I'm Telling a Tale

Good evening, Board Gamers. Well, it's evening now I'm writing this sentence, but through the magic of the written word, you could be reading this potentially hours later. Please adjust greeting as appropriate. Another NoBloG, another writer: me, also known as "Chris."

This Tuesday saw a quite reasonable gathering of gamers, especially given the pre-term time of year and bum-freezing weather. (Am I allowed to mention bottoms in the NoBloG? Let's assume I am. Mine is chilly. Makes a change from the soggy ones they always seem to have on Bake-off.) There were new faces, too — fresh-faced due either to youthful vigour or the frigid air. After my late arrival due to an overly large dinner (I find it's the best kind, especially before an energetic round of gaming) folks were almost ready to settle down to play, and the main groups had already formed: New Angeles, Adrenaline, Kemet, Scythe and Dead Men Tell no Tales. I must apologise that this post has not been written in pirate-speak, but— wait, you know what, I'm not really sorry because it would have been bloody ridiculous.

Reading the residents of New Angeles the Riot Act.
It doesn't seem to be working.

New Angeles seems to be a cross between Pandemic and Dead of Winter: the goodies try to prevent a city from being taken over due to riots and the creeping influence of an evil government, whilst a potential saboteur attempts to set everything on fire. Not literally — put the jerry can down! At least, I don't think the naughty player is allowed to ignite anything, and the Tun was still fairly not on fire when I left it, though the same cannot be said for my pirate alter-ego, as I'll come to later. Anyway, then the goodies win if they meet their secret objective and the city isn't a pile of ashes and government agents, whilst the baddie has a special goal. Lewis and Sam managed to both win — Lewis by achieving economic dominance and doing better than three other corporations, and Sam by doing better than his target player. The other three — including the saboteur — lost.

The game's over and some people have won.
Others have lost. Losers!

There seemed to be quite a lot to the game and plenty of bits and pieces for people who like that kind of thing, though there was the incongruous use of a 5p piece to mark the Threat level. In this post-Brexit world, I suppose actual money is basically worth the same as bits of cardboard, so why not?

Shoot people! Avoid getting shot!
I think that's the general idea.

The players of Adrenaline were busy shooting each other. This seems appropriate, as it's supposed to be a bit like a first-person-shooter video game, although I think you'd have to get your face rather too near the board for comfort if you really want to get a first-person view of things. Still, whatever floats your boat and all that.

D4s - not just generators of
quadratic randomness!

Off in the lands of ancient Egypt we found lots of D4s on the board for Kemet. But do not be fooled, for those D4s do not merely look handily like pyramids, they actually are pyramids in the game! Though, point of order, Kemet designers: Egyptian pyramids are square-based, not tetrahedrons. I await the next release in which fair square-based D4s are included. Having said that I'm not holding my breath.
One of our newcomers was playing Kemet and, in his own words, was "actually enjoying losing!" That's a good sign. Losing is fun! The game revolves around buying special powers which combo in useful ways, with the two more experienced players already having double the powers of the less experienced two. Nevertheless, Monika (in the latter category) with a mere 4 power cards, was doing well enough to be described as "terrifying." Though there was some debate as to whether this was strictly to do with her prowess in the game, I think it would be both uncharitable and unsafe for me to firmly attribute it to anything but her strategic skills.

Stompy robots which haven't quite
started stomping on anything yet.

Then there was the much-hyped Scythe! Regular gamers and readers of the blog will know it well — I know it only by reputation and haven't played it myself. Pete, the buyer of this particular set, was very happy with it in spite of its lukewarm reception by some other Tun-goers, though he did say this was possibly due to a kind of reverse "buyer's remorse" effect in which he incorporates the hype into his very self, becomes one with the hype and, in turn enjoys the game regardless of any flaws. He was also said to be winning, which might have something to do with it, although having placed all of his workers, things were beginning to get expensive. The players were in any case having a good time of it, hype or no hype.

In spite of another player camping the fairly-important factory, bolstering his defences and buying POWER, the other players agreed Pete was still going to win due to actually being Terminator. Apparently he has some kind of heads-up-display in which all the various probabilities and pay-offs are calculated and displayed, allowing him to analyse out the best way to proceed at lightning speed. I wish I had that, as it would prevent all my fellow players getting frustrated at my own incredible ability: that of stretching out a single binary decision to take 5 minutes, every single turn. Unfortunately the game was over and packed up before I had a chance to check who did win, in the end.

Matt adding MORE FIRE to a ship with already
QUITE A LOT OF FIRE

And now to the game I actually played, and thus a little more detail, though perhaps I should keep quiet as Dead Men Tell no Tales. This is certainly a gorgeously-designed piece of boardgamery — every card and token has scintillating artwork, the tiles representing the burning, sinking undead pirate ship (I think a large proportion of NoBoGers would already be sold) look great, and even the little tokens to represent the undead deck-hands who hinder your actions and movement through the ship are made from wood with a tiny skull-design printed on. There's a handful of red and yellow dice which also look nicely dyed, though sadly you never get to grab a bunch and roll them all at once, since they're almost never rolled, and always placed with an explicit number facing upwards, then later manipulated.
The game has a cooperative treasure-extraction-fest, your objective of removing five (in easy mode) of the six treasure tokens from the burning ship to your dinghies being harried by the ghostly and/or skeletal crew and facing the ever-rising danger of fire which spreads through the ship. During the initial turns of the game, the players place tiles representing newly-explored sections, Betrayal-style. Each tile gets a dice representing how badly the fire is raging in that section and a token representing potential goodies guarded by undead crew or trapdoor from which spring bony lackeys. As the ship is built up your team of (living) pirates must travel through, trying not to overheat from the fire, killing the pirates which guard the treasure, and removing to the waiting launches. You usually have 5 actions per turn with a wide choice, including movement (incurring damage by traversing hotter sections), quenching flames, grabbing loot and psyching yourself up for battle.

The early stages of the game

You can lose by several mechanism, two of which are central: fire and deckhands. Every turn, a card is drawn which tells you which fire dice to increase. If any die would be turned to a six, that section explodes. When a section explodes, anything on it is lost which could mean you run out of crew-members or treasure. If too many sections explode, the boat sinks (though on the plus side, it will then cease to be on fire, so that's something to be happy about.) Also, an exploding section increases the blaze in each adjacent tile, leading to potential chain-reactions of orange-red boomy death. Ow. Each of these cards of doom also has the potential to spawn a deckhand out of each trapdoor, or spawn deckhands into each room connected to a trapdoor, limited by how many deckhands are on the trapdoor tile already. If you run out of tokens for them, you lose. This and the increasing fire lead to rising tension and lack of control which should be enjoyable for all.
The game is of course not perfect. While the theme is well tied in and excellently evoked with the artwork, the board you get looks nothing like a ship. This matters less with Betrayal or Carcassonne, where your twisty haunted house or weird, partial collection of cities and pointless roads don't seem to need to resemble anything practical. Here it's a shame as other aspects of the theme are so strong. Some of the special abilities could do with clearer text — which are free actions and which augment your existing actions, for example? Both should be explicit. We also missed a change to the damage-taking rules for when you're carrying treasure which could easily have been printed on your cheat-sheet card. But the fundamental gameplay seems very strong, and the mix of mechanics and great style definitely makes for an enjoyable play.

Our first playthrough: two sections have exploded
and the third is coming soon, spelling our doom.

We played the game twice and lost both times. It's clear that we weren't playing optimally, and that you really need to make your actions count. Too many actions wasted making your battles with pirates safer means you can't tackle the fire or skeletons (who are quite weedy compared to the full undead crew) properly and this contributed to our downfall (spewing flames and gunpowder as we went) both times. The first game though also had a definite streak of bad luck: we got several nearly-exploding tiles early on in the game and very quickly lost one room to explosion, luckily with just a trapdoor. My strategy of acquiring as many swords as possible was dispatching the undead foe one after the next, but playing it safe (if you can call striding through a burning ship full of zombie-buccaneers and charging at them with two swords "playing it safe") meant that my section of the ship was rather more on fire than ideal, and after a little while the next section exploded, taking with it one of the six treasure chests. We only needed five, but unfortunately there was not enough time to quell the flames which were already consuming the vessel, and before long a third section containing a second chest loaded with booty succumbed to explosion (why do pirates insist on storing so much gunpowder around? The undead ones especially quite clearly never attended their health and safety briefings.) The reward now too little, we had to call the mission off and return to shore, covering our faces with our dashing tricornes in shame.
The second round went rather better, especially with keeping the fire down. It certainly presented an ever-rising threat, as after one run through the deck of doom-cards you're very likely to have a bunch of tiles all with the same fire level and ready to all be simultaneously increased by the next unlucky draw. However, it was the skeletal scoundrels pouring out of the trapdoors which got us — if you have a couple next to each other they each cause the other to more frequently produce skellies. Eventually the bony tide swamped us, and we were pulled down with the burning ship.

So, I'm afraid I won't be able to join you all for NoBoG next time as I'm currently sitting in Davy Jones' locker, feeling quite soggy and (un)dead. At least I'm not on fire any more, and those ghost pirates are quite friendly when you get to know them.

There were also fillers such as the classic Resistance, with suspicion and cries of innocence being thrown in all directions, but that is all I've managed to register in the cold, silicon databanks of my robot mind. Oops, I went a bit too far in the Terminator fantasy, there, didn't I? Still, a guy can dream. Of electric sheep, I guess.

Forty Two

"What do you get if you multiply six by nine ?"
"Six by nine. Forty Two."
"That's it, that's all there is."
"I always thought there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe."

Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent on the supercomputer Earth.

Busy - Dead of Winter, Lewis and Clark and Kemet

My hunch that last week was going to be more quiet turned out to be utterly wrong. So much for hunches. And eventually we had 42 people attend, including a post Netrunner playing G Man and Pete.

James with a mind to bringing some titles more suitable for any board gaming newbies that turn up brought along Thief of Baghdad, a classic Queen title that for me has a feel not a million miles away from the other Queen classic Alhambra. Whether it's because of the simplicity of shooting for your colours, or the fact that the publishers are the same, and therefore the production values are very similar, or that it has a similar theme going on, who knows.

The game is very easy, play colour cards to get your thieves onto table, or shift guards and thieves about - get enough thieves in an area and you can steal the treasure. First to X treasures wins.

Thief of Baghdad. A nice early era gateway Euro

Myself, James and Nicky gave the game a run - about as far away from newbie board gamers as it gets ( you know you're in trouble when James is the youngest person at the table ) - and had a blast playing this old gateway game. I spent too much of the game dicking with other people - I like screwing with carefully laid out Euro plans - and James was somewhat intent on doing the same to me. Nicky sensibly concentrated on getting the game winning chests of treasure, and ended up pilfering her quota of stash first and taking the game.

A lovely light little classic game, very much in the early euro era, and probably something you could bang out with the family and those that are not conversant with the edgier reaches of board gaming instead of say playing Monopoly.

Rally Man got on a play on the other side of the room, leading me to immediately want to custom paint the tiny cars, and Ewan has a report on how that went with some pics from Tim.

Tonight myself (Ewan), Owein, Tim, Hal, and new comer Heather sat down to put the pedal to the metal in the racing game Rally Man. Rally Man is a game about getting the fastest time over several rally circuits which are created by the players.

Each turn players choose how fast or careful they want to go round the circuit by choosing a number of dice representing the gears they want to either go up in or go down in. The gear the player finishes their turn with earns them the time assigned to that gear, so finishing in 5th gear equates to 10 secs while finishing in 1st equates to 50 secs. However you can’t expect to stay in 5th all the way round as there are plenty of tricky corners that require slower gears in order to go round safely; so careful planning and thinking ahead is required to get the fastest time overall.

When rolling the dice it is all about managing luck, as if you roll 3 hazard symbols it could spell a nasty crash and not only more time added on but also damage to your car. You can choose to roll all the dice at once; giving you some nice bonuses in time saved but could be more likely to crash. So with all that in mind the 5 rally drivers took to the wheel of their cars and sped along over 3 circuits.

During the first circuit I tried to save some time and take a short cut over the corner and suffered a puncture which would have led to the slowest time if it weren’t for, as she became known as the entertainment crew, Heather crashing; adding a minute onto her time. Tim finishing the fastest with a respectable time of 1 minute 46 seconds, with Owein and Hal not far off the pace. Onto the second circuit which was both longer in distance and a lot more strenuous hair pin corners. This circuit showed us its dangers with all but myself crashing at least once; Heather managing to puncture 2 of her tires (how the car actually passed the finish line is a mystery) and Tim damaging his car by crashing into a tree.

All of this allowed myself to not only catch up but to over take the leaders and come in with the fastest overall time, closely followed by Owein and Hal. But it was all to play for in the final circuit, which introduced snow on the tracks. Tactical decisions about whether to switch onto snow tires or stick with tarmac (each having advantages and disadvantages).

It would soon become apparent that those drivers, who switched to snow tires, although slower on the tarmac, were able to speed along the snow as if it wasn’t even there. Heather crashing again, and Tim struggling with damage on his car from the previous run in with a tree, both struggled and overall finished in 5th and 3rd respectfully.

Coming into this circuit it was my race to lose and with Owein putting in some fast times the pressure was great. However keeping my cool and flying over the final jump across the finish line it was myself who blazed into first with the fastest time overall of 8 minutes 24. The crashes of the previous circuit had there toll on the others with Owein finishing with a time of 9 minutes 45.

Overall Rally Man is great racing game and the theme comes across extremely well with lots of tension at every dice roll. Managing the risk with the dice rolls and forward planning (with a little luck) is what this game is all about and a game that everyone seemed to enjoy.

Punk Rich was back in the house this week after a prolonged hiatus, and their table chose Nexus Ops to fight over - which is an ameritrash dice rolling bonanza with skirmishing aliens. Basically Axis and Allies on a really small map with an Alien theme. Or if you've never heard of that, then Risk with bells on.

Nexus Ops. Beware the treaties of Rich and Pete

I felt a little sorry for Hazel having to put up with the shenanigans of Rich and Pete, I suspect she'd probably have liked Thief of Baghdad a bit better, but they all seemed to enjoy themselves, and afterwards they joined us for a game of Spyfall.

Downstairs Sam I put Kemet on the table, with Med Ed returning from his jet setting to join in - if I recally correctly Med Ed always seems to get in on games of Kemet, and is rather a mean hand at the game. Next to them Lewis and Clark got played Joe has some words on what they got up to

This week myself, David, Elliot, Tom and guiilame attempted to reenact Lewis & Clark's trek across America which had never been done previously by anyone, ever... Honest. Elliot got wood, LOTS of wood. But I managed to pull of the victory by harnessing pure beef power (with a little bit of horse in the mountains, but if its good enough for tesco...)

Then we played a couple of quick hands of coup, I won one and David won one (I think, or maybe it was Tom). Not sure I really like coup, its ok, but I think its over just as you're getting started, might have to try it with reformation at some point to see if that improves it.

Uh huh, I will chime in and say I don't much like coup either - it's ok, but eh, I dunno, takes a bit of a werewolf recipe, mixes, comes up... short. There's just not a whole heap of cleverness or deduction, it's a pure bluff, which is fine, but there's not many dimensions to the bluffing either. You could argue that Mascarade has exactly the same problems, except the key feature of not knowing who you are either injects a lot of humour and double bluffing into the game.

Lastly Dead of Winter clawed its zombie way through the cold, I think they managed to tank the colony once and so started over again - but that wasn't looking too rosy either when I looked.

Peeking over the shoulder of Lewis at Munchkin

Castle Panic also got a play with Chris bringing it along and getting a reasonable table of 4 together.

And possibly the longest ever game of Munchkin was to be had - a 3 hour marathon session of munching, of which Sam was branded the winner. If there is such a thing after 3 hours of munchkin. I think technically everyone is a loser. Sam was the least losing of the losers perhaps. He didn't look entirely chuffed with his win it has to be said. I suggested some T-shirts should be made with "I survived the 3 hour Munchkin game" emblazoned on them.

The Exclusive Munchkin T Shirt. Available nowhere.

Some other fillers made their way to table, Port Royal was squabbled over - Nicky won this too, giving her a clean sweep of wins for the evening.

Finally we finish on The Gallery with thanks to Monika for the extra pics - who seems to think that the Ribs of Beef landlord has made it into Dead of Winter. Cue soothing gallery music.

Dead of Winter - debating who to eat next no doubt

Rally Man

Lewis is happy with his munchkinning

Lewis and Clark

Chris and Lauren laugh at dying things in Castle Panic

Kemet, Sam looks disconsolately on his Egyptian forces

Dead of Winter trucker or Ribs of Beef Landlord ?

Sparky as ever kicking ass and taking names

Previous weeks, 32, 36, 39?

Thirty is the new Twenty

This week was another busy affair, I turned up to a packed Wherry Room where chief head counter and useful person Ewan informed me 28 , no now 29 had arrived for gaming.

After the chaos and confusion of sorting out who was playing what had subsided, another two turned up ( hello Max and Emma), pushing NoBoG numbers over the thirty mark for the second week running.

Thirty is the new Twenty apparently ( remember when we breathlessly trumpeted that we had twenty people turning up... ). Mr Bond scoffed at the news that 31 NoBoG souls were in the house, intimating that the numbers were disappointing given last weeks 33.

New people ? Yes, Max, Emma and Sam... and that was just on the table I was playing at.

Defectors. Yes. Darren from IpBoG. Ssshh. Mum's the word.

Tables - Six. Bondy actually managed to misplace one of them entirely, missing an entire game of Pillars of the Earth going on in the corner of the pub upstairs.

Games - Senji, Arctic Scavengers, Kemet, Castle Panic, Pillars of the Earth, Frank's Zoo, Avalon : Resistance, One Night Ultimate Werewolf, Dobble, Bohnanza ( I think ).

Senji. The Egg Timer dictates how long you can trade for.

Rich brought along recently acquired Senji this week which played to a packed table of six. Despite playing to its maximum six, the game played out in nice time and received nods of approval from those I grabbed for an opinion. It's quite a nice find to get a heavier kind of game that plays to large numbers without getting too bogged down or stuck in some never ending downtime hell.

As far as I can tell the game involves a lot of horse trading involving cards - obtaining sets, obtaining others cards - all in the name of getting end game victory points and or immediate help in battles - yep, there's also some direct, in your face, dice rolling combat interaction when fighting for control of a territory.When I looked in towards the end of the game, Pete was particularly high on the score track, but despite this ended up being trampled over by Jeff who took the Senji Crown.

Arctic Scavengers. Colourful drink not included.

Next table over had deck builder Arctic Scavengers - another one new to me. The game is set in some post apocalyptic frozen Earth, which finds up to four players trying to lead their merry band of dubious morality survivors onto success.

Success is determined at game end by how many warm bodies you have in your frozen tribe - and you do that by scavenging for items in the junk of civilisation long past and also by fighting and screwing your neighbours over for precious supplies. In terms of game mechanics you can pull blind from a "junk" deck when digging for items in the detritus of the apocalypse, send people out hunting to gather food with which to entice mercenaries to your cause, or lastly, compete against everyone else for contested resources by sending a bunch of ( possibly useless bluff cards ) into the scrum of melee.

No clue who won this, and the only facts I gleaned was I think Sam had succumbed to the joys of cannibalism, Tim was a butcher ( unclear just what was being butchered... Delicatessen ? ) and the two allegedly had some very shady synergistic things going on.

Castle Panic was played at a table of five complete with expansion. The castle survived with a single burning tower. Less of a castle. More of a housing estate impromptu junk fire. But survival is survival. Perhaps the survivors went off to form the tribes in Arctic Survivor.

Pillars of the Earth

Pillars of the Earth got another round of play - Nicky professed to having enjoyed the game and denied it being linked in any way whatsoever with her triumphant win.

Kemet also got a look in downstairs, Luke once more opting for this, and defector Darren trying his hand at the fighty desert shenanigans.

For myself I got to play a whole evening of filler types, with Frank's zoo and a gaggle of Resistance rounds ( with no less than two different groups ) making an enjoyable blast.

Several chaotic rounds of One Night Ultimate Werewolf were played, with some serious clangers being dropped on more than one round - players forgetting who they were, what they had done, and even what the winning conditions were. A gleeful Luke was excited about snatching the werewolf win, only to be suddenly downcast when he realised the role he had been swapped with - the Robber - was not actually part of Team Wolf. Oops.

I'm only happy when it rains...

Self named Spazzy McSpazhands ( aka Punk Rich ) once informed me that East Anglia is the driest region in the UK. I scoffed at such nonsense - picturing the boggy lands of Norfolk - and with this weeks endless rain, mud caked roads and howls of protest from locals, I feel the weather is weighing in on my uninformed unscientific side. Such was the lovely weather this week that forced many a NoBoGer into the very quickly humid Wherry Room. A NoBoG record breaking thirty three people will do that to a small room - fit enough bodies in, and a room will gain its own weather system.

This week seven tables of goodness squeezed into the pub, with Adventurers : Temple of Chac, Kingdom Builder, Keyflower, Kemet, Libertalia, El Grande and Istanbul first up for play.

El Grande - an almost 20 year old game.
Does that make you feel old ?

Keyflower ( which I kept auto correcting to Mayflower ) played to a packed table of six, a Euro game of hex tiles and meeples. The aim of the game as usual is to score more victory points than everyone else - and you do that by building your own village of hex tiles that have victory points directly on them and with hex tiles that score from synergies of other tiles.

The meeples in Keyflower are used in a fairly innovative way - for starters the meeple colours are not attached to a single player - no getting first dibs on colour choice here - instead they are used almost like suits of card in something like Bridge, where everyone has all colours, and once a certain colour of meeple is placed on a tile, for that season, only meeples of that colour can be used on it to either bid for the tile or use the action ( more than one player can take an action, but at an increasing meeple cost ).

Keyflower, with boatloads of new pilgrims ready to offload

Meeples are used then not only for worker placement, but also as currency for bidding on a tile. Your stash of meeples and therefore the makeup of just how many meeples of each colour you have, is secret, and so bidding or using the actions on the hex can become something of a canny game of what colour do I think you have run out of - particularly as one of the four colours of meeple is something of a prestige colour and difficult to get your hands on.

Actions can be taken anywhere on the table - including others villages, the key difference being that the owner of a tile gets to keep all the meeples placed on it at the end of a season - effectively earning you currency, and of course, meeples share duties as both worker placements and currency - be careful what you do with what.

The game is played over four seasons, with the final season allowing you to pick up the point multiplying boats in player turn order.

Pete offered a thumbs up for the game - and given as he is no fan of auction games, it must have been pretty good. Alina won, with Pete sneaking into second place.

First games out of the way, a series of second games hit tables - a couple of games of King of Tokyo to an almost newbie KoT table, Snow Tails - the game of reverse physics dog sledding - Ra, Bohnanza, Coup and One Night Ultimate Werewolf.

Snow Tails... the dogs haven't turned up yet. Lazy mutts.

 I got to watch a round of Coup and then join in - my first up close and personal play of the game. Coup reminded me very much of Mascarade, with players declaring themselves to be a certain role - which may or may not be a bluff - and then taking the action for that role . Anyone that doesn't believe any role declaration can challenge them. So far, so Mascarade. The differences however are that you have two roles in front of you at the start of the game - and you can look at them at any time. You also can't switch your role cards with others... you can only switch with the face down deck and only then if you declare yourself to be the role that can do that. And lastly some roles can actively block others - you simply declare yourself and state you are blocking their action ( which can also be challenged ).

Money is acquired in Coup in very similar ways to Mascarade - one role gives 3 gold, one steals 2 from another and so on, but here money is not the game end, but rather a means to an end - gold can power up some key abilities that allow you to eliminate other players role cards - either completely out of hand with no recourse, or by using the cheaper but blockable assassinate role. Lose both your role cards and you are out of the game.

Any challenges you make also result in the loss of a role card - for whoever turns out to be wrong with their challenge.

Quite fun to play, but eh, the game failed to have that key bit of tension and suspense for me. It seems to dance around the current trend for secret role based games ( werewolf variants ) , but miss most of the point of them. Whilst I like Mascarade, and it's a fun game to play, it's definitely not as strong as something like Resistance, and the game can occasionally fall flat on its face when people don't realise a game winning role is at hand - or a lot of roles have been revealed. Coup takes that Mascarade premise adjusts it again - and I feel gets an ever weaker game out of it. There's a very binary feel to Coup - two roles, two failures only, there doesn't seem quite enough interaction or quite enough impetus to actually get into peoples faces - it can be just about impossible to work out whether someone has a role or not ( there is no info ) and the punishment for getting it wrong is throwing half your chance to win the game out the window. At least in Mascarade the punishment isn't nearly so strong, and there's also the fun of failing to keep track of who you are.

Eh. Meh. I think Coup needs a few more tries, but misses the mark I feel. Give it a go and see what you think !

Frank's Alien Frontier Zoo

This week saw an almost but not quite record breaking crowd of 27 turn up to the Ribs ;  having just checked the dusty NoBoG tome of facts 28 is the number to beat. NoBoG ranks were deflated by missing regulars but much bolstered by a gaggle of new people, Lauren, Chris, Martin, Davey, Zen and Cal , and we had some irregulars turn up - Cross Atlantic Pete ( because we can never have enough Riches or Petes ) who likes to come along once in a blue moon.

On offer this week was a fine collection of gaming spread across six tables. Lords of Waterdeep entertained five - a game now so often played at NoBoG that it might be an idea just to glue it and perspex it permanently to one of the tables. The non gaming visitors to The Ribs can then puzzle about the strange table design over their pub lunch. Kemet also returned to once more tromp across the sandy desert with its weird bunch of mythological creatures - no Med Ed this week so he didn't get to face plant ( in the nicest possible way ) everyone else. Dean made the huge mistake of taking an early lead, only to then get stamped on hard. If there's one common rule to playing more meaty 4+  player games with other experienced gamers then it's this - never ever take an early lead unless you're a masochist who likes bringing people together in order to beat you senseless.

Archipelago made a repeated showing for the third time in a week, with Pete actually being the separatist instead of just play acting the separatist, but singularly failing to upset the colonists past the level of General Moaning About The Weather. Tsk. Island Rebellion Level = British. Instead of moving to a more rebellious French based level of unrest with cake eating, guillotines and general unhelpful unions, the resplendent Mr Bond romped his way to a glorious colonial power victory with a supply of pineapples and single church. A sure fire recipe for island bliss.

The snazzy 4th ed. Alien Frontiers

Meanwhile upstairs four took on the freshly reprinted and updated Alien Frontier plus faction expansion, with Matt coming on strong at the final push for colonist domination,
but I suspect he may have been pipped at the post.

The dodgy chaos faction was in play - my favourite - which allows all sorts of shenanigans to be had moving colonies around willy nilly, as everyone except yourself suddenly has a dire urge to settle in a single miserable overcrowded part of the planet for absolutely no gain whatsoever. Assuming of course you can keep up with the heavy ore expense to keep pushing everyone else around.

The quirky Steam Park got another show too, this being followed by Survive, with one greedy sea monster eating every Atlantean it could, whilst his mate, Cant Be Arsed Charlie simply waving all the swimmers by as he took a leisurely float around the blue waters. Apocalyptic Top Tip - Always check to make sure you are swimming to safety past the vegetarian sea monster in the event your island sinks and leaves you heading for more stable shores.

Castle Panic was up on the last table, where for once the green tide of trolls, orcs and goblins was resisted and sent packing back off into the forest, the castle only a couple of towers worse for wear. Lauren made a great effort to switch sides half way through the game by loading enemies onto the table - a shame as the game has no separatist / traitor / filthy spy - but rallied to be the top killer of the day. An inside job ? I think so.

A smattering of fillers rounded out the evening, Resistance, Love Letter, King of Tokyo and Frank's Zoo all getting a go, with Lewis winning King of Tokyo as a Penguin Princess ( your secret is safe-ish with us Lewis ), and then added insult to injury by also winning his first ever go at Frank's Zoo. He then declared the week to be all round amazing - either for winning games, or coming out as a Penguin Princess - I am not sure which.

I feel like we should probably bust out Saboteur again at some point - there are plenty of people down the pub who have never seen it or experienced its untrustworthy gnomes before.

Et tu, Bingo ?

Once upon a time when I was but a whippersnapper, I would engage in an illicit ( too young to gamble ) game of Bingo all the while under the watchful shadow of my dual wielding, dozen card mashing, no prisoner taking Aunt. Its been something like 30 years since I have set foot inside a Bingo Hall, and whilst at the time it was entertaining, I haven't ever felt the need to return, sweaty dobber pen in hand.

But as scripture says, if You wont go to Bingo, then Bingo will come unto thee.

So it was this week that I got my turn at Augustus, a short game set in ancient Rome, with some fancy ancient Roman artwork, fancy ancient Roman characters and some vaguely ancient Roman symbology. But don't be fooled by the Roman thing. It's Bingo. But instead of calling Bingo, or possibly House, you call Ave Caesar ! Which to me is something a die hard actor luvvie might decide to shout out whilst playing Bingo - the word Bingo being far too pedestrian. Instead -  Avveeeeeee Caesarrrr ! *hand flourish*

The game has you completing cards by listening for your called out symbols which allow you to mark slots with the matching symbol. Complete all of them on a card and you get to stand theatrically and resonate Bingo Ave Caesar ! Sound familiar ?

There are however synergies of card scoring, sets to collect and a few risks to take - all overlaid with a weighted distribution of symbols to consider. But don't let those fancy words fool you. It's Bingo. With some Euro scoring to allow you to believe you are in fact playing something other than Bingo. With Togas.

A short game that won't tax you, a suitable title for filling in those warm up or wind down moments, pretty cool, even if it is fancy scored Bingo.

Nathan for his part was very chuffed with the game, declaring his win to be the first at NoBoG - a Bingo win. A mixed blessing.

Elsewhere this week, Agricola was played with a table of learners + Rich. But Rich failed to capitalise on his enormous experience and came in third of five, Martin instead clinching the win with some synergistic pastures and animals.

Kemet and Seasons were taken upstairs, with wily Med Ed claiming a decisive win in Kemet by stomping The Bond into the dry sands of the desert. Med Ed is rather keen on the game and always seem to do pretty well whenever he plays.

Some Tokyo Kingship and Resistance followed upstairs, with the Good guys chalking up a straight 3 mission victory win in Resistance, and the bad guys failing to spot Merlin for the follow up.

Back downstairs Manhattan project followed by Small World hit one table, and on our table Archipelago returned from the shadows.

A new expansion has just come out for Archipelago - War and Peace, which brings 40 new evolution cards to the islands.

On the face of it an expansion consisting of just 40 evolution cards is a bit weak. It perhaps would have been nice to have had a few more map tiles to increase exploration variation, and a few more victory point cards to change the scoring possibilities.

However the 40 cards still pack a punch and introduce a heretofore missing element to the azure waters - notably direct conflict and meeple death.

It's a fact in Archipelago that as you explore and expand you can never go backwards - once a meeple is on the map, it stays on the map. Buildings that you build in general stay with their owners. And by and large the colony only goes ever onwards and upwards.

Not so under War and Peace. The new cards bring in the capability to bully, steal and even outright kill meeples in an expansion that shakes up your expectations of what is possible, and sees players given the chance to be nastier than ever to each other whilst trying to maintain the semi-cooperative truce to keep the natives from rising up.

Iron is a key resource for all this warmongery and control shenanigans, and sees a welcome improvement on the strategic importance of this element - in the past it has been a bit of an also ran item.

We didn't get too far with our new and spikey game - the colony collapsed in two turns ( 8 actions ) as three very nasty crises hit in succession, emptied the market and ultimately doomed the fat and unwieldy colony before it had a chance to consolidate. Not a huge surprise given two of our players were new to the game, and of the three remaining, one was a separatist who had every reason to see the colony burn.

It was great to return to the Islands, and it should be fun to see the new cards get a proper stretch.

Stu has reminded me that this week and into next is the Norwich Gaming Festival, celebrating many things computer game related at the Forum. There will also however be a chance to play some board games - played on the Tuesday from 6pm onwards. Forum Cafe closes at 9.30pm so any session there would  be shorter and earlier than usual, but if anyone fancies popping along, they can see what's going on, computer game related or not. Otherwise it will be business as usual in the Ribs for next Tuesday.


If you are counting, we had 23 this week over five tables.

Splits, Venues and International Table Top Day

Greetings NoBoGers, the blog is back after a week away. Blame the disruption on unscrupulous invading powers trying to wrest NoBoG sovereignty away, or possibly government hackers spying on the webcam feeds.

International Table Top Day

It's been raised again whether the combined irregular chaotic membership of NoBoG are planning to do anything on International Table Top Day. If you're asking yourself "What the Hell is International Table Top Day ?" I'll save you typing it into Google - click here . Suffice to say it's a day... that's promoted...  to go forth and play table top games, and be inviting to unsuspecting members of the public. And this year it's on Saturday 5th April.

Potentially the day could be a good excuse to play some longer games that don't fit in of an evening, and also might interest new local players that have not yet heard of the delights of NoBoG, however the day falls on a Home match for Norwich City F.C. with all the traffic and difficulties that entails.

Any interest in this, then post a comment on the blog, twitter, or have a chat down the pub about it.

Last Week - Split Venue

Last week with a potential quiz night at the Ribs conflicting with our numbers, we split into two groups - one staying at the Ribs and one taking a short walk down the road to Take 5. Those who remained at the Ribs got to play Seasons, Kemet and Ticket to Ride Europe and King of Tokyo whilst those down the Road played a couple of games of Trains, and a couple of games of Mice and Mystics.

So given the potential of Take 5 to replace the Ribs as the default venue of NoBoG how did the place stack up ?

On the plus side, Take 5 had a nice atmosphere and friendly staff - some nice large tables on the ground floor, and a whole heap of space upstairs - twice as large as the Wherry Room at the Ribs, meaning that everyone could get into one room.

Bondy gives his best Royal Wave upstairs at Take 5

The kitchen was open, serving food, and also a range of cakes and other things were on offer, providing a bit more of a rounded experience than an evening at the Ribs. Rich managed to eat his body weight in cakes as he seemed determine to try one of everything before the evening finished.

 On the negative side, tables were in short supply -

Even though only 7 of us ended up at Take 5, we managed to take up every bit of table space available upstairs. Lots of room. Bugger all tables.

And it was expensive.

And closed early. Half past ten early.

On the whole the opinion seemed to be somewhat negative for Take 5 - nice place, good space, but the lack of tables is a killer, and the higher prices didn't help. Personally I rather liked the place and wonder whether there might be an opportunity to talk with the landlord about getting some extra tables - even fold up tables. When we went in there the place was empty - 3 or so people, and by the time we left, there was but a single person. I would think the prospect of having 20 or so people in the pub on a Tuesday would be Good For Business, and that maybe providing a few tables would be inconsequential if it got you steady business. But I wouldn't know and as no one else seemed that taken by it, perhaps not even worth pursuing.

As it stands at the moment Take 5 is fine for an overflow destination when it needs to be, but as a replacement venue it just doesn't have the table space.

This Week

An interesting range of games were on offer this week, some shiny new things, old things that were new for NoBoG and some old things that had hardly been seen at NoBoG at all.

Bondy brought Descent 2 along - it's been a year since he last brought it down, and that was quickly subscribed ( and over subscribed ) to by all the Richards plus Pete. According to Mr Bond The Riches have been identified as Punk Rich, Lovely Rich and Richard the IV. As to which one is which... I'm also sure there is a Dick/Table joke in there somewhere too.

Bondy played the Overlord for Descent, and managed to squeeze in a couple of scenarios against the Alliance of Riches Plus Pete. However, despite Pete putting some dubious magical skills into play - in somewhat of a repeat of last week when it was speculated his wizard was no such thing and was actually just a mental patient running around shouting Blazaam at things to no real effect - Bondy failed to hurt the intrepid adventurers, succumbing to a blast of Pete Magic that actually worked, and some Beserker brutality by one of the Richards.

As Bondy comforted his wounded pride at game end, he positively reflected on the fact that Pete was hurt and diseased, and surely would be an easy target for the next scenario to be played on another day...

New and shiny dexterity game Rampage ( named as a homage to the very cool, old 80s arcade game of the same name ? ) got taken upstairs, where Dean whipped his unrealising workers into assembling the Movie Monster City Trashing game before proceeding to balance, throw and breathe/spit all over the components. This was not however some drunken or rage fuelled Euro game gone wrong, but part of the unique charms of the game that sees you balancing things, flicking things and even using 'breath weapons'. The game is a visual feast of 3D pretty things and funny gameplay and definitely one to watch. However, its suitability for the worlds most cramped table space in a subdued darkened pub where bits can and do jump off the table is open to debate. Also not a great game to play if someone has the flu - where using your breath weapon and breathing over the components brings a whole new long term infectious strategy to the game play. Those of a squeamish nature or weak immune system may like to walk away, or don a Japanese style germ mask.

On a nearby not quite so cramped table, Castles of Burgundy played out to a nail biting finish, with Stu and Nicky ending up in a tie breaker situation, beating out also rans, Paul and Tom.

For more new and shiny, Sam turned up with his new recently shipped Kickstarter affair Galaxy Defenders. A simple area based co-operative tactical combat game, players get to fight through a number of scenarios versus a programmed alien AI. Everyone seemed to enjoy this, and it will be good to see this again for another bash.

Five player Caverna played out on the last table - with two complete beginners ( no experience of Agricola either ), two that had played it once, and myself, veteran of many a game.

Not surprisingly I managed to romp to a strong win, with Clive putting in a good show with a heavy weapon strategy, and the beginners just struggling to understand how everything slotted together. Enjoyable game, but the static setup is beginning to bother me more and more.

Mascarade got a quick outing at the end of the evening - beating out a suggestion of Resistance play, however, there are rumblings about Resistance not having been played in *weeks* ( the outrage ! ) and that perhaps next week and entire evening could be devoted to it. Madness surely, but it seems Resistance is missed.

People. 19 last week - and the Ribs managed to attract no one to their quiz night, meaning our shuffling shenanigans weren't actually required. 21 this week.

The Return of the Saboteur

Eleven this week, Moritz bringing along newcomer Tina to join myself and Pete playing Steam.

And free glasses to all ! The ever excellent Ribs of Beef were undergoing a Glass change as the NoBoGers assembled, and very generously the old set of fine offerings were made available to all comers - quite a few people went home with a nice set of beer glasses tucked into their game bags.

Onto the games. Whilst Pete showed off the capabilities of his Googly Androidy NSA phone and how amazingly it tracked his entire life ( he has his own personal data share at the friendly and obliging NSA HQ ), Sam brought forth Kemet to entertain Bondy and Rich, neither of which had sampled its tumultuous delights.

This seemed to go down well with Bondy giving it a big thumbs up as he surged from a lacklustre position mid game to take the win with an unmitigated bloodthirsty approach, optimising all forms of warfare. I think this game has the favour of all that have played it - and I still personally think it's a better, less "up its own arse" version of Game of Thrones. I love GoT - the fiction, but the board game rendition to me is far too long for what it does.

Kemet fixes the overlong bit twiddling of GoT, but otherwise keeps a lot of other things in the same ballpark. Of course GoT has the advantage of players that turn up with loving rose tinted spectacles of all the fiction going on in their heads. I suspect if the roles were reversed, and Kemet had a GoT theme ( tricky thematically given the churning death rate of armies ), and GoT had a Kemet theme, GoT would be lumped down as an average Diplomacy rehash.

The Village turned up at the other end of the room - not the M Night Shama-lama-dingdong version of dudes running scared in forests ( no spoilers ! ) - with Dean teaching Nicky, Tom and Stu how to shuffle their cubes and train up their villagers to be noteworthy citizens. A Euro with an interesting time mechanic, your family members can be sent off to undertake certain tasks, and as time ticks ever onwards mortality takes its toll and removes them from the board.

The successful dead laid to rest in the village book. Hmm.

But this isn't a bad thing, what you lose in resource gathering you gain in final VP - as your now deceased family member is either remembered in the village chronicle - earning you VP - or ends up in an unmarked grave ( no VP for you ! ).

The first to leap wholeheartedly into their graves are remembered and earn VPs, those that come after however only face anonymity, in a first come first rewarded death race. Hmm. Not sure what this game is saying.

With a bevy of approving nods and awards this game ticks the spot for Europhiles, although isn't too far removed from The Usual cube shuffling ( apart from the cool race to the death mechanic ).

Having put away his NSA approved device, its camera no longer able to secretly record the goings on in the underlair of the Ribs of Beef, Pete had a quick run through of Steam for Tina, and we all got down to shuffling our cubes on our train routes. Despite Pete getting off to a rocky start, his wily skills of deploying a game changing grey route whilst I was watching the antics of the Village paid off handsomely, and with some perfectly optimised late game timing he romped to a convincing win. Newcomer Tina put in a great performance and came in second, leaving me to third and poor Moritz who struggled with Pete at the start - but unlike Pete failed to break out at the end, brought up the rear in last.

As all games finished just about at the same time, the stage was set for perhaps the most epic game that the Ribs had ever witnessed - an eleven handed bout of Saboteur 2. Alas, Nicky, Tom and Stu departed, leaving us with a mere 8 to dig through the rock in search of gold. Some evil last minute final round role swapping on my behalf netted me joint lead with Rich at game end. Sam then played King Maker and stole a gold from Rich, leaving me out front as bestest miner/saboteur/gnome in the pub.

I staggered home with imaginary gold stuffed in my pockets, and not so imaginary beer glasses grasped in hands. Huzzah.

The sound of tiny scurrying feet

Prince Collin and his companions
marveled at their new diminutive
bodies and at the once familiar castle
that now loomed over them like the home of a giant. 

Maginos snapped them from their reverie.

“We must move at once!” he hissed. 

The party quickly scurried through the bars of the cell, their delicately padded feet making nary a noise. . . .
~

Eight this week, Dylan turning up for his once every six months visit to join the rest of us - myself, Matt, Nicky, Sam, Ed, Ewan and Pete.

Spoilt for choice for games we eventually decided on Mice and Mystics on one table, and Kemet on the other.

Ewan, Sam, Ed and Pete settled in for Kemet - Pete being the newbie as everyone else at the table had experience of the Egyptian land grabbing skirmisher. Ed managed to somehow end up playing Kemet again for what must be 3 out of 4 weeks - and took the win after a tie break finish. Pete finished last, but there were only 2 VPs separating all 4 players, so pretty close.

Mice and Mystics rolled out on table 2, everyone grabbing their favoured intrepid mouse to set off and right the wrongs of the world. The game has few rules, is easy to grasp - a 5 minute rules session is enough -  and perhaps most importantly of all for these kind of RPG lite games, takes almost no time to setup.

Nicky opting for the wizardly mouse Maginos seemed to bear the brunt of foes that were encountered as the group struggled to keep enemies at arms length with either fast reacting enemy rats, or difficult terrain. Coming close to dying a few times it was up to Tilda the healer - wisely guided by Dylan - to furiously spend cheese to power her healing spells and keep everyone on their feet.

Splashing about in an underground drain the mice were in disarray, Nez under my control swimming desperately at the end to prevent himself disappearing into the dark waters, before thankfully, everyone helped him out and onto dry land.

Rats were dispatched, cockroaches destroyed and giant centipedes seen off to eventually allow the brave mice to scurry through the roots of the courtyard tree and onto the mysteries of the second scenario. . .

Finishing off the evening, King of Tokyo stomped its way across the table, the Killer Bunny facing down the Mega Draken, the Alienoid and the Gigasaur. Earning the wrath of all other monstrous critters, Matt and his Alienoid opted for a killer combo of Nova Breath - to attack all players - and a shrink ray, to simultaneously shrink them as they were hit. Desperate to dish out pain the Alienoid neglected its own health, and with a final clout of a Gigasaur tail the Alienoid collapsed - 10 or so VPs to its name. Meanwhile Nicky and her Mega Dracken racked up an impressive 19VPs, within spitting distance of a final win, only for the Gigasaur to strike again, chomping down on her wounded beast to fell her at the final hurdle.

The Gigasaur roaring its way into Tokyo kept the Killer Bunny at Arms length, accruing VPs all the while, before at the last the Bunny swept into the city. But alas it was too late, and the Gigasaur was crowned the King of Tokyo after all.


No pictures again this week. I really did mean to take some, but I got caught up in playing Mice and Mystics and completely forgot - a shame because Mice and Mystics is visually very nice indeed.

The burn of Ora and Labora

Seven this week, 3 to play Kemet and Kingdom Builder - Sam, Matt and Moritz, and 4 to play Ora and Labora, Pete, Stu, Dean and myself.

Kemet has been a regular for 3 out of 4 weeks now - everyone getting a turn at playing the new hotness. This week Sam saw off the challengers to reign supreme, Matt confessing he made some serious mistakes. A couple of games of Kingdom Builder followed with a win for Matt and one for Moritz, giving everyone a very fair and distributed win for the evening.

Pete finally got round to playing Ora and Labora which he has often been interested in playing but never quite got round to. Stu was new to the game too and after a reasonably straight forward rules session everyone got dug into figuring out just what the hell this list of buildings could possibly mean. The rules in Ora are not particularly tricky. The interplay of buildings, actions and just what to do next however is very challenging.

In fact if I think about it, Ora and Labora may just be about the most tricky and brain burny of games that I have played - and yet it looks pretty simple and cuddly at first glance.

This fact is not lost on new players - it induces much grimacing, head scratching and general despair, especially at the start of the game when the choices seem limitless. Pete managed to ask the same question no less than half a dozen times during play- where can I get whisky. On reflection he may not have been talking about the game however.

The nice thing about Ora - it doesn't punish you for not playing optimally. Unlike Agricola which can always be nipping at your heels and threatening to punish you for running out of food, Ora doesn't care. No pressure.

It's been a while since I've played this, but it was really good fun - I forgot just how cool this is, and also of course entirely forgot how to play even slightly effectively.

Dean won on some 200 points ish - a fairly clear winner 20 points ahead of everyone else.

Kemet, Core Worlds & Terra Mystica

Nine for the evening, and whilst I dithered on whether to choose Kemet or Terra Mystica, Dean opted out of Kemet to play Core Worlds with me.

Kemet on table one saw Matt, Sam and Ewan vie for Egyptian supremacy, and after balking at half the rules for Terra Mystica, Ed also joined in to make it a four player affair. Sam and Ed having previously played and seen the aggressive churn rate, started hacking and slashing right out of the gate, but Matt and Ewan elected to play more cautiously. Ewan went for an entirely defensive turtle strategy, and managed to avoid combat for most of the game - which paid off, as he came in with joint first VPs.

Sam won the game, beating Ewan on a tie break, but it seems all enjoyed the outing.

Terra Mystica on table 2 was Tom, Stu and Pete.With a small house rule for no settlement VP objective in the final two turns, settlements were spread and cults fought over. Pete tromped in a fairly decent win, Tom in second some way off, and Stu behind Tom.

This left me and Dean to play Core Worlds. I had fancied a go of Core Worlds - a card deck builder type game, which is not my favourite thing, but I liked the look of the theme.

Looking back on the game I think at some kind of mechanics level it's actually very similar to Ascension - which is something I wasn't particularly keen on ( lack of interaction, lack of ability to judge what would be able to be bid on, lack of ability to put any kind of plan into place other than taking the 'obvious' card on your turn ). Core Worlds has a similar central pool of cards to bid on, but unlike Ascension its not refreshed after every single purchase, instead it forms a fixed pool from which to buy from - so long as you have the actions and energy left. This for starters makes it a deal more interesting and tactical than Ascension. Then there is the buying / fighting for cards - most of which you can probably get your hands on, but in which order, and which ones do you pick. Again this offers more flexibility than Ascension - because you know what you are getting, rather than turning over a card on your turn and snapping it up.

Three resources are available in Core Worlds, energy ( your economy driver, so, cash in other words ), Fleet Strength and Troop Strength. Fighting cards can be deployed to your war zone at a cost in energy - at which point they can be used to fight ( 'pay' ) for a planet, and each planet you obtain feeds back into a higher energy income ( plus some end game VPs, and if you are really lucky a special ability ).

The aim of the game is to increase the capability of your deck, which means buying better cards in, and weeding out the weaker one and deploying energy generating planets in front of you, so that ultimately you can grab as many VPs as possible.

As far as this is concerned there is a little - but only a little - similarity with Race for the Galaxy here. Deploy cards in front of you, watch out for synergies of certain cards for increased capability. Core Worlds is however far lighter than Race for the Galaxy in this respect - whilst there are synergies they are fairly modest two tier affairs, and it doesn't require a great deal of thought or planning to make the most of them. Race for the Galaxy can have a complex interweave of production planets, goods consumers, special powers and combinations that make synergies the absolute heart of the game.

VPs are counted with what's in your deck, and what's laid out in front of you planet wise. Most VPs will be hauled in from planets - with the final rounds of the game revealing planets that will allow you to capitalise on certain kinds of cards for VPs.

All in all the game was cool. I made some mistakes paying for things I shouldn't have, but it was fairly straight forward, Dean hauling in the win on 39 points, whilst I trailed on 27.

This is imo way better than Ascension, though at its heart quite similar, the choices you make are much more meaningful. The theme is nice - if you like a Starship Trooper kind of dealio - and the expansion which we played with is really very good indeed at meshing with the base game ( probably due to the fact that it was designed from the get go with it in mind ).

I am not sure how replayable the game is - it's easier than Race for the Galaxy, but at the cost of having less permutations, and ultimately just being a gear up to have better energy, better fleet, better infantry. There is little complex maths to do here, just grab the things that are nice - and if you know your end game bonuses, concentrate on a certain VP grabbing way forward. My fear is this game gets old real fast.

Despite that, nice game, worthy of some play.

The houses of Terra Mystica and Core Worlds combined for a few rounds of Saboteur 2 at the end of the evening, the crafty Pete coming from behind to steal the most gold.

The Cogs of Water Kemet

An excellent evening of gaming, with numbers rebounding up to a populous eleven for three tables of gaming goodness. The ebb and flow of NoBoG personnel saw somewhat of an uncommon roll call for the night - Ed made a welcome return after a good few months missing in action, Fletch was also back and the not always present Jimmy, Moritz and Nicky turned up too !

Two new games to NoBoG were present - the new and hot Kemet and the errr new and hot Lords of Waterdeep.

Eschewing the newness, Pete, Ewan, Jimmy and Tom settled in for some cog spinning action in Tzolkin, Jimmy putting on a fair hand of winning, but the experienced Pete took the victory instead. Jimmy then managed to get the excellent Tichu onto the table as a follow up game.

Lords of Waterdeep played at pace - the game finished fairly early leaving with a joint victory for Fletch and Nicky - Moritz and Dean trailing after them in their quest to farm ever more magicians, and so the four brought forth..... Race for the Galaxy. Which everyone except Dean had never played. No word on whether they thought Race was 'the best game ever'  or  'eh just a blah card game' - it tends to be a Marmite kind of game, although I have to say most people seem to scrunch their face up at it. Pete - prime evangelist for Race - is convinced you need to play the thing at least half a dozen times to truly begin to appreciate it.

Lastly myself Sam and Ed took a punt at Kemet - which played out perfectly in the time available, the final turn winding down as last orders were called. Kemet is a light area control / conflict game themed around a mythological ancient Egypt. The order of the day is moving your limited armies around a limited map, winning battles, occupying a few key map locations, teching up, and getting to 8 to 10 VPs before anybody else.

After playing the game, Kemet strikes me as a cross between Game of Thrones with a few elements of Civilisation - but, for me, it's better than either and does a nice job of being not too much of an action constipated Euro, and also not too much of a limited over simplified yawnafying conflict game.

Combat - for which every win earns you a victory point - runs very similar to Game of Thrones. Select a card from your limited hand ( that is one use only and cycles back when you have gone through them ) that has a strength and add it to the number of units in your army. Whilst in GoT you then roll a die to add some randomness to the mix, in Kemet you can play a number of fairly limited pickup cards that may have an influence on the combat and change numbers.

After a win / loss for the battle is calculated actual body losses are calculated via a damage done versus protection afforded and the battle loser retreats away. Astute readers may notice that as damage done is not connected with winning the battle, it's entirely possible to win or lose a battle and yet everyone dies ( or indeed no one dies at all ).

The board is fairly space limited, and army sizes are hard capped at a small population level - you have a total of 12 soldiers with a max single army size of 5. Recruiting soldiers is a fairly low cost task, so combat losses arent particularly devastating, and as you can't deploy Risk like levels of uber armyness its more the gaining or handing over of VPs thats the critical thing.

A few spots on the board give you something to fight over and think about - do you go for a VP site(s), for 'cash' ( prayer points - which the entire economy of the game runs on ), or attack an enemy army for a VP.

So far, fairly GoT-ish.

Now add in a technology stack. There are 48 technologies on offer - a handful of which are dupes of each other, which break down into three wide and not entirely accurate categories of Economy/Society , Attack, Defence. These offer fairly straight forward upgrades for things that you can pretty much guess. +1 strength to attacks. +1 to defence. Extra prayer. Free upgrade. Cheaper items. Yada.

This has subtle effects on your melee capabilities as well as pushing you into earning VPs or prayer in certain ways. Whilst one player might be earning prayer for each enemy slaughtered, another might be getting extra prayer during the overnight phase of the game.

Technologies are tied to a level - 1 through 4 - and you have a tech rating in each of the three categories that tells you what the highest level of tech you can currently buy is. It costs prayer points to upgrade your tech, and then more prayer points to actually buy a tech at that level.

Hero type units are available as a 'tech', which allow you to place special mythological creatures onto the table to help your armies out. In general they buff an accompanying army with extra strength, speed etc and make a creature lead army have an advantage over those with none.

Finally, what you can do on your turn is prescribed by a Euro style action placement - five* actions at your disposal, choose from a list of nine or so possibilities.

The game is nice, turn over is high, I think it's meant to have quite a high churn rate and although it sort of looks like it might be something of a turtle combat game that Risk can be, it's nothing of the sort - the disadvantages for losing your home city are fairly mild and it's weighted in the favour of the original owner to get it back - and with a fairly restrictive movement and unit cap, you arent going to be worrying that much about the state of your army. In short you can get cleared off the map entirely militarily, but in the end it's not much a of a big deal - next turn you will almost certainly win a battle and come back.

Final scores, Ed with a bucketful of techs - 16 or 17 at last count - marched home with 9 VPs, I had 7 and a measly half a dozen techs, and Sam had 6 VPs with around 9 techs. Sam offered something of a casual alliance at the last gasp to stop Ed from winning, but then promptly attacked me and kicked me out of Ed's city ( which I had been occupying and sampling the wine cellar of ). Ironically the last turn saw me and Sam attack each other and leave Ed largely alone.

Politics eh ?

Great game. I recommend you give it a whirl with Sam.