Ra Ra ah-ah-ah

Ro-ma, ro-ma-ma. Well, I expect that reference to split the audience.

This week - possibly in a fit of indecision about what to play - we had the old school and noted giant of euro gaming Ra in the house, a classic title by a classic designer Reiner Knizia. If you're into your board gaming and haven't been in the gaming wilderness for the last 20 years then you're very likely to know who Reiner Knizia is, and if you have your proper board gaming chops, have at least heard of, if not played Ra.

Ra, Ra, ooh la la. A classic Knizia game.

If you don't know who Reiner Knizia, then suffice to say he is a prolific game designer of the euro type , and is part of a stable of game designers that cemented the term "euro" into the gaming dictionary in the first place.

If you want to get fancy about it, then maybe you could consider Reiner Knizia a crucial fuelling part of the Renaissance era of gaming ( where pre 70's ish would be antiquity, 80's and prior are medieval and say, post late 90's are modern ).

Ra is a simple Egyptian themed auction game, where players compete to out bid their opponents to pick up auction lots of tiles. Tiles are scored on some simple rules, set collection, bonus points, penalty points, and with the game split across three rounds ( or epochs ), scoring is performed three times, with a bit of overlap between rounds as some tiles stick around for the whole game. So the whole art of the game is in assessing whether a group of tiles is something you'd like to bid on, getting your scoring sorted out into some semblance of brilliance, and a bit of jockeying for position in timing of bids, availability of tiles and what exactly your bid strength is. The game despite being known as an auction game, and talking about auctions, and bids, and yada, isn't really anything of the sort - it's a trick taking game where your bids are fixed amounts determined by the tokens you are holding ( effectively everyone is playing with a single-ish suit from a deck of cards, and playing highest card wins, which kinda is an auction, but in the same way that playing Top Trumps is kinda an auction - IE no one ever refers to playing card trumping games as an auction . Oh you nicely outbid me there with your King of Hearts on top of my Jack of Hearts... this is never said. ).

Ra is a classic beloved by many of the gaming cognoscenti, but for my money, it's too dry, too simple, the theme makes me want to stab my eyes out, and I'd rather be playing something other than Ra. Not that it's bad by any means. Inoffensive. Like porridge. With no sugar. Or salt. Or anything in it. That makes you sit up straight before you eat it. And recite your 12 times table. Just. Yeah. Next ! Ra combined with Tigris and Euphrates - another well beloved Reiner Knizia game - are enough to make me throw up my hands in despair and go and find other things to do, such as beat my head against a wall.

Planet Norwich in the Norfolk System.

The clans have returned from distant stars to invade the Inner Sphere, the til now peaceful Commonwealth planet of Norwich suddenly finding itself the target of a rapid and brutal clan assault. Clan Ghost Bear landing advance forces onto the planet have already decisively engaged with the defenders, where despite being outnumbered have succeeded in pushing through defences and leaving a trail of destroyed enemies behind them.

Having broken through Inner Sphere lines, roving Clan scout forces now fan out in a rapid advance seeking to strike directly at the enemies capability to conduct and supply a war - ending the fight before it can really begin. Commonwealth forces in the form of the Davion Guards scramble to close the breach in the front lines whilst simultaneously reinforcing all strategic points behind the breach in danger of being overrun. But the task is a difficult one - the clans with superior mobility and firepower can strike at will and fade before a significant defence force can be assembled.

Reorganising the reserves into fast response defence lances, Davion Guard forces are distributed widely across the breach pocket with a hope of forming an anvil to delay Clan raiders caught in the act, before landing the hammer blow of a fast response.

Sector QF, just south of the Dereham lowlands - a call distorts across counter measure disrupted frequencies. Clan forces spotted, heading inbound towards the Unthank industrial zone. The Guards force on point scramble to their mechs, the brave pilots prepared to face the onslaught of the clans and provide the anvil. Meanwhile 60 klicks away, turbines spool up and thrusters ignite as the fast response drop ships pick up their mechs and prepare to speed to the battle to support their defences and deliver the hammer blow.

 Elsewhere I got to suffer play through another session of the even older than Ra - Battletech ( a game from the medieval period of gaming if we are keeping up the analogy, so, similar-ish to modern games, except no plumbing or toilets, other than a hole in the wall to stick your arse out of, giving rise to odd smells, suspicious lumps of matter loitering in odd places, and a certain air of unwashed, inelegant, grime about it all ) , Sean was dead keen on giving this a go being a bit of a Battlemech fan ( and who doesn't like big stompy robot things.. ), and having watched it being played a few weeks back.

Battletech, the filthy Clanners hug the edge of the map.

And that was cool, I found it pretty riveting, the time whisked by, a fair bit of analysis paralysis, a lot of thinking, a bit of taunting, and a good deal of ineffective fire. Highlights included a jumping mech making a bad landing and falling over in the river, and then me deciding to jump on top of their sorry ass to try and kick their head in, followed by a graceful pirouetting jump out of a cauldron of fire into a back flopping landing in a lake. All performed in a 55 ton mech. There was also lots of gratuitous use of the laser line of sight checker.

Everyone enjoyed themselves, albeit, such is the way of things, it was a harrowing session, and I think it's fair to say everyone felt like they'd gone ten rounds in the ring with a heavyweight champion by the time we called halt to the game.

For the record, the clan pushed up to the edges of the industrial zone, then were perturbed by my jumping shenanigans and some supporting fire from Andy ( notably Sean spent all game waltzing around without firing a shot until the last rounds - we had assumed until the very end of the game that he was some kind of pacifist handing out leaflets.. albeit in a 50 ton walking mech ) .

Battletech - in the distance the clan raiders pull into sight

The clan advance crunched into a confused rabble, sidled along the edge of the map in comedic hand holding fashion ( Sean did a very good spontaneous mime impression of this which you had to be there to appreciate ), before just getting into the industrial zone as the reinforcements arrived and the hammer blow dropped. We stopped one turn after that. But it was fair to say that things were looking grim indeed for the Clan, although Andy's Warhammer had by then had both it's arms blown off. Just a flesh wound. I'm invincible !

More miniatures and dice rolling were going on on the table across from us, where David hosted his quasi regular Imperial Assault game, with his Empire once again facing off against the heroic rag tag Rebel team. Pete playing as ever the wookie reports that he had great fun charging into the fray,

Imperial Assault. One of the monsters seems to have
had an unfortunate incident with it's knicker elastic.

running screaming down corridors in the way only wookies can, and laid about cleaving stand in bad guy extras left and right. Causing chaos and confusion the hairy hero bleeding profusely stumbled to the macguffin console, only to fumble through the blood and tears the activation sequence and fail the mission.

There is a reason they don't give wookies medals. At the end of Star Wars watch closely. There's Han. Here's a medal. There's Luke. Have a medal. There's Chewie... screw you buddy, we're fresh out of medals ! You and your hairy ass can just stand in the back being generally unappreciated ! Harsh. And it's all Pete's fault. They've never forgotten the time he fumbled that console roll. Do you know how many Bothans died for that ? Many Bothans ! Many !

As this is the second failure in a row for the Rebel team I have come to the conclusion that David is facing off against the B Team of the Rebel Alliance. These are the guys that you never see in the films, the one's they don't tell tales of derring-do about, the ones that generally screwed something up in the first place that then made the presence of the A Team Rebels a necessity. The Death Star ? Yeah. The B Team screwed that up by failing the mission to steal all supplies of Imperial hammers to deny the building work from ever starting. Resulting in one blown up planet. And a last minute emergency mission to blow the completed Death Star up. That's why there's no medals for Wookies. A failure to delete the hammer invoice order from the death star construction console. Peeettteee ! Or in character. "aaarrrrarrarrr-arr-arrrarr-arrrrr".

Moving on from Rebel debacles, Sam got to try out the excellent Colt Express with the new stagecoach expansion, which brings hostages, whiskey, and victory points for getting shot ! It all sounded pretty cool, and I absolutely have to give this a go when I get a chance and am not playing

Thunderbirds are go ! F.A.B !

Battletech until midnight. Prior to this Sam busted out the FAB game - ah ha ha - Thunderbirds, a brand new spanky offering of this now 50 year old... we'll go with classic. To be honest I have no idea what goes on in this game. It's co-operative. It has miniature depictions of the Thunderbird vehicles. One can only presume you go around the world saving people whilst displaying very little face movement and refusing to walk anywhere where you could instead build an unfeasibly complex mechanical system to ferry your sorry ass around in an automated chair, thus avoiding the burdensome necessity of actually getting up. International rescue is one thing. Being bothered to get your ass out of your armchair is a whole other ballgame. I'm with you there buddy !

Who knows if Sam's intrepid team won or lost ? But really, playing Thunderbirds the Game in your automated chairs, I think we can all agree that everyone is a winner, regardless of game outcome. I'm not sure, but I could swear at some point I saw Sam with serene face gliding past in an automated chair headed for the bar. FAB !

Another old school classic was also on show at the Tun in the form of Alhambra. They played a pretty full six handed game of this I think, with I'm going to take a guess at a pure vanilla setup. So none of the bazillion expansions on offer.

Elsewise the lovely Suburbia got a turn on the boards, Lewis got vanilla Smash up out and Codenames and a host of other fillers also got a play through. I had my head buried in Battletech so I probably missed a lot.

For those counting, 43, another quiet night.

The Gallery...

Smash Up

Codenames

Suburbia

The Return of the frakkin' Toasters

Monika bounced excitedly up to me clapping her hands.

"Did you bring it ???!" she asked with a big grin.
"Yessss... but... it's kind of late, not even set it up yet." I answered unconvinced
"Well, where is it ?! I will set it up. Quick !" she replied with boundless enthusiasm.

I gave her Battlestar Galactica and left her and Voitek to it whilst I made sure everyone was sorted with a game.

So this week, Battlestar Galactica once more sailed the deep black with just about all the expansions spread between five players - two of which were toasters, the evil cylons.

James is pushed out the airlock. Don't worry, he's not
human, he's a fancy hoover. With murderous tendencies.

I called Monika and James out on being evil from near the start - a few slips of tells made me suspicious, although Voitek also had a couple of slightly dodgy calls at the start of the game, but, to me, Monika and James were clearly Not One Of Us. And that despite me playing the ever suspicious Baltar, and Voitek playing the equally suspect Boomer.

Whatever it was, the case against James and Monika seemed quite compelling and Richard IV early on obliged the rumours by pushing James out of the airlock. There was a little debate about whether to push Monika or James out of the airlock, in the end it was James. We had made only a single jump of distance one, we had barely started, and one of our number had been spaced. Forcefully plunged into the pitiless vacuum to die a terrible death.

Richard cackled gleefully. One thing playing with Richard teaches you is that he loves a bit of chaos and disaster. At least as far as board games go, he is definitely in the "just likes to watch things burn" camp.

But in this case pushing people out of the airlock was good move. It turned out the rumour mill was right and James was indeed a filthy traitor - and thus no one was particularly upset. It wasn't a human we had ejected into the void. But more like a Henry Hoover. A Henry Hoover with a remarkable capability for conversation. And murderous plotting.

And then we didn't trust Monika either. Who shortly after revealed herself to indeed be another

Battlestar Galactica ... and a new table lamp !

toaster. And we still hadn't even got half way through the game. In hindsight the debate about whether to push one toaster out or the other toaster was moot. Any toaster would have been good.

You'd think having sussed out the bad guys would be a great help to us. It wasn't. Galactica seemed incapable of jumping more than a distance of one at any time. Cylon ships piled ever higher and were never dealt with. And then the boarding parties started.

At one point I was the Admiral, CAG and President. That's all the titles. Belonging to one person. At this point I was the most important person in the fleet, everyone else was a mere peasant and had to do as I said. On the other hand, there was no way I could successfully fulfil all three roles at once. The cylons joked that I was the only person left in the fleet, hence I had all the jobs. I just like to think it was my natural leadership skills being rewarded.

In the end the fleet was destroyed, we had barely got half way, supplies had run out, Galactica was almost critical with damage, and my epic reign as Admiral CAG President was a failure. However, I also like to think that such an important person as Admiral CAG President would have had an escape plan. And a personal escape craft. And unlike the rest of humanity made it away safely. Possibly with a hidden cache of champagne.

So looking behind the curtain a bit about what makes Battlestar Galactica tick, it seems to me that the jump cards have an enormous impact on whether the game runs short, long, easy or tough. Getting a set of 1 jump cards can effectively kill you, whereas getting a couple of juicy 3 jumps can make the going a piece of cake for the humans. On reflection, cutting all the waffle out, I think the game actually just comes down to that jump progress, and little else. It also has the capability to make the game go on forever. But you could argue you don't want to look behind the curtain of an FFG game. FFG games are to my mind notoriously random in design. Whilst I enjoy a number of FFG games I could never imagine ever calling one of their titles "elegant" or "clever". Long on bling, long on components and short on.... balance, playtesting and editing. Looking too hard at the Wizard of Oz just destroys the illusion. Better to ignore it and enjoy the show.

Alchemists and another of the lamps.
And a pretty new blue table cloth !

Elsewise Nate turned up again with a choice selection of good Euros, and eventually settled on Concordia. Elliott banged out Ticket to Ride again - Ticket To Ride Marklin - which apparently is different to Ticket to Ride in that you have passengers. That go on a journey and then die. It's very maudlin. I have no idea. We also had some Alchemists, Lords of Vegas and Takenoko, where I believe Lewis took the win by a single point.

And my copy of the ever excellent Mission Red Planet hit the table, with some evil shenanigans leaving Tim and his lucrative high worth area out of luck as Dean sabotaged his scoring efforts with a secret area card effect.

Seven Wonders, Smash Up and Spectre Ops also filled out the games first up, and there were quite a few tables with just three players. The extra space at the Mash Tun means we no longer are forced to play five or six player games, but can play whatever takes your fancy with small cosy groups.

Dominant Species

James also finally got Dominant Species back to table - he's being trying for a while. Pete got off to some game stomping initial move that James was most unhappy about, but despite this the wily Tom managed to win the day - with I think his arachnids.

As well as BSG this week I also had time for a couple of games of Cheaty Mages - yes, BSG plus fillers in one evening. Madness. The end times are upon us. I am pleased to report that I won embarrassingly well in Cheaty Mages. Not once, but twice. Just to prove it wasn't a fluke. I am the cheatiest of Cheaty Mages apparently. A sentiment Sean agreed with as he watched the table - I was not to be trusted. Shockingly libellous.

Apart from the games this week we also trialled out a couple of rechargable led table lights. Which seemed to do the job ok. Personally I wasn't terrifically thrilled with them, not entirely easy to get a well lit board and keep the light out of everyones eyes, on the other hand, when they were switched off you realised just how spoiled you were with them, and how crap the light was without them. As it stands I think the lights are pretty much perfect for our needs. Light in weight, portable, adjustable and offering a good light source for the gloom. Apparently one of the lights really helped with Alchemists, allowing the phones to pick up the cards without suffering in the poor light.

We've also got a whole pile of new table cloths - mostly in blue, with a red and purple one thrown in for good measure. There are now once again enough cloths for all tables - so you can spare your board games from the unknown vagaries of pub table residues and condensing glasses and instead treat them to the luxury of a felt surface.

As ever I leave you with the gallery.

Takenoko

7 Wonders

Lords of Vegas

Smash Up

Mission Red Planet... on a red table cloth. Fancy.

Spectre Ops

Concordia

Ticket to Ride Marklin

44 if you're counting. A number of soliders down again this week. I blame it being summer and everyone swanning off for holidays. With the exception of Martin. Who was allegedly ill. I'll assume he'll be bringing in a sick note this week to explain his absence last week.

Mass Tuna

This week NoBoG was on tour again this time visiting - at least according to Voiteks presumably auto corrected text - Mass Tuna. For those of us who like uncorrected text we were all visiting the Mash Tun. Or perhaps we should just keep calling it the Mass Tuna from now on - it would certainly make the auto correcter happy.

A Mass of Tuna. Not to be confused with a pub in Norwich. Easily done.

Some old faces turned up, some new faces joined in, and after correcting my earlier count, we reached a total of 45 people settling in to play some game or other. Which is actually a record for NoBoG just pipping the previous 44 ( ... last month ).

Lower floor at the Mash Tun. Six play Waterdeep.
That sounds like an Enid Blighton book.
Lashings of Victory points for all ! Except Elliot.

I'm not sure if it was the prospect of being able to play longer into the evening, given that the Tuna closes up at 11.45pm to midnight, or whether it was just a mad gambit but Game of Thrones turned up on a table, and was enjoyed by a group of 5 ... and they nearly finished. Although Sam reckons they could have finished under slightly different circumstances. So that's a thing now. You can play Game of Thrones in a pub evening. Next thing you'll know people will be bringing Battlestar Galactica along to play as well. Preposterous !

Dun dun, duh duh, dun dun, duh de dahhhh.
You know the rest. Game of Thrones. Sam grins
a Lannister grin.

Sam reports that he had wanted to have a go of GoT for quite a while, so he was keen on getting to play and ended up enjoying himself and winning as the "nice" Lannisters. Nice ? In my world said Sam, the Lannisters were nice. Monika was quite happy in the first half of the evening where she was pleased to note she was winning GoT, only later resorting to taking propaganda pictures of herself being picked on and trodden down into a not winning position. Such is Game of Thrones. Fortunately the rules for the board game Game of Thrones unlike the actual setting do not include you having to "win or die". So everyone made it home ok, no heads were chopped off, goblets poisoned or such forth.

Elsewise a very keen Punk Rich and Hazel had setup their stall with Nations - arriving at 6pm just to

Pete dashes through the rules of Hansa for Luke, Luke ( Crocker )
and James. Unfortunately a third Luke could not be found to make
the table an all Luke experience.

be sure. They said something about shopping, but I think they were just dead excited about getting in first. They played with Chloe and David, with Punk Rich romping to a win by not just pulling into the lead, but then grinding everyone else face first into the board game equivalent of dirt ( brown wooden cubes ). Hazel noted he was a bastard. No one likes a winner Rich.

Crocker appeared from the vaults of NoBoG history to challenge Luke and James to Hansa Teutonica, where despite James bemoaning that Luke had 5 actions and an implicitly uncatchable lead, Luke failed to win. I'm not sure who did win. My money is on Crocker who always rather liked Hansa.

Colt Express, Bondy gives a wave

Big group of six took on Colt Express followed by Lifeboats for an evening of what must have been some pretty intense backstabbery and enemy making. Andy made it to his self confessed once a year NoBoG visit for this, and Mr Bond brought along Jen to introduce her to the finer arts of gaming betrayal and how to make enemies. If any of the participants were talking to each other by the end of the night then it must have been a small miracle.

Downstairs not entirely sure what got played, Hal played... something... with Martin.... ummm.... followed by Ankh Morpork. Lords of Waterdeep was on table, Elliot got mauled in this and came fourth out of six - and we welcomed back Clive all the way from Lowestoft after a long hiatus.

Round the corner, Elite Ed was back with us along with Dean and newcomer Ian, and they got to try out Nations the Dice game. Both Nations and Nations the Dice game were being played simultaneously.

Lewis and a thumbs up for Munchkin

Lewis insisted on playing Munchkin the table over, and Ewan got a full game of Pillars of the Earth, followed by some Resistancing. There was a bit of a panic for a bit as it turned out no one had brought Resistance - shocking - until newcomer John ferreted a copy out of his bag. Phew.

Lastly I played New Dawn, managed to entirely miss the gist of the game at the start, wander off randomly throughout the game to chat to people, but finished in a strong second

Darren sets up New Dawn. Replace the board game with an
I.T. presentation and you have a busmans holiday for Darren.

place behind Pete. Which if I could have rolled a six on a dice at least once in 3 rolls would have meant I would have won instead. Stupid dice. Pete picked on newcomer John and wiped a bunch of his conquests out, which was harsh, he ended on 10 points which I failed to diplomatically handle by

New Dawn with some idiot grinning inanely in the foreground. ( me )

exclaiming in loud surprise ONLY 10 ????!!!! Alas it was indeed only 10. Pete had cherry picked his good scoring places. Evil Pete. Pete ended on 35, myself on 30, and Darren 20 something. Pete opined that getting off to a good start and being efficient was crucial in the game. I disagreed and said I had pissed my first few turns up the wall, wandered off, and still got a hand in it. I secretly agree with Pete though.

We finished with a game of Hal's prototype which was all very good, a game in which each player has a key piece of information, with the solution to the game being the combination of all those pieces of information. Deducing what information everyone else holds is the game with a simple could it be this space, yes or no. Elegant, deductiony, helps if you really lock into your head what the possible rules are to exclude / include them.

Pillars of the Earth. And beer.

It was great to see so many old faces back with us, plus good to see newcomers again and everyone fit in with space to spare and enjoying themselves. I'll say for me that the evening at the Tun has to be one of the best NoBoG nights I've seen, a lovely atmosphere, a great venue and a fantastic bunch of people. The extra space and time make such a difference, and looking back at the Ribs it just makes me really wonder how on earth we all fit and coped !

Everyone I talked to enjoyed their time at the Mash Tun, although I did get at least half a dozen people comment on the lighting - for those sitting on the lower level, the light by the end of the evening was dingy - not an uncommon thing for a pub, but in my estimation it was no worse than upstairs at the Ribs. Always a tricky problem when navigating some dodgy euro board colours. Voitek has suggested head mounted LEDs, which would definitely give a thematic vibe to something like Saboteur where you play gnomish miners, and Pete has suggested the possibly more suitable but less fun table lamps.

The barmaid at the Tun reported that we enjoyed their beer - with the NoBoG crowd drinking half a keg of the fruity stuff - around 20 pints during the evening.

Votes are underway for determining where the NoBoG tour heads next - or whether it just parks at the Tuna and has done with it. It looks like the Mass Tuna is where the tour bus is going to finish up. At least for Tuesdays. Once we've settled that, the tour bus might start up for a second NoBoG night on Thursdays. But, who knows, another discussion to be had ! When, where, if.

Thanks to everyone for making our first trip to the Mash Tun go down well, thanks to the lovely Monika for her pictures, and thanks to David and Chloe for scouting out the the pub in the first place ! Great find !

I'll leave you with the Gallery - with some more pictures from Athena last week.

Pleasure Pants - Get Them Whilst They're Hot

Another busy week last week with 39 people getting in for some gaming action. Any other time that would have been a record, had we not already pushed the bar up to 44 from the previous week.

James had a mini pre-game game for us all this week, with game mention Bingo. He's been threatening to do it for months, and so everyone was treated to a small bingo card with a list of games to cross off when they were called out. I think this is largely a reaction to somethings always being present in the game roll call session and James having a James like sense of humour. Elliot called out a bingo half way through the roll call, and won the prize of nothing whatsoever. Congratulations. Perhaps we should get a special hat in future. The winners hat. Design suggestions welcome.

Snake Oil ! Can I interest you in some pleasure pants ? Um. No.

Lewis had a new thing to try out with an intriguing name - Snake Oil, one of those card games that can expand to fit a whole gaggle of players, although, it did seem to run awful long. Lewis kindly forwarded on a report of the session for it, so we can hear what he has to say and find out what it's all about.

Right by the entrance to the Ribs, I (Weird) had somehow managed to gather a group of eight fellow players to try out the card game Snake Oil. This party game has players each getting an opportunity to assume the role of a customer, their role determined from a card from the customer deck - politician, newly-wed, caveman, hostage, and so on. How we're managing to sell things to these people I dare not ask.

Once the player decides on a customer role, all other players must try to combine two words out of the six cards in their hand to create a product, catering to the role in question, then attempt to pitch said product once prompted by the customer. In my instance of being the customer, I happened to draw the 'nerd' customer card, which led to the kind of mix of products you'd expect from any round, from practical combo's (a shower fan), to video game DLC (energy key), to the really rather creepy suggestions from the far side of the table (kiss monkey). Ech!

With a difficulty level on par with Cards Against Humanity, and given the entertainment value of watching someone try to sell a banana beard to... well, any kind of customer, I reckon any group can find quite a lot of enjoyment out of this game. It's not a game to focus on scoring, given how unlike Cards Against Humanity you know exactly who's suggestions are who's, but rather a game to see people try to sell pleasure pants to an insomniac.

I would personally recommend this game as a 4-player filler rather than an all-evening 9- or 10-player session. Should've known that before, but at least we know that now. Great fun all the same, and gg to Andi for claiming 4 out of a possible 8 points to win. Quite an inventor amongst us!

Their group then split into two tables for some Colt Expressing and Sushi Go-ing - and Lewis recommends that if you haven't played Sushi Go you really should, the food has faces. Which apparently makes it more appetising  / fun. Hmm. Note to self. Don't accept dinner invitations from Lewis.


Over on our table we cobbled together a game of Alchemists, where despite me forgetting to play the first half round, we did a fairly decent job of piecing together what was what. James somehow blasted away to a significant lead in this and ended up winning, despite only mixing 3 potions for the entire game. What ?! I had mixed a good half dozen, got master of the green potions at game end, but due to some early game spurious theory gambits could only limp in joint last with Pete.

There was much spluttering around the table of I Am Right, and You Are Wrong, and in what could be an early pattern, various Euro gamers believing they are infallible only to find out they have ballsed up their notes. James swore that the app had given him a wrong result, but on checking at the end, the app seemed to be bang on point. A glitch ? Or user error ? Sad to say, in my decades of imprisonment within the IT industry, in 99.9% of cases it's user error. A PEBKAC. Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair. Somewhat out of date these days given the swishy touchy mobile slatey kind of devices that are prevalent. But who knows. The potion app was struggling with the dingy pub lighting.

Concordia - NOT a game about cruise ship piloting

A short peanut flick away from us Hal got the much fancied 2014 game Concordia to table. I am beginning to think that Hal has very good taste in games, as most of what he turns up with looks interesting. Well. Except that drab blockade runner game. Concordia was nominated for a bunch of awards in 2014 ( but failed to actually win anything ), and is a game I have had half an eye on, wanting to see it in action. Despite Pete's humorous summary of the game being about piloting cruise ships as close to the coast as you dare ( which went straight over my head for 5 minutes until I realised what he was talking about ), the game is actually about commerce in the Mediterranean in the era of ancient Rome - short on rules, long on scoring opportunities.

Players get to wander around a simple board, building houses, collecting resources and trying to build some lovely scoring combination for game end - of which there is something of a point salad, depending on what you are concentrating on. The main thrust of the game is around your hand of cards, each of which is an action allowing you to perform something or other - producing goods, building houses,  buying more cards and so on. Hand management is a part of this game, as once a card is played it stays down, but, playing a certain card allows you to pick them all up again ( although crucially here it also triggers a scoring round for yourself the first time you play it, meaning that you have to be particularly efficient in how you play this ), and some cards allow you to copy other players cards.

It looks like a cool euro economic builder to me, but I failed to get a proper response from Hal's table as to what it was like. A general thumbs up was offered.

The table behind us started off the evening with a bit of Resistance Avalon, where I assume the evil doers took the game as after a while someone at the table put on their best theatrical voice and cackled loudly into the pub that the other players were all their unwitting slaves. Or words to those effect. It was all very Macbeth.

Downstairs the ultra classic Agricola was dusted off, and David has a brief write up of that for us.

Myself, chloe, owein, Richard and ewan played agricola on Tuesday.

It was a suprisingly close game with just 5 points between first and fourth place. Owein came out on top with a solid cover all bases strategy.

Ewan managed to make a mega pasture which used all but two of his fence pieces, which was pretty impressive.

I think it was the first time I've played a game at the club in which everyone knew the rules, which was refreshing. Especially as agricola isn't kind to new players.

Agric - things are serious when you have to stand up
to take your turn

Uh huh. Agric is one of those nice perennials that never gets old. Whisper it - I prefer it very slightly to Caverna. But I live in hope of some Caverna expansions coming along to mix things up a bit.

Elsewhere downstairs another Euro classic got spanked onto a table - Powergrid, or more correctly Funkenschlaaaaaaag, this time with the American map - which I couldn't remember ever seeing before. It actually took me a minute to realise what I was looking when I took a picture of an upside down Powergrid America map. Looks cool. Although six players with Powergrid is for me... gah. Too many.

Powergrid America

Another table was playing something else. Which. I cannot remember at all. It wasn't new, otherwise I would have taken a picture of it. A mystery game.

Fillers rounded off the evening for some. I got to play Artificium and like Sam the week before went from a lacklustre score all the way to a trouncing lead by way of chaining wizards. Other things were played. But I didn't check in on them. And people don't write to tell me of their sessions either. Hint. Hint.

Colt Express Beer Goggles

Twenty Nine last week at the ribs, numbers declining from the heady heights of the previous weeks 38, although given the pub was more busy than usual at game time, it felt - to me - just as busy as last week trying to get everyone sorted.

This week Lewis is guest writing for his own table experiences - without further ado...

Ticket to Ride

On our table we first played Ticket to Ride: Europe, teaching Sam how to play for the 1st time (still some learners!).

A close game throughout, but I pulled off the win having taken first with the longest route bonus.



I then drew out my two new additions to my collection.

Le Guillotine

First, Guillotine, which featured a short 2nd day due to Jamie (@JEndlessraining) playing a card that allowed him to end the day after his turn, picking up two nobles adding up to 6 points. He ultimately won, though I stole 2nd from Sam. Teehee.


We finished off with Pickomino, which had me controlling most of the titles throughout the game, but after a brief moment of confusion over the French rules over certain die results and a struggle to trigger the end of the game, James (@JamesHayward92) took the win by one more worm than me.

Three satisfying games, with Guillotine and Pickomino being described as "slightly frustrating" but great fun. What game isn't, at the very least, "slightly" frustrating?

Meanwhile upstairs...

XCOM. Tom II wonders where it all went wrong.

Despite there being no evidence for the presence of aliens on planet earth, apart from dodgy videos of some dude in a skin tight leotard prancing around like an idiot , the ribs played host to XCOM again last week, four intrepid commanders swearing to defend the pub from any ill looking alien. Which is very public spirited of them. And you would imagine involving standing at the pub door with a clipboard and a menacing look. Tom II, Richard IV, Davey and Ewan headed up this enterprise with an early game status report providing troubling news - the entire ground infantry / door bouncer force had been eliminated to a man, leaving only the tea boy and the caretaker left at XCOM HQ. Who was the commander in charge of this debacle ? Tom. Tom was in charge, so I blamed him for the mess.
The buck stops with the C in C.

By the end of the evening however the team had turned things around and seen off the aliens, Tom proving his quality leadership skills after all, albeit one presumes with a large marble plaque commemorating the lost Poor Bloody Infantry.

Imperial Settlers. With Deans thumbs and not his face.
Which is either a framing error, or sparing viewers a horrible sight.

On the next table over a nice game of Imperial Settlers was afoot - I say nice, but this was nice as in Mr Bond doubling down on his raiding capabilities and burning everyones stuff to the ground. Particularly Dean who was the Japanese. With those oh so burnable buildings made of wood and paper. Elite Ed ( the artist formerly known as Writer Ed ) confessed he didn't really know what was going on, and had only got to grips with the game about two thirds of the way through, his Romans bringing up a very poor rear score. Nevertheless by game end he had sorted himself out to bring himself within touching distance of the others, but the brutal barbarian Bond won the day, with his victory points for earning swords malarkey going on.

Nice game Imperial Settlers. If you haven't tried it, you should.

On our table we opened with Colt Express. With Luke relating to us the drinking game version of Colt Express that he apparently regularly plays. When anyone gets shot you take a shot. As it were. This ends up doubling the penalty of getting shot - not only do you get a duff card in your hand, your mental clarity also takes a hit. Colt Express Beer Goggles. Luke then told us how he often won such games, but this turned out to be not so much excellent tactics, but telling everyone else the wrong rules and filling everyone with bullets that never ran out. Sam won this. A reasonable haul of loot and a bonus for shooting everyone dead.

We then had a blast of Sheriff of Nottingham, which surprisingly seemed to revolve around 5 guys offering or demanding cocks. I'm not sure who started this cock filled innuendo, but when Martin started demanding that he wanted to hear Sam say he wanted his cock we had reached Peak Cock. Luke displayed some dubious tactics again, claiming that anyone taking 2 or less goods had to be searched - which he duly did and thus proved easy bait - and was endlessly goaded into searching goods and bankrupting himself. By the end he had lost most of his money and carted a sorry collection of items into the market. Martin won this with a policy largely consisting of honesty. And cock baiting. Um. Ok.

Archipelago. I think Med Ed is quietly signalling me to
sabotage the deep in thought Pete.

Downstairs Archipelago got another wheeze. This time Pete was not picked at the post by an evil Separatist and took a convincing win as the Pacifist, managing to pick up or even come first in almost everyone elses categories too. Very good. The other players looked a bit shell shocked over their beating.


Powergrid got a play with six I think. I like powergrid, although I find myself always shying away from playing it, but Powergrid with six is... heavy. Not sure how this worked out. There looked to be some confusion from the new players half way through. Which sounds about right.

Powergrid aka FUNKENSCHLAAAAG. Sounds better in German.

A very shortened game of Saboteur 2 took place. A single saboteur won the day. Mostly because every single other faction was busy kicking the crap out of each other. A shameful display.