In which NoBoG nicknames get a little more ridiculous.

Happy Lententide, board gamers! What awaits us in this divulsion of board-based diversions? I'll tell you what: a veritable trove of tabletop treats. And speaking of treats, Lewis gave me a rolled up chocolate crepe thingy to celebrate pancake day. What a time to be alive! And what a time to be attending NoBoG! I was tardy to the Tun — not, this time, because of any pancake-related procrastination but due to the rather mundane delay involved in waiting in a queue to get cash, and then typing my PIN in wrong. I'm not good with numbers, OK?! But this was not enough to stop me getting in on a game — oh no! — I arrived to the main room, pint in hand (I had to put that cash to good use, after all) and immediately bagsied a spot in Dicenstein. I then discovered that all the spots had been bagsied already so I sort of dithered a bit, but then two other people un-bagsied their places and the resulting polite-off culminated in my playing it. But more on that later — read on to find out to what everyone else was getting up.

 

My first excursion was to a game I can't think of a decent pun for because it's called bloody Tash Kalar which just doesn't lend itself to jokes in the English language. All I've got is something weak to do with moustaches, so leave your suggestions in the comments. Anyway, my first impression of this game was that it looked pretty complicated. This was confirmed by Sam whose first words to me were "I'm enjoying it but it's fucking hard." The basic gameplay consists of what he described as "combat Othello" — placing tokens in certain patterns which allow you to activate cards, each of which requires a certain pattern of tokens, summons something special and potentially has some special effects. The more powerful the effect and summon, the more complicated the pattern is that you need to have already. Sam wasn't feeling to confident about the game because Alex already had a fire elemental out which had wiped out a whole bunch of stuff all at once — the potential for chaining things together and wreaking destruction seems quite high.

A rather unclear shot of Tash Kalar. In the
middle is the grid on which you put your tokens.

I checked back just after the game had ended and now Sam was rather enamoured with it as "it went brilliantly because I fucking won!" Monika accidentally took victory from the other two players and handed it to Sam. They both insist that she would never do anything nice to Sam on purpose so this was not a deliberate coronation, but kingmaking is obviously a possibility. It seems like it could be a bit of a mind-bender — "You feel you could do a lot better if you were a lot smarter because you have to think so many jumps ahead."
The game looked really interesting as well as the card designs being gorgeous and I'd quite like a go at some future NoBoG (hint!)

 

Next I was off to spectate a race where the prize is the whole galaxy! Quite high stakes. I've played a couple of times before but apparently I've forgotten all the symbology of it, which is (famously) intense. I should be ashamed of myself really — we mathematicians are supposed to be good at memorising and understanding crazy abstract symbols. The players had an embarrassing situation of their own though; Joe — a first timer! — looked set to win! "If he's developing, I'm definitely developing, said one nervous player.

It's a race! Newbie Joe is middle-left with
more developments than everyone else.

J-Dawg (the nickname has apparently stuck!) revealed "for the record" though, that "this is not the real game" and was just a practice. Why? "Because there are new players" — like Joe — who "might be accidentally succeeding." Well that's a new euphemism for beginner's luck! And a very cruel slander to someone who could already articulate a clear strategy of "build cards. Game." He did seem to have about ten times as many cards as any of the other players, which even I can remember is a good sign.

In front of the bar the mild week was nevertheless experiencing the Dead of Winter, a game which I still have not played (they tried to convince me this week, but I wanted something a bit more duck-outable.) They'd already experienced one unpleasant eventuality in which one character found insta-death on the exposure die which you have to roll when you go a-wandering. I unsubtly inquired about the existence of any early suspicions, and even though Meltem copped to "always having a suspicious face" they weren't ready to properly finger anyone and thought there might not be one.

Dead of Winter set-up.

Having still not played this perennial favourite I asked for a quick run-down of the gameplay. Apparently the long and short of it is: feed the colony, search piles of equipment, avert crises, do/fail the main objective (delete as applicable depending on whether you're a baddie) and do your secret objective (or skip this part if you're Matt, according to post-game facebookery!) The end — simple! Given the quantity of bits I suspect it's a bit more complicated. The moral dilemma of what to do with the survivor tokens, which represent food consuming babies and old people, had not been resolved — and apparently my suggestion of just letting them die/turning them into Soylent Green was no good as you'd lose morale and then everyone gets sad and you lose. Bleak.

Serried ranks of soldiers in Dead of Winter.

On my return the game was getting close to completion and the survivors were worried about not having enough tool cards to complete the objective. Recent turns had been fairly quiet due to not moving much (staying holed up is safer of course, just sitting in front of your fire fueled by zombie-parts and doing some knitting I guess) but Meltem was still suspecting Adam of being a traitor ("because nine times out of ten he's a traitor!") Unfortunately I didn't catch the very end of the game so I may never know what befell the four!

Things hot up (cool down?) in Dead of Winter

 

At this point I interrupt your regular programming to relate a tale from the Epic Spell Wars table wherein Hannah loudly lamented that, "he had three wild magic and I killed him before he had to use them! I'm so terrible!" For those not in the know such a card requires you to shout "WILD MAGIC!" whenever you activate a spell with them, hence being seen as something of a forfeit. We share your sorrow, Hannah. Though to be fair there was quite a lot of extremely wild magic being flung back and forth!

 

So, to return to the regular schedule, I went exploring! Specifically I explored the little alcove where they were exploring early 19th century America just like Lewis and Clark. In Lewis and Clark you are trying to get from one side of the continent to the other first by river, then over land, then by river then land then river. (If I have correctly remembered the precise sequence of river/land which I may not have...) You do this by acquiring lots of little hexagons. (Actually hexagonal prisms...) Effectively it's a "really complicated race" in which the hexagons represent canoes, horses, logs, meat, tools and skins. They're not really called skins, but these particular players want to sell four of them at once. hehe. The player possessing Lewis from the start was a bit miffed that this didn't confer any advantage, but when I asked what it should give you, he said it should make you automatically win, so I'm not sure he can be trusted to devise balanced house rules. You also have Indians whom you can hire to help you, but they slow you down because when you break camp to actually do some movement, the more Indians the less you move.

Hexagons! More than four skins!

The fundamental means of making progress is paying resources in order to use cards, to do which you actually have to play two cards together — each in a different role, so you have to choose which of the card's sides is best to use. Tim, whom I am now required to quote as Timbelina, said the game was "a bit brain melting" and this effect seemed to already be underway as he was already talking to himself, asking why he was only playing a one-power card when he had something that needed more power! Goey Joey (what have I got myself into with these nicknames, seriously?!) was the only one who'd ever played before but wasn't exactly racing ahead as when I looked in for a second time they were all stuck on the mountains. The reason for this is that you tend to grab a load of stuff which is useful for progressing through the river and have a bunch left over when you get to the end of the river section, but it is apparently avoidable if you plan ahead well.

Trying not to let his mind melt onto his hand
and ruin the cards.

I wound my way back around the tables to find a heavenly game of Celestia in the offing. A quite unbelievably cute airship is captained by a new player each turn who may or may not be able to pilot it from its current station to the next one. If you think the captain is capable (which is to say, possesses the right resource cards), you stay aboard in the hope of a far-off land flowing with milk and honey (note: not actually sure what the resources you pick up are; probably not milk or honey.) If successful, you, the captain and the other True Believers move on and the captaincy moves to the next person. But if you are too trusting in your pitiful pilot, you go crashing down with the ship and get nothing, and the ship returns to the start. You do always have the option, though, of expressing your lack of confidence in the captain by simply disembarking. You then get whatever meagre rewards await where you are, which are of course not as delicious as those at loftier destinations. It seemed a neat, simple concept with lovely pieces and cards.

SO CUTE! LOOK AT IT!!

Trying to decide whether to trust the captain.

And that brings me roundly back to the spooky graveyard of malformed cuboids forming the Dicenstein! Now an iniquitous past in Warhammer has given me a love of games with ten trillion dice which is exactly what Dicenstein is. Though as I will explain, there are some missed tricks here, but all those dice, each having little pictures and weird symbols printed on them, make a cool first impression. The figurines, too, are quite nice, though the size seems a bit off — they don't stand up well and laying them down doesn't work well with all the dice that clutter the board at the beginning.

My goodness, that's a lot of dice! Note fallen-over
Dracula-figurine, because trying to keep them
stood up was just too much effort.

The aim of the game is to accrue points by digging up graves containing monster parts (represented by dice) and either cashing them in or using them to create your own, better monster and battering the other beasts with it. You start out as a craven hunchback which will automatically melt into nothingness after three turns, but when you melt, die by being clawed to death by a mantis-creature or return to your lab, your monster disintegrates and you reform it by rolling all your acquired dice and selecting four (one head, one body, one each of arms and legs.) Each die has stats that you add together to make your terrifying hybrid beast of brutality, and then you venture out again. Each type of dice also confers a unique power on your new monster, like being able to move diagonally or to re-roll some of your opponents' attack dice. Before you do this you have the option to return a set of dice — but you have to balance getting cash with having enough dice left to make a good monster.

Lewis tries to serenade a swarmling.
I don't think it's working.

Our game proceeded in two clear phases: in the first, two of us made monsters with huge amounts of "dig" stat which essentially cleared the board of dice. Then we focused on making the most horrifying and deadly mutants of mayhem and went on to clobber each other to death as violently as we could while trying to sneak back to our labs before dying ourselves, in order to regain health and cash in dice.

I acquired quite a lot more dice than this over
the course of the game: you can see why it got
hard to roll them all at once!

So how was it? The game is fundamentally fun but pretty limited. There are clearly quite a few different tactics to explore given the many different powers and stats, but I suspect the majority are dead ends. A simple example is that the dig stat is totally useless once most dice have been dug up. The clown parts seem to have poor stats and a weak special power. If you have a gargoyle part you essentially no longer need to care about your speed because the arena is so tiny (just 4 by 4 squares) that, coupled with the diagonal movement from the gargoyle, you can move anywhere in one turn (and often you can move back in the same turn.) The game might have gone differently if anyone had tried to interrupt the shambling mole-creatures which just dug up the entire graveyard stuffing the invisible man's limbs (how do you see them once you dig them up?!) into their hamster-like cheek-pouches, though in the end this didn't make or break the game. Nevertheless clearing the board of dice severely limited my opponents' options and if I hadn't made a couple of tactical blunders (including forgetting one of my special powers which could have allowed me an extra go at scoring some dice) I suspect it would have got me a win.

Once mostly cleared of dice, the pokey size of
the 4x4 game-board is revealed.

My main gripe though is with the dice — for starters you just don't spend enough time rolling them! This surely is the most satisfying part of any dice-rolling game but you only do it when re-forming your monster. They also have tiny symbols and are often hard to differentiate from one another, which you need to do to work out which special power they confer. This means you spend a lot of time sorting and hunting through the dice to work out which of yours you want to put in your creation and which of those on the board are best to snatch up. Though it's undoubtedly cool to form your monster out of the dice, it would perhaps also do more justice to the promise of a name like "Dicenstein" if you could acquire a bunch of dice in different stats which you then had to roll to perform each action. The fact that you can only form your monster out of four dice also seems a bit underwhelming. Imagine if you could create arbitrarily large monsters by laying out dice according to certain rules, but then had to decide when to start dismantling it in order to cash in the points, while still not becoming too much weaker than everybody else so as to avoid becoming fish-man food.
Still, for this first game it was definitely enjoyable — perhaps could have done with some refinement to the mechanics, but we suffered no terrible frustrations. So hurrah! John won, and then only bloody won Port Royal too, continuing a winning streak he said stretched into last week! So your task for next week, NoBoGgers, is clearly to beat him at any game you can. Not that I'm bitter for coming two points behind him in Dicenstein and three in Port Royal. Shush!

Lewis selects from some pirate ships and shipmates
in a final quick round of Port Royal.

Sad looking doodahs

Varied games on offer this week at the Ribs, one table indulging in nothing but fillers all evening ( those games that are typically lighter and can be played in 30 minutes or less ), with many of the  tables busting out at least three slightly longer but still pretty quick games.

A couple of longer games did take place - both card games, Blood Bowl Team Manager, which surprisingly lasted all evening, and Arctic Scavengers. I am unsure how they made Blood Bowl Team Manager last 3 hours plus - I actually thought they had played it twice.

As for everyone else, we got to see Quantum, Race for the Galaxy, Havana, Royal Palace, Coup, Regenwormen/Pickomino, Istanbul, One Night Ultimate Werewolf ( multi tables ), Avalon : Resistance, Get Bit and Frank's Zoo. I might have missed one or two.

From top left clockwise
Dave, Nicky, Stu and Nate play Royal Palace

After beating everyone at Quantum, Pete then managed to slip Race for the Galaxy onto the table, and proceeded to beat the entirely newbie players into bloody submission over the course of a few rounds, all the while intoning in monastic chant that Race, is the best game ever. It's good to be the King.

On our table we welcomed two newcomers, Mark and Kat, recently moved from Glasgow and looking for something game related to do on a Tuesday.

Istanbul was first up, a nominee for the 2014 Kennerspiel des Jahres, which is a quick playing Euro that has you travelling around the city in pursuit of gems. The city is made up of 16 tiles, each of which allows you to perform an action - picking up resources, selling resources, buying gems, improving your cart and so on. The key mechanics to the game are that you are limited to only moving one or two tiles from your current location a turn - and that everytime you visit a location you leave an assistant to actually carry out the action. Once you have run out of assistants you can't do anything else.

Thus the game challenges you to make best use of your moves - you can't move everywhere - and to backtrack efficiently to pick up those assistants. Other merchants encountered on a space require you to give them cash for the privilege, whilst run ins with their criminal accomplices will give a reward, which adds another layer into the calculation of just what the most efficient route through the city is.

Add to this multiple paths to gem victory and you have a nice Euro with very little down time that plays nicely up to five. Definitely a nice game to ease people into more complicated games, there is strategy there for the most hardcore of gamers, and speed and ease of play for the most casual.

South Atlantic Seal
The Sad Looking Doodah

A few rounds of One Night Ultimate Werewolf followed, where Mark challenged Rich for the position of Worst Liar in NoBoG. When confronted about why he hadn't chosen a role and whether he was in fact the werewolf, Mark couldn't answer. Frozen, like a rabbit in headlights. Outright accusal of being the werewolf and a terrible liar, Mark still couldn't answer, not even to erect a hastily assembled defence. At the very last minute before everyone agreed to lynch him, he chose to declare himself a villager, but it was all too late. And he was lynched. To add insult to injury even Kat his fellow werewolf player voted to lynch him.

Frank's Zoo followed and Kat turned out to have her own very particular way of playing. Announcing cards as she played, we got treated to "Sad Looking Doodah", the "White Towelie Thing", and the "Spikey". I can only guess that Kat is a trained Zoologist and was informing us of the animals scientific classifications.

Keeping with an animal theme we then got to try out Get Bit - a game about "robots" swimming away from a ravenous shark. I'm going to take a guess here that the robots bit was inserted in order to sell an otherwise brutally bloody game to all ages and sensibilities. A bit like the computer game Carmageddon patching the red blood of people you run over to green blood of "zombies" and thus avoiding some of the more aggressive censorship regimes ( Germany seems to be particularly squeamish, not even allowing innocent zombies to be run over - robots being dis-membered is A OK however. On the face of it I would think it more likely in future that there was a Robot/AI equal rights movement as opposed to a Zombie equal rights movement. I think Germany might have some explaining to do when the Robots rise... )

Get Bit ! Myself, Kat and Rich IV have already been eaten...
The shark is savouring the remains of my leg here.

Get Bit is a very simple game - each player gets a hand of cards with numbers from 1 - 7 ( or less depending on player numbers ) and a robot playing piece that has detachable limbs. The robot closest to the shark at the end of a turn will get bit and lose a limb. A robot with no limbs has been completely eaten and is eliminated from the game.

Each turn a player chooses a card from their hand, places it face down at which point everyone reveals their cards. In numerical order from lowest to highest, each player than gets to move their robot to the head of the line - furthest from the shark. Players that selected a value that someone also selected do not move at all. Cards played stay discarded, reducing choice for the next round - unless you are bit or have a single card left, in which case you take back all your discards. The game then is a question of trying to play a card that no one else will play, trying to stay away from the shark, and in certain key moments trying to guess what card the person behind you will play so that they stay right behind you. After all, in terms of being devoured by a shark, it's not about winning, but just about staying ahead of the person behind you.

Great little filler, fun with the lego dudes.

Oh and 28 people for those who are counting.

Betrayal at Waterdeep

Both Lords of Waterdeep and Betrayal at House on the Hill have seen repeated play at the Ribs in recent weeks. I always seem to be playing something else when they appear, so was pleased to get to try both in one session.

Betrayal at House on the Hill is a super thematic game where the players are exploring a spooky house. Tiles are laid out as new rooms are entered and players contend with all the usual sort of things you’d find in a haunted mansion – encountering strange events, collecting items and revealing ominous omens along the way. Finally, one of these omens will trigger the end game where one of the characters betrays the others. A scenario is randomly determined and the traitor goes off to another room to read his objectives (usually kill all the other players) while the rest of the players look up their part in the corresponding scenario - how to survive and/or defeat the traitor.

The game rattled along at a brisk pace even with six players. We played a particularly long game, with lucky haunting rolls (which determine the end game) prolonging the exploration part of the game. By the time we’d determined Richard as the Assassin – keen to murder us all and stop young Clive, the heir to the mansion, from claiming fabulous wealth – most of the mansion had been revealed. This played in our favour and we got Clive to the throne room with the requisite items and still in one piece. We did lose Nicky and Pete II along the way, but they were only ever assassin fodder in my eyes.

It’s a pretty simple game. Easy to drop new players into. It really shines if players get into their roles and treat the other players to a bit of theatrics when reading the omens and descriptions on the cards. If you’re not into that sort of thing it can still be fun, but you’re really just waiting for the end game to trigger so you have an objective, rather than wandering the halls tooling up your character. Plus coming in at 90 minutes it doesn’t outstay it’s welcome.

This meant we had time for Lords of Waterdeep. A game based on the Forgotten Relams D&D franchise, this sounds like it should be a thematic romp with high adventure in the port city of Waterdeep. It's not. Those with cold and calculating eyes (and even those with just plain old seeing eyes) will look past the stock D&D pictures and see a game about buying and spending cubes to accrue victory points. If you need to get into a role and pretend to be a mighty Lord of Waterdeep and crave nothing but adventure, walk away now. This will disappoint. It's not bad, it's just that Accountants of the Lords of Waterdeep is probably more of an accurate title. So if you like euro/efficiency style games and aren't sniffy about the theme then there is an enjoyable game to be had.  And coming in at between and hour and 90 minutes, it doesn't linger in your hallway boring you with tales of its arthritic feet.

Thanks to Richard IV for bringing along and explaining both games to me. I had a lot of fun with both.

The rest of the pub was crammed with NoBoGers  playing all manner of games.  I think there were five tables in all, with 23 gamers. Four intrepid gamers drowned as they failed to beat Forbidden Desert. Twice. There was a five-player game of Blood Bowl Manager with the Sudden Death expansion. Suburbia got a look in. As did Grimoire, Kingdom Builder, Race for the Galaxy, Libertalia, and Skull and Roses.  And Pete got his rather nice looking Space Game prototype out for some more playtesting. Once again the playtesters let it be known that they still disliked the “If your name is Pete re-roll the dice” rule. We shall see if their concerns make it into the next rules re-write.

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...

Glass Road to the Ming Dynasty

A fine array of different gaming choices were on offer this week at the Ribs, with plenty of never seen before titles just begging to be played by the Eighteen people that managed to make it.

Pete brought along his yet to be named and yet to be playtested game, and quickly found another three to help give the thing its first run through. Inspired by Race for the Galaxy but mixed up with a board / topological map, the game is a sci-fi exploration and exploitation tile layer. Take a lot of Race for the Galaxy, a pinch of Eclipse, a pinch of Steam and a pinch of Suburbia, and you arrive at... <insert game name>.

Chink In the Galaxy ? Pete's new prototype game.

Each round a player gets to select an action ( Research / Develop / Settle / Trade / Influence ), and then once everyone has revealed their chosen action, all have an opportunity to use any of the called actions. So far so Race. Unlike Race however, your systems, developments and goods are not placed in your own private solitaire area, instead they are placed on the galactic map - where in theory they are open to use and abuse from all players. So how to work out who controls what ? Influence. Players can add tokens to systems to indicate increasing influence over a system, and access to its capabilities and its end game victory points.

Goods can be Traded between systems, netting card rewards or end game victory points, and with each trade, influence in the target system is increased ( presumably as your cultural goods flood the market ... McDonalds anyone ? ).

For an untested prototype the game plays remarkably well right out of the box without any hiccups or imbalances whilst also being fun - and all who played enjoyed the experience.

On the next table, super game bargain hunter Stu brought forth Notre Dame for a whirl. Notre Dame is an older Feld-ian title where players compete to hold sway over... Notre Dame - or as some would have it, it's a game about managing medieval rats.

Notre Dame

Both of those statements are true.

A simple card drafting / action selection / area influence game, your task is to build a suitable strategy from the influence you already have in your borough, and the cards you have finally got your hands on whilst also keeping an eye on your 'rat level' to avoid it getting out of hand and the plague befalling your neighbourhood ( with a loss of VP and influence ).

Not sure who won this, but I did hear Nicky complaining at one point about her lack of decent options, the accusation being her fellow players were stitching her up.

Over on table three, Sam brought along the tactical sci-fi dungeon crawler fest that is Level 7 Omega Protocol. In a very familiar theme setup, one player gets to play the numerically superior but power challenged bad guys ( Aliens ) , whilst the other player(s) get to take control of an elite team of gun toting good guys ( Marines ). The theme of a butt kicking marine squad from Cameron's Aliens franchise has been done many times in a variety of guises, from things like the classic Space Hulk or Space Crusade, through to hellish inspired Claustrophobia and Doom, robotic Legions of Steel or to the WW2 skewed Incursion.

Level 7 [Omega Protocol]

This game leans on the side of a personalised dungeon crawler feel, with characters that are customised at the game start with a number of kits - giving each marine unique capabilities ( somewhat like Space Crusade ), and rooms that offer 'treasure' and surprises that plays very much like Descent / Space Crusade / Doom, and very little like Space Hulk / Legions of Steel. Not sure what the opinion on this game was at the table, although I overheard a passing 'alright' comment.

Mechanics or not the game is presented beautifully, and if you are into the whole sci-fi shooting hordes of things type trope, or like the idea of opening a door into an unknown room of horror gun in hand, then this game must be at least be slightly appealing to delve into.

Finally, upstairs Glass Road and then Ming Dynasty were given a bash. Glass Road is another Uwe Rosenberg game which has definitely been inspired by his other titles - notably Ora and Labora. Glass Road however is a fast stripped down experience that offers the familiar flavour of developing your own synergistic board, but in a very short frame of time with very little fiddle factor.

A set of fifteen duplicate cards are given to each player - each card giving the player one or two actions to take when played. From these fifteen, five are chosen and then over three rounds, cards are played and their actions taken. At this point the game could be an utterly solitaire competitive Euro build malarkey, but here is where the clever bit comes in. If you select an action someone else has in their hand, they get to take that action too out of turn - but both of you get to perform only one of the actions ( out of two ) listed on the card instead of the usual two. Also, the card *must* be played - so any grand plans you had of using that build card when you had built up enough resources might just go out of the window when you are forced to play it early.

Astute readers will also notice that with only three rounds and five cards, you can only pick three of the five to play. Guess correctly however and you could be playing all five of your cards as others trigger your 'spares' out of turn - giving you more bang for the buck, and the initial selector less.

Glass Road - Resource dials eliminating the usual
Rosenbergian chaotic token piles

Uwe is a fan of loading his games with a bazillion different resource types. And Glass Road is no exception - there are eight basic resource types to collect, but unlike his other games he has finally hit upon an utterly elegant almost no bits mechanism for it, where all your goods are kept track of on two dials. Resources never feel clunky or fiddly, and it's actually very easy to keep track of the eight different things ( plus there is a clever auto build mechanic for both Bricks and Glass )

Points are rewarded for developing buildings on your board - but to get those buildings you will need empty land ( clearing forests ) and a whole bunch of resources. The game is short and sweet - four periods of three cards - meaning anywhere between 12 and 20 actions in total for the entire game. Into this you will need to be building extra resources, harvesting, erecting buildings and synergising your setup.

All in all this game is lovely - it's refreshingly tight and quick, and yet offers some of the nice things in other Rosenberg games of developing your own little area, and getting satisfaction of a steadily improving infrastructure. The card / action mechanic works fabulously well and introduces a great deal of interaction - buildings are unique and in a shared build pool, so it really does matter what gets called when and by who.

Everyone enjoyed the game, although Tom reflected it could do with being four times as big and taking four times as long to really sink your teeth into it - but then it would be something like Ora and Labora I think. Dean put it high on his list and a possible future purchase item.

Lastly, Tom also a connoisseur of the bargain game bin shuffled a recent purchase - Ming Dynasty into sight at the end of the Glass Road. Quite a bonkers game of area control and Princely movement, your task is to dominate the various neighbourhoods of the city and ultimately earn more victory points in doing so than everyone else. As you can only place members of your family ( influence ) wherever your Prince is, it matters where you are, and where you can move to - these factors controlled by the movement cards you have, and where everyone elses Prince is ( only one Prince is allowed per region ).

Ming Dynasty... or Poop Wars, depending on your pov.

Dean after a while managed to retheme the game into some City Sanitation game as his Prince 'walked around the city pooping blocks' which the city then cleaned up for victory points.

Uh huh.

Fun game, somewhat susceptible to the winds of luck, cool to play, probably a bit on the long side for what it is.

Start as you mean to go on...

With Christmas feasting and New Year frivolities out of the way, this week saw the return of gaming to the Ribs. A record equalling/busting ( depending how you count ) 23 people turned out for the first NoBoG of 2014 as an epic five tables of gaming were setup.

Lords of Waterdeep, Kingdom Builder, Caverna, Suburbia and Village were played - Stu's table played something before Kingdom Builder but I forget what it was.

It's not the first time Village has been down to NoBoG ( earlier play description here   ), but it's been a while since it made its first appearance, and not many got to play it. This week Village was played by a new audience, and Rich, Pete and Ed all had good things to say about it - Ed liking it despite coming in an abject last and suffering from a swollen foot. Not sure if this was beneath the table foot stamping signals that had got out of hand or an earlier injury, but nevertheless after a triumphant Pete had killed the most of his villagers for the win, Ed went limping home, happy but sore.

Pete then managed to sneak Race for the Galaxy out onto the table for a quick round, before finally the various tables finished and the customary end of night Resistance game ensued. The evil do-ers had a torrid time, with a straight three victory win for the good guys, and some shifty behaviour by the tell dropping bad guys sealing the slick win. However, all was not lost, as the bad guys still had a chance to assassinate Merlin, and even with Ewan playing it cool and ignoring the general pointing in his direction, the bad guys chose to assassinate him - who was revealed indeed to be Merlin. A win for the bad guys via assassination !

Caverna ( play description ) had another run through down the pub, with only one other seasoned Agric player - and no Caverna players at all - at the table, the game was initially daunting for the new players. Everyone picked it up quickly however, and Owen the Agric vet piled on the weapons to score strongly at the end with 73 points. Alas he was pipped to the post by my peace loving dwarves, who with no weapons and only one mine could hardly be counted as dwarves at all, but eked through with a score of 76 - and a remarkable number of dogs.

For those ardent fans of Race for the Galaxy, this week saw the release of the new expansion Alien Artifacts, which brings a small board element and in theory more player interaction to the otherwise purely card based and largely solo game. It's likely to turn up next week if you are interested, although the whole Orb board game bit seems a bit.. well... poor. But your mileage may vary - hit Pete up for a blast, as I am sure he will have it with him.

Many a Season

Autumn has most definitely arrived in Norwich, the ground has begun to swell with fallen leaves, the air has started to turn crisp, and there is rain and moisture almost permanently in the air. Where might one go to obtain respite from the clammy doldrums of Autumn you ask yourself ? Well for 21.5 of us sanctuary was to be found within the Ribs where warmth was to be had and games needed to be played.

Those who are paying attention will note that 21.5 attendees marks yet another record turnout for NoBoG, and play had to be accommodated over 5 tables of gaming goodness.

After some initial management problems akin to herding cats, two classic games were quickly put down to play - Power Grid and Chaos in the Old World. Robin lead his bunch of merry gamers on their quest to throw on the lights in as many cities as possible in Powergrid, whilst Chaos in the Old World was a shark pit of well experienced hands... plus Ed.

Rich rode to a plague ridden finish in Chaos by pushing the unlikely Nurgle to a convincingly strong VP win - with Pete in an almost as strong position just a single point behind. Tom had a diabolical ( see what I did there ) game as Khorne, and limped home after a few hours play, having barely managed to put a score on the board - a dismal 14 points for the record. Surely a new low. He lamented having switched from points to outright mayhem halfway through the game, his strategy netting him little of use as the others contained or matched his machinations.

Trains !

Meanwhile, Bondy marched a group off upstairs for another week of Trains - it seems that Trains is a game that is required to be played upstairs in the pub. Two games of this were cranked out, the latter of which Bondy managed to monopolise on a terrible wave of synergising cards and VP scoring to romp to a clear win.

The final two tables elected to play the same game - Seasons. Because why not. Well, why, because 5 people wanted to play it, and Seasons only takes 4. Seasons is new to me, and if I had to explain it in a single sentence I'd say, Magic with victory points instead of health + Zombie Dice.

Seasons puts you in the role of a wizard vying for the top job of Archmage by besting all other magic doers in a tournament of sorcery that lasts for three years. That's some tournament - but then if the competition only lasted for two weeks, the game probably wouldn't be called Seasons. It'd be called ... "ZaptasticMagicWimbledon IV - The Return of Zaptastic". Yes, I am available for hire for corporate branding / Game name brainstorming.

Seasons... upstairs

The game takes the guise of a card drafting affair played across a series of rounds that are thematically split into the four seasons. Hence the Seasons. Unlike many other card drafters / deck builders / Magic wannabes which have economy cards ( mana, gold, military strength ) to make everything else work, the impetus to your turn in Seasons is provided instead by dice. Each season has a set of dice associated with it that are rolled once per round, with each player in turn order getting to pick one of the dice to utilise in their turn. Dice provide mana to power card play as well as some actions - being able to burn raw mana for VP, drawing a card or increasing the cap size of your tableau. Mana is stored round to round in a players finite sized storage area, so you can save power up to use in future turns.

As should be apparent - due to the dice you're never quite sure what mana you might have to utilise, and, because the dice are drafted one at a time to each player, you may get to miss out on something you really need if your place in the turn order sucks.

Seasons... downstairs

The game length is predictable in a fuzzy way - each round may advance the turn marker between 1 and 3 months, so you can roughly see how long things will take, but not be able to predict it exactly.

Gameplay itself beyond all that is a fairly typical deck building, card drafting type exercise, with card synergies providing boosts to your points and actions and your VPs growing in size with every deft management of your hand.

The game prioritises solitaire building over interaction - only a minority of cards allow you to interfere with others, but we didn't play with the more advanced "in your face" cards available in the game ( although on hearing what they did, I am still not sure there is a whole heap of messing that you can do to your fellow players ).

I thought the game was cool and an interesting spin on the usual card placement, tap malarkey, but as to be expected, the random number generator is on at least medium level here - random card draws and random dice rolls can leave you with your ass in the wind as the player next to you repeat performs some card tapping horrific victory point score ability.

It's slated to run at 60 minutes - but our game lasted a marathon 3 hours, which was ok, but not great. At 3 hours the game shows its knickers a bit too much and the random number machine goes into overdrive ( probably not entirely helped by me resetting the year clock a couple of times to get at least another years worth of play out of the game ).

Nice game, needs to be kept short and sweet, probably not something I'd break my neck to play again, but definitely one to experience at least once, if not a few times to see the wacky dice + cards mechanics going on.

Simon blasted to a win in this, and seemed to enjoy muttering to himself immensely as at least a few of his turns resembled the depths of Magic depravity where a player just keeps on pulling cards, tapping things, sacrificing others things, and shoving bits around their play area. I actually managed to hold an entire conversation with Ed on the next table, watch a bit of another game, and still made it back in time to see Simon not yet quite finished with his book keeping. Epic.

The upstairs game of Seasons finished in a much more reasonable time frame - so they busted out Ghost Stories ( and failed in their co-operative bid to beat the spooks off ) as their second game of the evening.

After the shark pit of Chaos was concluded, Pete decided to bring out yet another shark pit experience with Race for the Galaxy. It will come as a surprise to no one whatsoever to learn that Pete placed a comfortable first in this, with only a mild ruffling of feathers coming in the form of Rich placing third - Ewan pipping him to second. Good job Ewan.

During some of Simon's epic turns with Seasons, and due to my favourable seating placement, I was able to watch over Pete's shoulder as he went through his Race strategies and narrated his decisions to me. I can recommend it, it's like a painting masterclass - except it's Race for the Galaxy.

The evening finished with a game of Resistance - Avalon, where the bad guys having succeeded in fouling up the first two quests singularly failed to take advantage of their dominant position and collapsed to a loss. Pete - bad guy and in charge of the assassination knife, then debated with his fellow evil doers as to who Merlin might be - shoved the knife in, only to discover they had blundered and missed the magic wielder. Good had won. Pitiful.

Whilst the bad guys were failing at Resistance I got to play Mascarade, a bluffing role game in which you are not entirely sure who everyone else is, or even who you might be. As Dean put it, this game in many ways is a distillation of the role cards in something like Citadels or Mission Red Planet - all other aspects of the game other than the roles having been removed. Memory is a big feature of this game - if you can memorise where all the cards are - and if you are good at reading people - then this game is going to be a lot easier. I would think good poker players would do well at Mascarade.

A series of role cards have a range of money grabbing powers - take money from the pot, take money from the courthouse, steal money from those next to you, steal money from the richest and so on. Each person has one role card - and a number of others are left in the middle of the table. The trick to this game is that other than the initial game reveal of roles, the role cards are mostly left face down and you must remember who is who. In a players turn they may switch cards with any other card on the table - or may bluff a switch -, look at their own role card, or state they are a given role and attempt to take the action for that role ( which may be a bluff ).

The game is a groovy filler game, and I want another play of this. I found it easy enough to remember who everyone was, and what the likely switch of a character would be when they took it - good enough that I could predict who everyone was over the course of two rounds and skip to a win. I am sure if I played it again over a longer game with more people it wouldn't be half so simple.

Roll Call - Barnaby, Bondy, Caroline, Clive, Dean, Ed, Ed, Ewan, Fletch, Jarryd, John, Matt, Nicky, Paul, Pete, Rich, Robin, Sam, Simon, Stu, Tim, Tom.

21.5 players - Caroline was the 22nd player, spectated Power Grid, but played end of evening Resistance. 21 players or 22 depending how you are counting.

Pete Week

Instructor Phenir banked his Tie Interceptor to the left in a graceful arc whilst keeping his eye on the four rookies who were bumbling around in their Tie Fighters.
 "Pattern Alpha Four Left !" Phenir barked into his intercomm. Three tie fighters rolled left - whilst one rolled right - the sergeant in his Tie advanced peeling off to follow the single inept rookie. 
"I said left you saalarkian hog ! Do you not know right from left ?! I will have you back at guard duty TK-426 !" . The miscreant Tie wobbled in space before joining back with his newbie compatriots.  
A flash of silver glinting in the dark of the void - Phenir snapped his attention to the right flank. There in the distance, a rebel recon flight hauled into view. Phenir cursed into his mask.  
"Z squadron form up, battle speed,  flank right, bandits approaching. Rookies stay close, remember your training !"  
As the Tie engines whined up to full speed, laser fire crackled between the combatants, the rookies getting a harder lesson today than they had bargained for.

This week must have been Pete's birthday or somesuch, as both Race for the Galaxy and Hansa Teutonica were played - and Pete got to partake of both. These two games are something that makes Pete a very happy NoBoGer.

With some discussion about what to play, and a debate about the merits of various Archipelago shenanigans, it was decided that a couple of lighter games would kick off proceedings for the eight of us.

Ewan sitting in on his first bewildering encounter with Race for the Galaxy joined Sam, myself and Pete for a relaxed pace blast through this classic marmite card based game. Not to be confused with marmite twiglets, a delicious crunchy snack with a hint of marmite. Race for the Galaxy is more a mental marmite - you either love it or you hate it. No chewing on the cards required. Or you play it enough that you get to like it, because goddamnit you have to play it at least 30 times to get the learning curve, and you will play it at least 30 times it's in your contract. Pete said so.

Declaring myself to be aiming for second place - behind of course Pete - the game set off, with Sam getting a great start, and Pete playing in a laid back manner.

Ewan sat in the corner looking perplexed. Not untypical for your first hand of Race. I think he was mulling over whether he liked this curious marmite flavour. Disgusting ? Or interestingly piquant ?

Cards were cycled through, planets settled, developments developed and Pete by mid game had set up a devastating economic engine. Sam hadn't quite fully capitalised on his setup, Ewan was struggling with his military worlds, and I was tromping through the mud of trying to get something to work.

With a few blasts of high earning VPs for the last couple of rounds, Pete ended up the comfortable winner, I was second, Sam came in a half dozen points behind me and Ewan behind Sam.

In other words, the positions matched the level of experience. Coincidence ? Maybe.

No chewed cards, so probably a victory for everyone then.

Notre Dame. This is what Paris looks like. Apparently.

  In other non galaxy racing parts of the universe, Stu, Fletch, Nicky and Matt had a stab at Notre Dame.

Not sure who won this, but there were some curses and groans as this played out, clearly vying for influence in the Parisian suburbs is a cut throat affair. I was intrigued by the board layout for this, and the game chatter sounded like it was a fun outing.

Half time was called and everyone had a switch around. Despite Pete being up for some Star Wars action, the temptation of Hansa proved too much, so he Nicky, Matt and Ewan went off and played Hansa Peteonica. A vanilla outing for the board game this time - no alternative board nor funky objective cards - and Matt, a proponent of the Actions Are Important line of thinking, aced his way to five actions, linked up the two main cities and romped home to a convincing score.

Pete is slipping at Hansa. I think it can no longer be referred to as Hansa Peteonica, as quite a few people have given him a drubbing at this lately, and I am hard pressed to remember the last time he won.

Star Wars was setup on the other table, myself, Fletch and Sam sitting down to this, with Stu participating in a purely observational capacity.. and the odd jibe at passing hap hazard pilots.

Sam in his first play at this picked Imperial, Fletch went Rebel, so deciding to join the inexperienced Sam I too went imperial.

Sam picking quality, opted for a Tie Advanced with some missiles, and a Tie Interceptor flown by some Imperial Bad Ass ( Turr Phenir ), for a total of 52 points. Deciding I needed to therefore weigh in on quantity - I am with Comrade Stalin here, that quantity has its own quality - I pulled four rookie academy pilot tie fighters out, at a cost of 48 points. Four juniors in non upgraded tin cans. Don't worry lads... you'll be fine.

Fletch chose himself a spread of war machinery, an X-Wing flown by non other than Wedge Antilles, a somewhat inexperienced A Wing, and a veteran Y-Wing. Needless to say all three ships were packing - R2 units, missiles, fancy systems, you name it. Pfah. Those rebels and their bling. A real man sits in a non upgraded tin can. With no life support. Or heat. In a funky flightsuit. With only a red lightbulb for illumination.Yeah.

A no nonsense fight kicked off with a fairly short ranged brutal pass that resulted in damage to the A-Wing, a minor shield dent for the X-Wing and that was about it. Roaring past each other, half the Imperial force wheeled around to find the A Wing startled in headlights and quickly shot to pieces - its missiles unspent.

The interceptor is just about to bite the dust, but
Imperial payback is screaming in from the right

As Tie fighters wheeled about out of position, Wedge got R2 to repair his shields and rounded on an Interceptor bearing down on him - annoyingly the tricksy boosting out of his way. The Y-Wing behind Wedge however, with quick reflexes and a single shot blew the oh so clever Interceptor out of the sky - the Imperials top pilot biting the dust in a fraction of a second. Ah the fragilities of the Empire.

The Rebels chuffed with success, failed to notice the Advanced and flanking rookie Ties targetting Wedge and in a flurry of fire the X-wing also disintegrated in a burst of laser cannon and missiles.

This left the Y-Wing alone against all four Tie rookies and one advanced. Poor odds.

The Y-Wing pulling off some amazing moves for its aged frame managed to keep the worst of the incoming fire away, but found its systems blowing up and collapsing as the Empire took its toll.

The rookies had survived, Instructor Phenir however was dust...Guard duty my ass, thought TK-426.

Very fun game. Must play this more.

The Cogs of Water Kemet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So far, fairly GoT-ish.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Politics eh ?

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