Mars 2.0

After having been talked up for sometime, the sleeper hit of Mission Red Planet which has proven somewhat tricky to get your hands on in the past, has finally returned to shelves with the second edition tweak and reprint that FFG has just released. Did they tweak it and break it ? Improve it ? Or is it the good old Mission Red Planet we know and love.

To answer all those questions, this week Ewan had it fresh off the presses and ready to play in all it's cute chibi astronaut glory. Here's what he had to say about that.

Tonight Tim, Sam, Andy, Rich, Simon, and I put on our space helmets to head to Mars for riches in the second edition of Mission Red Planet.

Mission Red Planet reprint in all its glory

Mission Red Planet has been played a few times in the past at Nobog but I believe this may be the first time that the second edition has been played. I won’t go too much in depth into the rules/gameplay, as previous Noblogs have covered the first edition ( Ed. actually I'm not sure the basic premise ever has made it into a NoBlog.. google search says no ! ) .

However there are some differences with the newer edition. First off there are several cosmetic differences, including some cool astronauts for each player (now plays up to 6 players) as well as the board being circular and feeling a little smaller. Secondly the new addition of Phobos, a moon orbiting Mars, which is an extra zone to send your astronauts too and potentially use (in conjunction with the soldier card) to stage a Mars invasion. Finally the addition of action cards, which can really have an impact on the final phases of scoring.

Mars begins to fill up with eager astronauts

Playing with 6 certainly makes Mars now feel crowded but as everyone plays pretty much simultaneously each round it didn’t add too much to the overall game time, I think we took about 90 min to play after a rules explanation. The crowded board certainly added to the theme as the competition for resources was fierce and the slight change to the rules of counting down rather than up during character resolution made the game feel more thematic.

Phobos is an interesting addition an adding some addition strategies to the game. When you send astronauts there they are pretty much stuck there; however with the change to the soldier card you can move up to 3 to any area on Mars. This makes timing the soldier card even more important if you want to fully utilise him. The action cards have the potential to be a game changer and are brutal. Andy was able to play one entitled space zombies (yes even in a steam punk universe there are zombies) and bring all his dead astronauts back and put them anywhere on Mars; pipping me for control on a key area.

An unexplored Mars ready to be discovered - first turn MRP

Overall the new additions to Mission Red Planet have made this more than a simple reprint and have added a lot to the original game. For those that own the original though I don’t know whether this warrants buying the new edition (unless you want the new astronaut meeples) and it will depend on what you feel about the new rules. For me I really like the new additions and it makes Mission Red Planet feel new again with in a familiar setting. In terms of what went on in our game Tim ran away with the win due to some nice placements of discovery cards, netting him a lot of ice to win the global mission. Definitely worth a play for those who have either played the original or for new players.  

Six players at 90 minutes is a great play time. The board looked like utter chaos at the end - I didn't play it, but I would quibble that the game board is now far too busy - more players, bigger pieces, small board - to my eye it made it a good deal tougher to instantly appraise who was where in what numbers and what needed to be done to massage control. A minor quibble though. The astronauts look kick ass. I think I would possibly be tempted myself to custom print a bigger board for it. In any case, cool stuff, I wanna give this a go to see how the changes stack up.

Ten - hut. MRP Astronauts on parade.

Last weeks inaugural play at NoBoG of the print and play version of Secret Hitler took the house by storm ( and I failed to get a game of it ), so this week I printed out a second set of it just to make very damn sure that I would get to play it.

Which turned out to be wise as both copies ended up in use.

Secret Hitler. Time to out those whose fashion sense is far too
into sharp outfits with black, red and skull motifs.
Liable to be fascists or Dennis the Menace.

My first time playing Secret Hitler I found the game was indeed pretty damn good, and for all its simplified Resistance setup - and is there really enough to think about here, still has enough gas in game to get the usual pointy fingers and accusations going around a table, but dare I say it in more streamlined fashion. The game also feels very inclusive - the roles very quickly zip around the table, and having to exclude players who were previously part of the legislative roles forces play into a wider circle. Some very funny play, including an increasingly obvious Fascist of Lewis, Richard IV real time editing hitler moustaches onto suspects via some cell phone trickery, some discussion about when choosing who to kill whether you could kill yourself in some very apt Hitler suicide type thing and Sam blatantly acting like a Fascist in the first round - vote me, vote me, I'll kill who you like.. possibly the most needy Fascist play ever - but actually turning out to NOT be a fascist, followed by a much more trustworthy and calm game where he turned out in fact to be Hitler and got elected as Chancellor. Dammit. Plus I'm not sure I'll even believe Hal is anything but a liberal when playing Secret Hitler. I just can't see him as a Fascist. Ever. We finished on a five player game of Secret Hitler - and the consensus around the table was that five just doesn't work too well - I think six may be the actual workable minimum number for this game.

Old School Mexica

Hal brought along something of an old school classic in the form of Mexica which at this point is nearly 15 years old, one of a trio of games in the so called "Mask Trilogy" - Mexica, Tikal and Java. Mexica has recently had a reprint and a facelift with more detailed and fancier buildings and overhauled board art. An old school relaxed Euro ( as all the games in the Mask Trilogy are ), Mexica features players constructing buildings around the board in order to gain dominance in a particular district. Districts themselves are not set and are created from players building discrete islands surrounded by canals, meaning no two games will ever quite work out in the same way.

The new (resin?) building / pyramid pieces look great, and the game is quite the eye candy piece - although it has to be said that ALL of the Mask games were pretty nice to look at.

Ich bin ein Hamburgum. I am a donut as Kennedy once said.

Also keeping it Euro and somewhat old school as ever was Stu and Tom and this week Stu was offering Hamburgum (2007) up for play. I've not played this but it looks Eurotastic - and I think is one of the handful of games to have the whole action rondel thing going on ( a wheel of actions ) - of which I remember from the much fancied Navegador (2010).

Lewis tempted fate by playing Cauldron again, and the beast that is Betrayal at House in the Hill seems to be stirring once more and beginning to pop up or be requested with some regularity. I still maintain someone(s) needs to sit down and create a whole new story book for the game to extend past the 50 included. People like Luke have now played Betrayal so often they've done every single story, and a lot of those more than once ( which tells you something about how popular that game is with some people )

No Champions of Midgard this week ( gasp ), but we did have some Lords of Waterdeep instead.

Blood Rage, Ragnarok and the end of the world.
Oblivion. Which came as a relief if I'm honest.

And lastly Blood Rage also made it back to table, and a largely new player base got to go through its Viking delights with Pete teaching and then monster feedback engine-ing through the game ( he blasted to an enormous 200+ point victory by the end ). This is the second time I've played Blood Rage - I didn't like it the first time, I made something of a laundry list of outright mechanical flaws and noted a number of game design decisions that were personally unfun and eye rolling to me but gave it the benefit of the doubt - and this second time around I have to say it just underscored those issues to me and removed the benefit of the doubt to outright no thanks. Made worse this time around by my effective player elimination two thirds through the game. Ragnarok couldn't come quickly enough for me.

Lovely miniatures though.

A few shots for the gallery. Thanks go to Tim this week, who was snapping away with a fancy new phone to get you most of the shots of Mission Red Planet that you see. For me, I had time to snap extra shots of Blood Rage. It's not like I was doing anything else ...
 

Blood Rage - I had time to titivate with the camera

If this is the kind of game the Vikings play, I can see why they are all Blood Ragey. They're probably not enjoying Eric M Langs unique sense of questionable game design either.

Cauldron

Betrayal at House on the Hill. More stories required.

More Mission Red Planet

Pandemic. Contagion lurked in the corner with Voitek and Monika.

The Case of the Hopeless Investigators

What a week ! This was the week that saw us suddenly and unexpectedly punch through the previous attendee record of 59 all the way up to 68, which at its busiest point was just almost every single table in the house bar one filled ( even the coffee table got a look in for our Watson and Holmes game ). We also had the pleasure of now irregular attendee Mr Bond turning up, and even more irregular attendee Andy - both of whom have done their stint as NoBlog writers. Bondy put forth the theory that it was so busy this week because everyone had turned up to see him, possibly, possibly.

Hamsterolles second outing of the evening

We also had other irregulars in the house, Lauren and Andrew got to play Hamsterolle with a couple of new to gaming people that happened to walk in and showing too much interest in the games going on I whisked them away to try it for themselves. I figured you can't go wrong with a bit of Hamsterolle. I never saw the walk ins again after this. Not sure if they escaped after Hamsterolle or were bundled into the back to become One Of Us, One Of Us, One Of Us. Possibly via Lewis' NoBoG Cthulu Cult.

Anyway. Summary. Busy.

By this time I should have learned. When I say something innocent like "ha, next ridiculous thing you'll know people will want to play Game of Thrones down the pub" this inspires everyone to actually go and do that ridiculous thing and before you know it Game of Thrones becomes a semi regular thing ( with optional throw pint over board mechanic ). Last week I briefly mentioned the idea of both Risk and Monopoly showing up at the Tun as a sign of the end times.

Don't panic. It's only an apocalyptic Pandemic.

Which of course meant that Risk and Monopoly then promptly turned up at the Tun this week. Newcomer Sean was proud to have a beat up copy of Monopoly ready to play ( complete I think with correct connoisseur levels of sellotape holding the box together ), which on asking about he started to disown and say it was a joke or possibly a penalty for anyone losing a game - play Monopoly. Ha. A likely story. I told him NoBoG was a Safe Place and he was free to come out of the closet and admit he liked Monopoly and wanted to play it. No judgements here. Hi. My name is Sean. And I am a Monopolian. 'Nuff said.

Three simultaneous games of Pandemic went down this week. I even think that one of them might have been the latest sexy hotness of Pandemic Legacy - the game that is Pandemic, but features the whole narrative, card ripping up, ever changing rules that is part of the Legacy charm.

Codenames - I'm hanging from the ceiling
Tom Cruise style for this shot

We also had a gaggle of codenames games going on towards the end of the evening, with each group telling tales of appalling clues and appalling guesses. If you've never played Codenames, it's a fairly quick filler game that splits into two teams, with a spymaster for each team attempting to give out clues that allow the rest of their team to correctly guess which currently laid out named cards they need to point out.

Our own table featured its share of woes with the - by now highly suspect - spy master of James giving us a clue of watery, and yet failing our guess of Pool. His defence was that he read Pool and thought of the game and not the swimming variety. I can't remember which way round it was, but he also failed either Tap or Washer for the watery clue as well. D'oh.

The self labelled super group - Team Ginger, mere moments
before they crashed and burned the first time and proved once
and for all they are not the master race.
Left to Right - Hal, Bondy, Luke, Andy, Dean.
Incidentally Hal wears the face of a spy master that is
NOT enjoying the pressure. The rest of
Team Ginger don't seem to be trying too hard.

Despite this, we pulled a win out of the bag somehow, and then went onto win again against the self described Team Ginger as they crashed and burned under the pressure for a second time and picked the instant game losing Assassin card with the ( somewhat cheaty ) clue of James Bond. Agent was the assassin card. Dean - spy master of this travesty - threw up the excuse that he hadn't seen Agent was an option. For the record, ahem, I went 4 wins to zero losses at Codenames including a successful stint as spy master and putting up with James as spy master for one round ( surely a handicap ). I ended up the only one at table with a perfect record. Yes, you may now bask in my awesomeness. This and my epic whitewash wins of spyfall last week mean I am now considering taking up a career related to spying. Or at least talking shit across a table with cards involved. Same difference right ?

Only one copy of Champions of Midgard on offer this week. Which caused not a few people to have to go without playing CoM - there were more players than player spots. I blame Ewan. Who wasn't there. So we were one copy of CoM down.

David and Co. battled further in their once a fortnight ongoing Imperial Assault campaign and James returned for a second week running to play first Acquire then Hamsterolle. Clearly a pairing of games that was so good, he had to do it all again the next week ( which to be fair, they are both solid and fun ).

I got to play the new game Watson and Holmes - incidentally my NoBoG secret santa gift - which is a mechanically simple deduction game running through a narrative of a Sherlock Holmes type mystery. The game is a competitive one - with each player attempting to solve the case before everyone else - and each player having a unique character with their own subtle powers to alter how the game is played.

Watson & Holmes on the coffee table. Tim got to play a dog.
Who for a dog was surprisingly talkative and something of a dick.
When he kept on preventing people getting to locations.

The main thrust of the game comes down to reading the narrative found at any of the dozen or so case locations and piecing together the relevant information within, whilst also out maneuvering or outright dicking with your fellow investigators by beating them to a location or preventing them from accessing an important location altogether. Sending Watson along with another player also gives them the rather unwelcome effect that they then have to read out their location to everyone at table - thus giving everyone else the benefit of their personal investigation ( and potentially then putting them a step behind everyone else ).

The game doesn't hold your hand too much - and you will need to sift through the narrative text to reduce the important facts within - it's not going to point them out to you. But the clues seem nicely balanced in that they don't feel entirely obvious and therefore you get satisfaction in working them out, and also are not so obscure that you feel like you're beating your head against a wall.

A once playthrough style game, when you've tackled one of the cases in Watson and Holmes you can't tackle it again as you already know the unique information for that particular case, but the game does ship with over a dozen cases ready to burn through. The cases range in difficulty from easy to hard, and because they are uniquely scripted can get up to all manner of clever tricks like changing what it is you need to investigate half way through the case ( in our case an apparent suicide became a murder ).

I wasn't too sure this game would hold up that well prior to playing in a group, but having now played it with five players the game is great and offers something of a streamlined Holmesian experience of other games that have come before it. This is also a surprisingly social kind of game despite the secrecy and gathering of clues in - somewhat - isolation to everyone else that is really pushed to the fore when someone gets blabber mouth Watson dumped on them and they have to read their location out to everyone. A certain amount of oneupmanship, knowing looks, bluff and race tension does creep into the whole affair and it works very nicely indeed. This would be an ideal game to have a more chilled gaming session for a group of non hardcore gamers that want something to think about, as well as appealing to your average gamer that likes a bit of deduction. I could well see this game doing fairly well at some dinner party type affair with the right crowd of people - particularly collaborating couples ( the game caters for 7 people ( or teams ), and because of the way the simultaneous gameplay works there is just about no downtime for any player ).

Our game featured epic fails by all but the very last investigator to knock on 221B Baker Street with the solution. One after another each of us gave our solution to Holmes only to find out, no, you got it wrong, please go and kill yourself - most of these accompanied by the cackling of Dean who had first offered a solution and come oh so close but not close enough to win. Dean further ventured the opinion that Holmes by the end was just slamming the door shut on every wrong answer from the procession of clowns turning up at his apartments. In the end Bondy with the luxury of four failed guesses before him managed to nail the conclusion after some epic wrong footing of my own investigation.

Wiz War, stroll around and fireball your enemies.

What else was going on. Wiz War was present - this is something of a real long in the tooth game ( originally published in 1983 ) that has seen many a reprint in the intervening years and has players running around as wizards trying to do their opposite number in, in something of an old school fantasy style FPS death match - with a bit of treasure stealing thrown in. It's been a good few years since I've played this, but it's quite fun - and for me this and the much later Dungeon Twister get mangled in my head into some multi armed octopus of a game ( they feel quite similar to me ) - but Wiz War is for my money the better streamlined game.

Notre Dame - Not. Rah. Duhm for this side of the pond.
Note Err Daym for the other side of the pond. Colonials. Pfft.

Stu - official guardian of all that is Properly Old School Euro, or might in future be deemed Properly Old School Euro - was also in the house along with Tom and both were playing amongst other things the classic Euro of Notre Dame. Keeping it real with the multi award nominated and Spiel des Jahres nominated gaming.

This week coming we have the delight of the local press in attendance at the Mash Tun. The editor has decided that it would be nice to do a feature on Norwich Board Gamers and to that end is sending out a journalist and photographer in tow to interview those in the know about what goes on, and chat to a few of the attendees. If and when the article shows up online, I'll stick a link to it, lurkers can read the official piece and gawp in amazed lurkerness at what they're missing, and attendees can check to see if their beautiful faces and epic strategising made it to print and nationwide ( or at the very least region wide ) fame.

James is keen to have the press guys actually join in on some boardgaming fun - but I suspect they will be time pressured and focused on doing a job as opposed to playing some (excruciating) 3 hour game of Terra Mystica. Possibly the order of the day would be some nice, quick, accessible social type game - so if someone with a notepad and trilby turns up and hovers by you ( that's what journalists look like right ? ) consider offering them a turn of cash n guns / resistance / werewolf / mafia de cuba / spy fall / codenames et al.


The Gallery. Monika saves my bacon this week and takes some pictures I failed to get round to. Thank you Model 14 ( Monika's cylon designator ).

Terra Mystica. Strong showing for current second most popular game at NoBoG

Epic spell duel war thingies.

Imperial Assault. These are your rebel heroes. They seem awful casual for Rebel Heroes. Not even a decent cosplay in sight.
David at the back plots his nefarious Empire shenanigans.

Great shot of Pandemic - James gazes in adoration at something Voitek is showing him. A disease cube probably.

Champions of Midgard. Elliot attempts a blue steel look. Fails. That's a rubbish blue steel.

Moar pandemic. The Tun was lousy with infections this week.

Duang Good Gaming

As the internet debates whether blue is white and black is gold, and further afield many ponder what on earth the word duang means, which to be fair are the most gripping problems the planet currently grapples with, here at NoBoG we carry on sublimely unaware of such trivialities, preferring instead to tackle the much more serious and important playing of games down the pub.Without which the entire German board game industry would no doubt collapse.

As Bill Clinton was prompted to say - It's all about the economy stupid.

This week we had a raft of never seen before at the pub games on offer, starting with the very lovely Lewis and Clark.

Lewis and Clark is a Euro 'racing' game all about getting your expedition to be the first to plot a course across the North Western part of the US and hit the pacific coast based on the historical expedition that started out in 1804. Which is quite shocking to realise - that in 1804 a great swathe of the US was largely unknown. Makes you realise just how young the US is.

Lewis and Clark is a very mild deck builder, in fact so mild that I am loathe to even say it is one - but the fact is you start with a set of cards which you will almost certainly be adding to. Albeit you'll probably only add a half dozen cards at most to that hand. Each card allows you to perform a certain action, and along with spaces on the board also offering actions, allows each player to gather resources, improve their expedition and for the true goal of the game - push their expedition further up the trail towards ultimate victory.

The delightful Lewis and Clark

Hand management is crucial in Lewis and Clark - each card doubling as both action and strength, meaning players must choose wisely which actions to sacrifice as strength in order to play other actions, as cards played stay played until a hand reset in the form of an optional encampment action is called. Getting the timing of this right - as well as being able to dip in and riff from other players played cards is half the art of the game.

The other half of the art of this game is resource management. Which has a severe wrinkle in from the usual play action, spam resources, use hoarded stock. Lewis and Clark punishes you for having too many resources. Likewise you won't be able to do what you need to do unless you have enough resources. Meaning that a player must walk a goldilocks tight rope between too little and too much. Too many resources will see your fat expedition going backwards with time penalties, whilst too few will see you struggling to efficiently use your actions to set a good pace.

Hand management, tight resource control, interaction between players in first come first served action spots, duplicated actions played and a changing route that forces you to switch resource gathering strategy means that Lewis and Clark is no slouch. Indeed Mr Bond declared the game to be somewhat brain burny as you sit and work out just exactly how many resources you need, what actions you are going to play, which cards you can afford to burn, and just where every other player is right this minute.

Overall the game is lovely. The artwork is absolutely beautiful - each card is unique in art, and apart from the start deck, every single action card is also unique in function. The game is steeped in historical theme - all the characters within it are research and accurate, and as for the mechanics of the game - they really are very well done and a step up from the usual. It must be said one important errata has been published for the game - nerfing an otherwise spoiling strategy of sitting on your arse at the start, ignoring penalties and accruing ever more crap for a single devastating burst of speed.

Highly recommended - Mr Bond won an otherwise incredibly close race with a final burst of speed taking him across the finish line to setup camp first on the pacific coast.



Sam II brought along the next new thing  - Super Motherload which is all about mining. Why it's not called Super Motherlode I couldn't say. Perhaps it's an illiterate publisher, or perhaps they are making a very clever point - so clever in fact that it seems dumb. Or perhaps because it loads. As in computer game loads.

Blurry shot of Super Motherload

Super Motherload is a fairly simple deck building game where the results of your playing your ever improving deck are placed on a community board that represents you digging ever deeper into the surface of Mars. Play a bunch of cards to mine some spots on the board, get rewards for mining those spots, use those rewards to gain new cards. Rinse and repeat. Along the way win victory points for achieving various goals - the first to use four cards to mine, the first to dig a four length tunnel and so on. The small wrinkle here is the community board which allows all the players to interact in the same space. If one player digs deep for a reward the next will be able to mine from their tunnels to get somewhere else - thus you need to  not only keep an eye out for what you can achieve, but also what you might be offering to others by doing so. There's also quite a nice board revealing malarkey going on, in that you can't actually see the lower depths until you've completed certain aspects of the current depth - the person that achieves completion gets a small advantage in being able to pick exactly what the next depth will look like, even though its a binary choice.

Spot the difference - Super Motherload artwork

The artwork is sumptuous albeit somewhat wacky in style. I can pretty much guarantee that looking at the card art will not in any way give you a mining vibe. It might give you a 1970's cop show vibe. Say, CHiPs for those of a certain vintage. But mining... not so much.

The game actually looks quite fun in an easy going kind of computer game mimicking type of way - and that's no surprise as the game originally started life as an easy going laid back computer game available for your console and pc couch gaming. I failed to get the opinion of those playing it at the time to see if it was as cool as it looked. I suspect the computer game is more varied and cool, and the board game is slower but more social.

The last newness was taken with the world premiere of Orctions a game that Elliot has been mulling over in design for more than a decade. I have no idea how the game plays. It has auctions. With orcs. But what can be said is that it attracted 8 players who all seemed to have a fantastic time playing it, and such was the good vibes it generated that Lewis became an instant evangelist and is not only buying it as soon as its released but was promising to go to the UK games expo to help with its launch. You can find out more about this at the somewhat in development orction website http://orctions.co.uk/

Pandemic. Going well ? Maybe not...

Elsewise the G man was in the house again - this time playing Libertalia, Ra and something else which I forget with the ever diplomatic Stu. Stu's group kindly played a filler game of Forbidden Desert as a kick off game to allow the late arriving G man to join in.

Betrayal at House on the Hill had a return play, having been absent for sometime, with a Frankensteins monster being burnt to death - again. It seems Frankenstein isn't so hard to put down in Betrayal.

And finally Pete got Lord of the Ice Garden to table again, this time with Tom and Rich IV providing competition, of which the wily Tom gained victory.

Lord of the Ice Garden. Pete didn't win.
I think he subtly blamed RichIV for ending the game too early.
Know Your Players - Rich IV is not beyond delighting in explosive suicide

Filler type games and other things rounded out the week, with an impressively strategic Sam II pulling a great victory in Saboteur as he got all the Saboteurs to help him out - having early been thoroughly sabotaging, only to turn the tables at the end to reveal the gold and himself as a good guy - not a saboteur. Sam put this down to actually not looking at his role card until most of the way through the second game and thinking he was a Saboteur when he was not. Regardless of this it allowed him to place the winning tile and grab the lions share of the loot. Perhaps hes hit upon a great, albeit risky, counter saboteur strategy - pretend to be one of them until you can lay the winning tile.

Blockade Runner. Hazel contemplates the awfulness going on.
Never mind. Cheaty Mages afterwards was much better.

The week before that ... Hal brought a never seen at NoBoG game to table - Blockade Runner, a game about shipping cargo into the Southern States during the American Civil War. I'm not sure what it is with Hal but he seems to have a penchant for some really obscure games - which certainly does make an interesting change to the usual faire.

I'm not entirely sure what goes on with this game, but suffice to say its something of a Euro with a map of the Southern US, some auction mechanics going on, deliveries and some card play.

I have to say when I looked over at this game the thought crossed my mind that I hadn't seen such a drab board since the 70's. But all that glitters is not gold and all that. Unfortunately when I asked the players what the game was like, Hal was first in with a single word - abysmal, and everyone else followed with milder but equally unglowing terms. Unfinished. Nice ideas but doesn't quite work. Needs refinement. And so on. Uh huh.

Walk like an Egyptian... Imperial Settlers

I got to roughly teach a group how to play Imperial Settlers. Which I am really liking and wouldn't mind picking up for myself - we were playing with Mr Bonds copy. Netrunner Sam who is something of a 51st state veteran quickly picked up the game ( the games being by and large the same thing ), and with a strategy of large card flow went on to a good win with the Romans, with me trailing a dozen points behind, and Stu and Nicky a good 20 points behind me. With a little kick here and there I'm sure I could have taken it, but as the Egyptians I was fannying around with stone and building funny monuments - no swords to be had.

Cash and Guns 2 - Lauren Birthday Edition

At the other end of the room Lauren brought her birthday copy of Cash and Guns 2. And engaged with a full group in an extra noisy game of gangsta shooting and looting. Pandemic got a play upstairs. As well as Powergrid. And possibly some other stuff I really cannot now recall....

Fillers, Netrunner Sam busted out a new game to me - Cheaty Mages. Which is a pretty basic bet on the final result of a card type game - where every player gets to - mostly - secretly dick with the value of the result. This is a nice filler game with a high level of interaction and table backchat - as most filler type social games are wont to do. I'm not sure its classically cool enough to be up there with the greats, but it is a solid filler and a welcome extra choice in the field of quick high player social games.

The classic Powergrid still doing its thing.

Guillotine is having something of a ... *cough*.... renaissance, and with a few copies floating around is being played quite a bit. Simultaneously on two tables at one point. So thumbs up for guillotine. And well done Tim for introducing this quiet winning game to everyone.

Whilst everyone seems to be on a guillotine love in, Hal for one still hates it. It fills me with rage he confided. I am not sure why this is. Perhaps he has some French Nobility in his genealogy and still harbours a grudge towards the filthy Robespierre. He does have a liking for fancy wines. So maybe there's something in that.

UFO

This is what fighting aliens looks like. Sexy. Right ?

Start the youtube vid below. It's this weeks theme tune. Once it's playing you can read on !
 

Back in the early 70's, when space hoppers were the greatest orange coloured transport device ever invented, hair was big, collars bigger and flared trousers biggest of all, if you had thoughts about defending the Earth from nefarious alien ne'er-do-wells then you might have found yourself a member of S.H.A.D.O and your go to uniform choice might look something like this

Standard S.H.A.D.O uniform.
Clearly they never suffered chilly days in S.H.A.D.O central command.

UFO fighting fashion styles have moved on fortunately - or unfortunately depending on your level of depravity - and so this week when an alien defence headquarters was setup in the Ribs of Beef, none of the defenders were wearing string vests sparing us all a horrifying sight. That there are sacrifices to be made defending the Earth goes without saying - putting up with four gamer dudes hanging out in string vests however is arguably a sacrifice too far. You'd probably be better off welcoming your new alien overlords instead.

Owein brought along the new and sexy XCOM to NoBoG challenging three fellow compatriots to keep the earth safe, the humans from panicking over the prospect of string vest wearing whilst simultaneously swatting away alien invaders. If you haven't been living under a rock for the past 20 years computer gaming wise, you will know that XCOM is a highly successful video game franchise that splits into tactical man to alien combat and a strategic level logistics management mode where you get to train people, research new tech, and react to alien ship incursions. The whole singing dancing Xenophobia train has now been ported into board game form, and whilst the man to alien tactical combat element has been lost in translation, the nail biting logistics balancing space ship intercepting bit remains.

XCOM. Don't drop your pieces on the floor. The timer waits for no one.

Truly one of the new breed of board games, XCOM integrates technology into your usual pile of cardboard and bits with a free app for use on your digital toy of choice - like for instance an iPad. The app gets to co-ordinate the alien player, effectively forming a broad programmed AI against your wiles as well as injecting a real time element into the game where you have to make decisions in a short span of time ( unless you're playing in the lame Easy mode ).

The nature of the app also allows the game to play with the timing of various phases, meaning that you can never be quite sure that A follows B follows C thus forcing your into committing resources before they were ready or correctly in place.

Because of its triple A computer game heritage the production values of the app are absolutely first class, oozing theme and atmosphere - heavily borrowing a lot of resources from its sibling games.

Did you know ?

Ananda Gupta who designed the board game Twilight Struggle also designed the reboot of the XCOM video game and brought a lot of board game sensibilities into the design mix. In ever more crazy cross pollination that video game has now crossed the divide back into the board game world.

As a co-operative game it slightly side-steps the group think tendency that some of those games can have - where a particularly strong or pushy player just orders everyone else around resulting in a solo game with a number of observers - by giving players unique roles to play that have very clear responsibilities and available actions.

Explaining the actual machinations of the game is kind of tricky - its involved and has a lot of bleed through from the computer game ( which you'll feel right at home with if you have played it ) - but basically making decisions about missions, sending squaddies out on missions, balancing resources and doing everything in a timely fashion is the order of the day. You'll need to cater to random things popping up, keeping a lid on panic - which can lose you the game -, keep your base from being destroyed - another lose event - and finally surviving long enough to actually take a shot at the aliens and win the game outright - as opposed to just surviving.

If tense random thematic games are not your thing, then XCOM is going to not be something you want to look at ( unless you like facing the derision of the gaming community by playing it in Easy mode and not having to worry about the timer at all ). If you are into your stress time based games, and or you have an XCOM background, this is a game you will definitely want to give a try out of.

The game went down very well on Tuesday, with Davey vowing to rush home and buy it as soon as he could so taken he was with its gameplay.

The intriguing looking Castles of Mad King Ludwig

Another recently release game was on offer this week - the Castles of Mad King Ludwig. This is a tile placing game that has you vying for victory points by collecting sets or synergistic placements and according to Sam who got to play it, is something of a riff on Suburbia.

Castles however is not a town builder but is a . . . castle builder. Where you get to build room by room a crazy patchwork castle ( hence the Mad King ) to try and maximise your VPs via whatever cunning strategy you cook up.

Lighter than Suburbia with less capability to synergise the game however ups complexity in a different direction with tiles that are different shapes and sizes - meaning that placement of those rooms is not quite as straight forward as Suburbias uniform hexes.

A fun looking game, Sam enjoyed it - managed to win, and noted Chloe had spent all game building a very evil looking castle with suspicious pits, mossy rooms and long spindly corridors that led nowhere.

Steam with 6. Banned by the UN as cruel and unusual punishment

Elsewhere Steam had a monster game with six players. Hal was playing mean. Apparently. And on the table over Pandemic was succumbed to with an abject failure for players, who could only end up planning their apocalypse party with 3 turns to go as it became apparent the infections were out of hand. They then finished with the less disease ridden Small World.

I believe Lauren and Andrews table played King of Tokyo - and some other lighter stuff. Not sure.

Pandemic. It's looking bad folks. Time to invest in a bunker.

Downstairs Lewis lead the ever redoubtable Lords of Waterdeep to table, complete with machine gun noises which he assured was not for once his fault. Ticket to Ride was on the table over, which left the last table with a riotous game of Archipelago.

On a crazy whim Pete decided the Archipelago should be seeded via the optional desert start, which proved to be in the end an absolute nightmare for exploration. Getting those tiles out with a land interior is much tougher going than starting with a sea tile. It certainly changed the pace of the game however, and with the expansion cards in play - and the Jail out from turn one, some of the typical dynamics of the game were subtly altered.

Dawn rises over the ill fated Archipelago.

Pete got off to a flying start whilst most of everyone else struggled to escape the hot sandy interior. Feelings of ill will circulated towards the obviously well performing Pete, and as an end game trigger threatened to activate, everyone suddenly got very jealous of their precious commodities. So much so that the colony leapt up in misery, jumping a full 21 unrest points in a single turn, whilst the singularly quiet Punk Rich who turned out to be the separatist secretly gloated that the colony would now go tits up.

An extremely funny game, much comedy with Rich IV offering Pete a pocket bird flip at one point in reply to his request for renumeration, and with Punk Rich playing a very quiet separatist, lulling everyone into being ever more selfish, the game sank in perfect Archipelago fashion. Amazing game.

The gateway game classic - Ticket to Ride

Roll for the Galaxy was squeezed into the end. We got two thirds in before calling it a day. Pete pipped me by three points. Everyone else was flailing on half scores.

Mr Bond was very excited this week. The prospect of having 40 NoBoG attendees sent him a twittering, only to have his hopes dashed when two of the would be players managed to claw their way to safety  left prematurely. It should be said this was with several of our regulars out. Breaching 40 seems like something we will be doing in 2015. Still. 38 is a record. Apparently. I've lost track. It certainly sounds a lot. The pub was pretty full with NoBoGians, and that was with a table of six and three tables of five. Heaven help us when everyone decides they just want to play four player games only. It will be woollen hats and thermal gloves all round to cope with playing games on the ice festooned river terrace.

Lastly, congratulations to Sam who is now the official Norwich Netrunner champion. This is apparently why we only see him every other week at NoBoG - he's netrunning down at Athena games in the other weeks. Personally I think he's a Norwich based mask wearing crime fighter who takes it to the streets every other Tuesday. I noticed he turned up in a spiderman themed jacket this week - clearly he got his crime fighting persona days mixed up. But yeah. If you want to believe his cover story, then he's the Norwich Netrunner champion.

Which is a card game. If you didn't know. Go look it up. Don't expect me to do everything for you ! Tsk.

For Sale : 10,000 sq/ft Industrial Unit - slightly war torn

This week for the most part NoBoGers elected to play the old* favourites** with Pandemic, Lords of Waterdeep and Betrayal at House on the Hill first up on the tables in the Wherry Room.

*old - in terms of board game fads and newness about 12 months at most
**favourites - in terms of fickle gamers some will really like, and others declare absolutely broken ( mostly because they didn't win )

Betrayal at House on the Hill in particular has now been played so often at the Ribs, it's a wonder the regular players aren't all thoroughly experienced veterans that can list all the betrayals from memory. There may be lessons to be learned here for budding game designers about the compelling nature of the game as for my money there are not too many other games like it in terms of mechanics and how it plays, plus as a bonus the theme really works well.

A full and buzzing Wherry Room

Betrayal had two plays, one with a Dracula bad guy who was roundly beaten by the good guys, and a second... with an invincible traitor that must be killed with a statue. Sounds weird. I guess you had to be there.

The world of Pandemic meanwhile was being threatened by the very twelve monkey-esque bio terrorist challenge, where one of the players instead of tripping around the planet curing diseases is instead actively working towards bringing the zombie / mutant / pathogen apocalypse joy to the world at large. Happy days. Richard the IV was the bio-terrorist with a grudge ( don't blame me if you're now on an NSA web search watch list Richard... ) but failed in his task to bring a slightly insane Bruce Willis into time travelling reality.

Lords of Waterdeep had a blast at the far end, Lewis complained he was getting his butt kicked by a bunch of newbies mid game, but by the end had successfully shown them what a bunch of newbs they were and had won.

Upstairs a table of six took on some shorter games. Firstly there was Space Cadets Dice Duel - new for everyone at the table except myself. A stressful hour of dice rolling passed with two games, some role switching and a single victory for both teams. Mr Bond was very chuffed with the experience and declared the game to be the best thing ever. I think he was still adrenalin pumped at that point from all the split second dice rolling decision making. If you want to know what the game is about, a small vid of our first outing of this was posted a whileback.

Sentinel Tactics : Uprising

Afterwards we had some crazy camel racing in Camel Up - my first go at this. Cool stuff, and a little more involved than it first appears. The game is a fun, quick and light betting / racing game that manages to keep any Randomness to a reasonable minimum, and the capability for planning and working out odds to a maximum.  Even half a lap behind, it's still possible for some ridiculous camel to gallop into the lead, albeit very unlikely. A game of calculating risks, managing them, and trying to make more money than everyone else whilst doing it.

Lastly we gave Sentinel Tactics : Uprising a bit of a test play. Sentinel Tactics Uprising is a tactical super hero combat game, where each player controls a super hero ( or villain ) type, runs around a hexagonal based urban landscape, and attempts to Zap, Pow and Ker-Splat others into non existence. The game can be played in a few different ways - co-operatively against a story based challenge or competitively in a death match style. If you've ever played or heard of Heroclix, then, you'll get the idea.

We played in two teams of three in a death match style, grappled with the rules of orders, movement, range and shooting, and sallied forth to beat each other to a pulp.

Sentinel isn't based on any mainstream comicbook IP, so it won't have any names you are familiar with, but they follow tried and tested formulas of heroes and villains. Mr Bond got to play the "Invincible Bunker" which looked to be a slightly fat Ironman. I on the other hand got to play some random computer name, and it turned out I was an automated factory gone bad.

Just how an automated factory turns bad and then goes onto terrorise a neighbourhood is a very good question that is not really addressed. By necessity we made up our own narrative for my "character".

Covering a sizable chunk of the board, and for 10,000 square feet of prime Industrial Zone, surprisingly fleet footed, I managed to rocket jump half the map and attempt to grapple with Nicky's "The Wraith". Who promptly slipped away... Wraith like. Then again, it doesn't seem like that arduous of a task to actually dodge a 10,000 square feet industrial building that has menacing feelings towards you. Indeed you might not even realise a factory is harbouring menacing feelings towards you, such is their lack of general mobility. Or sentience. Dodging an evil factory should be a case of just slowly walking around it as opposed hitting your head on its door jam. Less Wraith like to dodge it then, and more just observing the Watch Your Head signage pasted on the front door.

Rich playing a rather suspect Ra "The Sun God" ( I am too a Sun God, look at this lovely tan... don't rile me, I'll give you such a sun burn ! ) turned out to be no such thing, and just plain old Bob from the Melanoma Sun Tan Clinic in a stupid outfit. "Ra" or Bob as we now know him jumped onto a building in turn one only to be turned to goop by the Wraith and the impressive weaponry of the Bunker.

After burning Ra, everyone turned their attention on my prime real estate, and begin firing flak cannons at my offices. This was unfortunate as at that point, having failed to engage The Wraith I had instead turned my energies into producing iPhone accessories for the mass market. Nicky trying to shut down production for good started throwing knives at me. Hmm. Not exactly something large industrial units tend to worry about - throwing knives. Nevertheless she did some damage - we concluded that she must have killed the caretaker or security guard - but this time failed to slip away and instead got buried under pile of automated production line and masonry. Bits of her will be showing up in iPhone accessories for the next six months.

After Rich dusted himself off and tried giving The Bond a blistering sun burn ( failed, of course ) we halted the game with 1 knock out each. A cool game if you like that kind of thing, it seemed a bit ill balanced for player versus player shenanigans unless you really know what you are doing and balance the teams accordingly. I'm not sure there is enough in it to make it tactically challenging, it comes down to getting there first, having most of your dice hit, and pummelling someone into the dirt before they can return the favour.

This game to me is pretty much the same as Heroclix - it's a slightly larger map scale, and a bit simpler than Heroclix, but eh, I think if you wanted to play something like this, I can't see why you wouldn't play Heroclix. Heroclix has the well known IP, a deeper more involved range of choices, and does the same job. Maybe I am missing something.

The evening finished for some with Splendor and Avalon Resistance, where Luke got to make one of his now customary faux pas by announcing that we - the bad guys - only need one more vote to fail. Thus condemning him to be identified as a filthy spy. Another one of those, oh, did I say that out loud moments.

Love Letter might also have briefly appeared.

Next week I shall be bringing the new and spanky Dead of Winter - a semi co-operative ( yay ?! ) game about surviving the zombie apocalypse. Or possibly just bringing the whole camp down and being an evil zombie loving betrayer. Boo. Featuring one player character of a Mall Santa, who is so appallingly bonkers / annoying / drunk, that the camp actually has morale improve when he "goes missing". Dark.

Other weeks :
 Rex has got a play 3 out of the last 4 weeks which I find surprising but very cool - it almost got played this week, but we opted for shorter things instead. Rex still intrigues me - simple, yet tricky. Limited, yet lots of choices. I think the whole game works on two things - the very asymmetrical player powers ( that are amazingly balanced ), and the possible alliance permutations ( and seating order and turn order and what that means for the game at large ).

Bora Bora made a return visit - only the second time this highly thought of game has been down the Ribs. A mystery why it hasn't turned up more often. Still haven't played it.

Rich got to teach Caverna. And kicked ass. Predictable. Possibly one ( the only ? ) flaw in Caverna - its predictability.

Sam got to play Mission Red Planet, full of confidence on having won before. And crashed to a defeat his confidence balloon popped. He had got engaged in a bit of a power tussle. And distracted. It happens. Mission Red Planet is a nice little game. And is rumoured to be getting an FFG reprint.

The other Sam kicked ass at Kemet. A victory at his own game. Avoiding the embarrassment of being beaten by newbies - although Luke was also playing who has quite the experience with the game now.

Lastly, have some pictures from the last few weeks.

Camelot

Bora Bora

Camel Up

Caverna

Kemet

Takenoko

Numbers for the last 3 weeks - 20, 25, 23. Less busy than usual !