The Curious Incident of the Rat in the Night-time

Eh up, buckos! I know you've all been anticipating this moment. At least since you clicked on the link and were waiting for the page to load. Maybe even since you saw the notification pop up on facebook! This moment is of course when we look with rose-tinted spectacles, or at least innuendo-laden fondness, at the past Tuesday's gaming. And this week I'll be unfairly reporting on the playing of Sheriff of Nottingham, Chaos in the Old World, Noria and for myself, Quadropolis.

A small part of the East Midlands turned up in the Mash Tun for the players of Sheriff of Nottingham which seems to be a game the goal of which is to embarrass Jamie because he's so awful at it. As I arrived, he was asking about the bread situation, but quickly started laying on the accusations, claiming that Gareth was "good at the talking shit game as well" in an attempt to play hardball that backfired. The main mechanic in question here is Cheat-type one where you can call someone's bluff, either penalising the cheater or being penalised if you're wrong. Jamie had either wrongly called bluff ("stop him! he's got bread!") or wrongly accepted a bluff 8 times in a row, so things were looking pretty good for the Merry Men on his watch. Jamie wasn't the only one with problems though, as James in another round had attempted to bluff while accidentally showing the cards in question to everyone. An omnishambles of medieval proportions.

Jamie examines his hand in order work out
exactly how to cock up his next call...

The Sheriff, to put it politely,
is fond of his food.

Next was a pretty chaotic game in the old world, and pretty debauched at that --- as perhaps it is to be expected for a game featuring the Daemon Prince of pleasure and hedonism, amongst others. The game, allegedly, is drawn on human vellum, though I don't think that would be allowed nowadays. When asked for a run-down the players simply said they were "old gods trying to destroy the world with corruption," which sounds like an average Tuesday to me, NoBoG or otherwise. You can win by completing your dial by achieving your God's particular objectives such as seducing nobles or killing people, or you can just get 50 points by whatever means.

Slaanesh and Skaven, sitting right next
to each other. Who'd have thought?

Slaanesh thinks that the objectives are too hard --- "just let me touch myself!" This was avoided at least in part thanks to there being a Skaven token on the board so "no-one was getting here." We were trying to figure out how this worked and hypothesised that nobody would want to get busy if there were rats around. However Peter then dropped the bombshell on us, declaring, "I do remember nearly squashing a rat during intercourse once." When asked what he was doing his reply was simply, "Well we were having sex, the rat was just walking around." I'd add some kind of witty follow-up to this, but I just don't think I can improve on what's already given to me. Peter did clarify that the rat was a pet.

Paint me like one of your French rats.

Next up was Noria which is a still-unreleased, fairly heavy engine-builder. You have a spinny dial (see photo) which rotates each turn somehow, and what is in the bottom section of the dial on your turn is what determines your actions. This means that you can't just plug away at one section of the mechanics and have to adapt and anticipate the up-coming actions. You can change what's in your dial but you have to sink money into doing so, so you can't do it too much.

Things are Pointed At in Noria.
I wish I'd got a close-up of the spinny dials.

There are lots and lots of bits and locations and I didn't get a complete description, but for example you can go exploring in order to obtain resource generation, and you can do other actions which push up the markers on the main tracks, which is what ends up scoring you points.

So then I built some square towns in Quadropolis. It was my first time and I kind of sucked, especially when I forgot that we were on the last round and based part of my strategy around doing something next round... Anyway, if you've not played before as I hadn't, the object is to build up a town by taking and placing various district cards on your 4x4 town grid. You take them in player order from a shared 5x5 pool by placing one of your four selection cards down. Each is numbered 1-4 and you take the card that distance away from the edge on which you place the selection card, meaning your choices become more restricted as the round progresses. You can only place districts in the row or column corresponding to the card you used. This all adds up to meaning you need to be very careful about which of the selection cards you use to get which district, and in what order since you don't some other bugger to nick your district (there's quite some scope for screwing people over if they have a limited number of viable or possible choices).

My quadropolis after one round. Pretty modest.

The districts themselves are fairly straightforward with some nice interactions: each requires a certain resource to run, and may also produce a resource. Typically districts produce the opposite resource from what they consume, and some synergising districts behave the same, forcing you to diversify. Synergies involve making certain patterns, adjacencies and the like, and you can only do a couple perfectly before running out of space on your 4x4 board. There is definitely enough going on to need a few plays before you really work out some the optimal strategies. It feels similar to Suburbia in a bunch of ways — building a town, obviously, with districts that should be placed in certain configurations obtained from a central pool. In Quadropolis, you have far less freedom with where you place things, though, and the resources are quite different. I feel like the small town board might start get a bit stale after a few plays, but there is an advanced mode with an extra round, a whole extra zone to build on, and new district types.

Finished quadropolis, still pretty modest.
Note the neat gap on the top row which could have
been a park adjacent to three residences.

So that's it for this somewhat belated write-up of board gaming beauty. I suspect we'll all never think about rats in quite the same way from now on. Until next time!

All mouth and no trousers

Not much to report this week - we'll call it the All Mouth and No Trousers edition. Not because there wasn't anything going on, but more because I had One of Those Days on Tuesday, where things conspired subtly against me. The upshot of which is that a) I don't have any fancy pictures of what went on, and that b) I couldn't really tell you a lot of what went on either.

Which makes for a fascinating weekly blog post that is usually concerned with a) fancy pictures and b) what went on.

Oh dear. I partly blame Pete. And IT things. And the outrageous solar storm that hit the planet that day.

This week we had some 32 ish in the house, spread upstairs and downstairs, with some particularly virulent outbreaks of game choice apathy ( where gamers stand around wanting to play something, but entirely unable to actually pick something to play and instead stand waiting, endlessly waiting, for inspiration on high ). Caroline noted that the pre-game organisation was indeed like herding cats. I could only agree.

Dixit

Not being anything like resembling cat herding, a decisive group went upstairs and Dixit made a show - which to my memory despite being something of a bit of a classic, hasn't actually made it to the Ribs before. Half a dozen enjoyed the impromptu matching words to drawings malarkey, made all the better because of the game being very generously donated to Lewis by the G Man. We shall call him the G Man from now on. You know. Alternate names being given for hotel check ins and all that. My name ? Why yes, it's Barney Rubble. Room 1042. Or if you're Johnny Depp then you like to use Mr. Drip Noodle, Mr. Stench, and Mr. Oddpong. No, I didn't make that up. Google it. Then you can waste the next 30 minutes of your day finding out other celebrity names. Wasting time not doing the things you should be doing - You're welcome.

Bondy challenged a group to some Taj Mahal. Taj Mahal is, or was, or at one time for a short period, was one of Mr Bonds favourite games. A bit of a classic. Ticket to Ride also got a showing followed up by Betrayal at House on the hill, whilst downstairs NoBoG veteran Chaos in the Old World was fought over with some Mad King Ludwigging next door. I still want to give Mad King a go.

The last table. I have no idea what they were playing. Strip Poker Carcasonne for all I know. Shameful.

My table played a disastrous game of Dead of Winter where everyone died due to zombies overrunning the camp, which was more of a logistics error than anything else, and then we managed to squeeze in a game of Arcadia Quest which quickly devolved from beating up the bad guys, to beating up each other. At one point my team was surrounded by the other three players all of which were trying to smash my brains out. At some point this turned into a 2 on 2 fight, but it was all a bit of a blur. I scored an epic 4 gold coins. Pathetic. Top score was something like 16 gold coins. Very reasonable. A pity we had no time to level up our teams and go on another run.

A gorgeous pimped out Arcadia Quest. Image courtesy of BGG

So what is Arcadia Quest ? Arcadia Quest is a very simple dungeon romp, not very far away from the likes of the old school Heroquest, where you move around a small randomified map, killing monsters and picking up Stuff. Each scenario will have a number of quests to achieve - kill the troll, rescue the leaders and so on, as well as player versus player quests of kill a member of another players team. Quests are scored 1 point for each done, plus an extra point if you were the first to achieve it. Optionally some quest completions may give you a title which will allow you to do something special in game.

In a four player game there can be as many if not more player kill quests than there are goals on board quests. Inevitably this means that knifing your buddy on your right is going to feature in your future.

The interesting schtick to this game is that each player gets to choose three characters to form their team - the roster of which vary greatly in capabilities. Balancing capabilities, play styles and tactics is quite an enjoyable process, and a large part of this is that the game is designed to be run as a campaign where your team get to spend their loot on ever better equipment and thus effectively level up.

Arcadia Quest. Nice Minis. The player characters are amazing

It's incredibly simple, almost too simple, and yet, the gameplay is fun. Having the other players mixed in as possible frenemies adds a certain zing to the game, but with death being only an inconvenience ( and a penalty for the next scenario ) , there isn't an overly dramatic source of hurt feelings and kicked over tables for even the most sensitive of players.

The game is also miniature heavy, a miniature for everything, and all of them are a work of art. The quality of the mini's is phenomenal and they really do cry out for some TLC painting and presentation.

Lastly our thoughts go out to Stu who has been adventuring in the name of business career corporate monotony down South amongst the wilds somewhere around Swindon. He had vowed to give the Swindon Board Gamers a call - who's web page seems to be dead. Perhaps it's all a front for a sophisticated human trafficking ring who trade gamer dudes into slavery to work on such things as optimising your banana republics logistics, or getting the most out of your worker placement slaves in your gulag.

The Dark Side of Worker Placement

Back to 18 on Tuesday with Tuck joining us for his first taste of the sweet, sweet NoBoG honey.

Dean, Paul, Tom and Stu played Spyrium, which was sold by Dean as “A game by the same bloke that did Caylus”. Then, as if that didn’t sell it enough – “It’s worker placement, but you don’t put workers on cards, you put them in between them”. Ah, cunning. I look forward to the next evolution in worker placement games, where cards are placed on top of workers. Heavy thick cards that crush the workers like some malevolent industrialist exploiting the people. Worker Exploitation it would be called. Far more representative than the sugar coated 'Worker Placement' phrase. Right, Punk Rich? Anyway… that Caylus bloke is William Attia and from a quick squint into the murky corner where Spyrium was being played it certainly had a resemblance to Caylus: Magna Carta with that pale blue look to the cards. Apparently, Spyrium is set in a steampunk version of England. Players build factories and recruit workers to produce a commodity called "Spyrium". Producing Spyrium in one factory, then processing it in the next results in victory points. Alternatively, Spyrium can be purchased, but the material is rare and expensive, and players are constantly short of precious cash. See? Better to exploit the workers.Their lives are cheap! This is definitely worker exploitation. Dean won as he was the most ruthless and cruel mill owner – flashing his gaudy VPs in the face of his down-trodden workers that had broken their backs for his superfluous gains. Boo hiss.

Ewan, Ed 2 and I played Bloodbowl Team Manager. I am pleased to announce that it ended with a crushing win for the Bondy Dwarves, who swept away the opposition with 48 fans, to the Orc and Human teams’ 24 fans a piece. Admittedly, I got lucky getting to compete in 4 match ups twice. However, all my dwarves were well treated and although they fought for their lives in a grim and bloody version of American Football they were paid well for their services. Ewan’s Orcs even had comprehensive health care in form of an apothecary. Better than working in Dean's Spyrium mill.

Rich, Pete, Martin, Ed and Richard played another Fantasy Flight spin-off from the Games Workshop stable in the form of the popular Chaos in the Old World. But despite this being seen regularly at NoBoG, this week, the players must have rested on their demonic laurels as the Old World (the game itself) beat them all. Chaos defeated, good wins!

Alina, Matt and Sam played Suburbia. Creating three Utopian neighbourhoods. Such beautiful neighbourhoods that they should all be declared winners.

On the final table, Fletch took Sam 2 and Tuck on a medieval farming journey with Agricola. Fletch won by five points. His family of farmers enjoying the simple pleasure of providing for themselves. Only for their children to bear witness to the ushering in of the industrial age, where in time, they would be forced to endure back-breaking tasks in those dark, satanic mills and eventually be thrown into destitution by the emergence of the spinning jenny.

At the end of the evening we split again for a games of Smash Up, the newly Resistance re-themed Coup and of course Resistance: Avalon. Various people won.

Many a Season

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

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

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

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

Trains !

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

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

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

Seasons... upstairs

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

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

Seasons... downstairs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Norris McWhirter says "Not a record."

This is not Fight Club.

This is not Pinhole Camera Club.

This is not Admire my Stripy Shirt Club.

This is Games Club. This is the Norwich Board Gamers. Hear the clatter of our dice (or the sliding of our cubes, if you prefer).

The Stripy Shirt Club engages in some games

I’m not sure whether people got confused and turned up on the wrong night expecting some other club, but we had 18 in attendance this week. This matches our record attendance of 18 back when we met in the St Andrews Tavern (now the Rumsey Wells). That time we had nine foreign students accidently turn up to double our numbers.  They were never seen again (by us - I’m not saying we killed them and buried them in the cellar), but this time all those attending were repeat attenders and despite my previous aspersions that they got confused, I think everyone actually attended on purpose. Well done everyone, but not quite a new record.

So what did we play? Well, I played Chaos in the Old World with Rich, Tom, Jen and Robin.  Dial clicks were hugely contested with no-one managing a double progression all game. And while Tom’s Khorne beat on the Robin the Ratman, the three other factions were able to lay out huge amounts of corruption and spoil five regions in no time at all. The game ended with a victory point win for my Tzeentch. Jen’s Slaanesh got a last minute boost into second as Rich’s Nurgle matching pace for much of the game fell short on the last turn. The Rats were fourth and the feeble Khorne last (Corn syrup for the Fake Blood God).

Cyclades

Sam hauled out Cyclades for Dean, Fletch and Nicky. A game set in ancient Greece, where players make sacrifices to the five Gods (Apollo, Ares, Athena, Poseidon and Zeus) in order to gain favours, to help them in the race to be the first to build two cities.

This is a bidding and area control game with a massive dose of direct conflict thrown in.

By the same guys that designed the popular Kemet, this has the same look and flavour with similar chunky monster miniatures which can be used to beat on your opponents.  Looked good. Dean won.

They followed this up with more ancient times gaming with a quick game of 7 Wonders. This was also won by Dean.

Kingdom Builder, Kai dominates, Alina lurks deceptively strong

I'm sketchy on who played what on the other tables. I know Pete played three-player Eclipse and won that by sucking on a Supernova. While those that we exiled upstairs played two games of Kingdom Builder – Kai and Alina winning the first game and Alina winning the second for good measure. They then played King of Tokyo.

We ended the evening, as is customary these past weeks, with The Resistance. Resistance Avalon this time.  As also seems to be customary, the game was won by the dastardly minions of Mordred (John, Tom and myself) who infiltrated the round table on the final turn. Merlin, played by Rich, had a tough time and although he was being covered by Jen, the bad guys had a pretty good idea of his identity – especially when he picked a mission with none of the villains in it. Fortunately, John quickly proclaimed that Rich was making strange decisions and the mission was cancelled. As john mentioned last week, Merlin is a tricky character to play and really can't reveal very much without being uncovered by the bad guys. One other thing came out during the game – there may be the need for a couple of playmats for card discards, as which is the 'good' pile and which the 'bad' pile caused confusion. At least one bad guy laid a success card when he shouldn't have and one good guy laid a failure card to make two failures when there was only one bad guy on the mission. A small thing that I’d think unnecessary if it came in the box, but would be surprisingly useful.

Beer:  I supped at Green Jack’s Summer Ale. T’was delicious. That is all.

The Giants of Easter Island

Stu turned up this week with two new things in his hands - Giants and Forbidden Desert. With numbers at ten - Seamus the travelling thesp with us for his last week before moving on - it was decided two good 5 player games were required, and Giants... well, it was untried, untested, but it was 5.

Stu, Matt, Elena, Fletch and myself sat down with Giants to learn how we might erect the greatest Fat Stone Head of them all. ( I am not going to refer to them by their proper Moai name - Mo - Aye for the phonetics , they shall be called instead Giant Heads). The aim of the game is to garner as many points as possible - and this is done by carving and then shifting a Giant Head across the island to a suitable Giant Head site on the coast. The further you have to lug it, the more points you get. The heavier it is, the more points you get. And for the cherry on the top, you can invest in a hat, lug that to the site, and stick a hat on your Giant Head. And if you think I am joking you are much mistaken and I doubt you have what it takes to be a serious Giant Head and Hat installer.

Giants is a game if nothing else about balancing ill fitting and ever more ridiculous looking things on top of other ill fitting and ridiculous looking things. Giant Heads. Hats. Tribal tokens. Possibly tribal tokens on top of hats. And then trying to get your fat fingers in between two tricky statues to collect up your tribe members. It's (unintentionally) like Buckaroo or Operation but with Euro mechanics. It also has a wood resource token that is quite small and prone to rolling around.

The island of Wobbly Heads. Early sites have been developed.

Worker placement is the order of the day. But it's way more limited than other worker games - not an especially great deal to think about here. The interesting bit is in how you haul the various Giant Heads and Hats around the island - achieved by placing workers and wood in a path between Where You Are and Where You Want To Go.

Whilst shifting around the smallest heads isn't so difficult, shifting the bigger ones around is much harder, and in reality you will almost certainly need to lean on other peoples labour to get the job done. But this isn't a problem. Once a player's worker is placed on the map *anyone* can utilise them. If you do utilise someone elses worker however, they get a victory point or three, depending how much work needs to be done.

This means the game quickly shifts into synergistic, opportunistic lines of workers snaking across the island - and you have to pay attention to how many VPs you are blowing by using others workers. In general this shouldn't be too much of an issue, but if you let one player take a big role in all movement, you will find they have a nice lead to hold onto.

Our game was very much a learning curve kind of game as most players fell into a series of copy cat turns exploring different mechanics as time went on. Elena more than anyone else concentrated on building up her supply of workers and then shifting stone around. This lead to her being instrumental in getting everyones first and second wave of Giant Heads onto site - netting a lot of points in the process.

A conga line of workers, chiefs, shamans, wobbly statues,
ridiculous hats, and things balanced precariously on top
of other things. Stu gave up trying to balance
some of these items when he failed his basic Buckaroo skill test.

A scramble for sites at the end, and a bit of a mistake with the end game conditions meant the final turn was hectic, but it didn't end up making too much of a difference. As the final statue was lowered into place, Elena had come out on top some dozen points in the lead, myself in second thanks to the only enormously heavy head present on the island being shifted for miles, and a dozen or so points behind me were the also rans.

Interesting game. Feels like some of the mechanics are... well... off... there are some things that are just so useful, it's pretty much a no brainer to take them - the magical tablets -, and there are other things that are well... borderline useless - the wood. I guess the whole wood angle is very thematic to what's going on as a cautionary tale about getting into the Giant Head business, but I don't think it really adds much/enough to the game to justify its presence. Conversely the magic tablet is pretty much a no brainer purchase - you can often be left with spare tribal tokens at the end with which they are bought, and as a magic tablet can be used to give you an extra action AND counts as VP at the end AND is a tie breaker for bids....

I suspect the game should probably mainly be about negotiations about who is going to help who. The rest is just a setup for that discussion. Definitely worth a play. One to avoid if you have shaky hands and are easily annoyed.

After that, we had a bash at Forbidden desert, which is a thematic successor to Forbidden Island. Run around digging in the sand for flying machine parts to escape the clutches of the hellish wastes and a terrible dessicated fate. Cool filler game. Some very clever tiny mechanics going on. A great looking flying ship that needs assembly. A challenging difficulty.

Rather appallingly, Stu - the Water Carrier - failed the mission for us all by dying of thirst. To be fair half the rest of the team also died on that turn from thirst, but I personally blame the water carrier. Who carried no water during the game. And then promptly complained of being very thirsty before falling over. Pfft. Fletch the Meteorologist on the other hand spent almost the entire game propped in a deck chair, scrying the skies for what tomorrows weather would be like. As it turned out the weather was always Hot. With Sand. Hmm. Fletch declared he didn't need to be a meteorologist to tell you what the weather would be like in the desert.

Table 2 meanwhile had a fling with Chaos in the Old World. Seamus as bloody Khorne, Tom as the warped Rats, Pete as festering Nurgle, Ewan as sorcerous Tzeentch and Rich as the pleasure loving slightly suspect Slaneesh.

By all accounts the game was something of an aberration. An early world event restricted *all* card playing unless you sacrificed two of your snivelling followers. This, fairly obviously, set things up for a very different game, and the fact that it managed to stay in play for 4 out of 5 rounds meant it pretty much dominated the flavour of play.

 Khorne laid the smack down hammer on the every churning leader, Tzeentch struggled with the card ban, Rich unrolled a cunning all consuming plan for victory, and Pete lay in the back rows getting ignored.

Five player games. If there is a rule to five player games it's this. Never ever take the lead until you can win. Lurk in the middle of the pack and hold onto that killer move.

After Rich crashed and burned with his plans, Sneaky Pete managed to get his infectious hands on a set of ruinations that pushed Nurgle onto a rare victory. This kind of makes sense to me as I find Nurgles powers are blah at best. A game that forces a premium to be paid for playing cards can only on balance I think help Nurgle. Nurgle doesn't lose much compared to everyone else here. Although in theory it shouldn't be much of a problem for Khorne either who can always just stick to Plan A - Beat the Snot out of Everyone.

After the win of the Grand Snotty One, King of Tokyo was played - Pete managing a win by ignoring the over hyped Tokyo and instead installing himself in a comfy suburb with some rather surprisingly efficient dice. King of Tokyo ? Perhaps Not. Prince of Suburbia ? Definitely Yes.

The Lure of the Games

Halloween, and a weary traveller stumbles into the Ribs of Beef. He’s not sure why he’s here or how he even got here. He orders a beer, not really taking note of what the barmaid serves him. A twitchy faced man stares at him from his perch at the bar. So Jeff, for that is our traveller’s name, decides to take refuge downstairs, away from the prying eyes of the locals. “NO, don’t go down there!” shouts the barmaid. Alas Jeff doesn’t hear. He’s drawn down the stairs, into the bowels of the pub, as if some unearthly power had a hold of him. At the bottom of the stairs is a large red door from which he can hear howls of anguish. Still drawn, he cautiously opens the red door and peers inside. ARRRGGHHH! Unspeakable horror! He see’s Stu trying to wedge Tom’s Small World board under a table leg to keep the table straight. Oh my! Tom dances to and fro squealing at his tormenter. Next he sees Nicky placing her full to the brim drink perilously close to the edge of the Shogun board (the glass even leaves a ringmark). This is too much for Jeff. He turns to flee, but comes face to face with the hideous, shambling malformed shape of [insert NoBoGer of your choice here]...

OK, so it was November 1^st and Jeff was already there when I arrived, but you get the picture. Jeff’s first night at NoBoG - all the way from America, though he’s now living in Thetford. Welcome Jeff (or maybe Geoff or even Djeph).

Jeff said he liked Fantasy Flight games and so Chaos in the Old World was the obvious choice. He joined a game with myself, John and Pete. It was an embarrassingly quick win for Khorne, who double dial clicked every turn and had won before even a single region was ruined. It was so quick that we even had time for a three player game of Hansa Teutonica, which was a much more competitive affair as I only just nudged past John and then Pete in final scoring.

Jimmy had been to Essen and rolled off two games that none of us had seen before: Hawaii and Die Burgen von Burgund. The latter was chosen by Crocker, Tom and Stu. It seemed to be a hit with Luke and Stu and I’m sure Tom enjoyed it as he won.

Phil’s copy of Shogun had finally arrived and he settled down with Diane, Nicky and Moritz to battle for control of Japan. It ended with a win for Phil, who clawed his way back from a dodgy start by initiating a non-aggression pact with Diane.

Beer: Wolf’s Werewolf. This is a seasonal premium bitter. Chestnut in colour. Slightly malty, hint of biscuit and pretty quaffable. Nothing exciting, but very good. A bit like 7 Wonders – there’s nothing overly unusual or different about it, but it does the basics very well.

Preference for repeated plays?

We’ve not been very adventurous of late. Unusually for the club there has been a lot of repeat plays with a few games getting played on consecutive weeks. I always remember Tom mentioning that he’d been coming to the club for six months and had yet to play a game twice. This was back in 2007 and there certainly seemed to be a new game on the table every week. Of course there have always been old favourites; Power Grid has regularly been hauled out of someone’s bag at 7.30 on a Tuesday. It benefits from being owned by quite a few attendees so there is a good chance someone will have it. It’s one of those rare six-player games (along with Cosmic Encounter) so is the obvious choice when we have six players - usually preferable to splitting into two groups of three, as good three player games seem to be a rarity. Re-playability is boosted by the plethora of expansion maps. And finally it’s a great game – OK, so that’s rather subjective, but I can safely say that the majority of the club regard it very highly and the remaining few are willing to endure it. So, if Power Grid is the old stalwart, who are the new pretenders?

Chaos in the Old World

This game had a spate of plays at the beginning of 2010 when it was introduced by Richard Harding. It got played five times in the space of two months as Punk Rich also bought it. It’s seen a resurgence this summer as the Horned Rat expansion was released and Phil added it to his collection increasing the likelihood that it’ll be available to play (also Phil’s other games are uniformly awful or ridiculous – so it’s the only game he has that we’ll play). It perhaps shouldn’t see as much table time as it should as it absolutely needs to be played five (or four without the expansion). However, it has a nice mix of styles - the core mechanisms are clearly from the Euro mould, which are then jazzed up with kickass dice rolling, funky miniatures, and the chance to shout ”BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!”. This appeals to my taste in games as I gradually shun the ‘mechanisms for mechanisms sake’ of a lot of games out there. Punk Rich, Phil and Pete clearly feel the same and one of us will suggest it almost every week.

Steam

This has displaced Age of Steam since it came out a few years ago and although has regularly hit the table it’s seen more play over the summer months than most. The old Age of Steam split opinion and there were certain gamers that wouldn’t touch it with the proverbial bargepole. Like Power Grid it benefits from having a number of expansion maps, which keeps it fresh. Good with four or five, there is now a core group of players down the club that know how to play Steam and the game only improves with more plays. As another one of my favourites and also one of Jimmy’s there is a good chance it will make the journey to the Ribs on a regular basis.

Hansa Teutonica

This has been played on four separate evenings at the Ribs; twice in a night on a couple of occasions. This is definitely a pure Euro with a theme so wafer thin you could feed it to Mr Creosote all night long. This cube shuffler is eminently playable, with a raft of choices and a feeling that you’re not just playing the game, but actually playing your opponents, which is often lacking in this type of optimisation game. Crocker waxed lyrical about it a few weeks back. He’s the only one of us that owns it and with Luke coming to the club less frequently this could easily see more play if others decide to buy it, especially as it looks like it will scale well between three and five players.

Popularity and player numbers are obviously the biggest deciding factors with regards to which games get played on a given night and this has always been the case. Perhaps the change isn’t the games, but NoBoG itself. With the most stable group of regulars we’ve had for a long time we are now able to explore games we all know rather than teach or learn new games. One thing the three games I’ve mentioned have in common is that they all get better as players become more experienced. With strategies to explore, and blocking and countering being a big part in all three, everyone is improving at the game and everyone’s experience is getting better each time – leading to the game being requested again the following week.

Or maybe there just aren’t as many good new games coming out?

More of the same.

Thanks to Dan: the greenest of the Dans for chivvying me along and getting me to update the blog. And for making use of the Norwich Board Gamers Guild on Board Game Geek. If any of you frequent both BGG and NoBoG then I suggest you join the guild – it’s awesome. As I mentioned there is a prize waiting for Dan next time he’s in Ribs on a Tuesday night.

Repeated plays this week. Chaos in the Old World with the Horned Rat expansion was played by Moritz, Tom, Punk Rich, Phil and myself. This week saw Phil’s Khorne slaughtering their way to victory. It’s the third time in a row that Khorne has won, but the first time we’ve seen it done with a points victory. We finished with a game of Citadels, which Tom narrowly won.

On the other table Jimmy, Nicky, Diane, Dylan and Pat played Steam with the Mid-Atlantic United States map (Railroad Empires in the Civil War Era) from the new expansion. This was won by Diane.

Beer: I had two contrasting experiences: The first was Pirate’s Gold(en Piss) from the Wooden Hand Brewery in Truro. A golden ale with a claggy honey sweetness and a sharp, feral finish. The second was Ringwood’s Fortyniner, a tasty premium bitter which tasted of autumn – apples, raisins and sweet malt, but with a nice bitter finish. Fortyniner is like Agricola as it tastes like a satisfying harvest (8/10) and Pirate’s Piss is like Pirates of the Caribbean Monopoly if it had been urinated on by a tramp (3/10).