Join In

If you are around the Norwich area, or can make it to Norwich and are free on Tuesday evenings, then why not come down to the Ribs of Beef, play some games, drink some drinks and meet a varied bunch of people with a good sense of humour and an interest in pushing wooden bits around a table.

New people are always welcome to come play and the NoBoGers are a very friendly laid back bunch that are not into rules lawyering or overly stressing about the evenings random entertainment. Although Jimmy has a rule that there is to be no extraneous talking whilst playing Saboteur. Gnome mining is a serious business. I on the other hand like the Saboteur smack talk.

Unlike most other clubs there's no membership fee, no complex list of rules that need signing in your blood, no pouting or hurt feelings if you can't make it or even just turn up once every year, and there's not even a need to own or bring a single game. So really, there's nothing stopping you from turning up at 7.20pm on a Tuesday and getting roundly beaten by Pete at Hansa Teutonica.

So if you've been lurking, or sitting on the fence, or have come in the past but have lapsed into some gaming void, come and join in and see what it's all about. Marvel at the NoBoG special levelling device. Purr in appreciation at the luxurious game-table covers. Partake of the pre main event table placement game - a tricky endeavour involving too many chairs, odd sized tables and a number of bystanders with only one space to manouevre in and out of.

Ninja Penguins

With the excesses of the long bank holiday weekend past, Tuesday once more rolled around to find a group of travellers stumbling hastily into The Ribs. Given an asylum choice between the Ecuadorian embassy and a pub with games, six of us chose beer and entertainment. No word on what the Ecuadorian Embassy was offering other than a long boring conversation with Julian Assange, who after some 80 odd days couped up in the building must be by now going slightly cabin crazy - and without so much as a copy of Settlers to pass the time.

Unlike the embassy, our group busied themselves Ninja-ing, designing space ships, plying galactic trade routes, fishing in the ice and building wonders of the ancient world. Which is a rather surprising and unexpected range of activities to find going on at your local pub. Usually its just drinking - which we also managed to do.

Another veteran NoBoGer turned up for the evening - Dylan - there must be something in the water, or the weather is driving them out from their usual hiding places as this last month or so has seen a rash of vets turn up to put in a celebrity appearance.

Dylan, Mr Bond and myself settled down to Galaxy Trucker, with Bondy struggling to get his ships completed on time, Dylan consistently confusing his cabins for cargo holds, whilst I serenely cruised  to a good lead come the end of Round 2.

In a suspiciously Hustle type move, Bondy suddenly turned things around in the last round, completed a spanking ship in record time and swept pirates, smugglers and slavers before him to rack up a huge amount of bounty and haul home an enormous cargo to boot. Dylan and myself could only trail in his exhaust picking up the odd scrap - and the huge armament of my ship mostly unused.

Meanwhile on table 1, Matt, Dean and Tim strapped on their Ninja Tabi and proceeded to stealth around the grounds stealing items and wooing courtesans for their clan. Actually I am not sure what wooing courtesans has to do with it, but those involved assure me its a necessary 'sacrifice'.

Tim was obviously going for the Best Dressed Gamer of the evening award, as can be half seen in the picture to the right. But despite his obvious evening wear flair he only managed to place last with Matt and Dean beating him in the contest of who has the blackest pyjamas. Dean who has described this game as his favourite most played game clinched the victory peppering his foes with wooden shuriken and fancy cards.

Back on table 2, Hey, Thats My Fish was setup for a couple of quick rounds of penguin mayhem. The dancing birds shuffled around the ice floe to visit horrible isolation death on their penguin foes, their cute features belying their brutal machiavellian manouevering. The savvy and noble red penguins lead by myself secured a nicely sized island of fish and forged ahead to a comfortable win in round 1.
Round 2 saw Dylans shifty and underhanded blue penguins become far too greedy, trying to hive off a large portion of the ice floe for their own selfish bellies. Not standing for that kind of fish piracy my noble penguins and Bondys hapless birds assaulted his position, and stopped his greed from getting out of hand.
Somehow whilst this was happening, my red penguins also managed to win a nice sized island chunk and contest a third group of ice floe, leading my forces to another comfortable victory.
Bondy once again disgusted with his performance, derisively slurred his score as Rubbish.

Finally, all six of us grouped up for a game of Seven Wonders, both heavily militaristic players - Dean and Matt, scoring well, with Dean romping ahead with a perfect military score and a large number of points for science to boot. Matt managed to secure half the gold reserves of the old world - a sum of 30 odd coins to hand, making up for an otherwise rather bare play area.

The Embattled Bin Men of Bob

Nine this week, Rich, Moritz and Matt playing the well travelled Hansa Teutonica with Crocker suitably enticed to stay and join in before making a hasty departure.

Matt ended up as the most savvy of traders securing a civilised Hansa win, whilst on the other table, a noisy uncivilised game of Risk Legacy trash talked its way across the world - and heavily distracted me from observing the goings on of Hansa.

Game 11-ish in the Risk saga opened with some major nuclear polluting of the Americas - Pete's enthusiastic bin men turning up in the troubled continent for a few days of trash collection - the more polluted the better. Bring Out Yer Dead.

Phil's mecha and Dean's bears could not have followed refuse protocol correctly however - bins not at the kerbside, the wrong kind of trash in the wrong bin - as Pete's army of Refuse Technicians could not quite finish the job and pulled over somewhere on a deserted American highway for a tea break. Cue sad Pete.

With radioactive trash piling up, and both bears and mecha dying, the only sensible solution to the problem was more pointless war, ravenous bears wandering around America in search of picnic baskets and uncollected bins and Bondy's mercenary Europeans taking an American bear hunting vacation.

A ridiculous defence of the City of Bob by its embattled bin men saw the African hordes decimated - but not before they limped on into the American cauldron to wipe out the hibernating bears.  A struggling Phil broke free of the poisoned jungles of Petia to let his mecha stomp forwards and secure Phil's first win, the City of Bob changing hands once more to end the game.

Seas boiled, the land heaved and the end of days was brought forth, the mark of the unlikely win of Phil. America - now known finally, justly as Philtopia would see dark days ahead as the sun waned and a chill wind began to blow. . . . such is the cost of a Phil win. Woe be unto you all !

To finish off the evening, an eight handed game of Saboteur commenced, Phil was deemed to be a saboteur every game regardless of evidence and saw his tools broken before he could even play a card. Harsh some might say. But Phil has the definite look of a Saboteur.

Some particularly inspired and pre-emptive Saboteuring saw the player deck tampered with so that four saboteurs could be pitted against four miners and properly bring any excavations to a crashing halt.

A lot of smack talk and laughs later and Pete squeaked the win with 9 gold, Moritz and myself on 8, Bondy on 7.