The Return of the frakkin' Toasters

Monika bounced excitedly up to me clapping her hands.

"Did you bring it ???!" she asked with a big grin.
"Yessss... but... it's kind of late, not even set it up yet." I answered unconvinced
"Well, where is it ?! I will set it up. Quick !" she replied with boundless enthusiasm.

I gave her Battlestar Galactica and left her and Voitek to it whilst I made sure everyone was sorted with a game.

So this week, Battlestar Galactica once more sailed the deep black with just about all the expansions spread between five players - two of which were toasters, the evil cylons.

James is pushed out the airlock. Don't worry, he's not
human, he's a fancy hoover. With murderous tendencies.

I called Monika and James out on being evil from near the start - a few slips of tells made me suspicious, although Voitek also had a couple of slightly dodgy calls at the start of the game, but, to me, Monika and James were clearly Not One Of Us. And that despite me playing the ever suspicious Baltar, and Voitek playing the equally suspect Boomer.

Whatever it was, the case against James and Monika seemed quite compelling and Richard IV early on obliged the rumours by pushing James out of the airlock. There was a little debate about whether to push Monika or James out of the airlock, in the end it was James. We had made only a single jump of distance one, we had barely started, and one of our number had been spaced. Forcefully plunged into the pitiless vacuum to die a terrible death.

Richard cackled gleefully. One thing playing with Richard teaches you is that he loves a bit of chaos and disaster. At least as far as board games go, he is definitely in the "just likes to watch things burn" camp.

But in this case pushing people out of the airlock was good move. It turned out the rumour mill was right and James was indeed a filthy traitor - and thus no one was particularly upset. It wasn't a human we had ejected into the void. But more like a Henry Hoover. A Henry Hoover with a remarkable capability for conversation. And murderous plotting.

And then we didn't trust Monika either. Who shortly after revealed herself to indeed be another

Battlestar Galactica ... and a new table lamp !

toaster. And we still hadn't even got half way through the game. In hindsight the debate about whether to push one toaster out or the other toaster was moot. Any toaster would have been good.

You'd think having sussed out the bad guys would be a great help to us. It wasn't. Galactica seemed incapable of jumping more than a distance of one at any time. Cylon ships piled ever higher and were never dealt with. And then the boarding parties started.

At one point I was the Admiral, CAG and President. That's all the titles. Belonging to one person. At this point I was the most important person in the fleet, everyone else was a mere peasant and had to do as I said. On the other hand, there was no way I could successfully fulfil all three roles at once. The cylons joked that I was the only person left in the fleet, hence I had all the jobs. I just like to think it was my natural leadership skills being rewarded.

In the end the fleet was destroyed, we had barely got half way, supplies had run out, Galactica was almost critical with damage, and my epic reign as Admiral CAG President was a failure. However, I also like to think that such an important person as Admiral CAG President would have had an escape plan. And a personal escape craft. And unlike the rest of humanity made it away safely. Possibly with a hidden cache of champagne.

So looking behind the curtain a bit about what makes Battlestar Galactica tick, it seems to me that the jump cards have an enormous impact on whether the game runs short, long, easy or tough. Getting a set of 1 jump cards can effectively kill you, whereas getting a couple of juicy 3 jumps can make the going a piece of cake for the humans. On reflection, cutting all the waffle out, I think the game actually just comes down to that jump progress, and little else. It also has the capability to make the game go on forever. But you could argue you don't want to look behind the curtain of an FFG game. FFG games are to my mind notoriously random in design. Whilst I enjoy a number of FFG games I could never imagine ever calling one of their titles "elegant" or "clever". Long on bling, long on components and short on.... balance, playtesting and editing. Looking too hard at the Wizard of Oz just destroys the illusion. Better to ignore it and enjoy the show.

Alchemists and another of the lamps.
And a pretty new blue table cloth !

Elsewise Nate turned up again with a choice selection of good Euros, and eventually settled on Concordia. Elliott banged out Ticket to Ride again - Ticket To Ride Marklin - which apparently is different to Ticket to Ride in that you have passengers. That go on a journey and then die. It's very maudlin. I have no idea. We also had some Alchemists, Lords of Vegas and Takenoko, where I believe Lewis took the win by a single point.

And my copy of the ever excellent Mission Red Planet hit the table, with some evil shenanigans leaving Tim and his lucrative high worth area out of luck as Dean sabotaged his scoring efforts with a secret area card effect.

Seven Wonders, Smash Up and Spectre Ops also filled out the games first up, and there were quite a few tables with just three players. The extra space at the Mash Tun means we no longer are forced to play five or six player games, but can play whatever takes your fancy with small cosy groups.

Dominant Species

James also finally got Dominant Species back to table - he's being trying for a while. Pete got off to some game stomping initial move that James was most unhappy about, but despite this the wily Tom managed to win the day - with I think his arachnids.

As well as BSG this week I also had time for a couple of games of Cheaty Mages - yes, BSG plus fillers in one evening. Madness. The end times are upon us. I am pleased to report that I won embarrassingly well in Cheaty Mages. Not once, but twice. Just to prove it wasn't a fluke. I am the cheatiest of Cheaty Mages apparently. A sentiment Sean agreed with as he watched the table - I was not to be trusted. Shockingly libellous.

Apart from the games this week we also trialled out a couple of rechargable led table lights. Which seemed to do the job ok. Personally I wasn't terrifically thrilled with them, not entirely easy to get a well lit board and keep the light out of everyones eyes, on the other hand, when they were switched off you realised just how spoiled you were with them, and how crap the light was without them. As it stands I think the lights are pretty much perfect for our needs. Light in weight, portable, adjustable and offering a good light source for the gloom. Apparently one of the lights really helped with Alchemists, allowing the phones to pick up the cards without suffering in the poor light.

We've also got a whole pile of new table cloths - mostly in blue, with a red and purple one thrown in for good measure. There are now once again enough cloths for all tables - so you can spare your board games from the unknown vagaries of pub table residues and condensing glasses and instead treat them to the luxury of a felt surface.

As ever I leave you with the gallery.

Takenoko

7 Wonders

Lords of Vegas

Smash Up

Mission Red Planet... on a red table cloth. Fancy.

Spectre Ops

Concordia

Ticket to Ride Marklin

44 if you're counting. A number of soliders down again this week. I blame it being summer and everyone swanning off for holidays. With the exception of Martin. Who was allegedly ill. I'll assume he'll be bringing in a sick note this week to explain his absence last week.

How many Saboteurs does it take to change a light bulb ?

Excluding the James pre game bingo game the other week, last week saw the biggest single game ever for NoBoG in the form of Saboteur 2 played by a crazy 11 people.

Did you know that Saboteur could even play 11 people ? Apparently it can play up to 12 people. But, I wouldn't hold your breath about getting a turn. Or even a share of the gold. What does Saboteur look like with 11 people ? What do you think Saboteur with 11 people looks like ? Chaos. If Chaos had a mind to sit in orderly fashion around a pub table ( and it might, because Chaos being Chaos, anything is possible, including sitting orderly around a pub table ).

The Ribs of Beef AGM. aka Saboteur Chaos.

Joe and Adam both reported that Luke showed a particularly cynical view of politics during Saboteur when he complained that with the more people involved,  the less of a say you get - just like democracy. Clearly Luke won't be voting this election and will instead be preparing his militia for an armed takeover - Fortress UEA.

They didn't manage to finish their Saboteuring, and Joe noted that he wasn't entirely sure the extra roles in Saboteur 2 did much for the game - Saboteur 1 was better. A common sentiment.

Earlier in the evening myself, Darren and Pete paid another visit to Alchemists, the game of potion deducting pre-science, where in a hopelessly incompetent showing all three of us managed to get results wrong and end up with frantic scribbles on our deduction sheets. Pete romped into a strong lead from an early start of making some good bets on a range of 50:50 guesses, whilst Darren actually managed to end up on fewer points than he started with.

A good game, but I am still unconvinced about the games depth - and that if you take away the fluff you are left with a game of luck of who gets the best early test results / ingredient mix. Despite that, still fun so far.

On the table over Lewis got to table with Sheriff of Nottingham, and despite telling everyone that honesty was the strongest strategy - a sure fire opening bluff gambit if ever I heard one - proceeded to then get called out continually by Monika - even when she wasn't playing the Sheriff. Lewis came last for the record.

Guillotine and Pickamino followed, with more tales of woe for Lewis, finishing last and second from last, and with a few notes that perhaps Guillotine has some game flaws after all - quick finishing days spoiling the game flow, and Pickamino coming down to Yahtzee with some dice squabbling. Oof.

Nicky was back with us this week after being notably away around the Easter month, and she brought Alhambra along for Tim, Stu and Tom to fight over. I think they played Wurfel Bohnanza again - and yet more comparisons with Yahtzee were made.

There was also some six player Lords of Vegas-ing going on - with some hard lessons about the dubious wisdom of engaging in betting, and I definitely walked past the ever excellent Galaxy Truckers and the sorriest bunch of looking collapsed space trucks I had ever seen.

Betrayal at house on the hill

Betrayal at House on the Hill was also being played when I visited downstairs, Luke was taking delight in calling himself a blob ( I am guessing he was the bad guy, and this wasn't just some crisis of self image going on ) and there was some discussion amongst the players about divided loyalties and actually volunteering to join Team Blob as it looked pretty hopeless for the good guys.

There was also some inventive roleplaying going on about hopeless librarians throwing themselves into the basement in fits of despair only to turn up with an item of Hope in hand. All very deep and allegorical. Who woulda thunk it ?

Raising the euro bar on the table over from the riff raff of narrative ameritrash of betrayal, Concordia got a run through again with Hal at the helm, and this week he decided to write up his experience.

Downstairs, people quickly snapped up all five chairs for Concordia. We promptly piled the broken furniture limbs into a small pyre and burnt them in honour of the Roman goddess of harmony. We all won, if you judge victory by smoke inhalation.

Uhm, maybe I should say five people were eager to play the game Concordia, and sat in a very safe and non destructive manner on the kindly provided chairs and benches. Much clearer. Concordia was released in 2013 to muted praise, an unsuccessful bid for Kennerspiel, and much scoffing at the box art. David mentioned he was keen to try it out as it has apparently been climbing steadily up the BGG rankings since then.

Hal ponders what is good about Concordia. He doesn't know.
But at least it isn't Blockade Runner.

The players are all playing competing Roman somebodies, spreading their settlements around the empire, so that they can produce goods to turn into money or more settlements. How you do this is controlled by your hand of cards. Each card lets you take a specific action when you play it, and each aspiring Roman somebody starts with an identical hand of cards. On your turn, you play one card from you hand, do the action it says on it, and put it on top of your discard pile. You keep doing this until a somebody has built their final settlement, or all the extra cards have been bought. Oh yes! As you become more and more of a somebody about Rome, you can buy extra cards from a market on the board to put into your hand, giving you access to more actions, or more powerful actions.

Each individual action is kept quite simple: when you play the merchant, you trade two types of good for a fixed price. The interesting part is sequencing these small actions so you're able to make the most of each one. Once you've played a card, that action isn't going to be available to you for a while, until you play the card to put your discard pile back into your hand. The game moves at a brisk pace, each action is quickly achieved, and there's enough to think about while the turn comes back round to you.

At the start of the game, players spread out across the board. Richard IV made a beeline East to the tool rich Syria, Guillame had eyes on the crown of Hispania, while Chloe, David and I shared the spaces around Italia & Germania. The board is split up into regions, with two or three potential settlement sites in each. There is some benefit to sharing a region with others, when a region produces resources, it produces resources for everyone present there. When you share, you're more likely to have other people making regions you're in produce goods for you.

How do you make regions produce goods? Play a card. The answer to almost any “How do I...?” in Concordia is “Play a card”. Everything that happens is going to be the result of someone playing a card and taking its action. This really gives a strong feeling of control in the game, everything has a very direct and obvious cause. It also means Concordia has basically no admin. There's no point at which the game pauses, and you have to run some algorithms and shuffle pieces about.

So we carried on playing cards and moving pieces around. Chloe struggled to expand for a while in the midgame, David longed for brick (required to build anything, except brick producing cities). Guillame achieved the throne of Hispania, Richard IV declared the entirety of Asia undesirable and headed to North Africa. I decided to colonise the cloth rich cities either side of the English channel. I had decided to try and go for my winning strategy from the week before again – get spread out and try to be in as many provinces as possible.

I was hoping to please Saturnus, the Roman god of putting on a good spread. Each card you buy also has at the bottom the name of a Roman god, who at the end of the game bestows favour (and VP) upon you based on how well you met their very well defined wants. Saturnus will give you 1 point for each region you are present in. I ended up being present in ten. Importantly, he will do this for every Saturnus card you have managed to cram into you hand. I had five Saturnus cards in the end, for a total 50 points from the god of the buffet.

This scoring system is interesting, and makes picking up cards tough, weighing their action against their scoring opporunity. It is also completely opaque, you have no idea how well anyone is doing until the end of the game, when you stop and spend ten minutes doing sums. Somebody announces their winning score, and t isn't quite the climax you'd hope for. The victorious somebody was David, although most of us thought King Guillame of Hispania (and a bit of Gallia) had it won.

Everyone seemed to enjoy it, probably more than I think I do. It's a solid, streamlined game, with a decent gradually rising arc of power for each player as they grab more cards, and the choices you make matter and the timing is interesting. It lacks a central hook though, if someone asks me “What's good about Concordia?”, I can't ever think of anything excellent to point to. I like it, it's good, but it doesn't attempt anything great. Although I made people play Blockade Runner, so my taste in games is forever suspect.

Qwirkle made - I think - its first appearance at the Ribs, a game that manages to bridge the divide between those happy safe family type stalwarts, and those slightly more esoteric games that your Nan has never heard of. Qwirkle is a solid domino type game and if you haven't played it you need to, it's a nice easily pleasing filler type that will get even the most ardent game nay sayer having a go.

Adam relates :

Our table (James, Sam, Deano, Joe, Mel, Adam) played a quick round of qwirkle. Scoring highly wasn't a problem for some in this one. So simple in concept we didn't even bring the rules-creating lines of either colours or shapes and scoring points based on their length. Sam's score increased at an exponential rate at the end of the game, but it wasn't enough to catch Joe, who was convinced his tactical skills (and not drawing the right coloured tiles) were the reason for his impressive score (for 6 player) of over 100. Players were convinced the choice of shapes by the game designers were less than ideal, but decided a swastika wasn't a suitable alternative. Seemed to be enjoyed, and a very quick game with little explanation required. Although I did have my hands full keeping score.

That's all for this week, the NoBoG writing goblins are complaining about working on a Bank Holiday and demanding triple pay. Until next week, nobog fans, same nobog channel, same nobog time*.

Thanks to all the contributors this week, there were a good few of you, your input is appreciated.


* Lies. All lies.

Pleasure Pants - Get Them Whilst They're Hot

Another busy week last week with 39 people getting in for some gaming action. Any other time that would have been a record, had we not already pushed the bar up to 44 from the previous week.

James had a mini pre-game game for us all this week, with game mention Bingo. He's been threatening to do it for months, and so everyone was treated to a small bingo card with a list of games to cross off when they were called out. I think this is largely a reaction to somethings always being present in the game roll call session and James having a James like sense of humour. Elliot called out a bingo half way through the roll call, and won the prize of nothing whatsoever. Congratulations. Perhaps we should get a special hat in future. The winners hat. Design suggestions welcome.

Snake Oil ! Can I interest you in some pleasure pants ? Um. No.

Lewis had a new thing to try out with an intriguing name - Snake Oil, one of those card games that can expand to fit a whole gaggle of players, although, it did seem to run awful long. Lewis kindly forwarded on a report of the session for it, so we can hear what he has to say and find out what it's all about.

Right by the entrance to the Ribs, I (Weird) had somehow managed to gather a group of eight fellow players to try out the card game Snake Oil. This party game has players each getting an opportunity to assume the role of a customer, their role determined from a card from the customer deck - politician, newly-wed, caveman, hostage, and so on. How we're managing to sell things to these people I dare not ask.

Once the player decides on a customer role, all other players must try to combine two words out of the six cards in their hand to create a product, catering to the role in question, then attempt to pitch said product once prompted by the customer. In my instance of being the customer, I happened to draw the 'nerd' customer card, which led to the kind of mix of products you'd expect from any round, from practical combo's (a shower fan), to video game DLC (energy key), to the really rather creepy suggestions from the far side of the table (kiss monkey). Ech!

With a difficulty level on par with Cards Against Humanity, and given the entertainment value of watching someone try to sell a banana beard to... well, any kind of customer, I reckon any group can find quite a lot of enjoyment out of this game. It's not a game to focus on scoring, given how unlike Cards Against Humanity you know exactly who's suggestions are who's, but rather a game to see people try to sell pleasure pants to an insomniac.

I would personally recommend this game as a 4-player filler rather than an all-evening 9- or 10-player session. Should've known that before, but at least we know that now. Great fun all the same, and gg to Andi for claiming 4 out of a possible 8 points to win. Quite an inventor amongst us!

Their group then split into two tables for some Colt Expressing and Sushi Go-ing - and Lewis recommends that if you haven't played Sushi Go you really should, the food has faces. Which apparently makes it more appetising  / fun. Hmm. Note to self. Don't accept dinner invitations from Lewis.


Over on our table we cobbled together a game of Alchemists, where despite me forgetting to play the first half round, we did a fairly decent job of piecing together what was what. James somehow blasted away to a significant lead in this and ended up winning, despite only mixing 3 potions for the entire game. What ?! I had mixed a good half dozen, got master of the green potions at game end, but due to some early game spurious theory gambits could only limp in joint last with Pete.

There was much spluttering around the table of I Am Right, and You Are Wrong, and in what could be an early pattern, various Euro gamers believing they are infallible only to find out they have ballsed up their notes. James swore that the app had given him a wrong result, but on checking at the end, the app seemed to be bang on point. A glitch ? Or user error ? Sad to say, in my decades of imprisonment within the IT industry, in 99.9% of cases it's user error. A PEBKAC. Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair. Somewhat out of date these days given the swishy touchy mobile slatey kind of devices that are prevalent. But who knows. The potion app was struggling with the dingy pub lighting.

Concordia - NOT a game about cruise ship piloting

A short peanut flick away from us Hal got the much fancied 2014 game Concordia to table. I am beginning to think that Hal has very good taste in games, as most of what he turns up with looks interesting. Well. Except that drab blockade runner game. Concordia was nominated for a bunch of awards in 2014 ( but failed to actually win anything ), and is a game I have had half an eye on, wanting to see it in action. Despite Pete's humorous summary of the game being about piloting cruise ships as close to the coast as you dare ( which went straight over my head for 5 minutes until I realised what he was talking about ), the game is actually about commerce in the Mediterranean in the era of ancient Rome - short on rules, long on scoring opportunities.

Players get to wander around a simple board, building houses, collecting resources and trying to build some lovely scoring combination for game end - of which there is something of a point salad, depending on what you are concentrating on. The main thrust of the game is around your hand of cards, each of which is an action allowing you to perform something or other - producing goods, building houses,  buying more cards and so on. Hand management is a part of this game, as once a card is played it stays down, but, playing a certain card allows you to pick them all up again ( although crucially here it also triggers a scoring round for yourself the first time you play it, meaning that you have to be particularly efficient in how you play this ), and some cards allow you to copy other players cards.

It looks like a cool euro economic builder to me, but I failed to get a proper response from Hal's table as to what it was like. A general thumbs up was offered.

The table behind us started off the evening with a bit of Resistance Avalon, where I assume the evil doers took the game as after a while someone at the table put on their best theatrical voice and cackled loudly into the pub that the other players were all their unwitting slaves. Or words to those effect. It was all very Macbeth.

Downstairs the ultra classic Agricola was dusted off, and David has a brief write up of that for us.

Myself, chloe, owein, Richard and ewan played agricola on Tuesday.

It was a suprisingly close game with just 5 points between first and fourth place. Owein came out on top with a solid cover all bases strategy.

Ewan managed to make a mega pasture which used all but two of his fence pieces, which was pretty impressive.

I think it was the first time I've played a game at the club in which everyone knew the rules, which was refreshing. Especially as agricola isn't kind to new players.

Agric - things are serious when you have to stand up
to take your turn

Uh huh. Agric is one of those nice perennials that never gets old. Whisper it - I prefer it very slightly to Caverna. But I live in hope of some Caverna expansions coming along to mix things up a bit.

Elsewhere downstairs another Euro classic got spanked onto a table - Powergrid, or more correctly Funkenschlaaaaaaag, this time with the American map - which I couldn't remember ever seeing before. It actually took me a minute to realise what I was looking when I took a picture of an upside down Powergrid America map. Looks cool. Although six players with Powergrid is for me... gah. Too many.

Powergrid America

Another table was playing something else. Which. I cannot remember at all. It wasn't new, otherwise I would have taken a picture of it. A mystery game.

Fillers rounded off the evening for some. I got to play Artificium and like Sam the week before went from a lacklustre score all the way to a trouncing lead by way of chaining wizards. Other things were played. But I didn't check in on them. And people don't write to tell me of their sessions either. Hint. Hint.