Boardgames, Beer and Badminton

The eagle eyed amongst you will notice I wasn't around last weekend, this was because I went to Devon with a massive group of friends from Uni. In addition to all the sensible mainstream things that we did like archery, air rifle and pistol shooting, badminton and eating far too much cake, we played boardgames... a lot of boardgames. At last years trip I was introduced to BSG, Ticket to Ride, Race for the Galaxy, Cthulhu Gloom, Monty Python Flux and Wiz War. This year, as well as playing some old favourites, I also got to try out Robo Rally, Firefly, Game of Thrones, King of Tokyo, The Big Bang Theory Party Game, Yggdrasil and Red November for the first time.


Yggdrasil: A cooperative board game

In no particular order. Yggdrasil and Red November are both cooperative games where all the players play against the game rather than each other. They have a very different flavour though, Yggdrasil you take the role of Norse Gods fighting to stop the destruction of the universe at Ragnarok. You get to make a number of actions each turn to fight back the monsters advance or to power up your characters for later in the game. Red November is a bit less serious, you play the crew of a gnomish submarine desperately fending off various crises abroad the boat. The game mechanic basically leaves you trading off taking more time to increase the chance of succeeding, against the greater number of crises that time generates.

King of Tokyo

In King of Tokyo you take the role of a monster movie style baddy trying to take control of Tokyo. The game involves dice rolling which provides you with attacks to damage your opponents, healing to remove damage you have taken or power to purchase upgrades for your monster. It is easy to pick up and quick, therefore likely to be a great game for our club. Robo Rally is a bit like the classic TV show Robot Wars, you race your laser wielding robot across a factory floor in the aim of winning the race or destroying your opponents. You programme your moves at the start of each turn and then each robot takes each part of its move in turn, potentially disrupting their opponents as a result. With a low number of players its very quick but becomes a much longer when played with the maximum number of players (we played for several hours without getting anywhere near the end). The Big Bang Theory Party Game works by each player choosing an amusing answer to a category or description, e.g. the category "Often Leads to Disaster" could be answered with "Killer Robots". It is basically a toned down version of Cards Against Humanity, I'm not sure either game is particularly suited to our club as the potential for causing offence is pretty high.

The two big long games that we played were the new Firefly board game and the Game of Thrones board game. In Firefly you are captain of a ship looking for crew to complete jobs in order to make cash. The overall objective to win changes each game depending on a story card, ours was to simply make the most money. Each turn you get to make two actions, for example you can buy goods, take new jobs or move. Moving slowly has no risk but making a hard burn to move further comes at the risk of encountering the Alliance or Reavers. The game captures the feel of the Firefly/Serenity universe well and if you're a fan of the show you'll probably like this game. Game of Thrones is a bit of a beast of a game, the rules are fairly complex and it takes a long time to play. We played for 3 hours and got to the halfway point. You take control of one of the houses of Westeros and battle for control of the castles and citadels of the continent. The game has a variety of different mechanisms in place from placing orders for your troops, blind bidding for one of the positions of power and card drawing for random events at the end of each turn. Whilst it took a while to get into it felt like a well designed game and it was a shame that it took so long with half the players never having played before.