The End of 2013

This week was the last NoBoG evening for 2013, and on this final chance to game at the Ribs an outstanding 20 turned up, including a few new persons who we can only assume got lost on the way to their employers Christmas Do.

Four tables were setup, Betrayal at House on the Hill proving to be an early popular choice, followed by a debate over Lords of Waterdeep or Chaos in the Old World ( The Waterdeepian Lords eventually claimed supremacy ) on table two, and the classic stand in Powergrid on table three.

Meanwhile Matt overcome by possibly one too many pre Christmas celebrations declared that Hansa Teutonica hadn't been played in a while, and suggested that make it to the fourth table upstairs. It was here that newcomer Roxanne stumbled onto their game and was quickly engaged in an overwhelming display of abstract Euro cube shuffling. I'm not sure what it is lately with subjecting our newcomers to the gnarliest of cube crunchers we can - perhaps it's a developing newcomer hazing ritual.

Pete played in random Hansa fashion but ended in a reasonable first place with a nice key bonus - no big scores this game - Matt came in a good second, Roxanne a strong third, Nathan a fairly poor fourth, and me in a pathetic fifth. Oh dear. In my defence however I think I did a reasonable job of making sure the game wasn't too appallingly abstract crunchy for the new players.

Downstairs betrayal was already afoot in the spooky house where Ewan turned out to be some evil bat wrangler, feeding his pretty pets on the blood of the innocent explorers. The explorers were having none of it and called in the exterminators to win the game. The second outing found Nicky to be the evil doer, and in a strangely bat/rat type affair led her ever expanding rat horde to a glorious nibbletastic human devouring victory over the explorers.

A quick round of Mascarade upstairs was then followed by everyone grouping into two tables - some Saboteur 2 ing, with an evil evil Sam ousting his fellow Saboteurs at the end to claim a single glorious Saboteur victory, and for the second table the ubiquitous Resistance Avalon.

Resistance was a sorry affair with the bad guys once again losing helped on by some spytastic clangers. Matt as Merlin simply shut his mouth for the entire game, and let a logically perfect Pete figure out where everyone was. With Lady of the Lake and Merlin in the game, no sign of any bad guy help, and 2 of 3 of the spies being practical new players, it was always going to be a tough ride for Team Evil. In fact now I come to think of it, I have no idea why we so heavily favoured Team Good - some spurious suggestion by Pete to better cater to the new players seems in hindsight flawed when a good number of those new players were on Team Evil.

For those that did not attend, not only did you miss out on some great gaming, you also missed out on Robin's home made mince pies.

So 2013 is done for NoBoG, and the next session is probably shaping up to be the 6th 7th January 2014. Keep your eyes peeled to Twitter or the Blog for eventual confirmation as to when the next outing is.

Until then, Merry Christmas and may all your presents be game shaped.