Tuesday 24th May

Kes wrote:We're playing castle ravenloft. Plays up to 5 so 3 spaces atm. It's a co-op dungeon crawler.
Anyone want in?

Just me for castle ravenloft tonight unfortunately

Ok, we have one space then. Anyone else?

Jen_K wrote:Can I join Archipeligo?

Of course!

Carl_H wrote:

Kes wrote:We're playing castle ravenloft. Plays up to 5 so 3 spaces atm. It's a co-op dungeon crawler.
Anyone want in?

Just me for castle ravenloft tonight unfortunately

I'd like to give it a go sometime Carl. Does anyone know how to play it?

I'll take that 4th Archipelago spot.

Cheers tom sam and Paul for some great games. Really enjoyed tzolkin and will be good to play again with slightly less need for rulebook look-up. Well played by all. That said I suspect we could all get better with practice.

And special praise to Paul; newly crowned SBGC Roll For the Galaxy champion with a lovely final move. I shall have my revenge.

Tzolk'in was fantastic. A very satisfying timing puzzle. When you manage to pull of a multifaceted move or series of moves using several workers that had been placed three or four of five turns ago and had rotated into advantageous positions due to superior planning, or blind luck disguised as superior planning, it's worth a small mental celebration.

And to our winner, Sam, a well deserved congratul-*cough**splutter*- nope, can't do it. Quarter of a point! What game deals in quarters of points?!

J/K brah, GG

I enjoyed Scoville but think 6 players is too many, there was a lot of downtime and, I'm sure it was noticed, my attention swayed to other things. I'd like to play it with 4 and see how it goes, it feels like a 90 minute game at the max to me. Thanks for bringing it down though Paul, you saved me from another purchase!

What was with the monkey game last night by the way? Was the guy with the t-shirt the designer?

Yeah, they've got it on Kickstarter at the moment. Not sure of the name though

Sam wrote:Quarter of a point! What game deals in quarters of points?!

Quarter points don't count! Everyone knows you have to round points down to the nearest whole number? I thought that was common knowledge no?

Archipelago Update:

Myself, Nick, Jen and Matt played Archipelago last night. A couple of mistakes were made re: the use of the 'Slavery' evolution card.

1. Jen used it, to effectively perform 2 action on her go. The text on the card is a bit misleading; however, the game's designer has confirmed, that it basically just disengages active-engaged citizens. See thread here: https://boardgamegeek.com/article/22772191

2. Matt used it, to stand up all his rebel citizens. It can't do that. It only disengages active-engaged citizens; it doesn't make rebel citizens active again. There is another evolution card, 'Dictatorship', that specifically allows you do convert rebel citizens back to active citizens.

There are 3 states a unit can be in:
a. Active-unengaged.
b. Active-engaged.
c. Rebel (laid down).

I need to do some work on my player aids for this game, I think specifically:

1. A glossary reference detailing the effect of some the more ambiguous evolution cards.

2. A summary of how the buildings work, what they all do, and how towns work.

So, each region (hex) can contain one of each building type (regardless of who owns it).

If you control (have an active citizen in) a town in a region:
a. You can block access to that regions resources (other players can negotiate with you for access to them).
b. You block migration in to unoccupied buildings within the region.
c. A citizen in your town can operate other unoccupied buildings in the region.
d. After a crisis, you can expel rebel citizens from other buildings in the region.

Kes wrote:Yeah, they've got it on Kickstarter at the moment. Not sure of the name though

Monkey Butt! They wanted to see how understandable their rules are for people, apparently. I didn't get to play it myself as I was Tzolkining but they had a good few people playing over the evening, I think.

Sam wrote:Tzolk'in was fantastic. A very satisfying timing puzzle. When you manage to pull of a multifaceted move or series of moves using several workers that had been placed three or four of five turns ago and had rotated into advantageous positions due to superior planning, or blind luck disguised as superior planning, it's worth a small mental celebration.

And to our winner, Sam, a well deserved congratul-*cough**splutter*- nope, can't do it. Quarter of a point! What game deals in quarters of points?!

J/K brah, GG

I agree with Sam. Very fun game with lots of different elements to explore. It wasn't as AP prone as I thought it might be, since, although the ramifications of your choices may be tricky to work out, you've only really got a few things to consider on your turn.

Final scores were spread over just 4 (and a quarter) points, with everyone getting their points in different ways.

As well as the Monkey Butt guys, we had another visitor yesterday: Mike Hayes, designer of classic wargame "Warlord", also known as "Apocalypse" when it was published by Games Workshop back in the day and now called "Classic Warlord" in the current edition. He was handing out some flyers inviting entries to a Warlord tournament some time in June.

I have played a 6-player game with a friend's copy and everyone had a good time, although it does have some old-school elements that modern designers would try hard to avoid, such as player elimination and indefinite length. I remember thinking that the combat system was really clever and it made perfect sense when Mike said he used to lecture on game theory. Any wargame fans we have in the club should check it out. Here's a fairly comprehensive review on BGG.