Peter's Folly

A super 24 turned up last week for games. So what was played and who won?

Descent. Help I'm being attacked by a dog. Save me!

The second delve into our Descent campaign saw the three Riches and their Advisor Pete clash against me (as the very misunderstood overlord. I’m not evil, you see...). This week we played the second half of the Cardinal’s Plight. In the first half the plucky adventurers had done an excellent job and toasted all my minions to a crisp - giving them a nice advantage going into the second half. An advantage which they threw away. All because they listened to Pete. Foolish Riches. Sage advice included: Don’t search for the Runestone. Save me from the dogs. Don’t kill the Zombies. Block the corridor. Move the altar to the middle of the room where it looks more aesthetically pleasing despite the fact it makes it harder for us to use. In the end, they were too slow and Cardinal Koth was feasted upon by my zombies - the very thing they needed to avoid in order to win. Serves them right for killing the two dragons visiting the Library to research their ancestry. Not evil Dragons, you see.

The Village. I'll punch you all in the face if you don't let me win.

On the end table there was the longest game of the Village, ever. This may have been due to the expansion, Village Inn, slowing things up with new delights. The new expansion adds two new buildings. The first is the Brewery where you can acquire beer. The second is the Inn where you can meet influential people (in the form of cards), and you can acquire these villager cards by spending beer/coins and time. Each villager card has a unique ability that can be used once per game, giving either points and advantages during the game or additional points at the end of the game for certain achievements. There were rumours of a third building - the Nightclub, where you could have sex in the toilets without being judged, but alas, this was just Ed II’s furtive imagination. And we judged him all the same. The Village Inn also allows for a fifth player to play, which is probably why it all took so long (often the way - eye those expansions with suspicion. No extra fun to be found within, only extra long games). I have no idea who won as I have waited too long to write this. We’ll assume Tom cheated and threatened his way to victory.

There was indeed betrayal in Betrayal on House on the Hill this week. Which was comforting, as a game of Betrayal on House on the Hill without a betrayal leaves you feeling rather betrayed. WeirdFTW won this (he has a real name, but I can only remember his Twitter name at time of writing). Well, maybe he didn't, but  I know he betrayed everyone, and he looked happy it about it as well. We’ll say he won.

The Betrayer and the Betrayees.

Upstairs, Lord of Vegas was given another spin of the wheel. This time Ed’s lucky number came up. But only just, beating John on the money tiebreaker, who must have learned from his dismal display last week. Again it was claimed to be great. And even greater as they were now playing with the correct rules.

Kingdom Builder was played and won by Stu. I’m almost certain it wasn’t won by Stu, but I am almost certain it was played.

And then there was some shuffling and Frank’s Zoo got an outing. After rounds of animal matching and trumping and confusion over whose partner was whose and whether they were big or little and, I hope, a badly translated German joke about mosquitoes, and the obligatory mention that a single lion has no pride, Nicky was the very best and won.

The Resistance: Avalon got started, but was aborted. Which was a shame, as I was doing an amazing job (in my mind) of fooling the good guys into thinking I was Merlin, when I was actually Morgana. Drat.

Start as you mean to go on...

With Christmas feasting and New Year frivolities out of the way, this week saw the return of gaming to the Ribs. A record equalling/busting ( depending how you count ) 23 people turned out for the first NoBoG of 2014 as an epic five tables of gaming were setup.

Lords of Waterdeep, Kingdom Builder, Caverna, Suburbia and Village were played - Stu's table played something before Kingdom Builder but I forget what it was.

It's not the first time Village has been down to NoBoG ( earlier play description here   ), but it's been a while since it made its first appearance, and not many got to play it. This week Village was played by a new audience, and Rich, Pete and Ed all had good things to say about it - Ed liking it despite coming in an abject last and suffering from a swollen foot. Not sure if this was beneath the table foot stamping signals that had got out of hand or an earlier injury, but nevertheless after a triumphant Pete had killed the most of his villagers for the win, Ed went limping home, happy but sore.

Pete then managed to sneak Race for the Galaxy out onto the table for a quick round, before finally the various tables finished and the customary end of night Resistance game ensued. The evil do-ers had a torrid time, with a straight three victory win for the good guys, and some shifty behaviour by the tell dropping bad guys sealing the slick win. However, all was not lost, as the bad guys still had a chance to assassinate Merlin, and even with Ewan playing it cool and ignoring the general pointing in his direction, the bad guys chose to assassinate him - who was revealed indeed to be Merlin. A win for the bad guys via assassination !

Caverna ( play description ) had another run through down the pub, with only one other seasoned Agric player - and no Caverna players at all - at the table, the game was initially daunting for the new players. Everyone picked it up quickly however, and Owen the Agric vet piled on the weapons to score strongly at the end with 73 points. Alas he was pipped to the post by my peace loving dwarves, who with no weapons and only one mine could hardly be counted as dwarves at all, but eked through with a score of 76 - and a remarkable number of dogs.

For those ardent fans of Race for the Galaxy, this week saw the release of the new expansion Alien Artifacts, which brings a small board element and in theory more player interaction to the otherwise purely card based and largely solo game. It's likely to turn up next week if you are interested, although the whole Orb board game bit seems a bit.. well... poor. But your mileage may vary - hit Pete up for a blast, as I am sure he will have it with him.

The Return of the Saboteur

Eleven this week, Moritz bringing along newcomer Tina to join myself and Pete playing Steam.

And free glasses to all ! The ever excellent Ribs of Beef were undergoing a Glass change as the NoBoGers assembled, and very generously the old set of fine offerings were made available to all comers - quite a few people went home with a nice set of beer glasses tucked into their game bags.

Onto the games. Whilst Pete showed off the capabilities of his Googly Androidy NSA phone and how amazingly it tracked his entire life ( he has his own personal data share at the friendly and obliging NSA HQ ), Sam brought forth Kemet to entertain Bondy and Rich, neither of which had sampled its tumultuous delights.

This seemed to go down well with Bondy giving it a big thumbs up as he surged from a lacklustre position mid game to take the win with an unmitigated bloodthirsty approach, optimising all forms of warfare. I think this game has the favour of all that have played it - and I still personally think it's a better, less "up its own arse" version of Game of Thrones. I love GoT - the fiction, but the board game rendition to me is far too long for what it does.

Kemet fixes the overlong bit twiddling of GoT, but otherwise keeps a lot of other things in the same ballpark. Of course GoT has the advantage of players that turn up with loving rose tinted spectacles of all the fiction going on in their heads. I suspect if the roles were reversed, and Kemet had a GoT theme ( tricky thematically given the churning death rate of armies ), and GoT had a Kemet theme, GoT would be lumped down as an average Diplomacy rehash.

The Village turned up at the other end of the room - not the M Night Shama-lama-dingdong version of dudes running scared in forests ( no spoilers ! ) - with Dean teaching Nicky, Tom and Stu how to shuffle their cubes and train up their villagers to be noteworthy citizens. A Euro with an interesting time mechanic, your family members can be sent off to undertake certain tasks, and as time ticks ever onwards mortality takes its toll and removes them from the board.

The successful dead laid to rest in the village book. Hmm.

But this isn't a bad thing, what you lose in resource gathering you gain in final VP - as your now deceased family member is either remembered in the village chronicle - earning you VP - or ends up in an unmarked grave ( no VP for you ! ).

The first to leap wholeheartedly into their graves are remembered and earn VPs, those that come after however only face anonymity, in a first come first rewarded death race. Hmm. Not sure what this game is saying.

With a bevy of approving nods and awards this game ticks the spot for Europhiles, although isn't too far removed from The Usual cube shuffling ( apart from the cool race to the death mechanic ).

Having put away his NSA approved device, its camera no longer able to secretly record the goings on in the underlair of the Ribs of Beef, Pete had a quick run through of Steam for Tina, and we all got down to shuffling our cubes on our train routes. Despite Pete getting off to a rocky start, his wily skills of deploying a game changing grey route whilst I was watching the antics of the Village paid off handsomely, and with some perfectly optimised late game timing he romped to a convincing win. Newcomer Tina put in a great performance and came in second, leaving me to third and poor Moritz who struggled with Pete at the start - but unlike Pete failed to break out at the end, brought up the rear in last.

As all games finished just about at the same time, the stage was set for perhaps the most epic game that the Ribs had ever witnessed - an eleven handed bout of Saboteur 2. Alas, Nicky, Tom and Stu departed, leaving us with a mere 8 to dig through the rock in search of gold. Some evil last minute final round role swapping on my behalf netted me joint lead with Rich at game end. Sam then played King Maker and stole a gold from Rich, leaving me out front as bestest miner/saboteur/gnome in the pub.

I staggered home with imaginary gold stuffed in my pockets, and not so imaginary beer glasses grasped in hands. Huzzah.