Duang Good Gaming

As the internet debates whether blue is white and black is gold, and further afield many ponder what on earth the word duang means, which to be fair are the most gripping problems the planet currently grapples with, here at NoBoG we carry on sublimely unaware of such trivialities, preferring instead to tackle the much more serious and important playing of games down the pub.Without which the entire German board game industry would no doubt collapse.

As Bill Clinton was prompted to say - It's all about the economy stupid.

This week we had a raft of never seen before at the pub games on offer, starting with the very lovely Lewis and Clark.

Lewis and Clark is a Euro 'racing' game all about getting your expedition to be the first to plot a course across the North Western part of the US and hit the pacific coast based on the historical expedition that started out in 1804. Which is quite shocking to realise - that in 1804 a great swathe of the US was largely unknown. Makes you realise just how young the US is.

Lewis and Clark is a very mild deck builder, in fact so mild that I am loathe to even say it is one - but the fact is you start with a set of cards which you will almost certainly be adding to. Albeit you'll probably only add a half dozen cards at most to that hand. Each card allows you to perform a certain action, and along with spaces on the board also offering actions, allows each player to gather resources, improve their expedition and for the true goal of the game - push their expedition further up the trail towards ultimate victory.

The delightful Lewis and Clark

Hand management is crucial in Lewis and Clark - each card doubling as both action and strength, meaning players must choose wisely which actions to sacrifice as strength in order to play other actions, as cards played stay played until a hand reset in the form of an optional encampment action is called. Getting the timing of this right - as well as being able to dip in and riff from other players played cards is half the art of the game.

The other half of the art of this game is resource management. Which has a severe wrinkle in from the usual play action, spam resources, use hoarded stock. Lewis and Clark punishes you for having too many resources. Likewise you won't be able to do what you need to do unless you have enough resources. Meaning that a player must walk a goldilocks tight rope between too little and too much. Too many resources will see your fat expedition going backwards with time penalties, whilst too few will see you struggling to efficiently use your actions to set a good pace.

Hand management, tight resource control, interaction between players in first come first served action spots, duplicated actions played and a changing route that forces you to switch resource gathering strategy means that Lewis and Clark is no slouch. Indeed Mr Bond declared the game to be somewhat brain burny as you sit and work out just exactly how many resources you need, what actions you are going to play, which cards you can afford to burn, and just where every other player is right this minute.

Overall the game is lovely. The artwork is absolutely beautiful - each card is unique in art, and apart from the start deck, every single action card is also unique in function. The game is steeped in historical theme - all the characters within it are research and accurate, and as for the mechanics of the game - they really are very well done and a step up from the usual. It must be said one important errata has been published for the game - nerfing an otherwise spoiling strategy of sitting on your arse at the start, ignoring penalties and accruing ever more crap for a single devastating burst of speed.

Highly recommended - Mr Bond won an otherwise incredibly close race with a final burst of speed taking him across the finish line to setup camp first on the pacific coast.



Sam II brought along the next new thing  - Super Motherload which is all about mining. Why it's not called Super Motherlode I couldn't say. Perhaps it's an illiterate publisher, or perhaps they are making a very clever point - so clever in fact that it seems dumb. Or perhaps because it loads. As in computer game loads.

Blurry shot of Super Motherload

Super Motherload is a fairly simple deck building game where the results of your playing your ever improving deck are placed on a community board that represents you digging ever deeper into the surface of Mars. Play a bunch of cards to mine some spots on the board, get rewards for mining those spots, use those rewards to gain new cards. Rinse and repeat. Along the way win victory points for achieving various goals - the first to use four cards to mine, the first to dig a four length tunnel and so on. The small wrinkle here is the community board which allows all the players to interact in the same space. If one player digs deep for a reward the next will be able to mine from their tunnels to get somewhere else - thus you need to  not only keep an eye out for what you can achieve, but also what you might be offering to others by doing so. There's also quite a nice board revealing malarkey going on, in that you can't actually see the lower depths until you've completed certain aspects of the current depth - the person that achieves completion gets a small advantage in being able to pick exactly what the next depth will look like, even though its a binary choice.

Spot the difference - Super Motherload artwork

The artwork is sumptuous albeit somewhat wacky in style. I can pretty much guarantee that looking at the card art will not in any way give you a mining vibe. It might give you a 1970's cop show vibe. Say, CHiPs for those of a certain vintage. But mining... not so much.

The game actually looks quite fun in an easy going kind of computer game mimicking type of way - and that's no surprise as the game originally started life as an easy going laid back computer game available for your console and pc couch gaming. I failed to get the opinion of those playing it at the time to see if it was as cool as it looked. I suspect the computer game is more varied and cool, and the board game is slower but more social.

The last newness was taken with the world premiere of Orctions a game that Elliot has been mulling over in design for more than a decade. I have no idea how the game plays. It has auctions. With orcs. But what can be said is that it attracted 8 players who all seemed to have a fantastic time playing it, and such was the good vibes it generated that Lewis became an instant evangelist and is not only buying it as soon as its released but was promising to go to the UK games expo to help with its launch. You can find out more about this at the somewhat in development orction website http://orctions.co.uk/

Pandemic. Going well ? Maybe not...

Elsewise the G man was in the house again - this time playing Libertalia, Ra and something else which I forget with the ever diplomatic Stu. Stu's group kindly played a filler game of Forbidden Desert as a kick off game to allow the late arriving G man to join in.

Betrayal at House on the Hill had a return play, having been absent for sometime, with a Frankensteins monster being burnt to death - again. It seems Frankenstein isn't so hard to put down in Betrayal.

And finally Pete got Lord of the Ice Garden to table again, this time with Tom and Rich IV providing competition, of which the wily Tom gained victory.

Lord of the Ice Garden. Pete didn't win.
I think he subtly blamed RichIV for ending the game too early.
Know Your Players - Rich IV is not beyond delighting in explosive suicide

Filler type games and other things rounded out the week, with an impressively strategic Sam II pulling a great victory in Saboteur as he got all the Saboteurs to help him out - having early been thoroughly sabotaging, only to turn the tables at the end to reveal the gold and himself as a good guy - not a saboteur. Sam put this down to actually not looking at his role card until most of the way through the second game and thinking he was a Saboteur when he was not. Regardless of this it allowed him to place the winning tile and grab the lions share of the loot. Perhaps hes hit upon a great, albeit risky, counter saboteur strategy - pretend to be one of them until you can lay the winning tile.

Blockade Runner. Hazel contemplates the awfulness going on.
Never mind. Cheaty Mages afterwards was much better.

The week before that ... Hal brought a never seen at NoBoG game to table - Blockade Runner, a game about shipping cargo into the Southern States during the American Civil War. I'm not sure what it is with Hal but he seems to have a penchant for some really obscure games - which certainly does make an interesting change to the usual faire.

I'm not entirely sure what goes on with this game, but suffice to say its something of a Euro with a map of the Southern US, some auction mechanics going on, deliveries and some card play.

I have to say when I looked over at this game the thought crossed my mind that I hadn't seen such a drab board since the 70's. But all that glitters is not gold and all that. Unfortunately when I asked the players what the game was like, Hal was first in with a single word - abysmal, and everyone else followed with milder but equally unglowing terms. Unfinished. Nice ideas but doesn't quite work. Needs refinement. And so on. Uh huh.

Walk like an Egyptian... Imperial Settlers

I got to roughly teach a group how to play Imperial Settlers. Which I am really liking and wouldn't mind picking up for myself - we were playing with Mr Bonds copy. Netrunner Sam who is something of a 51st state veteran quickly picked up the game ( the games being by and large the same thing ), and with a strategy of large card flow went on to a good win with the Romans, with me trailing a dozen points behind, and Stu and Nicky a good 20 points behind me. With a little kick here and there I'm sure I could have taken it, but as the Egyptians I was fannying around with stone and building funny monuments - no swords to be had.

Cash and Guns 2 - Lauren Birthday Edition

At the other end of the room Lauren brought her birthday copy of Cash and Guns 2. And engaged with a full group in an extra noisy game of gangsta shooting and looting. Pandemic got a play upstairs. As well as Powergrid. And possibly some other stuff I really cannot now recall....

Fillers, Netrunner Sam busted out a new game to me - Cheaty Mages. Which is a pretty basic bet on the final result of a card type game - where every player gets to - mostly - secretly dick with the value of the result. This is a nice filler game with a high level of interaction and table backchat - as most filler type social games are wont to do. I'm not sure its classically cool enough to be up there with the greats, but it is a solid filler and a welcome extra choice in the field of quick high player social games.

The classic Powergrid still doing its thing.

Guillotine is having something of a ... *cough*.... renaissance, and with a few copies floating around is being played quite a bit. Simultaneously on two tables at one point. So thumbs up for guillotine. And well done Tim for introducing this quiet winning game to everyone.

Whilst everyone seems to be on a guillotine love in, Hal for one still hates it. It fills me with rage he confided. I am not sure why this is. Perhaps he has some French Nobility in his genealogy and still harbours a grudge towards the filthy Robespierre. He does have a liking for fancy wines. So maybe there's something in that.

You Win Second Place in a Beauty Contest...

... in a lineup of one. So goes the Monopoly inspired joke. More of that later.

Did you know ? The most popular day of the year for holiday
hunting is January 5th. Just after lunch. One can only assume
this is because everyone is miserable being back at work after
Xmas.

Since Christmas the NoBloG writing goblins have become slack. Weekly issues are failing to get out, news is being missed, and all the while the slacking goblins have been eating the last remnants of festive chocolate, complaining about having eaten too much, and using their office time to search the web for cheap winter holidays. What can you do ? I have sent them all off to a recuperative post christmas blues tropical beach, and been forced to do my own typing in their absence. Pfft.

The last couple of weeks have returned to a busy pub of gaming with 34 people turning up on both weeks ( with a huge variance of *who* actually turned up in the differing weeks... should everyone instead decide to turn up at once ... ), with Resistance having a resurgence in popularity and returning to its regular-ish slot of end of night play.

Stu and Tom were with us this week, both of whom like nothing more than the meta game of the Bargain Bin Rummage. I think they must have some competition going on as to who can find the cheapest or most obscure game. In the past this has brought us classics from Giants, a euro game about shifting giant heads around Easter Island... and putting hats on them.... to Felinia, a game about sea going medieval cat merchants. That is to say, cats, who are merchants. Stand up on their hind paws. And engage in conversations about... fish ? As opposed to merchants who deal in cats.

This week Stu ( or possibly Tom ) had managed to dig a bit of serious retro gaming out of one of his secret bargain bins. Waddingtons Formula 1. Which with an initial release date of 1962 is I am going to guess, older than every single NoBoGer currently in irregular attendance.

Formula 1, Tom roars into the lead with a bit of
judicious picture taking timing

At first glance the game looks suspiciously monopoly inspired. A dice. Two decks of cards bearing an uncanny resemblance to Chance and Community Chest - except of course, here they are Pit Cards and Tactics cards. And a carefully measured track with spaces to move your playing piece around. There are no second place beauty contest wins here however - but instead varying advantages of moving faster, accelerating to top speed, careening around a bend without incident, or the reverse, missing a turn because.. well.. you have been subject to poor pit work. Such are the advanced game design machinations of the 1960's family game. If it doesn't have a random number generator lurking in a deck of cards, you are doing something very wrong.

Five enjoyed this hark back to a more innocent gaming age, with Caroline roaring across the finish in first place. And despite its age, everyone really did seem to enjoy it.

Elsewhere Mr Bond brought along one of his Christmas presents - Imperial Settlers, a full table of four spending the evening standing up and poring over the wording on cards. No idea who won. But seemed fun.

Lewis, Tom, Lauren and Andrew had a go with Takenoko, followed by Get Bit and Love Letter. Lauren was on the warpath and taking no prisoners, bashing her fellow gamers with expletives, threats, yells and anything else. She ended up winning Takenoko and Get Bit, although whether this was due to great game play or just banter intimidation it's hard to say. She took her losses on Love Letter hard. I think she wanted a clean sweep victory.

Downstairs Caverna was given a whirl, with it has to be said a group that was probably thrown to the

A busy Wherry Room full of gamers

lions. Just about all new to Caverna, and in some instances new to gaming. A trial by fire. I'm not sure how this went down, but highly experienced Euro gamer Guillame wiped the floor with everyone apparently. Hmm. We might have scared off some new people there.

An epic six player game of Lords of Vegas was on the table over, and over from them - I think Room 25 got another bash.

Upstairs I got to take a couple of completely new gamers on a tour of what's what, starting with Colt Express, of which the programmed movement seemed to at times really mess with their heads, before moving onto Sechs Nimmt, which as I suspected, they really warmed to and took a picture of it at the end so they could go buy it themselves. Scratching my head for easy finishers we settled for Loot Letter, which almost earned a ban from Mr Bond because it had Munchkin in the title.

Last week Bondy threatened NoBoG legal action against the players of Munchkin on the grounds of Bad Taste Gaming. Despite having taken photographic evidence of the deplorable activity and posting it to the NoBoG twitter feed, the threatened Official Letters of Warning have yet to be actioned. A lucky escape perhaps for the transgressors.

Lastly downstairs they had an epic game of Avalon Resistance - they were frightened off of using the new chiefs and spy hunters malarkey and instead stuck to swords and sorcery. Pah. Luke performed the tricky game intro spiel with morgana, merlin, percival and the kitchen sink and did a good job getting it all right. However. You could hear his brain whirring as he paused at each step, thought about it, thought about it again and his voice steadily slipped into BBC English. Watching Resistance can be nearly as much fun as playing Resistance.

Upstairs I got to enjoy a quick filler of Port Royal with Hal and Mr Bond. Stealing the win right at the end away from the many be-pirated Hal, Mr Bond declared the game to be awesome. Because he had won. With a strategy of... doing everything not particularly well. Except possibly capitalising on everyones failures more than anyone else. I had personally gone card draw crazy - ignoring victory points to.. I don't know. Show off with how many cards I could take ( which helped me not at all ). Hal had a very solid heavy pirate strategy. But somehow. Pushing his luck just... never... worked. Greed ! Without it, he could probably have won the game a good few rounds earlier. Fun game. Funny banter. Always a laugh with Hal and The Bond.

Port Royal is a really nice little filler game, a push your luck, build up a simple tableau, earn victory points piratey card game. It's not long enough or deep enough to become some card memorising synergy monster like Race for the Galaxy, and its shorter and less prone to breaking than Glory to Rome, but shares a few elements with those games... in a piratey themed way. And let's face it. Pirate themes are the best themes. You can take your Race for the Galaxy Uplifting species and.... uplift them. I'll stick to pirates.

Last week Mission Red Planet showed up for its quarterly airing. Newbies all. And for once I managed to capitalise on my experience, and romped to a 3 point hoarding win. We then had some Frank's Zoo. Which I totally failed at. Although it has to be said this was more to do with my partners than myself - both of whom flopped out in last place for zero points, and despite me finishing first in the last round, I had the worst score. Bah.

Suburbia was also on show. Resistance. And err. Other things. Like Munchkin. And Seven Wonders ( which James had never played before... ! ). And Tragedy Looper. And more stuff. Which I forget. And the goblins are all away at the beach. So who knows.

Martha the Camel

Ah, the joys of Norwich traffic on a football day - NoBoG evening found me many miles from Norwich dahn sahf, battling to return against lane cutting coaches and roads that cannot handle the numbers. So I arrived this week without any preparation or organisation and without any clear game to play. I decided to watch the river go by from the Ribs balcony instead and enjoy not looking at the arse end of yet another football coach.

My peaceful reverie did not last long however, as a bunch of fresh faced first year UEA students turned up fashionably late looking for games to play. Given only one of them had any real kind of gaming experience, Agricola seemed positively cruel, Legendary Encounters probably... a bit too alien, so I started them off on the gentle crowd pleaser, King of Tokyo.

Which was a bit like Yahtzee I explained.

What's Yahtzee ?

An old family game from then 70's, 60's, 50's whatever.

But I'm only 19, I don't know Yahtzee.

Moments like this make you realise just how old you are. Or possibly how few people play Yahtzee anymore. I blame Angry Birds.

A couple of enjoyable games followed, Kaylee was determined to be a pacifist penguin and came second twice, or in her own words "a consistent failure". Camel Up was played next, with Kaylee again favouring odd tactics and encouraging the hopelessly behind yellow camel ( which she named Martha ) to ride forth and win. She did not however put her money where her mouth was, and refused to bet on the long term prospects of Martha.

We finished with a couple of games of Avalon Resistance, four new players in a six player game, followed by five new players in a seven player game. Uh huh. No monumental cockups, apart from a team of all good guys managing to fail a quest. Uhhh. And then Darren convinced I was a bad guy sending all the actual bad guys on a quest together. Oh dear.

Despite Darren being very keen to play Resistance with our group, he spent most of the play time stating how he hated playing Resistance with me. I took it as a compliment. Which sounds weird perhaps unless you've played Resistance. He dithered about me being Merlin. I told him I wasn't Merlin. Incredibly unlikely I was. He stabbed me on the offchance I was Merlin. I wasn't Merlin. I suspect this has not improved his liking of playing Resistance with me.

It was great to get to play Resistance again - it's been a while for me, and it was great to wind Darren up. Very enjoyable.

Elsewhere Stu rustled up some Burgundum for a group of five, followed possibly by some Love Letter. Downstairs the longest ever game of Betrayal at house on the Hill saw Lewis and his zombies eat everyones brains - including the two newcomers ( rather rude to eat newcomers brains before they learn the ropes ) and Elliot brought his Catan on steroids with the Catan Histories : Settlers of America : Trails to Rails.

Which left Sam on the last table showing off his new kickstarter package. I think at this point Sam needs to be called Kickstarter Sam as he seems intent on single handedly supporting board game kickstarter development by investing in one of every other release.

This week Sam had Xia, a game in which you get to fly your spaceship around, make money from salvage and cargo, shoot things, explore things and compete for titles and fame. Which in theory sounds like a more open ended Merchant of Venus - or if you like Elite - The Boardgame. Richard IV gave this game a big thumbs up and recommended I give it a try if I could. A pity I was so unprepared otherwise I would have had a nice picture of it.

28 this week.

Two Eds are Better than One

Two Eds are Better than One, so sayeth the idiom, however just what three Eds gets you is beyond conventional wisdom - this week we had three Eds, Med Ed, Writer Ed - finally back from the wilds of Milton Keynes - and lastly for want of a better title, Lord Ed - who loves to play Lords of Waterdeep... and win.

Pax Porfiriana - the card game of Mexican coups, revolutions and dodgy businessmen - made it back down to the Ribs, last time I saw this was in Mr Bond's excited grip, and I can remember it being quite a good play.

Pax Porfiriana with Two Eds, Hal, Rich and Pete

This lasted all evening for the entire table, Pete muttered something about hidden information - I think he was subtly complaining about it - but I believe ended up winning. Or won one game. Or something.

Lord Ed decreed that Lords of Waterdeep was played on the middle table, and proceeded to play a very close game, with Ed pipping James by two points in a close finish, whilst on the table over, another evergreen favourite at the Ribs - Betrayal at House on the Hill was setup with Luke eager to once more prowl the haunted corridors.

Upstairs Dead of Winter got another cold blast of play - this time around we had to barricade the bejesus out of the colony with 10 barricades, and have a barricade at every other location too. Mid way through the game things were looking good, decent food supply, zombie numbers in decline and no apparent betrayers. Then a single dodgy betrayal like card turned up in a fuel crisis, accusations went flying, and things started to go downhill. With a single round left to play, Sam called all the zombies to the colony, set fire to the lovingly contributed crises, trashed a whole bunch of cards to make everyone miserable, and oversaw a massive thirteen people get eaten by the rush of zombies.

Game over, betrayer Sam had won. Betrayer Bondy had kept his head down all game, and by the smallest of margins missed a joint win. Everyone else was eaten.

Although Sam technically won, the final outro of the game revealed him to be eyeing his naked self up in the mirror, stroking his well fed belly, and getting excited about all the suffering people and his mountain of saved food. Freak. I'm not sure anyone wins when you are getting off on watching yourself stroke your belly in a mirror.

There were other really nice narrative moments in the game, Mr Bond screaming the police station down, Martin poisoning people with his cooking and causing an outbreak of pus filled buboes, the wonder mom single handedly trawling a crate of food back to colony then breaking it down to make a barricade before romping through hordes of zombies.

It's a really nice game, but I think the betrayers tend to have the upper hand, timing is everything and it can be easy to tank the colony when things get a bit tough.

James brought Five Tribes to the table again, Dave won this by a tiny margin, and Small World Underground got a play for the second week running, followed by some Love Lettering.

Atta Ants induces much thinking

Whole bunch of people played Cash and Guns 2nd Ed at the end of the evening, making this the third or fourth consecutive week its seen table time.

Last week was Small World Underground, a long game of Blood Bowl Team Manager - Ewan and his Orcs tanked badly - Notre Dame, Five Tribes, Lords of Waterdeep, Ticket to Ride, Atta Ants, Cash and Guns and Frank's Zoo. We also kicked off the evening with an absolutely frantic couple of games of Space Cadets Dice Duel, which was immense fun, but after the second game everyone literally stopped for a rest for ten minutes. Crazy frenetic stuff.

29 people this week. 26 last.

Chris is ecstatic about getting his Tickets in TtR

Guns, Beer, Loot. What could possibly go wrong ?

Five Tribes - a game confusingly for only Four players

Notre Dame

Small World Underground

For Sale : 10,000 sq/ft Industrial Unit - slightly war torn

This week for the most part NoBoGers elected to play the old* favourites** with Pandemic, Lords of Waterdeep and Betrayal at House on the Hill first up on the tables in the Wherry Room.

*old - in terms of board game fads and newness about 12 months at most
**favourites - in terms of fickle gamers some will really like, and others declare absolutely broken ( mostly because they didn't win )

Betrayal at House on the Hill in particular has now been played so often at the Ribs, it's a wonder the regular players aren't all thoroughly experienced veterans that can list all the betrayals from memory. There may be lessons to be learned here for budding game designers about the compelling nature of the game as for my money there are not too many other games like it in terms of mechanics and how it plays, plus as a bonus the theme really works well.

A full and buzzing Wherry Room

Betrayal had two plays, one with a Dracula bad guy who was roundly beaten by the good guys, and a second... with an invincible traitor that must be killed with a statue. Sounds weird. I guess you had to be there.

The world of Pandemic meanwhile was being threatened by the very twelve monkey-esque bio terrorist challenge, where one of the players instead of tripping around the planet curing diseases is instead actively working towards bringing the zombie / mutant / pathogen apocalypse joy to the world at large. Happy days. Richard the IV was the bio-terrorist with a grudge ( don't blame me if you're now on an NSA web search watch list Richard... ) but failed in his task to bring a slightly insane Bruce Willis into time travelling reality.

Lords of Waterdeep had a blast at the far end, Lewis complained he was getting his butt kicked by a bunch of newbies mid game, but by the end had successfully shown them what a bunch of newbs they were and had won.

Upstairs a table of six took on some shorter games. Firstly there was Space Cadets Dice Duel - new for everyone at the table except myself. A stressful hour of dice rolling passed with two games, some role switching and a single victory for both teams. Mr Bond was very chuffed with the experience and declared the game to be the best thing ever. I think he was still adrenalin pumped at that point from all the split second dice rolling decision making. If you want to know what the game is about, a small vid of our first outing of this was posted a whileback.

Sentinel Tactics : Uprising

Afterwards we had some crazy camel racing in Camel Up - my first go at this. Cool stuff, and a little more involved than it first appears. The game is a fun, quick and light betting / racing game that manages to keep any Randomness to a reasonable minimum, and the capability for planning and working out odds to a maximum.  Even half a lap behind, it's still possible for some ridiculous camel to gallop into the lead, albeit very unlikely. A game of calculating risks, managing them, and trying to make more money than everyone else whilst doing it.

Lastly we gave Sentinel Tactics : Uprising a bit of a test play. Sentinel Tactics Uprising is a tactical super hero combat game, where each player controls a super hero ( or villain ) type, runs around a hexagonal based urban landscape, and attempts to Zap, Pow and Ker-Splat others into non existence. The game can be played in a few different ways - co-operatively against a story based challenge or competitively in a death match style. If you've ever played or heard of Heroclix, then, you'll get the idea.

We played in two teams of three in a death match style, grappled with the rules of orders, movement, range and shooting, and sallied forth to beat each other to a pulp.

Sentinel isn't based on any mainstream comicbook IP, so it won't have any names you are familiar with, but they follow tried and tested formulas of heroes and villains. Mr Bond got to play the "Invincible Bunker" which looked to be a slightly fat Ironman. I on the other hand got to play some random computer name, and it turned out I was an automated factory gone bad.

Just how an automated factory turns bad and then goes onto terrorise a neighbourhood is a very good question that is not really addressed. By necessity we made up our own narrative for my "character".

Covering a sizable chunk of the board, and for 10,000 square feet of prime Industrial Zone, surprisingly fleet footed, I managed to rocket jump half the map and attempt to grapple with Nicky's "The Wraith". Who promptly slipped away... Wraith like. Then again, it doesn't seem like that arduous of a task to actually dodge a 10,000 square feet industrial building that has menacing feelings towards you. Indeed you might not even realise a factory is harbouring menacing feelings towards you, such is their lack of general mobility. Or sentience. Dodging an evil factory should be a case of just slowly walking around it as opposed hitting your head on its door jam. Less Wraith like to dodge it then, and more just observing the Watch Your Head signage pasted on the front door.

Rich playing a rather suspect Ra "The Sun God" ( I am too a Sun God, look at this lovely tan... don't rile me, I'll give you such a sun burn ! ) turned out to be no such thing, and just plain old Bob from the Melanoma Sun Tan Clinic in a stupid outfit. "Ra" or Bob as we now know him jumped onto a building in turn one only to be turned to goop by the Wraith and the impressive weaponry of the Bunker.

After burning Ra, everyone turned their attention on my prime real estate, and begin firing flak cannons at my offices. This was unfortunate as at that point, having failed to engage The Wraith I had instead turned my energies into producing iPhone accessories for the mass market. Nicky trying to shut down production for good started throwing knives at me. Hmm. Not exactly something large industrial units tend to worry about - throwing knives. Nevertheless she did some damage - we concluded that she must have killed the caretaker or security guard - but this time failed to slip away and instead got buried under pile of automated production line and masonry. Bits of her will be showing up in iPhone accessories for the next six months.

After Rich dusted himself off and tried giving The Bond a blistering sun burn ( failed, of course ) we halted the game with 1 knock out each. A cool game if you like that kind of thing, it seemed a bit ill balanced for player versus player shenanigans unless you really know what you are doing and balance the teams accordingly. I'm not sure there is enough in it to make it tactically challenging, it comes down to getting there first, having most of your dice hit, and pummelling someone into the dirt before they can return the favour.

This game to me is pretty much the same as Heroclix - it's a slightly larger map scale, and a bit simpler than Heroclix, but eh, I think if you wanted to play something like this, I can't see why you wouldn't play Heroclix. Heroclix has the well known IP, a deeper more involved range of choices, and does the same job. Maybe I am missing something.

The evening finished for some with Splendor and Avalon Resistance, where Luke got to make one of his now customary faux pas by announcing that we - the bad guys - only need one more vote to fail. Thus condemning him to be identified as a filthy spy. Another one of those, oh, did I say that out loud moments.

Love Letter might also have briefly appeared.

Next week I shall be bringing the new and spanky Dead of Winter - a semi co-operative ( yay ?! ) game about surviving the zombie apocalypse. Or possibly just bringing the whole camp down and being an evil zombie loving betrayer. Boo. Featuring one player character of a Mall Santa, who is so appallingly bonkers / annoying / drunk, that the camp actually has morale improve when he "goes missing". Dark.

Other weeks :
 Rex has got a play 3 out of the last 4 weeks which I find surprising but very cool - it almost got played this week, but we opted for shorter things instead. Rex still intrigues me - simple, yet tricky. Limited, yet lots of choices. I think the whole game works on two things - the very asymmetrical player powers ( that are amazingly balanced ), and the possible alliance permutations ( and seating order and turn order and what that means for the game at large ).

Bora Bora made a return visit - only the second time this highly thought of game has been down the Ribs. A mystery why it hasn't turned up more often. Still haven't played it.

Rich got to teach Caverna. And kicked ass. Predictable. Possibly one ( the only ? ) flaw in Caverna - its predictability.

Sam got to play Mission Red Planet, full of confidence on having won before. And crashed to a defeat his confidence balloon popped. He had got engaged in a bit of a power tussle. And distracted. It happens. Mission Red Planet is a nice little game. And is rumoured to be getting an FFG reprint.

The other Sam kicked ass at Kemet. A victory at his own game. Avoiding the embarrassment of being beaten by newbies - although Luke was also playing who has quite the experience with the game now.

Lastly, have some pictures from the last few weeks.

Camelot

Bora Bora

Camel Up

Caverna

Kemet

Takenoko

Numbers for the last 3 weeks - 20, 25, 23. Less busy than usual !
 

The Case of the Missing Gamers

A grand total of 26 27 29 27 attendees this week, the ever helpful Ewan has got a new clicker app for his phone so he can count everyone in. That's right. You're now facing the ignominy of being counted like cattle. There was even talk on the river balcony of branding people as they enter.

We had a bit of trouble fitting some latecomers in this week - arriving just after 8, games had started, and the couple of spare slots available had already been filled by late, but not quite too late comers. Tricky. It's always good to have a table or two with some spare seats for those latecomers, but where you already have newcomers engaged it can be unfair to just up sticks and start something else. Despite being reassured there were some quick games being played if they wanted to stick around, after a quick look around they disappeared. I had a valiant attempt at tracking them down, but alas, they were missing.

This week we had Dungeon Petz, Nations, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Small World, Tzolkin and Mission Red Planet first up for play. Nations played in better time this week - although still took up the whole evening, and we got to find out that the game is kind of punishing. Poor Tim managed to fare badly in the first age, and then proceeded to always fall short in the following ages. It seems that a bit like Agricola, the game can punish you for not getting your ducks in a row and then you flail around at the rear of the scoring without a lot of hope of coming back.

A room full of gamers downstairs - 10 minutes from closing !

A flaw ? There is debate about whether games that have a harsh competitive penalty / elimination / elimination in all but name in them are "good design" or not. Good or bad depends on the mindset of the players. But whatever your mindset, it's understandable playing a 3 hour game without much hope of winning after the first 30 minutes is probably not great.

For all of that, everyone seemed to enjoy the Nation-ing, and Richard the IV secured a win - by I think a single point.

Betrayal at House on the Hill was the noisy table. They then played I can only imagine an equally noisy game of King of Tokyo, followed by an even more noisy Dobble.

Bohnanza - I'll trade you Stink for Wax ! Ok.
And what about the beans ? Ah ha ha... ehhh.

On the relatively subdued table over from the noise, Small World was given a whirl with a final tally of incredibly close scores, everyone being within a single point or two of everyone else. Tom won. Again. He's making a habit of it - remember, if you see Tom at your table, and you haven't played the game you are playing before - gang up on him. It's only fair. Small world was finished with a dessert of Bohnanza, which Tom valiantly tried to win again, but Ewan managed to tie him for it. Good job Ewan.

No idea who won Dungeon Petz upstairs. No obvious Zoo Poo Barons. Shame. I think Ed should come back from the wilds of Not Norwich and show them what the game is truly about. Poo.

Sam blasted to a win in Tzolkin. His first win at Tzolkin. But don't let that fool you, Sam has played a fair few games of the cog turner. Tzolkin definitely rewards experience. They finished this main course with some Skull and Roses and Love Letter.

As for my table, a repeat of other weeks, a fine win for Sam III at Mission Red Planet, a ruby filled win for me at Istanbul, and finally a Biker Gang victory for Sam III at Skull and Roses.

Alex who was new to NoBoG had a bit of a trial by fire, his first turn at Mission Red Planet found his astronauts completely shut out as all ships took off, and his turn was wasted - followed in the next turn by his only ship being blown up by saboteurs. Rough. Needless to say he came last. Oh dear.

Pew Pew Pew

A respectable twenty two for this weeks shenanigans, including Robin making an unexpected return after several months of being AWOL, and, of course, a few new people - Jodie and Mark amongst others.

A rather tough table for Castles of Burgundy was setup, wall to wall experienced players making the game a challenge. Wily Tom ended up being crowned the winner, with Pete lamenting his strategy of doing a bit of everything failing to bring home the Burgundy Bacon.

On the other side of the room to Burgundian Castles, the NoBoG classic Hansa Teutonica was wheeled out to four newbies and a single vet - myself. If you know anything about this abstract Euro cube cruncher, you will know that newbies can struggle a little at first getting their head around what works and what doesn't. Being the general nice chap that I am I gave everyone a run through of the strategy involved - ( although I know some that take satisfaction in it, I don't particularly believe in the adage of explaining the rules and only the rules to someone, then delighting in slicing them several ways from Sunday as I leverage my experience over their inexperience ) - with a liberal dose of make your own mind up and herded them around the pitfalls of play.

The game was enjoyable, tough and close fought, with everyone looking like they might have had a chance had things gone in a slightly different direction at game end. I struggled to make headway on points, but still managed to pip a win in a fairly low scoring game.

Funkenschlag - Powergrid. This time set in the lovely fjords.

Downstairs the venerable Funkenschlaaag ( Powergrid ) and Lords of Waterdeep were put up for play. A new to me Nordic board was on offer, with a lot of interest clustered in southern Norway. Not sure who won this, and for some at least the experience was somewhat bewildering, math heavy and not entirely a thumbs up - or a thumbs down. It's certainly true that Powergrid with players that kind of know what they are doing, can start to become an exercise in headbound spreadsheet mechanics.

Trains. Fletch is either confidently not viewing his hand of cards
- unlike everyone else - or is in the process of eating them here.

Lastly Ed and Fletch took newcomers and largely inexperienced Mark and Jodie through the paces of Trains. A game which by now we surely all know, is about Trains - as the now part of the furniture in NoBoG joke goes. Actually it's Dominion. Without any rioting peasants, endless expansion boxes, and with a lovely board. Which if you've played this with Owein will know is not a required part of interaction to win the game.

Fillers. After the Lords of Waterdeep lot finished, they embarked on a game of Love Letter. Which was possibly the noisiest most raucous game of Love Letter ever to be played. I am not sure just how you can play such a noisy game of Love Letter ( Ed gave a reconstruction demonstration "BOOM, yes I am the Princess BITCHES !" ) , but they managed it. Lewis blamed Luke for all the raucousity ( not a word, should be a word ) post game.

The last filler was Space Cadets Dice Duel. This is a game which splits the players into two teams, each of which gets to crew a starship with the sole aim of shooting down the other starship. Each starship has a crew station that controls one aspect of the ship, weapons, shields and so on, and if you've ever played Star Fleet Battles, you'll know exactly where this comes from. In fact, the two miniatures they supply in the box are even though not officially linked with any Star Trek IP, pretty much exact replicas of the Defiant from the Star Trek series Deep Space Nine. Coincidence ?

Unlike SFB, play proceeds in frenetic real time, with no turns at all - neither me go you go, or we go, just, just play as fast as you can - with dice used as the main interaction between a player and the game. Whilst this might sound utterly stupid and chaotic ( which may or may not appeal to you ), the action of having to roll dice - of which you always have your own personal stash - injects a delay into the game, wherein you are continually rolling dice looking for maybe one or two values that are useful to you.

The dice are the fuel of the game. The engineer player has six normal dice, and depending on the result of a die, he can assign them to a ship crew station. Once a player receives a power die from the engineer player they can then roll their own dice that interact with their station. Once a die has been rolled that the station player likes, they lock their die in, and hand the power die back to the engineer - who gets to roll it again.

The realtime nature actually works out well for this - whilst the engineer can give power dice away to crew stations to power up that station ( and let them roll their own dice ), in practice there is a time lag between assigning power to a station and something useful coming of it. Shoving power into the shields for instance simply starts the process of rolling a single shield dice. It might be 20 seconds or more before you actually get to raise a shield in the direction you want...

Gameplay is fun, frenetic and at times stressful if you have a lot to do. A great game to play, and a bit of a crowd pleaser given its wacky play, zero downtime and raucous chatter. My only concern about the game is of its longevity - once a crew gets skilled at using their ship the game could break down into a bit of a binary blah fest, where whoever gets the last best movement gets to win. I can definitely see this happening, at which point the game is a whole lot less interesting, but, it also has to be said there is quite a learning journey to be made before you reach those oh so jaded clued in cynical heights. Whilst there are less than perfect crewmen on station, fun and doubt is to be had.

I lost both games. I blame Fletch for our first loss and his frantic handling of shields, helm and tractor beam - I was the "no stress here" engineer just handing out dice. In truth, Fletch's job was by far the trickiest and most busy, and not an easy ride by any stretch of the imagination - particularly for a first game. And I blame Ed for my second loss - after he did a sneaky piece of manoeuvring  that flipped him to the shieldless rear of our ship and proceeded to blow the crap out of us. For my part I wasn't watching the sneaky move ( which in hindsight I should have been ) - I was watching Fletch and Pip trying to load the torpedos... and fail...

Fletch has now left us for six months of glorious touring with Her Majesty's Finest Flyers, we hope he has a safe tour, and returns eager for gaming around Christmas !

I vant to drink your blood...

Twenty one this week, a few new people - hello Dave, Lee and Pip, and a beta site activation that didn't get activated.

With regards to the beta site overflow, only half a dozen people turned up for the quiz, so there wasn't a space problem, but after a quick word with Roger the landlord it seems that a) we can get tables reserved even during a quiz evening and b) they are thinking of moving their quiz night to something other than Tuesday anyway given the regular 20 or so people that turn up to NoBoG, so in future we may avoid any quiz clashes. Huzzah.

This week, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Agricola, Archipelago, Bruges and Fury of Dracula saw table time, with a bare few fillers making it out in the form of Skull and Roses and Love Letter.

Two epic games of Betrayal managed to take up the whole evening, as Lewis' zombies tried to eat all the hapless house explorers - and failed choking on the last tasty morsel, and the second game ended in something as a draw as they ran out of time running away from a multi headed snake. Needless to say the Betrayal table won a few more avid supporters and everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves.

Betrayal is something of a favourite at the Ribs for those that enjoy more of a thematic fun narrative, and it usually proves popular when someone turns up with it. Ewan - one of the many NoBoGers who owns the game - has now played something like half of the 50 available story lines and is beginning to worry about memorising all the secret information contained within! Time to write up a bumper book of NoBoG haunts expansion ?

Agricola with five saw Pete getting the win over a mixed player group of newcomers and experienced hands. Rich once again struggling with the packed field that is a five handed game limped into mid table.

Archipelago with a relatively inexperienced table surely threatened to all end in tears, but with no separatist and a pacifist in play the colony made it through in happy form, with newcomer and new player Pip leading her colonists to a pacifist victory. Nicky for her part placed a decent second, and if it wasn't for the pesky pacifist getting her victory condition, would have been crowned winner instead. Archipelago also got a lot of appreciative nods and table chatter - a very cool game when it works out nicely.

The pacifists in Archi are having a bit of a good run of late with Archipelago, surely meaning the meta game will shift in favour of the separatists in future as everyone avoids an overly contented colony.

Upstairs, Joe swept the table with a win at all three games - Bruges, Skull and Roses and Love Letter. Shocking.

And lastly, myself Dave and Lee clashed over the Fury of Dracula.

The Fury of Dracula is an all against one game, with a team of up to four vampire hunters taking on a single Dracula player. The Dracula player gets to sneak around Europe using a clever hidden movement mechanism avoiding hunters when he can to buy time to create new vampires and win the game. The hunters for their part are scouring the land trying to find Dracula - or more likely his back trail - and figure out via a process of elimination where the Dark Lord currently is so they can put an end to him.

Items can be picked up in major cities to help the hunters - pistols, rifles, crucifixes etc - and event cards can also be pulled in something of a calculated risk, 2/3 of the events help the hunters, 1/3 help Dracula - you won't know which until you pull it.... from the bottom of the deck.

The Fury of Dracula
The Dark One is caught at midnight as he lands in Denmark

Round this out with traps and encounters that Dracula can litter along his back trail, a night day timer that sees the vampire wax and wane in power, and the game ends up as a compelling cat and mouse game that can be balanced on a knife edge.

Lee played Dracula in our game and for the first half of play was very satisfied with his slippery ways as myself and Dave missed a possible route out of Spain to Ireland and blundered fruitlessly around Southern Europe. Realising our error - and seeing Dracula put to sea, we quickly moved to the Northern sea ports only to catch the Dark Lord as he landed. The rest of the game was a tense chase through central Europe and into the heart of Translyvania itself, the hunters hounding and hurting the vampire until by the very end it was possible to finish him for good. The final night had turned however, and a series of successful transformations into a bat allowed Dracula to outrun his pursuers and create his sixth vampire to win in a nail biting finish where a single dice roll spelled the win or loss of the game. Rather thematically Van Helsing was the final pursuer of the blood sucker, clashing in two epic final encounters, but alas, couldn't quite put an end to the monster. So very close.

All in all a great game which everyone really enjoyed.

At its best Fury of Dracula can work really well, and build a great narrative towards a dramatic finish. At its worst an unlucky or inept group of hunters can stumble around finding arse all, with the Dracula player having all the fun. But the fate of the hunters is always usually in their own hands - sometimes you can push your luck and fail big time however. Personally I always enjoy Dracula, the cat and mouse game is great, and pinning down Dracula can be very tough - but not impossible, and things can turn sour quickly for an otherwise smug vampire player.

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.

Rise of the Gamers

A crazy amount of gaming this week at the Ribs. An epic 28 people turned up to partake, giving us six tables of gaming goodness spread over most of the pub.

A smattering of new people ( four ) were also in attendance, with Ra, Small World, Mall of Horror, Manhattan Project, Village and Glass Road being first up on their respective tables.

I played Glass Road with Clive and Pete, and despite Clive consistently building whatever I had my eye on a single turn before I did ( apparently I did the same to him in Caverna a few weeks back ), I managed to grab the win for the Glassiest Brickiest Glass Roader of them all. Which maybe means my default strategy ideas for Glass Road are rubbish. In a slightly bizarre itinerary I then played Glass Road again, this time with a recent returned Mr Bond, Nicky and Robin. Robin got some nice points from an improved Sand works, and beat my resplendent baths by three points to secure the win. Pfah. Everyone likes a nice bath. The same cannot be said of an improved Sand works.

Having also previously beaten everyone off in a noisy Ra session, Robin went home with a double victory to his name. Greedy.

Meanwhile downstairs, the Eds dominated the Village, with the ever cunning but disarmingly friendly Med-Ed piling his villagers into their graves for the win. Never trust a friendly Med-Ed... he's probably winning.

Hanabi got another play again this week - cool game, everyone that hasn't given it a whirl probably should, just for the wacky experience of holding your cards backwards.

Uluru, Love Letter and Betrayal at House on the Hill rounded out the other second wave of games played, with Rich managing to convince/misdirect/fool two of the newcomers to learn this cool game called Race for the Galaxy.... To his credit Rich wasn't giving them a thorough drubbing, and things looked to be surprisingly equal when I looked over.

Betrayal played out with no one turning out to be the traitor... but all the survivors slowly succumbing to the hypnotising tune of the dark fiddler. In a rather spiteful end game play, Lewis lost his sanity and turned to the darkside on the very turn that the survivors won. Eh. It's always when you think it's over that something jumps out to eat you. Those dead zombies just lying there waiting for you to poke them... never dead. Don't do it. Don't do... oh well.

No Resistancing this week, which no doubt some people were relieved about, whilst others get to go home slightly sad. I think Resistance is turning into one of those Marmite type games, you love it or you hate it.

There has been a request to play King of Tokyo, so I'll stick that in my bag for next week. Also Smash Up has been requested. Although the idea of actually having some sort of plan for the following week is practically blasphemous for the unplanned anarchy that is NoBoG.

It probably goes without saying, but there are likely to be a couple of new people turn up again next week. Turn up early, get your votes in - or laid back apathy - as to what you want to play, and if you see someone new wondering what the hell all this board game madness is, invite them in. Then teach them the rules slightly wrong so you can win a glorious victory. Huzzah.

Over on Steam, a group of NoBoGers Who Also Might Play Computer Games slowly assembles. It's been suggested we have a bit of a Blood Bowl tournament over there. Which sounds like a kick ass plan to me. Now, whether to play comedy goblins or something a bit more competitive...