Games Night... eventually.

We merry gentlemen (Warren, Steve, David, James and myself) met up once more for another foray into the world of boards, dice, cards and counters... and oh what lush counters they were.

After a debacle of tiny epic proportions with our usual venue, we agreed to convene at one of the groups houses *praise be to Warren* though must take heed and learn that in the depths of Farnborough milk is in terribly short supply. Humour and good sportsmanship is not though, which is nice.

First up to bat*

We started the evening off at a sedate pace with a game of Cards Against Humanity

Most of us had no idea what this entailed and tentatively placed our first cards, eager not to cause too much offence. For those who have not played the game, that tack will not get you a win (not that it really matters). After falling behind very, very badly I decided that I need to be more offensive and that's exactly what I did. From first to last in the last four turns of the game, cleaning up on each one. A racist comment, a homophobic comment and a sexist comment ensured the win for me... though I lost a bit of my soul too.

Warren, who was almost assured a win decided to gamble on his last turn (I gambled too). I won the round and we switcherood positions. James retained his entire soul by recording no points whatsoever.

Game Two

After a great deal of laughing and wincing and some occasional sharp intakes of breath, we decided to play Euphoria: Build a better dystopia

This was new to all of us, but two of the group had familiarised ourselves with the rules. It is a busy board and looks like it is going to be an uphill slog to play and understand. However, it really is a simple game in essence, though it will take a good while to get to grips with strategies and the optimum opening plays (at least for us).

It all started quite slow. For probably the first half of the game only one star had been placed, no markets had been attempted and we were each just ambling through with no real direction. Warren took what looked like an early lead and that sparked me to actually start to devise some kind of plan. David too was starting to pull away from the pack with a couple of stars in Icarite territory.

My plan... open markets. This lead to a rush, driven by myself to open four markets in quick succession. This was not how I expected the game to pan out and unfortunately for Warren, the leader, he was in a position which lead to him being shut out of all but one. In all, 4 markets were opened, three of which caused resources to be lost on certain dice rolls (3, 4 or 6). This is mean, especially to David who was not on any of the markets, Warren had managed to get into one of them.

This sudden rush took me and the two other players, who at this point were equally behind, in contention for the game. And like that, it was suddenly over. Warren placed a star on a market, with one star remaining for his win I was able to place my final star on an open territory.

From a slow start, the game took a strange turn and suddenly went into overdrive. By the end, everybody had 2 or less stars to place.

We all agreed Euphoria is a beautifully looking game, with great pieces and a nice theme. The only caveat is that we were playing the deluxe version and I don't know how this stacks up against the retail version of the game.

Final Game (three) of the Evening

With another evening drawing to a close we settled on a game of Dice Town. The game places each player in the wild west and fighting for control of certain roles/buildings (The Bank, The Bank Robber, Sheriff, Saloon, Mines and General Store).

Each player roles a set of poker dice, hiding the outcome from the opponents, and decides which dice to keep and which to re-roll. Eventually everyone settles on their final hand and that is used to determine who gets what from the available building/role spots.

All in all the games takes about an hour to place and is generally fun with plenty of opportunity to get one over on the other players. You can trade, steal and play cards on each other to gain advantage or hinder your opponents.

Warren came out as a runaway winner, with the rest of us fairly close to one another in score.

And that was that. Until next time.

Game Happy
Chris

*That's for you David.

Some great Christmas pressies!

I cannot believe it has been 6 weeks or so since my last post, but as always there is so much to do and so little time to do it in and then you add Christmas in to the mix and well, time just has a way of outrunning you!

In my effort to start up my own online games store, which I have hinted at, but never expressly mentioned, I have made many friends along the way, some who have been a great help, some who offered some great advice and others offered me well wishes and support in varying ways.

Aside being a successful online retailer of board games, my idea and inspiration came from Kick Starter, a topic which I have oft' spoken about in the past. Additionally, I wanted to try and find some of the harder too come by games and bring them to the UK market.

One such game is Police Precinct by Common Man Games, a game which is in incredibly short supply and almost impossible to find in the U.K. In early December I tried to find a distributor who could supply this game, but sadly at the time it was out of print. This lead me to contacting C.M.G. directly and speaking to their extremely helpful and friendly owner Karl Fenner.

He explained the situation with regards Police Precinct and told me to exercise a little patience. Lo and behold, the 2nd edition was just about to be launched. As a retailer this made me very, very excited and I wanted to get on board with the project. I also offered to help Karl and his team in any way I could and was invited to join one of his teams (I am very, very excited about that too).

The Kick Starter itself is well underway now and has only 14 days remaining, so if you would like to know more and perhaps get on board then why not check the project out: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1529038443/police-precinct-2nd-edition

So what has all this got to do with 'great Christmas pressies'?

Well, Karl also sent me copies of the two promo cards for the game to find out estimated mail times to the UK. Even though I don't have the game myself yet, I was still over the moon to receive them (who can resist a promo card?!)

Here they are in all their glory

Happy Gaming
Chris