Daryl of the Reading Boardgames Social organised a day of boardgaming
at the Siren Craft Brewery, on an
industrial estate in the middle of nowhere south of Reading.
It was a wet and chilly day, and as it turned out we were setting
up in the beer store (which obviously doesn't get heated). Had I known
this I'd probably have worn something warmer. Still, it made a change
for me not to be too hot.
It appears that they use old whisky barrels.
My beer day began with Calypso, a Berliner Weisse style with heavy
hopping and a distinct citrusy, grapefruit-ish, flavour. Meanwhile the
gaming day got started with a five-player Firefly
session, including Blue Sun. The story card was Desperadoes:
everyone starts with a warrant, Harken isn't in the game at all,
Illegal jobs pay extra, and the goal is to make $15,000 before anyone
else.
This was the first time I'd got
my new storage solution to
the table, and it worked reasonably well. The lids of the card cases
ended up being used for the discards, not as convenient as it might be
but this really is a game that expands to fill the available table.
(And then a bit more.)
Everyone mostly managed to avoid the Reavers, even with three of them
on the board.
As it turned out, I won this quite handily, mostly by being
unreasonably fortunate with the Misbehave cards: I think there were
two Botches, and everything else just worked for me. I had the Walden,
but never got far enough ahead of anyone else in skills and equipment
to find it worth going out pirating (indeed, one of my crew got
poached for a bounty); but I also managed to avoid the Alliance even
after several runs across core space. Player number two was on around
$10,000 and had he managed to pick up Fancy Duds at the right moment
might well have beaten me in a turn or two. Alas, one player managed
to end up with less money than he'd started with.
The next beer was Undercurrent, another fairly citrusy beer but with
a very pleasant bitterness. We moved on to
Dead of Winter,
one I haven't had out enough recently. By dint of a ruthless focus on
just the specific things we needed to win, we managed to pull off a
victory with one turn left to play: enough barricades, just barely
enough morale, and (as it turned out) enough people that my secret
victory condition was also achieved (a joint win with one other
player). No betrayer, and we were never seriously suspicious of
anyone. I think the odds are kind of low (just under 50% that there's
one in the game) but this can be a pretty brutal game even without
that option.
Some people managed to get a Paranoia session going. I drank When the
Light Gose [sic] Out, a darker beer but still with a strong citrus
note (several of the brewers are American and it's clearly an approach
they like).
Three quick six-player games of
Avalon
came next, with a mix of the Reading Boardgames Social regulars and
the brewers who'd come to join us. I will admit I was quite happy with
an understated performance as Merlin which led to a third-mission win
for the good guys and the wrong person being assassinated by the
traitors. To stay with the Indie Boards and Cards theme, we had a
quick three-handed
Coup (not at its
best with just three, but still enjoyable, and oh dear I won it,
mostly by never bluffing – a policy I follow about half the time).
My final beer was Liquid Mistress, a lovely burned dark West Coast IPA
with chocolatey notes. The last game of the day was
[redacted], a
somewhat stylised espionage game: everyone is a spy moving around an
embassy, trying to get the opposition's secrets to their helicopter.
The board isn't as clear as it might be (especially in terms of
showing which doors are locked and which have X-ray sensors). Nobody
knows which side anyone else is on.
As a British agent, I picked up the American secrets very early on,
but then had endless trouble actually doing anything with them. One
of the brewers followed a policy of fighting everyone he met, and
(using slightly modified rock-paper-scissors card play) beating almost
all of them; he ended up getting the win for that team.
I can see the appeal, but it seemed just a bit too random and keen to
deny information to be really fun. Might still give it another go if
it comes my way.
Overall an excellent day, and there are plans to have another (though
probably in warmer weather). My thanks and congratulations to Daryl
and to the Siren crew for sorting it all out.
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