by Stuart Burnham
06:15 - an alarm clock rings. On a Saturday?
A man merrily climbs from his warm bed and, after himself fixing a coffee, begins to ponder just what he shall shove into a bag to accompany him on the arduous 15 minute bus trip into Oxford for an
entire bloody day of games playing.
Whilst there was no real need to get up so early for an event so close to home it did mean that I could walk the dog, get a couple of loads of washing done and a spot of ironing before fixing a cooked breakfast for the family, and thus neatly bank some "brownie points" before buggering off and leaving Mrs B for the day.
See; gamification - It's just allying age old marital best practice to modern boardgame experience and thus making sure you can pay your upkeep costs / feed your family etc and avoiding a hefty penalty in the grand battleground of a long time relationship!
With son Billy in tow we set off for The Mitre pub on the High Street right in the city centre. Arriving before 10 we found several friendly and welcoming faces in the large function room upstairs and picked a nice table right by the big window that offered a great view of the bustling street below.
No-one that we knew had arrived yet so we settled down for a game of Billy's choice and he plumped for
Oh My Goods!. This was his first play of it and he did quite well, with both of us going for an industrial wheat strategy by each building a couple of mills. This meant that my mid game build of a bakery to convert my wheat and coal produced into tasty fresh bread was ultimately the key to the narrow win, as the extra income and the ability to purchase one of the extra workers helped me to just pip him.
Whilst we were halfway through playing esteemed designer, notable BGG attention seeker and good chum
Tony Boydell arrived and joined us and analysed the endgame over a coffee.
We then peered into his bag of delights which contained almost exclusively "games designed or current prototypes of Tony Boydell" (plus a copy of
Food Chain Magnate that he hoped someone could teach and a couple of games that I was buying -
Pickomino and
Buccaneer) for something to try out.
He kindly gave young Bill a copy of
Bad Grandmas, who was thrilled to be told that he was the second person in the UK to have a copy (after Tony himself, obviously!).
Of course we opened it up and got playing this quirky little game of conflict between the "Bad Grandmas" who have divided the care home into battle lines of "Knitters" vs "Bakers".
It's a fun 2 player micro game, there are 16 cards divided into "knitters" and "bakers" (plus a couple of grandads as little extra / variant) valued 0-7, each player plays a card and highest card wins; maybe. Each card has a different rule altering effect on the bottom of the card and the winning card defines the rule for the next card played. The winner takes "cookies" equal to the difference between the two cards played. Play next cards with the rule that was on the winning card.
The art and the puns on the cards are great (you might need to understand French to get the most out of them as this is a French published game, English language in rules and summary cards as well though) and the gameplay is pleasingly quick, funny and enjoyable.
Tony mentioned that he'll have copies at the UK Games Expo so get a copy when you pick up
Guilds of London (of which he kindly handed me a test copy so the Games for a Laugh crowd are in for a real treat!)
:D :thumbsup:
Next up from Boydell's bulging bag (
Snowdonia - Nice Cup of Tea, Danse Macabre (see reports from The Shed) and various others) Billy requested
Paperclip Railways which he was quite taken with and is something that I'd never seen, let at alone played so I was was very keen to try out.
Bathed in bright sunshine (Oxford having sidestepped the high winds and torrential rain that other parts were enduring) we strung together said paperclips and built our little towns, factories and suburbs.
It being a design of Tony's there are obviously a variety of ways in which you can "interact" with your opponents and it was something that Billy indulged in with glee, destroying one of only two places that I could build out of with a late game move that almost totally destroyed me. I had fallen into a hare (as in hare & tortoise) gameplan but, as you might expect, I was overtaken by "Tortoise Tony" who had a HUGE number of end game scoring cards. Pleasingly he also overtook Billy for the win (which would become a nice habit for Tony throughout the day!).
There are also many puns, innuendos and gags upon the cards (my favourite below) and if you ever get a chance to play or, good lord, get a copy I'd urge you to do so!
During the play Ben (
Ross on Wye Boardgamers Blog) and lovely wife Becky arrived with an enormous, hernia inducing bag of games and we were also joined by an old gaming pal of Tony's, Robin, so a split into two trios was in order.
Tony, Robin and Becky went off to harvest tea and lay track with the excellent, imminent
Snowdonia Tea Gardens (another Tony win!) whilst Ben made good on a promise to teach me and Billy how to play
Troyes.
This is considered the formative game of the "dice placement" genre and it is
excellent to play. I really enjoyed it and am confident that I can now get it to games nights regularly. There appears to be so much variety and opportunity in the game, yet it also is tight and restrictive at the same time. A brilliant game with fantastic art and table prescence as well.
Thanks Ben!
The "quest for sustenance" was now underway and Billy took full advantage of being out with dad rather than mum and managed to wangle a giant burger, fries and milkshake out of me.
Upon returning the Ross-Refugees were busy with
Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King so we sat with recently arrived GFaL pal Terry and chatted whilst we waited for yet another Tony Triumph to play out before splitting into games of
Concordia and favourite of Terry, Tony and me
Glory to Rome. Billy also joined for his first taste of Chudyk craziness.
He did quite well, despite ignoring Tony's helpful advice (only several hundred plays under his belt - what would he know eh?!) so we might have yet another inductee into the fandom of this marvellously mad game. Terry managed to grab the win courtesy of some bonuses thus ending Tony's Tour of Triumph. For once I managed to construct some buildings of use and was reasonably competitive, stealing a building from Terry with the Prison and cards from all with the Bridge and use of the legionnaire action.
Excellent fun all round.
Tony then said his goodbyes and we resolved to arrange a halfway games session in the Cotswolds sometime soon.
Back at a group of six we then split up into two groups of three for
Le Havre (Robin, Becky, Terry) and
Saint Petersburg (Myself and "The Flowerpot Men").
I really enjoyed Saint Pete, despite my crucial error in dismantling an important part of my money engine early on - leaving me too short of money to buy more workers in a couple of rounds - it's a game that is right up my street with the engine / tableau building.
Bill was competitive with Ben until the last couple of rounds when Ben pulled away for a convincing victory.
It was now time to pack young Billy off on a bus back to Abingdon and home and after seeing him safety off I returned for a quick game of
Mottainai with Ben, again as with GtR managing to construct (craft) a mean building (work) that allowed me to steal a handy end game point scoring card from Ben that also covered some extra sales. Nice! (Or Nasty depending on which side of the table you were!)
Dinner was now the order of the evening and unfortunately it appears that the eatery I had in mind had closed, depriving Ben of the opportunity to eat some "Posh Sausage" (ooo-er!) so a nearby Pizza restaraunt was visited instead.
Suitably nourished we then returned for a 5p game of Becky's favourite,
Lancaster.
This was another first play for me and I found it to be yet another excellent game, all bullying each other out of spaces and self interest voting in/ out if laws along with jaunts over the channel for a spot of glory in bashing the French. Thematic in it's mechanics and quick and interactive in practice (even with 5, which is apparently an ideal player count) I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I wasn't competitive though with Becky shoving me out of a couple of key actions early on - lesson learned! Terry and Ben jostled for the win before Terry pulled away at the end courtesy of his large army.
Time to be off then, lest the terrors of a late night "drunk bus" ride home be endured if we stayed for one more game.
There's time enough for more plays Sunday.....
....to be continued...
