Game Night - TAKE THAT and Party?

🕑 8 min read

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

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

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

Let's GOOO!!

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

What a table of riches!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next game please!

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

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

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

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

What a starting might look like

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

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

NEXT!! 

The Origami artwork is stunning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sharks in the Water

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this week, the blog is the size of a small novel.

What happened to May ? May was a blur of gaming - for those of you who attended NoBoG, you will already know this. For those of you that didn't then you can imagine that parts of Norwich slipped into a gap in the space time continuum, only to finally reappear several weeks later, beer drunk, bar snacks consumed and games played.

First off some possibly important news. The Ribs has declared that there may very well be a darts farrago kicking off in the near future held every other week on a Tuesday night and laying claim to the front half of the pub.

On busy NoBoG nights this will straight up mean there is no space in the Ribs for some of us. As we have trialled the overflow of Take 5 before, another pub like establishment a very short walk down the road and they seem to be amenable to us turning up, I propose that we just do that on Darts nights. This may mean you want to think twice about ordering an early pint at the Ribs if it turns out you have turned up only to then decamp to another pub.

It's not certain if the darts extravaganza will be a thing, but if it is, I or someone will make sure to warn people which week is dart week so you can be prepared for downing a pint in 10 minutes or just not bothering until you know where you are sitting.

Enough of that. Onto an admittedly highlights version of what has been going on down the pub in the last three weeks. We'll start with Ewan.

This week I was the table for A New Dawn; which is the follow up to Among the Stars.

In a New Dawn you play an alien alliance officer charged with exploring, researching new tech and sending out ambassadors. Hoping to colonise abandoned space stations or planets in a very 4X'y way. Competing against other players over limited resources.
 
Overall the game was enjoyable and the different aliens you can play all have their own unique feel. Not only in their special powers but in the tech available to them. As we found through our play through there are some power combos.

I can't remember who won but throughout a hard fought game In which I felt i wasn't doing well and at least I ended up not finishing in last place. Was so involved with the game I forgot to take a picture or more notes. But New Dawn is definitely worth a play if you are into 4X space themed games.

I've got you covered Ewan - New Dawn in action.

Looked cool when I walked past it. I'd like to give it a go myself. Then we have some words from Tim.

For our fist game we played Smash Up. On the night, I took to describing Smash Up as a Deck Builder without any building during the actual gameplay. Players start by choosing two teams (or races) from the selection, and combining their separate decks of cards. Our group became a four way battle between Ewan’s Time Lord-Zombies, Adam’s Dino-Ninjas, Guillame’s Super-Ape-Plants and my own band of Steam Punk-Robots.  Each turn sees the players playing one Minion Card and one Action to one of the five open ‘Bases’. Each base has a different Break point, and scores differently dependent on how much power each player contributes. What eventually transpired was a situation where it looked impossible for anyone to best Ewan and his really annoying, they just wont leave you alone, Time Lord Zombies. I had the last turn of the round, was closest to Ewan on points, but could see a way to get over the line without feeding him what he needed to win. I took quite a while (sorry) to figure out if I could do anything, eventually just playing a ‘Draw Cards’ action out of desperation. Who should I draw, none other that the female mechanic, hence forth known as Kaylee from Firefly. She allowed me to rummage in my trash for a steam-punk minigun with which to power-up my bots and  surge to Victory!

After Smash Up, Rich IV joined us fro a game of Get Bit, which sees Robots desperately swimming away from a shark in order to avoid getting eaten. Needless to say, Kaylee worked her magic and my bot emerged as the last Robot Swimming, narrowly getting away whilst Guillame’s poor mechanoid was crunched to pieces.

To end the night, we played a few rounds wild-west dice shoot-em’-up Bang! The Dice Game. I was one of the Outlaws both times, and died quickly both times, having revealed myself to be a little too eager to kill the Sherif. What can I say, Kaylee never did like guns.

Power boats !

Myself over the weeks I've got to play Power boats an *almost* old school family game with it's dice to move mechanic which was funny, cool and mildly infuriating all in one ( Punk Rich won this despite failing spectacularly in the first race and instead of actually competing managed to go off on a Broads Cruise with Hazel in a leisurely exploration of the map ),  and a good few hands of the classic Tichu, which doesn't get played enough anymore now that Jimmy disappeared from our midst years ago.

Tichu is great. If you've never played it, it's a bit like a chinese version of bridge with tricks played reminscent to poker hands. If that makes any sense. Groovy, but the kind of strict four player limit ( to play the proper Tichu ) makes it surprisingly tricky to get to table.

The very nice Machi Koro. Martin won from nowhere.

Stu also kindly taught a bunch of us Machi Koro which is a game I have wanted to try for a while but never quite got round to. Everyone agreed it was a fun simple card game, and as Stu initially described it, a bit like Settlers of Catan without the board. Buy cards. Roll dice. Earn money from the cards with a matching dice roll. First player to build all their special cards wins. Simple.

I'd give this one a big thumbs up personally, and definitely a great gateway type game for those board game shy types. Despite me urging Martin not to calculate his turn as it was just "far too complicated" and better to just roll the dice again, he calculated his turn and ended up the winner. My

Machi Koro Aerial Shot

feeble social engineering had failed to net me an opposition mistake.

Libertalia also made it to table having recently aired on Tabletop. Libertalia has made it down the Ribs on a number of occasions in the past, and it's a pretty solid fun game. Rather surprisingly everyone at the table knew the rules - either having played it before or watched the tabletop episode - so we got off to a quick start where it has to be said I was picked on relentlessly and came in a very comfortable last. Guillame was first pursued hotly by the treacherous Sam who after assuring me he wouldn't pick on me then killed a valued member of my pirate team. You were the only one worth killing he lamely defended. Curses to ye scurvy dogs the lot of you.

You can check out Tabletops own playthrough here, complete with outrageous pirate talk.

Keeping a nautical theme we also played Lifeboats, the game of sinking lifeboats and voting to see who goes in the water. Getting tipped out of the boat into the water is instant death for the poor sailor so chosen, there being presumably sharks in the water. Myself and newcomer Heather forged a very strong alliance at the start and did really well, with poor James found in a boat on his own receiving most of the "bad luck" dished out by everyone else. He had a very glum face at one point. I cheered him up by saying he'd probably go onto win it - a prescient call as it turns out.

Midway through the game I had no choice but to turf my erstwhile bestie Heather out of the boat and from that point on things went positively tits up, the great allegiance breaking and Heather swearing vengeance forever.

Uh huh.

I ended up with a reasonable score, but James was the winner, although he was picked on at the start he came through in a triumph.

Finished with Cheaty Mages. I won by an embarassingly large amount. It was all rather spectacular.

Hal flexes his game design muscles and brings along his own game.

Hal apart from bringing such cool things as Powerboats also brought along a game of his own invention. Off the top of my head this brings the number of game designers in our midsts to half a dozen. I didn't stick around to get much of a gist of the game, but it seemed to be a deduction thing, working out where or what something was.





And finally, a beer report. It's been too long. Ewan reports...

Had a nice pint from Wolfs Brewery called For Fox Sake. A beer with a witty name, dark and fruity and very easy to drink.

Thanks to the lovely Monika for the pictures. The decidedly less lovely me supplied some pictures too. I'll leave you with the Gallery.

Six player Caverna. Hardcore !

Cas$h n Gun$ - Lauren ended winner as this I think

Batman Love Letter. Possibly the best Love Letter variant ??

Wherry Room at the Ribs

Bamboo ? Gardener ? Panda ? Must be Takenoko

Lords of Vegas

"Jazz Hands !"

Lords of Waterdeep

David Chloe Tim and Ewan playing what looks like a Legendary variant

Lifeboats, the vengeful Heather pouts

Punk Rich, Hazel, Pete, Rich IV and Hal partake of Hal's game

I'm only happy when it rains...

Self named Spazzy McSpazhands ( aka Punk Rich ) once informed me that East Anglia is the driest region in the UK. I scoffed at such nonsense - picturing the boggy lands of Norfolk - and with this weeks endless rain, mud caked roads and howls of protest from locals, I feel the weather is weighing in on my uninformed unscientific side. Such was the lovely weather this week that forced many a NoBoGer into the very quickly humid Wherry Room. A NoBoG record breaking thirty three people will do that to a small room - fit enough bodies in, and a room will gain its own weather system.

This week seven tables of goodness squeezed into the pub, with Adventurers : Temple of Chac, Kingdom Builder, Keyflower, Kemet, Libertalia, El Grande and Istanbul first up for play.

El Grande - an almost 20 year old game.
Does that make you feel old ?

Keyflower ( which I kept auto correcting to Mayflower ) played to a packed table of six, a Euro game of hex tiles and meeples. The aim of the game as usual is to score more victory points than everyone else - and you do that by building your own village of hex tiles that have victory points directly on them and with hex tiles that score from synergies of other tiles.

The meeples in Keyflower are used in a fairly innovative way - for starters the meeple colours are not attached to a single player - no getting first dibs on colour choice here - instead they are used almost like suits of card in something like Bridge, where everyone has all colours, and once a certain colour of meeple is placed on a tile, for that season, only meeples of that colour can be used on it to either bid for the tile or use the action ( more than one player can take an action, but at an increasing meeple cost ).

Keyflower, with boatloads of new pilgrims ready to offload

Meeples are used then not only for worker placement, but also as currency for bidding on a tile. Your stash of meeples and therefore the makeup of just how many meeples of each colour you have, is secret, and so bidding or using the actions on the hex can become something of a canny game of what colour do I think you have run out of - particularly as one of the four colours of meeple is something of a prestige colour and difficult to get your hands on.

Actions can be taken anywhere on the table - including others villages, the key difference being that the owner of a tile gets to keep all the meeples placed on it at the end of a season - effectively earning you currency, and of course, meeples share duties as both worker placements and currency - be careful what you do with what.

The game is played over four seasons, with the final season allowing you to pick up the point multiplying boats in player turn order.

Pete offered a thumbs up for the game - and given as he is no fan of auction games, it must have been pretty good. Alina won, with Pete sneaking into second place.

First games out of the way, a series of second games hit tables - a couple of games of King of Tokyo to an almost newbie KoT table, Snow Tails - the game of reverse physics dog sledding - Ra, Bohnanza, Coup and One Night Ultimate Werewolf.

Snow Tails... the dogs haven't turned up yet. Lazy mutts.

 I got to watch a round of Coup and then join in - my first up close and personal play of the game. Coup reminded me very much of Mascarade, with players declaring themselves to be a certain role - which may or may not be a bluff - and then taking the action for that role . Anyone that doesn't believe any role declaration can challenge them. So far, so Mascarade. The differences however are that you have two roles in front of you at the start of the game - and you can look at them at any time. You also can't switch your role cards with others... you can only switch with the face down deck and only then if you declare yourself to be the role that can do that. And lastly some roles can actively block others - you simply declare yourself and state you are blocking their action ( which can also be challenged ).

Money is acquired in Coup in very similar ways to Mascarade - one role gives 3 gold, one steals 2 from another and so on, but here money is not the game end, but rather a means to an end - gold can power up some key abilities that allow you to eliminate other players role cards - either completely out of hand with no recourse, or by using the cheaper but blockable assassinate role. Lose both your role cards and you are out of the game.

Any challenges you make also result in the loss of a role card - for whoever turns out to be wrong with their challenge.

Quite fun to play, but eh, the game failed to have that key bit of tension and suspense for me. It seems to dance around the current trend for secret role based games ( werewolf variants ) , but miss most of the point of them. Whilst I like Mascarade, and it's a fun game to play, it's definitely not as strong as something like Resistance, and the game can occasionally fall flat on its face when people don't realise a game winning role is at hand - or a lot of roles have been revealed. Coup takes that Mascarade premise adjusts it again - and I feel gets an ever weaker game out of it. There's a very binary feel to Coup - two roles, two failures only, there doesn't seem quite enough interaction or quite enough impetus to actually get into peoples faces - it can be just about impossible to work out whether someone has a role or not ( there is no info ) and the punishment for getting it wrong is throwing half your chance to win the game out the window. At least in Mascarade the punishment isn't nearly so strong, and there's also the fun of failing to keep track of who you are.

Eh. Meh. I think Coup needs a few more tries, but misses the mark I feel. Give it a go and see what you think !

Volcanoes, Pirates and Power Station Owners

This week I urged Rich to do the weekly game and gamer wrangling - who brought what and what do people want to play. And as he did such a good job in difficult circumstances, I then convinced him to write the blog too... over to Rich.

About 25 people this week. Here's some of what got played:

Skyline 3000 . 'Tall Dark' Tom bought it for ₤7.99 from The Works. In the bar later he said he enjoyed it. I have no idea who won, what it's like or anything like that. I suspect it was rubbish but Tom was putting a brave face on it, not wanting to appear to have wasted ₤7.99 on another turkey.

On the next table there was a 6 player game of Lords of Waterdeep with the Scoundrels of Skullport expansion. Waterdeep has been a popular game down the club for a while now. The expansion adds the sixth player and the corruption mechanic, which mixes things up a bit and definitely makes things more interesting. In mine and others' experience though getting the big quests seems to almost always result in victory, and the smaller plot quests (which give you abilities) although a cool idea, rarely provide enough of an advantage to counter the fact they give you less points. The intrigue cards are a neat innovation and give some nice interactivity that often isn't there in worker placement games. I think their next expansion should be Wankers of the Waterfront, with more harsh intrigue cards and other ways to be a dick.

On the other downstairs table Richard IV got everyone to play Power Grid with the UK map. Power Grid has been played a lot down the club over the years, probably more so than any other game. Someone won. I can't remember who, though I did ask. I didn't realise that the Admiral would give me a direct order to write this blog so you must forgive me. I can remember Rich IV summarising that the UK map was very tight, and the scores at the end were very close.

Upstairs: Owen, Alina, Sam and The Admiral played Robinson Crusoe. They played the volcano scenario, but forgot to actually have the volcano blow smoke, or something like that. Sam tripped over a box and got bitten by a rabbit and died, but they won the scenario despite that. Robinson Crusoe is a great game, probably my favourite pure coop. The neat thing is that you'll draw cards as a consequence of foraging, building or exploring. These cards will have an immediate effect and then will be shuffled into the events deck, and they'll come out later and something related will happen. Great mechanic, really thematic.

And on the final table we (Dean, Matt, Med Ed, Tim and me) played Libertalia, a pirate game. Players each get an identical hand of character cards with values ranging from 1 to 30. You play cards face down and the highest number played gets first pick of the loot for that round. Simple? The thing that complicates it is that each character card has an ability that can trigger and do things – ranging from getting extra doubloons to killing other people's characters and so on. Cool game. Dean won convincingly, I came dead last. Evidently being a pirate in real life doesn't help you win this game.

Augustus also got played, a really neat game that resembles bingo but without the crazy adrenaline rush you'll get down the Mecca on a Friday night.

After Libertalia those of us remaining upstairs played a three player game of Small World. Matt won with over a hundred points, the rest of us had in the 70s/80s. He got Heroic Skellingtons, which proved a very potent combination and he hung onto them for most of the game. Tim got a great early start, after following our advice and taking Commando Tritons. However, our counsel failed to take into account the looming presence of the Skellingtons, so Tim's spread out Commando Tritons were munched up by the Skellingtons in record time. My Spirit Humans didn't fare any better. After a slow start pointswise Matt built up to scoring at least 10 a turn for the remainder of the game, with little we could do about it as there were no bashy race combinations available. Good game though.

See ya next week for more games. Love, Punk Rich/Spazzy/C*n*y Rich x

It's all in the Seating...

A grand nineteen at the Ribs this week, and in what will be slightly upsetting news for those regulars who were last week pressing for Resistance and were notably missing this week, Resistance got played twice.

Skip a week of NoBoG and miss all the fun !

Lords of Vegas made its debut at NoBoG, with myself, Ed#1, Rich and Lewis sitting down to determine who was the greatest pit boss of Vegas. The Tabletop channel recently posted a playthrough of this, so rather than me explain what it's about - take it away Wil Wheaton....

Our game was closely fought at first, before my crappy positioning and an inability to roll much higher than a 3 left me trailing in the arid dust of Nevada. I satisfied myself with opening what I imagined to be a small hotdog stand next to the glittering lights of one of the palaces of gambling.

Lords of Vegas. Or in our case, Three Lords
and one hot dog seller of Vegas

Rich, Ed and Lewis however continued to compete closely, with a series of decent Casinos being built right on the strip with a few sneaky takeovers being attempted.

But all proved to be in vain as an excited Lewis ( clearly being a Pit Boss is something of a life goal for him - he was so excited at one point that his capability for counting money earned in a round left him in a confusion of enthusiasm and shaky hands ) managed to dominate the strip and haul in a good score to grab the grubby title of Lord of Vegas.

A cool game all in all, a fair bit different to your usual Euro Cube Shuffler, a dose of luck involved - of course it is Vegas after all... but nice. And some good interplay available between players. Taunting others to go large or go home is just a bonus.

Whilst our dubious efforts were squeezing money out of profligate rich and desperate poor alike, over on table two the venerable Puerto Rico was dusted off to three newbies and two seasoned hands.

Now, if you've ever played Puerto Rico, or heard about Puerto Rico, you might recall there's something about where you sit when there are newbies at the table. Sit to the left of the newbie, the wisdom goes, and you are in for an easy game. 

All three Puerto Rico beginners sat together. And Rich - noted Puerto Rico veteran - sat to the left of them. I observed out loud that he had picked the winning seat.

There are many who say that Puerto Rico is one of the finest Euro games to be had. I personally however am no fan of it, I find it to be an overhyped game that has long since shown its age. It has some cool mechanics, a bunch of 'flaws' that can make a game miserable for a player in the wrong seat, and a tendency to have a problem with seating bias overall. I'd play Agricola instead.

In any case, a fine evening of slave exploitation (!) and new world colony building was had...... and Rich won.

Bah ha ha.

 In a splendiferous evening of Riches, Richard the Fourth, or is that lovely Rich, I can't keep tabs on the Society of Riches, tromped forth to a stunning win in Lords of Waterdeep, piling on the points to humiliate all others at the table. This provides us with some rock solid 'take it to the bank' statistics that if your name is Richard, you have at least a 50% chance of winning the game you are playing.

Hmm. Did that sound Gambly ? I think Lords of Vegas has done something to me...

Meanwhile upstairs, Lost Legends was being played, a fantasy deck builder which sees your hero gearing up to defeat monsters and win Legen - wait for it - d Points. 

Ed does his best 1970's family game cover art pose,
gleeful of his upcoming win that never happened.

I managed to take a snap of an eager Ed looking forward to his "first NoBoG win" ever.

Everyone at the table fancied him to be in the lead and the probable winner by game end, which of course absolutely guaranteed that Ed would in fact not be the winner.

The wily Dean beat him to it.

Never count your Dwarven Hero Adventurers before they have hatched.

Finally, everyone jumbled up and joined in a game of Resistance and Libertalia. Much piratical thunking was going on over Libertalia and unfortunately we didn't come to a proper finish. Our short finish revealed me to be the Pirate King. It's rough, but I'll take it.

As for Resistance, it seems in the weeks of non appearance, the good guys have left their posts, stepped down from their watchful vigilance, and generally skulked off for a pint, as the Bad Guys put everyone to the sword ... twice.

Betrayal at Waterdeep

Both Lords of Waterdeep and Betrayal at House on the Hill have seen repeated play at the Ribs in recent weeks. I always seem to be playing something else when they appear, so was pleased to get to try both in one session.

Betrayal at House on the Hill is a super thematic game where the players are exploring a spooky house. Tiles are laid out as new rooms are entered and players contend with all the usual sort of things you’d find in a haunted mansion – encountering strange events, collecting items and revealing ominous omens along the way. Finally, one of these omens will trigger the end game where one of the characters betrays the others. A scenario is randomly determined and the traitor goes off to another room to read his objectives (usually kill all the other players) while the rest of the players look up their part in the corresponding scenario - how to survive and/or defeat the traitor.

The game rattled along at a brisk pace even with six players. We played a particularly long game, with lucky haunting rolls (which determine the end game) prolonging the exploration part of the game. By the time we’d determined Richard as the Assassin – keen to murder us all and stop young Clive, the heir to the mansion, from claiming fabulous wealth – most of the mansion had been revealed. This played in our favour and we got Clive to the throne room with the requisite items and still in one piece. We did lose Nicky and Pete II along the way, but they were only ever assassin fodder in my eyes.

It’s a pretty simple game. Easy to drop new players into. It really shines if players get into their roles and treat the other players to a bit of theatrics when reading the omens and descriptions on the cards. If you’re not into that sort of thing it can still be fun, but you’re really just waiting for the end game to trigger so you have an objective, rather than wandering the halls tooling up your character. Plus coming in at 90 minutes it doesn’t outstay it’s welcome.

This meant we had time for Lords of Waterdeep. A game based on the Forgotten Relams D&D franchise, this sounds like it should be a thematic romp with high adventure in the port city of Waterdeep. It's not. Those with cold and calculating eyes (and even those with just plain old seeing eyes) will look past the stock D&D pictures and see a game about buying and spending cubes to accrue victory points. If you need to get into a role and pretend to be a mighty Lord of Waterdeep and crave nothing but adventure, walk away now. This will disappoint. It's not bad, it's just that Accountants of the Lords of Waterdeep is probably more of an accurate title. So if you like euro/efficiency style games and aren't sniffy about the theme then there is an enjoyable game to be had.  And coming in at between and hour and 90 minutes, it doesn't linger in your hallway boring you with tales of its arthritic feet.

Thanks to Richard IV for bringing along and explaining both games to me. I had a lot of fun with both.

The rest of the pub was crammed with NoBoGers  playing all manner of games.  I think there were five tables in all, with 23 gamers. Four intrepid gamers drowned as they failed to beat Forbidden Desert. Twice. There was a five-player game of Blood Bowl Manager with the Sudden Death expansion. Suburbia got a look in. As did Grimoire, Kingdom Builder, Race for the Galaxy, Libertalia, and Skull and Roses.  And Pete got his rather nice looking Space Game prototype out for some more playtesting. Once again the playtesters let it be known that they still disliked the “If your name is Pete re-roll the dice” rule. We shall see if their concerns make it into the next rules re-write.

Decembrrrr - The End is Nigh

December is upon us, and only a few weeks of gaming are left before the world ends in the fiery cataclysm of the 21st. At just after half past 2 in the afternoon. It will be a cold and rainy Friday that at first glance will seem unremarkable, but the combustion of the planet will if nothing else spare us another dreary manufactured Christmas Number One from Simon Cowell, America's Top Singing Model, UKs Biggest Loser in Chelsea Essex, X Factor, Krappy Karaoke Kraziness Get Me Out of Here Live or some such other televisual excellence. Always look on the positive side eh ?

Ten players arrived this Tuesday to have it out over beer, tables and games, and including nine of the Usual Suspects, we had a new person - Grace turn up to uhh, grace us with her presence. Apparently Langleys the toy shop in the Royal Arcade tipped her off about our existence and a twitter search did the rest. NoBoG fame spreads throughout Norwich ! As far as a couple of streets over from The Ribs at least. As for the rest of the denizens, Sam, Matt, Pete, Rich, Bondy, Stu, Tom, Dean and myself were present.

Terra Mystica

Pete brought along his new and shiny Terra Mystica, a fairly weighty piece which as Pete likes to point out is a perfect information game. Dean and Tom challenged him to a duel of who could amass the most points by building villages, competing for cult dominance and generally fulfilling special powers, but around half way through Dean was flagging and admitted his brain had melted.

The game begins with a selection of a unique 'race' each of which have subtly different building costs and one or two very different powers that can get triggered by doing various things. A couple of settlements are placed on the board per player keyed to whichever land type you call home. The board is split up into various land types with each race having an affinity for a single type upon which it can freely build, but you also have a personal chart indicating the cost to terraform other incompatible land types into your own, thus hopefully spreading your dominion ( and lessening others ).

On top of these segments of land you can construct a settlement which through a number of improvement options can be upgraded into buildings of more import which lead to various other powers being triggered. Cities - that is to say a contiguous group of buildings of a certain size - are one of the keys to the game, each city earns you a bonus, and there are bonus points at the end for the player with the largest city. Getting more than one city is a nice trick - preferably that by game end joins up into one giant city, thus netting you all manner of bonuses.

Given however that you can usually only spread influence to areas you neighbour, its not quite so simple as just leaping all over the board building up any number of power bases. There are also minor bonuses to be had for building next to someone else, so whilst on the one hand marking out your territory is good, rubbing shoulders with someone else gives you advantages.

It's quite a nice Euro game, it has some mechanics that have definitely been seen before, nothing amazingly innovative - although the different player races put a nice spin on quite what your sweet spot is - but for me I'm not sure there's quite enough there to make it stellar. In some ways it reminds me of a cross between Tzolkin and Small World. But definitely worthy of a blast.

Vengeful Flames, Muddy Dwarves and Frightened Shrooms...

Speaking of Small World, Stu brought Small World Underground along, and Rich, Bondy and myself settled down for a whizz at this. Small World Underground is a variant of Small World - a different board from regular Small World with underground type themed areas ( mines, volcanoes, errr...mud, mushrooms, mountains and crystals ) and a whole new set of crazy races and traits to choose from. In addition to the usual Small World stuff, a number of 'monsters' lurk on the board, which in practice are defended areas you need to overcome. When beaten a monster is removed and in its place you get either a relic or a special place - both of which lend you special capabilities. As might be expected relics can tend to be picked up and hauled about, whilst places stay where they are - making certain areas on the board suddenly strategically important. Making most use of these items and places lends another edge to this game and provides in my opinion a not unwelcome new importance on gaining a particular territory.

Personally I find Small World a cool and fun diversion, but it's over simple for me to play it more than irregularly. I love the crazy traits and races, but beyond that... uh... I find the placement and positioning of races just... wacky and somewhat obvious. Perhaps it's the wargamer in me - where are my borders, my fortifications, my reinforcements. Nevertheless I would rate Underground as an improvement on the original. And you can mix and match the races from the sets too. Cool !

Despite Rich playing like a brick for the first half of the game he came on strong at the end with rampant abuse of a double scoring revealed special place, and was only thwarted in victory by my meddling in his grand plans. The game scored fairly close for all, although I was 12 points off of the lead, despite, or perhaps because of a strong early start.

Pandemic. Sam glares at me whilst Grace gives the board the finger.

Grace, Sam and Matt played Pandemic, with all the colds, coughs and sniffles going round at the moment a highly topical game, but alas I failed to note how the sneezing and disease spreading went. Keeping up with the happy positive theme, the three then embarked on a game of Gloom. Nothing like a game of world ending diseases followed by competing to be the most miserable player of all to cheer you up on a cold Winter evening.

A quick game of Hey Thats My Fish was squeezed in post Terra Mystica on Pete's table, and Libertalia was brought forth cannons blazing after Small World for another round of piratical loot grabbing, which I am pleased to note included the cursed item ditching Monkey. It's not about whether you win or lose, it's about how much evil your monkey can get up to by dumping all your cursed relics on the player to the left. Rich in my case. Huzzah.

Finally, an epic ten handed game of Saboteur ended the evening, with Rich and Matt tying for lead. Ten players is bonkers - I suspect Saboteur 2 is actually better suited to 10 - as the tunnels can either very quickly develop or quickly fall apart if there is a line of one type of player or the other, but nevertheless it's still a blast to play.

The new rebooted Merchant of Venus also stuck its nose in, walked about the place, but left without being played - it having better things to do than associate with the oiks in the Wherry Room. Perhaps next week we can entice it to stay.


In other news, it may or may not have come to your attention, but we have a new spanky Joining In page next to the usual Home page for the blog. This page has the lowdown on Tuesday gaming and should hopefully provide a good resource for newcomers or lurkers to peruse. If someone you know is interested - point them at the Joining In page and all will be explained ! If you feel something is missing from that page, speak up, and we can add it in.

Lastly, one of our regulars - Dean - does a bit of contribution work over on the Ready Up gaming site. He has recently started reviewing board games over there and has kicked off with a report on the new City of Horror zombie game. You can head on over to his review to see what he made of it and also spy some pretty pictures of a game or two in progress. I would like to add that the Steve Jobs character in the game managed to stand out in the open in the most dangerous part of the city for the entire game - boring his companion - the old man - to death with his reports on just how good his iPad was. So potent was his presentation that no Zombie could get near the pair to bite them. Blessed be the Cult of Jobs, for lo all his corners are rounded and his prices be reassuringly expensive.

Beer. The Nog was favoured apparently. Malty. Dark ? For Pete it was too burnt. He prefers something more toffee like. Stu corrected him on his poor taste. Personally I have no idea what they were talking about, the coke was as ever far too sweet, with too much caffeine, but that's why we like it.

Bondy steals the camera and gets an awful shot of me...

... and a blurry drunken shot of Rich !