Cows & Cows & Board Games

HULLOOOOOOOOOOOO! I'm writing this from the magic of a train, which means I keep getting distracted by cows. Typically the cows are in the fields rather than on the train. The train has just reversed direction at Ely and I'm now facing the wrong way, which I'm rather miffed at. Anyway. This is a NoBloG not a travel diary, I suppose. This week I'll be sending you missives regarding Plague Inc, Trajan, Camel Up, Sons of Anarchy, Plague Inc (again) and Adrenaline. Ooh look, horses.

First let's conquer the world the infectious way in Plague Inc, which is apparently so good that two separate groups of people were marching (in boots carrying foot-and-mouth, no doubt) their microscopic minions across the globe this week. Let's start with the front-room group, which was already pretty infected when I arrived. As I draw up, Matt fails his roll (his disease still being pretty pathetic so he only had a one-in-six chance) — disappointing for him because in his words "it would have pissed Lewis and JD off" if he'd got it. He is, however, the filthiest of all the players at this point, having acquired soe bonus infectiousness along the way which has bagged him a presence in a bunch more countries. Why are we going so slowly? Hey — dragonflies. Lewis on his turn talks a little excursion to Argentina then (paradoxically, in my view) gains cold resistance. But he wants to take one of those fashionable breaks in Iceland so it makes sense. With his low lethality he also is unable to succeed in his rolls to kill the countries he's managed to break out all over.

Thumbs up for disease!

Disease points

In the second game of Plague Inc — Sean tells me there had to be two "just because we wanted to kill everyone!" — Sean and Jake have a comfortable lead but are battling bitterly for first place. As this is being explained, Katherine is deliberating: "I just can't decide where to infect now!" But after having made up her mind picks up a mega-bonus which might throw the final tally, so confidently expressed mere moments ago, into doubt. I leave after being given cause to doubt the players' understanding of basic biology the advice is given, "remember you can't infect Kenya! They have diplomatic immunity." After a short pause it is pointed out that just regular old immunity immunity would probably suffice.

Because obliterating humanity once
is not enough.

Next up I have a look at a suitably imperious Trajan where it seems the eponymous emperor has been replaced by a Great Old One — one of the lesser-known dictators of the Roman Empire. John is getting confused about which place he's in, pretending to be last when actually not. All part of the meta-gaming strategy to get his opponents to go easy on him. Alfie is actually winning, whilst Pete insists they're all winning — awwww. However Pete actually has loads of bonus actions lined up so maybe he too is trying to divert attention. After all this motivational muttering, John still seems sad but nevertheless takes a bonus to hammers (or something, I'm just going by the symbol on the card. A bonus for do more break smash sounds good though.) Also this synergises with his end-game bonus (which unlike in a lot of games, are public information.) I leave them to work out who is winning the old-fashioned way — by playing the game to the end — and to their fate with the Ancient Horror.

Trajically Trajan. Tragic because
everyone's gone mad with terror.

Next up it's Camels. Which are also up. I've got no idea what's going on — they seem to be humping each other, and it's not even past the watershed. I am scandalised. When I enquire about what is actually happening, Ellie informs me that "it's a complete disaster" — presumably because she is not doing as well as she hoped. At this point accusations start flying: "that's cheating! You didn't get what you want and you rolled it again!" says Katie. Ellie retorts that she "rolled it wrong," which is an excuse I really would like to try in the future. Katie on the other hand is upset because "everyone was against me." "That's because you're winning." Amid much scrutiny due to the aforementioned incident, Dan rolls his die very carefully and with a touch of flourish, but I don't think it helped. I didn't learn anything about the rules but the game involves high emotions and a lot of swearing so it's probably good.

Oh my.

Woof. This doesn't have anything to do with
board games but who's gonna complain?!

The game of Sons of Anarchy seems disappointingly orderly and calm. Dave nevertheless asserts that it's caused such anger that the table has descended into gang violence, though I think he's getting confused between the game and reality again. Dave has three contrabands (i.e. cocaines). Contraband (cocaine) you can sell for cold hard cash (money) which is probably good. Dave then promotes a guy to have a bike. I thought that it was rather iniquitous to have gang members cycling around but apparently he got a motorbike which is probably more thematically appropriate. James on the other hand has no money at all but an absolute ton of cocaine — presumably piled up in some kind of parody of Scarface. Then a fight breaks out. No, in the game, not in real life. Both parties secretly commit a certain number of gang members and perhaps some guns, and roll dice. The total strength determines the winner, and bringing guns to what is no longer a knife fight also kills off some of the opponent's fighters.

Anarchy in the Mash Tun

Money! Drugs!

And now if I may get your Adrenaline pumping I will describe the game I played. Though I've left writing this up longer than normal and been distracted by a lot of farm animals so the details are getting a bit fuzzy. I'm pretty sure Benjamin was the sheep... Anyway the game started as it usually does with a scramble for the good weapons. I ended up with a Power Glove (run at people and punch them in the face), a Heat Seeking Missile and the localised area-of-effect Shockwave. In retrospect I probably should have found myself a medium-range weapon as positioning became very difficult — I either wanted to be right in people's faces or as far away as possible. As the game's mechanics tend to ensure, everyone got killed a similar number of times, not that being killed really does anything bad to you anyway. James zipped around the map using his Cyberblade (which allows you an extra move after you whallop someone with it) while Colin somehow avoided getting shot for ages.

Rarrr, kill 'em all!

Once the end-game phase was triggered, Colin and I had also managed to forget to actually kill anyone — Benjamin and James being the only two to have done so. Colin also unfortunately misunderstood the end-game and thought he would have an extra turn, missing out on the possibility of getting some last-minute points. As it happened if he had done so he might have inadvertently handed me the victory instead of James. The result of my ridiculous length of time trying to work out how to kill Benjamin was "you can't," requiring one more point of damage than I was able to do. In the end I came joint second, so that was OK. I've played Adrenaline 3 times now and I'm still not entirely sure what I think. It's definitely fun but it seems to be missing something — you're basically only ever trying to do damage — whether to finish someone off, to get more damage on someone before they die, or to get damage on someone new. With some more tactical options it might have a bit more depth — if there were some incentive to not take damage other than giving points, or an effective way to block other players from hitting a particular enemy. I also wonder if the action limit could be made a little more lenient without making it too easy — you can never do what feels like a "complete turn" because you typically want to move, pick up ammo or a new gun, get into position and then shoot someone, but you can generally only do two or three of these. I call on NoBoGgers to make it so!

Contemplative Colin.

Adrenaline gets pumping.

And that was the week — shooting, camels, more shooting, Cthulhu and everywhere the terrible spectre of disease. And more cows, right there in that field. Hope you've enjoyed, BYE!