Game Night - TAKE THAT and Party?

🕑 8 min read

Hi! Game Night is 'Back for Good'! We're not going to be 'Up All Night', but we are hopeful that it 'Could Be Magic'. For the purposes of this post, all player's names have been changed to protect the victims of both sharks and pirates.

This, was our first Tuesday evening game night of September, and it brought to us another 25(ish) NOBOGlins. After briefly catching up with Gary, I decided that I was going to join in with them and play Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest. Never played it before. Heard a lot of good things. We're all going to be SKY PIRATES! 

After the usual WHADIYOB introductions, we found ourselves with 6, yes SIX players!! OMG... this was going to be an amazing evening, I think 'I Found Heaven'. 

Let's GOOO!!

This game looked impressive, and easily spread out over our huge table. Gary initially warned us that our game might take over an hour; before efficiently ploughing onto explaining the rules. On my left was Howard, Mark, Jason, then Robbie, and finally Gary (on my right). It turns out that a few of us were "old salt" and had played before... not me though.

What a table of riches!

Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is a fairly recent re-print (and re-publishing) of an older and much loved 2012 version. In case you haven't played before, the cut and thrust of this game revolves around every player starting with the same hand of 6 cards (crew members), drawn from a pool of 40. Then we simultaneously choose one, play it, reveal it, and then deal with them in initiative order. Each crew card also has a unique power which affects the game in lots of cool and interesting ways too. The aim is to collect as many of the valuable loot tokens as possible, whilst avoiding relics which normally penalise you. Plus; force opponent's crew members to walk the plank (die), using your unique crew powers, thus hindering others and helping you to your villainous victory. The pirate with the most loot wins. Sounds easy...right?

My first wake up call that something might be rotten in the state of Demark, was being removed from the island (turn order) by another captain's crew powers and by the cutlass loot tokens. Unfortunately, in this game, if you are stymied too many times during a single round, it can prove to be a problem. Hence my first criticism of this game. When playing a 6 player game, a lot of 'out of turn' take-that powers can and and will be deployed. Resulting in bloody-brawls full of highs, lows and the haunting cries of "Please! Not me again!", "I'm not even winning!" and "Why do you HATE ME?!". "Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!! Batten down the hatches ya bilge sucking land lubbers!"

I had been warned prior, that Libertalia was a festival of 'by the skin of your teeth' escapes, brutal put downs, revenge, and of course clever predictions which lead to great plays. Which all sound amazing fun! So why didn't it 'feel' like that to me? Ok, no more review stuff - what actually happened?

Howard and Mark moved quickly into the lead by a good margin, closely followed by Gary. Unfortunately Jason and Robbie  (poor Robbie) got to walk the plank several times during the first round because "dead men tell no tales". I performed poorly by simply tripping myself up and over thinking, only to find my actions were over-ridden, or weaker than expected. However, when it came to round 2, I was beginning to understand what I needed to do, and was grabbing some valuable loot tokens. Yay me. 

Going into the final round, both Howard and Mark were really beginning to pull away. Gary's plans appeared to have paved the way for a great finish, and Jason was gaining good ground too.  Unfortunately for Robbie and I, we had been "scuttled" a few too many times early on to make a serious dent in our deficits. This is part and parcel of a competitive game like this one, and as the game's "scally wags", our inexperience was showing.

Robbie's not a fan. But we love him still. 

I'm not entirely sure, but I may have been witness to some frustrated plays made by Robbie. They began to unleash 'The Flood' on some of us by purposefully selecting the cutlass loot token and began "swabbing the deck" with extreme prejudice. I was here for it. I would have probably hi-fived Robbie if I got chance, but they made a speedy exit after the game (probably to utilise some of their notoriety and pursue a solo career). Suddenly our plucky six-some was now a band of five. Howard won Libertalia, closely followed by Mark. A predictable end, to a 2 hour game.

Afterwards, I was reliably informed that playing Libertalia several times is mandatory for a good time, and I do love me a good time. I enjoyed the table banter, and yes, I do look forward to giving it another go in the future.  

Next game please!

Fantasy Realms, one of my favourite short (filler) games. 5 players went into this game, and 3 of us had played it before. It's a super fast hand management and set collection game which has the tendency to end way too fast. Rome wasn't built in a day, but a Fantasy Realm can be built in 20 minutes. 

Each player is dealt a hand of 7 face-down cards. When it is your turn, you simply either pick a card from the remaining deck, or pick a face-up card from the discard pile. You may only have 7 cards, so you have to discard one before the turn moves on to the next player. All discarded cards are arranged face-up on the table, and when there are 10 cards left discarded on the table, the game ends immediately! How you decide which card to pick up, what to keep and the one to discard is all based on the strength of the hand you currently have. The idea is to build the most valuable (strongest) fantasy realm before the world ends. Each card you have has a strength value, and when added together, they become your final total. Some cards work together to multiply up strength, some cards penalise you for having particular cards and of course a few cards penalise you for not having certain other cards. It's a complete mess for new players - but a game plays so fast that it is entirely possible to rush through 2-3 games without even blinking.

Try it. Try blinking. I've already played 3 games of Fantasy Realms. 

After explaining the rules, I let everyone know that a score of over 100 was great for first timers, and if you managed to get to 150 then you did very well. Scores of 200 or more were available for experienced players, as knowledge of the deck is key to optimising your hand for a godlike total. 

What a starting might look like

Our winner from last game, Howard, scored an impressive 199 points! Plus Howard managed to make good use of the Gem of Ordering card, which provides massive bonuses for a set of cards in numerical order. Always satisfying when a player manages to do this. Gary and Mark (our first timers) scored well with 135 and 150 points. I remember finding it quite difficult to get anywhere near 150 on my first few attempts - so this was a amazing to see. Jason, who was our other experienced player (with 20 games under their belt) did exceptionally well with a score of 239! However, I managed a rare win by scoring 2 more points, totalling a huge 241, which a BIG number for me - so I was delighted. 

In our last game we all had to endure multiple 'take-that' actions which took their toll on our fragile plans. Fantasy Realms is not particularly known for hostilities. BUT experienced players know when to hold onto certain cards to deny other players big totals, and when to focus on their own burgeoning realms. Jason though, was witness to me picking up the Candle card, which when combined with the Book of Changes, Bell Tower and any one Wizard, adds a massive 100 points to your final score. Unknown to me, was that Jason had the Bell Tower, and decided to hold onto it for the entire game, denying me my bonus 100 points. HOWEVER... what he didn't know was that I had the Mirage card, which can duplicate the Bell Tower.. thus giving me the bonus in the end. I also managed to find the Necromancer which added another card to my hand at the very end just before scoring AND the Collector who added another 40 points for having 4 Wizards. Game over.

NEXT!! 

The Origami artwork is stunning.

Fast becoming one of my favourite short, set collection games, we reached our final game of the evening, the beautiful Sea Salt and Paper with 3 players, Howard, Gary and me. This was my 4th, maybe 5th play, and I still hadn't quite worked out how to defeat others yet. I do love it though. Simply, each player has an option of either picking 2 cards from a face-down deck, discarding one, and keeping one for their hand. OR, pick up one of the face-up cards from either of the 2 discard piles. Easy stuff.

As you collect your set of cards you are given opportunities to play pairs of cards face up to score points and gain additional actions from doing so.  For example: have another turn, or blindly pick another face-down card for your hand etc. In this game though, the 'take that' shark/swimmer combo pair was being used profusely. It would appear that blood was in the water again and it was time to 'Pray'. 

This game is played in rounds, and ends when one player reaches 35 points or more. Each round is curtailed by the players themselves. Once you have at least 7 points in your hand combined with any pairs played on to the table, then you can simply call STOP! Everyone counts up their card set values and adds them to their running total. There are a few more rules surrounding this, but I'll save that for an up and coming review. 

In our game, ATTACK was the only form of defence as each player proceeded to plunder the other's
hands; fishing for Mermaid cards and probing for valuable Penguins. In the first round I was shark attacked twice, leaving me with only 3 cards when STOP was called. So, I got a big fat zero. Cue the grumpy face. 

Amongst the very, very funny banter at our table, we also experienced a hilarious situation when Gary picked up 2 cards and immediately played them both as a pair, declaring loudly that he would be using his Shark & Swimmer combo to steal a card from my hand... again. This was a 2-fold mistake. Firstly, you can't pick up 2 cards and play them both in that same turn, you have to discard one first. So, a disappointed Gary pocketed the shark card and discarded the swimmer card. Secondly, I had a shark card in my hand, so of course I picked up the rejected swimmer, and immediately dealt Gary some 'rough justice' with it. It was amazing good fun, and my only regret was that we didn't get to fully finish the game before 'turfing out time' was upon us. In the end we called it a draw... but somehow I lost. Not complaining though, as it was a memorable night. 

This evening was FULL of highs and lows, frustrations and so much 'take-that' that it was difficult 'Holding Back the Tears' sometimes. I may have my criticisms of games which encourage such gratuitous amounts of player smack downs, however, sometimes you gotta 'Get Ready For It', and 'Don't Say Goodbye' too early. 

We will return next week; with more cutlasses and sharks than ever before. Just you wait!