The Spilt Blood Cup

Does anyone know where we can get stuffed emperor penguins from? Rich doesn't like Pete’s teenie tiny FFG version of Hey That’s My Fish, preferring Mayfair Game’s original chunkier version. But why not upscale things even further and create a garden version - like those over-sized chess sets found in the courtyards of a stately homes? Stuffed emperor penguins (over a metre tall) mounted on casters so they can be rolled across a giant hex grid. I would then go a step further and turn the game into a dexterity game where you rolled the giant flightless bird across the board like some perverse curling competition. Maybe the game could even be adapted to ice (so obvious!) and then inaugurated into the Winter Olympics. Contact me if you fancy funding such a project.

Hey that’s my Fish tiles and penguins comparison
Fantasy flight left and Mayfair edition right.

Moritz, John and Pete decided to give Merchant of Venus it’s third airing at NoBoG. I was only vaguely aware of what went on, but I have it on good authority that Pete was generally a horrible merchant, selling lots of his passengers into his slave network, doing dodgy deals on the black market and racking up a huge infamy score. The fiend. The scores? Well, close approximations to the actual scores have been provided: Pete 3.7k (ish) with a 1.1k trade in the final turn giving him the win, John 3.2k (ish) in second and poor Moritz failed to get over 1k.

Decreeing that more blood should be spilt in honour of fantasy sports, Andy revealed that he had not only brought Blood Bowl Team manager, but also the expansion Sudden Death. Myself, Rich and Ewan lept at the chance for sporting brutality.

Sudden Death adds three new team to the mix in this fantasy based take on American football. Vampires, Undead and the Dark Elves can all take to the field. There are new skills such as regeneration and skills that take affect when a player is downed - so that players can be down, but not out, or return to wreak revenge on the tackling player. Contract payouts and enchanted balls are introduced. Plus new team cards for the existing teams. All this makes for a more chaotic, but even more fun experience than the base game offers.

We all wanted to give the three news teams a run out, so along with the Chaos team from the original set randomly drew teams. I drew Chaos, Rich was the Dark Elves. Ewan Drew the Vampire team, which left Andy Undead.

Undead. Jabber and his friend Kevin, who changed
his name thinking it would sound cool. The tosser.

The first couple of rounds were evenly contested with and evenly high level of brutality as well. Andy got right into it, and embracing his inner hooligan, smashed a pint glass on the floor. We were all shocked at how far he’d taken the game’s violent theme. But none more so than Andy, who came to his senses, apologised and crawled around on the floor to pick up broken glass. He cut his hand in the process. We all learnt a valuable lesson and left the violence to the simulation.

By the third round of match-ups my Chaos team had started to build up a lead by consistently cycling players and building up a stack of cheat tokens that converted into fans. This meant I went into the final match-ups with a swagger - sensing that victory was within my grasp. Alas, it was not to be. Ewan’s Vampires targeted the match-ups that won him fans and put the boot into a couple of my better players with his blood lusting vampires. The final count up was tense, but Ewan won by a healthy margin with the hidden contract payouts he’d collected giving him the edge. A magnificent win to cap off a riotously fun game.

An inquest has since been called as to whether the Blood Lust card was played correctly. Mysteriously the investigating officials have all recently been found drained of blood. Hmmm.

That just left Jerry, Nicky and Stu to honour the Euro game with a game of Notre Dame and a game of Kingdom Builder. Jerry won both.

Beer: I sampled the delightful Adnams Kristal White Ale. This clear, golden wheat beer has strong citrus flavours, tempered with sweet caramel and a hint of banana. A welcome addition to the Adnams range. Like Dominion: Cornucopia!

Bring the Pain

It matters not who won or lost, but how you caused the pain. The unofficial motto of Blood Bowl, for this week Andy put in a rare appearance to bring along Blood Bowl : Team Manager - a game I have heard good things about but haven't had chance to play.

Blood Bowl Manager... at a lull in the action

Ten people turned up this week, and it was left to Andy, Bondy, Ewan and newcomer Catherine to settle their differences over the brutal field of play.

Showing the boys how to do things, Catherine romped to an impressive win, her ecstatic 46 fans out-cheering and out-hooliganing everyone else, with Ewan managing second some 15 or so points behind.

Core worlds was played on table 2, Dean, Jerry and Matt taking on the deck building game to create the most impressive new space empire. I didn't take much notice of this - my bad. I can't even tell you who won !

Core worlds - snooping at Jerry's cards

I have become somewhat wary of card building games and by default - fairly or not - I will probably choose something else to play. However in this case the Core Worlds theme is something I find interesting, a bit of clashing space empire goodness puts me in Starship Trooper and Stellar Conquest frame of mind. If it comes up again I will probably take a punt at it - although to be fair, this week, I think Blood Bowl Manager would probably have been my top choice.

Merchant of Venus hit table three. Sam, Pete and myself learning the trade routes of the sector. The sector shaped up into a tricky trading zone, there werent a great many optimised trade routes, but Pete managed to get off to a great start and ply the Western borders of space to great effect - setting up an impressive chain of Pete-Mart space stations.

Merchant of Venus, the forgetful yet highly
profitable Pete-Express at work

But not all was rosey in the business empire of Pete. Whoever he had employed as his deck manager was appalling - arriving at planets only to find cargo had forgotten to be sold at the previous planet, passengers picked up, dropped off, then cancelled and returned to their origin seemed to be the order of the day. The poor Diva passenger must have been offered passage with Pete-Express a dozen times, loaded, off-loaded, delayed, diverted, before eventually being taken to where she wanted to go. If she wasn't a bad tempered Diva before hand, after Pete-Express she probably was.

Nevertheless despite Sam hauling some impressively high cash loads towards the end of the game, Pete-Express stormed to a massive win with some 2,600 odd credits, myself and Sam not even making it past 2,000. I managed to be the most famous of the entrepeneurs, but in the end this did little to combat the vast retail empire that Pete had put in place.

Cool game, there is definitely a random number generator at work in Merchant of Venus that maybe some players would find board throwingly infuriating, but I find it's quite cool. It's an old school throwback, and the enjoyment comes from analysing the always different shipping routes, flying your ship around, choosing what to concentrate on, and watching the possible misfortune of your fellow players.

There was a man who went to Venus...

“Will you be pulling out your Merchant of Venus and slapping it on the table?” Dean enquired. That was all I was going to write this week, but John has been spilling the entire contents of his brain on to the blog over the past few months and a one line innuendo just won’t cut it today.

There were ten of us. No intrepid travellers from far off climes decided to visit this week, so we were left to endure the company of people we already knew.

John did indeed slap his Venus on the table. He’d been threatening to do it for a while and the encouragement from Dean was all he needed.  Rich was impressed and joined them for travelling through the galaxy buying and selling to alien worlds in hope of earning a buck.  This is the second edition of Merchant of Venus, the first being published by Avalon Hill back in 1988. The blurb on Board Game Geek says that this revision "remains true to its magnificently campy core while updating the map and game components and expanding game play in surprising ways that will cause even the most hardcore fan to celebrate." Campy hardcore! It also notes that in true Fantasy Flight tradition the player count has been lowered from six to four. No doubt so that a five player expansion can be released at a later date in order to delight (squeeze cash out of the) fans. As suspected, the intrepid three never finished the game, but they said it was good and could be played in the NoBoG timeslot with a bit more familiarity. John reckons he won.

Stu, Sam and Nicki raced through a few games of Kingdom Builder, which has seen some good table time lately. They then saved the human races in Pandemic. Before finishing the evening with some Coloretto. A victory for each of them and a combined victory to boot - this would have stood them in good stead if Crocker’s victory league table had survived the formative years of NoBoG. As it is, nobody really cares who wins.

Finally we come to Tzolk’in the fancy gear turning Mayan worker placement game. The tribes of Bond, Ewan, Pete and Tom competed for the prestigious prize of having the most victory points at the end of a complete rotation of the central cog. This was my first experience of Tzolk’in and it was one that I greatly enjoyed. On the face of it there is nothing new, other than the gears, which are an inspired way of speeding up the upkeep between rounds. The gears also allow the progression of time to become an easily trackable and usable factor and the actions of your workers get better as they age. I also like that having more workers isn’t an obviously good thing as it becomes prohibitively expensive to use the full complement. The rest of the game is decent, though familiar worker placement fare, with feeding workers, progressing along tracks and building engines to do actions more efficiently. One thing it did lack was the Mayans love of fiendish booby-traps (everyone knows ancient civilisations loved to foil tomb robbers and adventuring archaeologists with ingenious death-dealing devices?) I felt slightly disappointed that every time the gears were turned a random worker didn’t disappear to his doom through a hole in the board. Surely that should have been included? Anyway, I’ll certainly be back for more, but if you hate worker placements the novelty of the gears won’t distract you enough from the grind of optimisation.  Pete won with a building strategy – pipping my crystal skull and god track exploits by two points. I am enraged! Who said nobody cares who wins?