Spies at the Jet Garage

A busy week this week ! In the apparent subjective random chaos of the universe the pub was this week quite full for no good reason whatsoever, making our 32 attendees seem that much more as we struggled to obtain tables for our cardboard shuffling.

We managed to squeeze everyone in however with the threat of punishments for those daring to play less than 5 player games ( as it turned out we had two tables do this ) and the very real possibility of otherwise having to enact the Beta Site Protocol.

Lords of Vegas. Sam practices his nazi salute.
Everyone else awkwardly pretends it didn't happen.

Downstairs Cyclades ( I think or possibly Kemet ) made a return to table after some time away, and on the next table over a rather surprising game of Tzolk'in kicked off with 5 newbies. If you'd asked me to guess what game would be played without at least someone at the table having played it before, Tzolk'in would probably have been one of the last games I would have picked, as being a crunchy euro it's not exactly the sort of game you can just fall into in 5 minutes. Nevertheless after a rules explanation from Pete the 5 got on with it and they all seemed to enjoy it. I didn't manage to get an idea of who was doing what. Without a monster action efficiency vet at the table I daresay the game was... quite enjoyable. And not the soul crushingly inevitable cog grinding madness that it can be. *cough*.

Over from them Martin got one of his favourites to table again with Room 25, and then followed one of the Werewolf variants, Andrew having brought three different Werewolf variants to the pub. It seems you can never have enough werewolves. I caught them in a game that was winding down, much argument about who the werewolf was, with some dubious statements as to eye witnesses and swapped roles. Looked good fun.

Pete and Joe enjoying the latest crossroads card - Dead of Winter

Upstairs Dead of Winter made a return, half newbies, half experienced, and despite a bucketload of paranoia filling the table and a call for exile being ignored by a whisker, there ended up being no betrayers at the table. Collecting samples was the name of the game, with 15 samples to collect, or after dice probabilities, 30 zombies to kill.

Pete on his first ever game of this focused heavily on getting everyone to kill zombies in good order, and the first turn passed in something of a breeze.

Although it must be said a rather unwelcome change came over Pete almost the instant he sat down to play. He questioned why we need to support helpless survivors. Weren't they indeed a burden. Couldn't we just kill them ? Eat them ? Push them out into the cold ? No. We're civilised. Besides. You lose 1 morale for everyone lost. Usually. Ah he said. Incentive.

The morale of the story being don't be in a zombie apocalypse with Pete. He will be eyeing you up thinking of how well you'd go glazed in honey with some accompanying roast potatoes.

Despite our great start, if you've ever played Dead of Winter however, you'll know that things can go tits up very quickly, and you can be up to your armpits in helpless survivors and difficult crises before you can say BRAAINNNSSSS.

Which quickly started to be the case as no less than three survivors ended up being bit and dying, and a suddenly burgeoning population saw food requirements double overnight.

As morale dipped towards one, the samples were on the cusp of being completed and as we staggered towards the finish line - worrying that a betrayer could tank the colony at any moment - we managed to obtain the last sample and in a bit of collective support everyone fulfilled their objectives. The impossible had happened. Everyone at the table had won.

Pete declared the game to be easy and stated it was his lack of presence in previous games that had made them fail.

Uh huh.

Kingsburg - Davey in the corner had strong infrastructure built

Elsewhere Kingsburg rode into town, and when I looked Davey seemed to have developed a nice board with a full track of military and a nearly full track of something else - although crucially at that point he had no pure victory point buildings. I'm not sure his score tally was enough to take it, despite him having a good infrastructure. Over development of useful buildings perhaps ?

On the other side of the pub, Sam having purloined pub tables to get his group going brought Lords of Vegas out, which seemed to be developing nicely when I looked - there seemed to be quite a number of monster casinos out in play.

The peace of Porfirio Diaz - Pax Porfiriana

And lastly Pax Porfiriana made another return to the Ribs, this somewhat obscure title surprisingly having made half a dozen appearances at the pub in the last year or so. Apparently we love us some revolutionary mexican shenanigans at NoBoG.

Pax and Dead of Winter ended up finishing at the same time, leaving us with the tantalising possibility of giving the yet to be properly published game Spyfall a whirl.

Having printed the print and play version of this out earlier the only problem was that all the printouts were not yet sleeved - not a huge problem, and everyone agreed they could just sleeve what was needed, or as I suggested, just not even worry about it. Play with how it was.

However.

Tip a bunch of unsleeved cards on a table. Add a pile of as of yet unused sleeves. Then tell a bunch of OCD gamers there is no need to sleeve. Wait. Watch the beads of sweat form on foreheads as OCD tendencies are repressed. The eye twitches. The hands that creep towards the sleeves.

Predictably perhaps after a minute of discussion there then followed ten minutes of frantic sleeving by a NoBoG flashmob sweatshop.

I ended up just managing from on high - I did no work myself, I let the NoBoG sweatshop collective get on with it. When asked who was the winner of this sleeving game, Hal retorted that I was the winner - presumably having just got all my cards sleeved by a willing work force. This turned out so well in fact that I am sure there is a business opportunity in there to do with stimulating the OCD tendencies of NoBoGians, sleeving up cards, and offering services on ebay or somesuch. If you could introduce a betrayal mechanism into the sleeving process it would probably become the hit NoBoG activity of 2015. In any event I am considering bringing other unsleeved games to the pub in future, with a just so happened to have handy pile of sleeves and more reverse psychology comments that guys, there really is no need to sleeve these cards.

As for Spyfall itself, this played out really fun. As Punk Rich noted it had that fresh, buzzy, fun feel of Resistance in the early days when it was all new and shiny and people were getting to grips with how to lie convincingly to their fellow human beings. Although Pete was less charmed with it. Fun. But not deep enough. I think however it's as deep as your questions / players. It's like an unstructured Resistance session.

So what is spyfall ?

Spyfall is an easy filler werewolf type game with up to 8 players taking part in a bit of a Question and Answers deduction session. One player at the table will be a spy - and not know which location everyone is currently at - whilst all the other players are given the same location plus a role they fill at that location. So for instance, everyone might find themselves on an aeroplane, with one player as the captain, another as a stewardess and so on. But the spy knows nothing. The art of the game is in wheedling out the spy - or not. As the spy you either want to remain hidden, or for extra bonus points, remain hidden until you can figure out the location and declare it. As non spies you are trying to find out which one of you is clueless as to the location - without giving away the location to the spy - with a bonus point for the player successfully calling out a vote. Players are given eight minutes to ask questions - one player asking one other player a question, then that player asking someone else a question and so on.

So for instance. An utterly horrible question might be - Pete, are we at the Submarine ? Answer - Yes. Good job. You've just handed the spy the win.

Four rounds were played in total, with Graham calling Richard IV out as a spy with his dubious answers, Punk Rich panicking to a quick minute and a half spy guess as to the location ( wrong ), and then finally a couple of spy wins, the first being Punk Rich sailing to a spy victory as the wrong person was lynched, and lastly Bondy narrowly avoiding a spy vote to then call out the location was the "dodgy Jet Service Garage", earning himself a game winning 4 points in the process.

There were some great moments in the game, with Punk Rich as a spy completely nailing an answer on the location with a broadening your horizons statement ( for the school - he had guessed it was either the University or school ) and thus utterly avoiding any suspicion, and Pete launching into an impromptu political statement when asked something along the lines of whether everyone should attend this place ( school ). Graham also called out Owein for not laughing when everyone else did - this can be a giveaway in spyfall - but he wasn't actually a spy and not enough people around the table were convinced either.

A lot of frantic thinking was going on at the table for this game. The most popular word was Um. Um. Um. Um. Uh. Stalling sorry. Um. Uhhh.

After the final round Graham had managed to come up with a great universal question to weed out spies - What are the toilets like at this location ? Depending on your answer you can figure out if they know what they are talking about. One shot only of course. For use on suspected spies.

Funny werewolf filler variant. I expect to see more of it in the coming weeks.

If you'd like to try out Spyfall yourself ( and as it's not yet available ), there are a number of print and play versions available in the files section on the geek , but be warned the full game is some 208 cards.

Alternatively, if you'd like to play with the extra special Norwich NoBoG spyfall variant, you can print out the sheets that you can find here, including such places as the Norwich Cathedral, UEA, Norwich and Norfolk Hospital and of course the world famous Norwich Space Station. Uhh. Yes !

One cool thing about the game is that in theory, just one copy can play multiple tables simultaneously. With 25 odd locations to use, and only one ever being in use at one time, you could quite easily run three or four tables from one set. Although if you are truly wily you could possibly listen to other tables to help you figure out which location is *not* currently on this table. Filthy cheating.

A great evening of gaming, awesome fun. Roll on next week !

Boardgame Geek Print File for Spyfall http://boardgamegeek.com/files/thing/166384
NoBoG Spyfall A4 Card Sheets http://www.singularity-space.co.uk/spyfall_nobogstyle.rar

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.

Subversives never learn

Nothing too Euro Strenuous ( or indeed Euro at all ) afoot at the Ribs this week, with Elder Sign, King of Tokyo, Saboteur, Arabian Nights and The Resistance getting play time.

A fresh set of newcomers for the week - a hearty welcome to Caroline, Jarryd and Jennifer - taking us to what must be a new monthly record of nine fresh victims new players.

Elder Sign was first up for five of us, Jarryd, Caroline, Ewan, Robin and myself taking on intrepid / hapless investigators trying to prevent in this instance Nyarlathotep going about his evil doings. As seems to be the pattern with Elder Sign the investigators do a reasonably fine job all except for one person. Who tends to fail. A lot.

Elder Sign. Secret Cultist Joe Diamond skulks on the left.

Last time it was Dean's pretend magician who got stuck in a cupboard moping about his failures and then died having achieved precisely nothing. This time round it was Robin's PI Joe Diamond, who seemed to lurch from encounter to encounter doing little more than spawning monsters and putting doom on the track. A subversive cultist if ever I saw one.

Despite Joe's  best efforts to aid his lord and master Nyarlathotep, the rest of our derring band managed to slam the lid shut on the squirming tentacles of the outer god, and we all skipped back home in one piece for a nice cup of tea and a scone.

A ruthless game of King of Tokyo then ensued, the brawling with five was ceaseless, and both Jarryd and Caroline achieved a win by beating everyone else bloody. Victory points be damned.

Finally Saboteur made it out, and with it Pete appeared from his hiding place to join in. Pete managed some epic silver tongue shenanigans by getting one Saboteur - Jarryd - to sabotage the other saboteur - me. A sad day for the saboteurs. Robin and Ewan managed to scarper from the mines with the most gold stuffed in their pockets, despite them both losing the final round. I call it greedy.

Meanwhile on the other table situated by the verandah over the river, the summer sun twinkled from the water to play over the miraculous and at times dubious shenanigans of the Tales of the Arabian Nights. Jennifer, Bondy, Sam, Rich and Fletch took this story telling game out for a spin, each taking it in turn to read out loud from a hefty book of pick your own story style paragraphs and lay down the path of fate for one of their compatriots. The game is somewhere in between a board game and a roleplaying game, with the main thrust of the game based around story telling, making the odd decision and developing a character that obtains or has thrust upon them certain character traits. Fail to charm the princess and see her stalk off to her life of luxury ? Gain the trait Envy.

Tales about to start. Bondy hasn't got his fish yet.

Perhaps my ears are attuned to such things, but everytime I stopped to listen to the tales going on, there seemed to be an inordinate amount of dubious women prostituting themselves, being enslaved, and or taken by the players. Fletch encountered an imprisoned prostitute and 'took her for himself'. Apparently this meant he had married her. Personally I had visions of a subterranean dungeon.

Bondy on the other hand following a similar fate, managed to get his hands on a fish during his quest. Not just any fish. A multi coloured fish.

Hmm.

I guess entertainment is light in the lands of Arabia. No TV I bet. Or board games.

What have you got there ?

A fish !

Uh huh.

No, no, not just any fish. Look. Its a multi coloured fish.

Uh huh.

If it were me I'd feel hard done by, going on a quest, delving beneath the ocean, and coming back with a lousy fish. Then again if your adventures take you beneath the waves, a fish reward is probably quite likely.

No chips.

After a time, when the wow factor of the multi coloured fish wore off ( it got not so colourful and began to stink ), Bondy attempted to cook the piscine, only for it to turn into a woman.

Which I don't know about you, but happens to me all the time. A common kitchen problem. Deceased fish turning into women.

I lost track of what happened to his fishy pan woman and whether he had burnt her ass on the stove, but at some point he got a gift of 100 wardrobes ( more a curse than a gift I would have thought - imagine man handling 100 wardrobes into your living room ), opened them all, got greedy and was set upon by an Efreet. That's a fire djinn. ( I know far farrr too much about Djinn after spending 3.5 years roleplaying a Djinn pathfinder campaign ).

The morale of the story is... I don't know. Never accept 100 wardrobes as a gift ? A cheque will suffice. Or better yet cash. Cash good. Gold even. What's wrong with your good old clichéd chest of gold trope. Gold Great. 100 wardrobes. Not so much. Anyone offers you 100 wardrobes as a reward, start backing away is my advice.

The game occupied most of the night for the group, it seemed like fun, I think this very much depends on who you have playing, and how open to roleplay you are. Those with a phobia of roleplaying and a desire for crunchy euro mechanics need not apply.

Finally the evening finished off with an epic 10 handed game of the Resistance. Fabulously noisy, argumentative, hurtful and deceitful, the government spies once again brought the Resistance crashing down. I was evilly chuffed at my own spy shenanigans that managed to sow discord amongst the good guys - Fletch to Rich and Pete "you're going to be so sorry when this game ends and I am not a spy" - and got enough trust and plausibility that the good guys supported me.

Kudos to the other spies, Ewan did a fair number of honestly self implicating himself as a spy to seem to gain the trust of everyone else. And Jarryd fenced verbally back and forth across the table sowing confusion amongst the logic, and finally Caroline did a good number being relatively quiet and non suspicious, backing me up as "not a spy" when put upon ( despite the split second pause and blink when quizzed what *colour* was the card..... uhh... Blue ! she lied... ), and tanking the final mission when required. Muah ha ha ha ha.

High fives for the government. Blind folds and a firing squad for the Resistance.

Will you never learn subversives ? You can't fight The Man.

Decembrrrr - The End is Nigh

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

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

Terra Mystica

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

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

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

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

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

Vengeful Flames, Muddy Dwarves and Frightened Shrooms...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

... and a blurry drunken shot of Rich !

The Embattled Bin Men of Bob

Nine this week, Rich, Moritz and Matt playing the well travelled Hansa Teutonica with Crocker suitably enticed to stay and join in before making a hasty departure.

Matt ended up as the most savvy of traders securing a civilised Hansa win, whilst on the other table, a noisy uncivilised game of Risk Legacy trash talked its way across the world - and heavily distracted me from observing the goings on of Hansa.

Game 11-ish in the Risk saga opened with some major nuclear polluting of the Americas - Pete's enthusiastic bin men turning up in the troubled continent for a few days of trash collection - the more polluted the better. Bring Out Yer Dead.

Phil's mecha and Dean's bears could not have followed refuse protocol correctly however - bins not at the kerbside, the wrong kind of trash in the wrong bin - as Pete's army of Refuse Technicians could not quite finish the job and pulled over somewhere on a deserted American highway for a tea break. Cue sad Pete.

With radioactive trash piling up, and both bears and mecha dying, the only sensible solution to the problem was more pointless war, ravenous bears wandering around America in search of picnic baskets and uncollected bins and Bondy's mercenary Europeans taking an American bear hunting vacation.

A ridiculous defence of the City of Bob by its embattled bin men saw the African hordes decimated - but not before they limped on into the American cauldron to wipe out the hibernating bears.  A struggling Phil broke free of the poisoned jungles of Petia to let his mecha stomp forwards and secure Phil's first win, the City of Bob changing hands once more to end the game.

Seas boiled, the land heaved and the end of days was brought forth, the mark of the unlikely win of Phil. America - now known finally, justly as Philtopia would see dark days ahead as the sun waned and a chill wind began to blow. . . . such is the cost of a Phil win. Woe be unto you all !

To finish off the evening, an eight handed game of Saboteur commenced, Phil was deemed to be a saboteur every game regardless of evidence and saw his tools broken before he could even play a card. Harsh some might say. But Phil has the definite look of a Saboteur.

Some particularly inspired and pre-emptive Saboteuring saw the player deck tampered with so that four saboteurs could be pitted against four miners and properly bring any excavations to a crashing halt.

A lot of smack talk and laughs later and Pete squeaked the win with 9 gold, Moritz and myself on 8, Bondy on 7.

I'm not going down there...

Amidst personal turmoil I found myself turning up at NoBoG, waiting to see what kind of games they would throw at me. It had been some weeks since I ventured downstairs at the Ribs, to prostrate myself at the feet of the God of Euros (Luke Crocker, for it is he) and get mercilessly destroyed at board games. I have been on a roll of late personally, barring a pair of defeats in Tide of Iron I have been handing out smackdowns in other such war games as Eisenbach Gap, and who could forget my epic 13 hour WWII: Barbarossa to Berlin struggle with Matt just two weeks ago - the game to end all games. The game which may have changed my approach to games forever. So here I was, ready to do battle in the field of the "impress the vicar" scoring tracks, with wooden cubes and convoluted mechanics. And here was Luke, being very generous and suggesting we play Fury of Dracula! Normally I would have jumped at such a chance, but Matt had brought Container, the final works of the much under-rated games designer, Franz Benno Delonge. I am a huge fan of two previous Delonge efforts, those being Manila and Big City, so I was eager to give the tediously themed Container a go, as I had no doubts that the late Delonge would have left us with one final enjoyable game. Luke was clearly shocked that I would opt to play a Euro where the object of the game was to buy cuboids and ship them to an anonymous island. But thems the breaks. Luke, Olly and Adam played Puerto Rico. Matt, myself, Rachel and Chris would push cuboids around on pretty boats for two hours.

Container is a cracking game, actually better than I was expecting. Manila and Big City are two excellent Euro-ish games, but they seem to be mercifully divulged from the slightly more serious Euro scene that has produced such behemoths as Caylus. A scene which fails to inspire much excitement in myself. Yet Container leans more towards the serious end of the spectrum. You have to have your wits about you - you are basically manufacturing and purchasing goods, then shipping them to the central island where you aim to sell them to other people, or keep them yourself if you judge them to be worth more than your offers, all in the name of making more money. The only scoring system in the game is money, which is fantastic. You always have a pretty fair idea of how you are doing, just not how your opponents are doing, as for each player each container is worth a slightly different, secret amount. There were several strategies employed. Chris went for a production strategy, generating large numbers of containers but never purchasing them when they were delivered to their destination. I indulged in some wild, reckless capitalism, buying in huge numbers everyone elses products and selling them at tiny profits. I adopted the "Tescos Strategy". I then using my tiny profits and generous bank loans to secure product upon delivery to the island. Matt produced nothing, and stocked nothing, but his boats for often full of goods that he flogged to us or coughed up the readies to keep. Using this devious plan he saved up, took out two loans at an opportune moment and bought huge amounts of delivered product just as the game seemed out of reach. Rachel was a very tidy player, very frugal and efficient, producing and stocking where necessary, and selling me tonnes of product at bargain basement prices. Rachel and I were mutually assisting each other with sales and purchases throughout the game without really intending or declaring it and this caused Chris a lot of problems, but it never really paid off in chasing down Matt. For Matt's bold strategy won out. He purchased a lot of delivered goods for knock down prices, I was in a position to deny him his final delivery purchase but had over-stretched myself. Just 2 or 3 more in cash would have perhaps tipped the scales in my favour but it wasn't to be. Matt romped home with 96, I had 76, Rachel had 70, and Chris had 59, tripped up by being the only real producer of goods, and then having to sell them at cheap prices. The game provides a curiously fascinating insight into capitalism and market forces, and I believe that the player created economy and balance should mean that Container is highly replayable and offer a variety of options each time out. Very impressive stuff!

Over on the other table, Luke had destroyed everyone at Puerto Rico, and then they played some game called "LE SCORPION!" or something, which seemed to involve Olly talking in a terrible French accent, with sounded more Rommel-esque to my untrained ears. This game was clearly nonsense, it had a striking resemblance to a game I played in my extreme youth, possibly snap. There was no winner, only a loser. Basically you played a card, declared what was on it (in Franglais) and the other player had to guess if you were lying or not. If they were wrong, they took your card. Your card seemed to have a picture of a spider, or a scorpion or some other creature on it. IF you got 4 cards of one type, you were out. The person who was out first was the loser, everyone else won. Genius! Luke lost, I am pretty sure on purpose as he appeared to detest this ridiculous "game". LE SCORPION!

We finished up with a vibrant round of Saboteur, almost ruined by the lad who came downstairs and said very loudly "I AM NOT GOING IN THERE, IT SOUNDS F**KING AWFUL" before retreating to the safety of the upstairs bar. Saboteur was a new one on me, it is quite fun, very chaotic but you don't get much chance to influence the game. A fine end of night game nonetheless. I was the saboteur twice, and I was quite happy to let everyone know about it. Unfortunately I was unable to make serious inroads into sabotaging everyone, which was quite disappointing. We had three rounds and Adam ran out a worthy winner, though I have no idea how the scoring system worked at all. Saboteur is fun enough that the issue of winner and loser is quite irrelevant to be honest.

And that was that. Things were packed away, and we all faded away into the foggy night, a successful evening of fine gaming. GAME ON.