It's just a step to the left

Busy week at the Tun this week - but not because of a flood of interested people who had read last weeks newspaper or seen us on TV. Fickle and funny fate saw fit to feature ( say that quickly 100 times ) the Tun have one of its busiest Tuesday nights that we've seen, some sort of self help group turned up out of the blue and a fairly busy smattering of non gamer pub goers also competed for space.

Which meant space was critical. And upstairs was off limits due to Salsa noise. And I had issues with some serious people juggling. Something I've not had to do since the Ribs. This makes me unhappy. This gives me a meh face. It looks like this.

So yay. Are we back to running out of venue space ? Our once possible extra space has evaporated, and meh. For the record NoBoG numbers were pretty consistent again at 46 so, not us per se, just everyone else.

Maybe a new NoBoG folded table or two round the corner, hands off, plus some chairs is in order if this is the shape of things to come ( there is some spare ground space if not table space available ). I think the current folding table has done a fantastic job and is a pretty nice size for most games... what do NoBoG goers think ?

Anyway. Just a blip. Probably. Nothing to worry about - Famous last words as the ship sank beneath the icy waters.

On with the games !

The game I was most excited about seeing this week - and got to play - was Time Stories a curiously minimalistic looking deduction/narrative game that has you jumping into time to Sort Stuff Out. This game has been on my radar for sometime, and the very quiet word on the street from those that had experienced it was that Time Stories was one of the best board gaming experiences ever... ever... when you factored in the expansions for it. So, low hype, high performance - sounds almost like the opposite of most kickstarters... burn !

The minimalist box of TIME Stories. The Minimalist future aesthetic is kept up on the contents inside too.

This is going to be quite the waffle about TIME Stories. To my eye there's a lot of if not exactly new things going on here, then a very much pushing of the envelope in what it's doing, a lot of clever things, and arguably a very distinct take on story telling that... hasn't really been done before in a board game ? In short, a lot to talk about. Consider yourself warned.

So what is T.I.M.E Stories exactly ? It's just a step to the left... and then a jump to the riiiii-iii-iii-ii-iii-iiight. No. That's something else entirely.

Thematically the game is something of a Quantum Leap, Time Cop, Back to the Future any of those time travelling sci fi shows where Future People jump around in time to Fix Things, Break Things, or generally unwisely dick with the potential for some universe destroying time paradoxes by taking their own mom to the prom. You'll play one of a number of scenarios, with each scenario given the benefit of a time jumping premise being set pretty much anywhere anytime in any kind of reality. Expect swords. Or guns. Or Zombies. And just plain boring humans in a nuthouse.

Mechanically the game is a narrative exploration through a deck of location cards. And for a given scenario / story, you'll have a different deck of cards to investigate. So, cards are laid out to represent locations, and on visiting those locations you get to pick up the card and read the narrative on the back. A bit like some Choose Your Own Adventure or Fighting Fantasy book, but in card form. If you've ever played Holmes and Watson or any of those deduction detective games that have you travelling to locations and reading things, then you'll get an understanding of what's going on here ( and to a lesser extent something like Tales of the Arabian Nights ) . This isn't a game about harvesting cubes or setting up some euro production engine, nor about mass invasions of armies or politicking, it is instead a light RPG type game, where the roleplaying is non existent and confined to the elements of your character card, and the emphasis is on a collective experience of a story.

Where TIME Stories really starts to excel beyond all those other narrative and deduction type games before it however is in its rich and ( for what it is ) complex setup of a story and your journey through it, where you can pick up items, discover new locations or even change what's going on at a given location entirely. The game has mechanics that can empower a story to be highly interactive - if it so chooses, it's entirely dependent on the scenario - wherein even just looking at a new card alters the fabric of something else, either opening it up to discovery, or locking it away from your grasp. How the game pulls this off mechanically is very clever - story tokens ( just abstract shapes ) indicate what knowledge you have of events - and those story tokens allow you access to things or places you might not have been able to in the past. The simplest example of this shows how you can push narrative along - talking to a person in one location has them whispering to you that they know a secret, and come talk to them later in the Dormitory - and you get a token for that. On visiting the Dormitory one of the locations has that token, and on doing that, you get to talk to that person who whispers you their secrets.

The futuristic TIME Stories. Where you meet Bob. The chief
time technician. I'm not joking. Bob, holds the fate of
the universe in his hands.
You'd think he'd at least be called Robert
with such a serious responsibility.

The permutations for this can escalate quickly - particularly when entirely new areas of the map are revealed to you, and finding a key lets you through a door, the map changes, and now you can visit the previously off limit gardens for instance.

Given that the starting scenario has some 30 odd items to discover and perhaps a dozen different tokens on top of that, this is a pretty big deal. It allows a static game to actually track a progressing narrative, tracks what you know and dont know explicitly - and also implicitly via the players just figuring out WTF is going on, and the environment you are in changes and adapts to the unfolding story.

Those that play RPGs that mostly narrate a story directly into the imagination are well versed in a rich and evolving environment that lives around them - the GM tirelessly shifting scope to adapt to the infinite possibilities of the players. Doing something of the same in a board game is quite the mean feat where you have static setups and no GM. Don't mistake what something like a "light RPG" game of Descent does with its narrative being driven by new areas on a map to stick your minis and new foes to kill. This is an entirely different beast driven by story - not your location on a tactical battle map. Indeed going back to the RPG analogy, if the melee table top fights in a pen and paper RPG are directly related to games like Descent and Mice and Mystics - which are all fights and very little story, then the narrative story elements in an RPG - that have no table top part - are directly relateable to what Time Stories does. And don't mistake that for something like Tales of the Arabian Nights either which is a super simplistic Choose Your Own Adventure setup. TIME Stories is more Scotland Yard, with multiple paths, a dynamic environment and a rich narrative.

Is TIME Stories in fact one of the first board game versions of the story side of an RPG experience ? I'm struggling to come up with any other game that has done that - something like Pathfinder Adventure Card game doesn't even come close to what Time Stories achieves, even though component and stuff wise, they are probably in the same ballpark. PAC to me tries to simulate a tabletop melee heavy dungeon crawl in card form without a tabletop, it has little to say about story. I'm thinking that TIME Stories could be something of a unicorn here - the narrative bit of an RPG and something never really done (so well) before.

The game above and beyond all that also has the TIME element which feels similar to the time setup in tragedy looper. You get to play through the game once - almost certainly fail - reset TIME and try it again. You're time travellers right. However, somethings can stay the same between time jumps - as time agents you already know what happened before, and this time around, you can maybe shortcut something. Or fix something. You know where that hidden cupboard is. No need to spend time searching for it this time. And so on. You can argue here about whether this is an interesting mechanic to allow you to do meta things and get foreknowledge between runs - or whether its a cynical element to make you run through the same content more than once, eking out new content in a controlled fashion - or whether again it allows a designer to put truly hard scenarios into place knowing that you will get several cracks at the problem.

TIME Stories - who will you quantum leap like jump into ?

The game also features something which might be arguably superfluous - the characters themselves and their capabilities, the usual-ish simple setup of melee, charisma and agility. The stats however are a little vague in places - I suspect because like the rest of the game it means a given scenario can actually choose what those stats mean, so instead of strength, glibness and agility, maybe this time its fighting, intelligence and research. Locations can have you doing the whole by the numbers melee fights - just like your Fighting Fantasy books - zomg, here comes 2 orcs, they start fighting you, roll to hit - as well as dice rolls against your stats for stealing items, persuading people, breaking down doors and yada.

There was a bit of debate at the table as to whether the whole dice roll thing added anything to the core game - in a purist sense it does not, but in a lets roll some dice and experience some epic misses, epic hits and skin of the teeth saves, it probably does. But. There is an element there of if some encounters are hard, does it make you stop and tool up first - visiting locations and spending time. Do you risk it, or play safe ? And of course, as Alfie pointed out, everything takes time, and those melee encounters and otherwise all serve to burn extra time at a location. When you run out of time your jump finishes and you have to reset. I think on balance the characters and dice rolls add that smear of necessary light RPG-ness to the game. It gives you a different element to hold onto. But I can totally understand that someone appreciating the narrative, deduction or puzzles could be somewhat perplexed at the need to roll a dice at X location. I think its appealing to more than a niche of one kind of player.

Because of the nature of the game and its clever setup it has a great deal of scope about what it can throw at you. Not only in the stories it can present to you. But also game wise what it can do to you -  It can give you deduction problems to solve. It can give you outright mental problems to sit and solve at the table - like some mid game Sudoku or labyrinth solving exercise. It can threaten you with melee and force you to gear up and find healing stuff, or give you moral dilemmas about whether to beat someone to death or chase them away ( and the consquences can be different for each ). It can give you choices about the dreaded Splitting The Party, or which character you should Sam Beckett Quantum Leap style jump into this visit. And offer challenges of working out what the story is doing - the motivations of the characters, do I release that chained up nutter or leave him be, do I trust that mad capering idiot with the top hat when he says he has something awesome to show me.

All in all, it seems like the game is pretty capable of serving anything up to you. Which is pretty amazing.

Of course. All of this is entirely dependent on just how well written the scenarios are. How cleverly they make use of the tools available of the game mechanics.

We played the base box scenario - you get one, and only one scenario with the game.. which is... rather mean, but given how much is in it, it probably is the equivalent of several scenarios of a more static deduction type game ) - and the story was compelling and the elements nicely clicked. Without giving spoilers away, a visit to a mental hospital in the1920s to investigate something Bad Going On. You can probably imagine what kind of field that gives you to work with - its not an unfamiliar trope.

I can see why TIME Stories is picking up a devoted following. The game IS a one shot affair however - play it once and that scenario is then dead to you, so, there is definitely a big issue of replayability here, a one hit wonder with a vengeance. This is not entirely unknown territory for such narrative games though, and others before it have had similar problems - albeit, TIME Stories with its single scenario is really testing the limit of whether a one play one box thing is a good deal or not. Of course, as of writing, there are another four scenarios you can go out and buy, and get a cool experience all over again. But yeah. Unfortunately there's really no other way it could be with TIME Stories - because the scenarios are so interleaved and carefully crafted, there's not much you could do to approach the game as a high replayable scenario without destroying many of the elements that make the game stand out ( the puzzles would immediately go out of the window ).

For  me, it's debatable whether you'd want to buy TIME Stories. Its limited replayability is a big issue. On the other hand the experience it gives - for my money - is second to none, other than actually playing an RPG, and even then, it manages to bang out what an RPG can do in probably, I don't know, a tenth of the time. Oddly enough, I think TIME Stories is probably the ideal club type game, where a single copy of the game could be played by many different groups of a single club. It'd be a great experience, get a lot of use, but still abide by its you can only play me once deal.

Overall - Highly Recommended. A must play for anyone who is even slightly interested in narrative things, deduction type games, or any form of RPG. I'd go further and say it's probably a must play for any kind of board gamer, at least once, just to see the clever tricks the game manages to pull off and use an inspiration springboard.

I got to play as some cute but wild eyed and committed cannibal girl, followed by an attractive lady with an erotomania problem, and learned just how sexy plungers ( the kind you unblock toilets with ) can be. I won't spoil it. But it's definitely all in there. Ask any of the players about The Plunger.

Alfie stuck with his coke head character who could snort cocaine at will to gain dice power ups - but using the last dose of coke meant a permanent health hit, Hal flipped between a hardcore soldier who was a secret pacifist and couldnt abide anyone dying, and Darren played some glib mouthed shyster who needed to be escorted everywhere otherwise we lost time. Time doing what ? Don't ask.

Fab game anway. Really pleased I got to play it, quite the unique experience, go play it !

Dead of Winter. And no sign of Jon Snow.

Dead of Winter was back on table this week, one of the most popular NoBoG games of 2015, but seemingly the steam has run out of this title and it's dwindling in its replays and I dare say it wont feature in the top 10 for 2016. I saw Elliot having a bash at this - I think it might have been his first foray into the game, and it seemed to go on for quite a while, barring a heavy 5 player Imperial Settlers game, it was the longest play of the evening ( over 3 hours ). I didn't get a chance to really ask if everyone enjoyed it - I kinda got the sense it went on a bit too long.

Elsewise, after some squeezing onto a larger sized table, Lewis got Epic Wizards to the table, whilst at the other end of the table Star Wars Carcassonne shaped up to possibly be the most interesting of all the carcassonnes - it certainly looked hella funky.

We also had some lovely old school gaming going on with Judge Dredd, a real blast from the 80's

Judge Dredd. IIRC the Ape Gang are in this. Awesome.

past, and a game from the - in my estimation - first golden age of gaming, when board games were busting dice out left right and centre, Games Workshop was still.. well... about Games and not just miniatures, and companies like Avalon Hill, GDW and TSR had yet to go financially tits up.

Luke and his more than 100 games of Betrayal at House on the Hill ( isn't it about time someone made him the official mascot of the game or something ) led a table around another dance on the hill ( really, more stories required !), whilst down on the ground what looked to be a great game of Imperial Settlers was shaping up, Ben had so many prestige buildings as Japanese it was bewildering ( but apparently he wasn't winning ???? ), and Ewan got the lovely second edition Mission Red Planet out again, with a mostly gentlemanly first round of scientists, followed by a much less gentlemanly round of secret agents, followed by some positively dickish Femme Fatales. If you've never played the game you won't have a clue what that means, suffice to say, increasing levels of dickery.

Also David lead his merry band of Star Wars people through the romp of another Imperial Assault - albeit Rebel Chloe was absent, presumably off training on Dagobah with Yoda. David reports that they are just about half way through the campaign, but, I think Stormtrooper fatigue is beginning to kick in, as their cannon fodder Red Shirt nature is starting to tire Darth David out. Uh huh. Maybe there should be a bad guy rota thing from week to week. . .

As ever the evening finished with the game du jour - Secret Hitler, Lewis finally tumbled off his winning streak, for once being a liberal and also marking his first loss. Richard IV managed to take a few snapshots in game of the characters in play with his super secret smart fascist detector mobile app ( which I suspect is just him drawing things on the screen ). Awesome !

The Smart Fascist app detects its first positive

Imperial Assault

Epic Wizards Spell War Thingies. Rearrange words to make sense.

Carcassonne Star Wars.

Betrayal at House on the Hill

Imperial Settlers kicks off

Mission Red Planet 2

Mars 2.0

After having been talked up for sometime, the sleeper hit of Mission Red Planet which has proven somewhat tricky to get your hands on in the past, has finally returned to shelves with the second edition tweak and reprint that FFG has just released. Did they tweak it and break it ? Improve it ? Or is it the good old Mission Red Planet we know and love.

To answer all those questions, this week Ewan had it fresh off the presses and ready to play in all it's cute chibi astronaut glory. Here's what he had to say about that.

Tonight Tim, Sam, Andy, Rich, Simon, and I put on our space helmets to head to Mars for riches in the second edition of Mission Red Planet.

Mission Red Planet reprint in all its glory

Mission Red Planet has been played a few times in the past at Nobog but I believe this may be the first time that the second edition has been played. I won’t go too much in depth into the rules/gameplay, as previous Noblogs have covered the first edition ( Ed. actually I'm not sure the basic premise ever has made it into a NoBlog.. google search says no ! ) .

However there are some differences with the newer edition. First off there are several cosmetic differences, including some cool astronauts for each player (now plays up to 6 players) as well as the board being circular and feeling a little smaller. Secondly the new addition of Phobos, a moon orbiting Mars, which is an extra zone to send your astronauts too and potentially use (in conjunction with the soldier card) to stage a Mars invasion. Finally the addition of action cards, which can really have an impact on the final phases of scoring.

Mars begins to fill up with eager astronauts

Playing with 6 certainly makes Mars now feel crowded but as everyone plays pretty much simultaneously each round it didn’t add too much to the overall game time, I think we took about 90 min to play after a rules explanation. The crowded board certainly added to the theme as the competition for resources was fierce and the slight change to the rules of counting down rather than up during character resolution made the game feel more thematic.

Phobos is an interesting addition an adding some addition strategies to the game. When you send astronauts there they are pretty much stuck there; however with the change to the soldier card you can move up to 3 to any area on Mars. This makes timing the soldier card even more important if you want to fully utilise him. The action cards have the potential to be a game changer and are brutal. Andy was able to play one entitled space zombies (yes even in a steam punk universe there are zombies) and bring all his dead astronauts back and put them anywhere on Mars; pipping me for control on a key area.

An unexplored Mars ready to be discovered - first turn MRP

Overall the new additions to Mission Red Planet have made this more than a simple reprint and have added a lot to the original game. For those that own the original though I don’t know whether this warrants buying the new edition (unless you want the new astronaut meeples) and it will depend on what you feel about the new rules. For me I really like the new additions and it makes Mission Red Planet feel new again with in a familiar setting. In terms of what went on in our game Tim ran away with the win due to some nice placements of discovery cards, netting him a lot of ice to win the global mission. Definitely worth a play for those who have either played the original or for new players.  

Six players at 90 minutes is a great play time. The board looked like utter chaos at the end - I didn't play it, but I would quibble that the game board is now far too busy - more players, bigger pieces, small board - to my eye it made it a good deal tougher to instantly appraise who was where in what numbers and what needed to be done to massage control. A minor quibble though. The astronauts look kick ass. I think I would possibly be tempted myself to custom print a bigger board for it. In any case, cool stuff, I wanna give this a go to see how the changes stack up.

Ten - hut. MRP Astronauts on parade.

Last weeks inaugural play at NoBoG of the print and play version of Secret Hitler took the house by storm ( and I failed to get a game of it ), so this week I printed out a second set of it just to make very damn sure that I would get to play it.

Which turned out to be wise as both copies ended up in use.

Secret Hitler. Time to out those whose fashion sense is far too
into sharp outfits with black, red and skull motifs.
Liable to be fascists or Dennis the Menace.

My first time playing Secret Hitler I found the game was indeed pretty damn good, and for all its simplified Resistance setup - and is there really enough to think about here, still has enough gas in game to get the usual pointy fingers and accusations going around a table, but dare I say it in more streamlined fashion. The game also feels very inclusive - the roles very quickly zip around the table, and having to exclude players who were previously part of the legislative roles forces play into a wider circle. Some very funny play, including an increasingly obvious Fascist of Lewis, Richard IV real time editing hitler moustaches onto suspects via some cell phone trickery, some discussion about when choosing who to kill whether you could kill yourself in some very apt Hitler suicide type thing and Sam blatantly acting like a Fascist in the first round - vote me, vote me, I'll kill who you like.. possibly the most needy Fascist play ever - but actually turning out to NOT be a fascist, followed by a much more trustworthy and calm game where he turned out in fact to be Hitler and got elected as Chancellor. Dammit. Plus I'm not sure I'll even believe Hal is anything but a liberal when playing Secret Hitler. I just can't see him as a Fascist. Ever. We finished on a five player game of Secret Hitler - and the consensus around the table was that five just doesn't work too well - I think six may be the actual workable minimum number for this game.

Old School Mexica

Hal brought along something of an old school classic in the form of Mexica which at this point is nearly 15 years old, one of a trio of games in the so called "Mask Trilogy" - Mexica, Tikal and Java. Mexica has recently had a reprint and a facelift with more detailed and fancier buildings and overhauled board art. An old school relaxed Euro ( as all the games in the Mask Trilogy are ), Mexica features players constructing buildings around the board in order to gain dominance in a particular district. Districts themselves are not set and are created from players building discrete islands surrounded by canals, meaning no two games will ever quite work out in the same way.

The new (resin?) building / pyramid pieces look great, and the game is quite the eye candy piece - although it has to be said that ALL of the Mask games were pretty nice to look at.

Ich bin ein Hamburgum. I am a donut as Kennedy once said.

Also keeping it Euro and somewhat old school as ever was Stu and Tom and this week Stu was offering Hamburgum (2007) up for play. I've not played this but it looks Eurotastic - and I think is one of the handful of games to have the whole action rondel thing going on ( a wheel of actions ) - of which I remember from the much fancied Navegador (2010).

Lewis tempted fate by playing Cauldron again, and the beast that is Betrayal at House in the Hill seems to be stirring once more and beginning to pop up or be requested with some regularity. I still maintain someone(s) needs to sit down and create a whole new story book for the game to extend past the 50 included. People like Luke have now played Betrayal so often they've done every single story, and a lot of those more than once ( which tells you something about how popular that game is with some people )

No Champions of Midgard this week ( gasp ), but we did have some Lords of Waterdeep instead.

Blood Rage, Ragnarok and the end of the world.
Oblivion. Which came as a relief if I'm honest.

And lastly Blood Rage also made it back to table, and a largely new player base got to go through its Viking delights with Pete teaching and then monster feedback engine-ing through the game ( he blasted to an enormous 200+ point victory by the end ). This is the second time I've played Blood Rage - I didn't like it the first time, I made something of a laundry list of outright mechanical flaws and noted a number of game design decisions that were personally unfun and eye rolling to me but gave it the benefit of the doubt - and this second time around I have to say it just underscored those issues to me and removed the benefit of the doubt to outright no thanks. Made worse this time around by my effective player elimination two thirds through the game. Ragnarok couldn't come quickly enough for me.

Lovely miniatures though.

A few shots for the gallery. Thanks go to Tim this week, who was snapping away with a fancy new phone to get you most of the shots of Mission Red Planet that you see. For me, I had time to snap extra shots of Blood Rage. It's not like I was doing anything else ...
 

Blood Rage - I had time to titivate with the camera

If this is the kind of game the Vikings play, I can see why they are all Blood Ragey. They're probably not enjoying Eric M Langs unique sense of questionable game design either.

Cauldron

Betrayal at House on the Hill. More stories required.

More Mission Red Planet

Pandemic. Contagion lurked in the corner with Voitek and Monika.

The Return of the frakkin' Toasters

Monika bounced excitedly up to me clapping her hands.

"Did you bring it ???!" she asked with a big grin.
"Yessss... but... it's kind of late, not even set it up yet." I answered unconvinced
"Well, where is it ?! I will set it up. Quick !" she replied with boundless enthusiasm.

I gave her Battlestar Galactica and left her and Voitek to it whilst I made sure everyone was sorted with a game.

So this week, Battlestar Galactica once more sailed the deep black with just about all the expansions spread between five players - two of which were toasters, the evil cylons.

James is pushed out the airlock. Don't worry, he's not
human, he's a fancy hoover. With murderous tendencies.

I called Monika and James out on being evil from near the start - a few slips of tells made me suspicious, although Voitek also had a couple of slightly dodgy calls at the start of the game, but, to me, Monika and James were clearly Not One Of Us. And that despite me playing the ever suspicious Baltar, and Voitek playing the equally suspect Boomer.

Whatever it was, the case against James and Monika seemed quite compelling and Richard IV early on obliged the rumours by pushing James out of the airlock. There was a little debate about whether to push Monika or James out of the airlock, in the end it was James. We had made only a single jump of distance one, we had barely started, and one of our number had been spaced. Forcefully plunged into the pitiless vacuum to die a terrible death.

Richard cackled gleefully. One thing playing with Richard teaches you is that he loves a bit of chaos and disaster. At least as far as board games go, he is definitely in the "just likes to watch things burn" camp.

But in this case pushing people out of the airlock was good move. It turned out the rumour mill was right and James was indeed a filthy traitor - and thus no one was particularly upset. It wasn't a human we had ejected into the void. But more like a Henry Hoover. A Henry Hoover with a remarkable capability for conversation. And murderous plotting.

And then we didn't trust Monika either. Who shortly after revealed herself to indeed be another

Battlestar Galactica ... and a new table lamp !

toaster. And we still hadn't even got half way through the game. In hindsight the debate about whether to push one toaster out or the other toaster was moot. Any toaster would have been good.

You'd think having sussed out the bad guys would be a great help to us. It wasn't. Galactica seemed incapable of jumping more than a distance of one at any time. Cylon ships piled ever higher and were never dealt with. And then the boarding parties started.

At one point I was the Admiral, CAG and President. That's all the titles. Belonging to one person. At this point I was the most important person in the fleet, everyone else was a mere peasant and had to do as I said. On the other hand, there was no way I could successfully fulfil all three roles at once. The cylons joked that I was the only person left in the fleet, hence I had all the jobs. I just like to think it was my natural leadership skills being rewarded.

In the end the fleet was destroyed, we had barely got half way, supplies had run out, Galactica was almost critical with damage, and my epic reign as Admiral CAG President was a failure. However, I also like to think that such an important person as Admiral CAG President would have had an escape plan. And a personal escape craft. And unlike the rest of humanity made it away safely. Possibly with a hidden cache of champagne.

So looking behind the curtain a bit about what makes Battlestar Galactica tick, it seems to me that the jump cards have an enormous impact on whether the game runs short, long, easy or tough. Getting a set of 1 jump cards can effectively kill you, whereas getting a couple of juicy 3 jumps can make the going a piece of cake for the humans. On reflection, cutting all the waffle out, I think the game actually just comes down to that jump progress, and little else. It also has the capability to make the game go on forever. But you could argue you don't want to look behind the curtain of an FFG game. FFG games are to my mind notoriously random in design. Whilst I enjoy a number of FFG games I could never imagine ever calling one of their titles "elegant" or "clever". Long on bling, long on components and short on.... balance, playtesting and editing. Looking too hard at the Wizard of Oz just destroys the illusion. Better to ignore it and enjoy the show.

Alchemists and another of the lamps.
And a pretty new blue table cloth !

Elsewise Nate turned up again with a choice selection of good Euros, and eventually settled on Concordia. Elliott banged out Ticket to Ride again - Ticket To Ride Marklin - which apparently is different to Ticket to Ride in that you have passengers. That go on a journey and then die. It's very maudlin. I have no idea. We also had some Alchemists, Lords of Vegas and Takenoko, where I believe Lewis took the win by a single point.

And my copy of the ever excellent Mission Red Planet hit the table, with some evil shenanigans leaving Tim and his lucrative high worth area out of luck as Dean sabotaged his scoring efforts with a secret area card effect.

Seven Wonders, Smash Up and Spectre Ops also filled out the games first up, and there were quite a few tables with just three players. The extra space at the Mash Tun means we no longer are forced to play five or six player games, but can play whatever takes your fancy with small cosy groups.

Dominant Species

James also finally got Dominant Species back to table - he's being trying for a while. Pete got off to some game stomping initial move that James was most unhappy about, but despite this the wily Tom managed to win the day - with I think his arachnids.

As well as BSG this week I also had time for a couple of games of Cheaty Mages - yes, BSG plus fillers in one evening. Madness. The end times are upon us. I am pleased to report that I won embarrassingly well in Cheaty Mages. Not once, but twice. Just to prove it wasn't a fluke. I am the cheatiest of Cheaty Mages apparently. A sentiment Sean agreed with as he watched the table - I was not to be trusted. Shockingly libellous.

Apart from the games this week we also trialled out a couple of rechargable led table lights. Which seemed to do the job ok. Personally I wasn't terrifically thrilled with them, not entirely easy to get a well lit board and keep the light out of everyones eyes, on the other hand, when they were switched off you realised just how spoiled you were with them, and how crap the light was without them. As it stands I think the lights are pretty much perfect for our needs. Light in weight, portable, adjustable and offering a good light source for the gloom. Apparently one of the lights really helped with Alchemists, allowing the phones to pick up the cards without suffering in the poor light.

We've also got a whole pile of new table cloths - mostly in blue, with a red and purple one thrown in for good measure. There are now once again enough cloths for all tables - so you can spare your board games from the unknown vagaries of pub table residues and condensing glasses and instead treat them to the luxury of a felt surface.

As ever I leave you with the gallery.

Takenoko

7 Wonders

Lords of Vegas

Smash Up

Mission Red Planet... on a red table cloth. Fancy.

Spectre Ops

Concordia

Ticket to Ride Marklin

44 if you're counting. A number of soliders down again this week. I blame it being summer and everyone swanning off for holidays. With the exception of Martin. Who was allegedly ill. I'll assume he'll be bringing in a sick note this week to explain his absence last week.

Viva la revolucion

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

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

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

Cuba Libre - Viva La Casinos !

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Citadels with the newbie Citadel players

No idea who won.

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

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

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

Jacques mimes his interpretation of "Saboteur"

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