He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing

This week was a mix of old and new, Small World, Archipelago and Rex were played downstairs and Seasons, Eminent Domain and Camel Up were played upstairs.

Writer Ed ( The Baron ) made a surprise return visit to the Ribs this week, and was pleased to report his first NoBoG win with a victory at Seasons and an embarrassingly high score. Sam could hardly believe such a thing happening by chance and figured that Ed has in fact spent the last several months away from NoBoG training relentlessly so that he could engineer just such a win. Sounds legit.

 Mr Bond challenged a group of seven to go through the paces of Camel Up and declared it to be no world beater of a game, but great fun and an enjoyable short blast of racing humps. I've still yet to give this a go - I've heard good things about it, it looks like a lot of stupid fun and something of a nice group filler game ( that isn't for once based on Werewolf ! ). In the unlikely event you don't know what Camel Up is, it's a racing game featuring camels. Players get to make bets on which camel will be the winner of each stage - and make money on their winning bets - as well as betting on the final result. Camels move at random via dice, and can also be interfered with by players placing obstacles or helpers in the way. The real wrinkle in the game however is that the Camels stack - and any camel that moves takes all the camels on its back with it. Thus some camels can get a real advantage over others.

The game also comes with a lovely gimmicky pyramid dice roller, give it a shake, place it upside down on the board, and open the slot to reveal a die. I would have a picture of it, but with all the excitement the photo was blurry. So no camel picture.

Dave took on Archipelago downstairs with a group of players new to the islands. Not entirely unknown, the colony collapsed in short order, the new players proving to have failed to grasp the finer points of keeping things moving along in the face of a difficult series of crises. Such is the way with Archipelago, it can take a game or two before you realise the dangers and that yes, there really is a co-operative element to the game.

"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing" - Paul Atreides, Dune

Rex was also played downstairs with a full ( and recommended ) complement of six. Clive and Med Ed returned to the pub to join in with this after a hiatus of weeks. Rex is the FFG remake of the seriously old and battle scarred Dune ( 1979 ) which many who have played it describe as playing out unlike any other game. Gameplay revolves around competing factions vying for control of Mecatol City by deploying troops, occupying areas and collecting influence resources. Arguably the original Dune has the better IP - based on the battle for Arrakis with the Atreides, Fremen and Harkonnens to name a few all trying to harvest spice, keep ahead of the desert storms and avoid worm attacks, but the mechanics are pretty much identical, David Lynch weirdness or not.

The dynamism in the game comes from the fact that each of the factions is unique to themselves - each player has a bunch of asymmetrical powers that mesh with the game in different ways. For instance, the Jol-Nar ( Atreides ) have access to a whole bunch of secret information - they can force players to reveal attack strengths early, look at cards before flipping and so on. This can be crucial given that bidding on cards is blind - except for the Jol-Nar, so possibly it pays to have them on your side. On the other hand some of the other factions get to act like the bank for all purchases, meaning the Hacan ( Guild ) in particular can be swimming with influence ( spice / money ). So it could be good to be on their team too. And therein starts to lie some of the depth. This combined with traitor mechanics, allied wins and special victory conditions gives rise to a finely balanced game of different powers.

Rex - no one knows what they're doing

Rex pretty much took up all the evening and for the most part was a game of stalemate - no one could make alliances, and a single player victory seemed all but impossible. In the last two turns all hell was unleashed as a bunch of alliances were made and broken and conflict began in earnest. The game finished with no one controlling enough strongholds, which meant the Hacan ( Guild ) fulfilled their victory goal, bringing their allies the Jol-Nar ( Atreides ) along for the win. But this was not to be as the Xxacha ( Bene Gesserit ) had predicted a win for the Hacan in the final turn and thus secured *their* victory condition of predicting a winner. Convoluted. And if you've never played Dune or Rex it probably sounds bonkers.

I can't put my finger on it, but in theory the game took a fair chunk of time to do not a lot and yet... I thought it was great. There's a lot going on under the covers, the very asymmetrical factions give rise to some wacky pressures that are not immediately obvious. I'm pretty sure we all played like a bunch of newbs and missed a whole lot of possibilities - not least of which being trading shenanigans and favours between the factions.  I'm keen on exploring this more and giving it more play time.

The evening finished for many with the usual suspects of One Night Werewolf and Avalon Resistance.

A belated 31 for the numbers. An epic nine people turned up late-ish or just outright late.

Next week I hope to be bringing Ugg-Tect amongst others - the game of inflatable cave man clubs and hitting people over the head.

Et tu, Bingo ?

Once upon a time when I was but a whippersnapper, I would engage in an illicit ( too young to gamble ) game of Bingo all the while under the watchful shadow of my dual wielding, dozen card mashing, no prisoner taking Aunt. Its been something like 30 years since I have set foot inside a Bingo Hall, and whilst at the time it was entertaining, I haven't ever felt the need to return, sweaty dobber pen in hand.

But as scripture says, if You wont go to Bingo, then Bingo will come unto thee.

So it was this week that I got my turn at Augustus, a short game set in ancient Rome, with some fancy ancient Roman artwork, fancy ancient Roman characters and some vaguely ancient Roman symbology. But don't be fooled by the Roman thing. It's Bingo. But instead of calling Bingo, or possibly House, you call Ave Caesar ! Which to me is something a die hard actor luvvie might decide to shout out whilst playing Bingo - the word Bingo being far too pedestrian. Instead -  Avveeeeeee Caesarrrr ! *hand flourish*

The game has you completing cards by listening for your called out symbols which allow you to mark slots with the matching symbol. Complete all of them on a card and you get to stand theatrically and resonate Bingo Ave Caesar ! Sound familiar ?

There are however synergies of card scoring, sets to collect and a few risks to take - all overlaid with a weighted distribution of symbols to consider. But don't let those fancy words fool you. It's Bingo. With some Euro scoring to allow you to believe you are in fact playing something other than Bingo. With Togas.

A short game that won't tax you, a suitable title for filling in those warm up or wind down moments, pretty cool, even if it is fancy scored Bingo.

Nathan for his part was very chuffed with the game, declaring his win to be the first at NoBoG - a Bingo win. A mixed blessing.

Elsewhere this week, Agricola was played with a table of learners + Rich. But Rich failed to capitalise on his enormous experience and came in third of five, Martin instead clinching the win with some synergistic pastures and animals.

Kemet and Seasons were taken upstairs, with wily Med Ed claiming a decisive win in Kemet by stomping The Bond into the dry sands of the desert. Med Ed is rather keen on the game and always seem to do pretty well whenever he plays.

Some Tokyo Kingship and Resistance followed upstairs, with the Good guys chalking up a straight 3 mission victory win in Resistance, and the bad guys failing to spot Merlin for the follow up.

Back downstairs Manhattan project followed by Small World hit one table, and on our table Archipelago returned from the shadows.

A new expansion has just come out for Archipelago - War and Peace, which brings 40 new evolution cards to the islands.

On the face of it an expansion consisting of just 40 evolution cards is a bit weak. It perhaps would have been nice to have had a few more map tiles to increase exploration variation, and a few more victory point cards to change the scoring possibilities.

However the 40 cards still pack a punch and introduce a heretofore missing element to the azure waters - notably direct conflict and meeple death.

It's a fact in Archipelago that as you explore and expand you can never go backwards - once a meeple is on the map, it stays on the map. Buildings that you build in general stay with their owners. And by and large the colony only goes ever onwards and upwards.

Not so under War and Peace. The new cards bring in the capability to bully, steal and even outright kill meeples in an expansion that shakes up your expectations of what is possible, and sees players given the chance to be nastier than ever to each other whilst trying to maintain the semi-cooperative truce to keep the natives from rising up.

Iron is a key resource for all this warmongery and control shenanigans, and sees a welcome improvement on the strategic importance of this element - in the past it has been a bit of an also ran item.

We didn't get too far with our new and spikey game - the colony collapsed in two turns ( 8 actions ) as three very nasty crises hit in succession, emptied the market and ultimately doomed the fat and unwieldy colony before it had a chance to consolidate. Not a huge surprise given two of our players were new to the game, and of the three remaining, one was a separatist who had every reason to see the colony burn.

It was great to return to the Islands, and it should be fun to see the new cards get a proper stretch.

Stu has reminded me that this week and into next is the Norwich Gaming Festival, celebrating many things computer game related at the Forum. There will also however be a chance to play some board games - played on the Tuesday from 6pm onwards. Forum Cafe closes at 9.30pm so any session there would  be shorter and earlier than usual, but if anyone fancies popping along, they can see what's going on, computer game related or not. Otherwise it will be business as usual in the Ribs for next Tuesday.


If you are counting, we had 23 this week over five tables.

Splits, Venues and International Table Top Day

Greetings NoBoGers, the blog is back after a week away. Blame the disruption on unscrupulous invading powers trying to wrest NoBoG sovereignty away, or possibly government hackers spying on the webcam feeds.

International Table Top Day

It's been raised again whether the combined irregular chaotic membership of NoBoG are planning to do anything on International Table Top Day. If you're asking yourself "What the Hell is International Table Top Day ?" I'll save you typing it into Google - click here . Suffice to say it's a day... that's promoted...  to go forth and play table top games, and be inviting to unsuspecting members of the public. And this year it's on Saturday 5th April.

Potentially the day could be a good excuse to play some longer games that don't fit in of an evening, and also might interest new local players that have not yet heard of the delights of NoBoG, however the day falls on a Home match for Norwich City F.C. with all the traffic and difficulties that entails.

Any interest in this, then post a comment on the blog, twitter, or have a chat down the pub about it.

Last Week - Split Venue

Last week with a potential quiz night at the Ribs conflicting with our numbers, we split into two groups - one staying at the Ribs and one taking a short walk down the road to Take 5. Those who remained at the Ribs got to play Seasons, Kemet and Ticket to Ride Europe and King of Tokyo whilst those down the Road played a couple of games of Trains, and a couple of games of Mice and Mystics.

So given the potential of Take 5 to replace the Ribs as the default venue of NoBoG how did the place stack up ?

On the plus side, Take 5 had a nice atmosphere and friendly staff - some nice large tables on the ground floor, and a whole heap of space upstairs - twice as large as the Wherry Room at the Ribs, meaning that everyone could get into one room.

Bondy gives his best Royal Wave upstairs at Take 5

The kitchen was open, serving food, and also a range of cakes and other things were on offer, providing a bit more of a rounded experience than an evening at the Ribs. Rich managed to eat his body weight in cakes as he seemed determine to try one of everything before the evening finished.

 On the negative side, tables were in short supply -

Even though only 7 of us ended up at Take 5, we managed to take up every bit of table space available upstairs. Lots of room. Bugger all tables.

And it was expensive.

And closed early. Half past ten early.

On the whole the opinion seemed to be somewhat negative for Take 5 - nice place, good space, but the lack of tables is a killer, and the higher prices didn't help. Personally I rather liked the place and wonder whether there might be an opportunity to talk with the landlord about getting some extra tables - even fold up tables. When we went in there the place was empty - 3 or so people, and by the time we left, there was but a single person. I would think the prospect of having 20 or so people in the pub on a Tuesday would be Good For Business, and that maybe providing a few tables would be inconsequential if it got you steady business. But I wouldn't know and as no one else seemed that taken by it, perhaps not even worth pursuing.

As it stands at the moment Take 5 is fine for an overflow destination when it needs to be, but as a replacement venue it just doesn't have the table space.

This Week

An interesting range of games were on offer this week, some shiny new things, old things that were new for NoBoG and some old things that had hardly been seen at NoBoG at all.

Bondy brought Descent 2 along - it's been a year since he last brought it down, and that was quickly subscribed ( and over subscribed ) to by all the Richards plus Pete. According to Mr Bond The Riches have been identified as Punk Rich, Lovely Rich and Richard the IV. As to which one is which... I'm also sure there is a Dick/Table joke in there somewhere too.

Bondy played the Overlord for Descent, and managed to squeeze in a couple of scenarios against the Alliance of Riches Plus Pete. However, despite Pete putting some dubious magical skills into play - in somewhat of a repeat of last week when it was speculated his wizard was no such thing and was actually just a mental patient running around shouting Blazaam at things to no real effect - Bondy failed to hurt the intrepid adventurers, succumbing to a blast of Pete Magic that actually worked, and some Beserker brutality by one of the Richards.

As Bondy comforted his wounded pride at game end, he positively reflected on the fact that Pete was hurt and diseased, and surely would be an easy target for the next scenario to be played on another day...

New and shiny dexterity game Rampage ( named as a homage to the very cool, old 80s arcade game of the same name ? ) got taken upstairs, where Dean whipped his unrealising workers into assembling the Movie Monster City Trashing game before proceeding to balance, throw and breathe/spit all over the components. This was not however some drunken or rage fuelled Euro game gone wrong, but part of the unique charms of the game that sees you balancing things, flicking things and even using 'breath weapons'. The game is a visual feast of 3D pretty things and funny gameplay and definitely one to watch. However, its suitability for the worlds most cramped table space in a subdued darkened pub where bits can and do jump off the table is open to debate. Also not a great game to play if someone has the flu - where using your breath weapon and breathing over the components brings a whole new long term infectious strategy to the game play. Those of a squeamish nature or weak immune system may like to walk away, or don a Japanese style germ mask.

On a nearby not quite so cramped table, Castles of Burgundy played out to a nail biting finish, with Stu and Nicky ending up in a tie breaker situation, beating out also rans, Paul and Tom.

For more new and shiny, Sam turned up with his new recently shipped Kickstarter affair Galaxy Defenders. A simple area based co-operative tactical combat game, players get to fight through a number of scenarios versus a programmed alien AI. Everyone seemed to enjoy this, and it will be good to see this again for another bash.

Five player Caverna played out on the last table - with two complete beginners ( no experience of Agricola either ), two that had played it once, and myself, veteran of many a game.

Not surprisingly I managed to romp to a strong win, with Clive putting in a good show with a heavy weapon strategy, and the beginners just struggling to understand how everything slotted together. Enjoyable game, but the static setup is beginning to bother me more and more.

Mascarade got a quick outing at the end of the evening - beating out a suggestion of Resistance play, however, there are rumblings about Resistance not having been played in *weeks* ( the outrage ! ) and that perhaps next week and entire evening could be devoted to it. Madness surely, but it seems Resistance is missed.

People. 19 last week - and the Ribs managed to attract no one to their quiz night, meaning our shuffling shenanigans weren't actually required. 21 this week.

Terra Prime - Homeward Bound

Eighteen was the number for the latest installment of NoBoG, with Terra Mystica, Terra Prime, Powergrid and Seasons up for play.

Pete was happy to get Terra Mystica out again and get funky with this Fantasy Euro that sees you building settlements and digging up land to turn it into different land ready for your particular Weird Race. New to the game Ed really enjoyed this modern and quite elegant Euro and was chuffed at placing second on his first try - good stuff.

Powergrid soaked up the numbers on table two - this classic Euro is doing the rounds with some of those that are not hugely familiar with it and is getting fairly regular plays at the moment.

Peering over Rich's shoulder, spying on his cards in Guildhall

Seasons had a repeat play again this week, which was then followed by guildhall which looked quite groovy.

There has been a slew of interesting shorter games down the pub of late - despite repeated popularity of The Resistance always squeezing into the filler spot - and it's nice to be able to dip your toe in the water and try out all sorts of wacky things.

The shorter games tend to be much pointier and more daring than your solid longer games - something about the speed of play allowing you take more edgy design decisions perhaps.

Lastly, taking to the upstairs of  The Ribs, five of us settled down to pilot our spaceships into the unknown void to bring back much needed resources to Terra Prime.

Terra Prime has a fairly simple premise - go forth and explore, exploit and win. Build colonies, blast aliens out of the sky, explore the dangerous outer territories and possibly shift some cargo back to base to earn those VP rewarding supply contracts.

Easy. Right ?

Except, this game tends to mess with peoples heads. It taunts analytical Euro Cube Crunching players. It sticks out its tongue at fine optimal plans for your turn, and it rudely gives you the two finger salute at your attempts to be clever.

Hard to say why. It could be because the possibilities of what you can do - and what you can't do, shift around like a slippery eel as each person explores, builds or possibly blocks space lanes. It might be because the oh so simple tile exploration actually has a lot of tricky permutations that are all too easily overlooked. Or it might be because we all suck.

Terra Prime in action.
Dean's hand is caught materialising in for his turn.

Whenever I looked at Bondy playing this, he was grimacing. I haven't seen him grimace so much over a game since he played Ora and Labora and was overwhelmed with information.

Bondy wasn't the only one feeling the pain - Matt was also wrestling with what to do, and in the end it was all too much for his sense of analytical pride to take. In hindsight, it was probably a mistake putting the ships mascot - Bubbles the Space Monkey - in charge of navigation and letting the astral simian fly around in meaningless directions. After a few turns of what can only be described as very sub optimal turns, Matt's ship, The Banana Express, ended up exploring the outer rim, hitting a bunch of asteroids, and losing all his VPs in the process. After mad Simian piloting, and Alina having stitched him up good and proper in previous turns, enough was enough and Captain Matt declared that there was no point in him playing any further and that he should probably go home.

Literally.

Eyebrows were raised, and people paused to grok the homebound declaration.

Really ?

Bondy declared that in the entire history of NoBoG, no one had ever Gone Home after a bad start.

Ooh.

The empty Pilots seat of the Banana Express.
Captain Matt cut his losses and headed for home.

Captain Matt mulled over his options for a round, whilst everyone else made not quite so sub optimal turns. But alas, Bubbles the Space Monkey had already ruined Matt's chances of winning... and the mess the simian had left on the navigational dashboard was best left unmentioned. Cutting his losses Matt bailed out and went home, leaving the rest of us to continue on.

A brutal game ensued where everyone made horrendous choices. Bondy actually managed to fly his ship around in circles for a while doing *absolutely nothing* as he dithered from turn to turn about what the hell to do. Dean had the least crappy game and by the end was actually doing a decent job - so much so that he romped to a win some 20 points ahead of everyone else.

The evening finished as it so often does of late with a blast of The Resistance. I got to be Merlin this time. And things were going pretty well, until good guy Pete got carried away with vetoing quests, we ran out of time - and quest options, and the bad guys made sure that the end quest was stacked with evil lackeys. A pity, Pete had been doing so well... and Clive had well and truly been outed as a nefarious spy.

Many a Season

Autumn has most definitely arrived in Norwich, the ground has begun to swell with fallen leaves, the air has started to turn crisp, and there is rain and moisture almost permanently in the air. Where might one go to obtain respite from the clammy doldrums of Autumn you ask yourself ? Well for 21.5 of us sanctuary was to be found within the Ribs where warmth was to be had and games needed to be played.

Those who are paying attention will note that 21.5 attendees marks yet another record turnout for NoBoG, and play had to be accommodated over 5 tables of gaming goodness.

After some initial management problems akin to herding cats, two classic games were quickly put down to play - Power Grid and Chaos in the Old World. Robin lead his bunch of merry gamers on their quest to throw on the lights in as many cities as possible in Powergrid, whilst Chaos in the Old World was a shark pit of well experienced hands... plus Ed.

Rich rode to a plague ridden finish in Chaos by pushing the unlikely Nurgle to a convincingly strong VP win - with Pete in an almost as strong position just a single point behind. Tom had a diabolical ( see what I did there ) game as Khorne, and limped home after a few hours play, having barely managed to put a score on the board - a dismal 14 points for the record. Surely a new low. He lamented having switched from points to outright mayhem halfway through the game, his strategy netting him little of use as the others contained or matched his machinations.

Trains !

Meanwhile, Bondy marched a group off upstairs for another week of Trains - it seems that Trains is a game that is required to be played upstairs in the pub. Two games of this were cranked out, the latter of which Bondy managed to monopolise on a terrible wave of synergising cards and VP scoring to romp to a clear win.

The final two tables elected to play the same game - Seasons. Because why not. Well, why, because 5 people wanted to play it, and Seasons only takes 4. Seasons is new to me, and if I had to explain it in a single sentence I'd say, Magic with victory points instead of health + Zombie Dice.

Seasons puts you in the role of a wizard vying for the top job of Archmage by besting all other magic doers in a tournament of sorcery that lasts for three years. That's some tournament - but then if the competition only lasted for two weeks, the game probably wouldn't be called Seasons. It'd be called ... "ZaptasticMagicWimbledon IV - The Return of Zaptastic". Yes, I am available for hire for corporate branding / Game name brainstorming.

Seasons... upstairs

The game takes the guise of a card drafting affair played across a series of rounds that are thematically split into the four seasons. Hence the Seasons. Unlike many other card drafters / deck builders / Magic wannabes which have economy cards ( mana, gold, military strength ) to make everything else work, the impetus to your turn in Seasons is provided instead by dice. Each season has a set of dice associated with it that are rolled once per round, with each player in turn order getting to pick one of the dice to utilise in their turn. Dice provide mana to power card play as well as some actions - being able to burn raw mana for VP, drawing a card or increasing the cap size of your tableau. Mana is stored round to round in a players finite sized storage area, so you can save power up to use in future turns.

As should be apparent - due to the dice you're never quite sure what mana you might have to utilise, and, because the dice are drafted one at a time to each player, you may get to miss out on something you really need if your place in the turn order sucks.

Seasons... downstairs

The game length is predictable in a fuzzy way - each round may advance the turn marker between 1 and 3 months, so you can roughly see how long things will take, but not be able to predict it exactly.

Gameplay itself beyond all that is a fairly typical deck building, card drafting type exercise, with card synergies providing boosts to your points and actions and your VPs growing in size with every deft management of your hand.

The game prioritises solitaire building over interaction - only a minority of cards allow you to interfere with others, but we didn't play with the more advanced "in your face" cards available in the game ( although on hearing what they did, I am still not sure there is a whole heap of messing that you can do to your fellow players ).

I thought the game was cool and an interesting spin on the usual card placement, tap malarkey, but as to be expected, the random number generator is on at least medium level here - random card draws and random dice rolls can leave you with your ass in the wind as the player next to you repeat performs some card tapping horrific victory point score ability.

It's slated to run at 60 minutes - but our game lasted a marathon 3 hours, which was ok, but not great. At 3 hours the game shows its knickers a bit too much and the random number machine goes into overdrive ( probably not entirely helped by me resetting the year clock a couple of times to get at least another years worth of play out of the game ).

Nice game, needs to be kept short and sweet, probably not something I'd break my neck to play again, but definitely one to experience at least once, if not a few times to see the wacky dice + cards mechanics going on.

Simon blasted to a win in this, and seemed to enjoy muttering to himself immensely as at least a few of his turns resembled the depths of Magic depravity where a player just keeps on pulling cards, tapping things, sacrificing others things, and shoving bits around their play area. I actually managed to hold an entire conversation with Ed on the next table, watch a bit of another game, and still made it back in time to see Simon not yet quite finished with his book keeping. Epic.

The upstairs game of Seasons finished in a much more reasonable time frame - so they busted out Ghost Stories ( and failed in their co-operative bid to beat the spooks off ) as their second game of the evening.

After the shark pit of Chaos was concluded, Pete decided to bring out yet another shark pit experience with Race for the Galaxy. It will come as a surprise to no one whatsoever to learn that Pete placed a comfortable first in this, with only a mild ruffling of feathers coming in the form of Rich placing third - Ewan pipping him to second. Good job Ewan.

During some of Simon's epic turns with Seasons, and due to my favourable seating placement, I was able to watch over Pete's shoulder as he went through his Race strategies and narrated his decisions to me. I can recommend it, it's like a painting masterclass - except it's Race for the Galaxy.

The evening finished with a game of Resistance - Avalon, where the bad guys having succeeded in fouling up the first two quests singularly failed to take advantage of their dominant position and collapsed to a loss. Pete - bad guy and in charge of the assassination knife, then debated with his fellow evil doers as to who Merlin might be - shoved the knife in, only to discover they had blundered and missed the magic wielder. Good had won. Pitiful.

Whilst the bad guys were failing at Resistance I got to play Mascarade, a bluffing role game in which you are not entirely sure who everyone else is, or even who you might be. As Dean put it, this game in many ways is a distillation of the role cards in something like Citadels or Mission Red Planet - all other aspects of the game other than the roles having been removed. Memory is a big feature of this game - if you can memorise where all the cards are - and if you are good at reading people - then this game is going to be a lot easier. I would think good poker players would do well at Mascarade.

A series of role cards have a range of money grabbing powers - take money from the pot, take money from the courthouse, steal money from those next to you, steal money from the richest and so on. Each person has one role card - and a number of others are left in the middle of the table. The trick to this game is that other than the initial game reveal of roles, the role cards are mostly left face down and you must remember who is who. In a players turn they may switch cards with any other card on the table - or may bluff a switch -, look at their own role card, or state they are a given role and attempt to take the action for that role ( which may be a bluff ).

The game is a groovy filler game, and I want another play of this. I found it easy enough to remember who everyone was, and what the likely switch of a character would be when they took it - good enough that I could predict who everyone was over the course of two rounds and skip to a win. I am sure if I played it again over a longer game with more people it wouldn't be half so simple.

Roll Call - Barnaby, Bondy, Caroline, Clive, Dean, Ed, Ed, Ewan, Fletch, Jarryd, John, Matt, Nicky, Paul, Pete, Rich, Robin, Sam, Simon, Stu, Tim, Tom.

21.5 players - Caroline was the 22nd player, spectated Power Grid, but played end of evening Resistance. 21 players or 22 depending how you are counting.