by Tony Boydell
No sign of the prodigal son (Jobbers) this evening, so it was a very good thing that I'd asked The Plough's Landlady if we could borrow a couple of her 'function buffet' long tables. Despite Boffo's calling notice suggesting 'no RSVP is required: just come along and we'll see what happens', our distracted com-padre replied anyway with an unusually-coherent "I shall not be coming" email - as opposed to his normal clipped, phonetic 'R's and 'Y's. Life's looking like it might be too short to be taking games so seriously TBH.I was transporting Mr Matt Green - loooong-time gaming pal and fellow designer - to the club as he is staying in Newent for the Boffonian celebrations. He had a hempen bag-for-life that disgorged its gaming delights for much of the evening; it also gifted us the tuberic joy of Potato Man:
A trick-taking game where one must, most-definitely, NOT follow suit, L'homme du pommes de terre stuttered through four rounds of 'Is this all it is?' before everyone just kinda got up and moved to their next game. No-one seemed to have any time to do anything; most of our dealt-hands being thrown in early due to someone being unable to not-follow legally. Matt won thanks to a huge score in the fourth - he evidently knows what he's doing - while the rest of us just looked around, dazed.
A proper card game for our next, however, as Herr Kartoffle was buried deep in the recesses of the hessian sack:
A Thomas Lehmann game is a wonderful thing and, true to form, Res Arcana looked gorgeous and came with about as many distinct icons as Guilds of London but with far less whining and bleating from players!
In summary: You get a Mage character and eight randomly-dealt (in the intro game) artifact cards. You collect resources (five types) in order to play out the artifacts which, in turn, provide further resources and resource-conversion effects. The aim is to build artifacts to accelrate in to building special locations and monuments for Veeps/Veep-scoring abilities and then hit 10+ points before the others.
The first game was a confused cornucopia of tapping, un-tapping, mis-plays and low-scores (apart from Matt of course) but with Mr Shep (of that other blog) joining us mid-intro, the second was a stonking festival of combos and card-abuse! Oh yes, one play and it all makes absolute and thrilling sense! Abusing a beast (gain RED equal to the number of BLACK an opponent had) and an item that builds artifacts from your discard pile at a hefty discount, I ended up playing the last few rounds with far more things-to-do than my Passed-and-sitting-on-their-hands opponents! A word of caution, though; Matt advised us that this is a first to 10+ race NOT a languid boat-ride of all-evening tableau optimization: you win big by winning quick!
I'd have happily played this for the rest of the night but variety is the spice of life:
Dicelantis is Matt and Sam's re-working of their Beyond the Gates of Antares: The Dice Game, in the manner of those cheesy Doug McClure movies of the late 1960s and 1970s. A well-hidden (by the publisher) gem, this Yahtzee-esque die-roller needs wider exposure and my plan is for Surprised Stare Games to give it the love it deserves! Mr Shep stole the first victory from under Gerv's nose and then pulled the last survivor from the Whirlpool of Doom in the second for a whitewash.
We closed with Eggs of Ostrich: an exactly-three-players blind-bidding affair that I'd not visited since 2012. In summary: reveal an ostrich card (how many eggs are available) then secretly select a bag number in which to store collected eggs or a 'Skip' card. Simultaneously reveal: those not skipping divide the eggs between them and put them in the bag whose number they played - go over the number and the bag breaks. Score points for exactly- and partially-full bags at the end of 10 rounds. EoO is a quirkly little bluffer and, notably, coaxed a series of odd wails and groans from Byll - so much so that it distracted Boffo from his 40th Too Many Cooks at the other end of the room!
Ian joined us at the very end but, this time, there was to be no Cockroach Poker; just a genteel departure in to the chilly end-of-Summer night.