All Filler No Killer

So depending on who you believe, this week we either had 17 or 22 people this week. I say only 17 count but Dan disagrees. Apart from the potential extra 5 that Dan is counting I don't think we had any new attendees this week but it's getting a little difficult for me to keep track.

Last week Gemma said she wanted to play King of Tokyo, so as the super nice guys both Dan and I are, we'd both brought it in. I lead King of Tokyo while Dan set up Kemet. We played standard King of Tokyo without Dan's extra expansions because, to be totally honest, I couldn't remember exactly how they worked. I got taken out quickly after rolling all 6 dice three times and failing to get a single heart.

I was in fact out so quickly that Dan was still teaching the rules to Kemet. I think Dan is channeling some Egyption gods because he's winning every game of Kemet he plays recently and this week was no different. Note to self: make sure we gang up on Dan next time I play. The others had lowered the usual upstanding and civilised tone of the evening by playing Cards Against Humanity.

After King of Tokyo we split into two groups with one playing Splendor and the other playing Machi Koro, another dice rolling game of luck mitigation. In the same way it can go in King of Tokyo, due to no fault of his own, luck was not on Alex's side and he got left far behind. I thought I was bound to win, needing less than ten coins to buy my final landmark. The main contender to my victory was Demetri but he needed over twenty coins. I rolled a nine which would give me five coins and him ten. Instead of re-rolling I let Demetri get the ten, sure that no one else would roll another nine before his turn. How wrong I was, another ten was rolled giving us both the money required to win but his turn was before mine and my victory was stolen from me.

Mike arrived at his usual 8:30 and we launched into a game of No Thanks! followed by For Sale. Contrary to last week's success, Alex continued his losing streak, coming last in For Sale. I'm pretty sure I ended up winning but I played so many games I'm having a hard time remembering who won anything..

After this we played Hanabi. I'd played this a couple of times before but always with two or three people and I'd found it fiendishly hard. This time we were playing it with five people and found it much more enjoyable and forgiving.We actually ended up doing pretty well, playing all the cards and scoring something like 22 points but with a bit of accidental cheating when people let on more than they meant to. It's easily done in this game though.

After that we joined with a few other stragglers and played a seven player game of No Thanks! Strictly more players than the game can support but we removed five cards instead of nine and started off with less tokens and it still played pretty well.

I can't be sure of every game that was played this week but I know Johnny was running a game of Betrayal at House on the Hill. I also know Lost Legacy was played with two sets of the game in play. I know this because there was a drink related accident. Someone had split their drink all over the table, drenching Alex's cards. Luckily to avoid too much awkwardness it was James, Alex's brother, so I guess sibling rivalry dictates a series of headlocks and Chinese burns as punishment. Either that or James buys Alex new copies. I think that's probably what they're going with. This is the second drinks related accent that I'm aware of, the previous one involving my copy of Citadels but in that case the cards came off relatively unscathed. I guess we should try and make sure we put drinks on the sides, not on the tables to avoid such mishaps in the future.

Finally the mystery of the extra five players. Towards the end of the night some passers by borrowed Cards Against Humanity and played that for a while with Craig. I'm not counting it because they didn't come specifically for the club, it was just a happy accident. If they're back next week to play again then I'm counting them!

Expand, Exploit, Exterminate

Just like last week we got three newcomers and fourteen attendees. We've been getting quite a few newcomers this week so maybe we'll hit the mythical twenty-one.

Mike had mentioned on the facebook group that he'd be coming at 8:30, armed with Quantum. I really wanted to try this game out so I started off with some small filler games so I could pounce on Quantum as soon as it arrived. I started off playing No Thanks! but the deck wasn't shuffled very well so it was easy to get runs. In this game lowest score wins and I won by hardly taking any cards and having a few tokens, resulting in a minus score. We shuffled the deck (properly this time) and played another game. I managed a double win, getting the lowest score in this game too. Afterwards we played Yardmaster Express with Dan winning. Mike arrived and joined us for another game of Yardmaster with Dan getting a double win himself. Yardmaster is a pretty cool game but it comes with caboose cards which are shared goals and there are only four of them. The game really needs more caboose cards to add some variation.

While we were playing our fillers, Johnny was running Power Grid. I don't think he realised how little of the rules he remembered and had to spend the first half of the game buried in the rule book. Although it took a bit longer than expected, Johnny ended up winning.

Alex was running a game of Inkognito. Last week he said it was the game that Cludo should have been but when he described it to me it sounded more like Guess Who. Guess Clue, maybe? Apparently it's good but needs exactly four people and you play in pairs. Alex was paired with Cathy who ended up winning.

Mike had arrived and so brought out Quantum. It does a maximum of four people and we had five but it was getting late  and Gemma had to get going. That was until Alex came over to pick up Carcassonne and she jumped at the chance to play it. As soon as the Quantum box was opened everyone was far too excited about the dice. They're so big, like King of Tokyo dice, and all translucent. And the game! Well, it's sort of like a 4X game except not really because there's not much exploring. I guess it's more of a 3X game. I really enjoyed it but I could be biased as I won. It was a close game between me and Dan but I managed to place my final cube on what would have probably been the turn before he managed to. It would be a contender for one of the best games of 2014 if it wasn't for the fact that it was released in 2013.

All Hail the King

Turnouts are getting back up to speed again. With the addition of three newcomers this week we managed fourteen attendees.

Last week Alex asked me if I could bring Citadels along for him to try so this week I did. We started off with this as our first game. We played with four people because, although this game supports up to 7, it can drag with a high player count. Adam made off with a good start building 5 districts while everyone else only had two or three. Gemma quickly caught up and took the lead, building some districts worth 8 or 9 points. It ends up that Alex was the first to build 7 districts giving him the extra bonus points to win the game, beating me by a single point. While we played Citadels the others were playing Arctic Scavengers and Splendor.

After Citadels we broke out Skull and Roses. Again this was won by Alex. Alex owns both the Flying Garden and Starship variants of Lost Legacy. We played the Flying Garden version while another group played the other. I tried my hardest to hinder him but it was to no avail, not wanting to ruin his winning streak Alex won this game too. All hail Alex, king of board games.

When we were done with this the others were finishing up games of Carcassonne and Yardmaster Express so we joined together and combined both sets of Lost Legacy to play one final double sized game before leaving for the night.

The Last Draft

This week was a good week, we finally got back into double figures. With two newcomers we made it to 11 people.

I arrived to find some people already playing Munchkin. I'm not sure what variant it was, maybe zombies. This left seven of us so the only sensible plan of action was to play 7 Wonders. I started off slowly with neither me nor my neighbors having any wood or stone at all but in the third age I really lucked out getting a lot of free builds due to my previous cards. Dan and I went research crazy and both managed to get five of the same kind of symbol. I also managed to get one of each type of symbol too which edged my score above his, winning the game. Often with 7 Wonders if only one or two people go for research you can score pretty highly but it's a risky move because if people catch on they can block you by discarding research cards or using them to build wonders. A few research of different types is nowhere near as good as lots of a single kind.

After 7 wonders we split into three groups. Alex played Five Tribes, Dan played Kemet and I played another drafting game, Among The Stars. Among The Stars is pretty much a space based 7 Wonders. That is space in theme where you're building a space station as well as space in mechanism where you're arranging cards spatially. In this game there are two types of cards, those that trigger immediately and those that trigger at the end of the game. Dan and I had played mostly immediate cards whereas Johnny had gone for a more delayed approach. Johnny was sure he was losing but when it came to the final scoring he'd beaten us by a mile.

By the time we'd finished Among The Stars, Dan had already finished Kemet, a game that took us over two hours when I played it last. It seems Dan had devised a pretty decent strategy and made it to the victory condition in no time. Also there were less people playing it this time so that might have contributed.

Alex had won Five Tribes and had finished up the same time as Dan. By the time we were done with 7 Wonders everyone else was just finishing a game of Coup. I taught a couple of guys how to play Yardmaster Express while the rest played Lost Legacy. Unfortunately I taught Yardmaster Express incorrectly. Instead of drawing a card, playing a card and passing your hand to the next player I taught it like a 7 Wonders/Among The Stars style drafting game where everyone would play their hand in unison. Luckily the game still worked pretty well for the most part. I guess that's what happens when you play too many drafting games in one night.

Scooby Dooby Doo

Again only nine people this week. We seem to be having trouble making it into double figures recently. I have my fingers crossed for next week!

Johnny started off with another game of Betrayal at House on the Hill which seems to have become a bit of an IpBoG staple recently. I was playing Machi Koro at the time and Demtri turned up unexpectedly at our table. It turns out he was the betrayer but even he was no match for those meddling kids and was defeated before he got his evil way.

Machi Koro is a game of tableau building and dice throwing. It's pretty luck based but still pretty fun. I usually do pretty bad at it but I won for the first time. Maybe there is some skill involved after all!

After Machi Koro we played Yardmaster Express, a little fifteen minute card game of making trains. It's pretty simple but pretty fun. Maybe even more pretty fun than Machi Koro.

 Afterwards I played Pandemic while the others played 221b Baker Street. 221b Baker Street is a Sherlock Home themed deduction game. From what I understand it involves finding and solving crossword style clues and Dan used his awesome crossword solving skills to win.

Pandemic was a strange one. The starting diseases were all clustered in one area. I still don't know if this was a good or bad thing. Towards the end it looked like we were going to make it but then we realised we were going to run out of player cards. But then even before that we had a couple of chained outbreaks and the outbreak limit was reached.

Afterwards we played Machi Koro again. Philip had gone strong on red and purple cards allowing him to take money off other players. This ended up working well for him with the other players unable to get a decent amount of money and him quickly getting enough to build all landmarks, winning the game.