Blue pill, red pill

>

You take the blue pill, the story ends.

You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. 

You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

> Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus in The Matrix

Col. Jessep: You want answers? 

Kaffee: I think I'm entitled 

Col. Jessep: *You want answers?* 

Kaffee: *I want the truth!* 

Col. Jessep: *You can't handle the truth!*

Tom Cruise & Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men 

The search for truth - some objective perfection - as so eloquently implied above is often as much about the truth as it is about the person doing the searching. .

What, you might ask yourself not unreasonably, has this got to do with what went on down t'pub this week.

Ah ha !

This week I got to partake in not one but two playtests of as yet un-released games, and ( here's the payoff ! ), like a search for the truth, playtesting games can be as much about finding an answer to an open mechanics question as it is about capturing the mood, mindset or otherwise of the designer.

A blue pill, red pill moment for the designer in a universe of their own crafting, if you will.

First up was Elliot with his new prototype ( Mausoleums of Umiat ) about building the fanciest resting place for your soon to be dead self. A bit like some Pharaoh competition to see who can build the swankiest pyramid and bury the most of their still living staff with them. Sharing is caring.

Elliots prototype game - Mausoleums of Umiat

Set in Elliots own world of Umiat and Kenai ( which you can go buy a book about here ), the game has a fantasy theme of orcs, pyromancers and Krakens amongst other things, and combines classic worker placement mechanics with some basic resource engine capabilities.

Players compete to out resource gather and manage each other with an ultimate aim to earn Vanity points - the main thrust of which is to be gained by building your mausoleum with said gathered resources. Some twists on the familar light euro mechanics include apocalyptic style resource collapse - over fishing, over hunting and complete deforestation are a real ( and depending on players almost guaranteed ) threat, and a tactile mausoleum build, where you don't just get to pickup tokens for your tomb, you get to build the tomb in 3d with blocks and decorate its surfaces with fanciness. You could imagine that with some lavish spending on production for the game beyond its humble prototype origins, the mausoleum building could be a thing of wonderful gimmicky goodness ( it cries out for some lego building imo ! ).

MoU has already had a few playtests, but this was its first visit to NoBoG and the game itself is in its early days of balance and feedback, with some hairy rough spots of probability wackiness, pacing, length and choices made, but overall looks promising. Elliot was taking notes throughout the evening and was interested in what everyone had to say about the balance of the game - even though he confessed to finding the undertaking somewhat harrowing. He seemed particularly downcast when I mentioned the game needed a "shit ton of balancing". Mmm. Maybe I should have given Elliot the option of the blue pill.

My second playtest of the evening was with Pete and Galaxy M101 which has had... what must be over a years worth of playtesting by now. In its latest tweak Pete has imo managed to break one of his key game mechanics, and whilst the final game scoring was close - we managed to zip through a full game - I commented that the balance was now kinda fubar and a non event for one of the action selections. Alas, I was only offering red pills again. Pete's stated aim with this iteration was however to push the mechanics until they broke and then dial it back some ( in a bid to encourage an under used part of the game ). So. Perhaps design goal met - action broken. Fix it.

Mice & Mystics - Joe is trapped awaiting rescue

Mice and Mystics graced the Mash Tun again this week to continue the ongoing diminutive adventures, and much like the first week, the team of gallant rodents aced the chapter and whisked their way to a complacent easy victory. After Joe had been talking up how difficult M & M could be, it seems that either it's not so hard after all, or the assembled players are some red hot mice tacticians. Joe was incredulous at how easy it all was - I think he secretly wants more pain and woe to befall the intrepid group.

David got La Granja to table for the third week (?) running, Pete trying it for the first time gave it a hearty thumbs up and noted there were some interesting multi use card mechanic malarkeys going on in this properly crunchy euro. And at the complete opposite end of the scale we also had ameritrash Risk in the house - in the form of a walking dead variant - delighting a table of three.

King of New York

Lewis committed the etiquette sin of introducing a whole bunch of new to NoBoG and new to game people to the wonders of King of New York, before roundly beating them at his own game. He then further added to the problem by slicing everyone up at Secret Hitler and triumphantly riding the win home as a Fascist. Thus teaching the newcomers in proper barbarian style that weakness is not to be tolerated, for as Conan says, the best thing in life is to "Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women.". Harsh.

Kingdom Builder made a return after several months of hiatus - mainly because Stu stopped bringing it - Champions of Midgard of course was played ( with relative NoBoG newcomer Halvor teaching everyone the correct pronunciation of the nordicness ) and there were outbreaks of epic spell wars of the battle wizards, Resistance, Bang !, Love Letter and a whole bunch besides.

La Granja

The Tun was busy this week - an unfortunate somewhat busy spread of regular punters in the pub conspired to make tables ultra short, and a number of small player count pre-arranged games exacerbated a difficult situation into almost breaking point - we nearly had to leave the Tun and split across site. This is the second time in a handful of weeks that space has been critical - and this week with only around 43 gamers in the house it wasn't even particularly gamer busy. Lack of available extra space is beginning to bite, and the issue is on my radar as A Problem that may need some work. A chat with the Tun about what other days or solutions are available, or talking nicely to Jamie and Athena to offer a split solution may be in order - or possibly even floating the so far elusive second NoBoG day to spread numbers across two days instead of just one.

No Monopoly this week. Boo. Although I really shouldn't talk these things up. We all know what happens when I talk things up, even in jest.

Ok, that's it. Cue up the gallery music and take it away...

Risk, Walking Dead Style

Champions of Midgard. With added Halvor authenticity * ( Halvor is not included with the game )

The excellent Istanbul

Bang !

Epic spell wars of the battle wizards

Avalon Resistance

Total Eclipse of the heart

For the third week in a row, this week at NoBoG saw a record turnout of gamers with 53 of them turning up at the Tuna to spread their wares over 13 tables. And what a splendiferous evening of gaming was on offer, even if poor Fletch had to squeeze onto one of the iffy tables.

Voyages of Marco Polo. Looks like a solid Euro.

I'll keep it short this week, as Pete and James have both posted a submission about their weeks experiences.

 Darren brought along the new and sexy Voyages of Marco Polo, a euro game with a mild point salad based around completing Marco Polo's journey and travelling from Venice to Beijing. Looks very pretty, and also looks like a pretty solid Euro game too !

One to get a play of I think.

XCOM. aka It's OK to be Xenophobic. Shoot to kill.

Rhea brought along the alien fighting earth defending X-COM - not its first visit to NoBoG, you can read that here - and the guys playing that managed to barely scrape a win in the most Hollywood of endings, coming down to the very last turn, make or break. Nice.

Caverna, Takenoko, Marvel Legendary and Dominions also made a return to the Ribs, and

Deviant animal antics - Animal upon Animal.

Fletch, Rowan and Andy also got into some weird if not downright deviant animal behaviour in the dexterity challenging Animal upon Animal.

I got to play the new and recently professionally produced Dark Moon, which had been doing the rounds before hand as the print and play game called BSG Express. As no surprise given its name, the game is based on a trimmed down Battlestar Galactica, the game of betrayal and pushing people out of the airlock ( if you have that expansion ). BSG Express cut all the extraneous fluff and fuzzy design elements ( it's an FFG game, of COURSE it's
bloated, if FFG produced Chess it would come with 652 pieces, 12 decks of cards, 10 dice, 100 money tokens and three boards and have rules that made you shuffle 3 random decks of cards between each move  ) out of the original to - hopefully - leave just the raw elements of keeping on top of problems in an atmosphere of justified paranoia.

Dark Moon, the game formerly known as BSG Express.

Long story short it works well, is brutally hard - although having played it since, it shouldn't be quite as brutal as we were playing it on Tuesday - and can indeed be finished off in an hour or so. In fact we played it twice. With room to spare for other games. Inconceivable !

If you want a dose of paranoid betrayal with a bit more structure than Resistance, and way less faffing than BSG, then Dark Moon could be for you.

Hal and Pete both got their prototypes played - Galaxy M101 and Unfeeling Creatures, and there was also room for some enjoyable and funny Avalon Resistancing, where we are still introducing a new wave of people into the basics of the game. ( There was a funny image post on our sister site IpBoG facebook page about Resistance... https://www.facebook.com/groups/ipbog/permalink/469141896601741/ )

Onto Pete...

Total Eclipse of the Heart

Eclipse. No one seems keen on meeting anyone else.

We've all done it. Sometimes it's not or fault, we've just picked it up from somewhere or someone. We might have misread or misunderstood or just made an assumption. 

Rulebooks can be bloated and hard to follow and some of us are not suited to reading and understanding rules as written. Most of us learn a game by being taught in person by someone who knows it. Maybe they didn't know the game quite as well as they thought or maybe they didn't explain things that well.

Sometimes we get one or two rules a little bit wrong. That's ok. It can mean that you play a bit of a different game than how it was designed and it might consequently be a bit imbalanced but it's an honest mistake.

I've got a bit of a reputation for posting about rules errors in games. That's because, if we weren't sure about something, I like to read the rules and faqs to understand how to play correctly; and I like to share what I find out with the people I played the game with. I don't mean to shame anyone, but sometimes it can come across that way. Sorry.

I prefer not to learn a game from the rulebook by myself and I prefer not to teach a game to anyone else unless I'm really confident that I know the game really well. So, when I run a rules session, you can be fairly sure that I know the rules; with the obvious caveat that I might have fallen foul of one of the above issues and maybe I've got something a bit wrong ;-) .

Anyway. When I've done a rules session, you might think that I've got one or two things wrong and you might want to query them. A quick check of the rulebook can usually clear things up...

...so, you might be fairly adamant that I am wrong about something and you might express that in a slightly strong way, perhaps saying something like "this is bulls#*t" or similar. However, that doesn't make for a pleasant gaming experience, and it might make you feel a bit awkward if, in fact, whadayaknow I was right after all...

...so, it's the 10th time in the game that you've called me out on a glaring rules error, but it's the 10th time that it turns out that the rule wasn't entirely as you thought it was. Maybe you might consider that you don't quite know the rules as well as you thought. Maybe you might be a little more courteous when questioning what the correct rule is. We all make mistakes, but it's never nice to be called a dick.

___

Three of us sat down for a game of eclipse. I've played it quite a few times, one player had played it at least once before and, for another, it was their first game.

Eclipse is one of my favourite games: a streamlined economic/combat hybrid game with an extremely elegant system for tracking income and expenditure combined with a good old-fashioned dicefest. If you like sci-fi 4x games, this is the smoothest.

After some decent early exploration into the level 3 hexes, uncovering a supernova and a few discovery tiles, I was able to do some tactical bankruptcy to take a few extra actions and get into some fights with the ancients. I had missed out on the improved hull tech and settled for some shields which I added to my dreadnought and intetceptor blueprints. I was able to build one of each and sent them, along with my start interceptor, into the level 1 hex. Who needs upgrades or dreadnoughts though when you can just roll a double 6 with the first dice roll? I could have won that fight with just two vanilla interceptors.

Next turn I bought another dreadnought and interceptor and went after another ancient and then, with the help of some computers and an ancient power source, the galactic centre on the following turn. I resisted the temptation to attack my undefended and inexperienced neighbour, instead opting for some diplomacy.

Unfortunately, I had blocked off the only pathway between my two opponents. It might be a bit socially questionable (I do have some narcissistic tendencies), but I successfully arranged to step out of the way to allow one neighbour to attack the other. Surely this is the best-case-scenario in a 3 player game? Sadly the attack came to nothing as the missiles were all absorbed by the hull laden tanks of dreadnoughts that lay waiting. 

After one or two rules clarifications and the sad demise of my supernova at the end of round 6 we moved into the endgame and the inevitable final conflict. I uesd the artifact key to top up my science and quietly acquired the wormhole generators before moving into the undefended backyard of my turtling neighbour. He had a rather populous home sector with an orbital and all the advanced spaces filled but, after brushing aside the hull-only dreadnought moved in as a reaction, the neutron bombs made light work of them.

Sadly, the attack proved too much and brought on an effective rage-quit which was slightly toned down to an instant pass and non-participation in the final round, save a couple of reactions late on. 

Prompted by some less than peaceful comments from my previously benign neighbour, I made a preemptive move into his territory to avoid having my ships pinned in my own sectors. It turns out that I do (occasionally) break an agreement. I was able to lay down 4 starbases and fill them with hulls to defend against the flood of missle-clad interceptors and ended up winning all the battles.

I had won. A hollow victory against a new player and another who didn't know the rules very well. It's a great game though and I'm sure revenge will be had.

Phew. And then James.

Martin was rather keen for me to bring Scotland yard along this week. So I dug it out of deep storage and bought it along.  At first it seemed like we were the only two up for playing it but a

James hides under his hat for Scotland Yard. He still lost.

new guy turned up just as everyone was sitting down.  Apologies that I can't remember your name new guy, it is not my forte.  Either way we sat and chatted about NoBoG for a little as Martin did a rule session on some other game before joining us.  Luckily the rules for SYard are very simple and quick so we got off (mostly) without a hitch.  For those that don't know SYard is essentially the original ‘letters from whitechapel’.  Its very basic and the detectives simply more around london using taxis, buses and the tube. Bad guy tries to evade them with the same tactic..

anyway the first few rounds went fine for Mr X (me) as the detectives utterly failed to be able to pin me down.  Until I checked the rules and noticed that there is a 3-player variant rather than it being a 3-6 player game.  when it’s 3 players the good guys both have TWO detectives each.  so with some additional pawns making their way onto the board Mr X got utterly thrashed, and I'm still not sure how it happened.

anyway, ive not played it for a while but its simplicity is the biggest factor of the game.. very simple rule set, very tactical gameplay.. all three of us seemed to enjoy it anyway.  Now i haven't played letters from W, but i hear it does smooth out some of the issues that SYard throws at you if you play it a few times.. but i think i still prefer SYard to Specter Ops (sic) which seems to overcomplicate things which also making it reasonably obvious where the bad guy is if you just watch his pencil movements when he marks the map..

Next we played Alien Frontiers which hasn't hit the table in yonks (not for me anyway). i dice roll based game where there are not really any bad rolls.  the results on your dice simply dictate what you can do on your turn, and if you like a certain tactic then you can easily get cards that help you ‘bend’ your dice results to that end.  whilst in theory it is an area control game, i find that in a 3 player game there isn't much needed for control until the end game.. and with three evenly matched players (which the dice seem to do for you) the scoring can end up very very close at the end.. a good entry level game though i think.. maybe something that should hit the table more when we get new guys..  the new guy won..

As a final point - and I'll post this up on Facebook as well for those who are into that kinda thing - I know it's not everyones Cup Of Tea - I doubled checked this weekend that the Mash Tun were ok with us storing tables and chairs at the pub, as we used every game capable table in the house this week. Charlie has kindly offered us the use of the store room next to the kitchen where there is some space up the back. I will probably drop off a table this Tuesday - if anyone else wants to donate some suitable gaming tables or chairs, then please do so, and we can squirrel them away in the storage room.

Pics this week are mine, Monika has shirked her photographic duties and gone on holiday. Pfft.

As ever, I shall leave you with the Gallery.

Hungry panda, hungry panda, hungry panda ooh ! Takenoko.

Dominion with Beer. The best Dominion expansion ?

Sam. Legendary. Am I referring to Sam, his pose, the t-shirt or the game ?
All of the above of course.

Classic gateway game, Ticket to Ride

Another classic gateway, this one pimped up Egypt style, Settlers of Catan

A neatly ordered Caverna.

Animal upon Animal gets epic.

Hot Stuff

This week was all change for NoBoG as we gave up our usual venue of the Ribs of Beef and instead descended on the Friendly Local Gaming Store of Athena.

This marked the start of the NoBoG on tour season - where we get to trial a bunch of different venues until we find one we like, all in the hopes of finding somewhere with more space to accommodate the growing numbers and also welcome back some old friends that have given up attending due to the general crush.

If you're out of the loop on this, suffice to say, a whole lot of talking got done, places were visited and votes taken. If you fancy reading several hundred thread posts - go check out the NoBoG facebook page. But you probably had to be there.

So this week Athena got a trial. Athena is a local gaming store that have been in Norwich for a couple of years and very recently have moved to a new huge premises - a former social club with three floors of hall space. With plenty of table and chair space and catering to gamers, Athena offers a no brainer fit for NoBoG gaming. On the other hand, NoBoGians like a nice pub - for the beer or the atmosphere or the eclectic mix of benches, stools and chairs, or perhaps at the end of it all, just for the fun of it.


At the start of the evening, with only a few people in attendance, the place definitely lacked a bit of buzz. No landlord or landlady to talk to. No other patrons at the bar. A mostly empty room with some seriously concentrating Netrunner players sandwiched along the far wall.

NoBoG @ Athena

But as more people turned up and the noise built up, the familiar NoBoG buzz sprang into life and all was good. With so much space there was no real need to count numbers ( and work out how many tables to people and therefore what games could be played ) and game arranging was completed in record time. It turns out it makes a huge difference when everyone can fit in the same space as to how quickly things get sorted.

A handful of new people turned up to join in the evening - as per usual - and by my rough count I think we hit 34 - ironically the lowest turnout in 3 weeks.

Six player Lords of Waterdeep

Elliot had six at his table for Lords of Waterdeep, whilst further down an intrepid three took on Pete's Galaxy M101 - without Pete playing, and finally Rich IV had his lugging of several tonnes of complete Dominion back and forth for the last month pay off, as he got it to table and challenged Hazel and the ultra seasoned Pete and Punk Rich to a crazy card synergy off.

Pete has taken to removing himself as a player / teacher from his prototype Galaxy M101 game in a bid to test how well new people can learn the rules and pick up the game without the author sitting in. As he puts it, the alternative to not doing this would be to clone and miniaturise himself to be included in all published copies of the game. I got to chat with Ben after he played it and he gave the playthrough and rules learning a big thumbs up, whilst also saying that the game was good - reminded him of Race for the Galaxy... no surprises there - and would be a cracking game once it was published.

Lords of Vegas with 5 hit the tables and Nicky got Waggle dance out again for the second week running - not a game about gamers ( or indeed Nicky ) shaking their asses at each other, but a game about bees making honey. Of course !

Chris also had Red Dragon Inn playing, which seemed to be going down really well, a card game about drinking and keeping your gold - fantasy adventurer style. I couldn't be sure but I think they were playing with five... as Chris has two copies of the game, it should only play four.

Blurry NoBoG @ Athena.. just before Lewis waves at the camera

As for myself, I played Lifeboats with Jamie, Chloe and David, the social game about voting people out of sinking boats to die, and I managed to pip a win with my social engineering shenanigans - without this time actually turning everyone against me because of my social engineering shenanigans. We played guillotine afterwards - where I shared a three way tie having been unscrupulously picked on, and finished up with late arrival Jack joining us and a table hopping Pete to get Avalon Resistance back to play. Things it seems have started to go full circle, and again there are a number of people who haven't experienced Resistance a bazillion times and are keen to give it a go...

The evil Pete and Chloe won, with poor newcomer Jack bamboozled by his role of Merlin, and Chloe offering a complete stonewall of lack of tells. She's well trained or a sociopath. I am not sure which.

Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves at Athena, and the snacks seemed to go down well - Martin pulled up a chair next to me with a fistful of Milky bars fresh from the Athena till. Jamie - who owns Athena - was gracious enough to allow us to bring our own beer with us, and quite a few NoBoGians turned up with their often weird and wonderful beers. It makes me wonder that if we do further nights at Athena, whether we couldn't do one of those whole beer swap evening malarkeys, where people bring in their favourite beers and then swap them with others to get an impromptu beer sharing evening.

I didn't hear a bad word said about gaming at Athena - people appreciated the good light levels, the tables, and Jamie got a lot of thanks from people for hosting us and putting up with our last minute arrangements. It was on the whole a great experience.

Personally speaking, despite grabbing my fair share of snacks and coke, I felt that if Athena had the facilities to offer more, I would definitely buy into it, and it seemed like a bit of a missed opportunity. Of course Athena and Jamie have a huge task ahead of them with refurbishing and plans for a cafe and all sorts - so I am sure in time things will change.

That was this week. Last week we were at the Ribs - and even without the darts it was a squeeze as 39 turned up.

Scoville - Hot Stuff

I got to play Scoville, a kickstarter that Ewan has brought along in the past which sees everyone competing to get the most victory points out of chilli farming. Ewan already wrote up an explanation of the game back here.

The game is solid and plays really nicely, and I think on reflection is probably the most solid kickstarter game I have played to date. Of course this has nothing to do with the fact that I won - which was quite surprising, I figured I had got scalped on making funky recipes with my chillis but as it turned out I did pretty well AND had just about all the bonuses from planting. Ewan came a super close second.... everyone else... well.. their chillis were just not up to snuff.

I'd highly recommend giving scoville a go if you are into light to medium Euros.

Nicky also brought along Waggle dance for the first time last week - this is a game by the same indie stable that released Cornish Smuggler ( Grublin Games ). I like their first title Cornish Smuggler - but the game does have some critical issues, you can break it relatively easily by some early super efficient moves, and all in all the game is something of a flawed gem.

Waggle Dance however seems to be a better designed affair - their second game - and Elliott gave it a thumbs up after also being aware of Cornish Smuggler and its flaws.

Sky Traders

Talking of possibly flawed games we also saw the first visit to NoBoG of Sky Traders a game published by FFG which sees players piloting their airships around for trade and nefarious doings. Owein who wasn't playing the game noted a possible fatal flaw that he had exploited - crippling another players ship without actually finishing them off leaves them out of the game. I don't think the session at NoBoG stumbled onto this tactical evil, and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

Elsewise a bunch of people new to Agricola tried their hand at the unforgiving farming classic - and I'm guessing got their assed kicked and Smash up and a bunch of other things got a whizz through.

Many thanks to Jamie for giving us the opportunity to try out Athena as a venue, and many thanks to Monika for the photos, as well as Elliott for Athena photos.

The Gallery

 

More Sky Traders

Agricola

Sam brings along Sons of Anarchy

Smash Up !

The Greed of Med "Shoot 'em til they stop twitching and then shoot em some more" Ed

This week we counted 22 NoBoG souls ready for gaming. Which turned out to be a wildly inaccurate count as eventually 31 people were playing at tables. I'm not naming any names *cough* Ewan *cough*, but I feel as if the counting was slightly wonky. This may not have been helped by a slow trickle of stragglers entering the pub. Excuses.

But no matter ! With a bit of patience everyone - even the latecomers - can be accommodated. If you turn up late, you might have to wait a bit for someone to lose horribly with an incompetent playstyle win with a clever strategy and start something else.

First up this week Pete got to give his prototype now in its second printing a go with a full table of six. Pete nobly took a small handicap given all five other players were completely new to the game - and as far as I know had not even played Race for the Galaxy which helps a lot when it comes to Pete's game - and proceeded to bamboozle everyone with rules.

Pete's prototype Galaxy M101
or as I call it, Chink In the Galaxy

Heads were swimming by the end of the rules explanation. It seems few had managed to grasp the finer points and all just wanted to get on and play to get a grip of it by playing a few rounds. The game is pretty straightforward, play systems for a cost ( cards also serve as currency ), deliver goods, put developments into play and creep influence into other systems in much of a cross between Race for the Galaxy and Steam, but if you haven't played either, then it could all be a bit alien at first.

Tom II won this with a triumphant 78 points and a hardcore deliver strategy ( pick cubes up, deliver them where they are needed ) with joint second limping in at 58 points. No one opted for military. A pity. Most enjoyed it thoroughly and thought it was an excellent game, whilst a couple were more on the fence with their experience. Six player is a pretty tough shark infested count for the game, and with all new players at the table it's likely that not everyone is going to have a happy clappy easy existence. Four players with new people would probably have been a good sweet spot.

Stu was back with us this week and gave Kingdom Builder - a Stu firm favourite - another bash. He followed this up with Camel C/Up ( annoying goddamn name that refuses to be one or the other ) which seemed to go down better than Kingdom Builder. Camel Cup is certainly a barrelful of fun and tends to leave the more serious, analytical and buttoned down Euros standing alone in a corner wondering where everyone has gone.

Lewis busted out Lords of Waterdeep at the final table downstairs, with Tom the First mixing it up and showing all the young 'uns ( technically everyone is a young 'un to Tom.... ) how to play with a solid victory. Quest finishes were at an all time high, the deck being one card away from exhaustion. No fillers for them this week as Lords played the whole evening.

Upstairs, Alhambra got a play, and if I have my facts right, Chris won this, with Kittens in a Blender being played afterwards. Kittens in a Blender according to Lauren was tense. Incredibly tense if you were one of the kittens I imagine. No idea who won this, but really, what does it matter who wins when you have a chance to stuff kittens in a blender ?

Elsewhere Darren brought Legendary Encounters - another card game in the Legendary family that this time sees you working your way through the Aliens franchise. We've already seen the Legendary Marvel game at NoBoG a couple of times, but the Encounters game is new this year and new to NoBoG. The rules are the same, but the theme is switched, no super heroes here, you get to play characters such as Ripley or Hicks ( not sure whether Hudson is in it... Game Over Man, Game Over ! ) and have to survive and engage with the acidic horrors from Geigers imagination. I didn't pay any attention to this as it was played but I suspect the theme is probably a good fit for the game, even though as a whole the Aliens Franchise has generally produced some awful games based on its IP - bewildering given that many knock off Alien copies are great games.

Dead of Winter got another bash. Everyone lost. Again. Two betrayers. But they didn't stink up the crises, they played nice. We played with an objective of too many mouths to feed, and started the game with 8 useless helpless survivors. The game seemed to be on punishing mode however, as helpless survivors sky rocketed - we ended up with an utterly bonkers 15 helpless survivors eating 8 food a turn - zero weapons were found, and much to the annoyance of all players, there were absolutely no options to eat any of the helpless survivors. Or leave them out in the cold. Or accidentally move base and forget to give them a forwarding address.

Despite the colony devouring 12 food a turn by game end, a heroic effort to salvage food saw us easily swing the food in the third round, only to be woefully betrayed by rampant resource burning which saw a flurry of zombie attacks eat people and plunge morale to a game ending -5.

Tough was an understatement.

Moving on we had a shot at Cash and Guns second edition and joined up with the Legendary table. Second edition Cash and guns makes a few changes to the original, notably it removes the Bang Bang Bang card ( which gives precedence over Bang cards ), changed loot division - it's now round robin instead of evenly split, and finally introduced the Boss who gets to pick loot first and also gets to change a single shooters target in the shooting round.

Adjustments have also been made to the player powers - simplifying them and making them all visible at game start - and the loot now has some set collection mechanics, with art and diamonds giving bonuses for who has what at the end.

Cash & Guns 2nd Edition. Ed toys with his gun...

Med Ed won the first round of this in his nice, easy mannered, I am not a threat, under the radar kinda way, and then proceeded to state that back to back wins in such a game were almost impossible. Little did we know he was just seeding the group think at the table for his shenanigans.

Darren got shot to bits in the second game with an astounding four out of four guns being loaded with bullets and pointing at him - and being brave or foolhardy he attempted to brash it out - but despite being dead and out of the game, this didn't stop Ed from later attempting to shoot Darren again. Because you know. Keep shooting them until they stop twitching. Or perhaps playing zombie filled Dead of Winter had trained Ed to double tap his victims. Just in case.

Admitting his incompetence - which may have just been another smokescreen ruse to lower his apparent threat - and having directed Ed not to shoot dead people in future turns, or anyone else at the bar / Norwich in general who weren't in the game, Ed cheerfully kept on sucking up double loot with his greedy character power and by game end had an impressive lead and had indeed won back to back at Cash and Guns.

The morale of the story is, don't be suckered in by Med Ed's nice ways. And also, never pretend to be dead. He'll still shoot you.