In YOUR endo, or, NoBoG shows its true colours (and they are puerile)

Hello, good evening and welcome! Welcome to another exciting instalment of the inimitable NoBloG! Tonight we have a delightful tale of success and failure, tears and laughter, life and, indeed, death. The Mash Tun was pretty full this Tuesday with a lot of games played. Unfortunately my choice of simultaneous-turn fun meant that I couldn't get around all of them, but I can at least relate some of what occurred in the games of Tokaido, Epic Spell Wars, Terra Mystica, Wrath of Asharglon, Small World and the games I played, Seven Wonders and The Bloody Inn.

So let me first take you on a peaceful and spiritually enriching journey through the world of Tokaido, Japan. I'd read about this on the Intertubes and thought that the principle sounded engaging, so I was intrigued to see how it played out in reality. When I arrived, James was in the lead - rather poor but nevertheless chilled out due to having taken a trip to the hot baths.

Tokaido

One thing that stands out about the game to anyone who's seen it is just how pretty it is. In fact it's not merely pretty but "prettyyy" according to the players, though we agreed it would be better with some Japanese music and sushi. As for the actual mechanics, I was given a quick run-down: you have to match up picture cards to make pleasant scenes, visit hot springs, give donations to temples and have encounters. The board itself tracks the players' progress forward. Jen had left a crap-ton of money at the temple and so was also feeling a little light of purse.

The Travellers of Tokaido on
their journey.

The players were having fun and, if I recall correctly, James won in spite of barely doing due diligence by the Gods. And it certainly presents a delightfully different theme than the majority of games we play - there's no conquest, war or death, just your travel and competition to have the best journey you can. I hope to get a play in soon!

Next I took a gander at another game of Epic Spell Wars. I didn't stay for long because the players appeared to be taking the game a little too much to heart - when I complained of poor light, they seemed to think their phones were magic wands and solemnly intoned, "Lumos," while turning the flashes on. I was edging away slowly as they complained about the massive fourteen damage that was flying around, at which point my shuffling turned into a run before I was targeted by the next spell.

"Lumos!"

I shuffled/charged full tilt right into a game of Terra Mystica. When I asked how everything was going, Gareth declared himself to be winning, but conceded that this was likely only briefly, whilst Jacob, who asked specifically to be described as "J-Dawg" (and definitely did not retract this request once he realised that his nom du jeu would be being broadcast to the World Wide Weblog...) described himself as "steaming ahead." I believe already by this point, Gareth was no longer in the lead.

Terra Mystica, nearly finished

The table, which I believe included new players, described it as fairly intuitive once you've played a few rounds, though some people do find being dicked over less fun. When pushed further it was revealed that J-Dawg was indeed one of those likely to be doing the dicking, which perhaps contributed to some animosity towards him, though he put this down to him simply being "too fun." "Oh, fuck you!" says Sinead as, presumably some of the "fun" heads her way.

Making my way onwards lest I also get fun aimed at me, I dropped in on the company battling against the Wrath of Asharglon. This is a board game based on D&D and designed to be played in a single evening. The rules are heavily D&D inspired, so you have abilities and spells you can use once per day, classes, races and so on all from that not-at-all-complicated ruleset. But from what I saw and what I guess, there's far less complexity to deal with in the board game.

Wrath of Asharglon

What it does have in abundance is lots of wonderful and threatening minifigures, replete with tentacles and weapons and limbs and goodness knows what else. When I rocked up the titular Asharglon had already been dispatched (I presume it made a noise like "AshaaRRGHHLGL-gone!") but some other unspeakable horror had already appeared, spawned from some portal into the plane of unspeakable horrors or whatever. In any case, the adventurers set out to try and destroy the portal, but ended up getting stunlocked by all the other beasties that had arrived. Two other monsters were off having a pleasant romp around the dungeon and, each time they explored a new room, found a new monster to join the party.

Kill the beastie!

The game is completely cooperative, with each monster being rolled for and "looked after" by the player on whose turn it spawned - with the exception of boss monsters, which get to have a turn on every adventurer's turn because they're so big and mean. "Who needs helping?" asks one player - in that cooperative spirit - "well, the dead person" comes the rather startling reply.

Tentaclesssss

Leaving the dead person to have either a funeral or resurrection party, I continued to the diminutive Small World. I apologise for the next joke, and request that children avert their eyes. In this game of Smallworld, Rod was "coming up your rear end." I swear Rod is the name of a player, though it sounds like the kind of name you might adopt if you wanted to star in an adult movie. I just hope I don't meet Rod on my way home up St Gregory's Back Alley.

Small world. No rear ends pictured.

Children may resume reading now. This was actually the first time the players had played Small World, and though they all had lots of details to learn they reckoned they'd got the rules down in about twenty minutes. From then on it's an area control and conquest-fest, where each race and area has different bonuses or, as it was described to me, "because it's a thingy I can travel from tunnel to tunnel." I'd write a joke right now, but I just don't think anything I write can do justice to the source material.

Well, one cold shower later and I'm ready to describe my two games of the evening, the first being Seven Wonders which is, appropriately, a wonderful game. Things got off to a peaceful start, with John a) swearing he'd never won agame of Seven Wonders before and b) that he was going to peacefully pursue scientific discovery and eschew the militaristic ambitions of his neighbours.

Age 2 is underway in Seven Wonders.
We don't yet realise John's treachery.

Of course veteran Seven Wonders players know how that goes, and John ended up building (what we veterans know as) "a shit-ton" of military. His policy of building walls followed by fortifications on top of the walls was remarkably current for a game set a few millenia ago, but thankfully there is no mechanic in Seven Wonders by which you can force your neighbour to pay for your projects, so it never got too topical. Colin, who was new to the game ended up with a very respectable score in a closely fought game of tableau tribulations which saw the sneaky John come in and sweep away with victory. I suspect John's policy of buying drinks for his fellow players is a cunning ploy to addle our abilities that on this occasion worked out perfectly.

Seven Wonders nears its conclusion

A fat stack of points

Time to add up the points!

Our gang's second game, after John left drunk on victory, was a stay at The Bloody Inn. This is a delightfully bloodthirsty game which has put me off French taverns for life, as the premise sees you and your partners in crime compete to see who can murder the most and richest guests at your inn. You get cash by successfully murdering and then burying travellers, but if you fail to get them safely inhumed when the police are staying you'll find yourself short a significant chunk of change as you have to get the town gravedigger to do a rush job on the sly.

The peasants at the Bloody Inn
look a bit constipated.

Tension is provided as you are all trying to murder the same pool of people and, when the fuzz are in, perhaps relying on them to help remove (murder) the heat. Come to think of it, it's a good thing John the copper didn't stick around as we were all taking a rather cavalier attitude to the law, to say nothing of our downright dangerous interactions with its officers, which saw piles of them interred in various buildings. The travellers range from the dour baron to the stuffy Representative, looking a little like a portrait of Francis Bacon, to the waifish News boy. "I'd love to have a news boy," said Colin, much to our consternation, after David snapped him up.

The "annexes" where I can bury
bodies, of which you can see three.

Each traveller has a cost which must be paid by discarding travellers you've already bribed: this cost is the same whether you're bribing, killing, burying or using their special ability, so you also have to enlist the help of peasants and other people who are free to hire to work your way up to the bigger and better targets. If you bribe someone you are, having already invested hard earned cash in them, not allowed to off them, but aside from using them to help commit your cursed crimes you can get them to build you something which will provide a place to house the recently-deceased (should such an unfortunate need arise) as well as an ongoing bonus. The winner is whoever has earnt the most money at the end of the game.
Unfortunately I built too much and killed too little, and ended up in last place. Nevertheless it was only by a whisker, with Colin and David edging ahead on the back of the fat stacks of francs they had stashed away. It was a fun if funereal game with lovely, whimsical artwork.

And that's everything! Well, everything which entered my consciousness (which is everything that matters to me) so sorry if I didn't get round to your table to cover your convivialities. Unfortunately the task-master of simultaneous decision making, as well as John's military aggression, kept me tied to the table.

A good deal Bigger, and a whole lot less Smaller

Quite a few soldiers down last week, with a final tally of 39 making it to the Mash Tun for some gaming. Whilst once upon a time 39 would have been a venue bulging number, at the Mash Tun 39 is practically off season.

Pillars of the Earth, the gloom begins to deepen...

Tom, Stu, Nicky and Ewan settled in for a game of Pillars of the Earth on one of the Tuna's front tables, but as the evening wore on, the dingy lighting became even more dingy as one of the low light bulbs had blown, turning their corner of the pub into something of a blackout. I believe Hal has a prototype game you get to play in the dark with mobile phones, but other than that, probably not a great light level for gaming. They eventually found a better lit table to continue their gaming on.

I've still not played Pillars of the Earth, I feel it's something I am missing out on - need to get a play of it.

For myself, last week I brought along All Creatures Big and Small, which if you don't know is another Uwe Rosenberg game based along the whole Agricola / Caverna vibe, but for two people, and somewhat simplified down from Agric. Having played All Creatures with Punk Rich, I

All Creatures Biggerer And Not so Small. 4 Player prototype.

immediately liked it, thought it would be an excellent stepping stone for learners to get to Agricola, but lamented it was only for two players. Why ? Cue some math, a few printed cards, and I expanded the game up to 4 players ( with the help of the two expansions available for the game, and another copy of the base game ).

I tried this out with Pete, Hazel and Punk Rich, and the game pretty much held up as a four player game. Tight, but not too tight, although I pretty much tanked - bad choices, or limited choices, hard to say, but given I was mostly first in turn order you have to say it was probably bad choices !

Pete won this with some amazing horse synergy and something of a meta bet with Hazel that you could indeed get more than 12 horses by game end. Thumbs up for all concerned, so, All Creatures Big and Small is now a good deal bigger, and a whole lot less smaller. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who hasn't played Agricola but wants to, or any Agric or Caverna fans.

Rokoko - time to get your fancy pants on

After that I was very pleased to finally get Rokoko to table which I think is a lovely Euro game. Rokoko is a game all about tailoring outfits for the swanky parties of the aristocrats, you'll gather supplies, hire workers, and either sell your outfits or hire them out to display the wonder of your works in the fancy balls. It has to be said that the theme often gets a bit of an eyebrow raise - really, a game about making dresses. Pfft. But, look past that and the game is a very good solid Euro, offering you a multitude of choices and ways to earn your points for a win. Like any good 'proper' Euro, luck plays only a very small factor in the game, and instead it will be your choice of actions - and the interaction with your fellow players, that will determine the greater part of your victory.

Pete won this again with a monstrous cash to victory points scheme, which in hindsight is perhaps a

Game of Thrones

flaw in the game - the cash to victory point action seems far too powerful. Admittedly I've only played two games of Rokoko but in both, this action slam dunked the win. Nevertheless, a really nice game, and if you're into your Euros you should check this award nominated game out.

Elsewhere Small World hit the table, Dead of Winter, Elliott brought along Ticket to Ride along with his compatriot "The Butler" ( I think they come in the same box as they are only ever seen together - not sure whether it's a special event expansion or what... ) and Game of Thrones made it back again - and this time actually finished. That's right. Game of Thrones ended up finishing in a single pub evening. There were some shouts and yells whilst this was being played - I refused to believe that Game of Thrones could be so exciting - and everyone had a good time, although at one point James looked particularly worried / shell shocked when I think he was attacking Sam.

The very tricky Aquasphere. Possibly the crunchiest Euro of them all ?

We also welcomed back Nate last week - was good to see him, he hasn't been down to NoBoG in some while, and he brought along Aquasphere - amongst other things - another game I really like. Luke was looking for a game with zero luck - or very limited luck, so I directed him to the uber crunchy Aquasphere, after which he gave the game a thumbs up. Huzzah for Nate being back, and Huzzah for getting Aquasphere to table. I only managed to convince people to get it to table once in the many weeks I brought it along.

Also Joe has a report writeup for last week too, which apparently he wrote on the walk home. How he didn't get runover whilst obliviously crossing a road I don't know...

This evening I took on the challenge of Legendary Encounters... As a plucky, light-hearted, yet ambitious researcher, tired of her years rattling the test tubes, and looking for adventures I joined my fellow crew mates Sam (scout), Andy (merc), ollie (medic) and Sean (gunner) as we ventured forth on the ill-fated Nostromo in search of fame glory and a close encounter with a perfect organism, to ultimately blow the crap out of it and hopefully escape with our lives... Or at least my life

Legendary Encounter

From the off things seemed like they were going pretty well, with half of the first objective covered in the first few turns, sadly that was not to last long. As the genetically superior aliens began flooding the ship we got closer and closer to annihilation. Thankfully, as we completed our first objective we had a little luck with the cards and the aliens began to thin a bit. Through the second objective we seemed to be coping with the influx of increasingly powerful foes nicely, although a couple of people were did seem to be a bit low on funds, and with mainly pricey people to recruit we suffered a bi of a blockage and a fair amount of cash went unspent.

Sam was looking a bit worse go wear having taken a lot of little hits, whereas Ollie was in a similar state having taken a couple of big hits. But all was ok and we dragged our sorry band through to the third and final objective - taking out the trash. (And by trash I mean hideously powerful ultra-alien, who has to be pushed through an airlock). As we started we were looking in pretty good shape (notwithstanding everyone carrying a few injuries - but hey we'd just battled our way through a horrendous shit-storm of aliens... So, swings and roundabouts we looked on top of it).

Then came the agony.

Everyone was suffering a bit from hands clogged with useless minion fellows and even a liberal sprinkling of helpful sergeants the tougher aliens of the end game started to take their toll. With Sean losing his entire hand, followed by me with only half a hand things got real.

One of the twin-mouthed nasties made it through to the combat zone and from there we were toast. First, Ollie the medic went down, then the Nostromo seemingly disappointed by our inability to get shit done decided to self-destruct taking me, Sam and Andy with it. Thus, leaving Sean the lone gunner, presumably hanging by his now heavily-bloodied arms to the remnants of the ship, surrounded by aliens trying to make the best of his near-fatal injuries, facing the perfect organism standing in the airlock.

In true hollywood style it was was set up for a grandstand climax. Sean showed some great skill in only picking strike cards which rinsed his hand, meaning he got to live a further turn, but sadly his lack of cards meant that he was completely obliterated by the swarm of super aliens that had managed to infiltrate our ship. RIP Nostromo.

All in all a tense, atmospheric experience. That said, I can't seem to shake the feeling that deck builders aren't my bag - I have played dominion about ten times and never enjoyed it, I bought pathfinder, played it once and found it to be an RPG completely lacking in RP (and if I'm honest could find much G either!) Before playing I was considering buying it, and I'm still on the fence - the atmospheric theme is really immersive. I'd definitely love another play, but am gonna hold off buying as i'm not sure how much legs the deck-building has for me.

We then got a bit back-stabby and had a couple of games of one-night werewolf, followed by some Avalon which ended with a ballsy traitor victory with the first 3 missions failed!

Sounds great. I also kinda agree with Joe about deck builders- I get the same kind of feeling myself, although I find Dominion to be a fairly laid back, don't have to think about it, easy social kind of game - at least the way I play it. Legendary Encounters looks like a whole  heap of fun however, the Legendary series are ok - I appreciate the theme, the game is ok, the Aliens version however seems to me be really well suited to the game mechanics. Who knows. Maybe I just like Aliens a whole lot.

Fillers finished the evening. I even think there was some epic Resistancing going on for over an hour.

Finally, I've managed to lay my hands on a couple of table lamps for this week. We'll see how they do. If they're any good I will pick up a couple more. Rechargable, portable and with six hours of lighting time, they should be just the thing. We shall see.

As ever I leave you with the Gallery.

The First Rule of NoBoG is...

This week the Ribs of Beef was full to the rafters as an epic 44 people turned up to partake of the NoBoG extravaganza. Personally I blame the inflated numbers on Mr Bond who advertised NoBoG Tuesday as #InternationalTableTopTuesdayEvening and offered free swag. On the other hand, if #InternationalTableTopTuesdayEvening isn't a thing, then it should be a thing.

Bondys promoted SWAG

The elevated numbers caused Pete to slightly panic* and give out the advice to newcomers that if they enjoyed themselves to remember not to tell their friends.

All very fight club if you ask me. The first rule of which is to not talk about it. If you haven't a clue what I am talking about, then your homework this week is to immediately go watch the 1999 film Fight Club.

Aside from Pete's comedy advice, it was great to see so many people down the pub playing games, and personally I had a great night, playing some new things, some old things, and introducing The Cow Game to those who had never heard of such a thing before - and were suitably delighted by it.

Chloe also pointed out that this week quite a number of gaming ladies turned up, by her count as many as ten of them, which marks another record for NoBoG. Back in the day, ten people would have been the whole of NoBoG, male or female.

Gah, a blurry shot of Mysterium and its screen.
Super low light level and a long exposure are to blame.

The G Man was in the house on Tuesday, and being the collector of the sometimes whimsical, he brought along a game called Mysterium, which after some wrangling, I ended up joining in to play. Mysterium - and I'm just going to go right ahead and assume you've never heard of it before - is a game best summed up as a cross between Dixit and Cluedo.

Funny vague artsy picture cards ? Check.

A murderer in Some Place with Some Murder Weapon ? Check.

Guessing who was where doing what to whom ? Check.

Unlike Cluedo however the game is a co-operative affair where everyone is trying to work together to solve the puzzles you are given - namely murder suspects. One player takes on the role of The Ghost, or, if you like, The Murdered, and it's their job to communicate to everyone else just who killed them and how.

Which would be lovely if the Ghost could just send you an SMS with the murderer's contact details.

Predictably things aren't so easy however, and instead the ghost must rely on sending dreams to the other players - who are allegedly psychics and sensitive to such things. Either that or they just have really vivid imaginations and a habit of eating cheese past midnight ( my mom always used to say eating cheese late at night would make you dream. Science ! ).

The dreams come in the form of cards with a lovingly artsy illustration, albeit random and often surreal. Spread on the table are another bunch of lovingly illustrated cards and it's up to the player(s) to make a guess as to what refers to what. Every player gets their own card to think about, with the end result being that the Ghost is going to tell you about X number of suspects, X number of murder scenes and X number of murder weapons, where X is the player number.

So you get into Dixit territory. A boy riding a bicycle through some woods ? Well clearly that

Mysterium ! It was.. the ghost boy with the candlestick !

indicates this magician chap over here. What ? The whole effort is further complicated by the Ghost only have a limited selection of cards to choose from each turn. So. The clues could be super vague.

The game is won if everyone manages to solve their person, location, murder weapon in a given number of nights, and after that, if everyone then manages to select the right person, location and weapon out of those that have been highlighted.

An interesting game. All about getting into the head of the person playing the ghost. And trying to find some connecting particular that links one series of pictures to another.

We failed for the record. The G Man kept apologising to me whilst handing me my clues. In the end a wolf was filling in for a unicorn, and most of the other clues were pointing at a small picture on the wall of one of the choices. As it was I actually did succeed in getting all my details right, but Pete and Sam failed. And so the ghost was not avenged.

Note to future murdered ghosts. Learn how to use email.

Small World, Chloe and David with some new NoBoGers

Meanwhile on the table over, a group of new NoBoGers learned to play Small World which came down to a very tight finish again, relying on a tie breaker to actually determine who had won. The game was given a thumbs up, and they liked the way that the races and traits made the game variable - they could see good replayability in it.

Behind them, an excited Jay Van Zee ( his newly annointed NoBoG street rap name, formerly known as JJ ) busted out a fresh from the kickstarter presses game of Shadow of the Elder Gods.

Given which name is a game that is contractually obliged to be about Cthulu type shenanigans.

Anytime you use Shadow and Elder God in some combination, you have to be talking about Lovecraftian Shnubbling, and Shoggotholling.

The Elder Gods of the Shadow Supermarket. See ? It's a game about a Cthulu infested supermarket. Easy.

Shadow of the Elder Gods. Aka Pocket Arkham Horror aka
James Mapp's Punch Yourself In the Face !

So what's the game all about... A co-operative game, players take the role of investigators, or just plain schmucks, who are wandering about the city of Arkham in a game of tentacle whack a mole.

Along the way you get to pick up things to help you fight off the nasties that keep cropping up, and hopefully by the end you will have enough experience to see off the Elder nasty himself. If this sounds remarkably like Arkham Horror, then you'd be right, it sort of is.

But it's condensed down into something that doesn't take between 3 and 6 hours to crank out and has wayyyy less of a footprint in terms of endless decks of crap. I like Arkham Horror, but it does suffer from early FFG designs of "Lets just make another deck of cards / pile of tokens / endless crap for that mechanic, and then we can big it up on the box how much crap is in here, and how much crap your money is buying - bargain !" which typically end up with you playing the Setup The Crap game for longer than you actually play the game.

I'm not sure how the game went down, it sounds pretty cool, albeit James who did play it spotted some dubious flaws he was less than happy with. A key component of the game is the Ring of Shadows, an item which allows you to tackle the unseen enemies that lurk beneath the seen ones and is the key to winning the game. The price of using this item however is a hit in sanity ( of course, no self respecting Cthulu game leaves out a Sanity mechanic ), and here's the issue. Certain random cards in the game will deal 5 sanity damage to the wielder of the Ring of Shadows. Which is enough for insta death. So. Draw a card. Die. Game Over ?

Are there mitigations to this ? No idea. But James was not a fan and stated that at least the game was short, and therefore wasn't too much of a pain to put up with before inevitably dying from the RNG insta death. On thinking about it more deeply he related the experience to be like punching yourself in the face. "Draw a Card, Punch yourself in the face that many times". I dunno. Sounds like a winning party game to me. COPYRIGHT !

Alhambra - vanilla style. Circa 2003

Away from the Cthulian Horror, Stu guided some people through the ways of Kingdom Builder, whilst the table over enjoyed a blast of classic Alhambra which I think was just the pure vanilla version - no expansions ( I tend to always play with the treasures and markets and yada these days... )

Downstairs Martin took some newcomers through the halls of Betrayal at House on the Hill, Hal gave a group a zip around Powerboats - which to my eye looked really cool ( I think its all those lovely hexes lighting the wargaming gene in me ) - and apparently played really nicely - a game all about managing your speed dice and trying not to ram into things from going too fast.

Power boats. Race around the islands and manage your speed.

Lastly, Darren got the new and sexy Xenoshyft Onslaught to table, yet another co-operative type game ( there were three and a half co-ops played this week - I am counting Betrayal as a half co-op ) which is a deck builder horror survival malarkey that sees your group of swaggering future troops defending your base from the evil alien Hive.

Marines versus Aliens you say ?

Yes. In co-operative deck builder format.

The very nice looking Xenoshyft Onslaught.

Which sounds in theory like a cool idea. What's not to like about the familiar Marines versus Aliens trope ( although I have to say, a bit like the whole zombie malarkey, it's probably getting a bit too done at this point ) ? No idea how this panned out. Tim noted it was very difficult to win. The game certainly looked gorgeous on the table - and surprisingly for a Cool Mini or Not game did not come with a bazillion miniatures.

After all that gaming a horde of smaller fillier games descended.

Artificium

I got to try out Artificium on my table - a highly rated light euro resource manager filler, all about turning one thing into another for points. Sam languished in last for the first half of the game before showing off outrageously to overtake everyone and fall off the edge of the scoring because he was just scoring so damn well with an army of wizards.

We declared him loser for running off the edge of the score board and therefore having no score.


After this we changed tables up and busted out The Cow Game to some newcomers - where there were some interesting aberrant plays going on.

Sechs Nimmt. Well. The next move is certainly tricky...

Firstly, one of the newcomers managed to score an enormous 50 points in his single first round. 50. That has to be a record of some sort. It makes Tim's previous week Cow collecting extravaganza look positively amateurish in comparison. Also. We had a full board situation occur. Which I can't remember ever seeing.

Too many fillers to mention. Pickomino, flaschenteufel, yet more Cows, werewolf. Gosh.

Thanks to those who submitted something, David, Chloe, James, short or long !


*our veteran members can be a fragile bunch that are sometimes to be heard muttering about how it was all different in their day, when there was just chess, counting the leaves that floated down the River Wensum, picking peanuts off the floor and flicking them at Crocker and Settlers of Catan.

UFO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did you know ?

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

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

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

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

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

The intriguing looking Castles of Mad King Ludwig

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dawn rises over the ill fated Archipelago.

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

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

The gateway game classic - Ticket to Ride

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

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

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

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

He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing

This week was a mix of old and new, Small World, Archipelago and Rex were played downstairs and Seasons, Eminent Domain and Camel Up were played upstairs.

Writer Ed ( The Baron ) made a surprise return visit to the Ribs this week, and was pleased to report his first NoBoG win with a victory at Seasons and an embarrassingly high score. Sam could hardly believe such a thing happening by chance and figured that Ed has in fact spent the last several months away from NoBoG training relentlessly so that he could engineer just such a win. Sounds legit.

 Mr Bond challenged a group of seven to go through the paces of Camel Up and declared it to be no world beater of a game, but great fun and an enjoyable short blast of racing humps. I've still yet to give this a go - I've heard good things about it, it looks like a lot of stupid fun and something of a nice group filler game ( that isn't for once based on Werewolf ! ). In the unlikely event you don't know what Camel Up is, it's a racing game featuring camels. Players get to make bets on which camel will be the winner of each stage - and make money on their winning bets - as well as betting on the final result. Camels move at random via dice, and can also be interfered with by players placing obstacles or helpers in the way. The real wrinkle in the game however is that the Camels stack - and any camel that moves takes all the camels on its back with it. Thus some camels can get a real advantage over others.

The game also comes with a lovely gimmicky pyramid dice roller, give it a shake, place it upside down on the board, and open the slot to reveal a die. I would have a picture of it, but with all the excitement the photo was blurry. So no camel picture.

Dave took on Archipelago downstairs with a group of players new to the islands. Not entirely unknown, the colony collapsed in short order, the new players proving to have failed to grasp the finer points of keeping things moving along in the face of a difficult series of crises. Such is the way with Archipelago, it can take a game or two before you realise the dangers and that yes, there really is a co-operative element to the game.

"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing" - Paul Atreides, Dune

Rex was also played downstairs with a full ( and recommended ) complement of six. Clive and Med Ed returned to the pub to join in with this after a hiatus of weeks. Rex is the FFG remake of the seriously old and battle scarred Dune ( 1979 ) which many who have played it describe as playing out unlike any other game. Gameplay revolves around competing factions vying for control of Mecatol City by deploying troops, occupying areas and collecting influence resources. Arguably the original Dune has the better IP - based on the battle for Arrakis with the Atreides, Fremen and Harkonnens to name a few all trying to harvest spice, keep ahead of the desert storms and avoid worm attacks, but the mechanics are pretty much identical, David Lynch weirdness or not.

The dynamism in the game comes from the fact that each of the factions is unique to themselves - each player has a bunch of asymmetrical powers that mesh with the game in different ways. For instance, the Jol-Nar ( Atreides ) have access to a whole bunch of secret information - they can force players to reveal attack strengths early, look at cards before flipping and so on. This can be crucial given that bidding on cards is blind - except for the Jol-Nar, so possibly it pays to have them on your side. On the other hand some of the other factions get to act like the bank for all purchases, meaning the Hacan ( Guild ) in particular can be swimming with influence ( spice / money ). So it could be good to be on their team too. And therein starts to lie some of the depth. This combined with traitor mechanics, allied wins and special victory conditions gives rise to a finely balanced game of different powers.

Rex - no one knows what they're doing

Rex pretty much took up all the evening and for the most part was a game of stalemate - no one could make alliances, and a single player victory seemed all but impossible. In the last two turns all hell was unleashed as a bunch of alliances were made and broken and conflict began in earnest. The game finished with no one controlling enough strongholds, which meant the Hacan ( Guild ) fulfilled their victory goal, bringing their allies the Jol-Nar ( Atreides ) along for the win. But this was not to be as the Xxacha ( Bene Gesserit ) had predicted a win for the Hacan in the final turn and thus secured *their* victory condition of predicting a winner. Convoluted. And if you've never played Dune or Rex it probably sounds bonkers.

I can't put my finger on it, but in theory the game took a fair chunk of time to do not a lot and yet... I thought it was great. There's a lot going on under the covers, the very asymmetrical factions give rise to some wacky pressures that are not immediately obvious. I'm pretty sure we all played like a bunch of newbs and missed a whole lot of possibilities - not least of which being trading shenanigans and favours between the factions.  I'm keen on exploring this more and giving it more play time.

The evening finished for many with the usual suspects of One Night Werewolf and Avalon Resistance.

A belated 31 for the numbers. An epic nine people turned up late-ish or just outright late.

Next week I hope to be bringing Ugg-Tect amongst others - the game of inflatable cave man clubs and hitting people over the head.

The Case of the Missing Gamers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Et tu, Bingo ?

Once upon a time when I was but a whippersnapper, I would engage in an illicit ( too young to gamble ) game of Bingo all the while under the watchful shadow of my dual wielding, dozen card mashing, no prisoner taking Aunt. Its been something like 30 years since I have set foot inside a Bingo Hall, and whilst at the time it was entertaining, I haven't ever felt the need to return, sweaty dobber pen in hand.

But as scripture says, if You wont go to Bingo, then Bingo will come unto thee.

So it was this week that I got my turn at Augustus, a short game set in ancient Rome, with some fancy ancient Roman artwork, fancy ancient Roman characters and some vaguely ancient Roman symbology. But don't be fooled by the Roman thing. It's Bingo. But instead of calling Bingo, or possibly House, you call Ave Caesar ! Which to me is something a die hard actor luvvie might decide to shout out whilst playing Bingo - the word Bingo being far too pedestrian. Instead -  Avveeeeeee Caesarrrr ! *hand flourish*

The game has you completing cards by listening for your called out symbols which allow you to mark slots with the matching symbol. Complete all of them on a card and you get to stand theatrically and resonate Bingo Ave Caesar ! Sound familiar ?

There are however synergies of card scoring, sets to collect and a few risks to take - all overlaid with a weighted distribution of symbols to consider. But don't let those fancy words fool you. It's Bingo. With some Euro scoring to allow you to believe you are in fact playing something other than Bingo. With Togas.

A short game that won't tax you, a suitable title for filling in those warm up or wind down moments, pretty cool, even if it is fancy scored Bingo.

Nathan for his part was very chuffed with the game, declaring his win to be the first at NoBoG - a Bingo win. A mixed blessing.

Elsewhere this week, Agricola was played with a table of learners + Rich. But Rich failed to capitalise on his enormous experience and came in third of five, Martin instead clinching the win with some synergistic pastures and animals.

Kemet and Seasons were taken upstairs, with wily Med Ed claiming a decisive win in Kemet by stomping The Bond into the dry sands of the desert. Med Ed is rather keen on the game and always seem to do pretty well whenever he plays.

Some Tokyo Kingship and Resistance followed upstairs, with the Good guys chalking up a straight 3 mission victory win in Resistance, and the bad guys failing to spot Merlin for the follow up.

Back downstairs Manhattan project followed by Small World hit one table, and on our table Archipelago returned from the shadows.

A new expansion has just come out for Archipelago - War and Peace, which brings 40 new evolution cards to the islands.

On the face of it an expansion consisting of just 40 evolution cards is a bit weak. It perhaps would have been nice to have had a few more map tiles to increase exploration variation, and a few more victory point cards to change the scoring possibilities.

However the 40 cards still pack a punch and introduce a heretofore missing element to the azure waters - notably direct conflict and meeple death.

It's a fact in Archipelago that as you explore and expand you can never go backwards - once a meeple is on the map, it stays on the map. Buildings that you build in general stay with their owners. And by and large the colony only goes ever onwards and upwards.

Not so under War and Peace. The new cards bring in the capability to bully, steal and even outright kill meeples in an expansion that shakes up your expectations of what is possible, and sees players given the chance to be nastier than ever to each other whilst trying to maintain the semi-cooperative truce to keep the natives from rising up.

Iron is a key resource for all this warmongery and control shenanigans, and sees a welcome improvement on the strategic importance of this element - in the past it has been a bit of an also ran item.

We didn't get too far with our new and spikey game - the colony collapsed in two turns ( 8 actions ) as three very nasty crises hit in succession, emptied the market and ultimately doomed the fat and unwieldy colony before it had a chance to consolidate. Not a huge surprise given two of our players were new to the game, and of the three remaining, one was a separatist who had every reason to see the colony burn.

It was great to return to the Islands, and it should be fun to see the new cards get a proper stretch.

Stu has reminded me that this week and into next is the Norwich Gaming Festival, celebrating many things computer game related at the Forum. There will also however be a chance to play some board games - played on the Tuesday from 6pm onwards. Forum Cafe closes at 9.30pm so any session there would  be shorter and earlier than usual, but if anyone fancies popping along, they can see what's going on, computer game related or not. Otherwise it will be business as usual in the Ribs for next Tuesday.


If you are counting, we had 23 this week over five tables.

Volcanoes, Pirates and Power Station Owners

This week I urged Rich to do the weekly game and gamer wrangling - who brought what and what do people want to play. And as he did such a good job in difficult circumstances, I then convinced him to write the blog too... over to Rich.

About 25 people this week. Here's some of what got played:

Skyline 3000 . 'Tall Dark' Tom bought it for ₤7.99 from The Works. In the bar later he said he enjoyed it. I have no idea who won, what it's like or anything like that. I suspect it was rubbish but Tom was putting a brave face on it, not wanting to appear to have wasted ₤7.99 on another turkey.

On the next table there was a 6 player game of Lords of Waterdeep with the Scoundrels of Skullport expansion. Waterdeep has been a popular game down the club for a while now. The expansion adds the sixth player and the corruption mechanic, which mixes things up a bit and definitely makes things more interesting. In mine and others' experience though getting the big quests seems to almost always result in victory, and the smaller plot quests (which give you abilities) although a cool idea, rarely provide enough of an advantage to counter the fact they give you less points. The intrigue cards are a neat innovation and give some nice interactivity that often isn't there in worker placement games. I think their next expansion should be Wankers of the Waterfront, with more harsh intrigue cards and other ways to be a dick.

On the other downstairs table Richard IV got everyone to play Power Grid with the UK map. Power Grid has been played a lot down the club over the years, probably more so than any other game. Someone won. I can't remember who, though I did ask. I didn't realise that the Admiral would give me a direct order to write this blog so you must forgive me. I can remember Rich IV summarising that the UK map was very tight, and the scores at the end were very close.

Upstairs: Owen, Alina, Sam and The Admiral played Robinson Crusoe. They played the volcano scenario, but forgot to actually have the volcano blow smoke, or something like that. Sam tripped over a box and got bitten by a rabbit and died, but they won the scenario despite that. Robinson Crusoe is a great game, probably my favourite pure coop. The neat thing is that you'll draw cards as a consequence of foraging, building or exploring. These cards will have an immediate effect and then will be shuffled into the events deck, and they'll come out later and something related will happen. Great mechanic, really thematic.

And on the final table we (Dean, Matt, Med Ed, Tim and me) played Libertalia, a pirate game. Players each get an identical hand of character cards with values ranging from 1 to 30. You play cards face down and the highest number played gets first pick of the loot for that round. Simple? The thing that complicates it is that each character card has an ability that can trigger and do things – ranging from getting extra doubloons to killing other people's characters and so on. Cool game. Dean won convincingly, I came dead last. Evidently being a pirate in real life doesn't help you win this game.

Augustus also got played, a really neat game that resembles bingo but without the crazy adrenaline rush you'll get down the Mecca on a Friday night.

After Libertalia those of us remaining upstairs played a three player game of Small World. Matt won with over a hundred points, the rest of us had in the 70s/80s. He got Heroic Skellingtons, which proved a very potent combination and he hung onto them for most of the game. Tim got a great early start, after following our advice and taking Commando Tritons. However, our counsel failed to take into account the looming presence of the Skellingtons, so Tim's spread out Commando Tritons were munched up by the Skellingtons in record time. My Spirit Humans didn't fare any better. After a slow start pointswise Matt built up to scoring at least 10 a turn for the remainder of the game, with little we could do about it as there were no bashy race combinations available. Good game though.

See ya next week for more games. Love, Punk Rich/Spazzy/C*n*y Rich x