NoBoG was in danger of becoming a men’s meeting as we sat around and discussed politics, watched Punk Rich open his mail and discussed who was the hairiest. Then Pete turned up for the first time since the birth of his daughter Alea. He started talking about babies, the consistency of poo and breast-feeding, so we quickly set up the tables in gaming formation and broke out Tikal and Fresco.
Tikal is an old favourite down the club and, for those of you who care, is played using the auction rules. Crocker and Jimmy favour this rule. Original Rich does not. Everyone else had little to say on the matter. Anyway, Original Rich narrowly won, despite the auction rule, Pete came in a close second, Crocker third and Phil who, by his own admission, over bid for everything, was last.
Fresco is not an old favourite, but was making its debut at the Ribs. It isn’t really anything we haven’t seen before – except maybe the theme… Players are striving to paint a Fresco on the ceiling of a church and employ apprentices to buy and mix paints, do the painting and do some other work on the side. How hard you work them is a fine balance - either get them up early in order to get the best locations and paints, but you have to pay them more and they start to feel overworked, or choose to leave them to snooze until 9am, thus keeping up their morale and paying them less money at the risk of losing out on the best stuff. The game simulates this with simultaneous worker placement, turn order manipulation and a morale chart. It got a good reception from everyone who played and we all agreed that for a middle-weight euro it has a lot going for it and even has a coherent theme/mechanics match up. I enjoyed it, but maybe that’s because I won, beating Jimmy by a solitary point. Punk Rich ambled in third followed by Dave.
Beer: I had several pints of Brew Dog’s Alpha Dog. A dark-amber-red bitter. Malt, caramel and fruit flavours all in there, but with room for the hops. Tasty, tasty brew. Doesn’t come in a stuffed squirrel though. I rate it a 9 and compare it to Container – a game I probably enjoy more than most, which is also produced by a slightly “controversial” manufacturer.
2 comments:
I must apologise to Pete - I'm sure I've spelt your daughter's name wrong. Though I am disappointed that he hasn't actually named her after a games publisher.
I think Ayla is actually the correct spelling.
Ha! I was just having a read back through some of the old blog posts and had a guss at when I'd first gone back after she was born and I hit this. It's Eila, but that's an unconventional spelling and is essentially a different name with a different meaning but the same pronunciation as Isla. Just in case anyone else ever reads this and wondered.
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