Norris McWhirter says "Not a record."

This is not Fight Club.

This is not Pinhole Camera Club.

This is not Admire my Stripy Shirt Club.

This is Games Club. This is the Norwich Board Gamers. Hear the clatter of our dice (or the sliding of our cubes, if you prefer).

The Stripy Shirt Club engages in some games

I’m not sure whether people got confused and turned up on the wrong night expecting some other club, but we had 18 in attendance this week. This matches our record attendance of 18 back when we met in the St Andrews Tavern (now the Rumsey Wells). That time we had nine foreign students accidently turn up to double our numbers.  They were never seen again (by us - I’m not saying we killed them and buried them in the cellar), but this time all those attending were repeat attenders and despite my previous aspersions that they got confused, I think everyone actually attended on purpose. Well done everyone, but not quite a new record.

So what did we play? Well, I played Chaos in the Old World with Rich, Tom, Jen and Robin.  Dial clicks were hugely contested with no-one managing a double progression all game. And while Tom’s Khorne beat on the Robin the Ratman, the three other factions were able to lay out huge amounts of corruption and spoil five regions in no time at all. The game ended with a victory point win for my Tzeentch. Jen’s Slaanesh got a last minute boost into second as Rich’s Nurgle matching pace for much of the game fell short on the last turn. The Rats were fourth and the feeble Khorne last (Corn syrup for the Fake Blood God).

Cyclades

Sam hauled out Cyclades for Dean, Fletch and Nicky. A game set in ancient Greece, where players make sacrifices to the five Gods (Apollo, Ares, Athena, Poseidon and Zeus) in order to gain favours, to help them in the race to be the first to build two cities.

This is a bidding and area control game with a massive dose of direct conflict thrown in.

By the same guys that designed the popular Kemet, this has the same look and flavour with similar chunky monster miniatures which can be used to beat on your opponents.  Looked good. Dean won.

They followed this up with more ancient times gaming with a quick game of 7 Wonders. This was also won by Dean.

Kingdom Builder, Kai dominates, Alina lurks deceptively strong

I'm sketchy on who played what on the other tables. I know Pete played three-player Eclipse and won that by sucking on a Supernova. While those that we exiled upstairs played two games of Kingdom Builder – Kai and Alina winning the first game and Alina winning the second for good measure. They then played King of Tokyo.

We ended the evening, as is customary these past weeks, with The Resistance. Resistance Avalon this time.  As also seems to be customary, the game was won by the dastardly minions of Mordred (John, Tom and myself) who infiltrated the round table on the final turn. Merlin, played by Rich, had a tough time and although he was being covered by Jen, the bad guys had a pretty good idea of his identity – especially when he picked a mission with none of the villains in it. Fortunately, John quickly proclaimed that Rich was making strange decisions and the mission was cancelled. As john mentioned last week, Merlin is a tricky character to play and really can't reveal very much without being uncovered by the bad guys. One other thing came out during the game – there may be the need for a couple of playmats for card discards, as which is the 'good' pile and which the 'bad' pile caused confusion. At least one bad guy laid a success card when he shouldn't have and one good guy laid a failure card to make two failures when there was only one bad guy on the mission. A small thing that I’d think unnecessary if it came in the box, but would be surprisingly useful.

Beer:  I supped at Green Jack’s Summer Ale. T’was delicious. That is all.