Yo Ho Ho And A Bottle Of Rum

I turned up a bit late to Cult this week to find everyone mid-game. People were playing Seasons, Magic: The gathering, Splendor and, of course, Secret Hitler.

After a bit of a wait I managed to join the group that was finishing up Slendor. I played Sea Of Clouds and Paperback, both making their IpBoG debut.

Sea Of Clouds is a flying pirate themed game. It makes use of the Winston Drafting mechanism created by Richard Garfield for Magic: The Gathering combined with a  bit of set collection and a bit of push your luck. It has a kind of a 7 Wonder feel about it. It's pretty light but pretty fun and plays in under and hour.

Paperback is a deck builder where the cards have letters on them. The aim of the game is to spell words with the cards in your hand. generally more letters will give you more money to spend however some of the cards give you points for positioning or allow you to draw extra cards. There are also a couple end game goals and I managed to score both of them, just seeking into the lead. It's a pretty interesting take on deck building but with four people it seemed to drag, taking a couple of hours. Not the quick half an hour games I'm often used to with Dominion.

A bunch of other games were being played that I didn't get a chance to see but I'm pretty sure I spotted Mexica at some point.

UK Games Expo 2015

This weeks IpBoG took place the day after the 2016 UK Games Expo and a few people from the group attended.

One of those people was Mathew and he came back with a copy of the Spiel Des Jahres nominee Imhotep. I didn't play this at the club but I did manage to get a demo at the expo. Although it look similar to Container from last week it plays quite differently. It's a simple little game where your choices are to restock your quarry, put a brick on a boat, or send a boat to a harbor. Your bricks go on a the board and you get points for different patters in different harbors. The catch is that other people send might send your bricks somewhere where it doesn't help you at all. It's a pretty simple little game but pretty fun.

Alex brought along Season, a game I played once a long time ago but have since pretty much forgotten all about. It's a kind of drafting game but, as it was (mostly) our first time we played with preset cards. I remember the first time I played this I won. This time I came last.

As well as this we played Love Letter. But not just any Love letter, my super limited edition Love Letter with artwork by Ken Niimura. I hear this has just got a non-limited edition release so naturally I'm super disappointed by this. Nevertheless it's a fun game. Well, it usually is, this time Alex won every single round.

We finished off the night with some No Thanks! Other people were of course playing Secret Hitler and Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, the two most popular titles right now in the group. There was also some Choson, Codenames and Dominion. Some people were even playing Magic: The Gathering!

Hello, Sailor!

Two weeks worth of updates this time. Last week I started off with some more Deception: Murder in Hong Kong before moving on to Welcome to the Dungeon, a little push your luck game that i did terribly at. 

As usual the night started off with Secret Hitler. Others were playing Betrayal at House on the Hill, Ca$h 'n Gun$, Dominion, Pit and Timelines.

I ended the night with Container a game about producing, shipping and selling goods. At its core it's a bidding game. Goods are worth a different amounts to different people and you want to end up with the goods that are the most valuable to you. The twist is that the type of good you have the most of at the end of the game doesn't score anything. I got an early lead and somehow managed to keep it right up until the end.

In the second week so many games made their IpBoG debut. King's Forge, Tsuro and Las Vegas along with my new acquisition, Madame Ching. This was a bargain from the recent bunch of liquidated stock to be picked up by The Works. It's a pretty light little game when it comes down to it and there aren't that many choices to make. I didn't mind it thought and Dan seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. We both drew for first place with Dan beating me on the tie breaker.

There were some IpBoG classics too. I played Chinatown and For Sale and I saw others playing Tragedy Looper and Citadels.

Big Trouble In Little China

I'm back in the country and back to IpBoG so it's back to regular blogs with pictures. I arrive to find people playing Secret Hitler. It looked like a print and play version. I think it's a Kickstarter that's not been delivered yet but in the mean time print and play versions are taking the board gaming world by storm. As far as I can tell it's a sort of social deduction game à la The Resistance.

Rebecca had asked if I could bring in Takenoko so bring it in I did, but before we played that we played a quick game of Zaney Penguins. I finished off the night with Danny's new deduction game Deception: Murder in Hong Kong. He actually picked this up in Hong Kong where it's called CS Files. Thankfully the components still have English text on them otherwise figuring out the text would have been a deduction game in itself. I've not played Mysterium so I can't really comment but people have been saying it's a bit like Mysterium so maybe it is. It's a fifteen minute game and so never overstays it's welcome but we enjoyed it enough to play four or five games in a row.

Alex brought along Dominion, a game by Catan creator Klaus Teuber, as well as Patronize . Mike brought along Container which made it's IpBoG debut. As this there were a bunch of IpBoG classics: Dominion, Eight Minute Empire and Lords of Waterdeep.

While I Was Away

I've been away for three whole weeks so no pictures but here are some reports of what's been played in my absence.

Week 1

Tim:

I'll start. Quite a few of us arrived early so a nine player Secret Hitler game to start. Gloriously unembarrassed about identifying Nazis in a public space. Hitler was identified and stopped at the last possible moment. Then four player Celestia. New game I picked up. For a simple and pretty game its quite tense and tactical. Lot more fun than I expected. We felt like poker players.

Sacha:

Secret Hitler - as mentioned. For Sale, Pandemic, Quarriors, Chosŏn,Sheriff of Nottingham, Star Realms of course. Debuts from Spartacus and Imperial. Imperial we didn't completely finish but will try again another day. In other news, blog stylee, the Porter was off.

Week 2

Sacha:

Tottenham played Chelsea and wished they hadn't, Phillip kindly taught me star realms and now i can kick y'all's asses at that (yeah right!), played Mexica with Dan, Mike and Alex and drank too much Shiraz. Bar closed early due to bank holiday hours. 

Nathan:

Mike, Matt, Alex, Juliet and I played Dungeons and Dragons the board game, and Mafia de Cuba with Rebecca, Will and Danny.

Johnny:

Me, Sabrina, Danny, Rebecca and James played Pandemic (and lost, badly). Then Rebecca busted out an intricate little Korean steampunk deckbuilder called Chosŏn, and the Asian dream team (Danny and Sabrina) won that one. We played Danny's new Hong Kong CSI game Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, where Danny was the Forensic Scientist who steered the rest of the detectives into successfully determining that I was the murderer, and that I done it using tea leaves so I could steal the victim's scarf.

Week 3

Phillip:

Dan, Alex, Joe and I played castles of burgundy, other than that I saw Codenames and secret Hitler.

Nathan:

Mike, Myself, Jonny, Matt, Callum, Elliot and Rebecca played Coup, & when joined by Matt, James, Danny and Alex we played Secret Hitler. I believe Danny played Deception: Murder in Hong Kong.

Thanks to Sacha, Tim, Nathan, Johnny and Phillip for helping out. Back to the regular style updates from next week.