Tuesday 6 January 2015

Horse, strong like woman

Christmas is over.

And who can really remember what went on ? Turkeys, chocolates, bad TV, family fist fights over Munchkin. ( The latter was Lewis ). It's all a blur.

NoBoG managed to be active over the entire festive period, skipping not a single week in its bid to bring board gaming goodness to the citizens of Norwich, Norfolk, and anyone that was wandering nearby at the time.

Lords of Waterdeep was played on the last event of the year, ending 2014 much as it started - with Lewis and Luke in competition for the most cubes gathered and points won. It was during this epic battle of abstract wizardry that Lewis uttered the immortal wisdom of "Horse, strong like woman" into the sudden silence of the Wherry Room. Odd. Perhaps it was one of those Douglas Adams sentences floating through the ether that kick off inter stellar wars malarkey.... "I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle".

What else happened over the festivities ? There were mince pies. And gingerbread. Scoffings for all thanks to Ewan. Which were greatfully consumed. And there was free beer. And snacks. For all. For the whole evening. That's right. See what you miss when you dont attend ?
Chaos in the Old World with the Rats

We also played a bit of Hal's Resistance with funky new expansions involving hunters and chiefs that muddy the waters of the usual Resistance meta game. I am pleased to report I was the bad guy for both weeks and managed to win for both weeks too. Even though Lauren was outraged *OUTRAGED* that I was in fact a spy and she had knownitallalongactually despite begging me on the final round to be included in on my mission. Pfah. I didn't trust her, but I let her tag along. She could be my spy beard.

Splenderous Splendor
I also got to revisit the classic Escape from Atlantis with Sam, Hal and Martin, and given maybe a bit of luck, or perhaps a wealth of cut throat experience with the game, managed to romp to a win getting 8 out of 12 of my atlanteans safely to dry land. Everyone else managed a pitiful 5. The dolphins in the game - often thought of as helpful - were nothing but passive aggressive tormentors in our game, popping up to promise help to a swimmer only to minutes later splash away chuckling a cruel cetacean laugh as the sharks moved in. Dolphins are apparently bastards.

Chaos in the old World also made an end of year appearance, with things looking particularly bad as Khorne was leading in points half way through the game, powering through to game end to win on points and barely miss a dial click win too. Oh dear. Chaos in the Old World is another one of those games with dubious game balance - unless the players all work at it.

Hal had some 17something or other euro area control war game malarkey which was reportedly "weird". I can't say more than that. I was paying no attention whatsoever.

Finally some sad news. Another of the NoBoG gaming cloths has mysteriously gone missing. This has left us with a bare 2. If you see someone turn up in a freshly tailored green baize waistcoat and a pair of black velvet trousers, report them immediately to your nearest NoBoG security officer. In the meantime more but different green gaming cloths have been provided.




4 comments:

Hal said...

17something was 1714: The Case of the Catalans. It's a wargame where all the players are allied against the Bourbon Monarchy, but it's not cooperative. Only one player wins, by winning concessions in peace talks or occupying strategic locations.

It use the CDG mechanism from other wargames, where you play a card for point or the event, but forgoes giving you a a hand of cards. Instead one card per player is dealt out, and players draft a card each. If you pick the card at the top of the list, you're going to be first that turn, but put into last for next turn. There's only 3 main actions, and once one person has done an action in a turn, nobody else can, so there's lots of blocking people from actions. It also means you get to do each actions relatively infrequently, so timing it so you get each action when you're best positioned to benefit from it is pretty important. When the peace talks come around, the more you get in them, the more your country's will to fight drops, making things more expensive, or even removing you from the war for a while (no moving/recruiting/attacking)

All the player interaction in the game is pretty negative despite the players being allies, making the Bourbon troops attack other people, deploying Bourbon reinforcement in just the wrong place, demanding they hand over their hard won concessions.

Overall it felt to me like a more Euroy COIN game - you get to take actions relatively infrequently so maximising their utility is important; what you chose to do impacts what options others can do; lots of negotation and trading.

Mr Bond said...

That sounds great. Hal, you're bringing all the gold to NoBoG at the moment.

Alfonso said...

Didn't someone take the cloths home to be washed? I remember that being discussed at some point before Christmas.

Also, free beer?

Bork said...

One of the missing cloths turned up on the pub shelf - at least I am pretty sure it was one of ours.

It's ours now :p

And yeah free beer. It was a fill your boots night. The drinks were all bought and paid for.