Spirit Games Wednesday Night - 2013

[Zarniwoop]

Regular Burton Board Gaming at Spirit Games on Wednesday nights

We play a selection of new releases and old favourites, starting at 7.00pm and going on up to midnight. All are welcome, click on the articles link to get an idea of what we have been playing over the past year or two.

Contact Details:
salnphil@spiritgames.com

[EvilGinger]

Always a lot of fun & more than worth going to. I will repost this to the face Palm groups as well

 Ginger

[EvilGinger]

Wednesday 9th of January 2013

Did not intend to game to be honest but was lured in by a quick game of Perudo a dicy bluffing game which I did quite well in but did not win & then despite my arguing with myself vigorously was lured into the dungeons to play Decent 2nd edition. After which I made my excuses & left.


Now I know the papers are going to be late I will expand on this.

I had wanted to play Decent 2nd edition since it came out



having very much enjoyed my sadly one game of decent first edition even if it did take rather too long in a cold hall it was something I wanted to play again.

I was drawn into a campaign game, which Decent 2E supports right out of the box, but it was a well advanced campaign with well developed & upgraded characters with three other players who knew what they where doing so I had little to input being very much the newbie. It played at a fair clip despite the committee element and some discussion of what was the best move or action. The Scenario was rather a walk over but there was definite potential for it to have gone all wrong even so & it was done in about an hour & a half.

I would like to play it again preferably from the start of a campaign so I could see the character development elements of the game which seem to have been moved from in episode to between episodes in this edition.


I enjoyed Descent 2E but I feel its not quite as good as the first edition at least form my point of view though it plays very well smoothly & within a practicable time frame.

 Ginger

[Zarniwoop]

2nd January

First session of January so was a perfect time to try out one of my Christmas presents Expedition: Congo River 1884 a nice little game with a unique bidding mechanism for getting VP's, though there is a lot of luck and randomness. That said it is a pleasent enough game to play and once you get used to the cards should play relatively quickly. Caz, Paul, Carl and Cooper. I believe it was a Caz win on tie break but to be fair I don't recall exactly.

[Zarniwoop]

9th January

	Started the evening off with a game of Coup, this is a quick simplegame where players have 2 hidden cards with roles on. Each turn players claim to have a certain role nad take the appropriate action and/or collect money. Players can call your bluff and if they are wrong have to reveal one of their cards (ie lose a life) whilst you get to pick a new card. It is a last man standing game, thankfully this is quick not really my cup of tea but has proven quite popular with a lot of the Wednesday gaming group.
	Then we played Ra! an auction/set collection game and a bit of a classic. Really fun to play but takes a bit of thinking about. Sally:32, Caz:25, Andy:22, Phil:22 and Paul:19
	Finally a game of Citadels another classic, we had to call this one early as it was threatening to be a really long night otherwise (always forget how long this plays). One day I will try this with the alternative characters as I am not a huge fan of the Assassin as it seems to harsh. Sally:33, Caz:31, Paul:27, Phil:25 and Andy:21

[EvilGinger]

Perudo & that is almost certainly a miss spelling,  seems not to be avalible at the moment with the nearest equivalent being

Liars Dice



which is effectively the same game.

Ginger

[RichardD]

Descent 2.0 is really easy to play, but Simon's right - that as we approach the end of the campaign, the characters have all acquired lots of extra skills and items.  Plus the campaign regulars know how to deal with each scenario's challenges after ten sessions or so.  Descent 1.0 had lots of extra rules and fiddly bits, and it takes a lot longer, but I'm not convinced that the extra length makes for a better game.  Although a couple of scenarios have felt like walk overs for one side or another, there's often a key moment or two where a wrong decision - or a couple of missed die rolls - where things could turn the encounter on its head.

Uchronia - or Glory to Rome - has become our "go to" game to start the evening with, while waiting for the Descent players to assemble.

[RichardD]

The Descent campaign is over.  Five of us have been playing it for a few months now, off and on.  The Campaign included the introductory scenario, six two-part quests (each part takes about 90 minutes, with some time for setup and campaign admin), a long mid-point quest (which took us two Wednesday sessions to get through), and a two-part finale.  The finale was completed in about 90 minutes all-in, not least because the heroes have done pretty well throughout, collected a lot of gold and equipment, and finished the campaign as finely-honed, well-drilled killing machines.

Thanks to Philsy for being the Overlord, who refused to let things get him down even during the quests when we were steam-rollering his forces no matter what he used or how he planned it.  I'm going to leave Descent for a few weeks before starting a new campaign, this time with me as Overlord.  We'll see if I can cope with adversity, or whether I can put the new heroes under some pressure.

[Zarniwoop]

16th January 2013

We started off the evening with a gasme of Love Letter a really simple quick little game where you are dealt a card at the start, on your turn you draw another then discard a card and follow its instructions until there is one person left. Repeat until a someone has won a number of rounds (dependent on number of players). This is fun but I am not sure how replayable this is, it is quite random and you really have few choices available. Still it plays in minutes so no harm giving it a go to fill in between other stuff. I won this ...

We then played a game of Days of Steam now I am not normally a train game kind of guy but this was actually quite good. A mix of tile placement, good movement with some set collection for points. You build up the track with the laid tiles and can add towns which have goods, as long as certain crtieria are met. Certain tiles add difficulty in movement and you spend steam points to move around. I had good fun playing this and certainly would give it another go sometime. Caz:13, Neil:12, Sally:7 and Paul:5

[Zarniwoop]

23rd Janurary 2013

Started off the evening with trying out a new game Smash Up This is a card game where you choose 2 charatcer decks which you then shuffle together and then compete with other players to destroy bases for points. This is really quite a fun little game and the artwork on the cards is quite good, plus the chance to make bizarre combo's of characters is always worth a laugh. Players lay cards on bases or play cards to take actions that may effect bases or other players until enough strength is on a base to destroy it, players then assess how many points they get. A new base is layed out and it all carries on. The first team to 15pts wins. Sally:27, Paul:22

We then went on to play an old favourite Marrakech this is another really fun game that plays really quickly and has some cool components. I mean what can be wrogn with playing a game with mini carpets as playing pieces . Sally:64 and Paul:43. As you can see Sally was on form tonight.

[Zarniwoop]

30th Jan 2013

Tonight we started off with a game of Aztlan in which players represent one of 4 tribes vying for the favours of the Gods as they strive to remain in the blessed lands. Essentially an area control game where you have the chance to peacfully co-exist in areas, for which you are rewarded with a gift from the Gods, or you can force the other tribe(s) out if you have more power. On each turn you select a card from your hand, all players have the same set, and this grants your power this turn as well as determining which terrain is special for you. In order to score that round you need to create a domain of linked terrain (each tribe member must be adjacent to another) which also includes at least one of the type on your card. The scoring is a little convoluted but they do provide a handy table on the back to make this easier. The artwork is really great and the components of excellent quality, the only shame is as you get futher into the game the board gets really busy so it can be a little hard to keep track of what is going on. That said I realy enjoyed the game and aside from a few rule mistakes on my part the game went well. I will certainly play this again and even with four it plays in a reasonable time. Andy:216, Caz:168, Paul:131 and Roy:117

We then played Pirate Dice The artwork and components on this are of good quality and work well. This is a fun little game where you use dice to control your ship in a race to recover the treasure. Each player has a set of dice they roll and then allocate behind screens to take an action or pass over a series of turns. As you can imagine your carefully laid plans can be scuppered by the other ships moving into your way or worse shooting at you causing damage which then eventually starts to lock your dice. Due to bad dice rolls and missing a crucial rule I spent most of this game doing widths on the first tile while the rest chased down the treasure. In the end the worthy Pirate who outwitted the rest of us to grab the booty was Carole.

[Zarniwoop]

6th Feb 2013
Well we went out for a meal at the more then excellent Flora Thai restaurant in station street with Phil & Sal, so we sort of rolled in fashionably late to the Wednesday night games so we ended up playing Mermaid Rain which was apparently designed by one of [url-www.spiritgames.co.uk]Spirit Games[/url] customers from the old days in croydon.

So the components are of good quality as is the artwork. Essentially a set collection game where each turn players play cards to form melds that determine player order. Depending on the meld you may get some points as well as affecting your player order, then in turn order the players choose a wave tile on the board and this is then used to move around to collect the treasures strewn across the ocean. Beware that the more cards you spend in the bidding process to form the meld the less cards you have to use to move at this stage of the game. To move you discard a card with a symbol matching the wave tile or a shipwreck space, underwater cavern space or an atoll space. Final scoring means you have to give 1 of each type of treasure to the witch to "lose" your tail (losing 5 points for each missing one) and then you score majorities and monopolies on the treasure you have left. Really fin little game and more strategy involved then first appearances would suggest. We did have a bit of fun at the scoring stage as the crucial pay one of each treasure to the witch point had been missed, so we all suffered some minus points here!! Phil:61, Caz:58, Paul:51 and Sally:50

[RichardD]

Our second Descent campaign is properly underway.  Luke is playing a healer, Dan a necromancer, Carl a thief and Philsy is taking time out from previous Overlord duties to play a champion - although he still helps me out with useful reminders from time to time.  I am the new Overlord, and I'm clearly struggling with a few competency issues.

The first quest, First Blood, looked like a walkover for the heroes.  Though I managed to get four out of five goblins off the board as required, I think I handled things quite badly and the heroes ultimately had an easy win.  They also lucked out on treasures and shopping, picking up a suit of armour which makes one of them very hard to hurt, as well as some extra weaponry.

The second quest was drawn from the new expansion.  Something to do with mining, it was a longish one, with the unusual feature being that the time pressures were on me as Overlord rather than the heroes as is usually the case.  Dan got picked on mercilessly, as my main monster group could target him very effectively and he was also vulnerable to some of the traps I'll be weeding out of my deck ASAP.  The annoying thing was, I very nearly won.  There were several crucial cards I misplayed (or forgot to play at opportune moments), I handled the other monster groups poorly (especially the kobolds, whom I had falling over one another down a narrow corridor), yet I was still just one space away from victory in the final turn.  I only needed to run one monster out through the exit, I had enough kobolds left to provide a "meat shield" to protect him, and I contrived things so as not to do that; result, heroes put the required damage into my named monster and killed him when he was standing adjacent to the exit.  So very, very close, and the result is yet more loot for the party, including another excellent suit of armour.

I shuffle back to my lair, to hatch more fiendish plots, muttering that I'll get them next time.

[Zarniwoop]

13th Feb 2013

this evening I finally got Archipelago to the table after many missed opportunities. This really is a well made game with some excellent quality components and great detailed artwork, the insert which was meant to be functional unfortunately has been cut a little too precise so does not fit everything as well as it should to play out of the box. There is A LOT going on in this game and I now fully understand the people on BoardGameGeek saying it took then 2 or 3 games to "get" the game and enjoy it. I can see great potential for this and on the whole am very glad I took the plunge to buy this, I have enjoyed the two games I have played so far but I am only just getting to grips with all the options. Whilst this game may not be to everyone's tastes, with the right people at the table I can see this being an extremely fun game to play with plenty of replayability. Not quite sure how to gauge the players reactions to this around the table that night but there certainly wasn't any noises about not playing it again. So, good game will take a few goes to master the mechanics but worth the effort. Luke & Richard:11, Paul:10 and Caz:9

Finished the evening off with Martian Dice always a fun little game, which is a good filler one of the better push-your-luck dice rolling games. Paul:25, Colin & Caz:11 and Luke 6

[Zarniwoop]

20th Feb 2013

Started the night off with The Golden City one game I had been looking at on and off in the shop for some time. I am really glad I finally took the plunge, this is a really neat little game that is quick to teach/learn but will provides plenty of fun. Players have just arrived on the island and establish their business on the coast and gradually work their way into the Golden City earning "Letters of Business" as they go, a novel bidding mechanism for cards and different scoring options each round keep this interesting as players have to adapt their plans as they go. Great game, quick to play and always a fresh experience each time you play. Caz:70, Martin:58 and Paul:52

We ended the evening with Cargo Noir As with all of Days of Wonder games the components are first class, colourful boards, beautiful pieces, excellent cards and a well written rulebook. Each players represent a family of smugglers the aim is to amass the most Victory points (in the form of cards representing various assets - Dive Bars, Yachts, Night Clubs etc). To purchase the VP cards each player must place their ships in a port and bid for the goods available there, if they are successful they get all the goods. To win a bid you must be the only player left bidding in that port at the start of your turn otherwise you either have to increase your bid or withdraw. In order to purchase cards you trade in your goods, upto 9 of the same or upto 9 different, you earn differing amounts depending on which option. The amount of cargo you can hold is limited at the start but you can buy VP cards that increase your storage, as well as VP cards that increase your fleet and a final one that allows you to gain coins when you withdraw from a bid. Finally there is the port of Macao where there is a Casino where your ships earn $2 or the port where for each ship placed you can swap a trade good with any located face up or take one at random from the bag. This is a great game that sadly gets left on my shelf far too often, must make an effort to play this more, really enjoyed this again. Chris:150, Caz:140, Paul:100 and Martin:70