Blue pill, red pill

>

You take the blue pill, the story ends.

You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. 

You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

> Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus in The Matrix

Col. Jessep: You want answers? 

Kaffee: I think I'm entitled 

Col. Jessep: *You want answers?* 

Kaffee: *I want the truth!* 

Col. Jessep: *You can't handle the truth!*

Tom Cruise & Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men 

The search for truth - some objective perfection - as so eloquently implied above is often as much about the truth as it is about the person doing the searching. .

What, you might ask yourself not unreasonably, has this got to do with what went on down t'pub this week.

Ah ha !

This week I got to partake in not one but two playtests of as yet un-released games, and ( here's the payoff ! ), like a search for the truth, playtesting games can be as much about finding an answer to an open mechanics question as it is about capturing the mood, mindset or otherwise of the designer.

A blue pill, red pill moment for the designer in a universe of their own crafting, if you will.

First up was Elliot with his new prototype ( Mausoleums of Umiat ) about building the fanciest resting place for your soon to be dead self. A bit like some Pharaoh competition to see who can build the swankiest pyramid and bury the most of their still living staff with them. Sharing is caring.

Elliots prototype game - Mausoleums of Umiat

Set in Elliots own world of Umiat and Kenai ( which you can go buy a book about here ), the game has a fantasy theme of orcs, pyromancers and Krakens amongst other things, and combines classic worker placement mechanics with some basic resource engine capabilities.

Players compete to out resource gather and manage each other with an ultimate aim to earn Vanity points - the main thrust of which is to be gained by building your mausoleum with said gathered resources. Some twists on the familar light euro mechanics include apocalyptic style resource collapse - over fishing, over hunting and complete deforestation are a real ( and depending on players almost guaranteed ) threat, and a tactile mausoleum build, where you don't just get to pickup tokens for your tomb, you get to build the tomb in 3d with blocks and decorate its surfaces with fanciness. You could imagine that with some lavish spending on production for the game beyond its humble prototype origins, the mausoleum building could be a thing of wonderful gimmicky goodness ( it cries out for some lego building imo ! ).

MoU has already had a few playtests, but this was its first visit to NoBoG and the game itself is in its early days of balance and feedback, with some hairy rough spots of probability wackiness, pacing, length and choices made, but overall looks promising. Elliot was taking notes throughout the evening and was interested in what everyone had to say about the balance of the game - even though he confessed to finding the undertaking somewhat harrowing. He seemed particularly downcast when I mentioned the game needed a "shit ton of balancing". Mmm. Maybe I should have given Elliot the option of the blue pill.

My second playtest of the evening was with Pete and Galaxy M101 which has had... what must be over a years worth of playtesting by now. In its latest tweak Pete has imo managed to break one of his key game mechanics, and whilst the final game scoring was close - we managed to zip through a full game - I commented that the balance was now kinda fubar and a non event for one of the action selections. Alas, I was only offering red pills again. Pete's stated aim with this iteration was however to push the mechanics until they broke and then dial it back some ( in a bid to encourage an under used part of the game ). So. Perhaps design goal met - action broken. Fix it.

Mice & Mystics - Joe is trapped awaiting rescue

Mice and Mystics graced the Mash Tun again this week to continue the ongoing diminutive adventures, and much like the first week, the team of gallant rodents aced the chapter and whisked their way to a complacent easy victory. After Joe had been talking up how difficult M & M could be, it seems that either it's not so hard after all, or the assembled players are some red hot mice tacticians. Joe was incredulous at how easy it all was - I think he secretly wants more pain and woe to befall the intrepid group.

David got La Granja to table for the third week (?) running, Pete trying it for the first time gave it a hearty thumbs up and noted there were some interesting multi use card mechanic malarkeys going on in this properly crunchy euro. And at the complete opposite end of the scale we also had ameritrash Risk in the house - in the form of a walking dead variant - delighting a table of three.

King of New York

Lewis committed the etiquette sin of introducing a whole bunch of new to NoBoG and new to game people to the wonders of King of New York, before roundly beating them at his own game. He then further added to the problem by slicing everyone up at Secret Hitler and triumphantly riding the win home as a Fascist. Thus teaching the newcomers in proper barbarian style that weakness is not to be tolerated, for as Conan says, the best thing in life is to "Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women.". Harsh.

Kingdom Builder made a return after several months of hiatus - mainly because Stu stopped bringing it - Champions of Midgard of course was played ( with relative NoBoG newcomer Halvor teaching everyone the correct pronunciation of the nordicness ) and there were outbreaks of epic spell wars of the battle wizards, Resistance, Bang !, Love Letter and a whole bunch besides.

La Granja

The Tun was busy this week - an unfortunate somewhat busy spread of regular punters in the pub conspired to make tables ultra short, and a number of small player count pre-arranged games exacerbated a difficult situation into almost breaking point - we nearly had to leave the Tun and split across site. This is the second time in a handful of weeks that space has been critical - and this week with only around 43 gamers in the house it wasn't even particularly gamer busy. Lack of available extra space is beginning to bite, and the issue is on my radar as A Problem that may need some work. A chat with the Tun about what other days or solutions are available, or talking nicely to Jamie and Athena to offer a split solution may be in order - or possibly even floating the so far elusive second NoBoG day to spread numbers across two days instead of just one.

No Monopoly this week. Boo. Although I really shouldn't talk these things up. We all know what happens when I talk things up, even in jest.

Ok, that's it. Cue up the gallery music and take it away...

Risk, Walking Dead Style

Champions of Midgard. With added Halvor authenticity * ( Halvor is not included with the game )

The excellent Istanbul

Bang !

Epic spell wars of the battle wizards

Avalon Resistance

The First Rule of NoBoG is...

This week the Ribs of Beef was full to the rafters as an epic 44 people turned up to partake of the NoBoG extravaganza. Personally I blame the inflated numbers on Mr Bond who advertised NoBoG Tuesday as #InternationalTableTopTuesdayEvening and offered free swag. On the other hand, if #InternationalTableTopTuesdayEvening isn't a thing, then it should be a thing.

Bondys promoted SWAG

The elevated numbers caused Pete to slightly panic* and give out the advice to newcomers that if they enjoyed themselves to remember not to tell their friends.

All very fight club if you ask me. The first rule of which is to not talk about it. If you haven't a clue what I am talking about, then your homework this week is to immediately go watch the 1999 film Fight Club.

Aside from Pete's comedy advice, it was great to see so many people down the pub playing games, and personally I had a great night, playing some new things, some old things, and introducing The Cow Game to those who had never heard of such a thing before - and were suitably delighted by it.

Chloe also pointed out that this week quite a number of gaming ladies turned up, by her count as many as ten of them, which marks another record for NoBoG. Back in the day, ten people would have been the whole of NoBoG, male or female.

Gah, a blurry shot of Mysterium and its screen.
Super low light level and a long exposure are to blame.

The G Man was in the house on Tuesday, and being the collector of the sometimes whimsical, he brought along a game called Mysterium, which after some wrangling, I ended up joining in to play. Mysterium - and I'm just going to go right ahead and assume you've never heard of it before - is a game best summed up as a cross between Dixit and Cluedo.

Funny vague artsy picture cards ? Check.

A murderer in Some Place with Some Murder Weapon ? Check.

Guessing who was where doing what to whom ? Check.

Unlike Cluedo however the game is a co-operative affair where everyone is trying to work together to solve the puzzles you are given - namely murder suspects. One player takes on the role of The Ghost, or, if you like, The Murdered, and it's their job to communicate to everyone else just who killed them and how.

Which would be lovely if the Ghost could just send you an SMS with the murderer's contact details.

Predictably things aren't so easy however, and instead the ghost must rely on sending dreams to the other players - who are allegedly psychics and sensitive to such things. Either that or they just have really vivid imaginations and a habit of eating cheese past midnight ( my mom always used to say eating cheese late at night would make you dream. Science ! ).

The dreams come in the form of cards with a lovingly artsy illustration, albeit random and often surreal. Spread on the table are another bunch of lovingly illustrated cards and it's up to the player(s) to make a guess as to what refers to what. Every player gets their own card to think about, with the end result being that the Ghost is going to tell you about X number of suspects, X number of murder scenes and X number of murder weapons, where X is the player number.

So you get into Dixit territory. A boy riding a bicycle through some woods ? Well clearly that

Mysterium ! It was.. the ghost boy with the candlestick !

indicates this magician chap over here. What ? The whole effort is further complicated by the Ghost only have a limited selection of cards to choose from each turn. So. The clues could be super vague.

The game is won if everyone manages to solve their person, location, murder weapon in a given number of nights, and after that, if everyone then manages to select the right person, location and weapon out of those that have been highlighted.

An interesting game. All about getting into the head of the person playing the ghost. And trying to find some connecting particular that links one series of pictures to another.

We failed for the record. The G Man kept apologising to me whilst handing me my clues. In the end a wolf was filling in for a unicorn, and most of the other clues were pointing at a small picture on the wall of one of the choices. As it was I actually did succeed in getting all my details right, but Pete and Sam failed. And so the ghost was not avenged.

Note to future murdered ghosts. Learn how to use email.

Small World, Chloe and David with some new NoBoGers

Meanwhile on the table over, a group of new NoBoGers learned to play Small World which came down to a very tight finish again, relying on a tie breaker to actually determine who had won. The game was given a thumbs up, and they liked the way that the races and traits made the game variable - they could see good replayability in it.

Behind them, an excited Jay Van Zee ( his newly annointed NoBoG street rap name, formerly known as JJ ) busted out a fresh from the kickstarter presses game of Shadow of the Elder Gods.

Given which name is a game that is contractually obliged to be about Cthulu type shenanigans.

Anytime you use Shadow and Elder God in some combination, you have to be talking about Lovecraftian Shnubbling, and Shoggotholling.

The Elder Gods of the Shadow Supermarket. See ? It's a game about a Cthulu infested supermarket. Easy.

Shadow of the Elder Gods. Aka Pocket Arkham Horror aka
James Mapp's Punch Yourself In the Face !

So what's the game all about... A co-operative game, players take the role of investigators, or just plain schmucks, who are wandering about the city of Arkham in a game of tentacle whack a mole.

Along the way you get to pick up things to help you fight off the nasties that keep cropping up, and hopefully by the end you will have enough experience to see off the Elder nasty himself. If this sounds remarkably like Arkham Horror, then you'd be right, it sort of is.

But it's condensed down into something that doesn't take between 3 and 6 hours to crank out and has wayyyy less of a footprint in terms of endless decks of crap. I like Arkham Horror, but it does suffer from early FFG designs of "Lets just make another deck of cards / pile of tokens / endless crap for that mechanic, and then we can big it up on the box how much crap is in here, and how much crap your money is buying - bargain !" which typically end up with you playing the Setup The Crap game for longer than you actually play the game.

I'm not sure how the game went down, it sounds pretty cool, albeit James who did play it spotted some dubious flaws he was less than happy with. A key component of the game is the Ring of Shadows, an item which allows you to tackle the unseen enemies that lurk beneath the seen ones and is the key to winning the game. The price of using this item however is a hit in sanity ( of course, no self respecting Cthulu game leaves out a Sanity mechanic ), and here's the issue. Certain random cards in the game will deal 5 sanity damage to the wielder of the Ring of Shadows. Which is enough for insta death. So. Draw a card. Die. Game Over ?

Are there mitigations to this ? No idea. But James was not a fan and stated that at least the game was short, and therefore wasn't too much of a pain to put up with before inevitably dying from the RNG insta death. On thinking about it more deeply he related the experience to be like punching yourself in the face. "Draw a Card, Punch yourself in the face that many times". I dunno. Sounds like a winning party game to me. COPYRIGHT !

Alhambra - vanilla style. Circa 2003

Away from the Cthulian Horror, Stu guided some people through the ways of Kingdom Builder, whilst the table over enjoyed a blast of classic Alhambra which I think was just the pure vanilla version - no expansions ( I tend to always play with the treasures and markets and yada these days... )

Downstairs Martin took some newcomers through the halls of Betrayal at House on the Hill, Hal gave a group a zip around Powerboats - which to my eye looked really cool ( I think its all those lovely hexes lighting the wargaming gene in me ) - and apparently played really nicely - a game all about managing your speed dice and trying not to ram into things from going too fast.

Power boats. Race around the islands and manage your speed.

Lastly, Darren got the new and sexy Xenoshyft Onslaught to table, yet another co-operative type game ( there were three and a half co-ops played this week - I am counting Betrayal as a half co-op ) which is a deck builder horror survival malarkey that sees your group of swaggering future troops defending your base from the evil alien Hive.

Marines versus Aliens you say ?

Yes. In co-operative deck builder format.

The very nice looking Xenoshyft Onslaught.

Which sounds in theory like a cool idea. What's not to like about the familiar Marines versus Aliens trope ( although I have to say, a bit like the whole zombie malarkey, it's probably getting a bit too done at this point ) ? No idea how this panned out. Tim noted it was very difficult to win. The game certainly looked gorgeous on the table - and surprisingly for a Cool Mini or Not game did not come with a bazillion miniatures.

After all that gaming a horde of smaller fillier games descended.

Artificium

I got to try out Artificium on my table - a highly rated light euro resource manager filler, all about turning one thing into another for points. Sam languished in last for the first half of the game before showing off outrageously to overtake everyone and fall off the edge of the scoring because he was just scoring so damn well with an army of wizards.

We declared him loser for running off the edge of the score board and therefore having no score.


After this we changed tables up and busted out The Cow Game to some newcomers - where there were some interesting aberrant plays going on.

Sechs Nimmt. Well. The next move is certainly tricky...

Firstly, one of the newcomers managed to score an enormous 50 points in his single first round. 50. That has to be a record of some sort. It makes Tim's previous week Cow collecting extravaganza look positively amateurish in comparison. Also. We had a full board situation occur. Which I can't remember ever seeing.

Too many fillers to mention. Pickomino, flaschenteufel, yet more Cows, werewolf. Gosh.

Thanks to those who submitted something, David, Chloe, James, short or long !


*our veteran members can be a fragile bunch that are sometimes to be heard muttering about how it was all different in their day, when there was just chess, counting the leaves that floated down the River Wensum, picking peanuts off the floor and flicking them at Crocker and Settlers of Catan.

The Greed of Med "Shoot 'em til they stop twitching and then shoot em some more" Ed

This week we counted 22 NoBoG souls ready for gaming. Which turned out to be a wildly inaccurate count as eventually 31 people were playing at tables. I'm not naming any names *cough* Ewan *cough*, but I feel as if the counting was slightly wonky. This may not have been helped by a slow trickle of stragglers entering the pub. Excuses.

But no matter ! With a bit of patience everyone - even the latecomers - can be accommodated. If you turn up late, you might have to wait a bit for someone to lose horribly with an incompetent playstyle win with a clever strategy and start something else.

First up this week Pete got to give his prototype now in its second printing a go with a full table of six. Pete nobly took a small handicap given all five other players were completely new to the game - and as far as I know had not even played Race for the Galaxy which helps a lot when it comes to Pete's game - and proceeded to bamboozle everyone with rules.

Pete's prototype Galaxy M101
or as I call it, Chink In the Galaxy

Heads were swimming by the end of the rules explanation. It seems few had managed to grasp the finer points and all just wanted to get on and play to get a grip of it by playing a few rounds. The game is pretty straightforward, play systems for a cost ( cards also serve as currency ), deliver goods, put developments into play and creep influence into other systems in much of a cross between Race for the Galaxy and Steam, but if you haven't played either, then it could all be a bit alien at first.

Tom II won this with a triumphant 78 points and a hardcore deliver strategy ( pick cubes up, deliver them where they are needed ) with joint second limping in at 58 points. No one opted for military. A pity. Most enjoyed it thoroughly and thought it was an excellent game, whilst a couple were more on the fence with their experience. Six player is a pretty tough shark infested count for the game, and with all new players at the table it's likely that not everyone is going to have a happy clappy easy existence. Four players with new people would probably have been a good sweet spot.

Stu was back with us this week and gave Kingdom Builder - a Stu firm favourite - another bash. He followed this up with Camel C/Up ( annoying goddamn name that refuses to be one or the other ) which seemed to go down better than Kingdom Builder. Camel Cup is certainly a barrelful of fun and tends to leave the more serious, analytical and buttoned down Euros standing alone in a corner wondering where everyone has gone.

Lewis busted out Lords of Waterdeep at the final table downstairs, with Tom the First mixing it up and showing all the young 'uns ( technically everyone is a young 'un to Tom.... ) how to play with a solid victory. Quest finishes were at an all time high, the deck being one card away from exhaustion. No fillers for them this week as Lords played the whole evening.

Upstairs, Alhambra got a play, and if I have my facts right, Chris won this, with Kittens in a Blender being played afterwards. Kittens in a Blender according to Lauren was tense. Incredibly tense if you were one of the kittens I imagine. No idea who won this, but really, what does it matter who wins when you have a chance to stuff kittens in a blender ?

Elsewhere Darren brought Legendary Encounters - another card game in the Legendary family that this time sees you working your way through the Aliens franchise. We've already seen the Legendary Marvel game at NoBoG a couple of times, but the Encounters game is new this year and new to NoBoG. The rules are the same, but the theme is switched, no super heroes here, you get to play characters such as Ripley or Hicks ( not sure whether Hudson is in it... Game Over Man, Game Over ! ) and have to survive and engage with the acidic horrors from Geigers imagination. I didn't pay any attention to this as it was played but I suspect the theme is probably a good fit for the game, even though as a whole the Aliens Franchise has generally produced some awful games based on its IP - bewildering given that many knock off Alien copies are great games.

Dead of Winter got another bash. Everyone lost. Again. Two betrayers. But they didn't stink up the crises, they played nice. We played with an objective of too many mouths to feed, and started the game with 8 useless helpless survivors. The game seemed to be on punishing mode however, as helpless survivors sky rocketed - we ended up with an utterly bonkers 15 helpless survivors eating 8 food a turn - zero weapons were found, and much to the annoyance of all players, there were absolutely no options to eat any of the helpless survivors. Or leave them out in the cold. Or accidentally move base and forget to give them a forwarding address.

Despite the colony devouring 12 food a turn by game end, a heroic effort to salvage food saw us easily swing the food in the third round, only to be woefully betrayed by rampant resource burning which saw a flurry of zombie attacks eat people and plunge morale to a game ending -5.

Tough was an understatement.

Moving on we had a shot at Cash and Guns second edition and joined up with the Legendary table. Second edition Cash and guns makes a few changes to the original, notably it removes the Bang Bang Bang card ( which gives precedence over Bang cards ), changed loot division - it's now round robin instead of evenly split, and finally introduced the Boss who gets to pick loot first and also gets to change a single shooters target in the shooting round.

Adjustments have also been made to the player powers - simplifying them and making them all visible at game start - and the loot now has some set collection mechanics, with art and diamonds giving bonuses for who has what at the end.

Cash & Guns 2nd Edition. Ed toys with his gun...

Med Ed won the first round of this in his nice, easy mannered, I am not a threat, under the radar kinda way, and then proceeded to state that back to back wins in such a game were almost impossible. Little did we know he was just seeding the group think at the table for his shenanigans.

Darren got shot to bits in the second game with an astounding four out of four guns being loaded with bullets and pointing at him - and being brave or foolhardy he attempted to brash it out - but despite being dead and out of the game, this didn't stop Ed from later attempting to shoot Darren again. Because you know. Keep shooting them until they stop twitching. Or perhaps playing zombie filled Dead of Winter had trained Ed to double tap his victims. Just in case.

Admitting his incompetence - which may have just been another smokescreen ruse to lower his apparent threat - and having directed Ed not to shoot dead people in future turns, or anyone else at the bar / Norwich in general who weren't in the game, Ed cheerfully kept on sucking up double loot with his greedy character power and by game end had an impressive lead and had indeed won back to back at Cash and Guns.

The morale of the story is, don't be suckered in by Med Ed's nice ways. And also, never pretend to be dead. He'll still shoot you.

I'm only happy when it rains...

Self named Spazzy McSpazhands ( aka Punk Rich ) once informed me that East Anglia is the driest region in the UK. I scoffed at such nonsense - picturing the boggy lands of Norfolk - and with this weeks endless rain, mud caked roads and howls of protest from locals, I feel the weather is weighing in on my uninformed unscientific side. Such was the lovely weather this week that forced many a NoBoGer into the very quickly humid Wherry Room. A NoBoG record breaking thirty three people will do that to a small room - fit enough bodies in, and a room will gain its own weather system.

This week seven tables of goodness squeezed into the pub, with Adventurers : Temple of Chac, Kingdom Builder, Keyflower, Kemet, Libertalia, El Grande and Istanbul first up for play.

El Grande - an almost 20 year old game.
Does that make you feel old ?

Keyflower ( which I kept auto correcting to Mayflower ) played to a packed table of six, a Euro game of hex tiles and meeples. The aim of the game as usual is to score more victory points than everyone else - and you do that by building your own village of hex tiles that have victory points directly on them and with hex tiles that score from synergies of other tiles.

The meeples in Keyflower are used in a fairly innovative way - for starters the meeple colours are not attached to a single player - no getting first dibs on colour choice here - instead they are used almost like suits of card in something like Bridge, where everyone has all colours, and once a certain colour of meeple is placed on a tile, for that season, only meeples of that colour can be used on it to either bid for the tile or use the action ( more than one player can take an action, but at an increasing meeple cost ).

Keyflower, with boatloads of new pilgrims ready to offload

Meeples are used then not only for worker placement, but also as currency for bidding on a tile. Your stash of meeples and therefore the makeup of just how many meeples of each colour you have, is secret, and so bidding or using the actions on the hex can become something of a canny game of what colour do I think you have run out of - particularly as one of the four colours of meeple is something of a prestige colour and difficult to get your hands on.

Actions can be taken anywhere on the table - including others villages, the key difference being that the owner of a tile gets to keep all the meeples placed on it at the end of a season - effectively earning you currency, and of course, meeples share duties as both worker placements and currency - be careful what you do with what.

The game is played over four seasons, with the final season allowing you to pick up the point multiplying boats in player turn order.

Pete offered a thumbs up for the game - and given as he is no fan of auction games, it must have been pretty good. Alina won, with Pete sneaking into second place.

First games out of the way, a series of second games hit tables - a couple of games of King of Tokyo to an almost newbie KoT table, Snow Tails - the game of reverse physics dog sledding - Ra, Bohnanza, Coup and One Night Ultimate Werewolf.

Snow Tails... the dogs haven't turned up yet. Lazy mutts.

 I got to watch a round of Coup and then join in - my first up close and personal play of the game. Coup reminded me very much of Mascarade, with players declaring themselves to be a certain role - which may or may not be a bluff - and then taking the action for that role . Anyone that doesn't believe any role declaration can challenge them. So far, so Mascarade. The differences however are that you have two roles in front of you at the start of the game - and you can look at them at any time. You also can't switch your role cards with others... you can only switch with the face down deck and only then if you declare yourself to be the role that can do that. And lastly some roles can actively block others - you simply declare yourself and state you are blocking their action ( which can also be challenged ).

Money is acquired in Coup in very similar ways to Mascarade - one role gives 3 gold, one steals 2 from another and so on, but here money is not the game end, but rather a means to an end - gold can power up some key abilities that allow you to eliminate other players role cards - either completely out of hand with no recourse, or by using the cheaper but blockable assassinate role. Lose both your role cards and you are out of the game.

Any challenges you make also result in the loss of a role card - for whoever turns out to be wrong with their challenge.

Quite fun to play, but eh, the game failed to have that key bit of tension and suspense for me. It seems to dance around the current trend for secret role based games ( werewolf variants ) , but miss most of the point of them. Whilst I like Mascarade, and it's a fun game to play, it's definitely not as strong as something like Resistance, and the game can occasionally fall flat on its face when people don't realise a game winning role is at hand - or a lot of roles have been revealed. Coup takes that Mascarade premise adjusts it again - and I feel gets an ever weaker game out of it. There's a very binary feel to Coup - two roles, two failures only, there doesn't seem quite enough interaction or quite enough impetus to actually get into peoples faces - it can be just about impossible to work out whether someone has a role or not ( there is no info ) and the punishment for getting it wrong is throwing half your chance to win the game out the window. At least in Mascarade the punishment isn't nearly so strong, and there's also the fun of failing to keep track of who you are.

Eh. Meh. I think Coup needs a few more tries, but misses the mark I feel. Give it a go and see what you think !

Gangs, Guns and Poo Barons

Cake.

Yes. There was Cake at NoBoG this week. The generous spirited Ewan brought the bottom tier of his epic four tier birthday cake along to the Ribs for everyone to enjoy whilst playing board games and slurping their drinks. See what you are missing ? Birthday Cake !

The turnover of people at NoBoG can be quite something. Spend a year of Tuesdays down the pub playing games and you will see an amazing procession of people, some who turn into regulars, regulars that fade away, and those who turn up just the once. Blink, and you'll miss half of them.

So it is that for the time being we bid farewell to Ed#2 as he pursues a career in Other Places that are Not Norwich. Ed#2 has turned into something of a regular this last year, and it seems his lament of never winning a game at NoBoG is always going to be true.

His departure is especially a shame as this week saw Ed giving himself the deserved title of Poo Baron. Which surely has all the hallmarks of sticking as his official NoBoG name. Ed "Poo Baron" Lewis has a certain ring to it I think.

Early stages of Dungeon Petz

The Poo Baron, Owen, Ed#1 and Dean got to parade their motley collection of dungeon critters this week, feeding them, taming their rage tantrums, keeping them occupied and also trying to keep the inevitable pet poo from piling up.


Ed#1 for his part completely forgot to purchase any pets and instead seemed to go into the landscape gardening business - displaying a set of lovely show room enclosures and fields that had no animals in.

This is a pity, as Dungeon Petz is predominantly scored based on the actual animals you have.

Ed "The Poo Baron"glees over his poo in Dungeon Petz

Meanwhile the Poo Baron was doing what Poo Barons do best. Namely looking after mountainous volumes of Poo, which, much like landscape gardening, scores you no points in Dungeon Petz.

As for Owen, I couldn't see what he was doing. But he had a similar score to the Poo Baron and the Landscape gardener. So who knows. It would be hard to imagine coming up with a strategy to threaten the lacklustre capabilities of poo or empty enclosures, but Owen had it nailed.

All of which left Dean embarrassingly in front. So far in front in fact, that at one point had you combined the scores of the other three, they would still have been behind Dean. When I checked Dean was on the threshold of lapping the score track, whilst Owen, The Poo Baron and The Gardener were all dawdling in the low teens. Oh dear.

Meanwhile on other tables, Modern Art got a play, with Tim grabbing the win, before the group moved onto a spot of Kingdom Builder - a title that is surely in the spot of Most Played Game at NoBoG - with I think Tom and Paul vying for a win that went to a tie breaker.

Cash & Guns. Paul goes all gangsta with his gun
whilst Tom does his best "fuhgeddaboudit" pose.

Lastly they bust out the fun and foam gun filled Cash and Guns, always a treat, particularly if you've never experienced the stupidity of waving an orange fake gun in someones face.

Lords of Waterdeep - another popular NoBoG title - got played again, relative newcomer Andy beating all the veteran hands at the game.

Upstairs two tables had to fend with the Ribs of Beef Quiz Night. I'm not sure if the Ribs Quiz Night was some clever counter culture hipster event celebrating the absence of quizzing - so very last millennia - but whatever it was it had a turnout of precisely zero which meant undisturbed NoBoGing upstairs.

Infamy, Infamy, they've all got it....

Infamy got its first outing at the Ribs, myself, Pete, Rich and Sam vying to be the best futuristic gang in this simple but clever game of influence bidding and reputation building. The table talk was sharp and full on as Pete attempted to paint himself as ever in the guise of the plucky underdog that needs all your resources and Rich grumbled about everyone ganging up on him.

Rich ended up winning, with Pete blaming Sam of robbing him of the win.

On the other table upstairs a few people got to try out vanilla Galaxy Trucker, and in what seemed a very civilised outing to me, there were no mad scrambles for parts or mocking taunts as pieces of ship disintegrated into the ether. Having now learnt the base game, perhaps the intrepid explorers are ready for some advanced trucking another week, complete with ravenous aliens, implacable commandos and a whole fistful of crazy new components and threats.

JJ ponders his options in D-Day Dice

Skull and Roses, D Day Dice and Resistance finished off the evening in various places. The bad guys swept the floor in a hurried game of Resistance, and lawks alive, I won Skull and Roses ( I think so far I win more than I lose at Skull and Roses ).

D Day Dice looked interesting, I still want to give this a try, but alas Fletch is gone for another month - his duties take him in and out of NoBoG for weeks at a time.



Oh yes. And for those counting, there were 22 bold explorers this week.

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.

Betrayal at Waterdeep

Both Lords of Waterdeep and Betrayal at House on the Hill have seen repeated play at the Ribs in recent weeks. I always seem to be playing something else when they appear, so was pleased to get to try both in one session.

Betrayal at House on the Hill is a super thematic game where the players are exploring a spooky house. Tiles are laid out as new rooms are entered and players contend with all the usual sort of things you’d find in a haunted mansion – encountering strange events, collecting items and revealing ominous omens along the way. Finally, one of these omens will trigger the end game where one of the characters betrays the others. A scenario is randomly determined and the traitor goes off to another room to read his objectives (usually kill all the other players) while the rest of the players look up their part in the corresponding scenario - how to survive and/or defeat the traitor.

The game rattled along at a brisk pace even with six players. We played a particularly long game, with lucky haunting rolls (which determine the end game) prolonging the exploration part of the game. By the time we’d determined Richard as the Assassin – keen to murder us all and stop young Clive, the heir to the mansion, from claiming fabulous wealth – most of the mansion had been revealed. This played in our favour and we got Clive to the throne room with the requisite items and still in one piece. We did lose Nicky and Pete II along the way, but they were only ever assassin fodder in my eyes.

It’s a pretty simple game. Easy to drop new players into. It really shines if players get into their roles and treat the other players to a bit of theatrics when reading the omens and descriptions on the cards. If you’re not into that sort of thing it can still be fun, but you’re really just waiting for the end game to trigger so you have an objective, rather than wandering the halls tooling up your character. Plus coming in at 90 minutes it doesn’t outstay it’s welcome.

This meant we had time for Lords of Waterdeep. A game based on the Forgotten Relams D&D franchise, this sounds like it should be a thematic romp with high adventure in the port city of Waterdeep. It's not. Those with cold and calculating eyes (and even those with just plain old seeing eyes) will look past the stock D&D pictures and see a game about buying and spending cubes to accrue victory points. If you need to get into a role and pretend to be a mighty Lord of Waterdeep and crave nothing but adventure, walk away now. This will disappoint. It's not bad, it's just that Accountants of the Lords of Waterdeep is probably more of an accurate title. So if you like euro/efficiency style games and aren't sniffy about the theme then there is an enjoyable game to be had.  And coming in at between and hour and 90 minutes, it doesn't linger in your hallway boring you with tales of its arthritic feet.

Thanks to Richard IV for bringing along and explaining both games to me. I had a lot of fun with both.

The rest of the pub was crammed with NoBoGers  playing all manner of games.  I think there were five tables in all, with 23 gamers. Four intrepid gamers drowned as they failed to beat Forbidden Desert. Twice. There was a five-player game of Blood Bowl Manager with the Sudden Death expansion. Suburbia got a look in. As did Grimoire, Kingdom Builder, Race for the Galaxy, Libertalia, and Skull and Roses.  And Pete got his rather nice looking Space Game prototype out for some more playtesting. Once again the playtesters let it be known that they still disliked the “If your name is Pete re-roll the dice” rule. We shall see if their concerns make it into the next rules re-write.

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.

Calamity City

A belated fifteen this week, some newcomers, plenty of old hands, and three tables of gaming pleasure.

Lords of Waterdeep made another appearance this week, and with just about everyone being familiar with how this now plays, the game was fought over, finished, and Rich crowned the Lordiest of Waterdeep Lords in very quick fashion, leaving plenty of time for game variation.

Suburbia

Whilst that was going on, Suburbia was skirmished over on table two, which also finished in a nice time for some end of evening shenanigans, splitting into Avalon Resistance and Kingdom Builder for the We Don't Want to Play Your Stinking Spy Game NoBoG faction.

The last table found Tzolk'in with the new and sexy expansion that allows an increased five people to squabble over the slowly rotating action spaces. It was at this last table that I found myself competing against Evil Pete, Tim, Robin and new guy Phil. Phil admitted that whilst he had played a few games, he wasn't an experienced old hand at such things. Given the players, the game and the increased crunchiness of the expansion, I suddenly felt the need to apologise in advance for the experience he was about to receive. Which turned out to be just about right.

Tzolk'in is of course a hit board game from last year with a sexy / innovative / gimmicky ( pick one ) series of cogs that see your worker placements slowly shifting place over time. In mechanics terms it's just a worker placement game that triggers actions when you remove workers as opposed to when you place them. But we know all that, what we really want to know is how does the expansion play ?

The expansion adds some variety into the up til now, pretty static setup. First off there are the new tribes which provide a player with a single subtle game changing mechanic to influence your strategy. Powers range from things like - your second worker costs 1 less food to place, to, any action space you choose is capped at a maximum cost of 3 food.

Tzolk'in - Tribes and Prophecies

Next, expanding the actions available, the start turn space gets added to with three extra slots costing 1 food each. The action available on these slots changes with the turning of the cogs, and they vary from the almost useless - pay 1 food to take 2 food - to the much more compelling, pay 2 food to immediately build a building, or pay 1 food to take a gold. With a gold bonus tech going on, things like instant reward 1 food for 2 gold are almost obscenely good to take if you have some fancy building on your mind.

Lastly calamities are added - these represent possible bonus points for meeting criteria, but also crucially penalty points for not meeting them. They also inflict changes to other parts of the board - in our game all the calamities made temple advancement much more difficult by forcing people to pay extra resources to advance a step, and in some cases forcing people to retreat a step when some resources were collected. This had a definite cooling effect on temple competition for our game.

The tribe powers you choose at the start are very cool, it's nice to have everyone start on an uneven footing, and adds spice to what might otherwise be a fairly dry opening strategy. On the other hand the powers are also very situational and can be incredibly powerful in the right circumstances, or just about useless - or even a detriment - in the wrong ones. Surely then this leads to more careful strategic play. Kind of.

The expanded three extra actions are a no brainer. With five people all trying to jam into packed action wheels, the three extra actions are something of a congestion reliever and a good addition. However. Again, it's situational. At times the actions on offer are - as Pete likes to say - about as useful as the Guernsey Tax Office. And so sometimes the cogs really are cluttered because it's highly unlikely you are going to waste placing a worker to get you a net gain of 1 food.

Calamities. They certainly change the weight of what you want to be doing or perhaps avoiding, and offer an interesting - although at times just about impossible - way of garnering victory points.

Overall for me the game was tortuous. It was cool to see the expansion in action, and nice to have a chat over a game, but game wise I spent most of my efforts in last place turn order wise, and with five players, one of whom started with five workers instead of three to place, I found myself at times boxed into a corner to get on the busy cogs, or struggling to lurch about looking for a new plan. The situational tribe powers just added random insult to injury as some were able to get good use out of powers at times, and others, well, just downright struggled. Poor Phil with his five worker start faced an uphill battle all game of feeding all those mouths AND having increased costs of 3 food per worker instead of 2, AND an increased VP penalty for failing to do so. On the one hand, five workers out of the gate is awesome. On the other hand, paying fifteen food to maintain them is horrible. And remember. Five players. Packed cogs. Your placement costs are up on what a four player game might be.

And here lies perhaps a fundamental issue. The lovely / gimmicky cogs, fixed very much into the heart of the game as they are cannot be upgraded or changed when you decide you want to do an expansion. So to a certain extent you are jamming more people in the core mechanic fixed size space. As Pete noted, five is perhaps not the sweet spot for Tzolk.

Tzolk'in with the expansion is decidely not for beginners. Or the feint of heart. Personally I have some serious reservations about whether a fifth player actually works that well. Or that everything balances out well. Or that you can't get some seriously game cooling perfect storms popping up. I was also unimpressed with our final scoring which didn't seem to be particular clever as just mostly opportunistic. Blah.

Pete also confessed to having struggled for the first time ever playing the game - he's a big fan - and not entirely enjoying his experience.

As for Phil - who managed to net himself 10 negative points in one scoring round - I assured him that his gaming experience were he to return would only get better from hereon in, and only half jokingly, that next time he should try something fun, like Resistance.

As it was, Robin won the game with some decent in game scoring and a respectable end bonus, Pete came second with some extremely last minute bonus scoring - he had scored practically zip all game, which left Tim languishing in third and me and Phil way off the pace.

If you are a fan of Tzolk'in, I think you will like the variation the expansion brings. There are some nice ideas and cool things going on. Does it lose some elegance ? Yes. Can it fall off the rails a bit ? I think so. Is it really designed to fit five people in ? Probably not. But I think a fan will skip those "minor" quibbles and embrace the new challenges that it offers.

Resistance good guys won again. I think the bad guys are just phoning it in at this point. Shocking. There needs to be some serious spy training undertaken to shore up the score tally.

Black Friday

Black Friday is here, which for us Brits means mostly nothing, but for the Yanks means full contact no rules shopping. Fatalities are optional. But enough of turkey fuelled rage shopping, what happened with the games this week ?

A civilised thirteen souls for this weeks gaming where Cyclades and Caverna rubbed shoulders with unexploded cows, a delegation of some Lords of Waterdeep and some abstract Kingdom Building.

Cyclades

Robin and Bondy got to experience Caverna this week, the former trying a hardcore weapons strategy, and the latter attempting a maverick no tunnel building direction.

I am a fan of weapons in Caverna, but this week with the responsibility of first player landing on my shoulders I declared that I would be ignoring weapons completely and going for a peaceful extreme. Rich following me ended up doing the same - however he had the cheek to consistently berate me for copying him - and getting things before him, despite the turn order being what it was. Pfft.

A tight game ensued with Robin reaping huge weaponry rewards on just about every turn and looking increasingly strong as time went on, and myself and Rich building decent farm and food  bases up. Bondy went for early chambers and furnishing - but didn't achieve anything with it, he largely filled his mountain with trash that wouldn't help him at game end, and by the time the points were being calculated he was well shy of the front runners, and ironically enough having tried to concentrate on furnishing his mountain, was the only one with an unfinished cave system.

Caverna, Bondy's Dwarves concentrate on interior decoration

All was not entirely futile for Mr Bond however, in a series of half assed end moves he managed to screw me over royally and rob me of the final points I needed to take the game. Rich instead got the first place - and threw insults and rude gestures my way at having apparently blocked him from better scoring - and Robin with his weapons came in a very strong second. I was left in third, half a dozen points behind Rich ( Bondy blocked me from 8 points !! ).

Cool game.

Resistance finished the evening, Rich, Richard and newcomer Chris taking on the wiles of the evil doers. Team good secured an easy victory however - a fourth win in a row for the good guys - as poor Rich leaked all sorts of tells for the second week running - turning red when questioned about being a spy - and Richard made one of those Why Did I Say That early game tells confessing that at least he wasn't the assassin this game - but the implication being he was still a bad guy. Despite the two of them then trying to play it sweet it was pretty obvious what was going on, and Chris telegraphed his role with a series of perfect spy voting. Oh dear.

Last week I was the probable obvious Merlin, but Team Bad convinced themselves to knife Matt ( Percival ) instead. Wrong. This week, I was the probable obvious Merlin, and this time Team Bad knifed me ( Percival ). Wrong. Ha ha. Still, you have to worry about your life expectancy as Percival eh... ?

Mascarade was toyed with being played but failed, and Divinaire got half way out before being swept off the table by Resistance.

A drubbing for Team Good

Nineteen this week, and yes, more newcomers to share in the fun and games - Alina's exasperated cry of "Oh no, not more !" on seeing more people turn up for gaming should be taken as wild and unruly thought. Rest assured that she has been taken to the very deepest depths of NoBoG HQ to receive special thought re-education on the matter and is now well on her way back to normality as a card shuffling and cube counting drone welcoming member of NoBoG.

In all seriousness newcomers are always very welcome whenever you turn up, and as numbers grow we simply expand to fill tables upstairs in the pub, so not a problem. There are even plans for what to do when we fill up the pub / Norwich in general, although I am doubtful the "Norwich is full of Gamers Apocalypse Plan" will ever get put into place. There are shotguns, cans of gasoline, general anti zombie equipment and details of how to fortify the shopping mall in those plans. Hmm. Maybe that's the Day-Z NoBoG plan. *Quiet Year Flashback* *zombies* *heads on spikes* *Agnes the OAP* *Quiet Year Flashback*. Arrg. Ah well. No matter the plan, fear not, NoBoG is prepared whatever the eventuality !

This week Trains made it to table, which as the running joke goes, is a game about Trains. Once you open the box and start looking around however you might actually think it's Dominion... with a map. Trains is a light deck building game where you improve your personal deck of cards over time to either buy victory points for end game glory, or actually provide you with actions to do something useful on the map... which provides you with victory points for end game glory. Points are scored for pure VP cards in your hand and for having a track running into a station or off board distant location.

Building track and raising stations on the map can be achieved by playing an appropriate action card, but crucially, each time this is done waste is placed into your hand ( useless cards to interfere with your sublime deck build ), and, if you are building on top of someone else you get even more waste.

This means Trains has a certain benefit for people that build early or first on the map but in the process are perhaps sacrificing building and optimising their deck early. Which is a nice additional problem to juggle.

The various trains in the game provide you with money - and in an exact replica of Dominion the 3 standard trains are valued at exactly the same values as copper, silver and gold, and for each game a random set of optional cards are added in that provide additional actions and money.

Game ends when either a certain number of card piles are exhausted, someone runs out of track to place or all the stations have been placed. We managed to get two games in for a run time of somewhat over 2 hours - including a rules session.

The game plays nicely and for me is an interesting and welcome variant / extension of the Dominion mechanics, and I can see that this game could go the way of Dominions with perhaps a bazillion card expansions ( and also board layout expansions ), or even a complete re-theme and created as some other game.

Martin took both wins in our time with the game, thus proving that he is the Trainiest of Train Masters.

Elsewhere in the Ribs, Tales of the Arabian Nights flourished its way across Europe and Asia in its inimitable You Are Now Lost / Insane / A Frog type way and entertained five for the whole evening. Sam was apparently doing well this time out, but I have no specifics to offer. You can insert your own 100 wardrobes, Menacing Djinn, rubbish fish reward tales here.

Cosmic Encounter. No sign of space Goats.. yet...

The classic Cosmic Encounter bounced out for some of the more experienced hands, where I believe that Ed#1 possibly won. It can be very hard to tell with Cosmic Encounter however and it's possible that the bar maid - who wasn't even present - could have won instead. Or maybe the game ended with a Goat. Cosmic Encounter eh ?

Stu talked up playing Ra on the last table - not sure if he actually managed to get this out (*crackly NoBoG radio communications tell me that Ra was indeed played* ), when I walked past mid evening it was Kingdom Builder that was being contested over.

As the evening drew to a halt - those not playing with Insane Fishy Wardrobes - split into two groups to play The Resistance - Avalon and Cash and Guns. Excellent ! If you've never played either games, and more to the point, if you've never played either games with the NoBoGers then you should - it's possibly one of the greatest most fun ways to end a gaming evening. So long as you like lying and attempting to foil your compatriots plans. Or pointing foam guns at people. And let's be honest, who *doesn't* like pointing foam guns at people ?

In earlier weeks there has been a spate of the Good Guys winning at The Resistance - a shocking and immoral turn of events - but thankfully this week, the Bad Guys were back in form and gave Arthur's Round Table a thorough drubbing with three consecutive failed quests. The poor lady of the lake hardly had time to wake up and smell the coffee before the game was over.

The Resistance - left to right, Bondy bag of Cheese & Onion,
Hand of Matt, Silver Tongue Pete, Ed#2, Rich, Ed#1,
Clive Shoulder, American Pete bag of Ready Salted

To confuse matters we elected to play Resistance with two Eds and two Petes. Because it's not confusing enough when you start throwing accusations around about who is trustworthy when everyone has a different name. Next week we may decide to play with *all* of us adopting the name Ed, thus making the statement "I think Ed is a spy" guaranteed to be correct.

Evil Ed#1 managed to foul up some good guy questing early on but bought endless amounts of heat for his actions. Fingers pointed and his desperate verbal defences became shaky, beaten into the submissive statement of "Well, just bear in mind there's a remote chance I might *not* be a spy". Oh dear.

On the other hand Evil Ed#1 did absorb much heat from the other Evil Doers - myself and Matt - and any Good Guy that unwittingly copied Eds actions was then subject to tarring with the same Ed shaped brush. Excellent.

Wily American Pete slammed the accusation hammer down on Ed#1, and started pointing fingers at innocent old me too - I never really clocked that Pete was actually Merlin with inside information, instead, vocal Silver Tongue Pete seemed like the favourite for the bearded one. So good job there !

Alas, despite Merlin's best efforts, the bad guys won, myself and Matt managed to keep a fairly low profile, and even at the end after the final failed quest, I was being named amongst the most trustworthy of good guys ( and got to burn the last quest ).

Muah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Evil.

I love it.

Roll Call -
Adam, Alina, Barnaby, Bondy, Clive, Ed, Ed, John, Martin, Matt, Paul, Pete, Peter, Rich, Robin, Sam, Stu, Tim, Tom.

( That roll call seems like a failed Dwarf name list for the first draft of the Hobbit... scratched line and a hastily scrawled comment... needs more '_ifurs', '_ofurs' and '_alins'..)