The Bamboozling Business of the Baffling Board Game

Greetings, Gamers! I think you know the drill by now: this is a blog post about board games, I write it, you read it, we all achieve a state of enlightenment and oneness with the universe. Smashing. In this round of board-gaming zen I have reports relating to such wonders as Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle, Dark Souls, Trajan, Cash and Guns, Tiny Epic Galaxies, Keyflower and Resistance. Let's get gaming! or actually not gaming since the games have already been played and I'm just writing about them. COUGH

We first transport ourselves to a magical world of Magic, Evil and, err... Neville Longbottom in Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle. Yep, Elliot has landed the least desirable of all possible characters and even gets the pet toad, Trevor. James dispatches Peter Pettigrew because "he is an enemy who deserves to die," which seems very morally black-and-white but what do I know. Now at this point I must confess that a small argument broke out. This is because James made the unforgivable assertion that Neville Longbottom is better than Sam Gamgee. Now I know we have an election coming up and supposedly there are some important questions to be decided in that, but I'm sure we can all agree that it is absolutely necessary, once and for all, to clear this up right away. Sam Gamgee was the only one who could deliver a Strong and Stable Rinxit. What did Neville do? Kill a snake? #ConfundusOfChaos.

The state of play at Hogwarts

With that vital issue resolved now and forever, I got a quick run-down of the game. It's a co-operative deck builder with a varying difficulty, and most of the players are only informed as I'm talking to them that they're playing on the hardest difficulty. Oh dear... You have to build up your decks with extra spells, characters and items and work together to prevent the forces of evil from taking over the castle. Each character has some unique cards available only in his or her deck, like Neville's Toad Trevor, which when activated either deals some damage to an enemy, or heals Neville. I can only assume that he exudes some health-restoring drug/potion from his skin which Neville must lick to "activate." I'm guessing if he was stoned off his face on hallucinogenic toad-juice this would explain Neville's clumsiness in the books...

"Kiss me and I promise to turn into a prince,
and definitely not exude any toxin!"

I move on and find myself standing next to the campfire of Dark Souls. The players complain of a very unrealistic experience as none of them have died at all, yet. I haven't actually played the video games (yet) but nevertheless am well aware of how un-true this is to the source material. It's a co-operative monster slasher that has been getting quite a bit of play recently so presumably is quite good fun. It comes in a very hefty box with large miniatures which are just crying out to be painted (not literally crying out — though the name might suggest otherwise, Steamforged Games has not managed to actually embed the souls of the damned into the plastic figures) and indeed Sam has got started on a few of them.

"Cash me ousside, how bow dah?"

The monsters have some rules or "AI" which determines how they move and attack, so you have to try and play around that to get them to do the least damage to your team and put yourself in position to counter-attack. As I observe, poor Emma is actually being pushed into harm's way, but she is the tank (the tank role if you're not familiar with the terminology; this is a medieval fantasy themed game and does not feature armoured vehicles, instead Emma deals little damage but has excellent armour and so can soak up damage for the team) so it makes sense. This should keep everyone from getting leathered by the big dude who could, if not counter-played properly, hit everyone at once.

Emma the Tank moving things in Dark Souls

I leave them to their inevitable death and mosey along to imperial Rome where Trajan is holding court. Sam said, "I thought this was going to be the most boring game ever, but actually it's great." I'm not sure if that's exactly a grand endorsement, but there you have it. Personally I find such a U-turn completely contemptible. In Trajan the aim is to impress the Emperor (who presumably is Emperor Trajan, although I never did check...) by doing all sorts of stuff. That stuff includes conquering Europe (of course), build stuff, producing luxury goods, selling goods and probably more. Before I arrived Monika was winning, but now isn't winning and so, in an apparent fit of pique, attempts to destroy the game as she gets up to go to the bar. Bad form! (Mind you, I can't talk, as I'd had about three attempts at destroying Matt's Machi Koro box by the time the evening was up... I swear I hadn't been licking Trevor!) Whilst Sam was off "conquering the arse-end of Europe" (pretty sure there was something in the UKIP manifesto about that) Declan snuck up the senate track to get his pick of some end-of-game bonuses. Sam was rather miffed about this and tried to deploy dubious biology to convince him to leave the bonus Sam wanted, proclaiming that Declan was, "gonna have loads of spare bread! It grows on trees!"

Tragically Trajan

Returning from the bar (and having failed to destroy the game) Monika confessed that her strategy was really just to destroy Sam. I'm not sure that's actually a strategy but it's a goal, and more than that, it's a goal we can all get behind. On the other hand, Declan's goal was just to understand the game by the end of it — "I'm getting there," he said.

I believe these ranks qualify as "serried."

In a violent game of Cash and Guns, everyone agrees they're shooting Ben. Except they end up shooting at JD. Woops! Ben was the mafia boss and forced Hannah to aim at JD, whilst James was already aiming at him because he foolishly assumed he could count on everyone else to murderise Ben. Even though Hannah holds her gun funny, it was enough that JD would have been splattered against the bar, except he wisely ducked out. He had after all already been wounded twice (surviving despite the lack of medical facilities available in the Mash-Tun) and needed to play it safe.

Point guns!

Point fingers!

Point guns... kinda weirdly?

I fled the ganglands for the loneliness of outer space in Tiny Epic Galaxies, in which James is apparently cheating by farming when he isn't on a farming planet. The idea is to gather up the planets for your own nefarious purposes and then complete your (secret) missions. The game was in early stages; Lewis was the only player with a planet of any kind, having got lucky and been able to snag one without even possessing any upgrades. The game comes with cool unique dice (though what they determine I didn't ascertain) and some nice marked wooden cubes to mark your resource levels and other things on your player card. The two resources are "energy" and "culture" and this was a particularly uncultured game as everyone was using it up to try and screw each other over. I heard multiculturalism had failed anyway.

Some tiny epic planets to occupy similarly
diminutive yet awesome galaxies

This brings me round to the game I played, Keyflower. Keyflower got off to a slow start because the buildings we drafted initially were almost all in the 7–14 range and so were undesirable to get at the beginning of the game. This was the first time I'd seen this failure mode of the drafting rule (which was such a popular house rule for the base game of Keyflower that they included it as an official one in the expansions) the problem being that there's no mechanism to get rid of cards noone wants so you just end up with a poor, restricted selection for ages. I got pretty unlucky with this, frequently being unable to afford anything useful to me, compounded by Matt's investment into the red (i.e. dick) cards, stealing my (and everyone else's) money! At this point I should probably confess that, although we broke out Keyflower and started reading the rules, we decided it was too complicated to learn with none of us having played before (in spite of us all being experienced board gamers!) and, tacked onto the (always optimistic) playtime of 90-120 minutes, would probably leave us still playing by midday Wednesday. We therefore replaced it with Machi Koro.

Keyflower

Highlights of the game included me and Sam repeatedly deconstructing our landmarks for money and then forgetting we had done so. By doing this I once managed to roll two dice using my non-existent train station, make everyone put the money back they'd earned from the roll, and then go and roll exactly the same number with one die. I just like making people suffer. As the game progressed and the red dickery became old-hat, players started building up stocks of purple cards with which to screw each other. And how! Sam emerged as a clear favourite but as the game came to a climax(!) it was Dave's stack of number seven cards that brought him the win. Playing the probabilities always works (on average.) That is, if you can ever even afford to get a number seven card in the whole game. Oh well! Next time I might insist on the alternative card draft that is apparently a possibility, where you have split stacks of 1–6 and 7–14.

It IS Keyflower! Shush!

Dave's winning spread

Keyflower (shush) over, it was time for a traditional round of deception games and tonight's pièce de résistance was, err, Resistance, aided by the foam guns from Cash and Guns, to pick the teams for missions. Because more guns = more fun. The game got off to a good start with a win for the eponymous resistance, though accusations were already flying. In fact they'd been flying since before the loyalty cards had been given out, so maybe that's not so relevant. Unfortunately the second mission was sabotaged — the terroristsfreedom fighters had a traitor in their midst! There was much consternation and a third team was eventually picked consisting of the tried-and-tested first time, plus one more. This too passed, vindicating those four players and casting doubts on the cacophony of voices calling for votes against the choice. It was only natural to make the fourth team up of the same lot, plus a fifth when, suddenly, not one, not two but three failures had made it into the pot! The table immediately erupted in debate and, unlike certain other debates this week, attendance was not optional! (And it went on for bloody ages!) What were we to do? This meant that at least one of the original, trusted team was a filthy spy! Accusations flew, established trusts were shaken. After what seemed like hours, the final team of five was selected, avoiding the now-suspicious dream-team from earlier. This was it! What would the final cards say? Success, success, success, success... FAIL! This was a surprise to no-one except me because in spite of being evil (and having played "success" on two of my three missions) I'd gone so far undercover I'd forgotten who one of my fellow agents was and didn't realise we had one on the final team. But more important than anything else: more important than winning, more important than convincing Dave I was good, more important than convincing Matt that Sean was evil (maybe I didn't have much of a hand in that...): I'd finally been on the bad team at a NoBoG deception game! The upstart insurgency had been quashed, though in light of having played the game, we are now all open to future accusations of calling the terrorists friends.

Someone else took this photo. I can't even tell
who it's of, but as punishment for messing with
my stuff, here you go!

And that was the night! Raucous, rambunctious and just a tad raunchy. And I got to be evil.

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.

Weyward Sisters

The seasons turn, the nights draw in once again and NoBoG takes on its Autumnal guise of chilly dark evenings in a friendly warm pub full of games, and my thoughts naturally turn to Halloween. Given such musings, perhaps it was apt that Broom Service was the first game I played, witches were on the fly, potions delivered, and general underhand dickery was afoot.

Last week 55 assorted players turned up to partake, in which Game of Thrones made yet another visit to the Tun - and, rather amusingly, or annoyingly depending on where you stand, another drink was thrown over it. Could this be part of an optional ruleset for the game to mimic medieval-esque debauchery ? Or is it that the game inspires lots of errant hand waving ?

The tables were full last week, pushing our current seating plans to the limit given a few tables were taken by non gaming clientele, still plenty of space, but we edge ever closer to needing some more tables and chairs to go around.

Up on the mezzanine Ticket to Ride made another show courtesy of Elliot, who has played TtR in so many guises so often he must surely be something of a TtR savant by now. This week was Ticket to Ride Africa where Elliott managed to debunk his own propaganda of never losing by promptly losing. I believe James also busted out another table of Ticket to Ride - this one Europe ? - for double TtR goodness.

FuD ! Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt.
Actually it's Fury of Dracula, much the same though.

 Keyflower and Fury of Dracula also returned, Dracula being played by a completely fresh and new set of players, and by reports the game seemed to go down with mixed feelings. James noted the game as biased in favour of Dracula - too much so - and it was very difficult to pin him down and kill him, a lot of attacks simply doing no damage. Martin playing Dracula was hounded around the board, but also managed to slip away a few times and smartly shadow players a few steps behind. They prematurely ended the game when Dracula managed to disappear into the night into a random spot of the board and had only a few vampires left to create to win the game. All agreed that the game was a win for Dracula at that point.

Mayflower. Keyflower.

For the record, that's only the second time I've seen Dracula win - the vast majority of times the Prince of Darkness gets nailed good and proper. I think the inexperienced players probably suffered a bit in being able to come up with a good plan to kill the Count - tooling up with the right equipment is half the battle, and then choking the Dracula player of useful cards at the right moment is the other half. Failure to do either will make the game far tougher if  not impossible for the good guys.

Elsewise we had Run, Fight or Die, the classic Cosmic Encounter, Cards Against Humanity, and the very nice chilli farming game Scoville. And. Whisper it. Steampunk Munchkin, a new and sexy(?) variant of Munchkin.

Cosmic Encounter

For myself I got to spend a very enjoyable evening with Pete and Hal, first giving Broom Service a bash, followed by the splendiferous Isle of Skye and finishing off with as it turned out a very popular few goes with the spanky new Mafia de Cuba.

Broom Service is a bit of a redo of the earlier game Witches Brew - this version expanding on some of the core mechanics of the earlier game and adding a board and movement to the original card based game. Broom Service sees each player trying to deliver potions across the land whilst navigating the different terrain types, storms and events that crop up every turn.

Image courtesy of BGG

The meat and potatoes of the game comes down to the card based action selection, which allows you to move your tokens around the map, create new potions and deliver potions for victory points. Each terrain type has a specific action for it - so if you want to move to a hills space, you need the hill witch to get you there.

The wrinkle with this game is that any action card that is played *forces* any of the same card out of the hands of other players to all be played at the same time. This is very reminscent of Glass Road, where each action is called and you wait to see if someone else also has that action available. In Broom Service however there is a key decision to make when you declare your action - do you take the Brave action or the Cowardly action. The Brave action nets you a good deal more "things" than the cowardly action, so a Brave Hill Witch will allow you to move AND deliver a potion, whilst the Cowardly Hill Witch will allow you to just move. The key here is though that only one player ever gets to perform the Brave action - whoever the last one is in turn order to declare it. Anyone else that declared the Brave action loses the entire action. So. It's a gamble. Do I play Brave and get more stuff - but with the chance someone else will also declare Brave after me and thus eliminate my turn. Or do I go safe, use the sub optimal Cowardly and get to at least have a turn.

Broom Service - image courtesy of BGG

Going first in Broom Service is therefore something of a poisoned chalice. On the one hand you get to play a card in an order that suits you. On the other hand the likelihood of you getting away with a Brave action is low. The kicker here is that if someone did declare Brave and win it - they get to go first for the new declaration. Thus moving that poisoned chalice around.

On the whole the action selection is as simple as it could possibly be. But in practice the interaction between players, the timing of when an action gets called and the choice to be Brave or not injects a huge amount of chaos and complexity into the mix - so much so that you can almost think of the game as rewarding not the best planner, but the player who manages to screw up the least.

There is however, method in its madness, and a careful read of where other players are, what they are likely fishing for, in what order, and how best and when best to exploit that is the order of the day. Albeit it's fiendishly tricky to get right and requires not a little player reading.

Overall the theme is very cuddly and child friendly, indeed, if you squint at it, you could take it almost as a kids game. Except. There's a bit of a deeper monster hiding in there if you start playing the players. And it can be brutal.

I am pleased to report I won. With a smidging 2 points over the cunning Pete. Hal went with some weathergirl strategy and ended up some distance off the pace, although, it looked like a really good plan mid game. I managed to exasperate Pete a few times during the game, which is a win in and of itself. "Why ?!" he cried at one point with a pained expression "Why would you do such a thing ??". Needless to say Pete's grand plan for that turn was trashed. I wasn't actually trying to dick him over at that point - I was just trying to lose the lead in the least painful way possible.

Moving on, Isle of Skye made it to table, the Carcasonne on steroids. I am not sure Pete and Hal were too thrilled with it, Pete was miffed about having no money in the first round to buy stuff, and muttered darkly about buying things at first being important, but to me the game is a great light to medium game. The game ended with everyone within one point of each other, me at the rear, Pete in the lead. A post game tile move shifted me into the winning position however with an extra 3 points. But yeah. I failed to notice it. And also failed to give myself extra catch up mechanic cash during the game. Cool game.

Lastly we finished on Mafia de Cuba and recruited other NoBoG stragglers into our game, for first an 8 player game, then 9 player and then an epic 12 player game.

Mafia de Cuba is a cracking little werewolf variant that treads the usual path of having good guys and bad guys sitting around a table and arguing and lying about who is what and whether someone is really up to no good and should be outed. The twist in Mafia de Cuba is that the players get to *pick* which role they will be by dint of taking something out of the cigar box at game start...

Mafia de Cuba cigar box. Image courtesy of BGG

The game starts with a cigar box full of diamonds and poker chips with roles on them. Loyal henchman. CIA or FBI agent. Driver. Hitman. The cigar box is passed around the table with each player deciding what to take from the box. If they take diamonds then they are a thief, and trying to win by having more diamonds at game end than anyone else. If they take a role then they fit into that role - Agents just want to be outed as they win the game instantly ( so the Tanner in werewolf ), Loyal Henchmen win if the Godfather wins, and Drivers win if the person to their right wins ( think about it, they're driving the winning player around who's sitting in the passenger seat... ).

The box comes back to the Godfather who takes stock of whats left and can then start asking questions. How many diamonds in the box when it got to you ? What roles were left ?

The game works remarkably well, there is a good deal more solid deduction work at hand than vanilla werewolf by a good margin, gameplay is effectively kept to a single round to make it short and sweet, and the kicker is that you have a pick of what role you will take - so no newbies suddenly struggling under the weight of what the hell to do with the Merlin role they've just been given. And there's no complex cabal of people with their eyes closed sticking thumbs up, down, around, or shifting counters around.

Could it be the Gold Standard of werewolf rules ? Maybe. I daresay that this format will be copied quickly and widely as it works very well indeed. As to the meta of what happens over repeated plays and experienced players. That remains to be seen. But it should be fun finding out.

Great quote from Hal about the game - "Is this just a random box of junk you've brought along as a game ?". Followed up post game with "It's a very playable random box of junk.". Ha. I'm looking forward to playing more of this and seeing what extra roles are released.

As ever, the gallery. I rushed the pics this week, almost forgot, I was having far too good a time with Broom Service and Isle of Skye.

Run, Fight or Die

Steampunk Munchkin

Game of Thrones finishing up

Scoville

Cards against Humanity

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 !