Some Like It Hot

Alas I was not able to attend this week, and Mr Bond also bunked off, so instead, the NoBoG minions were roused to do a sterling job of organisation and reporting. Ewan and Lewis provide their insights into the week, and I think Richard and Elliott can be thanked for the pictures. Thanks to them and Pete and Rich for making sure everyone got a game and fitting in the always turning up new people. Good job guys.



With Nobog this week lacking the usual firm hand of its leaders, you would have thought chaos would reign (several scenes of apocalyptic films come to mind, or the playing of munchkin). However this was not to be the case with Pete and Rich IV taking the reigns and managing to herd everyone into a game.

A total of 28 NoBoGers sat down to enjoy the range that was on offer. At the table I was on I [Ewan] managed to rope 5 others to join me in a game of Scoville; a kickstarted game all about chilli peppers and trying to breed/make the best and hottest chilli.

Scoville is the name of the scale that rates chilli peppers on their capsaicin content (this being the chemical that causes people’s faces to melt when eating a hot chilli) and was created by an American called Wilbur Scoville back in 1912. The game Scoville takes place in the fictional town of Scoville and holds an annual day of celebration to Mr Wilbur; awarding prizes to town folks who can breed the best chilli peppers or cook the hottest chillies. The game is broken down into a morning phase and, based on the actions on the players, can move onto the afternoon phase.

Scoville, with handy fields perfectly dug to fit a chilli

Within the rounds of the game players start off with blind bidding to decide turn order during the round. However simply competing for first may not be the best strategy over all. This is because there are three parts to the round, Planting, Harvesting and Fulfilment. Going first for planting will mean you are last for harvesting and as such makes being in the middle a viable option.

During the planting phase you are grabbing chilli peppers from the auction house and planting a chilli on the field ready to be harvested. This leads onto the harvesting phase, in which players move their farmer meeples round the field and attempt to harvest more chillies based on the two chillies you walk between by cross breeding.

The use of a reference chart will show you what colour chilli you get out of it. This is the fastest way to create and get hold of new chillies which can either be planted and score points if you are quick enough to be the first or make hotter chilli recipes. This movement can cover coveted spots and block others from getting them. The round ends with players fulfilling orders or making recipes for points and afterwards checking that the game either moves to the afternoon phase (where better chillies appear in the auction house and more orders become available).

Scoville - the blinds remind me of footie ground hoarding

The game overall is a point salad, with lots of ways of scoring points and having to do a bit of everything to rack up your point totals. Deciding where you go on the turn track is vital and does take a lot of thought, as certainly with harvesting and fulfilment, you end up being blocked and getting nothing at all.

During our play there was many a shout of frustration coming from Ed about incorrect decisions. There is a nice amount of planning and strategy and the turn based mechanic along with a nice theme (I grow chillies so am biased) is a real positive for this game.

However there is a little bit of downtime (certainly playing with 6) as everyone rattles their brains about what to do. But this could be helped with either more experience or maybe putting out fewer recipes (24 in a 6 player game) which can be a lot of information to take in.

The components are really cool and all good quality but certain colours can be hard to distinguish between the two.

Overall everyone enjoyed it, well almost everyone, Sam stating he could have been playing Netrunner this evening. Maybe a new challenge could be involved by players eating ghost chillies then having to play through the game would be interesting, and probably make decisions being made much quicker.

Lewis and Clark

Downstairs alongside our table, Lewis and Clark was broke out again, with Elliot shouting about his need for wood and wanting four skins. Personally don’t understand the laughter that followed, it is a real issue and should be supported as wood and skins seem to be important with in the game. Elliot also gave this game a thumbs up and it seems that Lewis and Clark is getting favourable reviews from NoBoGers ( although there was some grumbling from Dean via Owein about it being a foregone racing game halfway through, but that might be if you don't include the fix to the broken resource hoarding strategy rule errata ).
 
Lewis and Clark was then followed by a game of life boats, which personally have never played but have heard many a tale of it being very cut throat.

James, Jamie, Jonny, John (that totally didn't get confusing at all), Rhea and I [Lewis] partook in a fantastic emulation of the experience of gambling in Las Vegas, in Lords of Vegas. On this occasion, Jonny created a green Pacman casino (I'd go if that were a thing), odds took a beating with James attempting a 3-versus-1 casino reroll to reclaim the casino I had taken over, to no avail for James, and we witnessed latecomer John go from optimism, to joy, to dread, to victory... all emotions felt while in 1st or tied-1st place. Typical Vegas attitude. Twas a round of too many emotions to list. 

Someone suggested this as the perfect replacement for Monopoly as the typical family board game. 

The world would be a happier place... then again someone else suggested suicide was better too, which is hard to argue with. 

A few adjustments to the line-up and One Night Ultimate Werewolf, with the increasingly-popular Daybreak and Promo Pack 1 expansions, was broken out - in particular, a scenario suggested by the Daybreak guide called 'Information Society.' 

Round 1, Martin the Mystic Wolf's plan to hide as some sort of Seer collapsed quickly. Round 2, Martin and Davy's Werewolf plan of making me, the Seer, out as the Mystic Wolf fell on deaf ears. With two rounds belonging to the village, round 3 would surely belong to the werewolves, right? 

While the Doppelganger had been introduced in the previous round, it stuck around as the Daybreak favourite, the Curator, was also brought in. I, as a Doppelganger - and able to copy whichever other player I pick on, was overjoyed to find that Jamie was the Curator, and moreso later in the night when he had gifted me an artifact. As a Doppleganger Curator, it seemed rude not to respond in kind and give an artifact back to Jamie. 

Waking up to a surprised room, Jamie and I viewed our gifts to one another. 

It's usually at this point that you pretend to've obtained the Mask of Muting, like Jamie decided to, but now I had ACTUALLY received. Suspecting at least one of us to be hiding a gifted Claw of the Werewolf ( because we couldn't have the mask of muting  and therefore one of us was telling lies ) - and with me unable to legitimately defend myself - the village decided to slaughter both of us. Reveal, my Mask of Muting... and Jamie's Cudgel of the Tanner, meaning he'd stolen victory from both the village and the werewolves for completing the Tanner objective of getting himself murdered. WELL THEN... gg Jamie. gg. 

More scenario-based games of ONUW: Daybreak in the future for sure, especially since there's one called 'Total Chaos.' Yesss.

Upstairs the tables were turned in Marvel Legendary Villains, a game using the legendary system and seeing players play as the marvel villains against the heroes; who from reports ended with a very amicable draw all around.

Dead of Winter I believe also got the table but I am unsure whether the survivors won or simply became a walking smorgasbord for the ever hungry zombies.

We finished the evening with a few rounds of skull of roses, a nice bluffing filler game, that becomes very random when you don’t look at the cards you play as I tried.

International Tabletop Day !

Athena Games ( they can be found down St Gregory’s Alley ) are hosting International TableTop Day this Saturday. It's free entry, and fellow NoBoG'ers have expressed interest in attending, so you'll be sure to see some familiar faces! 

Details can be found at this Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/834116623327596/  

International Tabletop Day

No Cake, Plenty of Hats

Despite there being rumours of cake for this weeks shenanigans they turned out to be greatly exaggerated. As Portal players know, the cake was indeed a lie. In place of cake however there were a great many admiral hats to be had, which lead NoBoG to take on something of an 18th Century Naval feel, despite there being no 18th Century Naval games to play. The hats were part of some beer promotion, and were being given to those who I can only assume looked dashing enough to pull the look off. Of course I had one - Lewis kindly gave me his. Wait. Does that mean I wasn't dashing ? And Lewis was ? I demand a recount.

I am ashamed to admit that I failed to take a picture of anyone wearing the jaunty headgear, Richard the IV in particular wore his with aplomb.

Ticket to Ride Marklin

But enough of hats. This week Elliot was back with Ticket to Ride Marklin - presumably after he had calmed from his rage that totally did not happen you guys - and this time managed to redeem himself in good order by thrashing everyone at the table. Particularly Lewis. Who's cheesy Marklin winning grin from a few weeks ago meant that he deserved his thrashing.

On the table over we had the cool and yet simultaneously hot Tragedy Looper, a game about manipulating time to prevent bad things from happening. Like suicides. And murders. Uh huh. It's a dark little anime game, what can you say ?

The game with its locations and characters comes off in a way like a modern Cluedo with a heavy anime vibe and a reset button. If you get it wrong about who is doing what to whom you get to try

Tragedy Looper

again - hopefully with some information gleaned from your failure. Unlike Cluedo the players all pitch in together to match wits against a single mastermind character. By manipulating the characters via such things as increasing their paranoia ( and potentially making them commit suicide... ) tragedies can be overted or instigated.

A deduction game that is driven from a number of scenarios to setup the puzzle ( with rules on how to make up your own scenarios ) it presents a fresh style of gameplay that is rarely seen. With its modern incarnation and funky anime style ( the game is originally japanese and has only just recently made its way into the Western markets ), it's an interesting cool game that will please those who like to use deduction, logic and misdirection to win games.

On the last table downstairs Lords of Vegas got another play where Mr Bond had a possible case of beginners luck and took the title of the Lordiest Lord of Vegas. Despite winning he wasn't entirely sure what rating to give the game, good, ok, ehhhhh were all words he used. I suspect the Random Number Generator that is active in the game was putting him off somewhat. Lords of Vegas is a good game, but sometimes the luck can be kind of crazy and end up making a bit of a foregone conclusion of a 2 hour session.

Tokaido

Upstairs the clean aesthetically pleasing art of Tokaido was on show where everyone travels along a single path and decides where they would like to go. Where you move to determines the way in which you can score points and how many there are on offer. Stringing together a decent strategy whilst working around the other bumbling idiotic players that are getting in your way is the crux of the game.

A nice light game created by the same guy that did amongst other things Takenoko, Ghost Stories and 7 wonders.

Finally Dead of Winter got another try, and once again the colony collapsed - this time amidst raging hunger as Richard the IV plunged the knife in. An epic three betrayers were at the table of five, with poor Caroline and Tom facing a very uphill struggle.

Dead of Winter

The betrayers all won I think - once you take into account there was some rules questions - and I am now beginning to think that Dead of Winter is just too hard for non betrayers. It's too easy for a betrayer to sit largely unseen before at a critical juncture upending the table and causing the colony to tank. The game is plenty hard enough that often the betrayers don't need to do much if anything to weaken the colony to where it becomes vulnerable to a sudden upset. Perhaps Rich IV is right and more exiling needs to go on. Hard to say.

The game has a lovely narrative nevertheless and the crossroads cards really inject a story into the play. I had a great card trigger that I had never seen before - if someone at the table yawns, trigger this card. I failed to spot anyone yawning however.

Boss Monster !

To finish off some fillers were played - Nates table that were playing Tokaido also played Hanabi ( same designer ) and I think Skull & Roses. Downstairs Boss Monster got a blast and finally we had an epic eight handed game of Avalon Resistance, which saw Lewis as Merlin possibly the most upset / stressed I have ever seen him ( he recounted that he had nightmares about the last time he had played Resistance 8 or so months ago ) as Pete a filthy evil doer labelled him a spy. Pete was doing a great job playing it straight but towards the end perhaps his one too many accusations at everyone else made too many fingers point him out and the table turned for a good guy win.

Despite Luke and Pete being sure that Lewis was Merlin, it was Tom as Percival that got stabbed in the face, securing the win for the good guys.

Pete then spent the next ten minutes whilst exiting and standing outside the pub logic ranting about mistakes made. I think he was slightly miffed at losing when he knew Obvious Merlin was Merlin.

Nevertheless another really enjoyable, very noisy and pretty stressy game.

25 this week.

The Case of the Missing Gamers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I vant to drink your blood...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All in all a great game which everyone really enjoyed.

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

Gangs, Guns and Poo Barons

Cake.

Yes. There was Cake at NoBoG this week. The generous spirited Ewan brought the bottom tier of his epic four tier birthday cake along to the Ribs for everyone to enjoy whilst playing board games and slurping their drinks. See what you are missing ? Birthday Cake !

The turnover of people at NoBoG can be quite something. Spend a year of Tuesdays down the pub playing games and you will see an amazing procession of people, some who turn into regulars, regulars that fade away, and those who turn up just the once. Blink, and you'll miss half of them.

So it is that for the time being we bid farewell to Ed#2 as he pursues a career in Other Places that are Not Norwich. Ed#2 has turned into something of a regular this last year, and it seems his lament of never winning a game at NoBoG is always going to be true.

His departure is especially a shame as this week saw Ed giving himself the deserved title of Poo Baron. Which surely has all the hallmarks of sticking as his official NoBoG name. Ed "Poo Baron" Lewis has a certain ring to it I think.

Early stages of Dungeon Petz

The Poo Baron, Owen, Ed#1 and Dean got to parade their motley collection of dungeon critters this week, feeding them, taming their rage tantrums, keeping them occupied and also trying to keep the inevitable pet poo from piling up.


Ed#1 for his part completely forgot to purchase any pets and instead seemed to go into the landscape gardening business - displaying a set of lovely show room enclosures and fields that had no animals in.

This is a pity, as Dungeon Petz is predominantly scored based on the actual animals you have.

Ed "The Poo Baron"glees over his poo in Dungeon Petz

Meanwhile the Poo Baron was doing what Poo Barons do best. Namely looking after mountainous volumes of Poo, which, much like landscape gardening, scores you no points in Dungeon Petz.

As for Owen, I couldn't see what he was doing. But he had a similar score to the Poo Baron and the Landscape gardener. So who knows. It would be hard to imagine coming up with a strategy to threaten the lacklustre capabilities of poo or empty enclosures, but Owen had it nailed.

All of which left Dean embarrassingly in front. So far in front in fact, that at one point had you combined the scores of the other three, they would still have been behind Dean. When I checked Dean was on the threshold of lapping the score track, whilst Owen, The Poo Baron and The Gardener were all dawdling in the low teens. Oh dear.

Meanwhile on other tables, Modern Art got a play, with Tim grabbing the win, before the group moved onto a spot of Kingdom Builder - a title that is surely in the spot of Most Played Game at NoBoG - with I think Tom and Paul vying for a win that went to a tie breaker.

Cash & Guns. Paul goes all gangsta with his gun
whilst Tom does his best "fuhgeddaboudit" pose.

Lastly they bust out the fun and foam gun filled Cash and Guns, always a treat, particularly if you've never experienced the stupidity of waving an orange fake gun in someones face.

Lords of Waterdeep - another popular NoBoG title - got played again, relative newcomer Andy beating all the veteran hands at the game.

Upstairs two tables had to fend with the Ribs of Beef Quiz Night. I'm not sure if the Ribs Quiz Night was some clever counter culture hipster event celebrating the absence of quizzing - so very last millennia - but whatever it was it had a turnout of precisely zero which meant undisturbed NoBoGing upstairs.

Infamy, Infamy, they've all got it....

Infamy got its first outing at the Ribs, myself, Pete, Rich and Sam vying to be the best futuristic gang in this simple but clever game of influence bidding and reputation building. The table talk was sharp and full on as Pete attempted to paint himself as ever in the guise of the plucky underdog that needs all your resources and Rich grumbled about everyone ganging up on him.

Rich ended up winning, with Pete blaming Sam of robbing him of the win.

On the other table upstairs a few people got to try out vanilla Galaxy Trucker, and in what seemed a very civilised outing to me, there were no mad scrambles for parts or mocking taunts as pieces of ship disintegrated into the ether. Having now learnt the base game, perhaps the intrepid explorers are ready for some advanced trucking another week, complete with ravenous aliens, implacable commandos and a whole fistful of crazy new components and threats.

JJ ponders his options in D-Day Dice

Skull and Roses, D Day Dice and Resistance finished off the evening in various places. The bad guys swept the floor in a hurried game of Resistance, and lawks alive, I won Skull and Roses ( I think so far I win more than I lose at Skull and Roses ).

D Day Dice looked interesting, I still want to give this a try, but alas Fletch is gone for another month - his duties take him in and out of NoBoG for weeks at a time.



Oh yes. And for those counting, there were 22 bold explorers this week.

Winter Fireworks

Such was the breadth and depth of gaming this week that I am hard pressed to keep all of it in my head. It could be something to do with the fact that we had another record busting week of 24 attendees spread over five tables.

Takenoko and it's greedy panda once more saw the light of day, and once more was followed by Betrayal at House on the Hill - but with a completely different group to last week. Glass Road made a tasteful and much appreciated second visit - this really is a cool shorter euro game with some clever mechanics going on, and no less than two concurrent games of Skull and Roses were also being played - one upstairs and one downstairs enabling you to take your pick of seating.

Pete's prototype got another airing in the pub with some discussion afterwards - not sure what the feeling was about it. I suspect Pete being Pete, then managed to encourage everyone to jump into a fast game of Hansa Teutonica - they were still playing when I left and the barmaid hovered locking up.

Alhambra and Lords of Waterdeep rounded out the other initial plays.

New to me this week was Hanabi - a co-operative card game all about fireworks. Although what the game has to do with fireworks - apart from having pretty pictures - is beyond me. It could be a game about collecting sets of goats. Or teapots. Or goat teapots. Or just about anything. Fireworks are cool I guess. Cooler than goat teapots anyway. Unless you're really into esoteric teapots. Perhaps the artist for the game couldn't draw goat teapots but could draw firework blasts. Who knows.

If you haven't played Hanabi the game is all about trying to finish colour sets of fireworks. Five sets in the basic game, six in the advanced game. Sets are laid down in the middle of the table according to their colour and on a strict numerical basis from low to high. Card values start at one and end at five, with there being only *one* five value card for each set in the deck.

So far so good. Except. You can't see any of your cards. Because everyone in the game is holding their cards with the backs pointing at themselves and their faces pointing at everyone else. And you need to play one of these backwards cards you can't see. Or spend a token to give a "clue" to someone else about some of their cards. You can tell someone what colour a bunch of cards are, or what numerical value they have. Failing that, you can discard one of your own cards to get a clue token back for someone in the group to spend later.

The art in the game then is to communicate enough information between all players such that they - 1) don't discard a card that's really needed, 2) don't try to play a card that doesn't fit and thus lose a life, 3) build a set of each colour of firework.

Just why you would be tampering with fireworks blindly in the first place, with three failures making the entire firework factory / display / anarchist centre blow up is a mystery. Seems excessively risky to me.

In any case the game plays very nicely and is something of a breath of fresh air. I feel the game could probably become too simple with a few plays, as a group really begins to read between the lines of clues that are given and understand the mindset of individual players. It's not so much what you say - which is helpful - as to when you say it - and who is saying it to who. And of course making sure that everyone has a 'safe' known action to take. The advanced game probably helps with this, bringing in a very difficult multicolour set to make, but eh, as it's not technically a requirement to complete, those that don't desire utter perfection could just ignore it.

Depends on the players I suspect. With a wrong group, this game could be a tortuous exercise in frustration / comedy.

Resistance finished the evening. The bad guys won three straight missions in a row. Despicable. Even after I had spotted two of the three spies, and had a probable line on the third ( which Merlin already knew to be true ). We'll blame it on short time. And King 'Reliable' Phil picking a well known spy for his mission. But nevertheless, it marks a welcome return to victory for the bad guys. Luke got his first try at being a bad guy. And gave himself up turn one. And then squirmed with some dubious made up stories as to his innocence. Ha. Never mind. It can be tricky with your first attempts at outright in your face lies. Resistance. A game about teaching you how to be a better liar / sociopath. When everyone has mastered it - be afraid.