This is my rifle, this is my gun.

Christmas is done, the New Year is over and the NoBlog catches up with the last couple of sessions of December.

On the week before Christmas Tuesday, NoBoG saw the Vietnam war era COIN series game Fire in the Lake have its debut at the Mash Tun.

If you've never played a COIN ( COunter INsurgency) game - or even heard about them - then they are fairly simple area control wargames with a very heavy semi random scripted event theme going on available via a deck of cards. Despite being simple area control games, COIN games are definitely not for the casual gamer and constitute some of the heavier, if not the heaviest of Euro-ish games, and some of the COIN games can take a considerable time investment ( the earlier Andean Abyss COIN game has had sessions that have rolled on past 9 hours in length ).

The conflict that COIN games depict are very much of the modern zeitgeist and in one way or another are pretty much a ubiquitous background noise these days from the 24 hour news empire. Given the relative strengths of well funded and armed combatants against rag tag outfits it's a no brainer that these kind of asymmetric conflicts have become the norm.

The COIN series of games attempts to capture the nature of this asymmetric warfare and also the oh so important political/terror fight for the hearts and minds of the populace that goes hand in hand with it. Previous games have visited the utter chaos of Colombia in the 1990s ( Andean Abyss ) and its druglords, the turbulent Cuban uprising of the 50's ( Cuba Libre ) of Fidel Castro et al,he more recent Afghanistan quagmire ( A Distant Plain ) of a US led coalition force and for the most recent game, the Vietnam war - Fire in the Lake.

Fire in the Lake-the red forces of Hal's NVA amass in the North

Fire in the Lake somewhat controversially pits four competing sides of the North Vietnamese Army, Viet Cong, US and the South Vietnamese republic forces ARVN against each other in a fight for domination of Vietnam. There are a number of team permutations you can play with - depending on number of players and political sensibilities - as well as what is probably one of the most complex AI scripts in a game for any of the factions should you wish to have the game control a player.

Asymmetric player capabilities tend to come down to outright displays of firepower with army units sweeping in and airstrikes, versus more subtle opinion influence, terror operations and sabotage. The goals in particular are setup in a clever way - the NVA and ARVN forces are rewarded for controlling areas through military domination, whereas the US and the VC are rewarded for having support from the general population. So whilst in theory the US and ARVN are fighting on the same team, the US are interested in getting everyone to be happy - and commit as few as troops as possible to do so - whilst ARVN is interested in projecting force into regions and making sure their corrupt friends are getting plenty of US aid money fed into their pockets. There is some - you might almost say accidental - overlap in goal alignment between allies, but it can be tenuous and at certain times even entirely unwanted ( the US for instance can help militarily dominate a region, even though the US in theory has no actual gain in doing so, and may in fact be hurting their own chances of winning )

This setup leads to some great emergent gameplay and very interesting choices about what to do in a given situation and something of a shaky ambivalent nature to the alliance of communists versus non communists. Some debate and "shit stirring" is definitely part of this game as play unfolds and each of the various factions bubbles up to dominate.

Enough of the theory. What happened with our game ? I took the VC - the only faction solely committed to unconventional guerrilla warfare, Hal took the NVA, Darren the US and Pete the morally bankrupt ARVN. We played the short scenario which is played over some 29 ish event cards / turns and means in practice that each player probably has around 12 turns in which they get to do something. As it turned out in our game, the corrupt leadership of the ARVN was highly resistant to change, meaning that funneling US aid out to ARVN cronies was extremely effective, and meant that Pete was doing his utmost to shove as much cash out the door to his mates, pushing his victory points way up.

Hal as NVA and Darren as US struggled to make much headway in their own VP fields, and for myself I had managed to get a crucial opinion shifter into play from the very start that punished anyone targeting me by awarding me with victory points.

Pete breached his VP goal by the middle of the game and was set for a win, only a self sacrificing move by Hal as NVA and then a wave of terror operations by myself ( and not a little outright killing of police by the NVA, and convincing other police to join my team ) saw his VPs shifted down enough for him not to win and continue on the game.

With the NVA struggling militarily, and the US having spent a buttload of money to influence popular opinion in their favour, Darren with it has to be said a fair amount of ( good ) advice from Team Communist of me and Hal decided take the opportunity to enact a massive withdrawal of US forces from Vietnam, wildly boosting his Victory points as the yanks were suddenly happy at not having to fight such a punishing war.

End game, blue VC enjoy support, the NVA marches
and the US have gone home... but win the day.
ARVN are reduced to a few key cities and locations.
Historically... accurate ?

With US ground support reduced to a skeleton force, and some painful anti corruption events played against Pete, the ARVN faction saw their control collapse, whilst myself as VC undid all the US good will work in Central and Southern Vietnam with only the cities now not being openly communist, and Hal pushed into Southern Vietnam to finally dominate areas in the South.

Despite the communist advances the happy vibes inspired by having such a low commitment to the war meant that Darren ended up the winner, having breached his VP goal and ending some 8 or so above it. However myself as the VC had also breached their VP goal in getting a decent majority of Vietnam to buy into the communist ideal, but crucially not enough to erode Darren's lead - indeed it was the US withdrawal that had bagged the win, just going by popular support the win would have been mine. Hal was very close to breaching his own VP goal of military control, whilst poor Pete ended up firmly fourth as his corrupt shenanigans caught up with him and the US withdrew.

Great game all in all, and once everyone was down pat with what was going on, the game moved on at a brisk pace. The medium length scenario would definitely be achievable within a pub evening with players that were kinda familiar with what was going on. Highly recommended to anyone looking for a game with a bit of a deeper bite to sink your teeth into and high player interaction.

Darren enjoyed the game so much he listed it as one of his favourite plays of 2015 ! High praise indeed.

Moving away from Vietnam, we had another first at NoBoG as Kingdom Death Monster turned up to put a bunch of players through their paces. Kingdom Death Monster has the dubious title as Most Expensive Board Game Ever as its absolutely top notch and arguably unmatched quality miniatures command ridiculous prices. ( I believe the base Kingdom Death Monster set with all the bits was some 300 post colonial dollars ). Kingdom Death Monster is almost a two part kind of game - with one part being a tactical combat game with an emphasis on boss monster kind of takedowns ( if you've ever played an MMO with a raid boss, you'll know the score here ), and the second part of the game being a colony planning and building campaign with an emphasis on a rogue like level of brutal difficulty and sudden random unfair hideous death.

Kingdom Death : Monster. Nothing's going on here....

Despite having gorgeous miniatures, I singularly failed at taking a good shot of them. So. Yeah. Sucks to be you. In my defence I was busy terrorising convincing the Vietnamese peasants to join the glorious communist uprising and caught the KDM'ers in one of their town planning sessions.

KDM went down very well with some interesting tales being told in the aftermath like Sean's character Carol - a hard hitting monster bashing type - having a crucial weakness of fainting at the sight of blood and having to be continually roused by team mates to get up and finish the job. I think Carol ended up losing limbs and eventually dying, not before managing to have a child - which then became Sean's character.

Although I haven't looked hard at KDM it continues to surprise me about just how positive people are when they play it - I think the whole colony planning phase and story element is the secret sauce that lifts this tactical melee game with work of art miniatures above what it would otherwise be.

Two Rooms and a Boom also made its NoBoG debut, which must somewhat annoy Lewis as he had been keen to play this but due to Christmas type responsibilities had skipped NoBoG. I can't say much about Two Rooms except that it involved an awful lot of people milling around the pub - at one point I thought just about the entire NoBoG playerbase was involved. There were some excited high fives, a good deal of chatting, and Sam slipped me a look of his role card. Suffice to say I hadn't a clue what it meant - except he apparently wasn't allowed to talk to a group of people. Sounds a bit harsh to me. Your role is to sit in a corner and have no fun. Sam seemed to be enjoying it however.

Blood Rage turned up again - Pete has waded in and bought this, so with both Nicky and Pete having copies, expect this to turn up even more at NoBoG. Champions of Midgard was also present during the Christmas period and I think is going to end up being the early 2016 popular game of NoBoG with several people now having bought copies of it and eager to give it a bash. Given that CoM is not a million miles away from Lords of Waterdeep - and Lords of Waterdeep was one of the top 10 games of 2015 at NoBoG, it's a reasonable bet that CoM is going to be a shoe in for 2016.

Finally, Sean who has been a recent regular NoBoGer - and particularly untrustworthy werewolfer/resistancer/spyfaller/mafioso - is leaving us for a year to go do university type things with embedded electronics and wifi devices. Spy devices then. He's going to advance the field of spy devices. Good luck in his studies, and his loud and dubious traitor antics will be missed !

As ever I leave you with the gallery.

Terra Mystica. Sam would like to confirm again that this is better than GoT. He made sure to tell me. Again.

Resistance. With an animated Luke who is odds on probably undermining his own team at this point.

A fine hand of cows there Adam. Sechs Nimmt.

Champions of Midgard with Ewan, Tim, Heather and home from Uni Kaya (sp?!)

The Shy Persons Christmas Approval Meeting. Everyone closes their eyes before interacting to avoid embarrassment.
Either that or it's Resistance. I guess it could be Resistance.

The lovely Divinare. Which I am turning into something of a Savant at. Needless to say I won.

The much fancied Lords of Waterdeep. One of NoBoGs Top 10 of 2015.

Cauldron. Still haven't played this. Still need to play this.

More Lords of Waterdeep. Popular. Apparently.

More Champions of Midgard. If you accept CoM = LoW, then it was played four times in two weeks !

Blood Rage ! It's like Chaos in the Old World but with only 3 turns. And more scoring volatility.

7 Wonders

32 and 33 respectively for those who are counting. 33 during the period between Christmas and New Years is crazily up.

All quiet on the Mash Tun front

It's been a quiet few weeks at t'Mash Tun and a decidedly relaxed more cosy air has settled on the weekly gaming. We've seen a spread of new gamers and new games both, but by and large it has been business as usual for NoBoG Tuesdays with classics such as Lords of Waterdeep and Ticket to Ride getting plays as well as the lesser spotted things such as Cyclades and Study in Emerald.

Hal, Pete and Sam enjoy a quiet game of Unfeeling Creatures

Dark Moon got a play a few weeks ago to a largely new group who wanted to sample its delights, and for once the game wasn't a horrendous car crash for the survivors. Welcoming Jack to his first NoBoG evening, he got to be one of the treacherous infected players, and on Sam's opening turn was pretty much revealed to be a filthy evil doer. Which isn't ideal. In fact I'd go so far as to say it's if not game breaking, then game disrupting. You can get the same thing happen in Battlestar Galactica ( of which Dark Moon is the stripped and dipped clone ) when Gaius manages to luckily pick a Cylon to reveal on one of his first turns. In BSG the impact can be even worse as by and large the revealed gets to spend the next 3 hours apart from everyone else.

I was the other infected in Dark Moon, but there was little I could do to help my fellow traitor, and the survivors had a remarkably good knack for rolling positives on their dice and passing all the challenges. Despite a good deal of suspicion going around the table, the survivors cruised home without hardly breaking a sweat, but the table talk was still great, and laughs and accusations were had.

Spyfall. I have seen less bad answers and more bad answers.
I'd say there were an average amount of bad answers here.

Sam also picked up Spyfall and we gave this a go with an expanding and contracting group for the rest of the evening in something of a marathon session. Spyfall has visited NoBoG before but surprisingly it's quite a rare sight and almost all the players at the table this time were newbies. The challenge of figuring out a question on the spot was as ever a fairly tough proposition until at least half a dozen games had passed and some stock questions started doing the rounds... along with some stock answers that turned into a running gag..."I have seen less X, and I have seen more X. I'd say there is about an average amount of X here"... and an easy way for a spy to evade detection by playing for a laugh. At one point during play we also had Luke the off duty barstaff at the Tun to join in and fielded questions about what to do if a squirrel was present and the unspecified horrors of what happened at the "show at 4". Great fun.

Castles of Mad King Ludwig

The castles of Mad King Ludwig is getting to be very popular at the Tun, several people have picked up the game for their own collection, and this week we saw two simultaneous games of it being played. I still haven't played this, looks good fun, and judging from its popularity, it must be getting something right ( as it stands it's now much more popular than Suburbia of which it bares a passing resemblance ).

The Imperial Assaulting team got their fortnightly game in too, but in something of a bid for worlds shortest Assault managed to finish the game before you could say "scruffy looking nerfherder". I think they took as long to get themselves sorted and setup as they did in playing it. They then decided to bust out some flicking type of game - Flick 'em Up I think - which looked great, however I have something of an aversion to game pieces flying off tables - too many scenes of people scrabbling under darkened pub tables with the flashlight on their mobile turned on ( and the things they can return from Under The Table with ) have scarred me.

Terra Mystica

This week Pete busted out Terra Mystica to teach a whole bunch of people who had never played it. Despite Chloe having the broken over powered halflings ( which are now errata'd to not be as over powered ) and Pete taking the less than spectacular Giants, Pete inevitably won. In a post game commentary he declared that against any decent opposition he would have lost, I laughed at his attempt to downplay his score whilst inadvertently and hilariously insulting the capabilities of everyone else. Possibly this was made even worse by Hal - one of his fellow players - standing next to him at the time. It's a good thing Hal is so laid back.

Also this week I got to play three cracking games, all new to me, Lewis and Clark Discoveries, The Grizzled and Harbour.

Lewis and Clark Discoveries is to Lewis and Clark The Expedition, as Roll for the Galaxy is to Race for the Galaxy. Same theme, approximately the same mechanics, but replacing the key bits of the engine with dice and dropping everything else. And it works really nicely for Lewis and Clark Discoveries.

The ideas are roughly the same - a journey that requires traversing rivers and mountains and encountering native tribes along the way which will provide aid. Instead of the fixed race like board you get in the original Lewis and Clark however, Discoveries simply uses victory points for each leg of a journey you complete. So for each journey leg card you complete, you get to add its victory points to your pile. If you step back and think about it, the race board and the legs for victory points are in fact the same thing - the difference being that in L&C the original it's a sprint to reach X victory points first, whereas in Discoveries the game timer is the globally available number of journey leg cards.

Lewis and Clark Discoveries.
One of Joe's workers has come to work for me.
Our expedition has cookies.

There is some elegant re-use of cards going on with the game ( something FFG designs could woefully do better on ) where the cards are double sided and fulfill native tribes and journey legs ensuring that no two games will ever be the same, and exactly what mix of natives and journeys you get is very open ( this is important when you are going for the exploration set collection ).

Dice form your workers for worker placement, and with these you will be able to befriend natives, change dice, or complete journey legs. Some of the time the dice will go back to a global pool, and sometimes they get to be recycled back into your worker pool. The interesting - and somewhat borrowed from L&C - thing here is that the global pool of workers can be picked up by *anyone*, meaning you can swag other peoples dice and use them in your own placements. However. At any time instead of placing workers a player can retrieve all dice of their colour regardless of where they are. Natives are extra neutral coloured dice - and hanging onto these as opposed to having them recycle into the global pool for others to grab is a key part of the optimising and decision making you will be doing.

The global dice pool is a lovely little spin that means picking up a whole bag of dice from the pool can be very enticing but also situational. If you can get in and out, use someone elses dice before they are ready to pull all their dice back all to the good. When someone has just one or possibly two of their dice out of their pool, is it really worth them doing a recall ? Probably not. So if you've got their dice, you're probably safe.

Great game. And it's really interesting to start seeing these dice games where dice are being used in clever ways - not just some yahtzee / King of Tokyo variant ( yeah that's right, I went there, I dissed King of Tokyo ).

Second up was The Grizzled, a French co-operative card game set in the trenches of World War I, with some lovely cartoon art done by one of the gunned down Charlie Hebdo artists ( Tignous ). Which, although passes unnoticed by many a gamer, is probably something to think about. Legacy. Mortality. Tragedy. Murdered man's work in your hands. Cheery, I know.

The Grizzled. We failed. Tim's fault.

The Grizzled is fairly simple - try to collectively exhaust a deck of cards before the game timer runs out - the game timer being either exhausting a different pile of cards or one of the players receiving too many wounds. Set *avoidance* is the order of the day with players playing into a global tableau trying to avoid three of a kind of anything. Failure to do so shuffles all the cards into the Pile That Needs to be Exhausted, whilst success bins the cards to the discards. Keeping cards in your hand at game round end will put them into the Needs to be Cleared pile - and one of the key balances of the game is how many cards should get dealt out at the start of a round ( it's up to the players ), and how many are going to be forced into play or onto the needs to be done deck.

The sets have a lovely theme, well, lovely is the wrong word, they are lovely pieces of art about a miserable existence, bullets, whistles, snow, rain, gas masks. Players each get a unique solider to play who have their own one use powers - clearing certain set types from the tableau - and also a speech power up which can do the same. Injuries can be picked up which have varying impacts on gameplay and your choices, such as forcing you to play all cards from your hand whether you like it or not.

A nice little filler game with lovely art, and one of those games you should definitely get round to playing at least once. And if you're into your French themed fillers, then this and Guillotine could be the start of your collection ! Now if only there was a Napoleonic filler...

 Lastly I got to play Harbour with Joe, which is another nicely condensed Euro squished into the size of a quick filler. Even though the games are utterly different, this reminds me of Artificium, which condenses a lot of Euro goodness into a very quick and simple filler based around card and resource management. In harbour the order of the day is worker placement and resource gathering / selling. In some ways it feels like a super cut down version of Le Havre in so much as the goods interaction is global and changes turn by turn as to their attractiveness, and behind all that you are trying to build things and score points in a port kind of theme.

Dare I say, it feels better than Le Havre to me ?

Le Havre is a cool game, and something you can sink your teeth into, Harbour is a filler, light weight, less complexity, and yet, by and large the games hit the same spots - resource collection, optimisation, building synergies, build to win, yada. Harbour plays in 15 minutes. Le Havre, not so much.

Check it out anyway, Harbour is a lovely condensed euro filler.

A study in Emerald - a study in cube placement. With tentacles.

 Last week I got to play Study in Emerald, a game I have seen occasionally pass through NoBoG but have never got to sit down and play. It's something of a collectors item these days with some seriously inflated prices ( although a second edition reprint is on the way which will no doubt pop that balloon ) which I am kind of at a loss to explain - perhaps because it has a passing tie in to Neil Gaiman - the game is based on a story of the same name.

Study in Emerald is a Cthulian Victorian Sherlock Holmesian mash up set in a world where the Cthulu lot rule the world, and an underground anti Cthulu lot want to depose them. The game is a simple area control and deck building game with a couple of twists, but by and large it comes down to having more cubes in a location than anyone else - which allows you to draft a new card into your deck and or score points. The cards form what kind of action you can peform - but there isn't a huge breadth of options here, you will be picking up cubes from the stock, placing them down into areas, cashing areas in for cards or assassinating someone else at a given location.

So the game comes down to place cubes, pick up cubes, cash in areas removing all cubes and obtaining a card. Rinse and repeat.

The main twist to this game is that the players are split into two teams, the pro cthulu and the anti cthulu, and the way you score points for each team is different - some things will only score for one side or the other and a global track of victory points for each team also adds into your personal score. Despite this team aspect, the game is won individually - and for an extra kick, the lowest scoring person penalises everyone else on the same team by a handful of points.

The game has excellent presentation and a cool theme, mechanically it does its job, but realistically there is only a certain amount of wiggle room you have in promoting your team - and your fellow players - and demoting the enemy. So, your hands can be tied if someone on your team is struggling and pulling your points down. No one likes to have their points pulled down in public. There is a balance there in trying to help your team whilst kicking the other AND also making sure no one else is beating you points wise that you get to play out, but, it's muted, the actions largely play themselves, and your influence on what is going on globally is limited.

Codenames

The filler codenames has also been doing the rounds. James was somewhat miffed when I couldn't help but describe his clue as possibly the worlds worst codename clue ( the clue was heel 2, one of the answers being socks, the other being part.... because a heel is PART of a foot.... um... that logic means that just about any word would fit PART ... leaf... well its PART of a tree innit... money... well... its PART of the global economic model innit... ), and post round demanded I be made spy master as it wasn't so easy. For the record I guided my team to a win - helped enormously by the opposing team continually getting our answers. Good work lads. That game session also saw Sam pull an answer out of his ass in 5 seconds flat with "satellite" for the clue "desynchronisation". Satellite and belt. Huh. And that won them the game too. Outrageous.

Lots of other games played. Cthulu wars again. Blood Rage. Machi Koro. Luna. Blood Bowl Team Manager. Steam punk rally. Phew ! So many games, so little time.

32,36,42 for those who are counting.

I'll leave you with an epic three week sized gallery.

Luna. With a very thematic blue cloth for the sea.

Lords of Waterdeep

Cthulu Wars

Machi Koro

Blood Bowl Team Manager

Ticket to Ride

Cyclades

Castles of Mad King Ludwig

Blood Bowl Team Manager

Ticket to Ride India

Game of Thrones LCG

Yet More Castles of Mad King Ludwig

Lords of Waterdeep

Takenoko

Galaxy Truckers

Blood Rage

Steam punk rally

The Girl that's driving me mad, is going away

Yeah !

Ticket to Ride UK. A Norwich First !

Last week was post Essen week at NoBoG, an event where the committed adherents go on pilgrimage to Germany in pursuit of gaming Nirvana. Or failing that a suitcase full of new game purchases that they can trade away in 3 months after the heady glow of Essen fever has faded. In the dusty annals of NoBoG history, once upon a time Jimmy would have been the chief Essen adherent, returning with many laden suitcases and armfuls of gems to play, but alas he has long since lapsed into the Hall of Fame and hasn't been seen down t'pub in many a generation*. If you have never experienced Jimmy giving you a withering look as you failed to pick up a rule the first time around or arrived late, you haven't lived.

But I digress. Regular NoBoGer Elliott did make it to, and back from ( with suitable missed ferry.. tsk.. bad worker placement optimisation there ! ) Essen with a haul of things, one of which he got to play on Tuesday - the new and sexy Ticket to Ride United Kingdom ( although using the word sexy in conjunction with British Railways is pushing your luck ).

Poor old Athena, one of our FLGS, is still waiting to demo its copy of Ticket to Ride UK, but if you want to be right on the pulse, NoBoG is clearly the place to be ! ( If you are interested in some TtR UK, then Athena's special preview event is on Sunday 25th October, more info can be found on facebook Ticket to Ride @ Athena , or, just turn up to NoBoG as well for an all you can eat Ticket to Ride buffet ! Promise there will be no soggy overpriced sandwiches. )

Elliott seemed rather excited about the prospect of getting Ticket to Ride on the table at the Tun,  despite having no pieces on the table - clearly this was the expert Blind Ticket to Ride variant, where each player must keep the board state in their head.

BOOM! Ticket to Ride Britain makes it debut @nobog pic.twitter.com/q4DkxywYqg

— The Orctioneer (@Quirkative) October 13, 2015

Eventually they did bust out the pieces, had an enjoyable game and Elliot didn't mention which position he finished in ( we'll assume last )

A win for the inaugural TtR Britain for Moni with a second place for @Caroline_Butler . Interesting game. pic.twitter.com/NsAT33wuCe

— The Orctioneer (@Quirkative) October 13, 2015

Lovely. The game introduces some new "tech" mechanic which promises to bring a little more to think about to Ticket to Ride than the standard, not sure how this pans out, but it's still Ticket to Ride, beloved by the multitude.

Space Dudes ! Pew Pew edition ! aka Imperial Assault

On the next table over, the regular fortnightly Imperial Assault group got their groove on and attempted to once again best Imperial David, with Owein giving up his spot to allow Fletch to kick some Star Wars ass. The rebels lost this one - they all ran out of time, which in the words of Pete was a shame, as he was enjoying wookie smashing his way around, and it seemed inexplicable to him that after a certain amount of time the rebels all gave up and went home for tea. One can only assume the Rebel Alliance is a keen observer of French union work hours, and knock off promptly at 5pm, princesses in distress or not.**

On Her Majesty's Service

My table I got to introduce the overly bling On Her Majestys Service to Tim, Samantha and Mark, and despite me trying to backstab the leaders as much as possible, there were just too many, and Samantha swept to victory in a late game double turn cunning move. Tim was impressed with the bling, took some photos, and this week actually remembered to send them to the blog.

Afterwards we had a game of the not much seen Divinare, which is a favourite of mine that I like to use as a gateway game. Divinare is a marvellous little filler game for up to four that is filled with deduction, bluff, some knowing nods, nudges and winks, and a little sprinkle of ass hattery. Simple in execution, Divinare portrays itself as a competition between mediums who are keen to prove they are the better psychic than anyone else present.

Divinare bathes in the blinding light that is Tim

They do that by predicting the total number of cards at the four different coloured tables and by playing cards to match their tables. So. Guess how many cards of each of the four colours are in everyones hand. Some card passing goes on, and there are some wrinkles about when and what kind of prediction you make, allowing you to neatly stitch other people up, bluff, or succumb yourself to some chicanery and either lose face with bad predictions or be forced to withdraw.

Firefly returned to the Tun to entertain a group of five. Not sure there were too many Firefly fans playing however, as there seemed to be some confusion about just what the "Serenity" was, and whether this was actually a game about Firefly at all. Shocking. There was also talk of having "warranties out", which in the end was not about insuring your spaceship from breakages and repair bills but turned out to be the decidely less reassuring "warrants" and being pursued for nefarious deeds. Competent captains all round then - no Mal Reynolds here.

Caverna, with Rebel Owein

Owein shirking his duties as Rebel Scum went and joined in for some Caverna farming action instead, presumably where he went on to sulkily service his uncle's moisture vaporators with power convertors from Toshi station. Or some other nonsense sci fi words. I have no idea really what went on there apart from the usual digging, farming, and snuggling with animals in the snuggle cavern - this actually exists if you've never played Caverna, I'm not making that bit up. And from the looks of the picture they were playing in simplified learners edition Caverna. Pfah !

Elsewhere we had Takenoko - everyone is keenly awaiting the chibi expansion for this with moar pandas - Game of Thrones once again - you can almost take it as read now that Game of Thrones is being played at least once a fortnight - Epic spell wars thingie, Carcassonne, Blood Rage - for an epic third/fourth week in a row ? - and Tom and Stu made a very laudable theme evening with some Bean Feasting, Bohnanzing and other bean related games, but bailed out at the end to play the Foxes which

Takenoko + Beer

isn't foxes but is really cats card game.

There were of course some end of evening Werewolf games, James had a rather unlikely game as a drunk who became tanner and then managed to win by being the person chosen to be shot - you can check out the write up for that from James on his blog

I leave you with the gallery. Thanks go to Tim this week for his photos. Remember, if you have photos, a funny single liner, a write up, or would just like me to shut up for a bit, you can send in a submission over here !

Carcassonne

Blood Rage

Umm, Beanfeast ?

Firefly

Epic Spell Wars

Game of Thrones ( no beer spills this week )

An empty Divinare table setup. I am embarrassingly far ahead.

Hoots mon, it's John Brown from OHMS

Mr Fox loiters with some gas mask person of ill repute

Pretty Shiny Things - OHMS

* A NoBoG generation being around 6 months by my unscientific reckoning. This is the minimum space of time someone new can turn up, attend regularly, then not bother again, thus never coming into contact with the "next generation" of NoBoGer. It's like dog years. Or something. It makes some of our veteran NoBoGers over 700 years old. Listen. It all makes sense to me ok ?

** A friend of mine related a recent story about someone breaking down in their car whilst in France. A swift call to the AA and local Francais repair man is out on the scene inspecting the engine. An hour later with a muttered cinq heure he packs up his tools and drives off - leaving the broken down car still broken down. Cue phone call to AA again. He buggered off at 5 ! Well that's not very good says the AA. We'll get a recovery vehicle out to you. A short time later an apologetic call from the AA. It seems that as it's now past 5 o'clock, there are no recovery vehicles available to pick you up. We'll get a taxi out to you and put you up for the night. Apparently the taxis do actually work after 5pm in France.

Next day, the car is picked up, taken to a local garage, and they arrive to see what the issues are. After a short chat, the mechanic declares it to be lunch, and buggers off leaving them none the wiser.

Très bien ! Liberté, égalité, fraternité ! ( only during office hours )