was racking up yellowcake and Dan was racking up airstrikes. Not considering me a threat, Dan concentrated hard on bombing Steve while Steve furiously tried to construct replacement buildings. This brought in new buildings for me and I managed to get an engine going at last. It came down to what looked like the last round or two where either Steve or Dan were going to win. Just to be on the safe side Dan called in an air strike and bombed my uranium enrichment plants. It came to my turn and I used the espionage track for the first time in the game, allowing me to send a worker onto another player's building. I sent him onto Steve's uranium enrichment plant giving me enough uranium to build two bombs in a single turn winning the game, although perhaps a little underhandedly. It was my poor playing at the start that made me seem like so little of a threat and I'd by lying if I said that was my plan all along but a win's a win never the less.

Andy had brought in Tzolk'in, a highly rated Euro with spinning wheels. I don't know much else about it except that it was a close game with Andy being beaten to first place by a single point.

Newcomer Will played using his expert dice rolling skills to lead his team to victory in Elder Sign. Proving you can never have enough dice rolling, after Elder Sign they launched into what turned out to be an hour long game of King of Tokyo. Games of this length are normally unheard of with King of Tokyo, usually playing out in under half an hour. Proving his dice rolling skills were no fluke, Will won that game too.

The others played Bang! with Johnny winning as the Sheriff. This was followed up by The Resistance. Proving that you can also never have enough hidden role games, they followed this with Werewolf, a game that seems mostly to be about drumming on the table with your eyes closed. After a game or two some others joined as their games finished. I don't know how many games were played in total but there certainly was a lot of drumming.

When we were finally done with The Manhattan Project we played a couple of games of Coup before heading home. There are still plans for a King of Tokyo tournament soon, probably not next week but maybe the week after. We've just got to hope Will can't make it that week or no one else will stand a chance.

Clockwork Zeppelins

Almost every week Dan's been bringing City of Iron but it's never got to the table. In his own admission, it's his dirty little steam punk secret. This week however, it finally got played. It's a monster of a game, sprawling out across the whole table. Theo ended up winning by a landslide, presumably by building the most clockwork zeppelins or something.

I jumped into a quick game of Star Fluxx, which is perhaps the best of all the Fluxx spin offs but still ultimately still just Fluxx. Some cards were drawn, some rules were changed, all of a sudden somebody won.

More people turned up and I splintered off to play Seasons with the late arrivals while the others played Bang followed by a few games of The Resistance.

I'd been wanting to try Seasons for a long time. Through most of the game I had no idea if what I was doing was good or bad. Everyone was being shunted up and down the score track although I seemed to be being shunted down a little more often than my opponents. At the end of the game extra points are awarded for the cards played previously and I somehow manged to get myself a surprise lead miraculously winning the game.

We finished just as City of Iron was coming to an end. Those of us that were left fitted in a couple of games of Coup before closing time. I don't know who won but it certainly wasn't me.

Chicken Coup

There's been a lot of talk about Coup, a Kickstarter by the same company that released IpBoG staple The Resistance. It's been out of print of a while but I noticed it was back in stock last week and immediately put in an order for it. It came on Monday morning so I brought it to Cult that evening. I arrived early and immediately launched into a game with Matt and Muir. It's a short game that you can get through in about ten minutes. I like to think I won but I really can't remember. Johnny arrived and we played a second game. I like to think I won the second game too but I probably didn't. We hit 15 people this week with 4 newcomers. I'm still dreaming of the day we hit the dizzying heights of 21 like the first ever meetup.

We split into two groups with the larger of the two playing Skull and Roses. I opted for Lords of Waterdeep. Although Waterdeep gets played a lot it was my first time playing it. I'm not always a huge worker placement fan (I find the abundance of choices overwhelming) but this game I enjoyed. Adam's Lord gained extra victory points for building and he played this strategy hard. I don't think he completed one quest in the whole game. All building spaces were filled and I think only a couple were occupied by other players. He was trailing behind on the points track, hoping to make up for it with bonus points at the end of the game. After a slow start I sped into the lead. Nothing could stop me, or so I thought. Muir sped up behind me, closing the gap. For a while there was a cold war going on, I had a mandatory quest I wanted to play on him but I knew he had one too and as soon as I played mine he'd play his back. On the last round he played his on me, also revealing that he had an influence card that would remove a mandatory quest if played on him, rendering mine pretty much useless. I completed the mandatory quest but Muir had crept into the lead. I completed one final quest but could't quite catch up. It was all down to the bonus scoring. Adam's strategy ultimately didn't pay off, although he wasn't last he was far from me and Muir. I scored well, putting me over 20 points ahead but Muir fared well too, placing him just in front and securing him first place.

After Skull and Roses the table next to us had been having the loudest couple of games of The Resistance I think we've ever had. People were really getting into the bluffing and discussions. The maximum 10 players were involved and the game really seemed to shine. There was one win for the resistance and one for the spies.

A few people left and we split into 3 different groups. The Works have had some budget Rio Grande titles in recently and I picked up Havana for £10 . It's a role selection game, a kind of cross between San Juan and Citadels, and well worth every penny. This was a tense game, it took me a long time to get off the ground and score a single point. It looked like Dan was a sure winner but everyone teamed together, using their actions so block his attempts. I was paying so much attention to his game that I missed a combination that would have won me the game. Instead Rob made the play, constructing three buildings in a single turn. However, in the end our valiant efforts were in vain and we couldn't stop Dan from claiming victory.

Next to us Matt and co. had been playing Pandemic and saved the world on the normal difficulty. Although Pandemic isn't as tough as the notoriously hard Ghost Stories, still not a simple feat.

The third table had been playing Alien Frontiers, one of the early Kickstarter board game success stories. Although not the version from the original Kickstarter, it was the second pressing with the Kickstarter-style miniatures instead of tokens. Adam won.

There was just enough time to get a couple more games of Coup in. I might have won them both, I really don't remember. But I do remember that I won the final game. It came down to just me and Dan, both with a single card left. I had been bluffing for the last few turns and it was going in my favor. If I kept up with the bluff I would be able to call a coup and take Dan out. Dan was about to call me on it but a turn too late, I stopped bluffing, grabbed a final extra coin and coup'ed  him out of the game.

Go Big or Go Home

11 people made it down this week. The company I work for has a Kiev branch and the guys from there were visiting our office. A few of them are avid board gamers and came along to see how the Ipswich guys do it.

Well, very similarly it turns out as we started off with The Resistance, a game they were already familiar with. With its roots in the Russian game of Werewolf it's not too surprising. The first game was won by the resistance. In the second game the leaders of the first three rounds were all spies. The resistance never stood a chance. The third game was won by the resistance.

During The Resistance a few new faces turned up so we played Mascarade, a game that will play up to 12 people, to get everyone involved. This game relies on memory and thrives on the chaos caused by large player counts. One of our Ukrainian visitors, Denis, won after following the cheat round the table and using his power to win with just ten coins.

After this we split into two groups. I played 7 Wonders with a couple of the new attendees. We were all sure Ed was going to win, going for a heavy research approach but on the last round I managed to play some good guild cards racking me up enough points to take the lead.

The others played King of Tokyo. It looked like it was a lost cause when newcomer Cathy (I might have got your name wrong, I'm so sorry!) decided to go big, rolling for a one in a million combination (actually, I think I was told it was 2 in 46656). It paid off, winning her the game. The final game of the night was a quick game of Fluxx with another win for Cathy.

And then we went home.