Cows & Cows & Board Games

HULLOOOOOOOOOOOO! I'm writing this from the magic of a train, which means I keep getting distracted by cows. Typically the cows are in the fields rather than on the train. The train has just reversed direction at Ely and I'm now facing the wrong way, which I'm rather miffed at. Anyway. This is a NoBloG not a travel diary, I suppose. This week I'll be sending you missives regarding Plague Inc, Trajan, Camel Up, Sons of Anarchy, Plague Inc (again) and Adrenaline. Ooh look, horses.

First let's conquer the world the infectious way in Plague Inc, which is apparently so good that two separate groups of people were marching (in boots carrying foot-and-mouth, no doubt) their microscopic minions across the globe this week. Let's start with the front-room group, which was already pretty infected when I arrived. As I draw up, Matt fails his roll (his disease still being pretty pathetic so he only had a one-in-six chance) — disappointing for him because in his words "it would have pissed Lewis and JD off" if he'd got it. He is, however, the filthiest of all the players at this point, having acquired soe bonus infectiousness along the way which has bagged him a presence in a bunch more countries. Why are we going so slowly? Hey — dragonflies. Lewis on his turn talks a little excursion to Argentina then (paradoxically, in my view) gains cold resistance. But he wants to take one of those fashionable breaks in Iceland so it makes sense. With his low lethality he also is unable to succeed in his rolls to kill the countries he's managed to break out all over.

Thumbs up for disease!

Disease points

In the second game of Plague Inc — Sean tells me there had to be two "just because we wanted to kill everyone!" — Sean and Jake have a comfortable lead but are battling bitterly for first place. As this is being explained, Katherine is deliberating: "I just can't decide where to infect now!" But after having made up her mind picks up a mega-bonus which might throw the final tally, so confidently expressed mere moments ago, into doubt. I leave after being given cause to doubt the players' understanding of basic biology the advice is given, "remember you can't infect Kenya! They have diplomatic immunity." After a short pause it is pointed out that just regular old immunity immunity would probably suffice.

Because obliterating humanity once
is not enough.

Next up I have a look at a suitably imperious Trajan where it seems the eponymous emperor has been replaced by a Great Old One — one of the lesser-known dictators of the Roman Empire. John is getting confused about which place he's in, pretending to be last when actually not. All part of the meta-gaming strategy to get his opponents to go easy on him. Alfie is actually winning, whilst Pete insists they're all winning — awwww. However Pete actually has loads of bonus actions lined up so maybe he too is trying to divert attention. After all this motivational muttering, John still seems sad but nevertheless takes a bonus to hammers (or something, I'm just going by the symbol on the card. A bonus for do more break smash sounds good though.) Also this synergises with his end-game bonus (which unlike in a lot of games, are public information.) I leave them to work out who is winning the old-fashioned way — by playing the game to the end — and to their fate with the Ancient Horror.

Trajically Trajan. Tragic because
everyone's gone mad with terror.

Next up it's Camels. Which are also up. I've got no idea what's going on — they seem to be humping each other, and it's not even past the watershed. I am scandalised. When I enquire about what is actually happening, Ellie informs me that "it's a complete disaster" — presumably because she is not doing as well as she hoped. At this point accusations start flying: "that's cheating! You didn't get what you want and you rolled it again!" says Katie. Ellie retorts that she "rolled it wrong," which is an excuse I really would like to try in the future. Katie on the other hand is upset because "everyone was against me." "That's because you're winning." Amid much scrutiny due to the aforementioned incident, Dan rolls his die very carefully and with a touch of flourish, but I don't think it helped. I didn't learn anything about the rules but the game involves high emotions and a lot of swearing so it's probably good.

Oh my.

Woof. This doesn't have anything to do with
board games but who's gonna complain?!

The game of Sons of Anarchy seems disappointingly orderly and calm. Dave nevertheless asserts that it's caused such anger that the table has descended into gang violence, though I think he's getting confused between the game and reality again. Dave has three contrabands (i.e. cocaines). Contraband (cocaine) you can sell for cold hard cash (money) which is probably good. Dave then promotes a guy to have a bike. I thought that it was rather iniquitous to have gang members cycling around but apparently he got a motorbike which is probably more thematically appropriate. James on the other hand has no money at all but an absolute ton of cocaine — presumably piled up in some kind of parody of Scarface. Then a fight breaks out. No, in the game, not in real life. Both parties secretly commit a certain number of gang members and perhaps some guns, and roll dice. The total strength determines the winner, and bringing guns to what is no longer a knife fight also kills off some of the opponent's fighters.

Anarchy in the Mash Tun

Money! Drugs!

And now if I may get your Adrenaline pumping I will describe the game I played. Though I've left writing this up longer than normal and been distracted by a lot of farm animals so the details are getting a bit fuzzy. I'm pretty sure Benjamin was the sheep... Anyway the game started as it usually does with a scramble for the good weapons. I ended up with a Power Glove (run at people and punch them in the face), a Heat Seeking Missile and the localised area-of-effect Shockwave. In retrospect I probably should have found myself a medium-range weapon as positioning became very difficult — I either wanted to be right in people's faces or as far away as possible. As the game's mechanics tend to ensure, everyone got killed a similar number of times, not that being killed really does anything bad to you anyway. James zipped around the map using his Cyberblade (which allows you an extra move after you whallop someone with it) while Colin somehow avoided getting shot for ages.

Rarrr, kill 'em all!

Once the end-game phase was triggered, Colin and I had also managed to forget to actually kill anyone — Benjamin and James being the only two to have done so. Colin also unfortunately misunderstood the end-game and thought he would have an extra turn, missing out on the possibility of getting some last-minute points. As it happened if he had done so he might have inadvertently handed me the victory instead of James. The result of my ridiculous length of time trying to work out how to kill Benjamin was "you can't," requiring one more point of damage than I was able to do. In the end I came joint second, so that was OK. I've played Adrenaline 3 times now and I'm still not entirely sure what I think. It's definitely fun but it seems to be missing something — you're basically only ever trying to do damage — whether to finish someone off, to get more damage on someone before they die, or to get damage on someone new. With some more tactical options it might have a bit more depth — if there were some incentive to not take damage other than giving points, or an effective way to block other players from hitting a particular enemy. I also wonder if the action limit could be made a little more lenient without making it too easy — you can never do what feels like a "complete turn" because you typically want to move, pick up ammo or a new gun, get into position and then shoot someone, but you can generally only do two or three of these. I call on NoBoGgers to make it so!

Contemplative Colin.

Adrenaline gets pumping.

And that was the week — shooting, camels, more shooting, Cthulhu and everywhere the terrible spectre of disease. And more cows, right there in that field. Hope you've enjoyed, BYE!

Raining Stars

Our second week at the Mash Tun brought fifty two into the pub for NoBoG, which needless to say is a new attendance record. This worked out to 12 tables of games - which is almost all the gaming table space that the Tun has. With half a dozen newcomers turning up, but a good deal more than that veterans not present. So fifty two is by no means a high water mark. Pete has jokingly suggested that newcomers are welcome to join in future, but must all bring a table with them as their one off joining deposit.

Longer games are definitely creeping into NoBoG now we have a bit more time and a bit more space, and this week we saw a double play of Forbidden Stars, the new hot game from FFG.

Forbidden Stars. And some very non grimdark happy commanders.
You're ruining the theme guys ! It's nothing but war !

Forbidden Stars is a 3X (?) game where you command a faction of military bad asses to go forth and expand your space empire, exploit resources and ultimately exterminate your foes whilst trying to grab your game winning objectives. So, collecting income from your territory, churning out armies and throwing dice at each other to eliminate those armies is the order of the day, like a lot of the more modern deeper rehashes of Risk ( or Risk itself if you insist ) have you do.

Forbidden Stars in very many ways - if not all - is simply a refinement and re-release of an earlier FFG game - Starcraft, and a lot of the mechanisms are exactly the same in both games. Something of a tidy up has occurred in the design of Forbidden Stars over Starcraft and of course aesthetically the theme has changed from Blizzards universe to that of Games Workshops Warhammer 40,000 universe of Eldar, Chaos and all the other grimdark gothicness. ( Ironically Starcraft the original video game started its life as a Games Workshop game, but Blizzard failing to come to an agreement with GW over IP dropped references to GW's 40k universe and came up with their own eye wateringly close, but not close enough to get sued variant. It's all the same. Dudes in power armour. Hungry aliens. Enigmatic other aliens in fancier power armour. Lots of space pew pew. )

More Forbidden Stars. Pete is lost in thought.

For my money, one of the fairly unique, elegant ( gasp ) and interesting mechanics that both games have is the issuing of orders to Do Stuff. A limited number of orders are placed on the board round robin style, indicating something is happening in a given area - however, the neat thing about this is that any number of orders can be stacked in an area, and the order they are stacked in is the order they are executed in - so player turn order if you like is determined by who placed what when. This means care has to be given about what order you play orders in - you'll need to do them back to front if you are chaining them - and beware others then putting on order on top of yours effectively getting the jump on whatever evil play you had in mind.

The game has some lovely production values and comes with a metric ton of plastic, bits, cards, dice and yada, enough to make any materialist board gamer very happy.

Both tables of this as the Tun said they enjoyed it, although David noted that there was some downtime for combat, and the game does run long - both tables managed to finish, but took the better part of 4 hours to do so for 3 player games. There is also some questions about its viability with four players ( the game supports 2 - 4 players ) as this would make it play very long and incur even more downtime for others. But it was a thumbs up from all involved.

I haven't played this so can't really comment wholly objectively ( I do own Starcraft however ), but to my eye despite it being overhauled from the unwieldy Starcraft, it still retains a lot of clunky inelegance evidenced in multiple decks of cards, dice, chits and the kitchen sink being brought in to realise what is in essence a fancy Risk - culminating in the sharp pointy end of combat having dice thrown, cards played against those dice, reinforcement chits thrown on top, and then working out the relative strengths of the models involved to get a result. The critical question for me remains whether any of that is really necessary to get you a deep and nuanced combat game, or whether its just a case of throwing more crap on the pile to muddy the waters ( and if you want to see an elegant but horribly deep and complex combat system, then look no further than old school heavy wargame ASL which proves far much more depth without half the crap - although it's no innocent itself ).

I would actually say something like Axis and Allies is a much better variant of this kind of game - less fiddly, more elegant and delivers the same kind of experience, resource earning, army building, territory conquering, tech upgrading, albeit you are stuck with WW2 - no fancy space pew pew.

Yeah that's right. I went there. I rained on the parade of the new game. But seriously, Starcraft itself was a cool game - if you could handle the endless fiddly crap of it - and Forbidden Stars has improved on this, and is no doubt a good game itself. Just some patience with fiddliness required I suspect, so it's probably much more down to the preferences of the players as to whether it's a great game than the actual design of it itself.

Betrayal at house on the hill !

Elsewhere in the Tun we had two simultaneous games of Betrayal at House on the Hill. You thought Betrayal was popular before. Oh boy. With fifty people it gets played with MORE THAN ONE COPY. It's a pity there wasn't a third copy to play really. Luke related his epic 3.5 hour game of Betrayal in which he narrowly pipped a win securing his victory where I think everyone else had failed. He was very chuffed ( they were playing against the doppleganger ).

Lewis played Smash Up and utilised some overpowered robot malarkeys to thrash his way to a win - helped by top decking a card at the last moment to secure the win. Ah. Top decking. The 'skillful' art

Lewis and Davey head up International NoBoG with Smash Up

of pulling the exact card you need from a deck of cards at the exact moment you need it - a great phenomenon in things like Magic and *cough* Netrunner. Yeah that's right. I'm raining on your parade too Netrunners. Lewis also had the honour of playing with our most far flung newcomers - a couple all the way from Australia. This seems rather a long way to commute for a weekly board game session, but clearly NoBoG is the place to be. Lewis thinks we should start pitching some International version of NoBoG. Well. We did have International Tuesday Tabletop Day.

Marvel Legendary. Heroic failure is nothing to smile about.

Ewan brought along Marvel Legendary, the deck building super hero capering co-operative game. Apparently it was on Tabletop this week, always a good move to bring a game along that's recently done the rounds on Tabletop as there is usually interest from some in playing what they see Wheaton playing. I think they had a quick success game of this, followed by an abject defeat.

I got to play the relatively new Bring Out Yer Dead, which is a lightweight euro that sees players competing to be the best buried family in the city. Uh huh. The game revolves around a very simple simultaneous hidden action selection which allows you to bury coffins into scored plots. Along the way you'll get to utilise special actions that mix the play up, get up to various shenanigans by bribing gravediggers to shift coffins, switch places, and also gain point riffing cards to get you in game scoring or end game bonuses. This is no brain burner by any means, but there is high player

Bring out yer dead. The finger pointing was not staged !

interaction, just about perfect information, and therefore a some planning and backstabbing that can be done. An easy inoffensive game, some think it could be garnering some awards attention, but I don't think it's quite at that level.

Other games - lots of them, too many to go into detail, but Dean brought along Myrmes, a much award nominated game from a few years ago all about leading your colony of ants to better... ant-ing than all the other ant colonies. Looked cool, missed playing it by a hair. Stu played the excellent Machi Koro followed by Camel Up, Hal got Spectre Ops to table ( which rather bizarrely had James seemingly doing a crossword whilst everyone else actually played the board game ) and before that Hal played his prototype, Luke got China to table, but

Ant action with Myrmes

lamented people didn't seem to be into its old school charm and vanilla Resistance had a couple of super noisy big sessions. I also caught a glimpse of Le Petit Prince - which I assume is based on the very cool book of the same name, the game of which seemed to revolve around building a planet ? There's a few other games in there I know I missed too.

Despite our high numbers everyone fit in nicely with room to spare, it didn't feel cramped at all, and everyone seemed content with the space, although Tom was ambivalent and noted it wasn't as cosy as the Ribs. Very true. But then fifty is hard to consolidate with cosy. Whatchagonnado. Although I think a few areas of the Tun are very cosy - it depends where you sit.

I will leave you with the gallery.

Roll Call - what games ya got ?

Hal's prototype, Unfeeling Creatures

Ankh Morpork

Nations

Machi Koro

Better Living Through (Al)Chemistry

Contrary to popular belief, science is not always an exact... science. For instance, the reason saccharin was discovered as a sweetener was because the chemist working on it accidentally got it over his hands, which then transferred to his sandwich. The lucky* chemist was then surprised when on eating his lunch the sandwich was a good deal sweeter than it had any right to be.

Being a good science lackey he then tasted everything on his bench, until on finding the culprit he figured he would test it was safe by taking a dose and waiting 24 hours.

Which, you know, is just sensible.

In a mad scientist, not to worry about poisoning kind of way.

A similar thing happened with LSD too when it was inadvertently absorbed through the hands. But with more colours and flying pigs.

Which leads you to some conclusions.

1) Never shake hands with a Chemist
2) Never trust a Chemist who asks you to just try something, it's safe honestly, it's been rigorously tested
and
3) Chemistry in some ways can still be a very medieval stick it in your mouth and see what it does type of activity.

And so it goes in the game Alchemists, which this week made a visit to the Ribs for some substance ingesting, random ingredient picking science. Old school style.

Alchemists - Mastermind for the Euro generation.

Alchemists is a light euro action selection type game who's main thrust revolves around deducing what ingredients do what. Or to put it another way, it's like a modern Euro take on the classic 70's family game Mastermind. Or the even older Cluedo.

Up to four players get to select actions from the board ranging from picking ingredients to drinking ( testing ) a potion. Crucial to scoring points is to figure out what each of the eight ingredients provide alchemically, and you do that by mixing any two ingredients together to get a potion and drinking it ( in the very best of Chemist Experimental Procedure ) - the result of which tells you some things about the ingredients. Rather humorously you can either get your poor suffering assistant to drink it - no bad effects should the potion turn out to be less than human compatible - or you can drink it yourself... if you're desperate.

After all the testing and observing, unless you have some kind of eidetic blind chess level of intellect, you mark down your results in a grid, which helps you to deduce what thing does what.

The more information you have about what does what, the more sure you can be of producing a certain type of potion - used to gain money when selling potions to adventurers, and also to score points in the final round - and also be more sure of what any ingredient provides.

The all important secret results grid of your potion drinking

Scoring points from your discoveries revolves around the concept of publishing your findings. For a gold coin you can publish a theory that Some ingredient provides Whatever alchemical goodness. This is a case of matching one of the eight ingredients to one of the eight available alchemical wotsits.

Publishing your work earns you reputation - victory points - and if you publish enough, reputation points per turn, and the chance to pick up a science grant of yet more reputation and cash.

The other wrinkle here is that published work doesn't necessarily have to be correct. You can publish any old tosh. Just to get your hands on a grant. Or some early points. But note, being found out - debunked - can cost you a serious penalty whilst handing a bonus to your debunker - and by game end your dubious statements will be revealed to be rubbish. Grants however, once awarded, stay awarded. Regardless of whether you are the academic equivalent of Beaker from the Muppets or the next Alchemical Linus Pauling.

The timing of publishing and debunking and any grants received provides the balance to whether spouting tosh pays off or not, plus a somewhat clever mechanism in allowing you to hedge your bets, know you are speaking rubbish, and secretly declare that you don't have much faith in your statement.

So how does it play ? The deduction part of the game is the meat and potatoes. The action selection is just an ordered way to get at the deduction. There isn't a whole lot of - or indeed hardly any - typical euro engine building and optimisation here, it's just about timing of scoring and getting your deductions done.

Which on the face of it is rather thin. However it is a fun experience - it's quite different from much of the board game field, and the added ( necessary ) gimmick of using your mobile phone to test results on adds a lot to an otherwise mechanically sparse game.

We played with four alchemists, which sees your action pool reduced to four a turn ( from a possible six ), which really makes figuring out ingredients a time pressured endeavour. Of course you can glean some information from others debunking, and the addition of a periscope or otherwise can allow you to snoop on others results, or make for more efficient resource gathering.

Smash Up. Reclining luxuriously on sofas.
AKA avoiding the camera

I enjoyed it a lot, Ben suffered an aneurysm about half way through and almost gave up figuring out potions, whilst Richard IV managed to cock up his results and get things spectacularly wrong and Ewan played a strong game of having the most bling equipment. Turn order was absolutely crucial - I was in a position at the end to score a truck load of points, but because I was beaten into last place turn order I could only sit back and watch everyone make dubious statements, wrong theories and generally miss out. Ewan won, I came second, and Rich and Ben challenged for Worst Alchemist of the Year.

Dead of Winter. Martin oversees the survivors.

Whilst all this alchemical nonsense was going on elsewhere Tragedy Looper was brought to table again, this time with Owein filling the shoes of the diabolical mastermind. When I checked in with them for the last time there was much shaking of the heads for the good guys, and a rather smug Owein gloating in the corner. I'm not sure who won this, but judging from that I would say Owein.

Camel Up galloped a few laps a table over, whilst Smash Up also did some smashing up on the comfy sofa seating table.

Downstairs Dead of Winter got another play, the colonists were doing a fantastic job, hardly any zombies, almost no helpless survivors ( were they even playing right ??? ), but morale was teetering on giving out entirely. They ended with a survivor victory and no traitors.

Hamsterolle. Wonky tables for pro level difficulty.

Mad King Ludwig was also on offer downstairs - this is proving to be really popular at the Ribs with an often eager player group waiting to bust it out. Fletch had a turn with this this week, and gave it a thumbs up and another confirmed report that it was indeed very similar to Suburbia, but nothing like as number crunching.

An ended Five Tribes. Guillame shows off his winning score.

Lastly James played Five Tribes for a final time before he sold it to Ben, Guillame winning this with a typical Euro stomping emphatic win - he's rather good at the Euro efficiency malarkey. They then followed up with the novelty acts of Hamsterolle and Loopin' Louie.

Other fillers were to be had. Guillotine made another show - Guillotine is racking up some fairly consistent plays.

Tragedy Looper. Tragically Owein is winning.

*Lucky - Lucky that he didn't a) die from cross contamination and the lesser point that b) also discovered something useful. One can only imagine that evolutionary pressures play a much greater role in selecting more assiduous scientists for say the role of Infectious Disease Researcher, which is perhaps why you don't hear about nearly so many "lucky" infectious disease scientists. The very worrying thought occurs that all scientists are like this, and that shaking hands with anyone in the scientific community is a good deal more hazard filled than people commonly believe.

Deutschland, Deutschland über alles

Germany is determined to safeguard her homeland, and especially her war industry and provisional centres for the fighting fronts. Therefore it has become necessary to create strictly forbidden zones, called death zones, in which all unauthorised trespassers will be immediately shot on sight.

Escaping prisoners of war, entering such death zones, will certainly lose their lives. They are therefore in constant danger of being mistaken for enemy agents or sabotage groups.

 Urgent warning is given against making future escapes!

In plain English: Stay in the camp where you will be safe! Breaking out of it is now a damned dangerous act.

The chances of preserving your life are almost nil!

From a notice posted up inside Colditz during the War.


This week the positively archaic board game Escape from Colditz paid a visit to NoBoG replete with its 'naughty' swastikas, 30 year old yellow sellotape and generally knackered box.

Myself, Fletch and the two Riches took this 40 year old game on, with myself playing the heroic Germans *cough*, and the rest playing the misbehaving allies. We agreed to play to a time limit of 2 hours and 15 minutes, and for the prisoners to get two of their guys over the walls and out to freedom. After a short and sharp rules session, we were off with the Poles of Punk Rich, the Brits of Fletch and the Yanks of Rich IV.

Disguises were gathered and equipment was collected - and the allies started whispering and muttering between themselves suspiciously. Odd clumps of prisoners began to form, and I as the Germans started nervously fidgeting guards around the most likely groups.

Punk Rich was defiant of the Germans. Sure he had escape equipment on him, but he wasn't going to be intimidated by any filthy German guard. Screw you you Nazi he sneered in my face.

So I arrested him. Schweinhund !

He was undeterred. Screw you ! So I arrested him again. Here then in our mini recreation of Colditz a battle of wills was going on between authoritarian jailer, and anarchist prisoner. Inevitably this ended up at one point with all the Polish except for one in solitary confinement. Fantastich !

The poles are so popular they get their own cell block.
Half the prisoners are in solitary. Huzzah !

This was branded as somewhat harsh to Rich. Unfair even. Pfah. Allied whining. Just doing my job ! You are prisoners and I am the jailer ! I personally was elated with the futile battle of wills, an easy contest for me to win whilst the other allies were still busy trying to put their plans in order.

Rich refused to go down however, busted all the Poles out of jail, taunted the guards... and got thrown straight back into solitary. As 2 hours rolled on, Rich had finally learnt his lesson. It's no good taunting the guards without a plan - and his defiant Poles scampered away from the Germans to look for safe spots. Yeah, that's right. Taunt me and you'll get a jackboot up your arse ! Muah ha ha ha.

Meanwhile a tunnel had opened up in the Chapel - a pathetic attempt by the Yanks and Brits that was immediately squashed and the offenders arrested - to join the ever present Poles in solitary. Fletch then managed to slip out to the parked staff car and brazenly drive it out of the front gates - only to conk out half way to freedom and find himself thrown in solitary. You cannot beat the Reich ! Filthy pig dogs !

Another largely unsuccessful tunnel opened up - one Brit escaping, one Brit getting shot, and the last turn of events, a mass escape at the North wall, with the Yanks ushering everyone over their roughly made rope. Poles and Yanks milled in confusion looking to jump the last 60' wall, but it was not to be as the guards descended and the Americans realised they had miscounted their rope and were caught like rats in a trap. Math is hard. How embarassing to lead your fellow prisoners to an escape that forgot to bring a valued piece of equipment ( to be fair to Rich IV I had decided to search the quarters he was in on the same turn and managed to confiscate a crucial piece of rope he was about to use... )

Despondency descended. How on earth do you get out ? This is impossible !

The German Commandant smiled smugly. A last ditch Do Or Die by the American failed, leaving the score at 0 for the Poles, 0 for the Yanks and 1 for the Brits. A victory for Germany. All rise for the German national anthem !

Great fun. Rich IV was surprised how much fun it was and how tense. Fletch seemed to really enjoy it and was doing a pretty damn good job. Punk Rich... I think the authoritarian cosh of the guards was too much for his anarchist ways and his battle of wills that left his Poles broken and imprisoned left him subdued.

Old school games laugh at your pain.

Robinson Crusoe

Meanwhile away from our tense battle of wills, Takenoko romped its way through bamboo and gardening downstairs and Cash and Guns was called for at the start of the evening - madness. The excellent co-operative game Robinson Crusoe made it to the final table downstairs, with the first scenario given a walkthrough - I failed to note if they succeeded in their endeavours.

Upstairs next to Colditz, Lords of Waterdeep got another play - it seems to be a happy go to game when no one can make up their mind - and Mr Bond playing for the second time won again to make his waterdeep record an impressive 2/2.

Bruges

Pillars of the Earth and Bruges also slipped in upstairs, with a whole slew of fillers following on in the rest of the evening - Resistance, Camel Up, Incan Gold, Blood Bound.

I got to finally have a go of the push your luck game of Incan Gold, and despite winning my first game, managed to slump to a score of zero for a following game, beating James' improbably pathetic score of 1.

James then adopted a low risk strategy of running early and managed to cash in significantly, ramping up some major scores in the 30's, which only just failed to pay off once at the end score with an amazing score from Ewan.

Blood Bound

34 this week. Not quiet then. Reduced to 32 when Caroline and Elliot decided that Takenoko was the work of the illuminati and refused to play it and instead left early, thus avoiding its subtle mind controlling ways of bamboo and panda.

Don't ask me. I only report the news.

Martha the Camel

Ah, the joys of Norwich traffic on a football day - NoBoG evening found me many miles from Norwich dahn sahf, battling to return against lane cutting coaches and roads that cannot handle the numbers. So I arrived this week without any preparation or organisation and without any clear game to play. I decided to watch the river go by from the Ribs balcony instead and enjoy not looking at the arse end of yet another football coach.

My peaceful reverie did not last long however, as a bunch of fresh faced first year UEA students turned up fashionably late looking for games to play. Given only one of them had any real kind of gaming experience, Agricola seemed positively cruel, Legendary Encounters probably... a bit too alien, so I started them off on the gentle crowd pleaser, King of Tokyo.

Which was a bit like Yahtzee I explained.

What's Yahtzee ?

An old family game from then 70's, 60's, 50's whatever.

But I'm only 19, I don't know Yahtzee.

Moments like this make you realise just how old you are. Or possibly how few people play Yahtzee anymore. I blame Angry Birds.

A couple of enjoyable games followed, Kaylee was determined to be a pacifist penguin and came second twice, or in her own words "a consistent failure". Camel Up was played next, with Kaylee again favouring odd tactics and encouraging the hopelessly behind yellow camel ( which she named Martha ) to ride forth and win. She did not however put her money where her mouth was, and refused to bet on the long term prospects of Martha.

We finished with a couple of games of Avalon Resistance, four new players in a six player game, followed by five new players in a seven player game. Uh huh. No monumental cockups, apart from a team of all good guys managing to fail a quest. Uhhh. And then Darren convinced I was a bad guy sending all the actual bad guys on a quest together. Oh dear.

Despite Darren being very keen to play Resistance with our group, he spent most of the play time stating how he hated playing Resistance with me. I took it as a compliment. Which sounds weird perhaps unless you've played Resistance. He dithered about me being Merlin. I told him I wasn't Merlin. Incredibly unlikely I was. He stabbed me on the offchance I was Merlin. I wasn't Merlin. I suspect this has not improved his liking of playing Resistance with me.

It was great to get to play Resistance again - it's been a while for me, and it was great to wind Darren up. Very enjoyable.

Elsewhere Stu rustled up some Burgundum for a group of five, followed possibly by some Love Letter. Downstairs the longest ever game of Betrayal at house on the Hill saw Lewis and his zombies eat everyones brains - including the two newcomers ( rather rude to eat newcomers brains before they learn the ropes ) and Elliot brought his Catan on steroids with the Catan Histories : Settlers of America : Trails to Rails.

Which left Sam on the last table showing off his new kickstarter package. I think at this point Sam needs to be called Kickstarter Sam as he seems intent on single handedly supporting board game kickstarter development by investing in one of every other release.

This week Sam had Xia, a game in which you get to fly your spaceship around, make money from salvage and cargo, shoot things, explore things and compete for titles and fame. Which in theory sounds like a more open ended Merchant of Venus - or if you like Elite - The Boardgame. Richard IV gave this game a big thumbs up and recommended I give it a try if I could. A pity I was so unprepared otherwise I would have had a nice picture of it.

28 this week.

The Greed of Med "Shoot 'em til they stop twitching and then shoot em some more" Ed

This week we counted 22 NoBoG souls ready for gaming. Which turned out to be a wildly inaccurate count as eventually 31 people were playing at tables. I'm not naming any names *cough* Ewan *cough*, but I feel as if the counting was slightly wonky. This may not have been helped by a slow trickle of stragglers entering the pub. Excuses.

But no matter ! With a bit of patience everyone - even the latecomers - can be accommodated. If you turn up late, you might have to wait a bit for someone to lose horribly with an incompetent playstyle win with a clever strategy and start something else.

First up this week Pete got to give his prototype now in its second printing a go with a full table of six. Pete nobly took a small handicap given all five other players were completely new to the game - and as far as I know had not even played Race for the Galaxy which helps a lot when it comes to Pete's game - and proceeded to bamboozle everyone with rules.

Pete's prototype Galaxy M101
or as I call it, Chink In the Galaxy

Heads were swimming by the end of the rules explanation. It seems few had managed to grasp the finer points and all just wanted to get on and play to get a grip of it by playing a few rounds. The game is pretty straightforward, play systems for a cost ( cards also serve as currency ), deliver goods, put developments into play and creep influence into other systems in much of a cross between Race for the Galaxy and Steam, but if you haven't played either, then it could all be a bit alien at first.

Tom II won this with a triumphant 78 points and a hardcore deliver strategy ( pick cubes up, deliver them where they are needed ) with joint second limping in at 58 points. No one opted for military. A pity. Most enjoyed it thoroughly and thought it was an excellent game, whilst a couple were more on the fence with their experience. Six player is a pretty tough shark infested count for the game, and with all new players at the table it's likely that not everyone is going to have a happy clappy easy existence. Four players with new people would probably have been a good sweet spot.

Stu was back with us this week and gave Kingdom Builder - a Stu firm favourite - another bash. He followed this up with Camel C/Up ( annoying goddamn name that refuses to be one or the other ) which seemed to go down better than Kingdom Builder. Camel Cup is certainly a barrelful of fun and tends to leave the more serious, analytical and buttoned down Euros standing alone in a corner wondering where everyone has gone.

Lewis busted out Lords of Waterdeep at the final table downstairs, with Tom the First mixing it up and showing all the young 'uns ( technically everyone is a young 'un to Tom.... ) how to play with a solid victory. Quest finishes were at an all time high, the deck being one card away from exhaustion. No fillers for them this week as Lords played the whole evening.

Upstairs, Alhambra got a play, and if I have my facts right, Chris won this, with Kittens in a Blender being played afterwards. Kittens in a Blender according to Lauren was tense. Incredibly tense if you were one of the kittens I imagine. No idea who won this, but really, what does it matter who wins when you have a chance to stuff kittens in a blender ?

Elsewhere Darren brought Legendary Encounters - another card game in the Legendary family that this time sees you working your way through the Aliens franchise. We've already seen the Legendary Marvel game at NoBoG a couple of times, but the Encounters game is new this year and new to NoBoG. The rules are the same, but the theme is switched, no super heroes here, you get to play characters such as Ripley or Hicks ( not sure whether Hudson is in it... Game Over Man, Game Over ! ) and have to survive and engage with the acidic horrors from Geigers imagination. I didn't pay any attention to this as it was played but I suspect the theme is probably a good fit for the game, even though as a whole the Aliens Franchise has generally produced some awful games based on its IP - bewildering given that many knock off Alien copies are great games.

Dead of Winter got another bash. Everyone lost. Again. Two betrayers. But they didn't stink up the crises, they played nice. We played with an objective of too many mouths to feed, and started the game with 8 useless helpless survivors. The game seemed to be on punishing mode however, as helpless survivors sky rocketed - we ended up with an utterly bonkers 15 helpless survivors eating 8 food a turn - zero weapons were found, and much to the annoyance of all players, there were absolutely no options to eat any of the helpless survivors. Or leave them out in the cold. Or accidentally move base and forget to give them a forwarding address.

Despite the colony devouring 12 food a turn by game end, a heroic effort to salvage food saw us easily swing the food in the third round, only to be woefully betrayed by rampant resource burning which saw a flurry of zombie attacks eat people and plunge morale to a game ending -5.

Tough was an understatement.

Moving on we had a shot at Cash and Guns second edition and joined up with the Legendary table. Second edition Cash and guns makes a few changes to the original, notably it removes the Bang Bang Bang card ( which gives precedence over Bang cards ), changed loot division - it's now round robin instead of evenly split, and finally introduced the Boss who gets to pick loot first and also gets to change a single shooters target in the shooting round.

Adjustments have also been made to the player powers - simplifying them and making them all visible at game start - and the loot now has some set collection mechanics, with art and diamonds giving bonuses for who has what at the end.

Cash & Guns 2nd Edition. Ed toys with his gun...

Med Ed won the first round of this in his nice, easy mannered, I am not a threat, under the radar kinda way, and then proceeded to state that back to back wins in such a game were almost impossible. Little did we know he was just seeding the group think at the table for his shenanigans.

Darren got shot to bits in the second game with an astounding four out of four guns being loaded with bullets and pointing at him - and being brave or foolhardy he attempted to brash it out - but despite being dead and out of the game, this didn't stop Ed from later attempting to shoot Darren again. Because you know. Keep shooting them until they stop twitching. Or perhaps playing zombie filled Dead of Winter had trained Ed to double tap his victims. Just in case.

Admitting his incompetence - which may have just been another smokescreen ruse to lower his apparent threat - and having directed Ed not to shoot dead people in future turns, or anyone else at the bar / Norwich in general who weren't in the game, Ed cheerfully kept on sucking up double loot with his greedy character power and by game end had an impressive lead and had indeed won back to back at Cash and Guns.

The morale of the story is, don't be suckered in by Med Ed's nice ways. And also, never pretend to be dead. He'll still shoot you.

Tastes like.... Pork !

Tom informs me that this week marks the 7th anniversary of NoBoG at the Ribs - seven years since the regular gaming evening was moved to its new pub home. Of those that were first among the attendees few are left as regulars - Mr Bond and James ( who of late has been turning up almost every week bucking his usual turn up once a year trend ) are the oldest of the old timers left, with everyone else following in poorly remembered chronology with sentences that inevitably start with "well X was here when I started coming, but I was before Y".

But enough of the past, this week we had a delightful 27 turn up who after a chaotic start all got to sit down and play something.

Mr Bond brought Wallenstein, a light Euro wargame covering the 30 years war of the 17th century that as part of its schtick employs the fabled cube tower. Originally released in 2002 ( and now something of a classic ) the game was one of the first - and one of the few - that uses a clever cube tower to resolve conflict. Dropping your army cubes into the tower - some come out the bottom, and some get stuck.

Wallenstein - The cube tower lurks in the background

The person with the most out of the bottom of the tower wins the battle. But of course - if you were unlucky and got plenty stuck, the chances are they will pop out again in a later battle - hopefully when they do you some good.

A group that is best described as the "old farts*" got to play this, James, Punk Rich, Pete, Tom and Matt ( Mr Bond ), huddling in the corner and generally jeering at anyone that got close. Pete being Pete immediately launched a Non Aggression pact with the ever amenable Rich, and the two romped on to a strong lead. In the end Rich pipped his Non Aggressive partner to the post and conquered all, or at least was slightly less of a mess at the end than everyone else. James and Tom put on a very strong show for competing for woeful last place and didn't seem to do well at all.

On the table over Freedom : The Underground Railroad got a play - a game I have never seen in person, but have heard a few controversial rumblings about - and despite James sneering at "not another bloody train game", the game in fact has no trains at all and instead is a Euro that deals with slavery in the US and the efforts of the abolitionists to smuggle slaves out of the Southern States of America and into Canada. During the nineteenth century whilst America either tolerated or even encouraged slavery, Britain had outlawed the practice, thus leading to Canada - a British colony - being something of a haven for runaway slaves. Helped by sympathetic abolitionists an underground resistance sprung up forming a network of secret routes and safe houses designed to free slaves.

Slavery in the US, the arguments of which were
one of the main contributing factors to the Civil War

Some find the the slavery theme a tricky even controversial subject to base a board game on, however the game itself is co-operative ( thus no one gets to play the possibly ultra controversial slave catchers ), with all players trying to free slaves and change the political outlook to stop slavery for good. The struggle of the game is to manage the movement of an ever appearing stream of slaves ( or else they are lost and count towards a defeat ), spending cash to support the abolitionist cause, and of course evading the slave catchers.

Ewan reports that the game is one of the most discussion based and thoughtful co-operative games he has played and gave it a thumbs up. Not sure whether they succeeded in their efforts to make enough of a difference to end slavery.

On the last table downstairs Dave took a hit for the team and taught a bunch of newbies the finer art of Archipelago + Expansion - an Archipelago rules explanation is not for the faint of heart. Well done Dave. The game proceeded better than in previous weeks and seemed to be going well at first, but with some decidedly aggressive and unfriendly cards about ( I saw slavery in play ) the underhand Nate managed to throw the islands into turmoil and caused enough unrest to secure the Separatist win. They followed their dismal Archipelago management with some Camel Up which rather unbelievably saw four out of five camels all cross the finishing line at the same time. Ewan has a nice pic of the impossibility on twitter.

Upstairs Betrayal at house on the hill got a couple of plays with an initial quick victory for the bad guys ( sometimes it happens ), Takenoko with its panda and gardener was munched to victory by Lewis, who then proceeded to play the felinetastic Kittens in a Blender, Coup and then Werewolf.

Lastly I got to play Dead of Winter - and this time it was a much harder undertaking. The game once again highlighted the brutal callousness of the players with poor "Fat Earl" who threatened to eat all our supplies instead finding himself knocked over the head, chopped up, and served as dinner for the next couple of days. He tasted like greasy pork. Almost like pork according to the description. Long pig for dinner. Grim. Turn 2 and we had already descended into cannibalism. Lee spent the entire rest of the game denying it was human flesh and instead referring to the choice cuts of Earl as a "nice bit of beef". At this point it was unclear who were the flesh eating fiends as everyone was a flesh eating fiend. But some of us had stats. And some were just "zombies".

More dark and dubious actions followed - ignoring the children in the gas station and letting them fend for themselves rather than help ( there was some talk of eating them too - "veal" ), and the school principal who being accosted by more children who had turned feral in the school, started hitting and shooting them instead of saving them. "Kick them in the face !" was the gleeful cry of Richard IV. For shame school principal. Oh how quickly civilisation falls when the undead rise.

As time went on and the zombie numbers grew, a few crucial crises were fluffed and accusations of who was to blame for the mess circulated the table but only finally built to a crescendo near the end of the game. Players started acting weirdly and instead of killing zombies - our objective - people were searching and declaring that they would never give up their fuel no matter what. Dark mutterings issued, and the spectre of Exiling raised its ugly head. Richard IV - unbeknownst to us the actual filthy betrayer - was very keen to exile any of the ( non betraying ) players, which in hindsight should have been a minor tip off, but the vote was somehow forgotten in a scrabble for food, which Richard helpfully tanked again, causing a rush of zombies to invade the colony and eat everyone alive.

The game ended and no one had won.

Unless you count the zombies.

Not even the filthy betrayer Richard had won. He hadn't quite got enough guns when the colony was overrun. Serves him right.

I personally had failed utterly - I had to have more followers that everyone else, and managed to finish with only a single person. A cook. Who had spent half the game doing nothing but cooking and cleaning and receiving the unfair accusations of being a betrayer ( admittedly at one point I managed to cook some very dubious stew and poison someone with it, but hey, what can you do, its a zombie apocalypse ). The mad Mall Santa I also had, dying of frostbite in the hospital, was saved by a fellow survivor, only for that survivor to get bitten by a zombie as he rummaged in the ruins, turn bad, and bite poor Santa's head off. Bah.

Having now played properly with betrayers, and in a five player game, even a single betrayer is a major pain in the backside. Crises get failed, and it can be difficult to figure out just who is being an unhelpful ass. Exiling the wrong person is really a very bad thing and can make a new enemy out of a friend ( your objectives can change when you get exiled ). With less players the betrayer has to be a bit more careful - but with five all spraying cards around, a bad card here or there is hard to catch.

Explaining this game to a friend recently he offered that it was like Battlestar Galactica. I thought about it and considered it to not quite be the same deal, but, on reflection, I think Dead of Winter is indeed pretty much Battlestar Galactica with a few tweaks and some of the expansion extra rules thrown in. Players get to use unique characters with unique powers - get to contribute helpful or harmful cards to crises in secret, move around a limited number of locations to find things to combat crises or work towards the final goal, players can be betrayers or not ( cylon or not ), resources need to be kept up - morale, food - to prevent the colony being destroyed, zombies ( cylon raiders ) need to be kept under control and always hover around the colony, people can get exiled ( cylon revealed ) and lastly, everyone has their own objectives to fulfill regardless of whether you are good or bad ( this is an optional set of cards in one of the BSG expansions that gives everyone certain conditions to fulfill ).

The balance of a few things is different, but I think its pretty much a rework of BSG. But shorter. And less clunky.


Lastly, if you haven't seen it on the NoBoG twitter feed ( you are following the NoBoG twitter feed right.... ) fellow NoBoGian Dean has written an article pondering the greater landscape that is contemporary board gaming. You can read the first part right here.


PS. Punk Rich - Wallenstein was not the first game to use the cube tower. As I suspected there was an earlier game Im Zeichen des Kreuzes.


* Not necessarily terribly old - except for Tom - but certainly old enough to remember when NoBoG was all fields, was lucky to have 8 people, and popular music had a decent brass band section / hippy-esque weirdness.

Sparky the Wonder Dog

The seasons turn and Summer flees through the squelching mud with Autumn pressing behind in close pursuit. The nights have started to turn dark noticeably earlier to leave gaming at the Ribs to huddle in the wan glow of the pub lighting. And what better way to spend rainy Autumnal evenings than playing the latest in board game entertainment whilst enjoying a drink or three ?

This week we had two spanky new games turn up amongst some of the more familiar - and less familiar - offerings. Sam brought along - fresh from the Kickstarter presses - Alien Uprising, a sci-fi co-operative game that has the players ship crash land on an Alien planet and throws the crew into the mix of meeting the distinctly unfriendly be-tentacled natives. Players must beat off the unreasonably bloodthirsty aliens whilst surviving long enough to gather supplies, wait for help to come, or fix their crashed ship to save themselves.

Alien Uprising

Like many such games it falls on the familiar trope of the endless primitive based enemy, versus a limited, hard as nails gun toting player base. So. Zulu. In spaaaacccce. But with less competitive singing. And why not, it's a pretty cool and engaging trope. Zulu that is. Not the competitive singing.

Designed by the same guy that created Arkham Horror, the game definitely has some of the same leanings with its co-op play, a pressure to keep on top of the smaller threats whilst also working towards the greater goal, a very thematic light RPG style action play with equipment, unique characters and powers, and lastly a somewhat abstracted board movement design. As per Arkham Horror, dice play a huge part of this game and inform you just what actions you can take, and whether you attack or defend successfully. This time around however the designer has not teamed up with the bloated mega octopus of clunky design FFG, and so the game does not have a bazillion decks of cards, chits, wizwags, doohickeys and other crap. So. Less clutter and clunk.

The game is slated at running for 90 minutes, but from what I can see I suspect this might be a bit of a fib especially depending on who is playing - the game is definitely open to someone sitting and contemplating all the possible things they can do and arguing about just who should do what. Sam couldn't finish a game in three hours - but this was probably a lot to do with it being completely new and having to be busted out, sorted and rules pondered.

The second new game was Dead of Winter, a zombie survival semi co-op with betrayal mechanics. Players get to start with a couple of unique characters that give them a range of different capabilities and then get to coordinate with everyone else to feed the colony, see off the continually occurring crises, keep the zombie numbers under control and work towards the main game objective. Along the way you might pick up new characters to join your clique - giving you more action dice - or you might get difficult decisions to make as random events occur to challenge your sense of right and wrong. Or for our group, showcase our brutally efficient culling of the weak.

Dead of Winter - Cheerful Smiley Apocalypse edition

We played the recommended starter objective on normal mode, providing us with it has to be said a fairly easy stroll through the park. A good combination of colonists and some nice morale boosting effects meant the colony was never under threat as we racked up zombie samples to help us try and figure out the cause of the zombie apocalypse. Despite there being two outright traitors, the colony was unfailingly cheerful in its outlook of zombie killing, and morale refused to budge. Even when the survivors rather brutally decided to kick a sick colonist out into the snow to die, everyone was immediately cheered by a glut of supplies. Because. You know. It doesn't do to dwell on the poor schmucks you left to die outside in the cold because they got some stinky disease. Instead think of the positives. More food for everyone else !

In hindsight the traitors should probably have done more to mix things up and interfere with happyville - but I think we got a few things wrong which made it harder for the betrayers, we were also playing a short beginner scenario ( which makes it even harder for the betrayers ) and it was hard to judge the pace of things given we were all learning.

Sam - one of the traitors - was on the brink of bringing his enormous clique of six back to colony to then bash pots together to attract all the zombies, throwing open the doors, and letting nature take its course. Lets see you be cheerful when the undead are gnawing on your leg ! Alas the last samples were taken before Sam could enact his plan ( he was busy finding as many guns as he could lay his hands on to complete one of his objectives ), and the game ended with all the good guys achieving their particular wacky goals ( there was a good deal of hoarding going on... ).

Best mention for the game probably goes to Sparky the dog - a remarkably adept canine who in the course of events managed to find a Snow Mobile, drive it back to camp and unwilling to sit on his laurels, then proceeded to siphon out the fuel for the colonys use.

Sparky the gun toting, goggle
wearing snowmobile stunt dog.
* Note Sparky is usually just a dog.
Your Sparky may differ from the advertised Sparky.

Inconceivable ! Not content with showing off his driving and siphoning skills, Sparky then got fitted with an automatic gun harness to blow away zombies and finally was kitted out with some night vision goggles. Given that dogs already have natural night vision we can only think that by this time Sparky was just showing off. Smug git. Sparky the Wonder Dog - secretly a betrayer, but a canine that never got to enact his revenge on the hapless humans.

Other moments included a hapless jock attempting to cajole the entire colony into getting fit and putting in some co-ordinated exercise every day so that "everyone could be awesome". This was met with universal jeers - how dare anyone suggest exercise - and an empty food can thrown at his head. His fitness regime was rejected. Perversely, morale increased. No one likes exercise apparently. Especially in the post apocalypse future.

Plus there was a Punk Rich in character old warbling voice moment as some other random event kicked off and he decided to get all Shakespeare on its ass. You had to be there to appreciate it.

Also Upstairs 1775 : Rebellion was played, one of the modern breed of light wargames depicting the struggle between the noble British and the revolting Americans. The game involves players shuffling their armies of cubes around the Eastern Seaboard of North America in an attempt to control more area than their opponent at game end. Dice are used to resolve battle, and unit movement is carried out by playing cards. Cards can also depict events which can bring in reinforcements, add dice rolls and so on.

1775 - The Colonials Get Uppity. Bloody Americans.

The basic mechanics based on a similarly themed 1812 game, have been tried and tested, with 1775 simply moving theme more than anything.


The game is nice and simple but offers some interesting wargamey choices which eventually after all the cunning moves are done just comes down to a fairly active Random Number Generator in battle dice offs.

Mr Bond and Richard IV won this as the heroic Brits and changed history to keep those filthy separatist yanks in their place. Long live the King !

Lords of Vegas + Expansion

Downstairs Betrayal at House on the Hill got another play, the Dragon rearing its baleful head but for the first time ever got its ass kicked with a win for the good guys. There was some surprise that Luke for once hadn't died. Apparently he dies a lot. Lastly, Lords of Vegas with nifty expansion for six got a play, with newcomer Byron proving his pile of cash to be greater than everyone elses.

A bunch of filler type things were played, a couple of simultaneous games of One Night Werewolf, Bottle Imp and Camel Up.