HEEYYYYOOOOOOOO it's NoBloG time! I'm afraid it's going to be another weedy one, but I swear it's not my fault. It's all Hannah and Lewis' fault for getting me to play Epic Spell Wars, from which I couldn't escape. It's not me, it's them! Oh well, I'm sure you'll cope. So the two tables I got to were playing Lords of Waterdeep and Orléans.
But before we come to that I must, in a minor plot-twist, forgive Hannah for her part in distracting me from my interrogations interviews, because she brought us DELICIOUS CAKE that wasn't even a lie. Not just any cakes — dice cakes! Like rice cakes except they taste of something. Thanks Hannah! We can definitely tolerate more.
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| See how delicious and moist it looks | Going quickly | Die close-up |
But that's enough of my uncharacteristically forgiving streak — now to the Loire Valley and Orléans! Guillaume was subjecting people to the very lovely but fairly complicated romp through the French countryside. At the time I came in for a snoop-about, monks were being taken (it's always the celibate ones that enjoy that kind of thing, is it not?) and books were being bought. But what exactly is the point of taking books and buying monks? Or, err, whichever.
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| Orléans is not a simple game, nor a small game! |
In medieval France, everyone wants food and books and stuff, but everyone needs lackeys to help them acquire them. You start out with a few such misbegottens, but must place them (it feels a bit worker-placer-y but you can't block other people's actions) on your board to acquire more minions and do everything else that gets you points. There's a hierarchy of sorts in that the second tier of workers, like lords, who unlock further classes like knights and so on, and a pool-building/management aspect as you only get to draw a selection of your guys each turn, and you can banish your unwanted farmers to the town council, giving you some points in return for losing your pair of hands. You can purchase buildings that give you extra actions, make others easier and give you various bonuses, and you can acquire "technology" which means you require fewer workers to perform a given action. In the end you hope to get a nice little engine going and run away with all the point-giving items. Don't be tardy though, because there are hefty bonuses for advancing up some tracks quickly. To answer the original question, then, monks are some kind of supreme worker being, able to perform any task, and books are one of the several things that gets you points.
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| Guillaume is sending people away. Poor people. |
So how was it all going down this Tuesday? Well, at the time I peeked in, it was still early stages: not much of the goods available on the map of the countryside had been snapped up, and the players were mainly acquiring more guys and building up to rake in the points later. Mike was finding it all a bit bewildering, this being only his second time at NoBoG! Pretty crunchy stuff for a newcomer. But he was enjoying jumping in at the deep end, so hopefully we'll be seeing him + company (whose name I confess to not writing down) again soon. In the end he decided to go to the village in order to take a cratsman and a technology token. Seeing the game played reminded me that I still need to have another go and hopefully do better now I have some kind of idea of how it works. Though I fear I am still just rubbish at engine-builders and might fail once more, but we shall see!
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| Mike has already got some tech and is getting more! |
Next up, to a soggy dominion whose rulers are the Lords of Waterdeep (with the Scoundrels of Skullport expansion — all sounds a bit grim if you ask me.) The first thing that occurred on my arrival was that I received a thorough admonishment for never having played it — OK, OK, I'm sorry, alright! My own deficiencies notwithstanding, I will give you a brief rundown of the principles just in case you the reader, like me the author, have never played this perennial of NoBoG.
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| Elliot makes some kind of move in Lords of Waterdeep |
The rudiments are that it's a worker placement game in which you have to perform actions first to obtain resources and then to complete quests from the available pool — doing so requires both the resources and placing a worker in the right spot. A player who completes a quest swipes the card representing it, so you can snipe them if someone else would benefit too greatly. New actions can be opened up by purchasing buildings — after which players have to pay Elliot the owner (which in this case was... pretty much always Elliot) of the building for the privilege of using them. Skullport introduces the corruption resource which you want to get rid of as it counts negative at the end. Once the game does end, you get bonus points for various things like which kinds of quests you've completed based on which Lord you are.
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| Action shot. With beer. |
So as I arrived (after being roundly told off for not having played) I asked-him-knowingly if Elliot was trouncing everyone, but apparently it was pretty close. The game was in its final round or two, and eyebrows were waggled as John gains a last minute point in this, his first time playing. Tabby meanwhile is feeling actual, physical pain at other people's slowness, manifested in ululating vocalisations when David finally plumps for a move which nets him a massive 40 points, this presumably being obvious enough to do immediately. David maintains an air of mystery about what he might otherwise have done, and unfortunately I never find out what it might have been. Victor does something but I fail to catch what it is because we're too busy discussing how to spell his name (it does not have a "k", we determine.) Tabby (or "Muggins" as she dubs herself) feels that everyone has been dicking on her in a blatant display of sexism as she is not doing so well, and is simultaneously the only lady at a table occupied otherwise by what might be described, if viewed in a good light, as gentlemen. Plus Elliot. Jamie tosses aside the accusation with a laugh, but it is perhaps mere bravado in anticipation of some kind of lawsuit, while Tabby describes what she would write in the blog at this juncture as "it will just say 'fuck all of you' over and over in all different languages!" While I can't comment on whether such ire was deserved (having observed only a tiny sliver of the game) I do revel in other people's suffering and anger. John took what I believe was his final move and divested himself of some corruption (presumably acquired as a consequence of all that dicking... shudder) and I was whisked away to duel with wizards. Only later did I discover that Elliot, playing coy all along, actually had the Lord which received bonus points for each building, and so thoroughly cleaned up when the points were eventually tallied.
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| See that swathe of buildings on the right of the board? All Elliot's. |
And what of my own game, Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards? Well if I tell you that each round can take quite a while (in no small part due to my own inability to make decisions, though this did improve somewhat as the game went on) due to the winner needing to eliminate all other players twice (and thereafter being a little weaker and a much larger target) you can imagine that LONG might well be the, erm, short answer. Each turn every player assembles a spell using (ideally) one of each card category (Source, Quality and Delivery or beginning, middle and end.) After working out who goes first using a couple of rules to determine priority, you read each component in turn to deal damage to your fellow battle wizards (more like warlocks I'm sure you'll agree! Hhhehehe.) There are also various other effects, like healing, giving you bonus cards, adding more cards to the spell and so on. You have to pick carefully because certain effects can be much more powerful if you add more of certain types of cards to the spell.
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| Zanzabeast has not much blood, but even more worrying is his lack of health. You'd thing the two would be one and the same... |
The whole game is decked in a colourful and extremely silly skin, so you tend to be throwing spells out that might be called, "Haggatha the Heffer's Motherforking Testi-kill." (The terrible things they're doing with genetically modified cattle nowadays...) You're encouraged to yell your spell names aloud, especially if you include the "Wild Magic" wildcard, which draws from the deck until you find a suitable one to slot in, which all adds to the overall ridiculousness. Spell effects can be a bit random — the more powerful ones rely on dice rolls, and the order of execution means your target may end up different to what you anticipated so you can't get too tactical. The game also suffers by having a lot of cards and some mechanics which only show up on a few cards. Thus it's all very well acquiring "blood" from a spell, but you may then literally never get another card which allows you to use it. This mechanic and some similar ones come from version 2 of the game, so I do wonder if this is a symptom of playing the combined version which mixes in a whole load of cards from before "blood" was a concept (a game-concept, that is, it already existed as, you know, life-giving liquid.)
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| Hannah's array of treasure (bonus ability) cards |
In the end we agreed to end the game early as time was running out — in the last round we decided that either someone would win for the second time (thus winning outright) or there would only be one person who hadn't won a single round, who would be "crowned" the loser. So, ALL HAIL JD, KING OF THE LOSERS! In the end it would have been far more fun if it had just lasted an hour, but the game is a bit stuck because it's trying to come up with a way to have it be a fight to the death without kicking dead players out until the end of the game.
And that's it. Hopefully one of these days I'll get around the pub properly, more thoroughly quenching the thirst I know you all have for more gaming session writeups. But until then, good byyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!