Black Friday

Black Friday is here, which for us Brits means mostly nothing, but for the Yanks means full contact no rules shopping. Fatalities are optional. But enough of turkey fuelled rage shopping, what happened with the games this week ?

A civilised thirteen souls for this weeks gaming where Cyclades and Caverna rubbed shoulders with unexploded cows, a delegation of some Lords of Waterdeep and some abstract Kingdom Building.

Cyclades

Robin and Bondy got to experience Caverna this week, the former trying a hardcore weapons strategy, and the latter attempting a maverick no tunnel building direction.

I am a fan of weapons in Caverna, but this week with the responsibility of first player landing on my shoulders I declared that I would be ignoring weapons completely and going for a peaceful extreme. Rich following me ended up doing the same - however he had the cheek to consistently berate me for copying him - and getting things before him, despite the turn order being what it was. Pfft.

A tight game ensued with Robin reaping huge weaponry rewards on just about every turn and looking increasingly strong as time went on, and myself and Rich building decent farm and food  bases up. Bondy went for early chambers and furnishing - but didn't achieve anything with it, he largely filled his mountain with trash that wouldn't help him at game end, and by the time the points were being calculated he was well shy of the front runners, and ironically enough having tried to concentrate on furnishing his mountain, was the only one with an unfinished cave system.

Caverna, Bondy's Dwarves concentrate on interior decoration

All was not entirely futile for Mr Bond however, in a series of half assed end moves he managed to screw me over royally and rob me of the final points I needed to take the game. Rich instead got the first place - and threw insults and rude gestures my way at having apparently blocked him from better scoring - and Robin with his weapons came in a very strong second. I was left in third, half a dozen points behind Rich ( Bondy blocked me from 8 points !! ).

Cool game.

Resistance finished the evening, Rich, Richard and newcomer Chris taking on the wiles of the evil doers. Team good secured an easy victory however - a fourth win in a row for the good guys - as poor Rich leaked all sorts of tells for the second week running - turning red when questioned about being a spy - and Richard made one of those Why Did I Say That early game tells confessing that at least he wasn't the assassin this game - but the implication being he was still a bad guy. Despite the two of them then trying to play it sweet it was pretty obvious what was going on, and Chris telegraphed his role with a series of perfect spy voting. Oh dear.

Last week I was the probable obvious Merlin, but Team Bad convinced themselves to knife Matt ( Percival ) instead. Wrong. This week, I was the probable obvious Merlin, and this time Team Bad knifed me ( Percival ). Wrong. Ha ha. Still, you have to worry about your life expectancy as Percival eh... ?

Mascarade was toyed with being played but failed, and Divinaire got half way out before being swept off the table by Resistance.