Crafting brews with a furious Dracula

A much smoother NoBoG this week. With the upstairs at the Tun all sorted (ish), far less furniture hauling going on ( but still some ), the serious business of gaming could proceed without worry. And what a great week of gaming it was !

Fury of Dracula. Pete reprises his role as the Count.

Third edition Fury of Dracula was back to table again this week, and this time game owner Hal actually got to try his own game out for the first time pitting wits against the wily Count Peteula. The game ran long again with Pete managing to fairly easily elude his pursuers, mostly first time players allowing the arch vampire to slip between the cracks of pursuit and ramp up points to a victory. I suspect splitting player turns into two turns of one action each, compared to the old variants of doing two things at once can push the game long if you have players that like to think about it. Nevertheless the 3rd edition seems like a solid game, and if you've been on the fence about it in the past, this edition is definitely worth a look.

Brewcrafters. David blasts to a win with all the assistants.

David brought Brew Crafters along again, this time managing to secure a good win by picking up a strong set of synergising specialists and ingredients pulls meaning he could brew the complex beers without breaking a sweat ( particularly neat as everyone else had focused on self sufficient yeast production meaning he could reap a whirlwind of benefits from a glut of unused yeast on the market ). Richard IV tried the not entirely easy to pull off mass production of shit low requirement ale, but failed to get any hops infusing extra victory points in on the action and coasted to a lack lustre finish. This game continues to get a good buzz about it, and more interested eyes are turning its way when it is in play.

Also upstairs Isle of Skye got a request for a play, my copy seems to slowly be doing the rounds and for good reason. I think in hindsight Isle of Skye has to be my top game of 2015, it ticks more good design boxes than you can shake a stick at and hits something of a nirvana of a very nicely thought out light to mid weight game. Co-designed by Alexander Pfister, this designer is starting to be one of my favourite designers - he also did Port Royale, Broom Service and Oh My Goods ! amongst others. You can read up my initial run through of Isle of Skye in the earlier NoBlog post here - http://norwichboardgamers.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/card-drafting-heaven.html

Talking of Oh My Goods ! that I enjoyed last week but slated for being a raw RNG fest, it seems I am not the only one that thought that as a 2.0 set of rules has been released for the game that sees an overhaul of the mechanics designed to mitigate a lot of the unmanageable randomness in the game. As well as that a few tweaks on top of the RNG handling ( mainly to nerf the power of the ridiculous take an extra card building ) promises to make the game a much tighter and satisfying experience. Alex Pfister has defended the first set of rules as being "more open to casual gamers" and that the second set of rules is more for the "experienced euro gamer". Mmm. Ok. Sure. Although I kinda suspect the first set of rules are just plainly not that good - casual gamer or not. The 2.0 rules certainly do not bring in any further complexity to the game. Just ways to mitigate the RNG ( by discarding and refreshing your hand - something even the most newbie of casual players would appreciate doing instead of being stuck with a hand for the entire game that you can't use ).

I look forward to giving Oh My Goods ! another run - this time with the (proper?!) 2.0 rules.

Funnily enough, after Isle of Skye I played Port Royale. To make it a Pfister evening. A Pfister evening ? Hmm. Doesn't sound the kind of evening you have in polite company. Anyway. It was great fun. Mick managed to trawl the unlikeliest of odds by failing to score a single game winning point in his own turn - instead going bust - and seeing Chris gleefully securing the win instead.

Betrayal at House on the Hill. Part of Bens send off.

This week also saw the old NoBoG favourite Betrayal at House on the Hill return in style with two simultaneous games of this getting to table. Ah. It's like the old days back at the Ribs. Betrayal played every week, sometimes on two tables in parallel. The slightly awkward passing of the ostracised played out in the badly lit bit of the pub in the stairs / deck / corridor reading up on their scenario rules for just what kind of a betrayer they are.

Of course Betrayal savant Luke got in on a game, by his own reckoning he has not only  played all the scenarios, but played each of them multiple times, and also Ben got in a game after requesting it as his final NoBoG game. As previously noted, Ben, one of the intrepid Mice and Mystic regulars, was due to head off to Japan at some point and that time has finally come with him departing to stay over there for the next four years to make interesting observations about water. He managed to squeeze in a couple of games of Coup after Betrayal followed by possibly one of the best sessions of Secret Hitler I've seen, fascist turning on fascist and Hitler getting confused by all the fascist internecine fighting going on shooting one of his co-conspirators ( Ben as it happened ) in the face. This marks the second time that Pete - as Hitler - has done far too awesome a job of appearing liberal and has harmed his fellow fascist team. An awesome game, and a great send off for Ben.

Old school with Carcasonne

In some news that's sure to excite the hardcore Betrayers, it's been recently announced that a new expansion of Betrayal is out soon with a new set of 50 stories and some extra tiles including a roof area for the house. Which is about time !

Elsewise on Elliot's table they were getting all old school with Carcassone ( *cough* the inferior version of Isle of Skye ) and Lewis put in a hugely theatrical turn whilst playing Aye Dark Overlord ( which is as rare as Hen's teeth to try and obtain these days - I think Martin might have brought it along ) as the Overlord, chewing out his minions over why they had failed.

I think we might have found Lewis' true calling. Dramatic Dark Overlord.

Sheriff of Nottingham. Lewis is digging being the Sheriff

Which is possibly slightly better than Secret Fascist. Maybe not. Prior to this Lewis had been warming up his theatrics with a game of Sheriff of Nottingham and really getting into the part of Sheriff.

James got another play of Village, his £3 bargain bin charity shop find, but has come to the conclusion that the game is just "alright" and will be putting it on his trade list. Still at £3 you can't go wrong. I can't remember anyone ringing the praises of Village, it did seem however to be an acceptable Euro when it first came out. I've never played it, all I know is you can score points by killing people.

Upstairs with Terra Mystica

Lords of Vegas and Terra Mystica were also back at table, Terra Mystica continuing to sustain its renewed NoBoG life, and Nate was with us again for a second week running this time playing Mombasa. Which. Bizarrely enough. Is yet another Alex Pfister game. All Pfister. All the time at NoBoG !

This week was also the inaugural week of NoBoG Mondays where we started trialling NoBoG on a second day of the week. Despite the weight of democracy coming down on Mondays as the choice day of the week, only six hardy NoBoGers turned up on Monday for some gaming. Six people on two tables was all very old school NoBoG. Back in the days where you didn't need to wrangle people into games, or do shout outs, organise people or find tables and chairs.

So Monday was all very civilised. Richard IV finally got his epic set of all things Dominion to table - where he proceeded to do the dickish tactic of making everyone mill through their decks via Saboteur, and over on the other table they played Terra Mystica.

We finished up with some fillers of Divinaire ( which, naturally, I won, because I am always the bestest psychic of them all, and Richard IV managed to finish on negative points thus giving him the very firm career advice that psychic was not in his future ) and also Pandemic Contagion. Pandemic Contagion was new to me, a competitive quick filler from the Pandemic world based on you trying to infect ( instead of cure ) as many places as possible, and grab more victory points than everyone else. It was an enjoyable game, but to my mind the game is, if not broken, then almost not a game. Your choices are not well balanced - there is a single obvious strategy to adopt, and final gameplay is a very arbitrary slam dunk kind of gameplay where you can wrap up scoring cities in a single turn. The game practically plays itself once you are fully invested, and you can't help thinking that the game needs some serious tweaking to give more meaningful choices a chance, and is kinda broken the way it is - for casual players though who aren't looking at optimising their choices, it's arguably a nice game. Woe betide any serious gamer who sits in with them however.

Next NoBoG Monday promises to see more people turn up. If the irregulars of NoBoG are to be believed. Plenty of people were either a) surprised there is now a Monday to play on, and of course I will turn up on Mondays now as they are better suited for me and b) fell asleep at some point before 7.30pm and missed the start. All very Boom Town Rats sleeping the whole day through.

Some more table and chair money was generously donated this week, and with expenditures on a total of 14 new chairs and 1 table this week, the NoBoG fund stands at £68.53.

More Betrayal. With apparently some Love Letter and cutlery thrown in. Luke is getting desperate to keep the game fresh.

Lords of Vegas

Village

Mombasa

No Honour Amongst Thieves

A mechanical vibration trembled through the strange metal floor, causing the small girl to shift her weight in fear, her doll clutched tighter to her chest. A series of grinding moving thuds echoed into the small room seemingly threatening to bring the walls crashing down on her head. But with a final resounding boom that made the room lurch, noises and vibrations stopped.

She didn't like this place. It was cold. And scary. It reminded her of trips to the dentist with it's too bright lights, and scary metal things for sticking her teeth. Tightly clutched she raised her doll Mindy to her face, the pneumatics of her replacement arm softly hissing as they moved. Hiding behind Mindy she fearfully glanced at the others in the room - a large man with an angry face and strong arms, a pretty lady with a mean expression, a fidgety man with glasses, and a couple more men talking to each other - one of them looked like a dentist. Perhaps this was his room ?

She couldn't remember how she got here. Was she at the dentist ? Was she in hospital again ? She didn't know. She was afraid and just wanted to go home. Perhaps the grown ups knew how to get home, but she was frightened to ask. Hadn't she been told to be wary of strangers ? Instead she listened, unsure what to do. The adults argued. The large man was very angry. It seemed no one knew where they were. Why they were here. They talked about this being a prison. And them being prisoners. Of having to escape. It didn't make any sense to her. This didn't look like a prison - it had no bars. And why would she be in prison ? She hadn't been naughty lately - she wasn't sure what kind of naughty put you in prison anyway. Jessica Langham had said a naughty word to the teacher once and got sent to the principal - but she hadn't gone to prison. It didn't make any sense.

The pretty lady approached her. Hey baby, she purred. Come on, stick with me, I'll keep you safe she said, holding out her hand. Deciding she was maybe nice after all, she grabbed the pretty lady's hand, and together they went to a funny looking door in the wall. Come on, the lady said, through here.

As they climbed into a new room, she turned around looking between chambers. They looked the same ! Each room had a single funny looking door in each wall. And each was brightly lit, metal, and smelled slightly weird.

Suddenly the lady picked her up and carried her to the door in the opposite wall. What was she doing ? With a sudden push the little girl found herself rudely shoved into the next chamber - this one was cold, so very cold, her breath steaming in the air. It's ok baby said the pretty lady. It'll be warmer in the next one. Go to the door over there. The little girl did as she was told. Opened the door. Climbed in. And suddenly couldn't breathe. Her throat stung. Her eyes stung. She felt sick. And afraid. She started to cry and try to climb back. But her arms were all wobbly and she couldn't see properly. The door she scrabbled towards started to close, and just before it snapped shut she heard the pretty lady laugh and say something - Stupid kid !

The door clicked shut with a locking sound leaving the little girl to fall to the floor, her doll spinning out of her hands. Mindy ! The little girl couldn't see anymore. Couldn't breathe. Dizzy. And a warm sleepy feeling crept over her. Maybe she would just rest a bit, then find her doll and climb out. As darkness descended she thought What a mean trick that lady had pulled... and she so too wasn't stupid... but most of all... she wanted her mommy...

This week Martin brought along Room 25, a somewhat co-operative game that can have betrayal mechanics - a firm favourite game type at the Ribs.

Room 25 - the diabolical prison with
moving rooms and traps aplenty

An un-apologetic copy of cult film The Cube ( albeit the Cube is well.. a cube... and Room 25 is.. a square... ), the game sees players thrown into a dystopian sci-fi prison / lab rat maze consisting of a number of identically sized rooms - some safe, some not so safe, and some downright lethal. The players have to escape the nightmare of the prison without more than one of their number dying. But there's a catch. Time is limited. And some of the prisoners are not what they seem - they are guards intent on preventing the prisoners escaping. The players can take a peek into another room before they decide to move into it, move into another room, or more darkly, push another player into a room. Finally through some dystopian sci-fi shenanigans players can control the rooms - and shift a line of them in a direction. Clunking and thunking the prison into a new layout.

Your fellow player The scientist just said that room is clear ? Push him in there and see if he was lying. Or maybe shift his line of rooms a bit and let him try again.

The game setup is interesting, and the idea of The Cube makes for a really great game theme that should be an enjoyable experience if done right. However Room 25 does have some issues that makes this game something of a diamond in the rough - a good game with some flaws which may or may not scupper the game for you.

First of the flaws is player elimination. It's absolutely possible for a player to be eliminated on turn one - unlikely but possible. And an eliminated player gets to do nothing for the rest of the game. However, given the game in theory should only run for 30 minutes, this isn't a huge problem. In practice though the game can run longer than 30 minutes - with players discussing moves, throwing out accusations, or just thinking about where they want to go. In our case I think it took us something on the order of over an hour to crank a game out.

Second of the flaws is connected to the first. It's possible for the guards to win in turn one, more likely in turn two. Maybe that isn't so much of a problem however - you can just reset and go again.

Third of the flaws is the nature of the 5 x 5 room layout. After a few plays it should be fairly obvious what an optimum exploration pattern is for a group of prisoners. Sure guards and trap rooms can throw a spanner in that, but by and large it should go by the numbers. But hey. Maybe you don't overthink your games too much, and the cool theme and the interesting variation of room layout makes that problem less of an issue.

Despite the above problems and a handful of minor other flaws the game does have a really cool idea at it's heart and if you are into that kind of thing is really enjoyable and fun.

Despite myself being eliminated on turn 2 I enjoyed the game a lot and would be happy to play it again. Lauren as a bad guy ended up being eliminated a turn or two after me - unknowingly by the other bad guy. Proving that there is no honour amongst thieves. Or possible that Martin just likes killing people - whether they're on his team or not. However some might say Lauren got her just desserts after pushing me into a freezer and then persuading me to happily skip to my death. Doll in hand.

As it was I really didn't mind. I enjoyed it. And I got to speak to Writer Ed for a chunk of time about his exciting new job doing things for the upcoming computer game Elite. Writer Ed is now Elite Ed. Who gets paid to play games. And makes excuses to his girlfriend about playing games at home by telling her its business. Career building. Now pass me the nachos and be quiet.

As for Room 25 - it turned out in the end that despite my death by poison, I won as the surviving good guys succeeded to make it out, regardless of a deranged Martin trying to kill everyone. He got stuck in a proper jail cell, powerless to stop the good guys. Just desserts all round. Except maybe for the gullible little girl.

Xia - Elite Ed proves to be an adept asteroid avoider

Next table over Xia got another play, whizzing space ships around dodging asteroids, selling cargo and playing Elite the board game.
Despite me and Ed chatting for a chunk of gameplay he managed to keep a competitive score and was leading for sometime before Sam started to catch him. Xia is proving to be very popular. If you can manage to beat Rich IV to calling dibs on playing, you might get a seat at this game too !

Abyss. Look at that gorgeous art. Look at it !

Last table downstairs had Abyss, a drafting card game where players vie for control of the empire under the sea via Lords, fights and... pearls. I played this game quite some time ago and I remember it being quite nice - it has some really kick ass art, and the game is... ok. Good ? Alright. Depending if you like these kind of drafty cardy things. I remember it reminded me somewhat of the other drafty cardy tribey game 3012. Which is probably no help as I suspect very few people have actually played 3012.

Punk Rich was going to play this, but on discovery it was only a four player game - not five - he made his excuses to search for something to play upstairs. And then went home ! Tsk. Remember, if you see Rich wandering around, don't let him out of the door, grab him and force him to play a game. He loves it really.

20th Century. Produce Crap. Recycle. Profit. Win.

Upstairs Tim lead a group through Citadels, Mr Bond trotted his horse around El Grande, and Tom was thoroughly beaten in 20th Century. Tom and Stu both experienced Euro vets were humbled, tarred and then feathered and ended up losing by 50 or more points to a strategy that saw lots of waste being recycled by recycling plants. As everything in the 20th century generates waste... this seemed to be a winning ploy. Produce crap. Make profit from clearing up crap. Uh huh. Obvious strategy is obvious ?

A completely not staged shot of Mr Bond
pointing out his evil plans.

Some fillers were then played. Mr Bonds group played some weird tower building game. Which involved not nudging the table and making things fall over. King of Tokyo had a blast where Lewis' punk ass Penguin won, and I got to play the psychic Divinaire with Tom and Stu, and managed my worst score ever, with a smug Tom proving to be the best reader of the tea leaves. Blah.






Next week we have a request for Dead of Winter. Three players already found. Possible two more required.


Numbers - 30 this week. 31 if you count the departing Punk Rich.

Um. Build Towers ? Don't ask
me how you use the wooden balls...

Happiness - a pile of wooden blocks on a pub table.