Cows & Cows & Board Games

HULLOOOOOOOOOOOO! I'm writing this from the magic of a train, which means I keep getting distracted by cows. Typically the cows are in the fields rather than on the train. The train has just reversed direction at Ely and I'm now facing the wrong way, which I'm rather miffed at. Anyway. This is a NoBloG not a travel diary, I suppose. This week I'll be sending you missives regarding Plague Inc, Trajan, Camel Up, Sons of Anarchy, Plague Inc (again) and Adrenaline. Ooh look, horses.

First let's conquer the world the infectious way in Plague Inc, which is apparently so good that two separate groups of people were marching (in boots carrying foot-and-mouth, no doubt) their microscopic minions across the globe this week. Let's start with the front-room group, which was already pretty infected when I arrived. As I draw up, Matt fails his roll (his disease still being pretty pathetic so he only had a one-in-six chance) — disappointing for him because in his words "it would have pissed Lewis and JD off" if he'd got it. He is, however, the filthiest of all the players at this point, having acquired soe bonus infectiousness along the way which has bagged him a presence in a bunch more countries. Why are we going so slowly? Hey — dragonflies. Lewis on his turn talks a little excursion to Argentina then (paradoxically, in my view) gains cold resistance. But he wants to take one of those fashionable breaks in Iceland so it makes sense. With his low lethality he also is unable to succeed in his rolls to kill the countries he's managed to break out all over.

Thumbs up for disease!

Disease points

In the second game of Plague Inc — Sean tells me there had to be two "just because we wanted to kill everyone!" — Sean and Jake have a comfortable lead but are battling bitterly for first place. As this is being explained, Katherine is deliberating: "I just can't decide where to infect now!" But after having made up her mind picks up a mega-bonus which might throw the final tally, so confidently expressed mere moments ago, into doubt. I leave after being given cause to doubt the players' understanding of basic biology the advice is given, "remember you can't infect Kenya! They have diplomatic immunity." After a short pause it is pointed out that just regular old immunity immunity would probably suffice.

Because obliterating humanity once
is not enough.

Next up I have a look at a suitably imperious Trajan where it seems the eponymous emperor has been replaced by a Great Old One — one of the lesser-known dictators of the Roman Empire. John is getting confused about which place he's in, pretending to be last when actually not. All part of the meta-gaming strategy to get his opponents to go easy on him. Alfie is actually winning, whilst Pete insists they're all winning — awwww. However Pete actually has loads of bonus actions lined up so maybe he too is trying to divert attention. After all this motivational muttering, John still seems sad but nevertheless takes a bonus to hammers (or something, I'm just going by the symbol on the card. A bonus for do more break smash sounds good though.) Also this synergises with his end-game bonus (which unlike in a lot of games, are public information.) I leave them to work out who is winning the old-fashioned way — by playing the game to the end — and to their fate with the Ancient Horror.

Trajically Trajan. Tragic because
everyone's gone mad with terror.

Next up it's Camels. Which are also up. I've got no idea what's going on — they seem to be humping each other, and it's not even past the watershed. I am scandalised. When I enquire about what is actually happening, Ellie informs me that "it's a complete disaster" — presumably because she is not doing as well as she hoped. At this point accusations start flying: "that's cheating! You didn't get what you want and you rolled it again!" says Katie. Ellie retorts that she "rolled it wrong," which is an excuse I really would like to try in the future. Katie on the other hand is upset because "everyone was against me." "That's because you're winning." Amid much scrutiny due to the aforementioned incident, Dan rolls his die very carefully and with a touch of flourish, but I don't think it helped. I didn't learn anything about the rules but the game involves high emotions and a lot of swearing so it's probably good.

Oh my.

Woof. This doesn't have anything to do with
board games but who's gonna complain?!

The game of Sons of Anarchy seems disappointingly orderly and calm. Dave nevertheless asserts that it's caused such anger that the table has descended into gang violence, though I think he's getting confused between the game and reality again. Dave has three contrabands (i.e. cocaines). Contraband (cocaine) you can sell for cold hard cash (money) which is probably good. Dave then promotes a guy to have a bike. I thought that it was rather iniquitous to have gang members cycling around but apparently he got a motorbike which is probably more thematically appropriate. James on the other hand has no money at all but an absolute ton of cocaine — presumably piled up in some kind of parody of Scarface. Then a fight breaks out. No, in the game, not in real life. Both parties secretly commit a certain number of gang members and perhaps some guns, and roll dice. The total strength determines the winner, and bringing guns to what is no longer a knife fight also kills off some of the opponent's fighters.

Anarchy in the Mash Tun

Money! Drugs!

And now if I may get your Adrenaline pumping I will describe the game I played. Though I've left writing this up longer than normal and been distracted by a lot of farm animals so the details are getting a bit fuzzy. I'm pretty sure Benjamin was the sheep... Anyway the game started as it usually does with a scramble for the good weapons. I ended up with a Power Glove (run at people and punch them in the face), a Heat Seeking Missile and the localised area-of-effect Shockwave. In retrospect I probably should have found myself a medium-range weapon as positioning became very difficult — I either wanted to be right in people's faces or as far away as possible. As the game's mechanics tend to ensure, everyone got killed a similar number of times, not that being killed really does anything bad to you anyway. James zipped around the map using his Cyberblade (which allows you an extra move after you whallop someone with it) while Colin somehow avoided getting shot for ages.

Rarrr, kill 'em all!

Once the end-game phase was triggered, Colin and I had also managed to forget to actually kill anyone — Benjamin and James being the only two to have done so. Colin also unfortunately misunderstood the end-game and thought he would have an extra turn, missing out on the possibility of getting some last-minute points. As it happened if he had done so he might have inadvertently handed me the victory instead of James. The result of my ridiculous length of time trying to work out how to kill Benjamin was "you can't," requiring one more point of damage than I was able to do. In the end I came joint second, so that was OK. I've played Adrenaline 3 times now and I'm still not entirely sure what I think. It's definitely fun but it seems to be missing something — you're basically only ever trying to do damage — whether to finish someone off, to get more damage on someone before they die, or to get damage on someone new. With some more tactical options it might have a bit more depth — if there were some incentive to not take damage other than giving points, or an effective way to block other players from hitting a particular enemy. I also wonder if the action limit could be made a little more lenient without making it too easy — you can never do what feels like a "complete turn" because you typically want to move, pick up ammo or a new gun, get into position and then shoot someone, but you can generally only do two or three of these. I call on NoBoGgers to make it so!

Contemplative Colin.

Adrenaline gets pumping.

And that was the week — shooting, camels, more shooting, Cthulhu and everywhere the terrible spectre of disease. And more cows, right there in that field. Hope you've enjoyed, BYE!

NoBoG Consulting Detectives

"Elementary my dear Watson. It was Lord FiddleBottom, the fat dude, at the train station in the silly mask !" - something Sherlock Holmes never said.

There seems to be something of a minor trend going on at NoBoG at the moment. Quite a few deduction type games are sneaking their way into the pub, pushing NoBoGers to ask questions, shuffle around locations and employ thinking caps to work out who did what and where. Which is something of a nice change of pace. However, these games are also frustrating the crap out of Richard IV who seems to have something of an anti-knack with them - and who mysteriously also ends up playing them.

" The only way to get smarter, is to play a smarter opponent " - Revolver 2005 ( also Fundamentals of Chess 1883, but Revolver is way cooler and has guns and crazy paranoid schizophrenic people. Stick that in your pipe Fundamentals of Chess ! )

This week we had the brand spanking new*, ripped out of its cellophane Inkognito to play, a team based deduction game for four** which sees you completing a mission with your partner to win, before the other partnership can do the same.

Inkognito - move around the city and ask questions

However. You don't know who your partner is. And you don't know what your mission is. Hmmm.

Which makes the game either some hilariously*** alternate philosophical comment on the pointlessness of gaming...

Or requires you to ask questions and filter answers to deduce the facts of who is your friend and who isn't. And what you should be doing. And how you're going to win the game.

The key mechanic to this game is of course the deduction element, which in Inkognito is a question either about someone's identity or about someone's body type. There are some rules about how you answer a question, but the upshot is that the answer must include at least one true piece of information, as well as some incorrect information. Meaning repeated questions, or even cross checked questions will start to allow the process of deduction to churn.

The game also has a clever little mechanic that randomly determines exactly what mission the players need to perform - depending on who you are ( Lord Fiddlebottom, Colonel Bubble, Madam Zsa Zsa and Agent X ), and what piece of secret code you have ( one of four ) a table tells you what your joint mission is going to be - all of which are the variant of getting someone to somewhere.

So the game splits into two phases. The first prolonged phase is that where players move around the city, bumping into other players and asking questions to figure out what from whom, and then the second shorter sprint for the finish line phase of having worked everything out, you then attempt to shift someone to somewhere.

Inkognito's funky RNG.
Marbles pop out the holes giving you your actions.

The deduction element of the game has a good deal more variability in it than something like the very methodical alchemists. Depending what information you get back it might become very quickly clear who someone is in Inkognito, or you may end up having to ask a library full of questions to get an inkling. This is down to luck. There is also a good deal of head screwery that players can deal in, in so much that the answers you give out if thought about carefully can give the absolute minimum away in terms of narrowing things down ( or if you are unlucky this can backfire spectacularly ).

In a five player game, utilising the more direct ambassador to ask questions ( which will guarantee you know someones identity in a mere 2 questions ) is a far riskier proposition, as the ambassador is playing against you, and giving him that information can win him the game. In a four player game I would say this makes the game incredibly easy and extremely short.

For all that, the game is quite a fun romp around a city with a rewarding/frustrating experience of making your deductions and getting your mission done.

In our game it has to be said that Pete won - and fortunately for me I was his partner. My questions and answers were not giving me a lot to work on, whilst Pete on the other hand had fairly quickly worked out I was on his team, and then just slipped me a perfect info set declaring himself when I next asked him a question, thus pulling me up by my bootstraps.

Rich IV seemed pretty sure of who was who as the game got to its final stages, but, the eventual win did seem to surprise Owein and Rich, who queried whether we had traded info and got to where we were. My greatest ( and only ? ) contribution to the win was in manipulating Hal to move towards the destination we wanted him to be in, by placing his only "sensible" move in the direction I wanted him to go. Being a logical gamer, he of course obliged and allowed myself and Pete an easy task to push him just that little bit further for the win.

Sons of Anarchy. James is uniquely looks suited to this game.
He's one gang leather jacket away from the total package.

On losing, Rich IV declared "Fuck deduction games !". I think he enjoyed it.But possibly may still have been bruised from his thumping in last weeks deductiony Alchemists game.

Cool game. Very enjoyable with a great table of players. I managed to frustrate Hal by feeding him the same piece of information three times in a row. After this he threatened to just draw a large cock next to my name on his results sheet. Ah ha ha ha.



Elsewise, Sons of Anarchy the board game got its first show at the Ribs and Orctions got a somewhat more muted just before release second outing. But then anything that doesn't have Lewis in it is almost guaranteed to be more muted.

The opulently produced 10th Ann. Ticket to Ride

Ticket to Ride also showed up again in opulent form with the rather spankingly attractive 10th anniversary edition, which one way or another make it the bazillionth week in a row TtR has been played, but this time it was played by a whole bunch of new people to NoBoG.

James ended up scalping the win at Ticket to Ride, blasting the newcomers with his expertise - not an enormous surprise as I think he plays it just about every week, and is surely by now a Ticket to Ride savant. If there can be such a thing. They then busted out Dead of Winter, which is pretty good going, Ticket to Ride AND Dead of Winter in one evening, and again got to win.

Ticket to Ride. Look at that bits tin. Look at it.
Can you spell O-v-e-r-p-r-o-d-u-c-e-d ? Lovely.

I'm sure they are playing it wrong :p

Diplomatic Stu was fresh back from his travails down South, and being diplomatic got to introduce some new people ( and Tim, who is definitely not new, and therefore by definition old and dusty ) to the cave dwelling goodness of Small World Underground with a full table of five. I believe there was a crazy three way tie at the end, of which I am  not sure which way the tie breaker went. I think you have to play the game all over again until it's not a tie, turning the game into less of a test of random tactical placement, and more one of endurance.

A snuggle of gamers. Small World, Dixit and Inkognito upstairs

Lewis and his merry band bashed Dixit out to table, and failed miserably to beat the newcomer, so much for experience and cliquey gaming, and then went onto the narrative Betrayal at House on the Hill and lost again to the evil doing newcomer.

Tsk.

A few fillers finished the evening. A lovely game of Sechs Nimmt, Six qui prend, Category 5 or whatever you want to call it - I think from now on I shall just call it Cows, where the surely cheating Hal managed to score zero in the first round and 1 in the second round ( and despite picking up a few cards at the end won with a very strong score ), and Tim at the opposite end of the scale managed to collect nearly all the cows, ever, anywhere, even some that weren't in play. I believe he had a score of 40 in one single epic round. Owein got shoved out of second place by myself and Rich IV, and special mention goes to Stu who managed to collect a whole bunch of cows on the very first card play. Which takes extreme levels of skill to fail that hard.

Orctions. Caption competition for what Elliot is doing here.

Downstairs, Werewolf with a bazillion add on quirks also got a play, Lewis ended up putting in an artsy french mime artist play session, and the wolves finished with a pretty much convincing win - only slight suspicion being thrown their way. The newcomers at the table were - as so often happens with the social werewolf variants - blown away with it, and wanted to immediately play it again. Uh huh.

There was also a bit of pre Inkognito discussion about how Cluedo was the best of that ilk of games ( in comparison to say Monopoly ). Which was somewhat surprising to me - I don't hold Cluedo in particular esteem, it could be done so much better these days, but I did make the point that surely a remake with an app holding the murderous identity rather than a binary envelope which wins or loses you the game would surely be much better. Which got me to thinking about how much better you could make Cluedo all round for today. Surely a NoBoG group think design project. Pitch in your ideas for a Cluedo remake. Betrayers ? Active murderous player ? Secret objectives ?? Areas with different capabilities ??? Surely there's something in there between Betrayal at House on the Hill, Cluedo and Dead of Winter / BSG.

Oh and 31 players this week, if you're asking. Of which six were new recruits.

* Inkognito is actually a 1988 game, but as far as we were concerned it was freshly minted in its plasticky seals of goodness

** Although technically a four player game it does actually cater to both 3 and 5 players. 5 players adds a player into the role of the ambassador who is trying to work out who everyone else is before any team completes their mission.

*** Not funny at all unless you are into hardcore nihilistic existential absurdity of the universe philosophical comedy. IE not funny.