The Curious Incident of the Rat in the Night-time

Eh up, buckos! I know you've all been anticipating this moment. At least since you clicked on the link and were waiting for the page to load. Maybe even since you saw the notification pop up on facebook! This moment is of course when we look with rose-tinted spectacles, or at least innuendo-laden fondness, at the past Tuesday's gaming. And this week I'll be unfairly reporting on the playing of Sheriff of Nottingham, Chaos in the Old World, Noria and for myself, Quadropolis.

A small part of the East Midlands turned up in the Mash Tun for the players of Sheriff of Nottingham which seems to be a game the goal of which is to embarrass Jamie because he's so awful at it. As I arrived, he was asking about the bread situation, but quickly started laying on the accusations, claiming that Gareth was "good at the talking shit game as well" in an attempt to play hardball that backfired. The main mechanic in question here is Cheat-type one where you can call someone's bluff, either penalising the cheater or being penalised if you're wrong. Jamie had either wrongly called bluff ("stop him! he's got bread!") or wrongly accepted a bluff 8 times in a row, so things were looking pretty good for the Merry Men on his watch. Jamie wasn't the only one with problems though, as James in another round had attempted to bluff while accidentally showing the cards in question to everyone. An omnishambles of medieval proportions.

Jamie examines his hand in order work out
exactly how to cock up his next call...

The Sheriff, to put it politely,
is fond of his food.

Next was a pretty chaotic game in the old world, and pretty debauched at that --- as perhaps it is to be expected for a game featuring the Daemon Prince of pleasure and hedonism, amongst others. The game, allegedly, is drawn on human vellum, though I don't think that would be allowed nowadays. When asked for a run-down the players simply said they were "old gods trying to destroy the world with corruption," which sounds like an average Tuesday to me, NoBoG or otherwise. You can win by completing your dial by achieving your God's particular objectives such as seducing nobles or killing people, or you can just get 50 points by whatever means.

Slaanesh and Skaven, sitting right next
to each other. Who'd have thought?

Slaanesh thinks that the objectives are too hard --- "just let me touch myself!" This was avoided at least in part thanks to there being a Skaven token on the board so "no-one was getting here." We were trying to figure out how this worked and hypothesised that nobody would want to get busy if there were rats around. However Peter then dropped the bombshell on us, declaring, "I do remember nearly squashing a rat during intercourse once." When asked what he was doing his reply was simply, "Well we were having sex, the rat was just walking around." I'd add some kind of witty follow-up to this, but I just don't think I can improve on what's already given to me. Peter did clarify that the rat was a pet.

Paint me like one of your French rats.

Next up was Noria which is a still-unreleased, fairly heavy engine-builder. You have a spinny dial (see photo) which rotates each turn somehow, and what is in the bottom section of the dial on your turn is what determines your actions. This means that you can't just plug away at one section of the mechanics and have to adapt and anticipate the up-coming actions. You can change what's in your dial but you have to sink money into doing so, so you can't do it too much.

Things are Pointed At in Noria.
I wish I'd got a close-up of the spinny dials.

There are lots and lots of bits and locations and I didn't get a complete description, but for example you can go exploring in order to obtain resource generation, and you can do other actions which push up the markers on the main tracks, which is what ends up scoring you points.

So then I built some square towns in Quadropolis. It was my first time and I kind of sucked, especially when I forgot that we were on the last round and based part of my strategy around doing something next round... Anyway, if you've not played before as I hadn't, the object is to build up a town by taking and placing various district cards on your 4x4 town grid. You take them in player order from a shared 5x5 pool by placing one of your four selection cards down. Each is numbered 1-4 and you take the card that distance away from the edge on which you place the selection card, meaning your choices become more restricted as the round progresses. You can only place districts in the row or column corresponding to the card you used. This all adds up to meaning you need to be very careful about which of the selection cards you use to get which district, and in what order since you don't some other bugger to nick your district (there's quite some scope for screwing people over if they have a limited number of viable or possible choices).

My quadropolis after one round. Pretty modest.

The districts themselves are fairly straightforward with some nice interactions: each requires a certain resource to run, and may also produce a resource. Typically districts produce the opposite resource from what they consume, and some synergising districts behave the same, forcing you to diversify. Synergies involve making certain patterns, adjacencies and the like, and you can only do a couple perfectly before running out of space on your 4x4 board. There is definitely enough going on to need a few plays before you really work out some the optimal strategies. It feels similar to Suburbia in a bunch of ways — building a town, obviously, with districts that should be placed in certain configurations obtained from a central pool. In Quadropolis, you have far less freedom with where you place things, though, and the resources are quite different. I feel like the small town board might start get a bit stale after a few plays, but there is an advanced mode with an extra round, a whole extra zone to build on, and new district types.

Finished quadropolis, still pretty modest.
Note the neat gap on the top row which could have
been a park adjacent to three residences.

So that's it for this somewhat belated write-up of board gaming beauty. I suspect we'll all never think about rats in quite the same way from now on. Until next time!

Back to the Caissons

T.I.M.E Stories was back at NoBoG this week ( or MoNoBoG or BoGoN or whatever splitter group acronym you favour ) and once again I was fortunate enough to get to play. This time we played the second scenario for the game - one that isn't included in the box and marks the first expansion scenario. This one - I think it's fair to say without spoiling it - is a much more direct in your face scenario where you get to roam around the zombie apocalypse in search of a girl that is described in a vague way by "Bob" your Time Lord / Chief Time Dude / The Boss / The Idiot Management / Twat as being the saviour of humanity. So. Get in. Battle zombies. Get girl. Of course. Bob being Bob he utterly fails to note that the zombie apocalypse is going on - a teeny tiny minor detail - and it's only when you jump through time straight into a zombie fight you realise, ok, so, zombie apocalypse. Thanks Bob.

T.I.M.E Stories. We're back. And this time it's zombies.

For all the ultra modern and fantastic science of time travel the scenario also goes through a bit of radio interference at the start once again, where seemingly super important information is mysteriously garbled by the radio breaking up. Tsk. If only there were more time in which to properly brief you eh. Wait a minute... aren't we time travellers ??! Or failing that. You know. Email it. Or something. Basically anything other than your crackly shitty oh no we've failed to communicate vital information to you on this 20th century technology piece of crap. The future. Great time travel tech. Really poor communications tech. Not even your basic SMS. Tsk. And management seems to be as inept as ever in failing to properly plan for that. Management is hard you guys. I have to stand here. And forget to tell you about the zombie apocalypse. And like, try and send you information too late, through this utterly inappropriate communications device. It's a tough job sipping coffee whilst you guys actually do shit. My name's Bob. Time administrator.

I have issues with Bob. I'm sure we'll have a nice 1:1 employee progress meeting about it at some point.

Bob also keeps referring to my time capsule as a Caisson. A Caisson. A what now ? Can't you just say capsule Bob, you pretentious twat. No. Apparently he can't. He might be French, which would explain it. Aller dans le caisson.

Mechanically and thematically, if you were trying to show that the T.I.M.E stories premise could deal with both investigative and fighting based scenarios, then the first two scenarios that drop with the game are doing a pretty good job of that - and you'd have to think that's not an accident.

There were a couple of nice little mechanics additions to The Marcy Case beyond what happened over the first one - to do with how much noise you're making and ammo tracking, but by and large the same general mechanics applied to both scenarios. It's nice though that in a scenario that isn't entirely combat focused things like ammo for guns is abstracted away into a "you have a gun", whilst a combat focused scenario wants you to carefully track ammo and consider how you're using it - and where to resupply. It really is quite clever in an understated way, and crafted by someone who "gets it" - it being when to know to abstract and when to know not to.

So The Marcy Case is much more in your face, and whilst it certainly had an element of investigation to it, to be frank, you know the story score here - there were no great shocks or puzzles to solve in this case. In fact it's so straight forward that you can kinda fill in the blanks of what needs to happen without needing to find it all annnddd.... well. Let's just say that we aced the scenario on the second run through, managed to score maximum bonuses and kinda understood entirely what was going on. Ok so we managed to fluke a 1 in 3 guess at the end, but, it wasn't a surprise, we knew the score. Perhaps this is a disadvantage of making a scenario with no or few puzzles with a much more straight forward combat focused pitch - you can blast through it.

Nevertheless, I found the experience to be great. Not as great as the first one. T.I.M.E stories to me does better when it has puzzles to solve and has a less rushed more story driven thing going on that requires a bit of poking around - not just a been there seen that experience. Of course the Marcy Case has narrative and things to find out. But that narrative is mostly, see zombie, shoot zombie, encounter sad rag tag group of survivors. But ! No matter. The Marcy Case was an enjoyable romp through a zombie wilderness, and I will say this - it was the most narrative story driven zombie tabletop game I have played ( think Telltale video games The Walking Dead ), which is something. Well. Maybe something like The Quiet Year provides a similarly narrative blast. ( What do you mean you don't know what The Quiet Year is - you can read about it in the noblog here or even here way back when we hilariously referred to 14 people in attendance at NoBoG as busy )

There were some cool highlights in the game. None of which I can really share without giving genuine spoilers away. But it was cool. And my character - well, he was loving the zombie apocalypse. He had never had as much stuff or as much fun. I guess that kinda made me Pope from Falling Skies. If you're into your Falling Skies.

A thumbs up again for T.I.M.E stories. Play it. You need to play T.I.M.E stories. But again. I'm not sure you need to buy T.I.M.E stories.

Elsewise on Monday, the rarely spotted and flip flop* wearing Med Ed ( because if you're not doing Medical things, then flip flops are the super chilled way to go ) turned up to join in a game of Ticket to Ride with Elliot, allegedly to give "Staceface" a chance to practice her ticket to ride skills for the upcoming Ticket to Ride competition. She lost. To Sean. Not boding well for her competition chances. They then played Medici. Which we now like. But old school NoBoGers hate. I don't know. Gaming politics man.

Imperial Assault. And the Imperials really did Assault and Batter

Tuesday was the more usual fuller fat crowd of people - not that people attending were fatter, just that there were more of them. More calorific. In a zombie eyeing up dinner kind of way. 42 of them to be precise. Which isn't especially busy these days ( ha ! take that in the eye 2013 NoBlog with its busy numbers of 14 ! Pfft ! 42 is nonchalantly unbusy !).

The Imperial Assaulters finally got their groove back on, and perhaps it was the rust from not having played in a while, but the hopeless rebels failed at their task handing a much needed victory to the slightly bleary eyed martialling of David who dashed back from a several day stag do bender to command the Imperials. Perhaps there's a lesson in there about the effects of alcohol on David's command capabilities. If you think about it all the death stars exploded whilst being commanded by perfectly sober commanders. Perhaps that's where they went wrong.

Sheriff of Nottingham

Monika and James were playing Sheriff of Nottingham ( see this keeps on getting played lately ) and perhaps it was all the declaring of goods that goes on in Sheriff but James also rashly declared his love for me as I passed their table.

Which is random but good to know. I love you too James, I love all the NoBoGers. Even those who play Blood Rage.

They followed up with a somewhat bizarre four handed game of Codenames.Which would seem to be less like Codenames, and more like one of those gameshows where you have to guess your partners intent.

Steam Time

An entirely different James - where the last James was perhaps the American James, and this one would perhaps be the formerly known as Goth James or maybe Beardy McBeardface if we're keeping with the zeitgeist - eagerly brought the new game Steam Time to table, complete with original German rules and black and white hastily printed English rules that kept annoyingly referring to the colour of game components. I didn't get much of an idea of this one, it's pretty, and it looks Euro and from what Dave briefly said there's an element of spending your engine infrastructure to get stuff - but of course in the process hurting your engine. Sounds like some classic Teutonic euro quandary mechanics going on. Expect to see this on table again - unless James didn't like it, which I failed to note.

Lovely laid back no hassles Machi Koro

Lastly my table had some lovely laid back Machi Koro going on, followed by some equally lovely but not quite as laid back Isle of Skye. Stu wants you to know that he's played Isle of Skye twice now and won both times. I think he's setting himself up as the Isle of Skye champion. Pfft. Challenge him ! He won this time due to no single thing, but a nice spread of points from a variety of gains, and possibly helped over the top by an early game large lake that netted him a crucial half dozen or so extra points.

Quadropolis. With three. I think. Triopolis ?

Downstairs we had Quadropolis again on table, hardcore Euro gamer Nate turned up and brought one of my faves, Aquasphere to table, awesomesauce, Chinatown had another play and Lewis finally managed to get Takenoko to table with the chibis expansion. There was also some Catan action with the Star Trek Catan variant, which is Catan, but in spaaaaaace. With some characters thrown into the mechanics to change things up a little. This game has been played by the Wheaton on his tabletop channel. Sam however, playing the Star Trek variant for the first time was not a fan. Stuck with a character that didn't do much, and unable to see what the other characters were doing, Sam continually got smacked around the head. An average thumbs rating for Catan from Sam, and a thumbs down rating for Star Trek Catan. Well. They had to do something extra mechanically to justify the Intellectual Property cash in didn't they. Time to shoe horn some classic photo portraits into the game !

Lastly Champions of Midgard returned to NoBoG tables proving it isn't quite dead yet ! Mel asked if there were any expansions to it - Not yet, but given how well its gone down, I wouldn't be surprised if some pop up.

And. No Secret Hitler this week. Dun dun darrrrrrrr. Has Hitler Hitle'd his last ? Is the game burnt out before its already released ? Print and Play games versus full print releases for derivative games that arguably don't really need full releases. Discuss. A little bit of gaming politics.

The UK Game Expo looms on the horizon, the 3rd to the 5th of June, and many a NoBoGer will be in attendance, including Elliot who has a whole pile of games to auction off doing what he does best, and as a stellar NoBoGer has offered a space of quiet, seclusion and refreshment for all NoBoGers at the event in his exclusive access all areas rear auction setup space. So if you're going to the Expo, drop by and say hello to Elliot - you can't miss him, he will have three gigantic orc auction type banners - and maybe purchase one of the eclectic mix of games he has on offer at a bargain price.

Ye Gallery. Thanks to Monika for some pics of the upstairs gaming.

Tra laaaa.. la la la la la laaaaaaaa. Whoooosh. Star Trek Catan.

Takenoko + chibis

Chinatown

Mind blowing Aquasphere

Champions of Midgard !

More Assaulting

Steam time with Beardy McBeardface, Dave and Lee

Machi Koro, Tim keeps unsportingly refusing to roll two dice and open himself to many many taxes

* They were probably not flip flops. They were probably some amazingly trendy and modern stylish foot wear that only kinda looks like flip flops, and how dare you suggest they are flip flops, these cost 100 squid from London, and this is pure Italian virgin hand stitched craftware - not flip flops. Even though to my 1970s simpler times old bastard ignorant beach trained eye, they look like flip flops.

Peak Gaming

It's been a very busy April at NoBoG. What with all the chair and table shenanigans. And arranging the new and shiny NoBoG Mondays as the alt day for NoBoG Tuesdays. The end of the month was also pretty busy. Wil Wheaton's ( increasingly exclusive ) Tabletop Day and Diceni conspired with NoBoG Monday and Tuesday to give you four days worth of tabletop gaming back to back. Elliot heroically attended all four days. I managed three.

My Diceni stack - the short, the crazy, the pretty, the captivating

Although officially NoBoG was not doing anything for tabletop day, a number of NoBoGers were doing things on the day - particularly at Athena - and took part in a bunch of demonstration run games. International Tabletop day is in a weird space in my head right now - originally I thought it was all about just a general day of organising and playing board games, a Wil Wheaton driven thing to get more people playing board games. This year however, only North American gaming stores have been invited in to officially get involved, private and non commercial groups have been given the elbow and the nature of the event at Athena was very demonstration lead. Which all seems to me much more locked down and commercial than I thought the original idea was meant to be. I can't say I am a fan of the direction it has gone in, it would be interesting to know the reasons why some of those direction decisions have been made. Nevertheless fun was had.

The sublime large scale Takenoko. This hands
down generated the most public chatter.

Diceni - one of many gaming type things going on in Norwich this year - we were officially present at however, and we had a small table running for most of the day including the very passer by interactive inducing Flick 'em Up and the eye catching Takenoko Collectors edition.  We could have made use of another table at one point as some of us ended up observing rather than playing, but no big deal, and it did mean I could chat to the public whilst some of the gaming went on. Akrotiri, Guillotine, Flick em Up, Takenoko, Jamaica and Cash n guns 2nd edition were the order of the day - I think with a bit more space a bit more prep time not running around in the pursuit of tables and chairs with the Tun we could have had more games like Cash n Guns being played for longer, which at the peak of the day I would guess would have got some good engagement. Quite a number of NoBoG regulars and irregulars stopped either to play or have a chat in passing, the day went by super quick, and was an interesting and different gaming day.

Flick em up - a great suggestion by David for a Diceni game

I can't say enough good things about Flick 'em Up for something like Diceni. David loaned me his copy of the game with a suggestion I play it, and what a great suggestion that was. The game is perfectly pitched to be eye catching, as simple a game as you can possibly imagine, be capable of having players drop in and drop out - or even just take one go in passing - and yet be fun. Tim's groovy printed NoBoG boards came in handy for this too - we could position them behind the line of fire to catch any wayward shots. If you have no idea what Flick em up is - its a wild west themed game where two teams get to shoot it out with each other. Moving a person involves you flicking a movement disc - and placing the person wherever it stops. Shooting involves you flicking a "bullet" at someone else, and if you knock them over, you've wounded them. Health is tracked, and meeples can only activate once per round. Additional rules and scenarios cover entering buildings, picking up items, chucking dynamite and so on, but for basics, stand in the street and have a duel. How this game isn't the must buy toy for any (grown up or actual) kid I don't know. It probably needs better marketing.

NoBoG Mondays continue to be quiet, last week we had an epic 14 people turn up, but this week after a hectic weekend of gaming, pouring rain and a bank holiday Monday, we were back to a very cosy 6. If you haven't been to Mondays, then you've missed out on some classics getting to table including Agricola, Seven Wonders, Dominion and Medici, plus you've missed out on the singular experience of myself and Elliot lamenting about being old, because no one else at the table knowing who Phil Collins, the Pet Shop Boys or a host of other 80s type people that were on the playlist of the Tun. You also missed the unveiling of the receipt. Crazy fun times.

Seriously though, Mondays are a very nice quiet throwback to the days of NoBoG yore and it's all very laid back and easy. If you don't like the more "atmospheric" NoBoG Tuesdays - and I know some of you don't - Mondays are definitely the way to go.

Brew Crafters. David wins this with another yeasty Malt strategy.

Two weeks of gaming to catch up on then. Of course we had Brew Crafters - there was even some talk of a double table of Brew Crafters going on, but in the end there was just enough for the single table, David is locked into a hardcore Brew Craftering phase at the moment, and his scores are edging up into the mid 80's to take the win. Picking up one of the Malt suppliers and taking advantage of a market glut of yeast seem to be his current winning formula, where everyone else goes for the yeast lab and becomes yeast self sufficient - leaving yeast on the market unwanted. The theoretical win for the mass production of low quality beer continues to just be theoretical - I don't think anyone at NoBoG has pulled that off yet - very tricky as you really need to get your incoming resources nailed down which can be hard going when everyone is scrabbling for every last morsel of malt.

Chaos in the Old World. An Eric M Lang
game that actually works. Burn !

Chaos in the Old World made a return to NoBoG, it's been a good few years since this game regularly got table time, and this was a pretty much new to the game group giving it a run. It turns out they got the dial clicks entirely wrong for their game, but everyone enjoyed it, and on hearing the dial clicks were wrong ( and had ended up winning the game for Khorne Slaanesh ) - there were demands for a rematch.

Lords of Waterdeep also made a return - the popularity of Champions of Midgard has not survived into Spring, and with the two games somewhat similar, Lords of Waterdeep has started creeping back to get some table time.

TtR India. Lewis won this. He was rather chuffed about that.

We've had some solid Ticket to Ride back at NoBoG too, the gateway game getting much love either via James or Elliot and poor Elliot had to stand in as train croupier for Ticket to Ride India, as unlike most of the other TtR titles it only caters to four people.

In another blast from the past, Archipelago was back for a run - but without the War and Peace evil shenanigans ( boo ) - to delight and in the case of Siv, confound its players. Siv who is relatively new to NoBoG found Archipelago baffling - and long. Which I can understand - it's an easy enough game to play, but to understand what you're doing is a fairly subtle and tricky exercise in watching what everyone else is doing whilst you go about your usual Euro style game actions. The fact that the game might not reward you at all for playing a nicely optimised bit of

Archipelago. Oh so pretty. And tricky.

Euroing, and for all your nice little empire you've managed to do squat end game can be something of a weird experience. I suspect Archipelago might be something of a (euro) gamers game on the quiet. Anywho. I enjoyed it. And failed to capitalise before time ran out. Pete won, everyones final scoring was within a hairs breadth of each other. Good stuff.

Sheriff of Nottingham has also been doing the rounds again of late. I think I've seen it being played two or three weeks in a row now, and for other old things coming out again, the infamous Battlestar Galactica was back, this time with a table of six, and in the most epically unsurprising outcome ever, Monika was a cylon. In fact she was a cylon sympathiser AND a cylon. Remarkable. I think Monika carries a You Are A Cylon card in her pocket at all times.. just in case.

Battlestar Galactica. Monika attempts to hide her Cylon glee.

The good guys lost, and when I checked in Galactica was critical on Fuel, Food and Population, but surprisingly for all of that Morale was high. Only the sociopaths remained on board perhaps. Or just the cylons were left and of course they were happy - all the fleshbags were dead. Seemed like fun anyway. It's always enjoyable watching Monika do her cylon thing. On the other hand - you have to consider that the game has trained her to lie extremely well by now. The skills you learn in board gaming eh ? Learn to lie and cheat your friends ! Without tells ! Become a better manipulator of fear and doubt ! Inspire distrust between colleagues ! All this and more you will learn at NoBoG. Machiavelli would be proud.

This also might be of some use - the NoBoG goblins have put in months of work into devising a flowchart to help you spot who the cylon is when playing Battlestar Galactica at NoBoG.

The NoBoG BSG Cylon detector flowchart. Never let Monika fool you again !

Machi Koro and Colt Express have seen table time. Both these games are great, and it's good to see more people getting a play of them - they deserve a bit wider audience than they've had at NoBoG I think.

This week the Mice and Mystics group returned - Joe finally freeing his worker from the Family Expansion space to make it to NoBoG and continue the mystical antics. I got to join them for their fortnightly outing this time to replace Ben. This was a chapter I'd never played before and involved the cooperative team splitting into two groups and maxing out the hero mice with six in play. Both teams had objectives to accomplish before theoretically meeting up in the smithy for a final climactic battle. In practice the splitting of teams was a little clunky - the game is designed around an assumption that everyone will be on a single tile - and the timing of the end game didn't seem to click that well as me and Sam arrived a whole tile earlier than Joe and Ben.

Cheese Golem Smash ! Smash Good !
Needs a Cheese Golem miniature.

The end battle was suitably difficult, and with only one team on board it could have been a tough fight, were it not for the fact we had picked up the Cheese Golem spell earlier. With a few defensive items to hand, Maginos the spell caster hulked out into the Cheese Golem and rolling a bucket of dice in attack and defence proceeded to one shot everything in the room - helped with a blast of multiple effect lightning. The fearsome boss wasn't much help to the bad guys either, who managed to fire off one shot of his bow before he was hammered into the floor from the weight of a cheesy golem fist. Cool stuff. Easy given our equipment drops. I suspect however this chapter could be a massive pain in the ass if the wrong kind of monsters spawn on the wrong group - as both groups are feeding a spawn counter, but crucially only one of them will trigger it. A struggling group could find themselves struggling even more with a bad spawn.

Deus - Imperial Settlers with a board ?

We also had a new to NoBoG game - Deus - turn up at the Tun. This game originally made its debut at Essen 2014 and picked up a bundle of award nominations in 2014 and 2015. The game can probably best be described as Imperial Settlers with a Catan like board. A shorter civilisation building game set ( loosely ) in an ancient Greek theme, players compete to build different buildings and gain victory points from building powers and conquering barbarian lands. In a very Imperial Settlers kind of way, players receive a hand of building cards which can be built and placed into your tableau - each of which gives some kind of power that can be synergised. With buildings requiring a number of different resources in game, so far Deus is Imperial Settlers. The differences here however are that the buildings get placed on a map - and there is some conflict over the first come first served conquering of a territory - and buildings will only trigger when a new building of the same colour is built. The game looks interesting but there are some questions about its limited player interaction - but I think this game is more pitched at a civ building card game, than an outright knife in the back competitive builder or war game.

Close your eyes. Listen to the voice on the phone. Werewolf !

And of course there have been plenty of social filler games going on, with the usual suspects of Secret Hitler, Avalon and Werewolf getting to table - although, unless I am mistaken, the bloom of the cult of new is most definitely off Secret Hitler, and it is beginning to fade in popularity. I personally got to play Divinaire a few times - and win.. of course... - and got to have another go of Alex Pfisters Oh My Goods ! but this time with the revised v2.0 rules. Which were much smoother. It's still something of an RNG fest, but the new rules allow better mitigation of it, and you're much more likely to get a meaningful build out of it. I'd recommend this nice Imperial Settlers type filler game. I definitely want to get some more plays of it to get a better feel of it.

The NoBoG cash kitty after chair expenditures now stands at £63.53. I've also started labelling up some of our chairs - as the Gin Palace this week made off with three of our nicer chairs that they had been drooling over the week before, and other of our chairs are generally wandering out into the general area of the pub. Not a problem per se, so long as all the chairs are available for gaming use when required !

Numbers for the record, 14/41 and 6/39 for Monday / Tuesday respectively. Lower turnouts than the previous weeks 50's.

Lights, Tables, Action !

This week there was something of a stir in the lands of NoBoGia.

Upstairs at t'Tun

Following on from last weeks burrito based bedlam, new upstairs space at the Tun had been cleared for use, and the cry had gone out for all NoBoGers to quest* in search of tables and chairs. NoBoGers responded in marvellous fashion, scouring classifieds for items, driving around Norfolk to secure bargains and putting in some time as amateur furniture movers. New Table Tuesday thus arrived with some tables and chairs already delivered, and a bunch more turning up on the evening, all of which got hauled upstairs into the labyrinthine depths of the Tun.  Perhaps I am biased, but I don't think you'll find a more friendly helpful community than that of the Norwich Board Gamers, from the regulars to the most scarce irregular. Awesome.

Light in the Dark, upstairs at the Mash Tun

In the end we managed to obtain five tables for this weeks use and some fourteen or so chairs. . . which wasn't enough chairs, we had to grab chairs from anywhere we could - including the Tun's staff only area "office" chair - whilst leaving the majority of the ( unused ) seating alone in the main area of the pub.

A fairly busy 51, 52, 53 turned up this week to see in the new tables, and every single usable table we had was put to good use ( only Hal's slightly wonky loose bolts table not being used ), oddly enough split five tables downstairs and five tables upstairs.

The space upstairs is ample for our forseeable needs, there's a need for more chairs - which we are halfway to resolving - and the lighting in places is very dubious. For those who had never been upstairs there was some surprise at the space available. Potentially we need more tables but only to cover Peak Gamer - which might be moot as we're moving to a two nights a week trial format.

What was played this week ?

The end of Time Stories. Figuring out the last puzzle.

I got to finish of Time Stories with Darren, Alfie and Hal where we finally put the first story to bed after a six week hiatus. During this session, without going into too many spoilers we learned that Hal will do anything to please a naked lady. Fortunately we ignored his happy trusting nature of naked ladies, took a different path and went on to win the game - with an epic score of zero. There was once again much discussion post game about the cost of the game versus its amount of play, whether the need to buy the base game was there once you'd cleared the first included story  ( the conclusion was you didn't need to buy the base game at all ), and the design aesthetics of the first story - dead ends and wasted time versus a need to not have players become complacent about never being able to fail. Despite the involved conversation about the game, everyone really enjoyed it, and I got the impression that the game if nothing else is a really unique and interesting experience for all involved - and for that reason alone is a must play for any half serious gamer.

We finished with a nice condensed euro filler of Oh My Goods! which to me is like a compressed Imperial Settlers without any dicking with other players. An interesting little resource management / synergy game, and I enjoyed it a lot, but whilst on the surface it has a lot of good nods towards euro goodness, player interaction is zero and ( a fixed limited ) card pull plays a very large part in whether you're going to be competitive or not. If you're being critical the game comes down to whether you pull the right two cards at the right time or not - and have some luck with resource pools available. This trend of super condensed euro fillers is really interesting, but I think is a difficult nut to crack without falling into just busy work hiding a big ole RNG engine. Still that being said, I'd really like to have a another go at this filler.

Pete enjoys vamping around Europe

Over in the corner of thematic gloom, Pete got the first play of the third edition of Fury of Dracula, the deduction based cat and mouse game of hunting Dracula across Europe. The third editions sees a number of shakeups, a changed day night cycle, a removal of dice and a bunch of minor tweaks. Without the vagaries of the much maligned dice melee thus becomes a good deal more predictable, and whilst in theory the removal of dice brings the game more into a modern Euro sensibility, it can mean the combat can seem on observation a little contrived as you can reasonably work out the outcome of any rock paper scissors type fight - great for Dracula if he's crunching his escape numbers. Pete for one likes the tweaks the third edition introduces and gave the game a big thumbs up.

Brew Crafters with a mad mix of Beers available

David busted out Brew Crafters for the third week straight - and Brew Crafters games seem to be popping up here and there in response to it showing up at NoBoG. David rather cruelly put newbies of Voitek, Monika and James through the paces of a bunch of advanced ( and pretty hideously tricky ) beers. Richard IV won this by sticking to a basic collaboration for points strategy and brewing nothing but one of the few non tricky beers repeatedly. Given the rest of the beers on offer this was almost certainly a sensible strategy.

Guillame brought Shakespeare along - Sam muttered it was surprisingly good, very Euro. I don't think he was amazingly thrilled with its Euro-ness. And James table, probably the hardcore player table of the evening with Nate, Tom, and Nicky played Istanbul, and something else I forget.

Busy downstairs, four tables in shot, 26 people !?

Downstairs was a huge filler night as two big tables of party / social games were the order of the night, Mafia de Cuba, Secret Hitler, Resistance and something new to me antidote, which at a quick glance seemed like a nicely themed up simple deduction game.

Ben had a third large table of players, hosting an epic 8 player game of Robo Rally which to me sounds utterly mental. Everyone really enjoyed their experience however and they even managed two games of it, the first game a bit of a training run through on one board and the second one a more proper run over 3 boards. Crazy.

Lords of Vegas, Quadropolis and a finishing game of Thunderbirds were also going on downstairs, and Tim has some pictures and something to say about Quadropolis.

Quadropolis

Being the yearly ‘New Game’ from Days of Wonder, I came to Quadropolis with Ticket to Ride front and centre in my thoughts. Having enjoyed many games of of the ten-years-plus old classic, with a wide variety of people, my hopes were set high. Being reminded that DoW also produced Smallworld did nothing to lessen that. I should perhaps have instead focussed on DoW’s Five Tribes, a game at the heavier end of the ‘Brain Crunch Spectrum’(TM). I have never played Five Tribes, but the reviews I have seen indicate that it is nowhere near as simple as Smallworld, let alone Ticket to Ride. After one play, I would put Quadropolis somewhere between Smallworld and Five Tribes.

The game consists of four round, with four player turns in each. A player has four numbered Architect tokens and plays one per turn to select which building from the central stock they will construct. The different building types score in different ways based on how they are placed in a players city, so careful thought is needed about every action.

I definitely enjoyed playing this with Ewan, Simon and Matt. The art style (and probably thoughts of Ticket to Ride) made me think I would get away with using my brain a little less than was the case. I certainly won’t say no to another play in the next few weeks, and if it stands up to repeats I may get my own copy.

Jarryd showed off his progress with the NoBoG app this week. It's coming along nicely, events are displayed where you can check out what games are available to play as well as adding your own games into a list, all of which hooks back to the BGG API to automatically include box art, number of players and other details about your games.

Next week we are going to trial Monday NoBoG or as Joe has christened it, Ultimately Inferior Night, as well as the regular Tuesday night. Moving to a two nights a week setup has been something kicked around for quite some time and is the single most requested NoBoG thing as some people just want to game more, and others can't make Tuesdays. Thursdays would I feel have been a better day, but from a pub night point of view Monday is a no brainer as if pubs are mostly dead on weekdays, then they are doubly dead on Mondays.

It remains to be seen what will happen to player numbers - will Tuesday numbers reduce ? Will Mondays be super quiet ? Will both days end up busy ? Who knows.

Diceni - one of the many gaming type conventions going on in Norwich this year - is also rapidly approaching, and we're going to go there and play some games with any passers by that are interested - or just amongst ourselves if the crowd is more of a watching type of vibe rather than a participating one.

As ever I leave you with the gallery.

Lords of Vegas

Robo Rally 8 player

Antidote

Beer + Secret Hitler - NoBoG style

Quadropolis

One of the strange half rooms in the Tun. This is the bar outside the upstairs larger room.

Shakespeare

The final fight of Fury of Dracula requires everyone to stand. It's in the rules.

Some of the labyrinthine stairs and corridors upstairs at the Tun. It's like Hogwarts without any of the class snobbery and more 1970's decor.

Seriously, possibly the best ever thematic lighting for a game of Fury of Dracula ever. Pete doing his best Translyvanian count bit. If Translyanian counts started wearing hoodies.

David (left) wrestling with the choices of Brew Crafters. Richard IV ( right ) hoping no one will notice his single beer collaboration strategy.

* Elliot's words. He was questing with his son Bilbo and fellow NoBoG regular Sam in something of a very Lord of the Rings vibe. But for tables, not evil rings. Elliot should probably change his name to Frodo. Or possibly Aragorn. Or maybe the crazy dude covered in bird poo - Radagast.