No YOU'RE a cylon!

Zhwummmm... zhwummm... I mean, err, hello! Hello from your totally human and not-at-all cybernetic blog-writer! Please ignore any possible, hmm, unusual redness in my eyes; it's all perfectly normal and nothing to do with robots. NoBoG was a bit thin on the ground this week, but of course, no less fun than usual. Games I surveyed this time round were Dead of Winter, Inis, Citadels and my own Spiel der Woche, Battlestar Galactica.

The start of the evening: not too many folks in.

The usually packed middle section

Even though Spring has been setting in in Norwich this past week, a cold bite returned though perhaps not quite leaving us in the Dead of Winter. When I arrived Chris (no, not me, a different one) said the team was working well together; though there could be a traitor, they had no concrete evidence and were close to winning. Chris thought it might have been easier due to the high player count of six. J-Dawg disagreed and declared that it actually gets more boring. (I considered asking why he was playing if it was boring but I suspected it was all a cover for being a traitor, and didn't want to ruin things.) At this point, Maddie (whose nickname I have deemed too difficult to type) was deciding her turn and was being called out for attracting the zombies after killing one. Now I'm not entirely familiar with how this game works but this did strike me as being a little bit out of the ordinary — maybe she's the traitor! When I inquired as to what kind of make-up or clothing might be used to attract a zombie I was informed it was best not ask. Thankfully my imagination was distracted before running away to dark and... disgusting places because Sean gave me chocolate. Whew.

Dead of Winter, teamwork in action.

In spite of the aforementioned teamwork, Gareth suspects that GaydogJ-Dawg (yes, this slip of the tongue actually happened, and yes, it had to be put in the blog. Journalistic integrity.) is a baddie on account of always screwing him over. J-Dawg counters that Gareth has been taking "outrageous risks!" and it all kicks off! Accusations fly left and right, that J-Dawg has been eating all the food, that certain people's mothers do certain unspeakable things for certain low prices and I make my exit. With certainty.

Would you like to attract these lovely lads?

When I return, I guess I'd missed the action because J-Dawg wanted to mime daggers flying through the air, piercing his back. This was a melodramatic way of announcing that Gareth had just shot him. I took some pictures and fled before I met the same fate.
Next up was pInis. This is a card drafting game in which you're trying to become King of the Island. Or the Inis. Pronounced "innish," which is where you go when you think you want to drink a beerish. I don't speak Celtic anyway (not Goidelic. Not even Brythonic, never mind Galatian.) There are three methods of becoming Kingish: you can become the chieftain of six clans, occupy six territories of the game board, or control six sanctuaries. The interesting aspect of this comes, though, because you gain a token for one of these victory conditions on your turn, but to win you have to not only still satisfy that condition by the start of your next turn, but you mustn't be drawing with anyone else who is simultaneously satisfying a victory conditions. The upshot is that while it's not that hard to get a victory condition, it's very easy to lose it, or to be tying when your opportunity to win comes around. In addition to the above, if you control the island's capital and possess a victory condition, you win even if someone else has one, too.

A board game...ish.

Inis has nice pieces.

As Tom put it to me, they'd got to the point, when I came by, where they were all quite close to winning but everyone was cock-blocking everyone else. Tom was, at least according to Emma, the biggest cock of all (or maybe the biggest block?) For the sake of balance I must also include that he protests that what befell Emma was not entirely his fault and that it would have happened without his interference. Then he and Dave fought each other too much and pissed away all their action cards, which are your only means of defence and of course throwing them away limits your possibilities, perhaps throwing your carefully laid plans awry.

The players contemplate their options in Inis.

I then swung by a game plaid by those men (and women) in the ivory towers of several Citadels, a game I love for its sometimes agonising layers of social deduction. The aim of the game is to have the most point-value of built districts at the end of the game, by paying that same point value in money to build them. Added to the mix is the fact that each round you take on a different role, chosen from a selection that is passed around, dwindling until the final person chooses from two. The trick here is that the special abilities of two of the roles which I will describe as the "fuck-you" roles target roles rather than players so if the most advantageous role for you is the merchant and you pick it, you may find yourself skipping your turn or losing all your dollah.

The citadels being built... and destroyed.

Joe seemed to be close to winning and his strategy was "just trying to go into 'game over' while everyone else does trying build big things," in other words trying to end the game by getting eight districts built, even if they're not worth so much. He'd also been the biggest dick, stealing all of Monika's money and other people's besides. "Crime does pay," he said, but it did turn out that he got his just desserts in the form of brutal murder for all his thievery. (In case you're wondering, after being murdered your city is taken over by your heir(s) in your stead.) Sam reckoned James was also doing pretty well, and I inadvertently aided him on his path to victory by clearing up his misunderstanding of the Warlord's special ability, pointing out that he could destroy one of frontrunner Joe's districts for free. The pot suitably stirred, I ran off.
And that brings us to the 5+ hour epic consisting almost entirely of pot-stirring that is Battlestar Galactica! Ahh, what a game. A special place it has in my heart, and I'd not played it for nearly a year. If you think you might watch the TV show, be warned that mild spoilers will follow.
The premise of the game, as with the show, is that humanity is trying to escape the blasted nuclear wasteland that was their home and strike out for the legendary Kobol, dogged all the way by their chrome-plated former slaves, the Cylons. Hidden amongst the humans, however, are sneaky skin-jobs who appear indistinguishable from good honest people with organs and souls and whatnot. They try to sabotage humanity's efforts by subterfuge and trickery, aiming to drop one of four resources to zero, to damage the titular Galactica six times, or to sneak a boarding party aboard her and have it disable the ship from within. These hidden agents can always do this by making or suggesting bad decisions, but secret actions complicate matters severely. Each turn the current player draws a crisis which must be resolved in an attempt to avoid or minimise its negative effects. Some of those are simply a choice for a particular player, often the President, between, say, losing a resource or discarding cards — skill cards which represent the particular skills of each character, like Leadership or Piloting. Others are skill checks, where each player in turn secretly contributes skill cards in an attempt to bring the total value of correct skill cards minus the incorrect ones to a given target. At this point, secret cylons may announce sweetly that they are single-handedly flying the planes, rallying the pilots and all else that is needed, whilst in fact contributing precisely the wrong cards. Once two random cards to reflect the hand of destiny have been shuffled in, it is no longer so easy to tell who has been telling the truth, and the accusations are let loose. In the midst of all of this, the cylons are typically sending raiders and other ships to damage galactica, threaten the fleet and generally screw things up — as things become increasingly chaotic, the humans must make tricky decisions about what to prioritise in order to avoid succumbing to any of the loss conditions.
In our play-through, everything started off swimmingly: there was not even an oily whiff of the cylon fleet, and we sailed through the void of space managing at first to even scavenge more fuel than we were using on our way to our mythical new home. At the four-distance mark, all resources looked peachy in spite of Madame President Meltem's insistence early on that food was not really so important, losing us two points in rapid succession. Our record on the skill checks had been patchy too, attempting and failing far too many for our liking. Yet the pilots were sitting in their ready room drinking ambrosia and playing cards with nothing to do; the enemy raiders weren't coming, and without that there was just no need to do better.

Just got to the half-way point: everything looks peachy,
though Chief's shown his true colours.

Kaan, looking sympathetic.

Four distance is the half-way point which marks the sleeper-agent phase where more loyalty cards are handed out to represent those who'd been cylons all along but who only now realise their true identity. It was here that the first signs of strife began to appear, as one of the humans turned to be rather sympathetic to the cylon cause; Chief Kaan slipped away from the human fleet and joined the cylons on our tail. Soon enough, the third jump had been made, bringing the fleet to 7 out of eight distance, guaranteeing a human win if they can just jump twice more, and still only fuel was in the red, with more than enough to close out the game. It was at this point, though, that the first full-on toaster-top revealed himself in the form of yours truly, Vice-President Chris Zarek, who first used his friends in low places to force the rest of the team to exhaust themselves in keeping another cylon suspect locked up in the brig. Zarek then blew himself away in a suicide attack that left Commander Lewis severely wounded. Respawning in Cylon-heaven, robo-blogger joined Chief Kaan in trying desperately to coordinate the cylon effort, which had as explained, been sorely lacking up to this point. The next round revealed also that Sam "Boomer" Valerii had been a sleeper agent all along and, though locked up and unable to cause any damage, she too offed herself and ended up on the resurrection ship.

This is what the board looks like when
the shit is hitting the fan.

With three toasters turned all the way up, defrost mode engaged, the humans' days were numbered. A massive assault was the all but the first sign of any real activity from the cylon fleet, orchestrated by Zarek. The erstwhile Chief used his connections to organise sabotage, damaging the hangar bay and preventing the launch of more vipers to defend against the amassed enemy. Boomer then coordinated every single cylon ship to attack, blasting the remaining meagre defences apart. An error in fleet management brought on by the chaos had left a dozen civilian ships unprotected, slaughtered almost to a man, and the humans finally broke, lacking the manpower to continue.

Cylon Centipede 2
Starbuck did not escape this encounter unscathed.

Cylon raiders, civilian ships, and their viper defence.

The cylons had won, proving the superiority of machine over man once and for all, but what had we learned? Well, first of all, never trust Adam "Starbuck" Thrace with the loyalty deck — if it weren't for good luck with the order of cylon reveals, we would have had four out of six players trying to screw the humans! As it happened, the third chrome-dome to be revealed had two cylon loyalty cards which doesn't turn him into some kind of super-cylon and has no further effect. He could therefore ignore the extra one without affecting the game at all. Second, it is extremely important that everyone read their loyalty cards for the exact same amount of time, especially if there are new players. I knew with almost certainty that Kaan's AI was malfunctioning because he spent a long time referring back to his loyalty card when others had finished reading — the "You are a cylon" cards having far more text. It would even be an idea to have everyone read these cards before the loyalty deck is made up to ensure familiarity. Luckily, this too didn't affect the game much as Kaan disposed of this card very quickly (giving it to me) on account of the rapid onset of the sleeper agent phase.

Cylon victory!

The destroyed civilian ship that ended it all.

And that's all for this week — citadels being built up and torn down, islands being fought over by great chieftains, the zombie apocalypse being defended in the bitter cold, and the inexorable march of the machines. Hope you've enjoyed it!

All Quiet on the Mash Tun front

Perhaps everyone stayed home to watch the Euro football. Or maybe people were put off by the chatter about having to share our space with football hooligans who wanted to watch the match on the big TV in the pub. Or maybe it's just an odd time of year.

But whatever it was, this week we had the lowest turnout for a number of years ( the official book of records reckons 2013 ) - we hit 26 people by the end of the evening.

As it turned out, the football hooligans sharing our space turned out to be a small family of Italians on Monday, and three very quiet guys on the Tuesday.

Lords of Vegas. Six player mental variant.

Games this week. The front of the pub played a frankly mental six handed game of Lords of Vegas. I told them this was mental. Twice. They ignored me. There was then some bemoaning of downtime during the game, and post game there were some polite comments about perhaps it was a little too long. Uh huh. Lords of Vegas is cool. And it can seat six with expansions. Which is very flexible and very cool. But I'm not entirely sure this isn't a seat too far for the game. A bit like trying to fit six seats on a bicycle. You might get it working. But it's not pretty. Or practical. I'm reminded of a Mr Bond pearl of wisdom here as he has noted in the past that expansions can be a very dubious affair when applied to solid base games - doubly so when expanding player count. Lords of Vegas sweet spot is four if you ask me. Which you weren't. You're welcome.

Some reformed table of theirs then played Machi Koro where James pretty much slaughtered everyone gaining his first ever victory against Lewis who had failed with a single dice strategy. Lewis had an absolute barrelful of new games that didn't get played, mostly smaller format card games, a mix of Kickstarters and purchases at the recent games Expo. It will be cool to see them get some air time in future - if you want an interesting, off beat, smaller card game, go see Lewis !

Citadels

Tim's table had an apparently utterly cut throat game of Citadels going on, where everyone except American James was being an ass. Maybe Karma smiles happily on nice guys, because when I checked in with them, he was winning. Despite playing nicely. Or perhaps because he was playing nicely. Sam then bucking the trend of generally shouting at people towards the end of the evening, accusing them of being werewolves or calling into question their dubious Aryan heritage, played a calming and refined game of Splendor. He does do refined occasionally. I suspect however that he would like the game much better if there were secret nazis in the game, and he could collect his sets of gems whilst also offering choice fascist slurs to other players. Or possibly secret dwarves. Which then sounds a bit Saboteur like.

Upstairs they played Trajan. I haven't a clue what went on there. I didn't venture upstairs at all other than to do a spot check. I still haven't played this game. I still need to play it. Some day.

Lords of Waterdeep

Elliot's table got to play the classic Lords of Waterdeep, where Joe played an absolute blinder and was slicing and dicing his way to victory.

Our table got to play a very full five for Rokoko. The game about making outfits for the high and mighty of Louis XIVs shindigs. Five is the most this game takes, and, with five it's a good deal tighter and longer. But still good. It wouldn't suffer an expansion with six though ! Sean had an impressively strong start hauling in some great money and making some good outfits, but then sputtered out in the face of bad turn order and paying little attention to updating his personnel roster. Mel on the other hand was fighting for first turn, spamming some excellent outfits into the royal hall and was doing a good job of recruiting. She put in a very strong score, and if she had managed to get another fireworks display or two built would have won the game. Adam descended into talking to himself at length. I called him the Adam collective such was the breadth of his conversations and arguments with himself - it was like watching a whole other table playing the game, all condensed into a single person. If only he could have changed his voices between lines, it would have been even better. And probably slightly worrying. But very entertaining.

Mel lost in thought surveying her outfit making empire in Rokoko

Poor Andrew seemed to be dicked over at every turn in this game and got off to a slow start along with me, but by the end he was doing a lot better and put in a challenging score. For myself I was entirely shut out of the points bonanza royal hall, no fireworks for me, struggled to do much points wise at the start, but bided my time by hoarding just about all the red cloth and grabbing savvy team members for my staff. In the end I managed to pip a win with a bare couple of room dominations and a butt load of money. The money aspect of this game *is* balanced in a situation like this, I was shut out of most things, but still managed to earn decent VPs from money and a crucial few other spots. I think the problem with money is if you are doing well on the board AND you get a decent money flow with a money VP gain - but, in theory, that's tough to do, it's probably one or the other, money or outright VPs as you can use your outfits either for VPs or to sell off for cash.

Super close game in the end. Very cool.

Unless I missed it, this week was probably the first week in... almost... ever.. that absolutely no filler type games were played. Unless you count Splendor. Which I don't. No fillers ? Madness.

Monday we played Deus, Machi Koro, and I gave a quick demonstration of Akrotiri. Hal won everything. I think he was fiddling the dice with Machi Koro as he romped to a win rolling almost nothing but 11's and in the entire game not a single 9 was rolled and 8 only once. With dice rolling like that he should play Craps for money where 11's are a natural insta win.

That's it, see you all next week, the footie is still on next week, so sharing table space will be a thing again.

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 ?

No Honour Amongst Thieves

A mechanical vibration trembled through the strange metal floor, causing the small girl to shift her weight in fear, her doll clutched tighter to her chest. A series of grinding moving thuds echoed into the small room seemingly threatening to bring the walls crashing down on her head. But with a final resounding boom that made the room lurch, noises and vibrations stopped.

She didn't like this place. It was cold. And scary. It reminded her of trips to the dentist with it's too bright lights, and scary metal things for sticking her teeth. Tightly clutched she raised her doll Mindy to her face, the pneumatics of her replacement arm softly hissing as they moved. Hiding behind Mindy she fearfully glanced at the others in the room - a large man with an angry face and strong arms, a pretty lady with a mean expression, a fidgety man with glasses, and a couple more men talking to each other - one of them looked like a dentist. Perhaps this was his room ?

She couldn't remember how she got here. Was she at the dentist ? Was she in hospital again ? She didn't know. She was afraid and just wanted to go home. Perhaps the grown ups knew how to get home, but she was frightened to ask. Hadn't she been told to be wary of strangers ? Instead she listened, unsure what to do. The adults argued. The large man was very angry. It seemed no one knew where they were. Why they were here. They talked about this being a prison. And them being prisoners. Of having to escape. It didn't make any sense to her. This didn't look like a prison - it had no bars. And why would she be in prison ? She hadn't been naughty lately - she wasn't sure what kind of naughty put you in prison anyway. Jessica Langham had said a naughty word to the teacher once and got sent to the principal - but she hadn't gone to prison. It didn't make any sense.

The pretty lady approached her. Hey baby, she purred. Come on, stick with me, I'll keep you safe she said, holding out her hand. Deciding she was maybe nice after all, she grabbed the pretty lady's hand, and together they went to a funny looking door in the wall. Come on, the lady said, through here.

As they climbed into a new room, she turned around looking between chambers. They looked the same ! Each room had a single funny looking door in each wall. And each was brightly lit, metal, and smelled slightly weird.

Suddenly the lady picked her up and carried her to the door in the opposite wall. What was she doing ? With a sudden push the little girl found herself rudely shoved into the next chamber - this one was cold, so very cold, her breath steaming in the air. It's ok baby said the pretty lady. It'll be warmer in the next one. Go to the door over there. The little girl did as she was told. Opened the door. Climbed in. And suddenly couldn't breathe. Her throat stung. Her eyes stung. She felt sick. And afraid. She started to cry and try to climb back. But her arms were all wobbly and she couldn't see properly. The door she scrabbled towards started to close, and just before it snapped shut she heard the pretty lady laugh and say something - Stupid kid !

The door clicked shut with a locking sound leaving the little girl to fall to the floor, her doll spinning out of her hands. Mindy ! The little girl couldn't see anymore. Couldn't breathe. Dizzy. And a warm sleepy feeling crept over her. Maybe she would just rest a bit, then find her doll and climb out. As darkness descended she thought What a mean trick that lady had pulled... and she so too wasn't stupid... but most of all... she wanted her mommy...

This week Martin brought along Room 25, a somewhat co-operative game that can have betrayal mechanics - a firm favourite game type at the Ribs.

Room 25 - the diabolical prison with
moving rooms and traps aplenty

An un-apologetic copy of cult film The Cube ( albeit the Cube is well.. a cube... and Room 25 is.. a square... ), the game sees players thrown into a dystopian sci-fi prison / lab rat maze consisting of a number of identically sized rooms - some safe, some not so safe, and some downright lethal. The players have to escape the nightmare of the prison without more than one of their number dying. But there's a catch. Time is limited. And some of the prisoners are not what they seem - they are guards intent on preventing the prisoners escaping. The players can take a peek into another room before they decide to move into it, move into another room, or more darkly, push another player into a room. Finally through some dystopian sci-fi shenanigans players can control the rooms - and shift a line of them in a direction. Clunking and thunking the prison into a new layout.

Your fellow player The scientist just said that room is clear ? Push him in there and see if he was lying. Or maybe shift his line of rooms a bit and let him try again.

The game setup is interesting, and the idea of The Cube makes for a really great game theme that should be an enjoyable experience if done right. However Room 25 does have some issues that makes this game something of a diamond in the rough - a good game with some flaws which may or may not scupper the game for you.

First of the flaws is player elimination. It's absolutely possible for a player to be eliminated on turn one - unlikely but possible. And an eliminated player gets to do nothing for the rest of the game. However, given the game in theory should only run for 30 minutes, this isn't a huge problem. In practice though the game can run longer than 30 minutes - with players discussing moves, throwing out accusations, or just thinking about where they want to go. In our case I think it took us something on the order of over an hour to crank a game out.

Second of the flaws is connected to the first. It's possible for the guards to win in turn one, more likely in turn two. Maybe that isn't so much of a problem however - you can just reset and go again.

Third of the flaws is the nature of the 5 x 5 room layout. After a few plays it should be fairly obvious what an optimum exploration pattern is for a group of prisoners. Sure guards and trap rooms can throw a spanner in that, but by and large it should go by the numbers. But hey. Maybe you don't overthink your games too much, and the cool theme and the interesting variation of room layout makes that problem less of an issue.

Despite the above problems and a handful of minor other flaws the game does have a really cool idea at it's heart and if you are into that kind of thing is really enjoyable and fun.

Despite myself being eliminated on turn 2 I enjoyed the game a lot and would be happy to play it again. Lauren as a bad guy ended up being eliminated a turn or two after me - unknowingly by the other bad guy. Proving that there is no honour amongst thieves. Or possible that Martin just likes killing people - whether they're on his team or not. However some might say Lauren got her just desserts after pushing me into a freezer and then persuading me to happily skip to my death. Doll in hand.

As it was I really didn't mind. I enjoyed it. And I got to speak to Writer Ed for a chunk of time about his exciting new job doing things for the upcoming computer game Elite. Writer Ed is now Elite Ed. Who gets paid to play games. And makes excuses to his girlfriend about playing games at home by telling her its business. Career building. Now pass me the nachos and be quiet.

As for Room 25 - it turned out in the end that despite my death by poison, I won as the surviving good guys succeeded to make it out, regardless of a deranged Martin trying to kill everyone. He got stuck in a proper jail cell, powerless to stop the good guys. Just desserts all round. Except maybe for the gullible little girl.

Xia - Elite Ed proves to be an adept asteroid avoider

Next table over Xia got another play, whizzing space ships around dodging asteroids, selling cargo and playing Elite the board game.
Despite me and Ed chatting for a chunk of gameplay he managed to keep a competitive score and was leading for sometime before Sam started to catch him. Xia is proving to be very popular. If you can manage to beat Rich IV to calling dibs on playing, you might get a seat at this game too !

Abyss. Look at that gorgeous art. Look at it !

Last table downstairs had Abyss, a drafting card game where players vie for control of the empire under the sea via Lords, fights and... pearls. I played this game quite some time ago and I remember it being quite nice - it has some really kick ass art, and the game is... ok. Good ? Alright. Depending if you like these kind of drafty cardy things. I remember it reminded me somewhat of the other drafty cardy tribey game 3012. Which is probably no help as I suspect very few people have actually played 3012.

Punk Rich was going to play this, but on discovery it was only a four player game - not five - he made his excuses to search for something to play upstairs. And then went home ! Tsk. Remember, if you see Rich wandering around, don't let him out of the door, grab him and force him to play a game. He loves it really.

20th Century. Produce Crap. Recycle. Profit. Win.

Upstairs Tim lead a group through Citadels, Mr Bond trotted his horse around El Grande, and Tom was thoroughly beaten in 20th Century. Tom and Stu both experienced Euro vets were humbled, tarred and then feathered and ended up losing by 50 or more points to a strategy that saw lots of waste being recycled by recycling plants. As everything in the 20th century generates waste... this seemed to be a winning ploy. Produce crap. Make profit from clearing up crap. Uh huh. Obvious strategy is obvious ?

A completely not staged shot of Mr Bond
pointing out his evil plans.

Some fillers were then played. Mr Bonds group played some weird tower building game. Which involved not nudging the table and making things fall over. King of Tokyo had a blast where Lewis' punk ass Penguin won, and I got to play the psychic Divinaire with Tom and Stu, and managed my worst score ever, with a smug Tom proving to be the best reader of the tea leaves. Blah.






Next week we have a request for Dead of Winter. Three players already found. Possible two more required.


Numbers - 30 this week. 31 if you count the departing Punk Rich.

Um. Build Towers ? Don't ask
me how you use the wooden balls...

Happiness - a pile of wooden blocks on a pub table.

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).