They're Heeerrreee...

Fourteen for Tuesday this week, and eschewing any initial six player game madness we split into four smaller groups.

Dean brought along new game to review, The Witches - another one to add to the slowly expanding range of Discworld board games - and with three others set about fixing the ills of the Discworld.

The Witches

It seemed to get a fairly cool reception after play, although Barnaby was more enthused as it appealed to his Pratchett fu. The game is very light and doesn't offer a whole heap of choices - and to be fair to the game it's been marketed as a light family game, so it's not pretending to be something it isn't.

With its capability to play solo, co-operative or competitive as you like, there are good options there for a young family to get out an interesting game with strong female protagonists - if that's your thing and have a family with a bucketful of young impressionable daughters. Dean will be writing up a review of this game soon, so when he gets done we can include a link and you can see what he thought.

Continuing the perhaps early Halloween theme, the next table over had Ghost Stories, a co-op game that sees players fighting off waves of ghosts with Taoist powers all to protect their village.

Ghost Stories

The game has a Chinese theme to it, and if you've ever seen the film Mr Vampire or its like, you know the score. If you've never watched Mr Vampire.... then do so immediately !

 The game is known for being tough to beat, however the team of four aced the game the first time round, played with more difficult settings in the second round only to beat that too.

Cue Ghostbusters music. Who you gonna call ? Nicky, Ed, Rich and Ewan apparently.

After the supernatural fare on these tables, play was switched up to Colossal Arena for The Witches players - a hidden betting kind of game, and the bonkers Unexploded Cow for the former Taoists.

All of this left Pete, Ed and Simon to play Tzol'kin - where you probably have to fear for the lives of Ed and Simon - and an almost game of Race for the Galaxy - which was rudely interrupted before it could quite start and replaced with The Resistance instead.

Six headed into the melting pot of Arthurian Resistance, where after four much argued missions, the forces of good held the day. But what of Merlin - the good guys may have congratulated themselves on a job well done, but all would be ashes if the evil do-ers assassinated Merlin at the end of it all. But it seems Resistance experience is beginning to sink in - Rich, a good guy but not Merlin, had ably run a good smoke screen presenting himself as the obvious target, covering the ass of Ed#2 ( a mean feat given no one knew who Merlin was ). The bad guys duly took the bait and attempted to assassinate Rich. Wrong ! Ed#2 had thrown a few mistakes out there to put off the bad guys, Ed#1 admitting it had crossed his mind that he might have been Merlin, but no, Rich was the obvious - wrong - target. Very well done to the Knights. Boo ya sux to the Mordred antagonists.

Upstairs I played Yedo with Richard and Paul. A closely fought game, the lead changed hands several times, with the final score so close that it was only a marginal bonus card point score at the end that nailed victory for me. I had a much better game this time round - was placed into the unfavourable first turn position after the first third of the game - but as I have suspected in previous games, I think this did me a favour as the game progressed. Preparing for a difficult black mission from the start, and getting some early VP buying under my belt made all the difference here. Richard also early prepared for a difficult mission which paid off, but crucially at the end of the game both Richard and Paul had stacks of unused money, which if it had been able to been converted into VPs would have been a game winner.

Early prep of at least one difficult mission seems to be a real help in Yedo. I suspect those that start slow, plan well at the start and then burn at the end stand the best chance of victory - certainly Ewan who followed this strategy to the letter several weeks ago trounced both me and Tom.

Lastly, for those not engaged in Resisting, Cash and Guns made it to table, six armed criminals arguing about the split of loot from their nefarious deeds. Bullets were fired, accusations made, Dean was shot up early but didn't quite die, and somehow by the almost end I had amassed a nice lead of 80k versus 50k. With two rounds left, it became apparent that surely, I would be facing a lot of guns. I decided to make a pre-emptive speech about how it wouldn't help anyone if all guns were on me, and you had to think about who was going to rake it in and win assuming I wasn't there. Blah.

It seemed to work as no one pointed their gun at me. Result.

Questions were asked as to why no one was pointing their gun at me, the cash leader. I offered the suggestion that I was a nice guy and it was perfectly fine not to be aiming guns at me.

My nice guy theory didn't seem to go down well with some. Final round Sam and Dean filled me with lead for daring to come up with the suggestion and killed me outright. A triumphant Sam rushed to take my - now empty - gun, and as the cash was totalled the game ended in a three way tie. Sam wanted a default win for being in a tying spot with *more guns than everyone else*. Probably a fair point. The real cash leader was dead on the floor in a pool of blood. Bah. Next time I'll duck.