All quiet on the Mash Tun front

It's been a quiet few weeks at t'Mash Tun and a decidedly relaxed more cosy air has settled on the weekly gaming. We've seen a spread of new gamers and new games both, but by and large it has been business as usual for NoBoG Tuesdays with classics such as Lords of Waterdeep and Ticket to Ride getting plays as well as the lesser spotted things such as Cyclades and Study in Emerald.

Hal, Pete and Sam enjoy a quiet game of Unfeeling Creatures

Dark Moon got a play a few weeks ago to a largely new group who wanted to sample its delights, and for once the game wasn't a horrendous car crash for the survivors. Welcoming Jack to his first NoBoG evening, he got to be one of the treacherous infected players, and on Sam's opening turn was pretty much revealed to be a filthy evil doer. Which isn't ideal. In fact I'd go so far as to say it's if not game breaking, then game disrupting. You can get the same thing happen in Battlestar Galactica ( of which Dark Moon is the stripped and dipped clone ) when Gaius manages to luckily pick a Cylon to reveal on one of his first turns. In BSG the impact can be even worse as by and large the revealed gets to spend the next 3 hours apart from everyone else.

I was the other infected in Dark Moon, but there was little I could do to help my fellow traitor, and the survivors had a remarkably good knack for rolling positives on their dice and passing all the challenges. Despite a good deal of suspicion going around the table, the survivors cruised home without hardly breaking a sweat, but the table talk was still great, and laughs and accusations were had.

Spyfall. I have seen less bad answers and more bad answers.
I'd say there were an average amount of bad answers here.

Sam also picked up Spyfall and we gave this a go with an expanding and contracting group for the rest of the evening in something of a marathon session. Spyfall has visited NoBoG before but surprisingly it's quite a rare sight and almost all the players at the table this time were newbies. The challenge of figuring out a question on the spot was as ever a fairly tough proposition until at least half a dozen games had passed and some stock questions started doing the rounds... along with some stock answers that turned into a running gag..."I have seen less X, and I have seen more X. I'd say there is about an average amount of X here"... and an easy way for a spy to evade detection by playing for a laugh. At one point during play we also had Luke the off duty barstaff at the Tun to join in and fielded questions about what to do if a squirrel was present and the unspecified horrors of what happened at the "show at 4". Great fun.

Castles of Mad King Ludwig

The castles of Mad King Ludwig is getting to be very popular at the Tun, several people have picked up the game for their own collection, and this week we saw two simultaneous games of it being played. I still haven't played this, looks good fun, and judging from its popularity, it must be getting something right ( as it stands it's now much more popular than Suburbia of which it bares a passing resemblance ).

The Imperial Assaulting team got their fortnightly game in too, but in something of a bid for worlds shortest Assault managed to finish the game before you could say "scruffy looking nerfherder". I think they took as long to get themselves sorted and setup as they did in playing it. They then decided to bust out some flicking type of game - Flick 'em Up I think - which looked great, however I have something of an aversion to game pieces flying off tables - too many scenes of people scrabbling under darkened pub tables with the flashlight on their mobile turned on ( and the things they can return from Under The Table with ) have scarred me.

Terra Mystica

This week Pete busted out Terra Mystica to teach a whole bunch of people who had never played it. Despite Chloe having the broken over powered halflings ( which are now errata'd to not be as over powered ) and Pete taking the less than spectacular Giants, Pete inevitably won. In a post game commentary he declared that against any decent opposition he would have lost, I laughed at his attempt to downplay his score whilst inadvertently and hilariously insulting the capabilities of everyone else. Possibly this was made even worse by Hal - one of his fellow players - standing next to him at the time. It's a good thing Hal is so laid back.

Also this week I got to play three cracking games, all new to me, Lewis and Clark Discoveries, The Grizzled and Harbour.

Lewis and Clark Discoveries is to Lewis and Clark The Expedition, as Roll for the Galaxy is to Race for the Galaxy. Same theme, approximately the same mechanics, but replacing the key bits of the engine with dice and dropping everything else. And it works really nicely for Lewis and Clark Discoveries.

The ideas are roughly the same - a journey that requires traversing rivers and mountains and encountering native tribes along the way which will provide aid. Instead of the fixed race like board you get in the original Lewis and Clark however, Discoveries simply uses victory points for each leg of a journey you complete. So for each journey leg card you complete, you get to add its victory points to your pile. If you step back and think about it, the race board and the legs for victory points are in fact the same thing - the difference being that in L&C the original it's a sprint to reach X victory points first, whereas in Discoveries the game timer is the globally available number of journey leg cards.

Lewis and Clark Discoveries.
One of Joe's workers has come to work for me.
Our expedition has cookies.

There is some elegant re-use of cards going on with the game ( something FFG designs could woefully do better on ) where the cards are double sided and fulfill native tribes and journey legs ensuring that no two games will ever be the same, and exactly what mix of natives and journeys you get is very open ( this is important when you are going for the exploration set collection ).

Dice form your workers for worker placement, and with these you will be able to befriend natives, change dice, or complete journey legs. Some of the time the dice will go back to a global pool, and sometimes they get to be recycled back into your worker pool. The interesting - and somewhat borrowed from L&C - thing here is that the global pool of workers can be picked up by *anyone*, meaning you can swag other peoples dice and use them in your own placements. However. At any time instead of placing workers a player can retrieve all dice of their colour regardless of where they are. Natives are extra neutral coloured dice - and hanging onto these as opposed to having them recycle into the global pool for others to grab is a key part of the optimising and decision making you will be doing.

The global dice pool is a lovely little spin that means picking up a whole bag of dice from the pool can be very enticing but also situational. If you can get in and out, use someone elses dice before they are ready to pull all their dice back all to the good. When someone has just one or possibly two of their dice out of their pool, is it really worth them doing a recall ? Probably not. So if you've got their dice, you're probably safe.

Great game. And it's really interesting to start seeing these dice games where dice are being used in clever ways - not just some yahtzee / King of Tokyo variant ( yeah that's right, I went there, I dissed King of Tokyo ).

Second up was The Grizzled, a French co-operative card game set in the trenches of World War I, with some lovely cartoon art done by one of the gunned down Charlie Hebdo artists ( Tignous ). Which, although passes unnoticed by many a gamer, is probably something to think about. Legacy. Mortality. Tragedy. Murdered man's work in your hands. Cheery, I know.

The Grizzled. We failed. Tim's fault.

The Grizzled is fairly simple - try to collectively exhaust a deck of cards before the game timer runs out - the game timer being either exhausting a different pile of cards or one of the players receiving too many wounds. Set *avoidance* is the order of the day with players playing into a global tableau trying to avoid three of a kind of anything. Failure to do so shuffles all the cards into the Pile That Needs to be Exhausted, whilst success bins the cards to the discards. Keeping cards in your hand at game round end will put them into the Needs to be Cleared pile - and one of the key balances of the game is how many cards should get dealt out at the start of a round ( it's up to the players ), and how many are going to be forced into play or onto the needs to be done deck.

The sets have a lovely theme, well, lovely is the wrong word, they are lovely pieces of art about a miserable existence, bullets, whistles, snow, rain, gas masks. Players each get a unique solider to play who have their own one use powers - clearing certain set types from the tableau - and also a speech power up which can do the same. Injuries can be picked up which have varying impacts on gameplay and your choices, such as forcing you to play all cards from your hand whether you like it or not.

A nice little filler game with lovely art, and one of those games you should definitely get round to playing at least once. And if you're into your French themed fillers, then this and Guillotine could be the start of your collection ! Now if only there was a Napoleonic filler...

 Lastly I got to play Harbour with Joe, which is another nicely condensed Euro squished into the size of a quick filler. Even though the games are utterly different, this reminds me of Artificium, which condenses a lot of Euro goodness into a very quick and simple filler based around card and resource management. In harbour the order of the day is worker placement and resource gathering / selling. In some ways it feels like a super cut down version of Le Havre in so much as the goods interaction is global and changes turn by turn as to their attractiveness, and behind all that you are trying to build things and score points in a port kind of theme.

Dare I say, it feels better than Le Havre to me ?

Le Havre is a cool game, and something you can sink your teeth into, Harbour is a filler, light weight, less complexity, and yet, by and large the games hit the same spots - resource collection, optimisation, building synergies, build to win, yada. Harbour plays in 15 minutes. Le Havre, not so much.

Check it out anyway, Harbour is a lovely condensed euro filler.

A study in Emerald - a study in cube placement. With tentacles.

 Last week I got to play Study in Emerald, a game I have seen occasionally pass through NoBoG but have never got to sit down and play. It's something of a collectors item these days with some seriously inflated prices ( although a second edition reprint is on the way which will no doubt pop that balloon ) which I am kind of at a loss to explain - perhaps because it has a passing tie in to Neil Gaiman - the game is based on a story of the same name.

Study in Emerald is a Cthulian Victorian Sherlock Holmesian mash up set in a world where the Cthulu lot rule the world, and an underground anti Cthulu lot want to depose them. The game is a simple area control and deck building game with a couple of twists, but by and large it comes down to having more cubes in a location than anyone else - which allows you to draft a new card into your deck and or score points. The cards form what kind of action you can peform - but there isn't a huge breadth of options here, you will be picking up cubes from the stock, placing them down into areas, cashing areas in for cards or assassinating someone else at a given location.

So the game comes down to place cubes, pick up cubes, cash in areas removing all cubes and obtaining a card. Rinse and repeat.

The main twist to this game is that the players are split into two teams, the pro cthulu and the anti cthulu, and the way you score points for each team is different - some things will only score for one side or the other and a global track of victory points for each team also adds into your personal score. Despite this team aspect, the game is won individually - and for an extra kick, the lowest scoring person penalises everyone else on the same team by a handful of points.

The game has excellent presentation and a cool theme, mechanically it does its job, but realistically there is only a certain amount of wiggle room you have in promoting your team - and your fellow players - and demoting the enemy. So, your hands can be tied if someone on your team is struggling and pulling your points down. No one likes to have their points pulled down in public. There is a balance there in trying to help your team whilst kicking the other AND also making sure no one else is beating you points wise that you get to play out, but, it's muted, the actions largely play themselves, and your influence on what is going on globally is limited.

Codenames

The filler codenames has also been doing the rounds. James was somewhat miffed when I couldn't help but describe his clue as possibly the worlds worst codename clue ( the clue was heel 2, one of the answers being socks, the other being part.... because a heel is PART of a foot.... um... that logic means that just about any word would fit PART ... leaf... well its PART of a tree innit... money... well... its PART of the global economic model innit... ), and post round demanded I be made spy master as it wasn't so easy. For the record I guided my team to a win - helped enormously by the opposing team continually getting our answers. Good work lads. That game session also saw Sam pull an answer out of his ass in 5 seconds flat with "satellite" for the clue "desynchronisation". Satellite and belt. Huh. And that won them the game too. Outrageous.

Lots of other games played. Cthulu wars again. Blood Rage. Machi Koro. Luna. Blood Bowl Team Manager. Steam punk rally. Phew ! So many games, so little time.

32,36,42 for those who are counting.

I'll leave you with an epic three week sized gallery.

Luna. With a very thematic blue cloth for the sea.

Lords of Waterdeep

Cthulu Wars

Machi Koro

Blood Bowl Team Manager

Ticket to Ride

Cyclades

Castles of Mad King Ludwig

Blood Bowl Team Manager

Ticket to Ride India

Game of Thrones LCG

Yet More Castles of Mad King Ludwig

Lords of Waterdeep

Takenoko

Galaxy Truckers

Blood Rage

Steam punk rally

Forty Two

"What do you get if you multiply six by nine ?"
"Six by nine. Forty Two."
"That's it, that's all there is."
"I always thought there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe."

Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent on the supercomputer Earth.

Busy - Dead of Winter, Lewis and Clark and Kemet

My hunch that last week was going to be more quiet turned out to be utterly wrong. So much for hunches. And eventually we had 42 people attend, including a post Netrunner playing G Man and Pete.

James with a mind to bringing some titles more suitable for any board gaming newbies that turn up brought along Thief of Baghdad, a classic Queen title that for me has a feel not a million miles away from the other Queen classic Alhambra. Whether it's because of the simplicity of shooting for your colours, or the fact that the publishers are the same, and therefore the production values are very similar, or that it has a similar theme going on, who knows.

The game is very easy, play colour cards to get your thieves onto table, or shift guards and thieves about - get enough thieves in an area and you can steal the treasure. First to X treasures wins.

Thief of Baghdad. A nice early era gateway Euro

Myself, James and Nicky gave the game a run - about as far away from newbie board gamers as it gets ( you know you're in trouble when James is the youngest person at the table ) - and had a blast playing this old gateway game. I spent too much of the game dicking with other people - I like screwing with carefully laid out Euro plans - and James was somewhat intent on doing the same to me. Nicky sensibly concentrated on getting the game winning chests of treasure, and ended up pilfering her quota of stash first and taking the game.

A lovely light little classic game, very much in the early euro era, and probably something you could bang out with the family and those that are not conversant with the edgier reaches of board gaming instead of say playing Monopoly.

Rally Man got on a play on the other side of the room, leading me to immediately want to custom paint the tiny cars, and Ewan has a report on how that went with some pics from Tim.

Tonight myself (Ewan), Owein, Tim, Hal, and new comer Heather sat down to put the pedal to the metal in the racing game Rally Man. Rally Man is a game about getting the fastest time over several rally circuits which are created by the players.

Each turn players choose how fast or careful they want to go round the circuit by choosing a number of dice representing the gears they want to either go up in or go down in. The gear the player finishes their turn with earns them the time assigned to that gear, so finishing in 5th gear equates to 10 secs while finishing in 1st equates to 50 secs. However you can’t expect to stay in 5th all the way round as there are plenty of tricky corners that require slower gears in order to go round safely; so careful planning and thinking ahead is required to get the fastest time overall.

When rolling the dice it is all about managing luck, as if you roll 3 hazard symbols it could spell a nasty crash and not only more time added on but also damage to your car. You can choose to roll all the dice at once; giving you some nice bonuses in time saved but could be more likely to crash. So with all that in mind the 5 rally drivers took to the wheel of their cars and sped along over 3 circuits.

During the first circuit I tried to save some time and take a short cut over the corner and suffered a puncture which would have led to the slowest time if it weren’t for, as she became known as the entertainment crew, Heather crashing; adding a minute onto her time. Tim finishing the fastest with a respectable time of 1 minute 46 seconds, with Owein and Hal not far off the pace. Onto the second circuit which was both longer in distance and a lot more strenuous hair pin corners. This circuit showed us its dangers with all but myself crashing at least once; Heather managing to puncture 2 of her tires (how the car actually passed the finish line is a mystery) and Tim damaging his car by crashing into a tree.

All of this allowed myself to not only catch up but to over take the leaders and come in with the fastest overall time, closely followed by Owein and Hal. But it was all to play for in the final circuit, which introduced snow on the tracks. Tactical decisions about whether to switch onto snow tires or stick with tarmac (each having advantages and disadvantages).

It would soon become apparent that those drivers, who switched to snow tires, although slower on the tarmac, were able to speed along the snow as if it wasn’t even there. Heather crashing again, and Tim struggling with damage on his car from the previous run in with a tree, both struggled and overall finished in 5th and 3rd respectfully.

Coming into this circuit it was my race to lose and with Owein putting in some fast times the pressure was great. However keeping my cool and flying over the final jump across the finish line it was myself who blazed into first with the fastest time overall of 8 minutes 24. The crashes of the previous circuit had there toll on the others with Owein finishing with a time of 9 minutes 45.

Overall Rally Man is great racing game and the theme comes across extremely well with lots of tension at every dice roll. Managing the risk with the dice rolls and forward planning (with a little luck) is what this game is all about and a game that everyone seemed to enjoy.

Punk Rich was back in the house this week after a prolonged hiatus, and their table chose Nexus Ops to fight over - which is an ameritrash dice rolling bonanza with skirmishing aliens. Basically Axis and Allies on a really small map with an Alien theme. Or if you've never heard of that, then Risk with bells on.

Nexus Ops. Beware the treaties of Rich and Pete

I felt a little sorry for Hazel having to put up with the shenanigans of Rich and Pete, I suspect she'd probably have liked Thief of Baghdad a bit better, but they all seemed to enjoy themselves, and afterwards they joined us for a game of Spyfall.

Downstairs Sam I put Kemet on the table, with Med Ed returning from his jet setting to join in - if I recally correctly Med Ed always seems to get in on games of Kemet, and is rather a mean hand at the game. Next to them Lewis and Clark got played Joe has some words on what they got up to

This week myself, David, Elliot, Tom and guiilame attempted to reenact Lewis & Clark's trek across America which had never been done previously by anyone, ever... Honest. Elliot got wood, LOTS of wood. But I managed to pull of the victory by harnessing pure beef power (with a little bit of horse in the mountains, but if its good enough for tesco...)

Then we played a couple of quick hands of coup, I won one and David won one (I think, or maybe it was Tom). Not sure I really like coup, its ok, but I think its over just as you're getting started, might have to try it with reformation at some point to see if that improves it.

Uh huh, I will chime in and say I don't much like coup either - it's ok, but eh, I dunno, takes a bit of a werewolf recipe, mixes, comes up... short. There's just not a whole heap of cleverness or deduction, it's a pure bluff, which is fine, but there's not many dimensions to the bluffing either. You could argue that Mascarade has exactly the same problems, except the key feature of not knowing who you are either injects a lot of humour and double bluffing into the game.

Lastly Dead of Winter clawed its zombie way through the cold, I think they managed to tank the colony once and so started over again - but that wasn't looking too rosy either when I looked.

Peeking over the shoulder of Lewis at Munchkin

Castle Panic also got a play with Chris bringing it along and getting a reasonable table of 4 together.

And possibly the longest ever game of Munchkin was to be had - a 3 hour marathon session of munching, of which Sam was branded the winner. If there is such a thing after 3 hours of munchkin. I think technically everyone is a loser. Sam was the least losing of the losers perhaps. He didn't look entirely chuffed with his win it has to be said. I suggested some T-shirts should be made with "I survived the 3 hour Munchkin game" emblazoned on them.

The Exclusive Munchkin T Shirt. Available nowhere.

Some other fillers made their way to table, Port Royal was squabbled over - Nicky won this too, giving her a clean sweep of wins for the evening.

Finally we finish on The Gallery with thanks to Monika for the extra pics - who seems to think that the Ribs of Beef landlord has made it into Dead of Winter. Cue soothing gallery music.

Dead of Winter - debating who to eat next no doubt

Rally Man

Lewis is happy with his munchkinning

Lewis and Clark

Chris and Lauren laugh at dying things in Castle Panic

Kemet, Sam looks disconsolately on his Egyptian forces

Dead of Winter trucker or Ribs of Beef Landlord ?

Sparky as ever kicking ass and taking names

Previous weeks, 32, 36, 39?

Viva la revolucion

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

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

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

Cuba Libre - Viva La Casinos !

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Citadels with the newbie Citadel players

No idea who won.

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

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

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

Jacques mimes his interpretation of "Saboteur"

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

Spies at the Jet Garage

A busy week this week ! In the apparent subjective random chaos of the universe the pub was this week quite full for no good reason whatsoever, making our 32 attendees seem that much more as we struggled to obtain tables for our cardboard shuffling.

We managed to squeeze everyone in however with the threat of punishments for those daring to play less than 5 player games ( as it turned out we had two tables do this ) and the very real possibility of otherwise having to enact the Beta Site Protocol.

Lords of Vegas. Sam practices his nazi salute.
Everyone else awkwardly pretends it didn't happen.

Downstairs Cyclades ( I think or possibly Kemet ) made a return to table after some time away, and on the next table over a rather surprising game of Tzolk'in kicked off with 5 newbies. If you'd asked me to guess what game would be played without at least someone at the table having played it before, Tzolk'in would probably have been one of the last games I would have picked, as being a crunchy euro it's not exactly the sort of game you can just fall into in 5 minutes. Nevertheless after a rules explanation from Pete the 5 got on with it and they all seemed to enjoy it. I didn't manage to get an idea of who was doing what. Without a monster action efficiency vet at the table I daresay the game was... quite enjoyable. And not the soul crushingly inevitable cog grinding madness that it can be. *cough*.

Over from them Martin got one of his favourites to table again with Room 25, and then followed one of the Werewolf variants, Andrew having brought three different Werewolf variants to the pub. It seems you can never have enough werewolves. I caught them in a game that was winding down, much argument about who the werewolf was, with some dubious statements as to eye witnesses and swapped roles. Looked good fun.

Pete and Joe enjoying the latest crossroads card - Dead of Winter

Upstairs Dead of Winter made a return, half newbies, half experienced, and despite a bucketload of paranoia filling the table and a call for exile being ignored by a whisker, there ended up being no betrayers at the table. Collecting samples was the name of the game, with 15 samples to collect, or after dice probabilities, 30 zombies to kill.

Pete on his first ever game of this focused heavily on getting everyone to kill zombies in good order, and the first turn passed in something of a breeze.

Although it must be said a rather unwelcome change came over Pete almost the instant he sat down to play. He questioned why we need to support helpless survivors. Weren't they indeed a burden. Couldn't we just kill them ? Eat them ? Push them out into the cold ? No. We're civilised. Besides. You lose 1 morale for everyone lost. Usually. Ah he said. Incentive.

The morale of the story being don't be in a zombie apocalypse with Pete. He will be eyeing you up thinking of how well you'd go glazed in honey with some accompanying roast potatoes.

Despite our great start, if you've ever played Dead of Winter however, you'll know that things can go tits up very quickly, and you can be up to your armpits in helpless survivors and difficult crises before you can say BRAAINNNSSSS.

Which quickly started to be the case as no less than three survivors ended up being bit and dying, and a suddenly burgeoning population saw food requirements double overnight.

As morale dipped towards one, the samples were on the cusp of being completed and as we staggered towards the finish line - worrying that a betrayer could tank the colony at any moment - we managed to obtain the last sample and in a bit of collective support everyone fulfilled their objectives. The impossible had happened. Everyone at the table had won.

Pete declared the game to be easy and stated it was his lack of presence in previous games that had made them fail.

Uh huh.

Kingsburg - Davey in the corner had strong infrastructure built

Elsewhere Kingsburg rode into town, and when I looked Davey seemed to have developed a nice board with a full track of military and a nearly full track of something else - although crucially at that point he had no pure victory point buildings. I'm not sure his score tally was enough to take it, despite him having a good infrastructure. Over development of useful buildings perhaps ?

On the other side of the pub, Sam having purloined pub tables to get his group going brought Lords of Vegas out, which seemed to be developing nicely when I looked - there seemed to be quite a number of monster casinos out in play.

The peace of Porfirio Diaz - Pax Porfiriana

And lastly Pax Porfiriana made another return to the Ribs, this somewhat obscure title surprisingly having made half a dozen appearances at the pub in the last year or so. Apparently we love us some revolutionary mexican shenanigans at NoBoG.

Pax and Dead of Winter ended up finishing at the same time, leaving us with the tantalising possibility of giving the yet to be properly published game Spyfall a whirl.

Having printed the print and play version of this out earlier the only problem was that all the printouts were not yet sleeved - not a huge problem, and everyone agreed they could just sleeve what was needed, or as I suggested, just not even worry about it. Play with how it was.

However.

Tip a bunch of unsleeved cards on a table. Add a pile of as of yet unused sleeves. Then tell a bunch of OCD gamers there is no need to sleeve. Wait. Watch the beads of sweat form on foreheads as OCD tendencies are repressed. The eye twitches. The hands that creep towards the sleeves.

Predictably perhaps after a minute of discussion there then followed ten minutes of frantic sleeving by a NoBoG flashmob sweatshop.

I ended up just managing from on high - I did no work myself, I let the NoBoG sweatshop collective get on with it. When asked who was the winner of this sleeving game, Hal retorted that I was the winner - presumably having just got all my cards sleeved by a willing work force. This turned out so well in fact that I am sure there is a business opportunity in there to do with stimulating the OCD tendencies of NoBoGians, sleeving up cards, and offering services on ebay or somesuch. If you could introduce a betrayal mechanism into the sleeving process it would probably become the hit NoBoG activity of 2015. In any event I am considering bringing other unsleeved games to the pub in future, with a just so happened to have handy pile of sleeves and more reverse psychology comments that guys, there really is no need to sleeve these cards.

As for Spyfall itself, this played out really fun. As Punk Rich noted it had that fresh, buzzy, fun feel of Resistance in the early days when it was all new and shiny and people were getting to grips with how to lie convincingly to their fellow human beings. Although Pete was less charmed with it. Fun. But not deep enough. I think however it's as deep as your questions / players. It's like an unstructured Resistance session.

So what is spyfall ?

Spyfall is an easy filler werewolf type game with up to 8 players taking part in a bit of a Question and Answers deduction session. One player at the table will be a spy - and not know which location everyone is currently at - whilst all the other players are given the same location plus a role they fill at that location. So for instance, everyone might find themselves on an aeroplane, with one player as the captain, another as a stewardess and so on. But the spy knows nothing. The art of the game is in wheedling out the spy - or not. As the spy you either want to remain hidden, or for extra bonus points, remain hidden until you can figure out the location and declare it. As non spies you are trying to find out which one of you is clueless as to the location - without giving away the location to the spy - with a bonus point for the player successfully calling out a vote. Players are given eight minutes to ask questions - one player asking one other player a question, then that player asking someone else a question and so on.

So for instance. An utterly horrible question might be - Pete, are we at the Submarine ? Answer - Yes. Good job. You've just handed the spy the win.

Four rounds were played in total, with Graham calling Richard IV out as a spy with his dubious answers, Punk Rich panicking to a quick minute and a half spy guess as to the location ( wrong ), and then finally a couple of spy wins, the first being Punk Rich sailing to a spy victory as the wrong person was lynched, and lastly Bondy narrowly avoiding a spy vote to then call out the location was the "dodgy Jet Service Garage", earning himself a game winning 4 points in the process.

There were some great moments in the game, with Punk Rich as a spy completely nailing an answer on the location with a broadening your horizons statement ( for the school - he had guessed it was either the University or school ) and thus utterly avoiding any suspicion, and Pete launching into an impromptu political statement when asked something along the lines of whether everyone should attend this place ( school ). Graham also called out Owein for not laughing when everyone else did - this can be a giveaway in spyfall - but he wasn't actually a spy and not enough people around the table were convinced either.

A lot of frantic thinking was going on at the table for this game. The most popular word was Um. Um. Um. Um. Uh. Stalling sorry. Um. Uhhh.

After the final round Graham had managed to come up with a great universal question to weed out spies - What are the toilets like at this location ? Depending on your answer you can figure out if they know what they are talking about. One shot only of course. For use on suspected spies.

Funny werewolf filler variant. I expect to see more of it in the coming weeks.

If you'd like to try out Spyfall yourself ( and as it's not yet available ), there are a number of print and play versions available in the files section on the geek , but be warned the full game is some 208 cards.

Alternatively, if you'd like to play with the extra special Norwich NoBoG spyfall variant, you can print out the sheets that you can find here, including such places as the Norwich Cathedral, UEA, Norwich and Norfolk Hospital and of course the world famous Norwich Space Station. Uhh. Yes !

One cool thing about the game is that in theory, just one copy can play multiple tables simultaneously. With 25 odd locations to use, and only one ever being in use at one time, you could quite easily run three or four tables from one set. Although if you are truly wily you could possibly listen to other tables to help you figure out which location is *not* currently on this table. Filthy cheating.

A great evening of gaming, awesome fun. Roll on next week !

Boardgame Geek Print File for Spyfall http://boardgamegeek.com/files/thing/166384
NoBoG Spyfall A4 Card Sheets http://www.singularity-space.co.uk/spyfall_nobogstyle.rar