Double Trouble

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But apart from that. Just like Casino Royale.

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

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

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

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

Game Over.

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

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

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

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

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

Churchill. Looks. Twiddly.

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

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

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

Funkenschlag aka Powergrid. Admit it. Funkenschlag sounds better.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A good deal Bigger, and a whole lot less Smaller

Quite a few soldiers down last week, with a final tally of 39 making it to the Mash Tun for some gaming. Whilst once upon a time 39 would have been a venue bulging number, at the Mash Tun 39 is practically off season.

Pillars of the Earth, the gloom begins to deepen...

Tom, Stu, Nicky and Ewan settled in for a game of Pillars of the Earth on one of the Tuna's front tables, but as the evening wore on, the dingy lighting became even more dingy as one of the low light bulbs had blown, turning their corner of the pub into something of a blackout. I believe Hal has a prototype game you get to play in the dark with mobile phones, but other than that, probably not a great light level for gaming. They eventually found a better lit table to continue their gaming on.

I've still not played Pillars of the Earth, I feel it's something I am missing out on - need to get a play of it.

For myself, last week I brought along All Creatures Big and Small, which if you don't know is another Uwe Rosenberg game based along the whole Agricola / Caverna vibe, but for two people, and somewhat simplified down from Agric. Having played All Creatures with Punk Rich, I

All Creatures Biggerer And Not so Small. 4 Player prototype.

immediately liked it, thought it would be an excellent stepping stone for learners to get to Agricola, but lamented it was only for two players. Why ? Cue some math, a few printed cards, and I expanded the game up to 4 players ( with the help of the two expansions available for the game, and another copy of the base game ).

I tried this out with Pete, Hazel and Punk Rich, and the game pretty much held up as a four player game. Tight, but not too tight, although I pretty much tanked - bad choices, or limited choices, hard to say, but given I was mostly first in turn order you have to say it was probably bad choices !

Pete won this with some amazing horse synergy and something of a meta bet with Hazel that you could indeed get more than 12 horses by game end. Thumbs up for all concerned, so, All Creatures Big and Small is now a good deal bigger, and a whole lot less smaller. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who hasn't played Agricola but wants to, or any Agric or Caverna fans.

Rokoko - time to get your fancy pants on

After that I was very pleased to finally get Rokoko to table which I think is a lovely Euro game. Rokoko is a game all about tailoring outfits for the swanky parties of the aristocrats, you'll gather supplies, hire workers, and either sell your outfits or hire them out to display the wonder of your works in the fancy balls. It has to be said that the theme often gets a bit of an eyebrow raise - really, a game about making dresses. Pfft. But, look past that and the game is a very good solid Euro, offering you a multitude of choices and ways to earn your points for a win. Like any good 'proper' Euro, luck plays only a very small factor in the game, and instead it will be your choice of actions - and the interaction with your fellow players, that will determine the greater part of your victory.

Pete won this again with a monstrous cash to victory points scheme, which in hindsight is perhaps a

Game of Thrones

flaw in the game - the cash to victory point action seems far too powerful. Admittedly I've only played two games of Rokoko but in both, this action slam dunked the win. Nevertheless, a really nice game, and if you're into your Euros you should check this award nominated game out.

Elsewhere Small World hit the table, Dead of Winter, Elliott brought along Ticket to Ride along with his compatriot "The Butler" ( I think they come in the same box as they are only ever seen together - not sure whether it's a special event expansion or what... ) and Game of Thrones made it back again - and this time actually finished. That's right. Game of Thrones ended up finishing in a single pub evening. There were some shouts and yells whilst this was being played - I refused to believe that Game of Thrones could be so exciting - and everyone had a good time, although at one point James looked particularly worried / shell shocked when I think he was attacking Sam.

The very tricky Aquasphere. Possibly the crunchiest Euro of them all ?

We also welcomed back Nate last week - was good to see him, he hasn't been down to NoBoG in some while, and he brought along Aquasphere - amongst other things - another game I really like. Luke was looking for a game with zero luck - or very limited luck, so I directed him to the uber crunchy Aquasphere, after which he gave the game a thumbs up. Huzzah for Nate being back, and Huzzah for getting Aquasphere to table. I only managed to convince people to get it to table once in the many weeks I brought it along.

Also Joe has a report writeup for last week too, which apparently he wrote on the walk home. How he didn't get runover whilst obliviously crossing a road I don't know...

This evening I took on the challenge of Legendary Encounters... As a plucky, light-hearted, yet ambitious researcher, tired of her years rattling the test tubes, and looking for adventures I joined my fellow crew mates Sam (scout), Andy (merc), ollie (medic) and Sean (gunner) as we ventured forth on the ill-fated Nostromo in search of fame glory and a close encounter with a perfect organism, to ultimately blow the crap out of it and hopefully escape with our lives... Or at least my life

Legendary Encounter

From the off things seemed like they were going pretty well, with half of the first objective covered in the first few turns, sadly that was not to last long. As the genetically superior aliens began flooding the ship we got closer and closer to annihilation. Thankfully, as we completed our first objective we had a little luck with the cards and the aliens began to thin a bit. Through the second objective we seemed to be coping with the influx of increasingly powerful foes nicely, although a couple of people were did seem to be a bit low on funds, and with mainly pricey people to recruit we suffered a bi of a blockage and a fair amount of cash went unspent.

Sam was looking a bit worse go wear having taken a lot of little hits, whereas Ollie was in a similar state having taken a couple of big hits. But all was ok and we dragged our sorry band through to the third and final objective - taking out the trash. (And by trash I mean hideously powerful ultra-alien, who has to be pushed through an airlock). As we started we were looking in pretty good shape (notwithstanding everyone carrying a few injuries - but hey we'd just battled our way through a horrendous shit-storm of aliens... So, swings and roundabouts we looked on top of it).

Then came the agony.

Everyone was suffering a bit from hands clogged with useless minion fellows and even a liberal sprinkling of helpful sergeants the tougher aliens of the end game started to take their toll. With Sean losing his entire hand, followed by me with only half a hand things got real.

One of the twin-mouthed nasties made it through to the combat zone and from there we were toast. First, Ollie the medic went down, then the Nostromo seemingly disappointed by our inability to get shit done decided to self-destruct taking me, Sam and Andy with it. Thus, leaving Sean the lone gunner, presumably hanging by his now heavily-bloodied arms to the remnants of the ship, surrounded by aliens trying to make the best of his near-fatal injuries, facing the perfect organism standing in the airlock.

In true hollywood style it was was set up for a grandstand climax. Sean showed some great skill in only picking strike cards which rinsed his hand, meaning he got to live a further turn, but sadly his lack of cards meant that he was completely obliterated by the swarm of super aliens that had managed to infiltrate our ship. RIP Nostromo.

All in all a tense, atmospheric experience. That said, I can't seem to shake the feeling that deck builders aren't my bag - I have played dominion about ten times and never enjoyed it, I bought pathfinder, played it once and found it to be an RPG completely lacking in RP (and if I'm honest could find much G either!) Before playing I was considering buying it, and I'm still on the fence - the atmospheric theme is really immersive. I'd definitely love another play, but am gonna hold off buying as i'm not sure how much legs the deck-building has for me.

We then got a bit back-stabby and had a couple of games of one-night werewolf, followed by some Avalon which ended with a ballsy traitor victory with the first 3 missions failed!

Sounds great. I also kinda agree with Joe about deck builders- I get the same kind of feeling myself, although I find Dominion to be a fairly laid back, don't have to think about it, easy social kind of game - at least the way I play it. Legendary Encounters looks like a whole  heap of fun however, the Legendary series are ok - I appreciate the theme, the game is ok, the Aliens version however seems to me be really well suited to the game mechanics. Who knows. Maybe I just like Aliens a whole lot.

Fillers finished the evening. I even think there was some epic Resistancing going on for over an hour.

Finally, I've managed to lay my hands on a couple of table lamps for this week. We'll see how they do. If they're any good I will pick up a couple more. Rechargable, portable and with six hours of lighting time, they should be just the thing. We shall see.

As ever I leave you with the Gallery.

The Greed of Med "Shoot 'em til they stop twitching and then shoot em some more" Ed

This week we counted 22 NoBoG souls ready for gaming. Which turned out to be a wildly inaccurate count as eventually 31 people were playing at tables. I'm not naming any names *cough* Ewan *cough*, but I feel as if the counting was slightly wonky. This may not have been helped by a slow trickle of stragglers entering the pub. Excuses.

But no matter ! With a bit of patience everyone - even the latecomers - can be accommodated. If you turn up late, you might have to wait a bit for someone to lose horribly with an incompetent playstyle win with a clever strategy and start something else.

First up this week Pete got to give his prototype now in its second printing a go with a full table of six. Pete nobly took a small handicap given all five other players were completely new to the game - and as far as I know had not even played Race for the Galaxy which helps a lot when it comes to Pete's game - and proceeded to bamboozle everyone with rules.

Pete's prototype Galaxy M101
or as I call it, Chink In the Galaxy

Heads were swimming by the end of the rules explanation. It seems few had managed to grasp the finer points and all just wanted to get on and play to get a grip of it by playing a few rounds. The game is pretty straightforward, play systems for a cost ( cards also serve as currency ), deliver goods, put developments into play and creep influence into other systems in much of a cross between Race for the Galaxy and Steam, but if you haven't played either, then it could all be a bit alien at first.

Tom II won this with a triumphant 78 points and a hardcore deliver strategy ( pick cubes up, deliver them where they are needed ) with joint second limping in at 58 points. No one opted for military. A pity. Most enjoyed it thoroughly and thought it was an excellent game, whilst a couple were more on the fence with their experience. Six player is a pretty tough shark infested count for the game, and with all new players at the table it's likely that not everyone is going to have a happy clappy easy existence. Four players with new people would probably have been a good sweet spot.

Stu was back with us this week and gave Kingdom Builder - a Stu firm favourite - another bash. He followed this up with Camel C/Up ( annoying goddamn name that refuses to be one or the other ) which seemed to go down better than Kingdom Builder. Camel Cup is certainly a barrelful of fun and tends to leave the more serious, analytical and buttoned down Euros standing alone in a corner wondering where everyone has gone.

Lewis busted out Lords of Waterdeep at the final table downstairs, with Tom the First mixing it up and showing all the young 'uns ( technically everyone is a young 'un to Tom.... ) how to play with a solid victory. Quest finishes were at an all time high, the deck being one card away from exhaustion. No fillers for them this week as Lords played the whole evening.

Upstairs, Alhambra got a play, and if I have my facts right, Chris won this, with Kittens in a Blender being played afterwards. Kittens in a Blender according to Lauren was tense. Incredibly tense if you were one of the kittens I imagine. No idea who won this, but really, what does it matter who wins when you have a chance to stuff kittens in a blender ?

Elsewhere Darren brought Legendary Encounters - another card game in the Legendary family that this time sees you working your way through the Aliens franchise. We've already seen the Legendary Marvel game at NoBoG a couple of times, but the Encounters game is new this year and new to NoBoG. The rules are the same, but the theme is switched, no super heroes here, you get to play characters such as Ripley or Hicks ( not sure whether Hudson is in it... Game Over Man, Game Over ! ) and have to survive and engage with the acidic horrors from Geigers imagination. I didn't pay any attention to this as it was played but I suspect the theme is probably a good fit for the game, even though as a whole the Aliens Franchise has generally produced some awful games based on its IP - bewildering given that many knock off Alien copies are great games.

Dead of Winter got another bash. Everyone lost. Again. Two betrayers. But they didn't stink up the crises, they played nice. We played with an objective of too many mouths to feed, and started the game with 8 useless helpless survivors. The game seemed to be on punishing mode however, as helpless survivors sky rocketed - we ended up with an utterly bonkers 15 helpless survivors eating 8 food a turn - zero weapons were found, and much to the annoyance of all players, there were absolutely no options to eat any of the helpless survivors. Or leave them out in the cold. Or accidentally move base and forget to give them a forwarding address.

Despite the colony devouring 12 food a turn by game end, a heroic effort to salvage food saw us easily swing the food in the third round, only to be woefully betrayed by rampant resource burning which saw a flurry of zombie attacks eat people and plunge morale to a game ending -5.

Tough was an understatement.

Moving on we had a shot at Cash and Guns second edition and joined up with the Legendary table. Second edition Cash and guns makes a few changes to the original, notably it removes the Bang Bang Bang card ( which gives precedence over Bang cards ), changed loot division - it's now round robin instead of evenly split, and finally introduced the Boss who gets to pick loot first and also gets to change a single shooters target in the shooting round.

Adjustments have also been made to the player powers - simplifying them and making them all visible at game start - and the loot now has some set collection mechanics, with art and diamonds giving bonuses for who has what at the end.

Cash & Guns 2nd Edition. Ed toys with his gun...

Med Ed won the first round of this in his nice, easy mannered, I am not a threat, under the radar kinda way, and then proceeded to state that back to back wins in such a game were almost impossible. Little did we know he was just seeding the group think at the table for his shenanigans.

Darren got shot to bits in the second game with an astounding four out of four guns being loaded with bullets and pointing at him - and being brave or foolhardy he attempted to brash it out - but despite being dead and out of the game, this didn't stop Ed from later attempting to shoot Darren again. Because you know. Keep shooting them until they stop twitching. Or perhaps playing zombie filled Dead of Winter had trained Ed to double tap his victims. Just in case.

Admitting his incompetence - which may have just been another smokescreen ruse to lower his apparent threat - and having directed Ed not to shoot dead people in future turns, or anyone else at the bar / Norwich in general who weren't in the game, Ed cheerfully kept on sucking up double loot with his greedy character power and by game end had an impressive lead and had indeed won back to back at Cash and Guns.

The morale of the story is, don't be suckered in by Med Ed's nice ways. And also, never pretend to be dead. He'll still shoot you.