Card Drafting Heaven

"If you find yourself alone, riding in the green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled. For you are in Elysium, and you're already dead!" - Maximus Decimus Meridius from his cavalry warm up speech.

This week Dean brought along the new and swanky card drafting, pool building game Elysium to NoBoG with its lovely art and Greek mythology theme. There is some fluff and nonsense about you competing with other demi gods to compose the greatest feat of narcissism by collecting artefacts, heroes and composing legends about yourself all in a bid to impress Zeus and have him pick you, X Factor style BC ( oh the horror ), but what it boils down to is collecting sets of things to score more victory points than your neighbour. And yeah. They all have Greek mythological things going on. Imagine Canasta, or some variant of Gin Rummy, but instead of the Ace of Hearts you have Persephone, 3 of Hades.

Elysium - pic courtesy of BGG

Elysium is pretty much what we've seen before from such games - every round a pool of cards is placed in a central area for everyone to draft from. There is no real purchasing going on of the cards at this point - everyone has an opportunity to draft four things in turn, the only constraint being whether you have the right colour selection left to take an available card ( which by and large you always will have ). A small twist on the typical drafting shenanigans at this point sees your card pool split in two - those that are active and possibly earning you capabilities and gold, and those that are inactive and that score you end game points ( for sets of things and special VP multipliers ). Timing when you push an active card into a scoring card is a little of what the game is about - you get limited opportunities to do so, and every card you push down costs an amount of gold, so getting your ducks in a row of how many cards you want to push down, covering the costs, and getting enough actions to do it is the order of the day - not that it is particularly taxing to do so, this is not a game that's going to beat you over the head.

The game offers a mild point salad in how to approach things, there are bonuses for being first or the best in particular category, and you can also engine up into raw points early game, or go for the long game and invest in sticking stuff into your scoring area.

There are limited opportunities to dick with other players ( Poseidons cards are all about the dicking) but by and large the gameplay is not terribly cut throat, something like say Core Worlds is a much more explicit fight and race for crucial point scoring opportunities. Elysium is way more laid back, build your own area up, graze from the deck pool. It's also not a heavy synergy lead game like say Imperial Settlers where that drafter is all about the ramping up of interaction - you will be turning cards into inactive point scorers throughout the game which keeps the interaction and complexity rate low ( imagine if at the end of every round of Imperial Settlers you widowed cards into an end game score pile where they no longer took part in the game - and you only scored end game points from that pile, not your open tableau ).

Elysium, pic courtesy of BGG

All in all the game is a nice example of its genre, lovely theme, nice artwork, good production and is a cool addition to a collection if you have a need to scratch a card drafting itch and don't already have something like Abyss or Core Worlds ( unless you are Dean who seems to collect *ALL* the card drafting games ), but ultimately doesn't really bring anything new or innovative to table and is something of a Me Too game.

For my money, Elysium would probably edge out all the other card drafters - it's a bit more relaxed, simpler, quicker, streamlined and open to newbies doing well, as opposed to experienced players slicing and dicing in Core Worlds, and on the whole I probably prefer the Greek theme to anything else - even sci fi. Gasp. Blasphemy. Then again, I have two mutts and their names are Ares and Athena. And I dig the Iliad and the Odyssey. And I can fan girl when I know the stories of the characters I am picking up. So. You know. Bias. YMMV and should arguably pick Core Worlds instead ( Imperial Settlers is different enough here that imo, they are just enough of a different game to stand apart ).

Martin won this by possibly a single point - Richard IV got the end turn order over me and stopped my glorious victory. The points were very close all told, everyone was within a point or two of everyone else. Dean, expert and shoe in for the win came last. Surprise !

On Her Majesty's Service

We also busted out a game of On Her Majestys Service earlier which was all round pretty funny, and incredibly back stabby. I went from a single turn away from victory all the way down to last place, Martin, stole the single turn away from victory spot away from me, before I managed to stab him a few times, leaving Dean in the oh so close to winning position before Rich IV came from nowhere and pipped the win. Ridiculous. Funny. High points include Dean exclaiming that I had dicked him twice in one turn, and Martin's face when it went from the smug, I have won next turn it's all downhill to the backstabbed, shit, now I can't win. Priceless. The game has enough going on to make you think in a turn, and enough backstabbery to make that journey sometimes painful and usually funny.

Med Ed was in the house and decided to play one of my new things Isle of Skye - which amounts to Carcassonne on steroids. But this is Carcassonne with someone taking a deeper look at the scoring, sorting out the tile placement and putting in a better way of interacting with players. In short. It's a whole lot better. In fact. If this game doesn't at least get nominated for an award I would be surprised - it's simple yet offers a surprising degree of variation complexity on what you should do in your turn, and has a very high replayability factor.

The game is played over the course of 5 or so rounds ( depending on player count ), with each game having different scoring things at different rounds, meaning no two games are ever the same ( there are some 20 different scoring items, and only 4 per game are ever selected ).

Isle of Skye

The game itself revolves around your placing tiles to create your own little Isle of Skye fiefdom, with fields, water, mountains, roads and the usual malarkey giving you a modular landscape to piece together, on the face of it like Carcassonne if you had your own private board.

But here's a nice twist. At the start of a round everyone gets to pull three tiles in secret from the tile pool. You then have to decide which of the three you will discard, and for the other two, how much money you will place on them. Once everyone is finished, all tiles are revealed and then in player order you can buy a tile from anyone for the amount of gold they have placed on the tile. Purchased tiles are then added to your pool for you to place, whilst the seller gets your gold, and the gold they placed on their tile back. Unpurchased tiles have the gold removed and go into your placement pool.

Isle of Skye, closer shot of the tiles

This means that on tile pick up there are plenty of things to consider here - where can I place these tiles that gives me good scoring, either now, soon, or later. What state are other players boards in, and can others use these tiles and potentially purchase them away from me. How much money do I have to potentially make some tiles very expensive for others to buy and lessen their attraction. Do I save my money for future in case something really good comes along that I want to keep or purchase.

And on reveal that set of choices multiplies. Who has a great tile for me. Who would really like tile X. Can I afford it. Is it worth it. Yada.

Although simple in principle, the puzzle of where to place, what to buy and what to guard is surprisingly deep, and I suspect this game would be a trough fest of Analysis Paralysis in the wrong hands.

On the whole a fantastic light tile laying game, scratching the itch of building your own little kingdom, enormous replayability in scoring and timing options, and a whole bunch of player interaction with the open tile buying. Great game, well worth having a go of.

Trains : Rising Sun

Elsewhere Tim brought along Trains Rising Sun, which is the second game in the Trains series, which for those that don't know is Dominion with a board and themed solely around ... trains. I very much like Trains, and whisper it, I think it's superior to Dominion, albeit Dominion scores heavily on the breadth of available options making it supremely replayable. Trains Rising Sun is a welcome addition to the line to start giving the whole thing more breadth in what you can do. Either play it as a standalone, or mix it up with the original Trains to expand the number of options available ( just like you get with each Dominion set... ). Davey reported that although Tim was excited about having the rare opportunity to bring something a little heavier this week, he was less excited at getting beaten into last place. Oh dear. Stupid game anyway ! Maybe this is the real reason Tim never brings it.

We also had Lewis introducing new people to Smash Up and beating them all with his... Steampunk Cats, followed by Monty Python Fluxx that saw only Lewis brave enough to adopt silly accents and other ostentatious diplays of ridiculousness. Although to be fair, in Lewis' case that's normal behaviour, where silly Bane accents come as part and parcel of Batman Love Letter, so he has an unfair advantage.

Multiple simultaneous games of Dead of Winter were on the front tables with a whole bunch of new people. Not sure if this is a new trend of the front tables to have multiple copies of the same game going on.

Pete had a Petetastic evening with two games he really likes - Steam followed by Hansa Teutonica. He mentioned getting an early 5 actions in Hansa, so I would presume the game went very downhill for everyone else from that point on.

James and Torres

Old school Torres was busted out, I think James won this by a single point, and then they went on to play James' prototype Robot Robot... which if we aren't playing at least one prototype every week, then we have failed. Perhaps everyone should clump together into a co-op publishing house and raise a new game company from the ground.

The university season has restarted, so, as such, we had a spread of Uni people back with us, including Luke who seems to have had an argument with the barber over the summer and lost his shoulder length hair. He brought Betrayal at House on the Hill back to table, along with some other social crowd pleasing goodness.

Firefly also made a visit - I think its first visit to NoBoG, but slacker that I am, I have no idea how that went down, or indeed much of anything else that went on in the Tuna.

And there were some ridiculous Speed Avalon Resistance games which unsurprisingly was a crushing win twice for the bad guys.

I also failed to get decent pretty pictures of what was going on this week. The camera died. What can you do. Thanks to Tim for a couple of his snaps.

In other sad news the new red gaming cloth has also died. After suffering from the great Eastern Sea Coke spill a few weeks ago, its tangle with the washing machine caused it to shrink to a fifth of its size and declare it was done with being a gaming table cloth and instead had focused on embarking on a new career as a rather fluffy bath towel instead.

56 this week for the count, just one off the record 57.

Mass Tuna

This week NoBoG was on tour again this time visiting - at least according to Voiteks presumably auto corrected text - Mass Tuna. For those of us who like uncorrected text we were all visiting the Mash Tun. Or perhaps we should just keep calling it the Mass Tuna from now on - it would certainly make the auto correcter happy.

A Mass of Tuna. Not to be confused with a pub in Norwich. Easily done.

Some old faces turned up, some new faces joined in, and after correcting my earlier count, we reached a total of 45 people settling in to play some game or other. Which is actually a record for NoBoG just pipping the previous 44 ( ... last month ).

Lower floor at the Mash Tun. Six play Waterdeep.
That sounds like an Enid Blighton book.
Lashings of Victory points for all ! Except Elliot.

I'm not sure if it was the prospect of being able to play longer into the evening, given that the Tuna closes up at 11.45pm to midnight, or whether it was just a mad gambit but Game of Thrones turned up on a table, and was enjoyed by a group of 5 ... and they nearly finished. Although Sam reckons they could have finished under slightly different circumstances. So that's a thing now. You can play Game of Thrones in a pub evening. Next thing you'll know people will be bringing Battlestar Galactica along to play as well. Preposterous !

Dun dun, duh duh, dun dun, duh de dahhhh.
You know the rest. Game of Thrones. Sam grins
a Lannister grin.

Sam reports that he had wanted to have a go of GoT for quite a while, so he was keen on getting to play and ended up enjoying himself and winning as the "nice" Lannisters. Nice ? In my world said Sam, the Lannisters were nice. Monika was quite happy in the first half of the evening where she was pleased to note she was winning GoT, only later resorting to taking propaganda pictures of herself being picked on and trodden down into a not winning position. Such is Game of Thrones. Fortunately the rules for the board game Game of Thrones unlike the actual setting do not include you having to "win or die". So everyone made it home ok, no heads were chopped off, goblets poisoned or such forth.

Elsewise a very keen Punk Rich and Hazel had setup their stall with Nations - arriving at 6pm just to

Pete dashes through the rules of Hansa for Luke, Luke ( Crocker )
and James. Unfortunately a third Luke could not be found to make
the table an all Luke experience.

be sure. They said something about shopping, but I think they were just dead excited about getting in first. They played with Chloe and David, with Punk Rich romping to a win by not just pulling into the lead, but then grinding everyone else face first into the board game equivalent of dirt ( brown wooden cubes ). Hazel noted he was a bastard. No one likes a winner Rich.

Crocker appeared from the vaults of NoBoG history to challenge Luke and James to Hansa Teutonica, where despite James bemoaning that Luke had 5 actions and an implicitly uncatchable lead, Luke failed to win. I'm not sure who did win. My money is on Crocker who always rather liked Hansa.

Colt Express, Bondy gives a wave

Big group of six took on Colt Express followed by Lifeboats for an evening of what must have been some pretty intense backstabbery and enemy making. Andy made it to his self confessed once a year NoBoG visit for this, and Mr Bond brought along Jen to introduce her to the finer arts of gaming betrayal and how to make enemies. If any of the participants were talking to each other by the end of the night then it must have been a small miracle.

Downstairs not entirely sure what got played, Hal played... something... with Martin.... ummm.... followed by Ankh Morpork. Lords of Waterdeep was on table, Elliot got mauled in this and came fourth out of six - and we welcomed back Clive all the way from Lowestoft after a long hiatus.

Round the corner, Elite Ed was back with us along with Dean and newcomer Ian, and they got to try out Nations the Dice game. Both Nations and Nations the Dice game were being played simultaneously.

Lewis and a thumbs up for Munchkin

Lewis insisted on playing Munchkin the table over, and Ewan got a full game of Pillars of the Earth, followed by some Resistancing. There was a bit of a panic for a bit as it turned out no one had brought Resistance - shocking - until newcomer John ferreted a copy out of his bag. Phew.

Lastly I played New Dawn, managed to entirely miss the gist of the game at the start, wander off randomly throughout the game to chat to people, but finished in a strong second

Darren sets up New Dawn. Replace the board game with an
I.T. presentation and you have a busmans holiday for Darren.

place behind Pete. Which if I could have rolled a six on a dice at least once in 3 rolls would have meant I would have won instead. Stupid dice. Pete picked on newcomer John and wiped a bunch of his conquests out, which was harsh, he ended on 10 points which I failed to diplomatically handle by

New Dawn with some idiot grinning inanely in the foreground. ( me )

exclaiming in loud surprise ONLY 10 ????!!!! Alas it was indeed only 10. Pete had cherry picked his good scoring places. Evil Pete. Pete ended on 35, myself on 30, and Darren 20 something. Pete opined that getting off to a good start and being efficient was crucial in the game. I disagreed and said I had pissed my first few turns up the wall, wandered off, and still got a hand in it. I secretly agree with Pete though.

We finished with a game of Hal's prototype which was all very good, a game in which each player has a key piece of information, with the solution to the game being the combination of all those pieces of information. Deducing what information everyone else holds is the game with a simple could it be this space, yes or no. Elegant, deductiony, helps if you really lock into your head what the possible rules are to exclude / include them.

Pillars of the Earth. And beer.

It was great to see so many old faces back with us, plus good to see newcomers again and everyone fit in with space to spare and enjoying themselves. I'll say for me that the evening at the Tun has to be one of the best NoBoG nights I've seen, a lovely atmosphere, a great venue and a fantastic bunch of people. The extra space and time make such a difference, and looking back at the Ribs it just makes me really wonder how on earth we all fit and coped !

Everyone I talked to enjoyed their time at the Mash Tun, although I did get at least half a dozen people comment on the lighting - for those sitting on the lower level, the light by the end of the evening was dingy - not an uncommon thing for a pub, but in my estimation it was no worse than upstairs at the Ribs. Always a tricky problem when navigating some dodgy euro board colours. Voitek has suggested head mounted LEDs, which would definitely give a thematic vibe to something like Saboteur where you play gnomish miners, and Pete has suggested the possibly more suitable but less fun table lamps.

The barmaid at the Tun reported that we enjoyed their beer - with the NoBoG crowd drinking half a keg of the fruity stuff - around 20 pints during the evening.

Votes are underway for determining where the NoBoG tour heads next - or whether it just parks at the Tuna and has done with it. It looks like the Mass Tuna is where the tour bus is going to finish up. At least for Tuesdays. Once we've settled that, the tour bus might start up for a second NoBoG night on Thursdays. But, who knows, another discussion to be had ! When, where, if.

Thanks to everyone for making our first trip to the Mash Tun go down well, thanks to the lovely Monika for her pictures, and thanks to David and Chloe for scouting out the the pub in the first place ! Great find !

I'll leave you with the Gallery - with some more pictures from Athena last week.

Method Game Playing - Getting Into the Role

Before we start a quick mention about next week as people have been querying. Next weeks NoBoG falls on the 23rd of December - this is going ahead unless I hear different from The Ribs or otherwise, but a number of people have noted they are tied up with Xmas shenanigans, so there will probably be fewer people turning up. If you are free and fancy a game then turn up for the last NoBoG of 2014. And as Lewis said, it might be something of a Throwback Tuesday in terms of numbers. I'll certainly be there. Possibly on my own. Playing single player Caverna. Or possibly two player Munchkin with Richard IV. We have agreed to play Munchkin to annoy Lewis who will not be able to attend next week, and has been trying to play this game all year. When he then states we never play it, we can refute the statement and tell him he's never there when we do play it. Slacker.

On with the regular news....

No NoBlog last week ? What do you mean No NoBlog ? It was there. You must have missed it. I can't help that you have a crappy internet connection. Pfft. But just for you I will run through what happened last week... again.... *cough*...

The European Xmas Decoration Surplus - aka The Wherry Room
Sheriff of Nottingham in the fore, Xidit at the rear

For those of you who have been absent lately, or perhaps those that are just permanent lurkers from afar, I can tell that you've been hankering to see the Ribs in its resplendent Xmas attire. Wonder no more as last week I snapped a picture of the Wherry Room in full sparkle ...

Last week Dean turned up for one of his once per two month visits to bring us yet another game about Lords. This one was Lord of Xidit, which Guillame informed me was a remake of Himalaya. Having never heard of either Xidit or Himalaya this didn't help me. Apparently the game has a certain amount of action programming going on - pick a bunch of actions then carry them out hoping that a) you haven't made some basic error in action planning and that b) no one else is buggering around with your juju as their idiotic plans interfere with your sublime programming.

The game itself is presented really nicely, and has some nice miniatures representing various armed forces - but which in reality are just resources to spend killing ( obtaining ) monsters ( rewards ) and bidding.

The nice presentation of Lord of Xidit

The game has a number of cool  mechanics rumbling along, hidden auctions for rewards at mid game points, area control based on map position, programmed interfering actions, and a hidden influence area control for game end scoring.

Perhaps most interesting of all is the game victory scoring, which can change from game to game. Three different resource types are scored - money, bards ( area influence ) and sorcerer guilds ( limited area influence ). The first two types eliminate the player that has the worst score, whilst the third type will gift overall victory to the player with the highest tally. This presents an interesting choice in that the third resource type is the only one that really counts, but if you neglect the other two and end up coming last in that category you will get eliminated before you can get to the actual victory scoring resource - but equally, like the adage about not having to outrun a bear to escape it, just outrun the person next to you - you don't have to win the eliminators, just not be last. Too much effort spent in an eliminator means your final tally suffers.

Which of the resources is the victory condition and which are the eliminators is set at the game start - thus giving a better longevity to the game with a slightly shifting victory scorer.

The game looks pretty cool overall, but Stu was not overly impressed with its play, noting that the final game scoring was pretty meh in actuality - it all being too close and a bit of a balanced non event. Perhaps one of those games that paddles hard, requires a lot of effort, and ends up with everyone in a close tie by game end. Good ? Bad ? Balanced ? Forced balanced whether you like it or not ? I'd still like to give this game a go myself however.

Elsewhere Room 25 had a busy and noisy outing, which was followed by Werewolf.

Sheriff of Nottingham

Sheriff of Nottingham got another go and proved to be popular again - Punk Rich spent all game being honest and setting himself up as the Totally Trustworthy No Need To Search Me Guv before he embarked on a final round of devious lying. Rich IV however being an untrusting type was not falling for his carefully crafted trustworthy reputation and caught him hauling a cart full of contraband in. Despite this Punk Rich still won.

Also downstairs James attempted to fit in an epic game of Dominant Species, but after turns started stretching out to an hour a piece had to abandon the game 2/3 of the way through. Dominant Species can be a bit long for a pub session - it probably either needs to be setup and played a lot earlier than their early start of 7.15, or the cards need to be played as a quick variant.

Upstairs I got to sample the new Britain map for Hansa Teutonica. Which I was unimpressed with. The new map significantly alters the balance of powers, which is fine, but I think to its detriment also brings in a lot of region and power locking which can prove difficult or impossible to deal with. As Pete noted Hansa is most definitely a self balancing game - it makes little pretence of being balanced in and of itself, and requires players to identify strong plays and compete for them to stop anyone running away with it. However with the new Britain map some of these power plays are locked away in exclusive areas which means most players are just not going to be in a position to compete and stop run away power houses. And if they try - they've probably just tanked their whole game in trying to claw back a leader.

This ends up as a major problem for either new players, or experienced players that haven't wrapped their heads around the map - because the map is so swingy a mistake or two at the wrong time can really hurt the end game - possibly beyond repair. For me it spoils Hansa to the point of being meh - and really cuts it off from being newbie friendly - and with the game length as it is.. it's an issue ( given that shorter games can get away with being more cranky as either way in 15 minutes the game is over ).

On the other hand if you have a player base that are hardcore Hansa players this map is going to be a breath of fresh air that really changes up what's going on. I still feel however that even then, an unlucky break may result in someone getting some serious advantages that make the game a foregone conclusion.

Of course at this point - a second expansion for Hansa - it's probably fair to say the target audience for the Britain map are hardcore Hansa players. Still. One to be wary of for newbs I feel.

Afterwards we played a really enjoyable couple of rounds of Colt Express which continues to impress.


This week Sheriff of Nottingham was back - played on two tables simultaneously such was its popularity. Everyone seems to be really digging Sheriff, and its simple but very social mechanic of trying to slip lies past the other players is proving to be appealing to the NoBoGers. This kind of social game seems to do really well at the Ribs, Resistance, Werewolf, Cash and Guns - and now Sheriff - obviously resonating with the players - whether that's because they all feature high social player interaction, elements of direct conflict / lying, are short and fun, hard to say. I suspect its the high player interaction and social / lying elements. Time will tell whether Sheriff can stick around to be a perennial favourite.

Glory to Rome got a hand or two in the Wherry Room, a great deck building score synergising card game which is not a million miles away from Race for the Galaxy, but some people rate better. I think Race has more permutations, and Glory to Rome is... more approachable. Lewis had a stab at this, won his first game, tanked the rest, but enjoyed it.

Afterwards they played Hansa Teutonica - this time on the original map - and everyone agreed to let Pete win again. Or rather, Pete was massively more experienced and hosed everyone.

Upstairs Dominion, Oddville, Get Bit another of the Sheriffs and a rambunctious game of punching shooting loot dropping Colt Express got a play.

All of which left myself with Caverna.

A massive seven player game of Caverna.

With newbies.

Half of which had never even played Agricola.

And just over 3 hours to play it.

Madness you say ? Pfft !

I've never actually played 7 played Caverna having shied away from it in the past for fear of monumental amounts of analysis paralysis and lengthy downtime of waiting for 6 others to take their turn - regardless of AP. As it was there wasn't much choice, a 7 handed game it was, and part of me was also intrigued to see just how this monster would play out. 7 players too many ? Too cramped ? Awful for newbies ?

Seven player Caverna. Hardcore. Crazy.

Despite the table being crammed to bursting with stuff - and supplies of everything from wood, to stone, to wheat all running out and having to be substituted with multiple counters ( and when these themselves ran out, with anything else to hand ), the game ran really well. And fast.

Personally for me the game didn't drag at all - quite the reverse, the pace was absolutely frantic and I could not keep up with what was going on. Although a lot of this was probably due to the fact I had 6 players barraging me with questions every turn, and I had no time to sit and think at all. I defaulted to a largely auto pilot strategy of early dwarf growth, borderline food supply issues, ignoring mines and weapons and getting a few decent point multipliers in by the end.

Everyone seemed to really enjoy the game - and by game end there were a lot of nods and appreciation of the subtleties of the different strategies and a real appetite to play it again, this time with better knowledge.

The game ended really close, a single point between myself and Owein, with myself taking the crown of Dwarfiest Dwarf. Although the victory points may be lying here, as Owein had a gloriously dwarfish setup of nothing but mines, weapons and a beer hall. Chloe also got really into the dwarfish roleplaying mid game, as throwing her pieces around the Ribs floor meant she was delving under dark benches, torch in hand, looking for of all things ore. I like to think she was taking a Method Acting approach to the game and getting into what it is to be a Dwarf in Caverna. So perhaps technically Chloe and Owein were dwarfiest dwarfs after all.

So the conclusion for 7 played Caverna is that it runs fantastically well. Even with newbs at the table. And is definitely a great euro to bust out for a higher player count. We agreed at the start not to spend too long in AP to make sure things went smoothly, and tbh, the game was a blast because of it. The only fly in the ointment was the resource token count. Everything starts to run out in a 7 player game - you either need more basic resources, or a whole bunch more multiplier tokens. This is particularly a problem for wheat - which often ends up spread thin around all 7 players and not really open to any of the multiple counters.

Personally I would love to play 7 player again, and although some of the powers feel ridiculously strong for 7 - the either or becomes and or - it didn't prove to be overpowered at all. If you haven't tried 7 player Caverna for fear of the downtime - try it. It's good.

Dextrous Delights

A flurry of dexterity games this week down the pub - mainly down to James bringing a bag full of such things. Villa Palleti, Hamsterrolle, Loopin' Louie, Animal upon Animal and Riff Raff were the fat fingered fumblers that got played, of which I have no idea who won what.

Riff Raff - Balance goods on a sea rocked ship

Villa Paletti - Remove your columns to build upper floors

 

Loopin' Louie was an unexpected visitor - it can be tricky to get your hands on - and is one of those kids games that has found favour with the board gaming cognoscenti. Or maybe it's all just an excuse to play with toys. Unfortunately they played it so quick I failed to get a shot of it - if you've never seen it, a guy in an aircraft buzzes around trying to steal your chickens. You can prevent this with a well timed flick that makes him jump your chickens and hopefully land on someone elses - or if you are James, back onto yourself to steal your last clucker. Childish and fun. If you are interested in it, and can't lay your hands on the original AND you are passing one of their shops, then there's a carbon copy of it being sold in Smyths.

Galaxy Trucker -The big III ships ply the space lanes

Betrayal at House on the Hill, Galaxy Trucker, Hegemonic and Hansa Teutonica were the non dexterity 'main' games being played in the evening, with Mr Bond taking a largely newbie or near newbie Hansa crowd upstairs to impress them with his cube shuffling skills. Punk Rich, the only seasoned vet tumbled to fourth position - not sure what was going on there - whilst Mr Bond crushed all before him to win the prize of being painted in period costume on the box of the next germanic historical Euro.

Galaxy Trucker had a fairly disastrous run, quite a few ships disappeared into the void never to return - fun fact, a rule that sometimes gets missed, a player can be a spoilsport and drop out of the race at any point to cut their losses... - but as ever the game went down well.

Hegemonic was a new visitor to the Ribs - a 4x space game, something of a more Euro-ified less sexy looking Eclipse. Pete reckons I did a poor job of selling the game with this description, but I think it's accurate.

Hegemonic - a space based 4x

Hegemonic is a 2-6 player game that sees each player exploring out into the galaxy to exploit political, industrial or military bases of power. The power bases present asymmetrical conflict possibilities, with each having different rules for where, how and what strength an attack will be. The game has no resources other than cash and very much comes down to what kind of power you can project or defend with, timing of actions and what technologies you have to help you along.

More than anything the game presents area control gameplay, the fairly large number of permutations between how each power overlaps with others giving a reasonable amount of depth to play.

Unlike Eclipse there are no dice in Hegemonic - conflicts are determined by strength of factors on the table and a single played card from your hand ( a la Game of Thrones et al ). So combat is far less open to RNG shenanigans. Also, tile exploration is performed from a pool of known tiles - another reduction in randomness from Eclipse - so gameplay is much tighter ( which might be as much a curse as it is a boon for those that like perfect information games ). Conflicts - particularly when player count rises can quickly become chaotic and are tricky to judge or time correctly. I have a fear that the game could devolve at points into single power base exploitation and popularity contests, but I haven't played it enough to see if that plays out.

Animals Animals aka, what I do with meeples when bored
waiting for someone to take their turn

There's not a lot of time to faff about with the game, the end game timer is pretty brutal, and a mis-step or two can easily cost you the end game. Nice game, interesting conflict dynamics - suffers a bit from inconsistent clunky rules in places ( not helped by subtle typos that change the meaning of sentences ), a lot of plays I fear might reduce the game to a fairly binary set of strategy choices.

Avalon Resistance finished off the evening for those not playing Hegemonic - a straight good guy win in the first round, with Luke as Merlin being just as quickly assassinated to turn it into a bad guy win, followed by a much more tricky five round game where the bad guys tipped for the win. Two wins for the bad guys.
 
Numbers - a very laid back 19 this week.

Pew Pew Pew

A respectable twenty two for this weeks shenanigans, including Robin making an unexpected return after several months of being AWOL, and, of course, a few new people - Jodie and Mark amongst others.

A rather tough table for Castles of Burgundy was setup, wall to wall experienced players making the game a challenge. Wily Tom ended up being crowned the winner, with Pete lamenting his strategy of doing a bit of everything failing to bring home the Burgundy Bacon.

On the other side of the room to Burgundian Castles, the NoBoG classic Hansa Teutonica was wheeled out to four newbies and a single vet - myself. If you know anything about this abstract Euro cube cruncher, you will know that newbies can struggle a little at first getting their head around what works and what doesn't. Being the general nice chap that I am I gave everyone a run through of the strategy involved - ( although I know some that take satisfaction in it, I don't particularly believe in the adage of explaining the rules and only the rules to someone, then delighting in slicing them several ways from Sunday as I leverage my experience over their inexperience ) - with a liberal dose of make your own mind up and herded them around the pitfalls of play.

The game was enjoyable, tough and close fought, with everyone looking like they might have had a chance had things gone in a slightly different direction at game end. I struggled to make headway on points, but still managed to pip a win in a fairly low scoring game.

Funkenschlag - Powergrid. This time set in the lovely fjords.

Downstairs the venerable Funkenschlaaag ( Powergrid ) and Lords of Waterdeep were put up for play. A new to me Nordic board was on offer, with a lot of interest clustered in southern Norway. Not sure who won this, and for some at least the experience was somewhat bewildering, math heavy and not entirely a thumbs up - or a thumbs down. It's certainly true that Powergrid with players that kind of know what they are doing, can start to become an exercise in headbound spreadsheet mechanics.

Trains. Fletch is either confidently not viewing his hand of cards
- unlike everyone else - or is in the process of eating them here.

Lastly Ed and Fletch took newcomers and largely inexperienced Mark and Jodie through the paces of Trains. A game which by now we surely all know, is about Trains - as the now part of the furniture in NoBoG joke goes. Actually it's Dominion. Without any rioting peasants, endless expansion boxes, and with a lovely board. Which if you've played this with Owein will know is not a required part of interaction to win the game.

Fillers. After the Lords of Waterdeep lot finished, they embarked on a game of Love Letter. Which was possibly the noisiest most raucous game of Love Letter ever to be played. I am not sure just how you can play such a noisy game of Love Letter ( Ed gave a reconstruction demonstration "BOOM, yes I am the Princess BITCHES !" ) , but they managed it. Lewis blamed Luke for all the raucousity ( not a word, should be a word ) post game.

The last filler was Space Cadets Dice Duel. This is a game which splits the players into two teams, each of which gets to crew a starship with the sole aim of shooting down the other starship. Each starship has a crew station that controls one aspect of the ship, weapons, shields and so on, and if you've ever played Star Fleet Battles, you'll know exactly where this comes from. In fact, the two miniatures they supply in the box are even though not officially linked with any Star Trek IP, pretty much exact replicas of the Defiant from the Star Trek series Deep Space Nine. Coincidence ?

Unlike SFB, play proceeds in frenetic real time, with no turns at all - neither me go you go, or we go, just, just play as fast as you can - with dice used as the main interaction between a player and the game. Whilst this might sound utterly stupid and chaotic ( which may or may not appeal to you ), the action of having to roll dice - of which you always have your own personal stash - injects a delay into the game, wherein you are continually rolling dice looking for maybe one or two values that are useful to you.

The dice are the fuel of the game. The engineer player has six normal dice, and depending on the result of a die, he can assign them to a ship crew station. Once a player receives a power die from the engineer player they can then roll their own dice that interact with their station. Once a die has been rolled that the station player likes, they lock their die in, and hand the power die back to the engineer - who gets to roll it again.

The realtime nature actually works out well for this - whilst the engineer can give power dice away to crew stations to power up that station ( and let them roll their own dice ), in practice there is a time lag between assigning power to a station and something useful coming of it. Shoving power into the shields for instance simply starts the process of rolling a single shield dice. It might be 20 seconds or more before you actually get to raise a shield in the direction you want...

Gameplay is fun, frenetic and at times stressful if you have a lot to do. A great game to play, and a bit of a crowd pleaser given its wacky play, zero downtime and raucous chatter. My only concern about the game is of its longevity - once a crew gets skilled at using their ship the game could break down into a bit of a binary blah fest, where whoever gets the last best movement gets to win. I can definitely see this happening, at which point the game is a whole lot less interesting, but, it also has to be said there is quite a learning journey to be made before you reach those oh so jaded clued in cynical heights. Whilst there are less than perfect crewmen on station, fun and doubt is to be had.

I lost both games. I blame Fletch for our first loss and his frantic handling of shields, helm and tractor beam - I was the "no stress here" engineer just handing out dice. In truth, Fletch's job was by far the trickiest and most busy, and not an easy ride by any stretch of the imagination - particularly for a first game. And I blame Ed for my second loss - after he did a sneaky piece of manoeuvring  that flipped him to the shieldless rear of our ship and proceeded to blow the crap out of us. For my part I wasn't watching the sneaky move ( which in hindsight I should have been ) - I was watching Fletch and Pip trying to load the torpedos... and fail...

Fletch has now left us for six months of glorious touring with Her Majesty's Finest Flyers, we hope he has a safe tour, and returns eager for gaming around Christmas !

Winter Fireworks

Such was the breadth and depth of gaming this week that I am hard pressed to keep all of it in my head. It could be something to do with the fact that we had another record busting week of 24 attendees spread over five tables.

Takenoko and it's greedy panda once more saw the light of day, and once more was followed by Betrayal at House on the Hill - but with a completely different group to last week. Glass Road made a tasteful and much appreciated second visit - this really is a cool shorter euro game with some clever mechanics going on, and no less than two concurrent games of Skull and Roses were also being played - one upstairs and one downstairs enabling you to take your pick of seating.

Pete's prototype got another airing in the pub with some discussion afterwards - not sure what the feeling was about it. I suspect Pete being Pete, then managed to encourage everyone to jump into a fast game of Hansa Teutonica - they were still playing when I left and the barmaid hovered locking up.

Alhambra and Lords of Waterdeep rounded out the other initial plays.

New to me this week was Hanabi - a co-operative card game all about fireworks. Although what the game has to do with fireworks - apart from having pretty pictures - is beyond me. It could be a game about collecting sets of goats. Or teapots. Or goat teapots. Or just about anything. Fireworks are cool I guess. Cooler than goat teapots anyway. Unless you're really into esoteric teapots. Perhaps the artist for the game couldn't draw goat teapots but could draw firework blasts. Who knows.

If you haven't played Hanabi the game is all about trying to finish colour sets of fireworks. Five sets in the basic game, six in the advanced game. Sets are laid down in the middle of the table according to their colour and on a strict numerical basis from low to high. Card values start at one and end at five, with there being only *one* five value card for each set in the deck.

So far so good. Except. You can't see any of your cards. Because everyone in the game is holding their cards with the backs pointing at themselves and their faces pointing at everyone else. And you need to play one of these backwards cards you can't see. Or spend a token to give a "clue" to someone else about some of their cards. You can tell someone what colour a bunch of cards are, or what numerical value they have. Failing that, you can discard one of your own cards to get a clue token back for someone in the group to spend later.

The art in the game then is to communicate enough information between all players such that they - 1) don't discard a card that's really needed, 2) don't try to play a card that doesn't fit and thus lose a life, 3) build a set of each colour of firework.

Just why you would be tampering with fireworks blindly in the first place, with three failures making the entire firework factory / display / anarchist centre blow up is a mystery. Seems excessively risky to me.

In any case the game plays very nicely and is something of a breath of fresh air. I feel the game could probably become too simple with a few plays, as a group really begins to read between the lines of clues that are given and understand the mindset of individual players. It's not so much what you say - which is helpful - as to when you say it - and who is saying it to who. And of course making sure that everyone has a 'safe' known action to take. The advanced game probably helps with this, bringing in a very difficult multicolour set to make, but eh, as it's not technically a requirement to complete, those that don't desire utter perfection could just ignore it.

Depends on the players I suspect. With a wrong group, this game could be a tortuous exercise in frustration / comedy.

Resistance finished the evening. The bad guys won three straight missions in a row. Despicable. Even after I had spotted two of the three spies, and had a probable line on the third ( which Merlin already knew to be true ). We'll blame it on short time. And King 'Reliable' Phil picking a well known spy for his mission. But nevertheless, it marks a welcome return to victory for the bad guys. Luke got his first try at being a bad guy. And gave himself up turn one. And then squirmed with some dubious made up stories as to his innocence. Ha. Never mind. It can be tricky with your first attempts at outright in your face lies. Resistance. A game about teaching you how to be a better liar / sociopath. When everyone has mastered it - be afraid.

The End of 2013

This week was the last NoBoG evening for 2013, and on this final chance to game at the Ribs an outstanding 20 turned up, including a few new persons who we can only assume got lost on the way to their employers Christmas Do.

Four tables were setup, Betrayal at House on the Hill proving to be an early popular choice, followed by a debate over Lords of Waterdeep or Chaos in the Old World ( The Waterdeepian Lords eventually claimed supremacy ) on table two, and the classic stand in Powergrid on table three.

Meanwhile Matt overcome by possibly one too many pre Christmas celebrations declared that Hansa Teutonica hadn't been played in a while, and suggested that make it to the fourth table upstairs. It was here that newcomer Roxanne stumbled onto their game and was quickly engaged in an overwhelming display of abstract Euro cube shuffling. I'm not sure what it is lately with subjecting our newcomers to the gnarliest of cube crunchers we can - perhaps it's a developing newcomer hazing ritual.

Pete played in random Hansa fashion but ended in a reasonable first place with a nice key bonus - no big scores this game - Matt came in a good second, Roxanne a strong third, Nathan a fairly poor fourth, and me in a pathetic fifth. Oh dear. In my defence however I think I did a reasonable job of making sure the game wasn't too appallingly abstract crunchy for the new players.

Downstairs betrayal was already afoot in the spooky house where Ewan turned out to be some evil bat wrangler, feeding his pretty pets on the blood of the innocent explorers. The explorers were having none of it and called in the exterminators to win the game. The second outing found Nicky to be the evil doer, and in a strangely bat/rat type affair led her ever expanding rat horde to a glorious nibbletastic human devouring victory over the explorers.

A quick round of Mascarade upstairs was then followed by everyone grouping into two tables - some Saboteur 2 ing, with an evil evil Sam ousting his fellow Saboteurs at the end to claim a single glorious Saboteur victory, and for the second table the ubiquitous Resistance Avalon.

Resistance was a sorry affair with the bad guys once again losing helped on by some spytastic clangers. Matt as Merlin simply shut his mouth for the entire game, and let a logically perfect Pete figure out where everyone was. With Lady of the Lake and Merlin in the game, no sign of any bad guy help, and 2 of 3 of the spies being practical new players, it was always going to be a tough ride for Team Evil. In fact now I come to think of it, I have no idea why we so heavily favoured Team Good - some spurious suggestion by Pete to better cater to the new players seems in hindsight flawed when a good number of those new players were on Team Evil.

For those that did not attend, not only did you miss out on some great gaming, you also missed out on Robin's home made mince pies.

So 2013 is done for NoBoG, and the next session is probably shaping up to be the 6th 7th January 2014. Keep your eyes peeled to Twitter or the Blog for eventual confirmation as to when the next outing is.

Until then, Merry Christmas and may all your presents be game shaped.

Catastrophic Catamarans

It’s a cold, crisp morning. The first rays of sunshine sparkle on the Bodensee. On the merchant ship Purrfect Storm, Whiskers McGee is checking the manifest: 'One chest of precision watches. One chest of rare books. 12 bottles of fine wine. And the case of refined glassware, which First Mate Tiddles is stowing in the hold. All seems to be in order.' Standing at the prow of the ship Whiskers admires his reflection. ‘I really am a very fine specimen’, he thinks as he adjusts his hat to a jaunty angle. A hard task when you have cat-ears. Smoothing down his fur he is jolted out of his musings by the sound of smashing glass and swearing.

“Be careful with that glassware.” calls Whiskers. “It’s expensive.”
“It’s this damn tail!” replies Tiddles angrily. “It’s bloody impossible not to trip over it on this cramped boat.”
“Don't you like pretending to be a 16th century feline merchant?”
“Not really. The cat outfit is itchy. The people over there are giving us weird looks. And neither of us can sail.”
“Oh.” mutters Michael Schacht, dejectedly taking off his Whiskers McGee mask.
“If you design a board game about cats sailing merchant ships then I'll happily play it, though.”

Tom grinning like the Cheshire
 Cat. Look at that awful cover!

And that’s what Michael Schacht did. Rather than live out a perverse fantasy life as a strange anthropomorphic merchant cat he designed Felina. Either that, or during a raucous night in a German beer hall the publisher lost a drunken bet and poor Michael, winner of the prestigious Spiel des Jahres, had this terrible theme foisted on to his game. And that is why Felinia is being sold off cheaply in the Works discount book store. And that is why Tom brought it down to the Ribs and insisting we play it. Because Tom is cheap.

If you look on Michael Schacht’s Wikipedia entry you will find a list of his games. He  designed at least one per year between 1999 and 2011, but there is an ominous gap in 2010. This is where Felinia should sit. He's ashamed, I tell you! But he shouldn't be. If you look past the dodgy cats and artwork, Felinia is a tidy little game with traditional Euro design roots. There is a nice acquisition portion of the game where players bid for the right to buy or exchange limited goods. Players can then cash in combinations of goods in order to load their cat-merchants on to the rather nifty 3D cardboard ships, which then set sail across the sea to the land of Felinia. Once on Felinia you can claim locations and grab tokens for points or special in game bonuses. It’s all rather familiar, perhaps a bit too familiar, but still makes for a fun time and the is some good jostling for position. Our biggest gripe wasn't with the gameplay, but that we found it hard to distinguish between the different goods. Three shades of brown is not the best choice of colours and we often ended up collecting the wrong goods. It would have been catastrophic if any of us were colour blind. Still not bad for a tenner.

See the lovely ships of Felinia. See the terribly hard to
distinguish goods. See not as much cat related stuff
as first envisaged. Sadly not even the meeples are cat-shaped.

Tom won by a good margin, taking time to align his merchants in nice rows to get placement bonuses. Nicky came second with a hefty stack of tokens. I came in third with my ramshackle strategy, and Stu was in last place; his food for points strategy not quite working as well as we'd all feared early on.

Not to be outdone on the ridiculed theme stakes, Sam pulled Ground Floor out for its second airing at NoBoG. You can read about its first reception here. New guy Robin, Matt, Alina and Alina’s friend (whose name I forget) sat down to pretend to be at work. They didn't finish, but it was better received this time. Alina especially enjoyed it - perhaps because she is self-employed and longs for the rigid structure and tedium that can only be found in a corporate office. And because she claimed to have African children working in the basement of her non-profit organisation. Hmmm.

Farming fun in the final round of Agricola.

Pete, Rich and new guy Oliver decided to toil in the mud and play the popular farming game Agricola, which Pete won. Then, insisting that Pete should win another game, they decided to play Hansa Teutonica.

Ousted from the comforts of the Wherry Room, Fletch, Dean and John were sent upstair to fend for themselves. There they found a lovely big table with comfy seats and played Core Worlds. This was an incredibly close game with Dean winning on a tiebreaker with John and Fletch only one point behind.

Beer: Ah, this is the bit you've missed! I had pints of Eugene’s Lair from the excellent Oakham. Named after a level on the 1980’s classic computer game Manic Miner. This is a hazy golden beer - well measured hops and tropical fruits with a hint of biscuity malt and a long dry, bitter finish. Nicely done. 8/10 Kemet in beer form.

Pete Week

Instructor Phenir banked his Tie Interceptor to the left in a graceful arc whilst keeping his eye on the four rookies who were bumbling around in their Tie Fighters.
 "Pattern Alpha Four Left !" Phenir barked into his intercomm. Three tie fighters rolled left - whilst one rolled right - the sergeant in his Tie advanced peeling off to follow the single inept rookie. 
"I said left you saalarkian hog ! Do you not know right from left ?! I will have you back at guard duty TK-426 !" . The miscreant Tie wobbled in space before joining back with his newbie compatriots.  
A flash of silver glinting in the dark of the void - Phenir snapped his attention to the right flank. There in the distance, a rebel recon flight hauled into view. Phenir cursed into his mask.  
"Z squadron form up, battle speed,  flank right, bandits approaching. Rookies stay close, remember your training !"  
As the Tie engines whined up to full speed, laser fire crackled between the combatants, the rookies getting a harder lesson today than they had bargained for.

This week must have been Pete's birthday or somesuch, as both Race for the Galaxy and Hansa Teutonica were played - and Pete got to partake of both. These two games are something that makes Pete a very happy NoBoGer.

With some discussion about what to play, and a debate about the merits of various Archipelago shenanigans, it was decided that a couple of lighter games would kick off proceedings for the eight of us.

Ewan sitting in on his first bewildering encounter with Race for the Galaxy joined Sam, myself and Pete for a relaxed pace blast through this classic marmite card based game. Not to be confused with marmite twiglets, a delicious crunchy snack with a hint of marmite. Race for the Galaxy is more a mental marmite - you either love it or you hate it. No chewing on the cards required. Or you play it enough that you get to like it, because goddamnit you have to play it at least 30 times to get the learning curve, and you will play it at least 30 times it's in your contract. Pete said so.

Declaring myself to be aiming for second place - behind of course Pete - the game set off, with Sam getting a great start, and Pete playing in a laid back manner.

Ewan sat in the corner looking perplexed. Not untypical for your first hand of Race. I think he was mulling over whether he liked this curious marmite flavour. Disgusting ? Or interestingly piquant ?

Cards were cycled through, planets settled, developments developed and Pete by mid game had set up a devastating economic engine. Sam hadn't quite fully capitalised on his setup, Ewan was struggling with his military worlds, and I was tromping through the mud of trying to get something to work.

With a few blasts of high earning VPs for the last couple of rounds, Pete ended up the comfortable winner, I was second, Sam came in a half dozen points behind me and Ewan behind Sam.

In other words, the positions matched the level of experience. Coincidence ? Maybe.

No chewed cards, so probably a victory for everyone then.

Notre Dame. This is what Paris looks like. Apparently.

  In other non galaxy racing parts of the universe, Stu, Fletch, Nicky and Matt had a stab at Notre Dame.

Not sure who won this, but there were some curses and groans as this played out, clearly vying for influence in the Parisian suburbs is a cut throat affair. I was intrigued by the board layout for this, and the game chatter sounded like it was a fun outing.

Half time was called and everyone had a switch around. Despite Pete being up for some Star Wars action, the temptation of Hansa proved too much, so he Nicky, Matt and Ewan went off and played Hansa Peteonica. A vanilla outing for the board game this time - no alternative board nor funky objective cards - and Matt, a proponent of the Actions Are Important line of thinking, aced his way to five actions, linked up the two main cities and romped home to a convincing score.

Pete is slipping at Hansa. I think it can no longer be referred to as Hansa Peteonica, as quite a few people have given him a drubbing at this lately, and I am hard pressed to remember the last time he won.

Star Wars was setup on the other table, myself, Fletch and Sam sitting down to this, with Stu participating in a purely observational capacity.. and the odd jibe at passing hap hazard pilots.

Sam in his first play at this picked Imperial, Fletch went Rebel, so deciding to join the inexperienced Sam I too went imperial.

Sam picking quality, opted for a Tie Advanced with some missiles, and a Tie Interceptor flown by some Imperial Bad Ass ( Turr Phenir ), for a total of 52 points. Deciding I needed to therefore weigh in on quantity - I am with Comrade Stalin here, that quantity has its own quality - I pulled four rookie academy pilot tie fighters out, at a cost of 48 points. Four juniors in non upgraded tin cans. Don't worry lads... you'll be fine.

Fletch chose himself a spread of war machinery, an X-Wing flown by non other than Wedge Antilles, a somewhat inexperienced A Wing, and a veteran Y-Wing. Needless to say all three ships were packing - R2 units, missiles, fancy systems, you name it. Pfah. Those rebels and their bling. A real man sits in a non upgraded tin can. With no life support. Or heat. In a funky flightsuit. With only a red lightbulb for illumination.Yeah.

A no nonsense fight kicked off with a fairly short ranged brutal pass that resulted in damage to the A-Wing, a minor shield dent for the X-Wing and that was about it. Roaring past each other, half the Imperial force wheeled around to find the A Wing startled in headlights and quickly shot to pieces - its missiles unspent.

The interceptor is just about to bite the dust, but
Imperial payback is screaming in from the right

As Tie fighters wheeled about out of position, Wedge got R2 to repair his shields and rounded on an Interceptor bearing down on him - annoyingly the tricksy boosting out of his way. The Y-Wing behind Wedge however, with quick reflexes and a single shot blew the oh so clever Interceptor out of the sky - the Imperials top pilot biting the dust in a fraction of a second. Ah the fragilities of the Empire.

The Rebels chuffed with success, failed to notice the Advanced and flanking rookie Ties targetting Wedge and in a flurry of fire the X-wing also disintegrated in a burst of laser cannon and missiles.

This left the Y-Wing alone against all four Tie rookies and one advanced. Poor odds.

The Y-Wing pulling off some amazing moves for its aged frame managed to keep the worst of the incoming fire away, but found its systems blowing up and collapsing as the Empire took its toll.

The rookies had survived, Instructor Phenir however was dust...Guard duty my ass, thought TK-426.

Very fun game. Must play this more.