It's all in the Seating...

A grand nineteen at the Ribs this week, and in what will be slightly upsetting news for those regulars who were last week pressing for Resistance and were notably missing this week, Resistance got played twice.

Skip a week of NoBoG and miss all the fun !

Lords of Vegas made its debut at NoBoG, with myself, Ed#1, Rich and Lewis sitting down to determine who was the greatest pit boss of Vegas. The Tabletop channel recently posted a playthrough of this, so rather than me explain what it's about - take it away Wil Wheaton....

Our game was closely fought at first, before my crappy positioning and an inability to roll much higher than a 3 left me trailing in the arid dust of Nevada. I satisfied myself with opening what I imagined to be a small hotdog stand next to the glittering lights of one of the palaces of gambling.

Lords of Vegas. Or in our case, Three Lords
and one hot dog seller of Vegas

Rich, Ed and Lewis however continued to compete closely, with a series of decent Casinos being built right on the strip with a few sneaky takeovers being attempted.

But all proved to be in vain as an excited Lewis ( clearly being a Pit Boss is something of a life goal for him - he was so excited at one point that his capability for counting money earned in a round left him in a confusion of enthusiasm and shaky hands ) managed to dominate the strip and haul in a good score to grab the grubby title of Lord of Vegas.

A cool game all in all, a fair bit different to your usual Euro Cube Shuffler, a dose of luck involved - of course it is Vegas after all... but nice. And some good interplay available between players. Taunting others to go large or go home is just a bonus.

Whilst our dubious efforts were squeezing money out of profligate rich and desperate poor alike, over on table two the venerable Puerto Rico was dusted off to three newbies and two seasoned hands.

Now, if you've ever played Puerto Rico, or heard about Puerto Rico, you might recall there's something about where you sit when there are newbies at the table. Sit to the left of the newbie, the wisdom goes, and you are in for an easy game. 

All three Puerto Rico beginners sat together. And Rich - noted Puerto Rico veteran - sat to the left of them. I observed out loud that he had picked the winning seat.

There are many who say that Puerto Rico is one of the finest Euro games to be had. I personally however am no fan of it, I find it to be an overhyped game that has long since shown its age. It has some cool mechanics, a bunch of 'flaws' that can make a game miserable for a player in the wrong seat, and a tendency to have a problem with seating bias overall. I'd play Agricola instead.

In any case, a fine evening of slave exploitation (!) and new world colony building was had...... and Rich won.

Bah ha ha.

 In a splendiferous evening of Riches, Richard the Fourth, or is that lovely Rich, I can't keep tabs on the Society of Riches, tromped forth to a stunning win in Lords of Waterdeep, piling on the points to humiliate all others at the table. This provides us with some rock solid 'take it to the bank' statistics that if your name is Richard, you have at least a 50% chance of winning the game you are playing.

Hmm. Did that sound Gambly ? I think Lords of Vegas has done something to me...

Meanwhile upstairs, Lost Legends was being played, a fantasy deck builder which sees your hero gearing up to defeat monsters and win Legen - wait for it - d Points. 

Ed does his best 1970's family game cover art pose,
gleeful of his upcoming win that never happened.

I managed to take a snap of an eager Ed looking forward to his "first NoBoG win" ever.

Everyone at the table fancied him to be in the lead and the probable winner by game end, which of course absolutely guaranteed that Ed would in fact not be the winner.

The wily Dean beat him to it.

Never count your Dwarven Hero Adventurers before they have hatched.

Finally, everyone jumbled up and joined in a game of Resistance and Libertalia. Much piratical thunking was going on over Libertalia and unfortunately we didn't come to a proper finish. Our short finish revealed me to be the Pirate King. It's rough, but I'll take it.

As for Resistance, it seems in the weeks of non appearance, the good guys have left their posts, stepped down from their watchful vigilance, and generally skulked off for a pint, as the Bad Guys put everyone to the sword ... twice.

PR for Beginners

Apologies for the lack of updates here. John has gone to Lincolnshire for his annual holiday. Not a man to idly while away his time, he spends ten days each autumn, on a poultry farm, sexing chickens. Apparently, he finds sorting the little balls of fluff and sending the unfortunate male chicks off to a quick death very therapeutic.  He took a quick break in his holiday to remind me that I was shirking my duties and hadn't updated the blog. Don’t worry, John, I shall remedy that now. You can get back to that tray of tiny birds that need electrocuting.

Last Tuesday was Bonfire night and it would seem that many of our regulars were up for some pyrotechnics as only nine emerged from the chilled smoke-laden darkness to play games in the welcoming warmth of the Ribs of Beef. And how they were welcomed! Pete had found a cheesecake on offer in the Coop and brought it down for us lucky sods to enjoy. Thanks Pete.

On the games front there was a clamouring for the classic role selection game Puerto Rico, which was played with the full complement of five. I taught Nicky, Fletch, Richard and Clive. One experienced player against four noobs? Those that know Puerto Rico will assume that I won, with Clive sitting to my right probably handing me victory. Not so. Well, OK, as the only experienced Puerto Rico player I did win, but this was mostly down to the new guys playing a couple of exploratory rounds early on and not knowing about the game’s pacing, rather than the seating order. Nicky (who sat to my left) did really well with an aggressive building strategy, ending just a couple of VPs behind my mixed shipping strategy. For those of you wondering why I'm mentioning seating order – one of the biggest complaints about Puerto Rico is that seating order really matters and one inexperienced player can hand victory to the player sitting to their left. Much of the game is about selecting a role that not only helps you, but helps the other players the least. If the player to your right constantly chooses the Craftsman (which produces goods for all) then on your turn you’ll get first dibs on using the newly produced goods to enter the empty Trading House to earn cash or fill the empty Goods Ships to the detriment of the other players. I've seen it happen and heard moans of despair from players further around the seating plan, but on Tuesday, perhaps because (almost) everyone was inexperienced at Puerto Rico this wasn't an issue. Or maybe everyone was just having fun and didn't care too much about perceived injustices. Or maybe everyone at NoBoG is a savvy and hardened gamer and would rather burn on a bonfire rather than make a generous play that in any way benefited another player. Apart from Pete who would give everyone cheesecake. Cheers for that again, Pete. Anyway, nice to see Puerto Rico make a return.

Suburbia was maxed out with four players on the other table.  I can’t say what happened in Suburbia. It’s not a secret I just didn’t pay much attention. I do know they had two games of it. In the second game, Rich looked to be leading with an industrial complex of mighty proportions, dwarfing Sam, Pete and Robin’s efforts.

We finished the evening, as is now almost customary, with Resistance: Avalon. Myself, Sam and Clive did a terrible job as the evil dudes and the good guys with Rich as Merlin and Pete as Sir Percival rode home to victory.

Who Is This Rory? And How did he Manage to Win Puerto Rico???

We where 9 this week and cracked out Puerto Rico and Amun Re, I did the rules session for Puerto and we got together a group of players either new to the slave trade or at best inexperienced. Rory won but I don’t know how (Jimmy did ask and we believe it was corn strategy but Rory seamed unsure himself). A lot of euro games are about taking advantage of what’s available rather than strategy, what’s more, good strategy can be difficult on first and second plays. Some games just aren’t fair when experienced players know the strategy and puerto rico is often seen as that type of game. One of my personal favourite nights at games club was when we ran the puerto rico contest and this number one ranked game got 4 plays and an ultimate champion.

I played Amun Re with Dave and Hal who were new to this Kinizia classic, making up the five where Luke who I believe had played it before and Jimmy. Id forgotten a couple of things and was shouted down early doors and having creamed this game last time I played I wanted to avoid the temple strategy. Hal managed to acquire 4 temples in the first era and 2 other players went heavy for farmers so Hal had a commanding lead. Jimmy went the other way wanting camels, as a result he was left behind in what turned out to be a money rich game. At the start of the second era it was pretty close with me in second and all others close behind. With bidding becoming extreme and 21 being a typical price to pay for regions all players fed the system and those that stepped back ran a risk of either falling behind or with luck winning. In the final count Hals lead was virtually unassailable......virtually Jimmy got very close and even closer having finished with the most money and I finished in second two points short.....then Jimmy realised we hadn’t counted my one temple and I narrowly piped Hal at the last. All things considered Hal played a blinder for his first game and all patronising aside he had the moral victory.

I had for some reason thought Rory was called Hugo??? I dont know why??? but the original picture didnt make sense so I had to find a rory???? so Stoke fans know whats going on but everyone else is asking why does a boardgame blog have a picture of a mediocre footballer??

Election Special

We should have played Die Macher or The Making of the President, both games with political themes (although they’re about German and U.S elections), but we didn’t. Instead we played other games and partook in political discussions/rants. Would the games played in the seedy underbelly of the Ribs of Beef be a strange and unlikely predictor for the elections on the sixth of May?

On the table by the window, two fully paid up members of the Green Party, Tory-Boy and a BNP activist slugged it out in the morally dubious game known as Puerto Rico – a game where players ruthlessly buy and work slaves to death in order to grow cash crops and bask in the prestige and wealth, which doubtlessly comes from such exploitation. Tory-Boy and the BNP both had a tough time of it, hardly surprisingly since both were new to Puerto Rico, a game which definitely rewards those with more experience. The Greens were amazingly adept at such a game, and were first past the post in first and second.

Evo was quickly slapped down on the other table and NoBoG incarnations of Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage battled it out to see who could mutate their dinosaurs so as best to weather the unpredictable climate on a small island and claim a shallow victory before all were destroyed by a thunderous meteor. Brown’s dinosaurs were big, hairy and ponderous, but viciously attacked anything that came in range. Clegg bred speedy, cost effective dinosaurs, but they were slow breeders and failed to get numbers on the map. Farage complained about dinosaurs taking his land and bred very quickly in order to ensure a high percentage of the dinosaurs on the island were his. In the end Farage and Brown tied for victory, while Clegg never lived up to his promises.

Clegg, Brown and Farage then got in a quick game of Manila. This would perhaps show off their ability to gamble with the economy?! Brown won this easily, Clegg came a close second, but poor old Farage crashed and burned…

I really don’t think that NoBoG gave us any real insight today’s election, but at least on Tuesday the Tories and BNP didn’t win, which at the end of the day is all that really matters, right?

No beer this week. The Greens imposed a 50% tax increase and I couldn’t afford it.