UFO

This is what fighting aliens looks like. Sexy. Right ?

Start the youtube vid below. It's this weeks theme tune. Once it's playing you can read on !
 

Back in the early 70's, when space hoppers were the greatest orange coloured transport device ever invented, hair was big, collars bigger and flared trousers biggest of all, if you had thoughts about defending the Earth from nefarious alien ne'er-do-wells then you might have found yourself a member of S.H.A.D.O and your go to uniform choice might look something like this

Standard S.H.A.D.O uniform.
Clearly they never suffered chilly days in S.H.A.D.O central command.

UFO fighting fashion styles have moved on fortunately - or unfortunately depending on your level of depravity - and so this week when an alien defence headquarters was setup in the Ribs of Beef, none of the defenders were wearing string vests sparing us all a horrifying sight. That there are sacrifices to be made defending the Earth goes without saying - putting up with four gamer dudes hanging out in string vests however is arguably a sacrifice too far. You'd probably be better off welcoming your new alien overlords instead.

Owein brought along the new and sexy XCOM to NoBoG challenging three fellow compatriots to keep the earth safe, the humans from panicking over the prospect of string vest wearing whilst simultaneously swatting away alien invaders. If you haven't been living under a rock for the past 20 years computer gaming wise, you will know that XCOM is a highly successful video game franchise that splits into tactical man to alien combat and a strategic level logistics management mode where you get to train people, research new tech, and react to alien ship incursions. The whole singing dancing Xenophobia train has now been ported into board game form, and whilst the man to alien tactical combat element has been lost in translation, the nail biting logistics balancing space ship intercepting bit remains.

XCOM. Don't drop your pieces on the floor. The timer waits for no one.

Truly one of the new breed of board games, XCOM integrates technology into your usual pile of cardboard and bits with a free app for use on your digital toy of choice - like for instance an iPad. The app gets to co-ordinate the alien player, effectively forming a broad programmed AI against your wiles as well as injecting a real time element into the game where you have to make decisions in a short span of time ( unless you're playing in the lame Easy mode ).

The nature of the app also allows the game to play with the timing of various phases, meaning that you can never be quite sure that A follows B follows C thus forcing your into committing resources before they were ready or correctly in place.

Because of its triple A computer game heritage the production values of the app are absolutely first class, oozing theme and atmosphere - heavily borrowing a lot of resources from its sibling games.

Did you know ?

Ananda Gupta who designed the board game Twilight Struggle also designed the reboot of the XCOM video game and brought a lot of board game sensibilities into the design mix. In ever more crazy cross pollination that video game has now crossed the divide back into the board game world.

As a co-operative game it slightly side-steps the group think tendency that some of those games can have - where a particularly strong or pushy player just orders everyone else around resulting in a solo game with a number of observers - by giving players unique roles to play that have very clear responsibilities and available actions.

Explaining the actual machinations of the game is kind of tricky - its involved and has a lot of bleed through from the computer game ( which you'll feel right at home with if you have played it ) - but basically making decisions about missions, sending squaddies out on missions, balancing resources and doing everything in a timely fashion is the order of the day. You'll need to cater to random things popping up, keeping a lid on panic - which can lose you the game -, keep your base from being destroyed - another lose event - and finally surviving long enough to actually take a shot at the aliens and win the game outright - as opposed to just surviving.

If tense random thematic games are not your thing, then XCOM is going to not be something you want to look at ( unless you like facing the derision of the gaming community by playing it in Easy mode and not having to worry about the timer at all ). If you are into your stress time based games, and or you have an XCOM background, this is a game you will definitely want to give a try out of.

The game went down very well on Tuesday, with Davey vowing to rush home and buy it as soon as he could so taken he was with its gameplay.

The intriguing looking Castles of Mad King Ludwig

Another recently release game was on offer this week - the Castles of Mad King Ludwig. This is a tile placing game that has you vying for victory points by collecting sets or synergistic placements and according to Sam who got to play it, is something of a riff on Suburbia.

Castles however is not a town builder but is a . . . castle builder. Where you get to build room by room a crazy patchwork castle ( hence the Mad King ) to try and maximise your VPs via whatever cunning strategy you cook up.

Lighter than Suburbia with less capability to synergise the game however ups complexity in a different direction with tiles that are different shapes and sizes - meaning that placement of those rooms is not quite as straight forward as Suburbias uniform hexes.

A fun looking game, Sam enjoyed it - managed to win, and noted Chloe had spent all game building a very evil looking castle with suspicious pits, mossy rooms and long spindly corridors that led nowhere.

Steam with 6. Banned by the UN as cruel and unusual punishment

Elsewhere Steam had a monster game with six players. Hal was playing mean. Apparently. And on the table over Pandemic was succumbed to with an abject failure for players, who could only end up planning their apocalypse party with 3 turns to go as it became apparent the infections were out of hand. They then finished with the less disease ridden Small World.

I believe Lauren and Andrews table played King of Tokyo - and some other lighter stuff. Not sure.

Pandemic. It's looking bad folks. Time to invest in a bunker.

Downstairs Lewis lead the ever redoubtable Lords of Waterdeep to table, complete with machine gun noises which he assured was not for once his fault. Ticket to Ride was on the table over, which left the last table with a riotous game of Archipelago.

On a crazy whim Pete decided the Archipelago should be seeded via the optional desert start, which proved to be in the end an absolute nightmare for exploration. Getting those tiles out with a land interior is much tougher going than starting with a sea tile. It certainly changed the pace of the game however, and with the expansion cards in play - and the Jail out from turn one, some of the typical dynamics of the game were subtly altered.

Dawn rises over the ill fated Archipelago.

Pete got off to a flying start whilst most of everyone else struggled to escape the hot sandy interior. Feelings of ill will circulated towards the obviously well performing Pete, and as an end game trigger threatened to activate, everyone suddenly got very jealous of their precious commodities. So much so that the colony leapt up in misery, jumping a full 21 unrest points in a single turn, whilst the singularly quiet Punk Rich who turned out to be the separatist secretly gloated that the colony would now go tits up.

An extremely funny game, much comedy with Rich IV offering Pete a pocket bird flip at one point in reply to his request for renumeration, and with Punk Rich playing a very quiet separatist, lulling everyone into being ever more selfish, the game sank in perfect Archipelago fashion. Amazing game.

The gateway game classic - Ticket to Ride

Roll for the Galaxy was squeezed into the end. We got two thirds in before calling it a day. Pete pipped me by three points. Everyone else was flailing on half scores.

Mr Bond was very excited this week. The prospect of having 40 NoBoG attendees sent him a twittering, only to have his hopes dashed when two of the would be players managed to claw their way to safety  left prematurely. It should be said this was with several of our regulars out. Breaching 40 seems like something we will be doing in 2015. Still. 38 is a record. Apparently. I've lost track. It certainly sounds a lot. The pub was pretty full with NoBoGians, and that was with a table of six and three tables of five. Heaven help us when everyone decides they just want to play four player games only. It will be woollen hats and thermal gloves all round to cope with playing games on the ice festooned river terrace.

Lastly, congratulations to Sam who is now the official Norwich Netrunner champion. This is apparently why we only see him every other week at NoBoG - he's netrunning down at Athena games in the other weeks. Personally I think he's a Norwich based mask wearing crime fighter who takes it to the streets every other Tuesday. I noticed he turned up in a spiderman themed jacket this week - clearly he got his crime fighting persona days mixed up. But yeah. If you want to believe his cover story, then he's the Norwich Netrunner champion.

Which is a card game. If you didn't know. Go look it up. Don't expect me to do everything for you ! Tsk.

Professor Plum in the Library with the Candlestick

Two retro classic name drops in as many weeks. Shocking. But no, Professor Plum of Cluedo fame was not present at NoBoG this or last week ( don't take that as a challenge to bring it next week... ), however the new and vaguely reminiscent game Witness was.

Witness is a slightly odd cooperative game that sees four - and only four, no less, no more - players investigating a crime that has taken place with the goal of everyone coming up with the facts of the case in an end summing up question and answer session. Think any ending to an Agatha Christie novel with everyone standing nervously around a period drama set waiting for some amateur to tell them whodunnit. If everyone has the facts of the case clear then everyone should be able to ace their questions. Or failing that you just send any poor innocent schmo to prison instead. Because you're awesome like that.

Despite the whole thrust of the game, the mechanics have very little to do with solving mysteries or deducing facts. The game is in fact Chinese Whispers ( telephone for you yanks ) with a score sheet at the end. Each player has information they know - and in the rounds of the game it is up to them to transfer this knowledge on via whisper to the next player along. In theory as you gain more information from others, you pass ever more information that you know on, until after three rounds, everyone should know everything about the case.

As is clear then, this is a game of Chinese Whispers played with four starting messages, which hopefully by the end have coalesced into a single combined message known by all.

The game is short sweet and different. Well. Different to other cooperative games, but perhaps not so different to Chinese Whispers. Definitely one to get a play or three of, but tricky to fit with its exacting demand of four players. One for the bridge / Tichu club perhaps.

After this they played Tragedy Looper... for... a change of pace ? Or just another cooperative deduction type game, but this one with Anime characters rather than 1940's belgian cartoon characters.

Fletch gets 5 player Agricola to table

Sticking on an old school theme, James threatened at one point to bring Totopoly along - to get into the whole occasional retro gaming vibe. Totopoly. Man. Another family classic. Although this one always felt a bit sexier, a bit more out there than monopoly, with its funky horses, double sided board and rampant gambling. Some 70 odd years old, it hadn't even heard of the terms Euro or Ameritrash when it was being diced over. But boy was the first board boring as hell.

Ignoring Totopoly - moving from the new Witness to the old but not as old as Totopoly Alhambra. Nicky brought along this classic in its Anniversary edition guise with one of its expansions ( the treasure chamber ). If you are going to play Alhambra then there's no finer way than with the Anniversary edition. With a nice board and pieces it really does make the experience better - don't ask me why, it's just... tidier. Nicky ended up pipping me by two points, which if I hadn't ballsed up and placed an illegal tile I would have taken. Not to mention she stole, blatantly stole, the towers from me to pilfer the win. Cool game which still stands up to play over a decade after it was released.

A blurry shot of Imperial Settlers

Mr Bond brought along Imperial Settlers again, with the ever optimisting Pete laying his hands on the Japanese and stumbling to a final win despite everyone kicking the hell out of him. Pete liked the game, noted that the Japanese were strong in scoring but weak against aggression and that the game like a lot of others, probably needed people to gang up on them. Khorne in Chaos in the Old World, I am looking at you. Pete likes a good engine building synergising type of game, and loves to employ clever efficiencies to get the most out of his virtual workers. Perhaps that's why he's also not keen on destructive interaction in such games - having someone walk over and kick his meticulous sand castle down makes him sad. There's no being clever in the face of a bullet. Or sword. Or heavy weighted object. As the nameless suit dude in Robocop taunted 'think you're pretty smart huh... think you can outsmart a bullet ? '

I got to play Imperial Settlers myself this week and it's a real fun game. It really riffed with Race for the Galaxy or more appropriately Glory to Rome again for me, but I dont know, every game I play lately seems to be riffing on them for me. Perhaps I have gone Race for the Galaxy insane.

Speaking of Race for the Galaxy, Punk Rich has laid his hands on Roll for the Galaxy, the sort of

Roll for the Galaxy.
With custom baby sippy cups for dribbly players

follow up game to Race that employs dice rather than cards. Thomas Lehmann takes us back to the uplift Universe of David Brin with players once again balancing, shuffling and earning resources to get ever more stuff. Some familiar stuff is in there. The calling of phases that are then shared for all players. Exploring, Developing, settling, producing, consuming are all here. But this time around the dice are powering things.

Punk Rich and Pete, the unofficial UK Race for the Galaxy Evangelists for World Peace, have both given the game a big thumbs up, and there are even some mutterings in the wings that it - *gasp* - replaces Race for the Galaxy.

Video Game High School

Darren finally managed to turn up this week, and grasped in his hands was Arcadia Quest and Video Game High School. Arcadia Quest proved to be so quick I didn't event get a shot of it, but all enjoyed its cutesy dungeon crawling / PVP action before turning to the Video Game High School. Which I have no idea about whatsoever.

Jeff also returned to us this week after a hiatus of... a quarter of a year. Injuries and work had kept him away, but this week he got to play Ora and Labora, which huzzah, I finally got to table. I really enjoyed my time back with this Rosenberg title, and Rich IV who is becoming something of a Rosenberg vet having played Agricola and Caverna for the first time recently, enjoyed this one too.

Ora & Labora. With Fimo Monks.
Luke however was not impressed with them.
"They look amateur modelled. And not in a good way"
I'll remember that Luke... I'll remember...

He went on to win the game by a single point, pipping me at the post when we packed up slightly early - we had some slow turns.

I think poor James III really struggled with this game. The overload of information was too much and the sheer number of buildings and interactions seemed to flummox him. Ora and Labora certainly can do this. When Bondy played this first he had a permanent pained expression on his face from all the thunkery.

Personally I like giving the game a whirl a couple of times a year. It's crunchy. And I love my fimo monks. Everytime I see them I want to make more....

James likes turning up with the odd weird and wonderful game. In the past it has been things like the

Colourful wacky Zendo.

difficult to get hold of HamsterRolle. Or the hipster cool Loopin Louie. Last week it was the turn of plastic surplus reuse scheme Zendo. A game in which you try to work out what arrangement of weird bits of plastic James has deemed correct. I think technically you don't have to be James to actually make this game work, anyone can decide what's right. It helps if you have James though. Not sure what that says about replayability when James is not available. But basically one master player decides on a ruleset the pieces follow, and then the other players build random placements of pieces for the master to mark. And hopefully you deduce what's right and what's not. So a simple master rule might be - it contains blue pieces. More difficult - it contains blue pieces and all pieces point at each other. Constructions are marked in a vaguely similar way to the old Mastermind game, and players can take a guess if they wish - first player guessing correctly wins.


Lauren was again taking no prisoners last week and continued on her rampage victory streak, being

Machi Koro. Fletch is on a roll getting games to table.

very evil and sneaky in Room 25 to pull the win, and either getting close or winning everything else.

Fletch finally got Planes to table, taught a couple of newcomers how to play, and then along with Elliot got his arse kicked by said newcomers. After having lost two or three times in this manner, Elliot declared it enough, and left. Ha ha. Busy departure, or refusal to be bludgeoned by newcomers ?

A whole bunch else got played in the last fortnight, Takenoko, Colt Express, Betrayal, Machi Koro, Agricola and more. All in all January has seen some awesome gaming sessions, and some interesting new titles stuck on the table. And famous people turning up. Yeah. That's right. See what you miss when you don't turn up ? I'm certainly not going to tell you who though...  Such is the star studded spectacle that is NoBoG Rich IV has started talking about inviting the Queen in for a gaming session. Although Resistance could be tricky - you might get accused of treason and thrown in the tower for being a filthy lying spy.

We. Are Not. Amused.

Off With His Head.

Kingdom Builder played with the Under the Table Amongst The Peanuts expansion.

31 last week. 27 this week.

(17,13 over Christmas... )