Gangs, Guns and Poo Barons

Cake.

Yes. There was Cake at NoBoG this week. The generous spirited Ewan brought the bottom tier of his epic four tier birthday cake along to the Ribs for everyone to enjoy whilst playing board games and slurping their drinks. See what you are missing ? Birthday Cake !

The turnover of people at NoBoG can be quite something. Spend a year of Tuesdays down the pub playing games and you will see an amazing procession of people, some who turn into regulars, regulars that fade away, and those who turn up just the once. Blink, and you'll miss half of them.

So it is that for the time being we bid farewell to Ed#2 as he pursues a career in Other Places that are Not Norwich. Ed#2 has turned into something of a regular this last year, and it seems his lament of never winning a game at NoBoG is always going to be true.

His departure is especially a shame as this week saw Ed giving himself the deserved title of Poo Baron. Which surely has all the hallmarks of sticking as his official NoBoG name. Ed "Poo Baron" Lewis has a certain ring to it I think.

Early stages of Dungeon Petz

The Poo Baron, Owen, Ed#1 and Dean got to parade their motley collection of dungeon critters this week, feeding them, taming their rage tantrums, keeping them occupied and also trying to keep the inevitable pet poo from piling up.


Ed#1 for his part completely forgot to purchase any pets and instead seemed to go into the landscape gardening business - displaying a set of lovely show room enclosures and fields that had no animals in.

This is a pity, as Dungeon Petz is predominantly scored based on the actual animals you have.

Ed "The Poo Baron"glees over his poo in Dungeon Petz

Meanwhile the Poo Baron was doing what Poo Barons do best. Namely looking after mountainous volumes of Poo, which, much like landscape gardening, scores you no points in Dungeon Petz.

As for Owen, I couldn't see what he was doing. But he had a similar score to the Poo Baron and the Landscape gardener. So who knows. It would be hard to imagine coming up with a strategy to threaten the lacklustre capabilities of poo or empty enclosures, but Owen had it nailed.

All of which left Dean embarrassingly in front. So far in front in fact, that at one point had you combined the scores of the other three, they would still have been behind Dean. When I checked Dean was on the threshold of lapping the score track, whilst Owen, The Poo Baron and The Gardener were all dawdling in the low teens. Oh dear.

Meanwhile on other tables, Modern Art got a play, with Tim grabbing the win, before the group moved onto a spot of Kingdom Builder - a title that is surely in the spot of Most Played Game at NoBoG - with I think Tom and Paul vying for a win that went to a tie breaker.

Cash & Guns. Paul goes all gangsta with his gun
whilst Tom does his best "fuhgeddaboudit" pose.

Lastly they bust out the fun and foam gun filled Cash and Guns, always a treat, particularly if you've never experienced the stupidity of waving an orange fake gun in someones face.

Lords of Waterdeep - another popular NoBoG title - got played again, relative newcomer Andy beating all the veteran hands at the game.

Upstairs two tables had to fend with the Ribs of Beef Quiz Night. I'm not sure if the Ribs Quiz Night was some clever counter culture hipster event celebrating the absence of quizzing - so very last millennia - but whatever it was it had a turnout of precisely zero which meant undisturbed NoBoGing upstairs.

Infamy, Infamy, they've all got it....

Infamy got its first outing at the Ribs, myself, Pete, Rich and Sam vying to be the best futuristic gang in this simple but clever game of influence bidding and reputation building. The table talk was sharp and full on as Pete attempted to paint himself as ever in the guise of the plucky underdog that needs all your resources and Rich grumbled about everyone ganging up on him.

Rich ended up winning, with Pete blaming Sam of robbing him of the win.

On the other table upstairs a few people got to try out vanilla Galaxy Trucker, and in what seemed a very civilised outing to me, there were no mad scrambles for parts or mocking taunts as pieces of ship disintegrated into the ether. Having now learnt the base game, perhaps the intrepid explorers are ready for some advanced trucking another week, complete with ravenous aliens, implacable commandos and a whole fistful of crazy new components and threats.

JJ ponders his options in D-Day Dice

Skull and Roses, D Day Dice and Resistance finished off the evening in various places. The bad guys swept the floor in a hurried game of Resistance, and lawks alive, I won Skull and Roses ( I think so far I win more than I lose at Skull and Roses ).

D Day Dice looked interesting, I still want to give this a try, but alas Fletch is gone for another month - his duties take him in and out of NoBoG for weeks at a time.



Oh yes. And for those counting, there were 22 bold explorers this week.