Subversives never learn

Nothing too Euro Strenuous ( or indeed Euro at all ) afoot at the Ribs this week, with Elder Sign, King of Tokyo, Saboteur, Arabian Nights and The Resistance getting play time.

A fresh set of newcomers for the week - a hearty welcome to Caroline, Jarryd and Jennifer - taking us to what must be a new monthly record of nine fresh victims new players.

Elder Sign was first up for five of us, Jarryd, Caroline, Ewan, Robin and myself taking on intrepid / hapless investigators trying to prevent in this instance Nyarlathotep going about his evil doings. As seems to be the pattern with Elder Sign the investigators do a reasonably fine job all except for one person. Who tends to fail. A lot.

Elder Sign. Secret Cultist Joe Diamond skulks on the left.

Last time it was Dean's pretend magician who got stuck in a cupboard moping about his failures and then died having achieved precisely nothing. This time round it was Robin's PI Joe Diamond, who seemed to lurch from encounter to encounter doing little more than spawning monsters and putting doom on the track. A subversive cultist if ever I saw one.

Despite Joe's  best efforts to aid his lord and master Nyarlathotep, the rest of our derring band managed to slam the lid shut on the squirming tentacles of the outer god, and we all skipped back home in one piece for a nice cup of tea and a scone.

A ruthless game of King of Tokyo then ensued, the brawling with five was ceaseless, and both Jarryd and Caroline achieved a win by beating everyone else bloody. Victory points be damned.

Finally Saboteur made it out, and with it Pete appeared from his hiding place to join in. Pete managed some epic silver tongue shenanigans by getting one Saboteur - Jarryd - to sabotage the other saboteur - me. A sad day for the saboteurs. Robin and Ewan managed to scarper from the mines with the most gold stuffed in their pockets, despite them both losing the final round. I call it greedy.

Meanwhile on the other table situated by the verandah over the river, the summer sun twinkled from the water to play over the miraculous and at times dubious shenanigans of the Tales of the Arabian Nights. Jennifer, Bondy, Sam, Rich and Fletch took this story telling game out for a spin, each taking it in turn to read out loud from a hefty book of pick your own story style paragraphs and lay down the path of fate for one of their compatriots. The game is somewhere in between a board game and a roleplaying game, with the main thrust of the game based around story telling, making the odd decision and developing a character that obtains or has thrust upon them certain character traits. Fail to charm the princess and see her stalk off to her life of luxury ? Gain the trait Envy.

Tales about to start. Bondy hasn't got his fish yet.

Perhaps my ears are attuned to such things, but everytime I stopped to listen to the tales going on, there seemed to be an inordinate amount of dubious women prostituting themselves, being enslaved, and or taken by the players. Fletch encountered an imprisoned prostitute and 'took her for himself'. Apparently this meant he had married her. Personally I had visions of a subterranean dungeon.

Bondy on the other hand following a similar fate, managed to get his hands on a fish during his quest. Not just any fish. A multi coloured fish.

Hmm.

I guess entertainment is light in the lands of Arabia. No TV I bet. Or board games.

What have you got there ?

A fish !

Uh huh.

No, no, not just any fish. Look. Its a multi coloured fish.

Uh huh.

If it were me I'd feel hard done by, going on a quest, delving beneath the ocean, and coming back with a lousy fish. Then again if your adventures take you beneath the waves, a fish reward is probably quite likely.

No chips.

After a time, when the wow factor of the multi coloured fish wore off ( it got not so colourful and began to stink ), Bondy attempted to cook the piscine, only for it to turn into a woman.

Which I don't know about you, but happens to me all the time. A common kitchen problem. Deceased fish turning into women.

I lost track of what happened to his fishy pan woman and whether he had burnt her ass on the stove, but at some point he got a gift of 100 wardrobes ( more a curse than a gift I would have thought - imagine man handling 100 wardrobes into your living room ), opened them all, got greedy and was set upon by an Efreet. That's a fire djinn. ( I know far farrr too much about Djinn after spending 3.5 years roleplaying a Djinn pathfinder campaign ).

The morale of the story is... I don't know. Never accept 100 wardrobes as a gift ? A cheque will suffice. Or better yet cash. Cash good. Gold even. What's wrong with your good old clichéd chest of gold trope. Gold Great. 100 wardrobes. Not so much. Anyone offers you 100 wardrobes as a reward, start backing away is my advice.

The game occupied most of the night for the group, it seemed like fun, I think this very much depends on who you have playing, and how open to roleplay you are. Those with a phobia of roleplaying and a desire for crunchy euro mechanics need not apply.

Finally the evening finished off with an epic 10 handed game of the Resistance. Fabulously noisy, argumentative, hurtful and deceitful, the government spies once again brought the Resistance crashing down. I was evilly chuffed at my own spy shenanigans that managed to sow discord amongst the good guys - Fletch to Rich and Pete "you're going to be so sorry when this game ends and I am not a spy" - and got enough trust and plausibility that the good guys supported me.

Kudos to the other spies, Ewan did a fair number of honestly self implicating himself as a spy to seem to gain the trust of everyone else. And Jarryd fenced verbally back and forth across the table sowing confusion amongst the logic, and finally Caroline did a good number being relatively quiet and non suspicious, backing me up as "not a spy" when put upon ( despite the split second pause and blink when quizzed what *colour* was the card..... uhh... Blue ! she lied... ), and tanking the final mission when required. Muah ha ha ha ha.

High fives for the government. Blind folds and a firing squad for the Resistance.

Will you never learn subversives ? You can't fight The Man.

The Traveller

An artful eight this week, including David, a temporary visitor hailing from Chelmsford. Giving up his regular Chelmsford gaming group ( CheBoG ? ) for the week to visit family, NoBoG welcomed The Traveller by sitting down to a game of the new and shiny City of Remnants.

City of Remnants is an area control game, with a bit of deck building, a bit of dice rolling combat and a Euro style action list with a smattering of Euro mechanics to go around. Set in some dystopian future, mankind has been brought low by some unspeakable alien race, with the survivors living in city ghettoes, rubbing shoulders with a range of other conquered imported aliens all under the iron rule of the invaders. Life devolves into scrambles for petty power and criminality by rival gangs, and it is one of these gangs that a player finds himself leading.

Your aim is to be the bestest, most notorious gang in the city - building up your criminal empire, fighting off other gangs, and avoiding the patrols of the alien overlords to be crowned kingpin.

There are many elements to this game, and there are a few things that lie in its shadows that might not be entirely obvious at first glance - hinting at some deep replay possibilities. Probably the chief mechanic in importance is that of managing your deck ( and each factions starter deck is unique to them ). Your deck represents your gang, its equipment and capabilities - and in a very real sense is tied to how many figures you can place on the board and therefore how much area you can control and firepower you can bring. For each gang member card you recruit into your deck, another figure becomes available for you to place on the board and vie for control.

The City - Dean nowhere to be seen

 But this isn't a game of luxuriously large decks. Your deck is small. Tight. And it's used in both combat and turn actions. Central to this deck size is the fact that it doesn't automatically refresh. Once it's gone, it's gone. Add to this a single combat action that can devour your entire deck and it quickly becomes apparent that timing can be critical in this game where ordinarily your deck will only refresh every four actions ( turns ).

But there is hope - you can take an action to refresh your deck prematurely. But of course, burning this action to refresh your deck is possibly a waste of a better opportunity - moving your gang members to control areas and attack, producing items to sell, developing premises into lucrative businesses, recruiting new gang members, or buying items from the black market.

A pile of cash, some notoriety and a single gang member free

The game area is relatively small - and the gangers can move relatively quickly. All of these factors add up to a game that can be intense and where your actions have a heavy price. To make matters even worse - every combat you lose, you lose a ganger off the table... and you permanently lose a card from your deck. Combat losses *hurt*.

It's definitely possible in this game to make a series of bad decisions and end up in a place that is difficult to get out of.

In our game the learning process was very evident as we all lurched from one game mechanic to the next with each revelation that oh yeah, that was quite important / useful. Dean and Sam entered into a punishing war that saw Dean struggling to even enter the city, and Sam reduced to a skeleton crew of gang members - a hairs breadth away from being exterminated entirely.

Dean has a sad and threatens to play his DS instead, as Sam takes Dean's
new development and thwarts all his attempts at entering the game.

This left David and myself in a relatively stronger position and vying for more useful control of the city proper. However, despite me taking an early lead and developing useful enterprises, David utilised his gangs special powers very well, and collected bounty on every player in the game to end up triumphant.

A cool game - it does seem open to a bit of Analysis Paralysis as players may sit and ponder what they should be doing - and with a relatively high VP condition, the game can play longer than it says on the tin. The game is also fairly unforgiving - make a mistake and you can get punished for it - and there is little to no mechanic to haul in a powerful player down. However, the small deck size, and the timing of card use pretty much makes this a non event, as a concerted effort against a single player is sure to reap rewards. The game feels like it can swing back and forth, and control of the city is not an easy thing.

Also, I don't know whether it was me, but I got such a strong Mega City One vibe from this game - it could so easily have been set in a 2000AD Judge Dredd setting, replace the alien overlords with judges, but leave everything else just about as it is. Makes me wonder if that was a missed IP opportunity right there.


Whilst the future gang warfare was going on, the second table sat down to another stab at Elder Sign. Ewan, Moritz, Pete and Nicky ventured forth against the unspeakable Lovecraftian denizens, and once more the museum was beset with strange noises and desperate battles. The heroes managed to thwart the Elder Gods once more - perhaps reinforcing reports that this game is a tad too easy for players to conquer.

Flipping roles and taking on the guise of monstrous entities themselves, King of Tokyo was next up for a game or two, Ewans cyber bunny triumphantly destroying all comers to be crowned de facto King of Tokyo for lack of any surviving competitors. A raucous and noisy second helping of monstrous carnage was unleashed, this time Nicky hauling in the 20 points required for a win.

After the noise of Tokyo, the table fell silent and a deep thoughtful quiet settled on the players.

I had no clue what they were playing. I figured they had busted out some four player chess variant from the serious faces and quiet thinking. But no. It turned out to be Hey Thats My Fish - and everyone was brain burning how to lead their penguins to greedy fishy victory.


Cool stuff. I look forward to getting City of Remnants out on the table again, this time with the benefit of knowing whats important and what isn't - and also making sure the turns hussle along. Perhaps Toms iPad game turn timer app would come in useful. . . .

Stop the Aged

Hark, tis me. Back with stories drawn from the depths of the Ribs of Beef.  Gather round…

We played Elder Sign. A game that is not about getting octogenarians across a busy road, but about a hardy group of investigators trying to stave off the terrible and madness inducing return of an Ancient Old One (a god from the HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos). This is by the same designer as the popular sprawling game Arkham Horror, which covers the same theme.

Elder Sign is much like Arkham Horror, but streamlined into a clever dice-roller, which plays in 90 minutes or so. It’s by the same designer and he’s done a good job of capturing the essence of Arkham Horror with much of the same flavour, fun and character driven exploits, but without the skip full of bits or the hours of tedium long play time.

Like Arkham Horror, this a cooperative game, where players complete tasks and beef up their 1930s characters with items, weapons, spells and allies, in order to investigate the supernatural goings on. In Arkham, the players are trying to close portals, in this the collecting of Elder Signs does much the same job. Collect a certain number of Elder Signs quickly enough and the players stop the return of the nasty Ancient One. Too slow and it’ll return and the investigators will have to do battle with the odds stacked heavily against them, probably culminating in the end of the world.

Elder signs look nothing like this.

In our game, five plucky investigators took up the challenge of stopping Hastur from appearing and doing something indescribably terrible.  Stalwart McGlen (Ewan) did the rough and tough stuff, while the sceptical, yet capable Kate (John) refused to believe in monsters with the effect disbelieving them out of existence. Then the was the Professor (myself), who rather than stick to books, tooled himself up with guns and took the fight to cowering curators, dusty tomes and meandering shoggoths – all went down in a hail of bullets. These three were aided by Mandy (Sam), a researcher that modelled herself on a common whore - providing relief in times of need. And that was it. Ah, no. There was also Dean’s inept “Magician”. Seemingly nothing more than a children’s entertainer, this coward spent most of the game locked in the toilet pretending to cast spells and slowly going insane. He eventually found himself in a downward spiral of despair, from which even Mandy couldn't rouse the poor chap. He died alone and unloved in his cubicle. Overall, it was a close run thing, but despite the loss of the magician, we prevailed and stopped the return of Hastur just in the nick of time. Huzzah!

I've never been a fan of the monstrosity that is Arkham Horror, but I’ll gladly play Elder Sign. Call me up when the world is in peril from the untold horrors that lurk beyond…

We also played Infiltration. A push your luck style game set in Fantasy Flight’s Android cyberpunk setting (also the setting for the recent release of Netrunner). In this five plucky fellows (always plucky) try to infiltrate a corporation in order to steal valuable secrets. This isn't cooperative; everyone is playing against the game and scoring their own points. Push further into the building to get more rewards, but at the risk of not getting out by the time the authorities arrive. We were all terrible at this. Too busy with our own schemes, we let an office worker escape and raise the alarm. The authorities showed up and it was game over. Not even John, who had almost made it to the top of the building escaped;  he was nabbed while waiting for the executive lift.

The other table played a new game, Bora Bora, by Stefan Feld. There is much love for Feld at NoBoG.  I can't tell you much about it other than it uses dice to perform actions and seems to be the usual melting pot of mechanisms that all contribute to earning victory points. Anyway, the correct appreciative sounds could be heard from that end of the room so I think we get another thumbs up for Feld. Nicky won this, mercilessly crushing Pete, James and Jimmy.