The Case of the Hopeless Investigators

What a week ! This was the week that saw us suddenly and unexpectedly punch through the previous attendee record of 59 all the way up to 68, which at its busiest point was just almost every single table in the house bar one filled ( even the coffee table got a look in for our Watson and Holmes game ). We also had the pleasure of now irregular attendee Mr Bond turning up, and even more irregular attendee Andy - both of whom have done their stint as NoBlog writers. Bondy put forth the theory that it was so busy this week because everyone had turned up to see him, possibly, possibly.

Hamsterolles second outing of the evening

We also had other irregulars in the house, Lauren and Andrew got to play Hamsterolle with a couple of new to gaming people that happened to walk in and showing too much interest in the games going on I whisked them away to try it for themselves. I figured you can't go wrong with a bit of Hamsterolle. I never saw the walk ins again after this. Not sure if they escaped after Hamsterolle or were bundled into the back to become One Of Us, One Of Us, One Of Us. Possibly via Lewis' NoBoG Cthulu Cult.

Anyway. Summary. Busy.

By this time I should have learned. When I say something innocent like "ha, next ridiculous thing you'll know people will want to play Game of Thrones down the pub" this inspires everyone to actually go and do that ridiculous thing and before you know it Game of Thrones becomes a semi regular thing ( with optional throw pint over board mechanic ). Last week I briefly mentioned the idea of both Risk and Monopoly showing up at the Tun as a sign of the end times.

Don't panic. It's only an apocalyptic Pandemic.

Which of course meant that Risk and Monopoly then promptly turned up at the Tun this week. Newcomer Sean was proud to have a beat up copy of Monopoly ready to play ( complete I think with correct connoisseur levels of sellotape holding the box together ), which on asking about he started to disown and say it was a joke or possibly a penalty for anyone losing a game - play Monopoly. Ha. A likely story. I told him NoBoG was a Safe Place and he was free to come out of the closet and admit he liked Monopoly and wanted to play it. No judgements here. Hi. My name is Sean. And I am a Monopolian. 'Nuff said.

Three simultaneous games of Pandemic went down this week. I even think that one of them might have been the latest sexy hotness of Pandemic Legacy - the game that is Pandemic, but features the whole narrative, card ripping up, ever changing rules that is part of the Legacy charm.

Codenames - I'm hanging from the ceiling
Tom Cruise style for this shot

We also had a gaggle of codenames games going on towards the end of the evening, with each group telling tales of appalling clues and appalling guesses. If you've never played Codenames, it's a fairly quick filler game that splits into two teams, with a spymaster for each team attempting to give out clues that allow the rest of their team to correctly guess which currently laid out named cards they need to point out.

Our own table featured its share of woes with the - by now highly suspect - spy master of James giving us a clue of watery, and yet failing our guess of Pool. His defence was that he read Pool and thought of the game and not the swimming variety. I can't remember which way round it was, but he also failed either Tap or Washer for the watery clue as well. D'oh.

The self labelled super group - Team Ginger, mere moments
before they crashed and burned the first time and proved once
and for all they are not the master race.
Left to Right - Hal, Bondy, Luke, Andy, Dean.
Incidentally Hal wears the face of a spy master that is
NOT enjoying the pressure. The rest of
Team Ginger don't seem to be trying too hard.

Despite this, we pulled a win out of the bag somehow, and then went onto win again against the self described Team Ginger as they crashed and burned under the pressure for a second time and picked the instant game losing Assassin card with the ( somewhat cheaty ) clue of James Bond. Agent was the assassin card. Dean - spy master of this travesty - threw up the excuse that he hadn't seen Agent was an option. For the record, ahem, I went 4 wins to zero losses at Codenames including a successful stint as spy master and putting up with James as spy master for one round ( surely a handicap ). I ended up the only one at table with a perfect record. Yes, you may now bask in my awesomeness. This and my epic whitewash wins of spyfall last week mean I am now considering taking up a career related to spying. Or at least talking shit across a table with cards involved. Same difference right ?

Only one copy of Champions of Midgard on offer this week. Which caused not a few people to have to go without playing CoM - there were more players than player spots. I blame Ewan. Who wasn't there. So we were one copy of CoM down.

David and Co. battled further in their once a fortnight ongoing Imperial Assault campaign and James returned for a second week running to play first Acquire then Hamsterolle. Clearly a pairing of games that was so good, he had to do it all again the next week ( which to be fair, they are both solid and fun ).

I got to play the new game Watson and Holmes - incidentally my NoBoG secret santa gift - which is a mechanically simple deduction game running through a narrative of a Sherlock Holmes type mystery. The game is a competitive one - with each player attempting to solve the case before everyone else - and each player having a unique character with their own subtle powers to alter how the game is played.

Watson & Holmes on the coffee table. Tim got to play a dog.
Who for a dog was surprisingly talkative and something of a dick.
When he kept on preventing people getting to locations.

The main thrust of the game comes down to reading the narrative found at any of the dozen or so case locations and piecing together the relevant information within, whilst also out maneuvering or outright dicking with your fellow investigators by beating them to a location or preventing them from accessing an important location altogether. Sending Watson along with another player also gives them the rather unwelcome effect that they then have to read out their location to everyone at table - thus giving everyone else the benefit of their personal investigation ( and potentially then putting them a step behind everyone else ).

The game doesn't hold your hand too much - and you will need to sift through the narrative text to reduce the important facts within - it's not going to point them out to you. But the clues seem nicely balanced in that they don't feel entirely obvious and therefore you get satisfaction in working them out, and also are not so obscure that you feel like you're beating your head against a wall.

A once playthrough style game, when you've tackled one of the cases in Watson and Holmes you can't tackle it again as you already know the unique information for that particular case, but the game does ship with over a dozen cases ready to burn through. The cases range in difficulty from easy to hard, and because they are uniquely scripted can get up to all manner of clever tricks like changing what it is you need to investigate half way through the case ( in our case an apparent suicide became a murder ).

I wasn't too sure this game would hold up that well prior to playing in a group, but having now played it with five players the game is great and offers something of a streamlined Holmesian experience of other games that have come before it. This is also a surprisingly social kind of game despite the secrecy and gathering of clues in - somewhat - isolation to everyone else that is really pushed to the fore when someone gets blabber mouth Watson dumped on them and they have to read their location out to everyone. A certain amount of oneupmanship, knowing looks, bluff and race tension does creep into the whole affair and it works very nicely indeed. This would be an ideal game to have a more chilled gaming session for a group of non hardcore gamers that want something to think about, as well as appealing to your average gamer that likes a bit of deduction. I could well see this game doing fairly well at some dinner party type affair with the right crowd of people - particularly collaborating couples ( the game caters for 7 people ( or teams ), and because of the way the simultaneous gameplay works there is just about no downtime for any player ).

Our game featured epic fails by all but the very last investigator to knock on 221B Baker Street with the solution. One after another each of us gave our solution to Holmes only to find out, no, you got it wrong, please go and kill yourself - most of these accompanied by the cackling of Dean who had first offered a solution and come oh so close but not close enough to win. Dean further ventured the opinion that Holmes by the end was just slamming the door shut on every wrong answer from the procession of clowns turning up at his apartments. In the end Bondy with the luxury of four failed guesses before him managed to nail the conclusion after some epic wrong footing of my own investigation.

Wiz War, stroll around and fireball your enemies.

What else was going on. Wiz War was present - this is something of a real long in the tooth game ( originally published in 1983 ) that has seen many a reprint in the intervening years and has players running around as wizards trying to do their opposite number in, in something of an old school fantasy style FPS death match - with a bit of treasure stealing thrown in. It's been a good few years since I've played this, but it's quite fun - and for me this and the much later Dungeon Twister get mangled in my head into some multi armed octopus of a game ( they feel quite similar to me ) - but Wiz War is for my money the better streamlined game.

Notre Dame - Not. Rah. Duhm for this side of the pond.
Note Err Daym for the other side of the pond. Colonials. Pfft.

Stu - official guardian of all that is Properly Old School Euro, or might in future be deemed Properly Old School Euro - was also in the house along with Tom and both were playing amongst other things the classic Euro of Notre Dame. Keeping it real with the multi award nominated and Spiel des Jahres nominated gaming.

This week coming we have the delight of the local press in attendance at the Mash Tun. The editor has decided that it would be nice to do a feature on Norwich Board Gamers and to that end is sending out a journalist and photographer in tow to interview those in the know about what goes on, and chat to a few of the attendees. If and when the article shows up online, I'll stick a link to it, lurkers can read the official piece and gawp in amazed lurkerness at what they're missing, and attendees can check to see if their beautiful faces and epic strategising made it to print and nationwide ( or at the very least region wide ) fame.

James is keen to have the press guys actually join in on some boardgaming fun - but I suspect they will be time pressured and focused on doing a job as opposed to playing some (excruciating) 3 hour game of Terra Mystica. Possibly the order of the day would be some nice, quick, accessible social type game - so if someone with a notepad and trilby turns up and hovers by you ( that's what journalists look like right ? ) consider offering them a turn of cash n guns / resistance / werewolf / mafia de cuba / spy fall / codenames et al.


The Gallery. Monika saves my bacon this week and takes some pictures I failed to get round to. Thank you Model 14 ( Monika's cylon designator ).

Terra Mystica. Strong showing for current second most popular game at NoBoG

Epic spell duel war thingies.

Imperial Assault. These are your rebel heroes. They seem awful casual for Rebel Heroes. Not even a decent cosplay in sight.
David at the back plots his nefarious Empire shenanigans.

Great shot of Pandemic - James gazes in adoration at something Voitek is showing him. A disease cube probably.

Champions of Midgard. Elliot attempts a blue steel look. Fails. That's a rubbish blue steel.

Moar pandemic. The Tun was lousy with infections this week.

That which shall not be named

Buenas noches a monos espaciales. Como estas ? ( Good evening space monkeys. How are you ? )

This week we had an Iberian flavour at the Ribs as after months of Pete trying to get his obscure spanish 15 Dias game to table, it finally got a play last week with a fairly eager six willing to take on the dubious English rules translation.

Set in the 17th century, 15 Dias is a card game about competing families and characters vying for the attention of the freshly installed young and naive Spanish King Phillip IV. Play cards, compare influence, gain affection. Pretend you know what the rules are saying. Does that sound your kind of thing ?

Players compete on two levels - the first is for your family, which sees the players split into two teams set against each other, and the second is individually - against everyone at the table. Family allegiance is determined at the start of the game, ensuring an equal number of players are on each team - which probably explains why the game has a requirement that there are only an even number of players ( surely a bit of a missed chance here to allow any number but introduce a handicap to one team or the other to offset the extra help ).

Players then get to compete in one of the three power categories, Government, Clerical and Society, which is determined at the start of a round by dishing out a card for each of the two families ( think a super simplified Top Trumps mechanism ). Players secretly play characters into the mix to compete for family favour with the winning family pulling the all important affection.

Once that happy team based round is complete, players then vie individually for affection with the remaining cards in hand.

Presentation of the game is spiffy, in a historical kind of illustration kind of way, but from reported moans of those playing the game, whilst the art is nice, the iconography is atrocious, making it tricky to work out exactly what each card is doing with subtle differences in icon revealing its capabilities.

It has to be said that no one at the table had good things to say about this game in the post play comments. When flamenco dancing and silly hats broke out half way through the game*, it was questioned whether all the rules were actually correct, or had survived translation as some of the mechanics just didn't seem to work that well.

* may be a total fabrication

The best comment was that it was "bizarre" ( said with accompanying wince ) and the worst comment was that Blockade Runner from a few weeks ago, and hailed as abysmal by Hal was a "much better game".

I dunno, the game seems ok to me, its main gimmick being the whole how much do you love your team versus how much do you love yourself kind of strategy malarkey. Although at 20 minutes per player - and thus a 2 hour experience minimum for six, perhaps it's somewhat long for what it's achieving. I wonder just how much rules mangling was going on and how well Pete explained it. 

Given the games drubbing however it's probably unlikely to show up again at the Ribs anytime soon.

Upstairs I managed to rouse out some players to join Stu in a collection of things, from Notre Dame to Wurfhel Bohnanza ( Bondy had been left in charge of game organisation and managed to have Stu on a table on his own upstairs, tsk ), whilst on my table I got Lewis and Clark out again and oversaw Guillame playing a super tight super efficient euro win beating myself and Sam. Sam struggled a bit to get his gear in order in this game, although to be fair he was also struggling with eating some pub supplied Biltong, which at times was challenging him for evolutionary supremacy. I think this was the true challenge at the table - overcoming the nuclear kiln dried beef that was masquerading as a bar snack. Sam kindly offered me a sample of the Biltong, the eating of which was an experience that on reflection was a bit like eating a leather belt. That had chilli seasoning. Or possibly a shoe that had had a decent sprinkle of pepper. I can't say I've actually eaten a shoe. But I imagine that it's pretty much the same as eating Biltong.

Afterwards we got some Port Royal and Sechs Nimmt in, of which I won nothing. Pfft.

That which shall not be named - Munch*in

The table over from us had a fairly bonkers six player game of dominion, which whilst technically is a four player game, can actually be played with as many players as you like until you get bored with the downtime. After that they played that which shall not be named. I don't think Bondy noticed, and thus they escaped any punitive sanctions. Fletch demanded to know what was so bad about Munch*in anyway. Shortly after this comment a group of black balaclava dressed men stuffed a hood over his head and bundled him from the pub into a blacked out van. You can't say he wasn't warned.

Meanwhile back downstairs, Duncan had shown up with a board gaming relic - Dream Factory, which I think Jeff got a look in with, and at the other end of the room they engaged in some Sheriffing of Nottinghaming, where Luke managed to rein in his compulsion to check every bag under a certain size ( and pulled a second placing ), and they then followed up with some Werewolfing, where a rather spanky Tanner managed the win by getting his suicidal self killed. Not bad ! It was noted by the Sheriff group how strong an honest strategy was - something that has been echoed by other groups playing it, which does make one wonder if Sheriff can break down a little with someone that's brutally honest and has a reasonable card pull.


26, 29, 28 for attendance of the last three weeks.

Two Eds are Better than One

Two Eds are Better than One, so sayeth the idiom, however just what three Eds gets you is beyond conventional wisdom - this week we had three Eds, Med Ed, Writer Ed - finally back from the wilds of Milton Keynes - and lastly for want of a better title, Lord Ed - who loves to play Lords of Waterdeep... and win.

Pax Porfiriana - the card game of Mexican coups, revolutions and dodgy businessmen - made it back down to the Ribs, last time I saw this was in Mr Bond's excited grip, and I can remember it being quite a good play.

Pax Porfiriana with Two Eds, Hal, Rich and Pete

This lasted all evening for the entire table, Pete muttered something about hidden information - I think he was subtly complaining about it - but I believe ended up winning. Or won one game. Or something.

Lord Ed decreed that Lords of Waterdeep was played on the middle table, and proceeded to play a very close game, with Ed pipping James by two points in a close finish, whilst on the table over, another evergreen favourite at the Ribs - Betrayal at House on the Hill was setup with Luke eager to once more prowl the haunted corridors.

Upstairs Dead of Winter got another cold blast of play - this time around we had to barricade the bejesus out of the colony with 10 barricades, and have a barricade at every other location too. Mid way through the game things were looking good, decent food supply, zombie numbers in decline and no apparent betrayers. Then a single dodgy betrayal like card turned up in a fuel crisis, accusations went flying, and things started to go downhill. With a single round left to play, Sam called all the zombies to the colony, set fire to the lovingly contributed crises, trashed a whole bunch of cards to make everyone miserable, and oversaw a massive thirteen people get eaten by the rush of zombies.

Game over, betrayer Sam had won. Betrayer Bondy had kept his head down all game, and by the smallest of margins missed a joint win. Everyone else was eaten.

Although Sam technically won, the final outro of the game revealed him to be eyeing his naked self up in the mirror, stroking his well fed belly, and getting excited about all the suffering people and his mountain of saved food. Freak. I'm not sure anyone wins when you are getting off on watching yourself stroke your belly in a mirror.

There were other really nice narrative moments in the game, Mr Bond screaming the police station down, Martin poisoning people with his cooking and causing an outbreak of pus filled buboes, the wonder mom single handedly trawling a crate of food back to colony then breaking it down to make a barricade before romping through hordes of zombies.

It's a really nice game, but I think the betrayers tend to have the upper hand, timing is everything and it can be easy to tank the colony when things get a bit tough.

James brought Five Tribes to the table again, Dave won this by a tiny margin, and Small World Underground got a play for the second week running, followed by some Love Lettering.

Atta Ants induces much thinking

Whole bunch of people played Cash and Guns 2nd Ed at the end of the evening, making this the third or fourth consecutive week its seen table time.

Last week was Small World Underground, a long game of Blood Bowl Team Manager - Ewan and his Orcs tanked badly - Notre Dame, Five Tribes, Lords of Waterdeep, Ticket to Ride, Atta Ants, Cash and Guns and Frank's Zoo. We also kicked off the evening with an absolutely frantic couple of games of Space Cadets Dice Duel, which was immense fun, but after the second game everyone literally stopped for a rest for ten minutes. Crazy frenetic stuff.

29 people this week. 26 last.

Chris is ecstatic about getting his Tickets in TtR

Guns, Beer, Loot. What could possibly go wrong ?

Five Tribes - a game confusingly for only Four players

Notre Dame

Small World Underground

Glass Road to the Ming Dynasty

A fine array of different gaming choices were on offer this week at the Ribs, with plenty of never seen before titles just begging to be played by the Eighteen people that managed to make it.

Pete brought along his yet to be named and yet to be playtested game, and quickly found another three to help give the thing its first run through. Inspired by Race for the Galaxy but mixed up with a board / topological map, the game is a sci-fi exploration and exploitation tile layer. Take a lot of Race for the Galaxy, a pinch of Eclipse, a pinch of Steam and a pinch of Suburbia, and you arrive at... <insert game name>.

Chink In the Galaxy ? Pete's new prototype game.

Each round a player gets to select an action ( Research / Develop / Settle / Trade / Influence ), and then once everyone has revealed their chosen action, all have an opportunity to use any of the called actions. So far so Race. Unlike Race however, your systems, developments and goods are not placed in your own private solitaire area, instead they are placed on the galactic map - where in theory they are open to use and abuse from all players. So how to work out who controls what ? Influence. Players can add tokens to systems to indicate increasing influence over a system, and access to its capabilities and its end game victory points.

Goods can be Traded between systems, netting card rewards or end game victory points, and with each trade, influence in the target system is increased ( presumably as your cultural goods flood the market ... McDonalds anyone ? ).

For an untested prototype the game plays remarkably well right out of the box without any hiccups or imbalances whilst also being fun - and all who played enjoyed the experience.

On the next table, super game bargain hunter Stu brought forth Notre Dame for a whirl. Notre Dame is an older Feld-ian title where players compete to hold sway over... Notre Dame - or as some would have it, it's a game about managing medieval rats.

Notre Dame

Both of those statements are true.

A simple card drafting / action selection / area influence game, your task is to build a suitable strategy from the influence you already have in your borough, and the cards you have finally got your hands on whilst also keeping an eye on your 'rat level' to avoid it getting out of hand and the plague befalling your neighbourhood ( with a loss of VP and influence ).

Not sure who won this, but I did hear Nicky complaining at one point about her lack of decent options, the accusation being her fellow players were stitching her up.

Over on table three, Sam brought along the tactical sci-fi dungeon crawler fest that is Level 7 Omega Protocol. In a very familiar theme setup, one player gets to play the numerically superior but power challenged bad guys ( Aliens ) , whilst the other player(s) get to take control of an elite team of gun toting good guys ( Marines ). The theme of a butt kicking marine squad from Cameron's Aliens franchise has been done many times in a variety of guises, from things like the classic Space Hulk or Space Crusade, through to hellish inspired Claustrophobia and Doom, robotic Legions of Steel or to the WW2 skewed Incursion.

Level 7 [Omega Protocol]

This game leans on the side of a personalised dungeon crawler feel, with characters that are customised at the game start with a number of kits - giving each marine unique capabilities ( somewhat like Space Crusade ), and rooms that offer 'treasure' and surprises that plays very much like Descent / Space Crusade / Doom, and very little like Space Hulk / Legions of Steel. Not sure what the opinion on this game was at the table, although I overheard a passing 'alright' comment.

Mechanics or not the game is presented beautifully, and if you are into the whole sci-fi shooting hordes of things type trope, or like the idea of opening a door into an unknown room of horror gun in hand, then this game must be at least be slightly appealing to delve into.

Finally, upstairs Glass Road and then Ming Dynasty were given a bash. Glass Road is another Uwe Rosenberg game which has definitely been inspired by his other titles - notably Ora and Labora. Glass Road however is a fast stripped down experience that offers the familiar flavour of developing your own synergistic board, but in a very short frame of time with very little fiddle factor.

A set of fifteen duplicate cards are given to each player - each card giving the player one or two actions to take when played. From these fifteen, five are chosen and then over three rounds, cards are played and their actions taken. At this point the game could be an utterly solitaire competitive Euro build malarkey, but here is where the clever bit comes in. If you select an action someone else has in their hand, they get to take that action too out of turn - but both of you get to perform only one of the actions ( out of two ) listed on the card instead of the usual two. Also, the card *must* be played - so any grand plans you had of using that build card when you had built up enough resources might just go out of the window when you are forced to play it early.

Astute readers will also notice that with only three rounds and five cards, you can only pick three of the five to play. Guess correctly however and you could be playing all five of your cards as others trigger your 'spares' out of turn - giving you more bang for the buck, and the initial selector less.

Glass Road - Resource dials eliminating the usual
Rosenbergian chaotic token piles

Uwe is a fan of loading his games with a bazillion different resource types. And Glass Road is no exception - there are eight basic resource types to collect, but unlike his other games he has finally hit upon an utterly elegant almost no bits mechanism for it, where all your goods are kept track of on two dials. Resources never feel clunky or fiddly, and it's actually very easy to keep track of the eight different things ( plus there is a clever auto build mechanic for both Bricks and Glass )

Points are rewarded for developing buildings on your board - but to get those buildings you will need empty land ( clearing forests ) and a whole bunch of resources. The game is short and sweet - four periods of three cards - meaning anywhere between 12 and 20 actions in total for the entire game. Into this you will need to be building extra resources, harvesting, erecting buildings and synergising your setup.

All in all this game is lovely - it's refreshingly tight and quick, and yet offers some of the nice things in other Rosenberg games of developing your own little area, and getting satisfaction of a steadily improving infrastructure. The card / action mechanic works fabulously well and introduces a great deal of interaction - buildings are unique and in a shared build pool, so it really does matter what gets called when and by who.

Everyone enjoyed the game, although Tom reflected it could do with being four times as big and taking four times as long to really sink your teeth into it - but then it would be something like Ora and Labora I think. Dean put it high on his list and a possible future purchase item.

Lastly, Tom also a connoisseur of the bargain game bin shuffled a recent purchase - Ming Dynasty into sight at the end of the Glass Road. Quite a bonkers game of area control and Princely movement, your task is to dominate the various neighbourhoods of the city and ultimately earn more victory points in doing so than everyone else. As you can only place members of your family ( influence ) wherever your Prince is, it matters where you are, and where you can move to - these factors controlled by the movement cards you have, and where everyone elses Prince is ( only one Prince is allowed per region ).

Ming Dynasty... or Poop Wars, depending on your pov.

Dean after a while managed to retheme the game into some City Sanitation game as his Prince 'walked around the city pooping blocks' which the city then cleaned up for victory points.

Uh huh.

Fun game, somewhat susceptible to the winds of luck, cool to play, probably a bit on the long side for what it is.

Pete Week

Instructor Phenir banked his Tie Interceptor to the left in a graceful arc whilst keeping his eye on the four rookies who were bumbling around in their Tie Fighters.
 "Pattern Alpha Four Left !" Phenir barked into his intercomm. Three tie fighters rolled left - whilst one rolled right - the sergeant in his Tie advanced peeling off to follow the single inept rookie. 
"I said left you saalarkian hog ! Do you not know right from left ?! I will have you back at guard duty TK-426 !" . The miscreant Tie wobbled in space before joining back with his newbie compatriots.  
A flash of silver glinting in the dark of the void - Phenir snapped his attention to the right flank. There in the distance, a rebel recon flight hauled into view. Phenir cursed into his mask.  
"Z squadron form up, battle speed,  flank right, bandits approaching. Rookies stay close, remember your training !"  
As the Tie engines whined up to full speed, laser fire crackled between the combatants, the rookies getting a harder lesson today than they had bargained for.

This week must have been Pete's birthday or somesuch, as both Race for the Galaxy and Hansa Teutonica were played - and Pete got to partake of both. These two games are something that makes Pete a very happy NoBoGer.

With some discussion about what to play, and a debate about the merits of various Archipelago shenanigans, it was decided that a couple of lighter games would kick off proceedings for the eight of us.

Ewan sitting in on his first bewildering encounter with Race for the Galaxy joined Sam, myself and Pete for a relaxed pace blast through this classic marmite card based game. Not to be confused with marmite twiglets, a delicious crunchy snack with a hint of marmite. Race for the Galaxy is more a mental marmite - you either love it or you hate it. No chewing on the cards required. Or you play it enough that you get to like it, because goddamnit you have to play it at least 30 times to get the learning curve, and you will play it at least 30 times it's in your contract. Pete said so.

Declaring myself to be aiming for second place - behind of course Pete - the game set off, with Sam getting a great start, and Pete playing in a laid back manner.

Ewan sat in the corner looking perplexed. Not untypical for your first hand of Race. I think he was mulling over whether he liked this curious marmite flavour. Disgusting ? Or interestingly piquant ?

Cards were cycled through, planets settled, developments developed and Pete by mid game had set up a devastating economic engine. Sam hadn't quite fully capitalised on his setup, Ewan was struggling with his military worlds, and I was tromping through the mud of trying to get something to work.

With a few blasts of high earning VPs for the last couple of rounds, Pete ended up the comfortable winner, I was second, Sam came in a half dozen points behind me and Ewan behind Sam.

In other words, the positions matched the level of experience. Coincidence ? Maybe.

No chewed cards, so probably a victory for everyone then.

Notre Dame. This is what Paris looks like. Apparently.

  In other non galaxy racing parts of the universe, Stu, Fletch, Nicky and Matt had a stab at Notre Dame.

Not sure who won this, but there were some curses and groans as this played out, clearly vying for influence in the Parisian suburbs is a cut throat affair. I was intrigued by the board layout for this, and the game chatter sounded like it was a fun outing.

Half time was called and everyone had a switch around. Despite Pete being up for some Star Wars action, the temptation of Hansa proved too much, so he Nicky, Matt and Ewan went off and played Hansa Peteonica. A vanilla outing for the board game this time - no alternative board nor funky objective cards - and Matt, a proponent of the Actions Are Important line of thinking, aced his way to five actions, linked up the two main cities and romped home to a convincing score.

Pete is slipping at Hansa. I think it can no longer be referred to as Hansa Peteonica, as quite a few people have given him a drubbing at this lately, and I am hard pressed to remember the last time he won.

Star Wars was setup on the other table, myself, Fletch and Sam sitting down to this, with Stu participating in a purely observational capacity.. and the odd jibe at passing hap hazard pilots.

Sam in his first play at this picked Imperial, Fletch went Rebel, so deciding to join the inexperienced Sam I too went imperial.

Sam picking quality, opted for a Tie Advanced with some missiles, and a Tie Interceptor flown by some Imperial Bad Ass ( Turr Phenir ), for a total of 52 points. Deciding I needed to therefore weigh in on quantity - I am with Comrade Stalin here, that quantity has its own quality - I pulled four rookie academy pilot tie fighters out, at a cost of 48 points. Four juniors in non upgraded tin cans. Don't worry lads... you'll be fine.

Fletch chose himself a spread of war machinery, an X-Wing flown by non other than Wedge Antilles, a somewhat inexperienced A Wing, and a veteran Y-Wing. Needless to say all three ships were packing - R2 units, missiles, fancy systems, you name it. Pfah. Those rebels and their bling. A real man sits in a non upgraded tin can. With no life support. Or heat. In a funky flightsuit. With only a red lightbulb for illumination.Yeah.

A no nonsense fight kicked off with a fairly short ranged brutal pass that resulted in damage to the A-Wing, a minor shield dent for the X-Wing and that was about it. Roaring past each other, half the Imperial force wheeled around to find the A Wing startled in headlights and quickly shot to pieces - its missiles unspent.

The interceptor is just about to bite the dust, but
Imperial payback is screaming in from the right

As Tie fighters wheeled about out of position, Wedge got R2 to repair his shields and rounded on an Interceptor bearing down on him - annoyingly the tricksy boosting out of his way. The Y-Wing behind Wedge however, with quick reflexes and a single shot blew the oh so clever Interceptor out of the sky - the Imperials top pilot biting the dust in a fraction of a second. Ah the fragilities of the Empire.

The Rebels chuffed with success, failed to notice the Advanced and flanking rookie Ties targetting Wedge and in a flurry of fire the X-wing also disintegrated in a burst of laser cannon and missiles.

This left the Y-Wing alone against all four Tie rookies and one advanced. Poor odds.

The Y-Wing pulling off some amazing moves for its aged frame managed to keep the worst of the incoming fire away, but found its systems blowing up and collapsing as the Empire took its toll.

The rookies had survived, Instructor Phenir however was dust...Guard duty my ass, thought TK-426.

Very fun game. Must play this more.

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!