The Grammaticist's Delight, or, the Semicompetent Semicolon.

Good evening; good evening; good evening; good evening and welcome to another episode of; no; not QI; you sillies; this is the one and only NoBloG! And what a night it was! Auspiciously did it start with a party of intrepid Grosvenorers; sallying forth to the chippy and feasting on deep-fried food products of various kinds. And delicious they were; too. I'd missed the previous week of fun due to accidentally faffing for too long before putting my tea in the oven; so outsourcing the tea preparation to a third party was the obvious and scrumptious solution. But enough about what I shoved in my face; "what about the games?" I hear you cry! Well as you may have guessed; some games were played and I am prepared to share a selection of them with you. As is often the case I didn't manage to get round even nearly everybody; but in my notepad today there are reports from Istanbul; Power Grid; Resistance; Archipelago; Aye, Dark Overlord!; Rock, Paper, Wizard; and King of Tokyo. (I hope, dear readers, that you appreciate the lesser spotted Oxford semicolon.)

So without further adieu, let us head for Anatolia, where East meets West in the bazaar of Istanbul. If you haven't played, the task is to travel around the city in the hunt of rubies (the first to acquire enough being the winner) by leaving a series of lackeys in various locations to perform advantageous transactions. You have to plan carefully though, as you are forced to backtrack to the same locations in order to gather your assistants again before you can dispatch them once more to other tasks. When you collect them, you can perform that same action again, allowing you to further optimise your actions. When I arrived, Matt had a whole load of bonus cards and a maximally upgraded caravan (if Pimp my Ride existed in the heyday of the Grand Bazaar, his would be the result) for the transportation of the maximum amount of cargo (which you sell for rubies). Matt however was not feeling too confident, as Gareth was feeling fairly liquid (in cash terms, rather than literally melting) and Siobhan was ahead of him on rubies. I should point out here that Siobhan is not Siobhan at all, but actually Maddie — no, not another nickname, but actually a joke at my expense, if you can believe it! Apparently I wrote down her name wrong on a previous blogging session and this was punishment for my error! The only thing is, I'm fairly sure I named her as Sinead, not Siobhan, but there we have it. (We could settle on Madnebhan?) Lazy lackeys (and forgetful bloggers) suitably chastised, I moved on.

The bustling bazaar of Istanbul

I found myself in an America of yesteryear, untroubled by the antics of a child left alone for too long with the orange paint, but suffering from a war for control of its Power Grid. Our players dubbed it, "Capitalism: The Game!" and the objective of course is to make the most money. How does one accomplish such a task? By generating power, of course! The object of the game is to buy power stations and the fuel to power them. Power stations are auctioned off, while the price of fuel is determined according to a supply-and-demand system that increases the cost if people are buying lots of a given type. At this point, fossil fuels were all the rage — typical American capitalists, you may say, but this was allegedly instead, "shortening our lives now for a greener tomorrow!" Colour me suspicious!

I proceeded to the next table only to find that the Resistance had collapsed, sabotaged from within by terrible treachery! And the scurrilous spies had not even the decency to creep silently away, instead revelling in their victory and the means with which they had achieved it: apparently Spy James and Spy Richard had managed to "check" each other's loyalty with mutually-reinforcing stories, so that when a third (Resistance) player claimed that one of them was seeking to undermine everyone's efforts, the seed of doubt was sown. When Sean then decreed an unfortunate mission team, the seed blossomed into a veritable tree of distrust. Or at least a shrub of suspicion, which was sufficient for the marauding moles to do their dirty work and bring it all crashing down, shrubs and all.

Getting to the next table involved a short trip by boat as they were based in an Archipelago, a game described to me as, "theoretically co-operative." Pushing for more information I discovered that this meant that if you didn't "cooperate" then the natives would get pissed off, murder and/or eat you and you'd all lose. But apart from that, you have completely free reign to backstab, betray, bugger and beat your opponents in any way you choose. In fact, wheeling and dealing is more the order of the day: basically you can make any deal you like, including bribing the person who determines the order of play for that turn to put you in an advantageous place in the order. Though Sam's previous play of the game was "sulky," he was feeling happier now because his monopolist card forced other people to give him money or stone, which in this game meant delicious victory points. He treated us all to some of his thought process which I will relate now: "Cattle bitches... I have enough fish... A healthy salad: fish, meat, stone and ore." If that doesn't convince you, I don't know what will.

The explored islands of Archipelago

The game features an exploration mechanic in which you pick tiles from a stack — either the top one which you can see, or the next one which is unseen. You then try to fit it into the existing configuration of tiles making up the eponymous archipelago. This is non-trivial because you may be unable to make it fit — at least two edges must touch existing tiles — and Emma had already explored four times without being able to lay one down. There's an action board where you place tokens to determine whether you'll be exploring or harvesting or hiring the natives or what. Sam has eschewed the last option as he reckons it's slavery and is taking an ethical stand, though Tom says hiring them actually makes them happy (and less likely to murder you to death.) Sam's derisive reply was, "Oh yes, they're just waiting around for the white man to come and hire them!" Some racial tensions in this colonialist enterprise are clearly coming to the fore.

Tom (aka the Slaver) makes a move in Archipelago.

And now turning to the games I was lucky enough to play, we first prostrated ourselves and proclaimed, "Aye, Dark Overlord!" to Lewis, the selfsame Dark Overlord. This is a very silly game. And we had very silly players, so it was even sillier than it might have been. In fact, even though there are literally several rules we essentially got rid of all of them, so I will explain the skeleton version we ended up playing. One player — the Dark Overlord — has sent the rest of you — his wretched minions — on a quest, which you have failed. The Dark Overlord tells you the quest you were sent on (you probably forgot, being so wretched and useless) and then points menacingly at one of you and cries, "YOU! Explain why you have failed," or words to that effect. The singled-out minion then selects a card from his hand, each of which has a monster, character, location or other eventuality which he attempts to use as an explanation for how the failure is actually the fault of some other minion. That player then does the same thing. At any time, and for any reason, the Dark Overlord may give a minion a withering look. If you receive three withering looks he feeds you to his pet monster and you get eaten and lose, ending the game. Naturally the game is not for those who require a great deal of structure and strategy, but we had a lot of fun convincing Lewis that Fluffy had been abandoned by JD, thus leading to a breakdown in the chain of command, which had been being used to tie Fluffy to a stick. And that Glibling the Leprous (whom some of you may know as "David") was not just trying to shag everything that moved in the dungeon, including the mice.

Some of the excuses available in Aye, Dark Overlord!
Centre stage: the Hellhound aka Fluffy. Glibling's first
Withering Look is visible to the right.

His Darkness, Lewis

After someone got eaten we played the slightly more tactical, though still quite silly, Rock, Paper, Wizards! In this quite original game you are trying to advance into a cave to acquire gold from a slain dragon. You accomplish this by simultaneously throwing out some kind of magical gang sign, of which four are allowable at any one time. These range from the dangerous "chain lightning" to the daring "imprison" to the downright kinky "dominate person." Each has various effects such as moving you closer to the gold, moving others further away, altering your target's spell or forcing them to donate gold. There is some second-guessing required if you wish to avoid falling victim to everyone's ire, though ultimately the game is a bit random and the winner will probably not be obvious until they are declared. In the end we all chain-lightninged each other to death, enfeebled one another's minds and generally blasted the shit out of that poor dragon's lair, until eventually Kieran arose victorious from the smoking ashes of our crispy corpses.

Hannah enfeebles herself

I can't remember what this spell was

Two chain lightnings and one anti-magic field

A cluster of Wizards in Rock, Paper, Wizards

After the smoke cleared and our vision returned there was still time to crown ourselves the King of Tokyo. I gather this is a perennial at NoBoG, but in case you, as I was, are unfamiliar, the objective of your monster is to score points by either rolling identical numbers on dice (which you can re-roll Yahtzee style) or by entering and remaining in Tokyo. You enter by rolling attacks, which hurt anyone inside Tokyo (assuming you are outside) at which point they can choose to withdraw, whereupon you must enter. It's dangerous in there, though, and not just because of the preponderance of magical girls (arch-nemeses of gigantic city-crushing monsters as any anime will tell you, at least unless the monster has tentacles...) — the industrial smog prevents you from healing your wounds, meaning you're liable to die if you stay there for long getting slapped about by all the outsiders. I got smashed early on after pushing my luck to stay in there, and watching James roll attacks on all six of his dice — just what he needed to crush me to a bloody, radioactive pulp. James went on to take the win after JD bit his nose to spite his face which, for skyscraper-demolishing edifices of mutated meat, means carpet bombing all of Japan, dealing damage to everyone. This killed Hannah, but left him perilously close to death, allowing James merely to sneeze on him to take the win. JD was happy with his decision.

A bloody jammy roll

Space Penguin is not the King of Tokyo.
Space Penguin is dead.

A King is crowned!

And that's the night! Whew! From bizarre bazaars to deceased beasts, an evening of victories and losses, strategy and silliness. And chips, of course - don't forget chips. Until next time, don't forget to brush your... game boards. They get dusty, you know.

Volcanoes, Pirates and Power Station Owners

This week I urged Rich to do the weekly game and gamer wrangling - who brought what and what do people want to play. And as he did such a good job in difficult circumstances, I then convinced him to write the blog too... over to Rich.

About 25 people this week. Here's some of what got played:

Skyline 3000 . 'Tall Dark' Tom bought it for ₤7.99 from The Works. In the bar later he said he enjoyed it. I have no idea who won, what it's like or anything like that. I suspect it was rubbish but Tom was putting a brave face on it, not wanting to appear to have wasted ₤7.99 on another turkey.

On the next table there was a 6 player game of Lords of Waterdeep with the Scoundrels of Skullport expansion. Waterdeep has been a popular game down the club for a while now. The expansion adds the sixth player and the corruption mechanic, which mixes things up a bit and definitely makes things more interesting. In mine and others' experience though getting the big quests seems to almost always result in victory, and the smaller plot quests (which give you abilities) although a cool idea, rarely provide enough of an advantage to counter the fact they give you less points. The intrigue cards are a neat innovation and give some nice interactivity that often isn't there in worker placement games. I think their next expansion should be Wankers of the Waterfront, with more harsh intrigue cards and other ways to be a dick.

On the other downstairs table Richard IV got everyone to play Power Grid with the UK map. Power Grid has been played a lot down the club over the years, probably more so than any other game. Someone won. I can't remember who, though I did ask. I didn't realise that the Admiral would give me a direct order to write this blog so you must forgive me. I can remember Rich IV summarising that the UK map was very tight, and the scores at the end were very close.

Upstairs: Owen, Alina, Sam and The Admiral played Robinson Crusoe. They played the volcano scenario, but forgot to actually have the volcano blow smoke, or something like that. Sam tripped over a box and got bitten by a rabbit and died, but they won the scenario despite that. Robinson Crusoe is a great game, probably my favourite pure coop. The neat thing is that you'll draw cards as a consequence of foraging, building or exploring. These cards will have an immediate effect and then will be shuffled into the events deck, and they'll come out later and something related will happen. Great mechanic, really thematic.

And on the final table we (Dean, Matt, Med Ed, Tim and me) played Libertalia, a pirate game. Players each get an identical hand of character cards with values ranging from 1 to 30. You play cards face down and the highest number played gets first pick of the loot for that round. Simple? The thing that complicates it is that each character card has an ability that can trigger and do things – ranging from getting extra doubloons to killing other people's characters and so on. Cool game. Dean won convincingly, I came dead last. Evidently being a pirate in real life doesn't help you win this game.

Augustus also got played, a really neat game that resembles bingo but without the crazy adrenaline rush you'll get down the Mecca on a Friday night.

After Libertalia those of us remaining upstairs played a three player game of Small World. Matt won with over a hundred points, the rest of us had in the 70s/80s. He got Heroic Skellingtons, which proved a very potent combination and he hung onto them for most of the game. Tim got a great early start, after following our advice and taking Commando Tritons. However, our counsel failed to take into account the looming presence of the Skellingtons, so Tim's spread out Commando Tritons were munched up by the Skellingtons in record time. My Spirit Humans didn't fare any better. After a slow start pointswise Matt built up to scoring at least 10 a turn for the remainder of the game, with little we could do about it as there were no bashy race combinations available. Good game though.

See ya next week for more games. Love, Punk Rich/Spazzy/C*n*y Rich x

Twenty 20

NoBoG has broken new ground this week, a record busting twenty people turned up to play games ! It's great to see a steady stream of new faces enjoying the evening and becoming regulars or even irregulars as they return in the following weeks. So a big well done to everyone, new and old, for making NoBoG Tuesdays so warm, friendly and fun !

This week we got to welcome Barnaby, Simon and Liz as newcomers to NoBoG. Ed also made a welcome return this week after a long hiatus, it was good to see him and his new tropical island tan, and Fly Sam also made a repeat visit to our corner of the pub.

As for the gaming - Power Grid, Lords of Waterdeep, El Grande and Cyclades hit the tables as the main fare, followed by a number of smaller offerings - The Resistance, Kingdom Builder, Cash & Guns and Grimoire. ( Grimoire is a fab little filler game, if you've never played it, you should, just for the novelty of the spell book action selection malarkey ).

Grimoire - Eager neophytes hold their spell books at the ready

I got to finally play Cyclades this week, a game from the same stable as Kemet, which sees players competing in a very light war game / Euro to become the most dominant in the archipelago. Area control is a key aspect of this game, and that's achieved by military force. But this is no Risk type game of endless troop shuffling, instead Cyclades presents a definitely Euro inspired twist to the military aspect of the game, where it's often more important that you have bid for the right actions at the right time, than it is to have a whole pile of troops somewhere. Crucially in your turn you will only get to perform one type of action - be that sea themed with Poseidon, buying ships, moving ships, building ports or say land warfare based with Ares, buying soldiers, moving soldiers or building forts. Given that the map is a patchwork of sea and islands, both sea and land are required to make progress - the military conquest immediately becomes a much more cagey action choice affair, rather than a straight up move and fight of say Kemet, as it's impossible to do everything in a single turn.

Like any good Euro, actions can also be taken to improve your position - do you invest in making future turns cheaper, buying more gold income, or building up to the crucial game winning metropolis buildings ? Slightly changing things up for the usual Euro fare - each set of actions randomly changes its place in the turn order at the start of a turn, meaning that just when each action triggers can play just as important a part as to what the action is - if Poseidon comes up before Ares, it could be that your invading land armies won't get the chance to move as your ships you were using for transport are swept from the sea. This is a real nice disturbance to trying to over analyse which action should fit where and how to optimise for it. Of course, some will hate the randomness of it, but, it's open to action bidding, so the choices are definitely yours to make, random turn order or no.

All in all, Cyclades is a good game, it mixes some direct conflict into the usual Euro mix to make for an interesting more aggressive kind of Euro, and it's theme of ancient mythological Greece is handled very nicely - I think because of its familiarity it pulls off a better theme feel than its sibling board game Kemet. It's much less of a pressure cooker than Kemet, has a lighter warfare part and an increased Euro building aspect.

There's enough going on in Cyclades turn to turn to make you think, but not disappear into analysis paralysis, and the game doesn't overstay its welcome or suffer from bloated gameplay.

On the other hand, I am not sure there is quite enough there to make it a real long lived classic, I think it's simple enough to start to fall into predictable patterns, but, that's taking a pretty harsh line -  the game is solid and very enjoyable and it's going to take a while before you become over used to its rhythms. Certainly the mix up of turn order and the changing monster cards ( special actions ) should always present fresh problems with each play. Despite some minor misgivings about its longevity I actually think I prefer Cyclades to Kemet - it's refreshing and interesting, and absolutely worth some play time.

If you haven't given it a go, give Sam a prod to stick it on a table near you.

Cash and Guns finally got to table at NoBoG this week. It's been down a number of weeks over a very long time period, but it's never garnered enough random impetus to actually make it out. This week it did, and its enjoyable, anarchic stupid play - waving foam guns at each other and talking smack was great fun. I suspect this is going to be something of a popular trend for a bit at NoBoG as the serious and deadly foam gun pointing was enjoyed by spectators as well as the players. If I hadn't been playing I would have taken a photo. As it was I was too busy avoiding gunfire.

Cash and Guns, if you've never played, is very simple - a bunch of cash gets put on the table for division amongst the gun toting thugs that each of you play. You get to select whether your gun fires a blank or a shot, and then point your gun at someone. If someone gets shot they have to sit down, take a wound and get no share of the cash. But maybe you don't want to get shot in the first place - in which case you have an opportunity to voluntarily back off - maybe there are too many guns pointing at you, or perhaps Rich with his gun pointing at your head has a mean glint in his eye that means today the gun is loaded. . . Crucially you have eight bullet cards to use in eight rounds, and once a bullet card is used it's gone. So you must choose wisely when to use your blanks and when to use your actual bullets.

The crim with the most loot at the end of eight rounds is the winner.

Variations put special powers into play that break rules in interesting ways, and perhaps most interesting of all, the cop variation puts a single undercover police officer in the midst - who has to phone for reinforcements without getting blown away. The hidden traitor in the midst mechanic. Tricky.

Just because I had won Cyclades, half the table pointed their gun at me in the first round of Cash and Guns. If in doubt, shoot me ? Unfair I call it. Filthy criminals.



Finally. A distasteful subject, but one that must be addressed. A word about Low Hanging Fruit. Practically every week the phrase "Low Hanging Fruit" is muttered by someone at some table. Often it's Pete. Or Tom. It's been called into question whether it should be banned, as the imagery conjured up by the term "Tom's low hanging fruit" and his quip about that's what his wife says is akin to mental torture or against some human rights convention.

Just Say No to Low Hanging Fruit.

Be careful what you wish for

A busy fourteen at the Ribs this week, Sam took Cyclades Kemet (thx Sam for the correction ! ) out for another jaunt with five before embarking on a more personal and less bloodthirsty missive with Love Letter, and Robin threw on the lights in Powergrid, introducing more people into the classic highly regarded Euro.

More than that, I can't really say. Richard got butchered in Powergrid, but loved it and is eager for a replay next week.

My attention you see, was taken by the dark and twisted tale of the survivors of a holocaust - The Quiet Year.

Bondy bounced into the Ribs clutching a newly printed PDF game in his eager grasp. It's all about telling a story about post apocalyptic survivors, he said enthusiastically. It'll be your kind of thing he told me. How could I refuse ?

The Quiet Year is self described as a map game, where you get to build things, and draw what's going on. In no uncertain terms however, the game is actually an indie cooperative roleplaying game, with the map forming the focus point of driving an almost completely invented narrative along.

The scenario sets up explaining that you are a small band of survivors some 60 to 80 strong, outlines a few rules to structure what you can do in 'your turn' and gets you to decide what environment your merry band will find themselves in and what resources are available - or more likely not available. A small town on a desert highway Tremors style with an abundance of fuel ? A hidden enclave in the mountains, Tripods style with an abundance of coal ?

After setup play is taken in turns, with each player resolving a random event card ( the event cards are fairly non specific and require a good amount of player input to fill in the blanks ) and then choosing a single thing to do - starting a new project, putting something up for discussion, or adding something new to the map.

In our case we had a forest community that was abundant on wood, but short on squirrels ( don't ask ). A bizarre set of decisions led the community to attempt to build a high rise apartment block from wood and to turn an abandoned and bone decorated railway station ( again, don't ask ) into a jail cell. An early discussion amongst our community as to who should be leader resulted in a mild consensus that the person with the strongest survival skills should be the alpha.

Cue from Bondy, a suspicious and timely emergence of "Karl Beaverson"  the wilderness and survival expert who had been watching the group for sometime and had now shown up. Just in time for those leadership questions. A quick vote for leader instigated by Ewan, and the newly emerged from the forest Karl Beaverson won with a 60 / 40 split of the vote.

But the 40% were not happy.

At all.

Myself and Luke were not happy at this newcomer getting himself voted as the supreme leader. And so the 40% of the community simmered.

Luke then introduced a new fact - Karl Beaverson was in fact a former Jackal. An evil do-er. A bad seed. Someone not to be trusted. Bastard. Uproar in the community. But Karl was still leader. Tensions started to rise as all thoughts of building a community in the post apocalypse were put aside for the greater questions of who to trust, who to burn, and that what we really needed was some authoritarian head bashing.

It was all getting very Battlestar Galatica. But without the robots.

With our newly completed jail with its bone and skull adornments, I launched an undertaking to round up Karl and his cronies and throw him in jail.

Duly completed, the 60% of the community took offence at Karl being deposed.

Goddamn weak liberals.

Weapons were forged, a militia was armed, faithless attempted escapees from our wondrous community were tracked down and forced into slavery - along with Karl and his cronies -, and a rescue attempt for Karl was put down in murderous fashion.

Giant frogs were found, Blimps circled overhead, and our communications expert was caught trying to escape into the wider world. For his sins, he was given over to the medical team for 'scientific education', where he was chopped up and experimented on 'for the greater good'.

That's alright then.

Our community had obviously taken a dark turn somewhere along the way. Murdering people. Cheerful advocates of Slavery. Jail cell adorned with a steadily increasing number of bones, skulls and cadavers. A no nonsense authoritarian and well armed militia.

Hmmmm. At this point the question was raised. Are We In Fact The Bad Guys ?

Putting aside such weak minded debates, we forged on, discovering prophecies and dark warnings that told us that to really get our community on its feet, human sacrifice was required. Death by boiling mud pit in fact.

Brutal murder and slavery aside, human sacrifice was perhaps a step too far.

So another town meeting was called about it.

And a winning scientific plan was hatched. The slaves would be used as the first sacrifices, and if after a week things had improved, clearly the sacrificing was working and we should embark upon it as a solid community agenda.

The slaves were sacrificed.

Things got better. Science had proven that human sacrifice really did work.

The community added Human Sacrifice to its growing list of community rules. The militia now with a new purpose set to the task of scouring the wilderness for survivors - survivors we could bring back in chains before plunging into the pit of boiling mud. We had reached our darkest, lowest point. In a vain attempt to get some perspective on the matter, the abandoned radar and communications tower was fired up, and a dialogue with the floating blimp people was attempted... but the end of our time was advancing fast upon us.

As the year came to an end and Winter gripped its icy fingers around the survivors, a revelation was discovered - strong evidence that we were in fact The Jackals, the bad guys taken to a bit of community building. Was it true ? Were all the punished bad guys, actually the good guys. Were we evil doers ? Were all those attempted escapees trying to tell us something about our community ? As a signal was finally received in the comms tower from the blimp, and a crackly voice came on the line, Who Are We ?. . . the game ended.

The identity of the survivors a mystery. The Quiet Year was anything but - full of murder and mayhem.

It has been suggested post game, that not every group turns so very dark. And perhaps the worst problem to hit other communities is that of a crop failure. Not that of ritual murder, live human medical experimentation, preying on the weak and slavery.

But as Nietzsche says, Beyond Good and Evil, there are no rights and wrongs, only survival of the fittest. And our militia was very fit indeed.


The game was a blast to play. But obviously, being a free format roleplay kind of game, it absolutely hinges on who is playing and what interactions are going on. I think this is a game that can spectacularly fall flat with the wrong crowd, or even the right crowd in the wrong mood. I am also not sure about some of the guidelines and constraints going on. The discussion action seems interesting, but it's made clear that you can't make any decisions in a discussion. It's literally just a discussion with comments made. If you want to actually make a decision, you probably have to raise a project. Which is a unilateral action - everyone else can take a hike. This makes discussions a bit weird - as in, you know they have no real outcome and they are a bit of a waste of time. Possibly. Perhaps the game is making a statement about the nature of chatty politics - it achieves nothing. Only Doers get things done. This also brings up another conflicting kind of mechanic - in game you're not supposed to talk about the community or decisions outside of your actions. So if you actually want to say something useful on what's going on, you raise the discussion action. However, it seems perfectly natural that people comment on what's going on as it happens. Oh that's good. That's bad. That looks stupid etc. Expecting a stony silence from the table would.... destroy any atmosphere I think and result in a much gloomier uninteresting experience full of suppressed thoughts.

The game actually has a mechanic for this - you can take a token if you really disagree with something. If you are outraged or otherwise. Perhaps all play should be silent then, and when someone does something you disagree with, all you can do is glare... and take a token. But this seems a highly peculiar and non interactive anti social kind of play experience to me. I can't believe this is entirely what's expected.

The game could also suffer from a lack of imagination. If you are stuck with what to do, things could become very hum drum. The events whilst in some places really do force a direction on the community, for the most part they are vague outlines, allowing you to tailor the events in the narrative of what's going on in front of you.

It's also not entirely clear what the right kind of balance between hardship and success is, and whether it really matters at all. Of course at its heart its a roleplaying experience, so those questions are moot to an extent, but the game has a bit more structure to it than a completely freeform story telling exercise, there is a question of survival and being ready in time, but there are no in game kicks to really bring this home. I think it would have been nice to have had some events that really prey upon deficiencies more, or give benefits to things that have been solved.

Interesting game. Some thrown together roleplay mechanics and guidelines to allow people that perhaps wouldn't otherwise try a bit of roleplaying to at least paddle somewhere in the waters.

This is almost the other end of the spectrum but on the same line as the Arabian Nights game. Where that is driven by ( effectively ) Wandering Monster Tables, and has as it's heart the random monster generation tables and snippets that have been part of D & D since year dot, A Quiet Year is instead all those random encounters removed and replaced with the random side plot hooks that adorn a well written scenario. A loose and freeform sandbox environment with no goals and no penalties.

Great fun. But, I suspect, flawed as a game. More of an interesting management team building exercise to be run by an experienced hand. Your Mileage May Vary. But in a way that's a good thing. You certainly can't roll your eyes at The Quiet Year and bemoan you've played it all before, and are sick of the sight of worker placement. It's edgy. And different. And has scope to succeed. And fail.


The evening ended with a game of The Resistance Avalon. Percival, Mordred and the Lady of the Lake turned up this week to complicate affairs, and despite in theory the scales being slightly tipped in favour of the good guys, the minions of Mordred won yet again. Although they had to win three sudden death consecutive quests to achieve that. Great stuff. I learned something useful - getting the Merlin role AND explaining to newcomers what was what, AND narrating the series of commands to tell people to open eyes or not at the start of the game . . .  . makes your head hurt. I found it tricky enough just to cite the starting script without giving away the fact I was Merlin with a stupid mistake, let alone play the game.


Addendum : The Quiet Year also saw :
A mass outbreak of Gonorrhea.
A bird flu outbreak.
Discussion of cannibalism.
A tunnel leading to a room full of computers powered by a hydro plant.
A forge.
A windmill.
A derelict highway.
A disused railroad.
A sawmill.
A rail container full of seeds.
Which was then sabotaged.
By Karl.
Bastard.
Karl then dying whilst slaving in the fields. He has set himself on fire failing to achieve more arson.
Serves him right.
Bastard.
An impending invasion of giant car sized frogs.
A fishless lake but with edible weeds.
Sven Kowalski, master of the forge, father of charismatic daughter Sam - who thought the forge would be a great idea.
Joe Bell, telecommunications expert and prominent community member, until he was dismembered. And experimented on. Arguably still a useful community member.
Weapons being prioritised over tools.
Lots of weird prophecies and superstitions.

The horror doesn't look so bad from up here.

Are You Loyal, Citizen ?

Thirteen this week, another two newcomers - Richard and Kai - dropping into experience the organised chaos that is NoBoG. If you're counting, that's six newcomers that have turned up in July.

No new and shiny games this week, three previous titles getting an airing - The Village, Power Grid and Terra Prime. Bondy executed a last ditch effort to plant his family in an early grave Logan's Run style to prevent Tom claiming his victory in the Village. Rich meanwhile capitalised on some mid game fortune to cap the win of the power stations - Sam who had never played was content with his mid table third of five placement and after some trial and error had a grasp of the rules of Power Grid. And lastly Matt won in a fairly strong showing in Terra Prime, a combination of some good cargo hauling, colonisation and a bit of exploration bringing the bacon home.

The evening finished with three rounds of The Resistance, four disloyal citizens attempting to bring down the evil Government all the while opposed by three loyal spies. Lies, accusations and underhand play ruled the table as the Resistance came crashing down three times out of three, the Government proving that it doesn't pay to fight the system. The noble freedom fighters nearly won one of three - indeed all the spies had been correctly identified and were generally acting like rabbits in headlights, but the spies managed to do enough to secure a flukey win with a lucky card pull, enabling them to hog the leadership and stack the mission with government toadies. Despite the clamours for execution of obvious known spies, it was not to be and the incompetent Resistance failed again.

The moral of the story here is that if you join a subversive organisation where nearly 50% of its members are working for the opposition, expect to get caught.

This game has proven to be most raucous of the raucous games at The Ribs as blatantly underhand activities are shouted down and fingers are pointed. Cool stuff. But oh so short again.

If you are interested in the Resistance and haven't seen it in action, Robin pointed out a good video last week of a Tabletop episode giving this a whirl. It's really rather groovy and probably deserves a watch, even if you are familiar with the game.

[insert title here]

In a vague attempt to get posts on the blog more quickly (before John) I have devised a template to use. Yes, I know it’s Thursday already, but at least I’ve posted something. So here goes with the new template...

[intro]
[number of people]  Ten
[new people?] Two new people. Dan and Mike. Welcome chaps!

[mention current event/holiday] So, the new iphone, eh?

[insert joke about John being nasty/Tom being old/Pete having a silver-tongue]

Tom wasn’t at the club as he had a Korean War veterans’ reunion.

[games I played - did I win?  
no =  mention it briefly and say it’s a poor game that requires little or no strategy.
yes = go into detail about how it’s a great game which requires great strategy.]

It was Taj Mahal! Matt won. Er, it’s a poor game that requires... No, it’s great. I refuse to tell lies about this awesome game, despite not winning.

[games on other table  - pick one for each game played
Taj Mahal = this a great game
Race for the Galaxy / Le Havre = this is a terrible game
Other game =  vague description and mention who won]

Power Grid Baden-Wurttemberg hit the other table. This is the sixth and newest board expansion for Power Grid. Pete won, but only because Nicky and Jimmy conspired to make Rich lose - the fiends.

[insert thinly veiled insult about Phil losing/Tom cheating/Pete having a silver-tongue]

Phil didn’t come last in any games! But that’s only because he stayed at home.

[say what a great time we had]

We had a great time.

beer - [try to recall the name of the guest beer and pick 3 of the following to describe it, amber, golden, dark, citrusy, floral, fruity, nutty, bitter, light, grassy, caramel, burnt, malty, biscuity, hoppy, chocolatey, vinegary, fishy, penguiny, sweaty. Compare it to a random game]

Beer: I drank Everards Sunchaser. Citrusy, golden and penguiny. 6/10 it’s like Felix: The Cat in the Sack.

Not the title I was going to use.

Adam, who we have not seen at the Ribs of Beef for many months, had bought inadequate paint. That was the reason given for Rachael and Chris arriving at NoBoG a full 15 minutes earlier than I've come to expect. Obviously, the greyhounds hadn't understood the concept of emulsion paint and so Rachael had come to the Ribs to find a sympathetic audience that would shake their heads in disapproval as she explained how Adam had bought paint that had separated in the can and, which despite being stirred, would not form a substance suitable for painting a bathroom. I completely understood her pain; only the other day I had opened a strawberry yoghurt, which had "separated" and despite claims on the packaging, I felt it would probably not aid my digestive system or the well-being of my stomach. In fact, if I had eaten it, I have no doubt that I would have violently redecorated my bathroom in Strawberry Pink, which incidentally is the shade Rachael and Adam had chosen for their bathroom.

Anyway, there were 13 in attendance last night. Other tables played Small World and Race for the Galaxy, whilst I played Power Grid with Jimmy, James, Pete and Rich (ha! and you thought that it would be Pete and Rich playing Race and Small World). Anyway, I won Power Grid and for the second week in a row the legitimacy of my victory was questioned by Rich, as we forgot a small piece of maintenance halfway through the game, which may or may not have changed the outcome. Jimmy came second, Rich third, followed by Pete and finally James, who deservedly came last for advocating the cutting down of all of the rain forests in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The other table finished off with Bohnanza and we finished off the evening with a few rounds of Land Unter.

This week I was drinking Special Ale, brewed by a brewery that has thankfully slipped my mind. The barman said it wasn't very nice and I ignored him and bought a pint of it anyway. It was O.K for a few sips, but by halfway it was clear that it wasn't special, but shit. I compare it to Zombies!!! - looks promising, but it's horrible and you really just want the experience to end.

Scratching count: Seven bags! (I only ate one bag, but I'm sure I've got salt poisoning).

Its Official Jack is A Retard

With Jack self confessing his personal retardation it was my pleasure to play Capitol and Tower of Babel with him and James. Jimmy, Ben, Rich and Pete played power grid all of whom where new to the game (obviously except Jimmy). I have no idea who won that encounter but I would expect Jimmys knowledge of the game stood him at somewhat of an advantage. When I left they where playing Race for the galaxy.

Im currently shedding a ton of games on ebay and wanted to play both Capitol and Tower of Babel again before they left me for good. Both games have merits. There is much to make either game enjoyable but not enough there to make you reach for it off the shelf over some of the other excellent games available.

Capitol is an area control game with a few mechanisms that limit your actions. It 'suffers' from players not being able to make their own choices rather having to play where cards dictate. If all things are equal this shouldnt be a problem but things arent equal and it was a problem last time I played and was again this time. I managed to draw only one card throughout the game of a particular colour and James was equally frustrated. Its a fine ballancing act in game design to allow players choices whilst at the same time having variable conditions or replayability.

Tower of babel is virtually over before its begun and has far to many elements out of my control for me to love it but when I want a 50 minute knizia auction game this was always an option. Players ask for help to build a wonder and rivals offer resources, the better the offer the less the player needs to contribute but in excepting the offer it advances the rivals board position. When offers are declined the rivals are awarded VPs based on the number of items offered. It can work well but in reality there are far too many variables out of a players control. Works best with four and can take five. We played with three which made offers rather pathetic and limited.

I also have to appologise as having not played these games for what amounts to at least three years, and having not pre-read the rules, the rules sessions where poor to say the least. This is probably why both James and I failed misserably and why Jack '(insult insult here)' Shannon was able to win both Capitol and Babel. Won done you retard.