The Ordeals of Walker

Business as usual last week at the Mash Tun, a comfortable 53 NoBoGers were in attendance to get their gaming groove on, Bondy failed to appear after promises to the contrary and Tom Ist aka International Man of Mystery and suspected MI5 agent turned up after a fair hiatus to challenge all to Blood Rage. I can only presume his hiatus was down to International Travel once again in pursuit of his cover job of piloting submersibles around various bits of ocean floor.

The fearsome Blood Rage ! Look at those bloodthirsty players !

Stu ended up winning Blood Rage - but once again, who knew, we are left to contemplate that all these calm seemingly courteous Norfolk dwelling people actually make excellent blood curdling vikings. Pete declared his strategy in the game had been on focusing on infrastructure - in a game that tells tales of blood letting vikings and rewards you for epic deaths - which just goes to show you can take Pete out of the Euro but you can't take the Euro out of Pete, and Tom declared the game stupid in so much as he completely fumbled two turns of which the game lasted three or so. A bit of gamer projection going on there. But all round thumbs up for Blood Rage again.

They finished with a card game about collecting foxes, which looked anything like foxes to me and appeared to be cats. Stu assured me they were foxes - despite having no muzzles to speak of - and that they had a cunning look to them. Yes. So cunning in fact that they appear to have disguised themselves as cats. Tom redeemed himself by winning the fox / cat game, with Nicky disgusted at coming a dismal last.

Meanwhile Lewis was excitedly bouncing around with Smash Up Munchkin edition, a game that promised to be the mash up of both ( Smash Up Mash Up Munchkin ? say that quickly 10 times ) for which he was looking to recruit some seasoned Mash Up players to test out the new more involved game.

Smash Up Munchkin - the ordeal aftermath. It was fun ! No. Really.

Some three and a half hours later they had finished the Smash Up Mash Up - so the new game seems to have inherited the length of Munchkin - with exhausted faces all round. There seemed to be some self assuring going on post game that they had indeed enjoyed it. It wasn't particularly convincing. Lewis however was very pleased with the game, although, even he I suspect knew it was a bit of an ordeal, like some mythic endeavour of the gods, the seven trials of Smash Up Munchkin.

Luke took some newcomers away to give them some rootin tootin, bullet shooting, punch flying shenanigans in the ever excellent Colt Express, which all enjoyed, and I got to sit down with Broom Service again where I finagled my way from last place into game winning first place by end game.

Broom Service and a win for me. Which I think we can all
agree is the only important thing here.

I'm on a roll with Broom Service - undefeated. I am the bravest witch...

We then got to play the epically backstabby Lifeboats, where some first turn treachery saw me thrown out of a boat to drown, and Andrew was the continual victim of having no spaces left to climb back into and having his sailors drown.

It was all very funny. Unless you were Andrew. Then not so much.

Lots of other games on offer, which to be frank, I only half noticed, I think there was a game of Keyflower, and some ninja assassiny type card game, and possibly two games of Castles of Mad King Ludwig again, and even some classic laid back Dixit.

Things wrapped up pretty early this week, most of the pub emptying out before 11pm - light weights - which only left a small group of us to play a bit of Werewolf until the witching hour. Good fun.

Charlotte has a request for us, for those using the top mezzanine "best table in the house" table, can you fold it up and put it away after you are done - it lives just around the corner. The poor girl is half the size of the table and has trouble wrestling with it every week. Failing that, just let me know and I will put it away.

As ever, I leave you with the gallery, lots of pics from Monika this week ! Great work.