Trouble Brewing

What a crazy week it has been for NoBoG. Firstly, the EDP news article was published which ended up showcasing a number of our lovely people and commenting on the rising trend of gaming culture.

And then on the day the article was printed the call came in that Mustard TV wanted to turn up and film a short piece about NoBoG as well ! With about six hours notice. Don't panic ! And so a day after the news article hit the streets we also had a very nice TV piece that hit the airwaves and shortly after the interwebs.

Blimey. Although in hindsight, as Mustard TV are part of the Archant group which the EDP also is, I guess it's not that big of a surprise we got the double barreled shot gun of press interest going on there.

Should you not have seen them on the facebook feed already, you can check out both of them here.

Eastern Daily Press NoBlog Link Board games are making a comeback in Norwich It is a Tuesday evening at The Mash Tun pub in Norwich and around 50 people are sitting around tables, sipping beers and cokes and occasionally exchanging conversation.
Mustard TV NoBlog Link The board game Renaissance A Norwich club is toasting a brave new world of board gaming. Say move over Monopoly and goodbye to Scrabble, because the Norwich Board Gamers are entering a new, golden era.

But enough of the starry eyed NoBoG promotion, what games were going on at The Mash Tun this week ?

A couple of never seen before at NoBoG games this week. The first of which was Joan of Arc.

Originally released in 1998,  Joan of Arc has a passing resemblance to something like Game of Thrones ( or more correctly the other way around given that GoT was released 13 years later ) in that you have a fairly limited high view strategic map, and the order of the day is going forth and conquering new regions with your armies and playing combat cards with values on them to swing the day in your favour.

Joan of Arc - the factions of France ( and England ) clash.

There is not much else going on game wise with Joan of Arc, it's an outright conquest type game, so don't be looking for some clever euro optimising or synergising going on here, fight for regions, regions get you more gold and points, rinse and repeat.

That's not a bad thing though, particularly if there are some clever things above and beyond say a dice roll ( Risk, *cough* ) that are contributing to your success or failure. And Joan of Arc has that - arguably the core of the game revolves around the combat mechanism. ( Everything else is just sauce for that inevitable fight, or in the case of Pretender Points and an extended confused food metaphor, the jam everyone is aiming for ) In Joan of Arc you will be managing a hand of cards that you can play into combat ( plus some other non combat cards you might spam out ). Some combat cards are just plain strength values, and depending whether you are attacking or defending you will get to play one or two of these, whilst others do sneaky things to the combat, and yet others act as extra buff cards - like sending in a leader to help out, or just using a bit of influence to increase the battle in your favour.

One of the nice things about the combat system here is, that if you win you get to keep your melee and hero cards ( albeit when attacking you can only use them once ), and if you lose they get burned. Which can be tremendously important when your sweaty hands are grasping that rare 6 value card and you're deciding whether you should keep it hanging around for defence, or you can win that next combat and get it back for defence anyway. It's also important to decide when to commit your re-usable +2 hero cards which you are free to add into a combat anytime you like - but crucially, if they lose, they die.

Elliot takes a snap of Joan of Arc

Add in a single die result to a combat and you can see that the conflict resolution in Joan of Arc is rather nice, tense, open to some bluffing and dickery and never entirely certain.

The rest of the game involves a series of phases, where you collect gold, build castles, choose whether the country should be at war or not, and manage your hand of cards. Victory points are scored at the end of every turn for regions held.

Joan of Arc in the end falls into a nice conquest style game, something between Wallenstein, Game of Thrones and old school Blood Royale ( remember that ??!? ). It's simple, and perhaps given its age starts to straddle that gap of old school Ameritrash and new age Euro with its nod towards hand management and a more involved melee process than seeing who can roll more sixes.

To my mind this game answers the question of whether Game of Thrones would be as popular as it is were it not for the very well known theme. I think you have your answer in the not a million miles away from it and not very well known Joan of Arc.

If you'd like to give this a go, and don't have the benefit of the board game, then rejoice, because they made a very good video game conversion of it - the demo of which you can play for free. Which I highly recommend if you have a bit of spare time to hand. Go. Do it. Download it !

Montjoie ! NoBlog Link Montjoie ! The PC version of the Joan of Arc board game.

The second new to NoBoG game this week was Brew Crafters, an unabashedly pure Euro game without a single element of randomness and a good deal of worker placement efficiency all about making your brewery the most renowned brewery of craft ales and beer malarkey in the land.

Brew Crafters is I think something of a sleeper of a game - it has largely slipped under the radar and yet has some solid gameplay and design, and many that have played it compare it to Agricola with a different theme. Which is no bad thing given what a great game Agricola is.

The crafty Brew Crafters

Brew Crafters despite the comparison to Agric is very much its own game. There are certainly elements that are inspired from Agric - such as the worker placement market board which has players place meeples one at a time on exclusive spaces that either reward materials or a certain action, and where spaces that aren't used have their resources accumulate turn after turn. And with each player also getting a brewery mat to play on in which they can upgrade buildings or build new ones, plant crops in a farm, and process ingredients into beer, there is a little hint of the Agric farm there too.

The game overall however is a fair step away from Agric - there are no mouths to feed here, and you wont be earning victory points from how fancy your brewery is. Instead the meat of the game revolves around the brewing of beers - each of which requires a different spread of ingredients - which nets you money and reputation points. Money is important - without it you will incur debts that give you negative reputation points ( effectively there is a direct one way trade of Victory points to money ) - but crucially at game end is worth nothing towards your victory. Only reputation counts, and reputation you get from your beers.

So far, so simple. Get ingredients. Process ingredients to beer. Profit.

Except. There are a barrel full of ways to do that in Brew Crafters. Whether you choose to bust out simple ales in mass production, or go for the more difficult brews, or even tamper with the brews as they get processed, there are many ways to pick up points here - all of which start with brewing a beer, but end in a whole bunch of different ways. Along the way you might decide to invest in technology to help you on your brewing enterprise - and also end up earning you extra reputation for the different beers you have. Or do you expand your building infrastructure. And if so what. And when ? And can you cover ingredients ? Or the cost of running all your choices ? Tricky. There are many lovely interleaved possibilities here, from producing your own stuff, to expanding storage size, or just employing someone who makes certain action spots more compelling for you, its pretty much always the case that there is more than one way to do anything in the game, and part of the challenge of the game is figuring out what actions you can get for free by doing other things, and the timing of everything to come together nicely.

Brew Crafters - can you run a better brewery ?

The game sets up in a basic mode - which to be honest comes across as something of the same weight of Agricola if not a tad heavier - and leaves it open to players to integrate a host of advanced options that only further muddy and complicate the waters. You can actually see a good reason why this game has done that - muddying those waters too much could result in an absolute brain melt down for a new player as they make a bunch of wrong decisions and crash out to a spectacularly bad finish.

The game also has a pretty decent replay value going on here - as there are a number of beers to brew, only nine of which are in any one game, and there are a number of skilled workers you can pick up, against only nine of which appear in any one game, that can radically alter what you can do in a turn.

We played it with five at NoBoG after a late start, and even with a rules session and a table full of new players we were finished in under 2.5 hours. Everyone seemed to really like it - Sam said it made his brain hurt, the Agricola inspiration was apparent to those that had played both, and there seemed to be the rather blasphemous opinion that Brew Crafters was actually more compelling theme wise and somewhat more satisfying as you chucked brews down your production line and stacked them up as your victory points. It's fair to say I think that everyone except me ( four games under my belt ) had trouble brewing, and there was something of a learning curve going on as to what worked well, and oh crap, I've just burned all my ingredients in a pointless action. Both Joe and Sam did quite a number on taking ingredients and then dumping them straight in the bin.

Is it a great game then ? That depends on who you are and whether you like your hardcore Euros or not. The theme is nice, but ultimately you have to at least like your Euro style games to enjoy this title, and I can imagine a whole segment of the gaming market that will run screaming from its uncompromising demands for efficient responsibility. Secret Hitler it ain't.

One of the many Can't Stop editions.

Elsewise in the house the old school classic Can't Stop got a play, another old school game, Settlers of Catan saw table time, James played some Castles of Mad King Ludwig tucked away around the corner ( he must like it round there, he always ends up there ), and the Euro distinguished Keyflower made it back for one of its irregular visits under the guidance of David and Chloe.

I missed what else was going on - and epically badly managed to miss what was being played on a table less than 6 feet away from me -  as I was kinda distracted by the filming and guiding my table through the finer points of brew crafting.

There was some epic and raucous Secret Hitlering going on at the end of the evening - Lewis turned out to be a Fascist again, and Luke a gleeful Hitler, with Team Evil Regime going on to secure the win. Luke was very buzzed by the whole experience and declared Hitler to be the best role of all and the game to be better than Resistance. Uh huh.

I failed to get quite enough people together for a decent second game of Secret Hitler, so this week I skipped it, and we busted out Cheaty Mages instead which hasn't seen table time for quite a while. Pete's first try at this game ended up with him being the cheatiest of all cheaty mages with some unbelievable goblin pumping that saw him cruise to a win. Seeing a goblin beat out both a Dragon ( highest creature ) AND a demon ( second highest creature ) AND a dark elf ( fourth highest creature ) in a single round is pretty amazing. Cheaty Mages is a nice little filler if you've never seen it or played it, a betting game where you subtly, or not so subtly cast hidden spells on the creatures to help or hinder them in their goal of being the strongest on table at round end.

Also some news about space at the Mash Tun, I'm not sure if it's a weekly thing again, but the recently cleared upstairs is now playing host to the Salsa dancing lot on a Tuesday - however, it's possible from a space overflow view that the Gin Palace could  be opened up if we need it - Luke did offer at one point, but an extra table was all we needed in the end.

Saying that, numbers are consistently steady at the moment in the mid 40's, ( 46, 47, and 45 respectively ) not an exact science however as we are getting some people in late, some people leaving relatively early, and some people coming in very late indeed !

Settlers of Catan. For many the game that kickstarted the second golden age of board gaming.

Keyflower

Jungle Speed. Or possibly beer mats and a candlestick holder. Hard to tell.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Truckers

Another fine evening of gaming last week, but truth be told, I can't say much about what was going on, I was chilling playing a relaxed game of Isle of Skye, Guillotine and then Take 6, plus fannying about with camera settings. So. This week there will be waffling. If you've ever seen the Fast Show with Paul Whitehouse and his bit with the old man in the chair, you'll know what to expect.

Formula De - time field distortion

A noisy full table of Formula De was played out beside us, I have no idea what track it was, but it looked good fun. I really like Formula De, but, and it's a big butt, it plays way too long for me for what it is. It takes forever and a day on a big track with lots of people, when all you're really doing is rolling and moving. Don't get me wrong, it's also a fun game, and in a campaign over several tracks with some serious minded people it can be another kind of groovy all over again. But yeah. Time.

1990, when my innocent self was still in the grips of schooling, I made my own formula 1 racing game, not exactly a million miles away from Formula De, except my version played in about 30 minutes. It proved to be very popular for the other sixth formers, who when given a choice of doing academic work / revising, or racing tiny cars around a track, picked the latter. Like shooting fish in a barrel ! Of course, me being me, shortly after I binned the whole thing and forgot about it, and now occasionally lament I did that, and try to remember exactly what the rules were.

In the grips of some madness of experimenting with to be honest, far too complicated camera settings, I tried to take some artsy pictures this week, with some long exposures and the like. Turns out, 30 second exposures of Formula De do not end well. 10 second ones, eh, somewhat better.

In other parts of the Mash Tun, Messrs David, Sam, James and Voitek decided to crank out the quality game of Galaxy Truckers, the crazy endeavour of assembling some form of cobbled together

Galaxy Truckers, League of Gentlemen style

spaceship, followed by taking it out into the galaxy to conduct your trading, looting and racing without it falling to pieces. I have to say watching them assemble their ships, they were by far the most, relaxed, polite, gentlemanly space ship builders I have ever seen. The spaceship assembly part of the game is something of a race against time against your fellow players - firstly to grab the bits you like, and secondly, you only have a minute to finish when the first player declares finished.

But apparently that was not of concern for the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Truckers who you imagine ply their trade routes in smoking jackets and slippers. I didn't actually hear it, but I'm sure there was much conversation during building along the lines of, "No no dear chap, you take that part, honestly, it looks better on your ship anyway" and "Excuse me, but I think I may be nearing completion of my vessel, but I will sip on my tea instead of finishing to give you chaps a good crack at completion." . Clearly they've never played with Sam "Numbers" Blackwell who delights in creating half finished ships in record time just to watch everyone else fail epically.

Blood Rage, Ragnarok is upon us

Nicky brought along a new kickstarter binge, the gorgeously over produced Blood Rage, a game all about Vikings and Ragnarok and securing yourself the best combat death ever.

As the tag line goes Life is battle, battle is glory, and glory is ALL.

Now. If you know Nicky, you might not immediately associate her with bloodthirsty, kill or be killed all out Viking blood fests - her calm and friendly exterior revealing little of the Valkyrie inside. But that's where you'd be wrong. Which just goes to show, you never can tell.

The epically epic miniatures of Blood Rage

The game looks fantastic - of course, it's been done by Cool Mini or Not - and has been written by Eric Lang ( Chaos in the Old World, X-COM amongst others ), and seems to be winning fans. Nicky has promised to bring the blood letting along again this week, so, if you have a moment you can gawp at the fantastic miniatures, or if you're lucky, even give it a play.

A double dose of Castles of Mad King Ludwig was also on offer, one game drawing out into a somewhat lengthy affair with some dubious card recycling going on, Punk Rich was back in the house and found himself a quiet corner to hide in with Hazel and Dean where they got themselves wrapped up in Nations.

David and Chloe brought Imperial Assault along, where presumably they found the droids WERE the ones they were looking for after all, and have signed up to an every other week campaign of Star Wars ground based pew pewing. Looked cool. Although I hear some grumbles that playing the Imperials is something of a boring experience.

King of Tokyo stomped around the pub too, plus some Orctions gaming, and once again Mafia de Cuba got hauled out with a full table of 12 and some crazy shenanigans which proved to be very fun. Me and Sam nearly got away with both declaring to be drivers - despite that meaning there were one too drivers many - but Hannah belatedly pointed out our lie to Godfather Kieran who promptly ratted out Sam - an actual driver - then me - a diamond thief. Curses. Well played Sam though, he backed me up right to the end. If it wasn't for those meddling kids....

Thanks to Monika whos picture of Galaxy Truckers I purloined this week. My own picture succumbed to a 30 second over exposure madness.

The lovely Isle of Skye

Nations in the Time Out Corner

King of Tokyo and a trio of cool T Shirts

Imperial Assault. These ARE the droids you're looking for.

Castles 1

And Castles 2...

Another shot of the lovely Blood Rage miniatures

More blurry shots of Formula De for you...

Double Trouble

Before we start, James wrote up a lovely little segment of his experiences this week - you can go read his exploits over on his blog.

With a line of NoBoG regulars texting, commenting and getting word in via yoghurt pots and taut string that they could not make it this week, I presumed that like last week it was going to be a quiet evening - which at the moment amounts to an attendance in the mid thirties ( half full for the Tuna ).

Turns out I was wrong and this week we hit 53. At least 53. I stopped counting stragglers coming through the door after 9pm.

And what a splendiferous evening of gaming it was ! What sights to see and wonders to behold !

For starters it was special hat night ! Charlotte the ever on duty bar maid commented that she was looking forward to seeing a mad collection of hats, and noted she had a beanie herself she could put on to get in the spirit. Alas, special hat night amounted to me wearing a rather fetching dragon hat, and as promised, Ewan actually for once removing his hat instead of wearing one. There were some rather poor excuses about not being informed when I quizzed people where their hats were, rather poor form, although someone suggested we should make every week special hat week. Food for thought. One suspects however this would be repeated weeks of again just me, in a hat, and Ewan without one. Pfah.

Elliot was in resplendent attire as he cut short his Other Duties and attended NoBoG in fine dinner

Lords of Waterdeep. Why is everyone staring at me ? Is it the hat ?

wear. It was like a scene from Casino Royale. Except instead of poker they were playing Lords of Waterdeep. And everyone else at the table was distinctly less well dressed. And there were no fancy palm trees and expensive cars outside. Just a small blue fiat and some classic British weather that couldn't quite be arsed to rain, might later, but would make you think about taking an umbrella only to annoyingly forget it and leave it somewhere, which would then properly leave you without an umbrella for the next day when it could actually be arsed to rain and isn't that bloody typical.

But apart from that. Just like Casino Royale.

We also had visitors from afar all the way from the US vacationing and working ( depending on which one you asked ) in Norwich. And of course, being in Norwich, the top place to be would be NoBoG ( bite it Norwich Cathedral ). So Erin and husband sat down to play some games, taking our American count up to 4 for the week. Rather alarmingly the trend in Americans attending NoBoG has steadily been on the rise for the last couple of months. At this rate we will all be Americans by sometime next year. Good news if you like large food portions. Bad news if you don't like the idea of Donald Trump possibly being your next leader. But regardless of American trends, NoBoG is clearly the international vacation spot to be given we've had Australian vacationers and all sorts. I plan to start up an in NoBoG novelty shop to cater for the flow of tourists - possibly a line of NoBoG Special Levelling Devices for holiday makers to take back home with them.

Sam was one of our regulars that couldn't make it this week, and he lamented that Mice & Mystics was probably going to be played whilst he wasn't there - a game that he wanted to have a go with. So to spite Sam we decided to play two simultaneous games of Mice & Mystics on one large table with both groups right next to each other ( largely because I was the only person who knew the rules, so I just shouted a bit to teach the two groups at once - Joe's clever idea that ). Double Trouble !

Mice & Mystics, Joe's group use "tactics" to win. Pah.

Our group of Mice didn't confer about what to take or skills to match, and piled in all dashing swords and bluster and quickly made it into the corridors beneath the castle. Two rooms in, and two mice down, we were slightly delayed having to rescued the downed mice before we walked into a torrent of spiders and centipedes. If you've never played Mice & Mystics before, then this is hardcore mode. Rats and Roaches are for wimps. Only truly heroic mice deal with the bigger spiders and centipedes. Surge after surge hit us, and in hindsight, a poorly timed dash into the next area left us reeling and bloodied and Tom as our spell caster, running desperately around a pit firing off magic bolts at chasing bad guys. Tom was last to go down, a mouse trap snapped shut on him after one too many dices with death, and as he brushed himself to get up, a centipede finished him off.

Game Over.

The other Mice & Mystics group used ridiculous ideas such as "talking to each other about what good synergies of powers they could use before selecting characters", and moving around so that the healer could always heal the hammer wielding tinkerer who kept multi smashing enemies. Pah ! They also set the game on beginner mode and removed some of the nastier events from the Search deck ( in our game it was one of these that ate a mouse ). They battled through the entire first chapter and successfully reached the tree roots - and had barely moved their time ticker on at all. I think they played it wrong. Real heroes do not discuss tactics. They spend their time coming up with rousing battle cries instead. I think we all know who the real winners were here.

Elsewhere Sean brought some possibly dodgy wrestling game to table and had a blast with that - Richard asked if you knew the winner of the game before anyone had even started, and everything else was just scripted. Sean said the game was good - or at least wasn't an abject failure, something which Andy agreed with when he noted it could have been a lot worse than it was. I'm still not sure if that was a compliment or some kind of back handed compliment insult thing. The game has some rock paper scissors action going on, with a bit of deck buildery shenanigans built into it according to Sean - the only down side being that only two of the four players could ever be in the ring at once. Why you couldn't have all four going ham is an open question. Seemed cool though. A tentative thumbs up !

Game of Thrones. Note ground zero of the Great Eastern Sea Coke Spill.

Game of Thrones was busted out yet again - and Martin and Davey were back with us at the table after a hiatus of a month ( I thought we had lost Martin for good ). As Lewis was also playing, it was necessary that a drink was thrown over the game ( it is now customary for any game Lewis is playing to have even odds that a drink should be thrown over it ), but to be fair it wasn't the fault of Lewis - but perhaps just his drink throwyness aura. They failed to finish the game, but everyone seemed to have a good deal of fun, except for perhaps Lewis who was beaten into a corner, and didn't really gel with the game. Don't worry Lewis, I'm not a big fan of the Shuffle Bits Pointlessly Between Three Areas for Five Hours game either. Game of Thrones. It's like diplomacy. But Winter Is Coming.

Hal brought along the new-ish Churchill game, which sees three players take on the roles of the World War II Allied leaders of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin. Although the game is about WW2 it

Churchill. Looks. Twiddly.

is not a war game, but instead something of a political animal about which Allied Leader will come out of WW2 with the most clout. Which is a point that is not that often touched upon when talking about WW2, and marks the point where the British Empire and any kind of British world power was finally extinguished - bankrupted and exhausted. Even before the war had ended at the beginning of 1945, Churchill began to refer to the meeting of the Big Three ( the common term for the three leaders ) as The Big Two and a Half, realising that the post WW2 stage would be set for the US and the USSR. Britain would no longer be a world power. An outcome he lamented and dwelled upon post war as one of his worst failures ( along with the parlous state of the world with the US v USSR stand off )

I managed to stick my head in half way through the game, and both Hal and David commented the game was strange. Good. But strange. Difficult to get a grasp of what was going on.

Pete got his much favoured Tzolkin to table - something that hasn't been out in a while, and proceeded to thump his two fellow players ( Alex and... someone... ! ) into the dirt, then jumped up and down on them for good measure. To be fair to Pete, as something of a challenge to himself he

Funkenschlag aka Powergrid. Admit it. Funkenschlag sounds better.

went for a risky strategy that he has viewed in the past as either being untenable at worst or at best very difficult to actually do well with - going for maximum workers, and therefore, maximum maintenance costs. However. Grabbing a couple of buildings early on that made sure all his maintenance costs of food were then covered  no problem meant that Pete could steam roller through his usual efficient scoring practices. Oof. I looked in halfway through to see Pete with an apologetic look on his face, and one of his opponents declaring that he had built at least one building and he would take that as a victory. Oh man.

What has been seen cannot be unseen. Is this guy
teabagging the recently deceased ? It certainly looks like it
Shocking behaviour ! And it's labelled indifferent public !
Indifferent to teabagging ??!

A whole bunch of other things were played - Blood Bowl Team Manager, Powergrid,  Legendary Encounter, Takenoko and more ( there were 12 tables of gaming in total ).

I got to squeeze a couple of games of Guillotine in, and Richard played a card he described as the "teabagging" card, possibly of someone teabagging a recently guillotined victim. Decide for yourself !

As ever, a few pictures left over for the gallery. Not so many this week. I was busy herding two tables of Mice. Or Mystics. Whichever.

James in the fore, and deep in thought David plays Churchill in the back.

Blood Bowl Team Manager. But have you bought Blood Bowl 2 yet ? Ewan has... crazy... keen.. fool.

Hot Stuff

This week was all change for NoBoG as we gave up our usual venue of the Ribs of Beef and instead descended on the Friendly Local Gaming Store of Athena.

This marked the start of the NoBoG on tour season - where we get to trial a bunch of different venues until we find one we like, all in the hopes of finding somewhere with more space to accommodate the growing numbers and also welcome back some old friends that have given up attending due to the general crush.

If you're out of the loop on this, suffice to say, a whole lot of talking got done, places were visited and votes taken. If you fancy reading several hundred thread posts - go check out the NoBoG facebook page. But you probably had to be there.

So this week Athena got a trial. Athena is a local gaming store that have been in Norwich for a couple of years and very recently have moved to a new huge premises - a former social club with three floors of hall space. With plenty of table and chair space and catering to gamers, Athena offers a no brainer fit for NoBoG gaming. On the other hand, NoBoGians like a nice pub - for the beer or the atmosphere or the eclectic mix of benches, stools and chairs, or perhaps at the end of it all, just for the fun of it.


At the start of the evening, with only a few people in attendance, the place definitely lacked a bit of buzz. No landlord or landlady to talk to. No other patrons at the bar. A mostly empty room with some seriously concentrating Netrunner players sandwiched along the far wall.

NoBoG @ Athena

But as more people turned up and the noise built up, the familiar NoBoG buzz sprang into life and all was good. With so much space there was no real need to count numbers ( and work out how many tables to people and therefore what games could be played ) and game arranging was completed in record time. It turns out it makes a huge difference when everyone can fit in the same space as to how quickly things get sorted.

A handful of new people turned up to join in the evening - as per usual - and by my rough count I think we hit 34 - ironically the lowest turnout in 3 weeks.

Six player Lords of Waterdeep

Elliot had six at his table for Lords of Waterdeep, whilst further down an intrepid three took on Pete's Galaxy M101 - without Pete playing, and finally Rich IV had his lugging of several tonnes of complete Dominion back and forth for the last month pay off, as he got it to table and challenged Hazel and the ultra seasoned Pete and Punk Rich to a crazy card synergy off.

Pete has taken to removing himself as a player / teacher from his prototype Galaxy M101 game in a bid to test how well new people can learn the rules and pick up the game without the author sitting in. As he puts it, the alternative to not doing this would be to clone and miniaturise himself to be included in all published copies of the game. I got to chat with Ben after he played it and he gave the playthrough and rules learning a big thumbs up, whilst also saying that the game was good - reminded him of Race for the Galaxy... no surprises there - and would be a cracking game once it was published.

Lords of Vegas with 5 hit the tables and Nicky got Waggle dance out again for the second week running - not a game about gamers ( or indeed Nicky ) shaking their asses at each other, but a game about bees making honey. Of course !

Chris also had Red Dragon Inn playing, which seemed to be going down really well, a card game about drinking and keeping your gold - fantasy adventurer style. I couldn't be sure but I think they were playing with five... as Chris has two copies of the game, it should only play four.

Blurry NoBoG @ Athena.. just before Lewis waves at the camera

As for myself, I played Lifeboats with Jamie, Chloe and David, the social game about voting people out of sinking boats to die, and I managed to pip a win with my social engineering shenanigans - without this time actually turning everyone against me because of my social engineering shenanigans. We played guillotine afterwards - where I shared a three way tie having been unscrupulously picked on, and finished up with late arrival Jack joining us and a table hopping Pete to get Avalon Resistance back to play. Things it seems have started to go full circle, and again there are a number of people who haven't experienced Resistance a bazillion times and are keen to give it a go...

The evil Pete and Chloe won, with poor newcomer Jack bamboozled by his role of Merlin, and Chloe offering a complete stonewall of lack of tells. She's well trained or a sociopath. I am not sure which.

Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves at Athena, and the snacks seemed to go down well - Martin pulled up a chair next to me with a fistful of Milky bars fresh from the Athena till. Jamie - who owns Athena - was gracious enough to allow us to bring our own beer with us, and quite a few NoBoGians turned up with their often weird and wonderful beers. It makes me wonder that if we do further nights at Athena, whether we couldn't do one of those whole beer swap evening malarkeys, where people bring in their favourite beers and then swap them with others to get an impromptu beer sharing evening.

I didn't hear a bad word said about gaming at Athena - people appreciated the good light levels, the tables, and Jamie got a lot of thanks from people for hosting us and putting up with our last minute arrangements. It was on the whole a great experience.

Personally speaking, despite grabbing my fair share of snacks and coke, I felt that if Athena had the facilities to offer more, I would definitely buy into it, and it seemed like a bit of a missed opportunity. Of course Athena and Jamie have a huge task ahead of them with refurbishing and plans for a cafe and all sorts - so I am sure in time things will change.

That was this week. Last week we were at the Ribs - and even without the darts it was a squeeze as 39 turned up.

Scoville - Hot Stuff

I got to play Scoville, a kickstarter that Ewan has brought along in the past which sees everyone competing to get the most victory points out of chilli farming. Ewan already wrote up an explanation of the game back here.

The game is solid and plays really nicely, and I think on reflection is probably the most solid kickstarter game I have played to date. Of course this has nothing to do with the fact that I won - which was quite surprising, I figured I had got scalped on making funky recipes with my chillis but as it turned out I did pretty well AND had just about all the bonuses from planting. Ewan came a super close second.... everyone else... well.. their chillis were just not up to snuff.

I'd highly recommend giving scoville a go if you are into light to medium Euros.

Nicky also brought along Waggle dance for the first time last week - this is a game by the same indie stable that released Cornish Smuggler ( Grublin Games ). I like their first title Cornish Smuggler - but the game does have some critical issues, you can break it relatively easily by some early super efficient moves, and all in all the game is something of a flawed gem.

Waggle Dance however seems to be a better designed affair - their second game - and Elliott gave it a thumbs up after also being aware of Cornish Smuggler and its flaws.

Sky Traders

Talking of possibly flawed games we also saw the first visit to NoBoG of Sky Traders a game published by FFG which sees players piloting their airships around for trade and nefarious doings. Owein who wasn't playing the game noted a possible fatal flaw that he had exploited - crippling another players ship without actually finishing them off leaves them out of the game. I don't think the session at NoBoG stumbled onto this tactical evil, and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

Elsewise a bunch of people new to Agricola tried their hand at the unforgiving farming classic - and I'm guessing got their assed kicked and Smash up and a bunch of other things got a whizz through.

Many thanks to Jamie for giving us the opportunity to try out Athena as a venue, and many thanks to Monika for the photos, as well as Elliott for Athena photos.

The Gallery

 

More Sky Traders

Agricola

Sam brings along Sons of Anarchy

Smash Up !

Viva la revolucion

Che Guevara - the Argentinian who became arguably the poster boy for the Cuban Revolution
And ironically spawned a massive capitalist enterprise of T Shirt selling.

On Tuesday revolution was in the air at the Ribs - and before everyone starts arguing about whether they're friends anymore, and what colour you're sporting - we're not talking about the business as usual election that took place in the UK this week, but rather the presence of GMT's Cuba Libre game, which pits players against and possibly at times with each other in the Cuban Revolution of the 1950's.

Cuba Libre is part of a series of games from GMT - the so called COIN series - that through a spread of different times and places, play out a balanced but asymmetrical struggle for power. Simple in execution but tricky in practice, the games are all about shuffling your cubes, eliminating your enemies cubes, grabbing cash/resources, and timing your operations all powered by a random event card system.

Cuba Libre - Viva La Casinos !

In the case of Cuba Libre the action takes place on a relatively small map depicting Cuba and engages the forces of the government, 26July ( Castro & Che ), the criminal Syndicate, and the anti communist rebels of Directorio.

Not only are the forces asymmetrical, but what you can do in a turn is also asymmetrical - although, largely if you squint at it similar - split between the Government and Everyone Else ( insurgents ) by and large ( the syndicates do get to build casinos which no one else can ).

A few simple actions that you can choose from in a turn - which the basic set amounts to moving, training new dudes or attacking enemy dudes in some form or another - is complicated by the fact that you are never quite sure who's turn it is next, or if and when you will next get something to do. There are also some special actions you can take - if you're the government you have the luxury of an air strike - maybe, assuming the US is still lending you support - or if you're the insurgents you might care to infiltrate somewhere and switch out government forces for your own dudes.

Another main staple of the game is that of the event card - which tells you who might get to have a stab at taking an action this turn as well as describing an event that can be played. If you've ever played Twilight Struggle, then you'll be right at home with the cards that have a spot of flavour text of a real world event, an optional event that a player can take, or failing that just engaging in some default actions for your own faction.

The different here between TS and COIN is that there is no concept of a hand of cards to beat your opponent to death with ( or grimace as your own hand beats you to death ), but rather a central, unpredictable game event generator.

Hal took a group of four through their paces with the game, and to his credit actually managed to finish it by closing time. COIN games have something of a repuation of playing long, albeit Cuba Libra is the simplest and quickest of the lot ( Andean Abyss, the game before Cuba Libre is slotted at a mere 6 hours play time, which can also run long... very long.. 9 hours or more long, depending on who you have at your table ). They played with the minor tweak of Easy Mode being on, speeding up the game and requiring less thunking ( which is simply the option *not* to reveal the next card that will pop up before it pops up ).

James called foul about having the living crap kicked out of him at game end, but, this is very much in the spirit of a COIN game and I think Hal and Rich IV ended up in something of a tie - although by my reckoning someone should have won, just a lesser win, as there are very specific tie breaker conditions. I can't recall if this means the historically accurate win for July26 occurred as I have forgotten who was playing what. ( Post Edit : If you look at the photo, Rich IV and Hal were the syndicate and the government respectively, so history was overturned and Cuba got to stay as a lovely corrupt Mob Resort for Rich Americans ). As the saying goes, "It matters not who won or lost, but how you caused the pain.". Something like that anyway.

This is what happens when no one sends in a report.
We have to mime what went on.

There were no reports sent in this week, so, it's all me. I was tempted to have a text less version of the blog with just pictures of board games, and various sad faces of street mimes appearing. An interpretative street art performance of the NoBlog if you will.

In celebration of FFG announcing a reprint of Mission Red Planet, I got the original version to table for a group of five and commenced a very enjoyable somewhat backstabby, somewhat evil session that saw Jason swipe the lead from my very respectable score with his ice bonus.

Tit for tat astronaut killing and femme fataling began to set a pattern, and the game saw again one supposedly innocent area of Mars become a bloodbath of treachery and far too many visitors.

Awesome game, we then followed this up with some Spyfall - the game in which a single spy tries to figure out which location everyone else is at, whilst everyone else tries to figure out who's pretending to know where they are.

Mission Red Planet - a squabble erupts over Mare Serpentis &
its lucrative hidden bonus card - which turned out to be a bluff

Ben II managed to win this at game end over the course of four rounds, the weirdest question of the evening being "So, if you had a wish what would it be ?". I'm not sure what that tells you about anything, apart from, "I'm not good at asking deductive questions".

Whilst we played Mission Red Planet, Tim took a group to play Citadels, which bares a very close resemblance to MRP in its main mechanics.

This was a group who had never experienced Citadels before - which to me is like saying, No, I've never played Settlers of Catan before, what's this wood for sheep pr0n I keep hearing about - with all ending up agreeing that it was a cool game.

Citadels with the newbie Citadel players

No idea who won.

Pete played a busy game of Steam - after I had poached a player from his table to prevent the madness of six player Steam - which left downstairs playing Lords of Vegas - with another full table, and in my opinion equally crazy at six players and Elliot and his table playing a bunch of things including the frantic  Escape - The Curse of the Temple.

There were some squeals and shouting going on as I passed Escape, plus some mad dice throwing. Which all looked to be thoroughly engaging.

Some of the other usual fillers were in attendance. Guillotine. Things. Stuff. I don't know. Here, have an artistic street performance of the fillers that were played at the Ribs this week.

Jacques mimes his interpretation of "Saboteur"

Thought for the Day : Did Che Guevara ever wear a Che Guevara T Shirt ? And could you have a Che T Shirt of Che wearing a T Shirt of Che wearing a T Shirt and thus end up with some infinite mirror malarkey T Shirtness going on ?