RogerBW's Blog

Boardgaming at home, January 2015 01 February 2015

On a chilly January day, nine of us ended up boardgaming at my place. (With images; cc-by-sa on everything.)

With seven of us there at first, we started off with The Resistance, in "Avalon" mode (adding Rebel Commander, False Commander, Bodyguard and Assassin). The initial setup is a bit tricky if one hasn't done it before, but I do prefer this to the baseline game with no special abilities. The spies won both times, though the second game was a profound spy victory; I did try to warn people against voting up early mission proposals, but they were keen to try things out. Which since I was a spy suited me just fine.

The other two players arrived, and we split into groups of five and four, which never quite managed to re-synchronise. At my end of the table we started with Splendor, where I played worse than ever before (this seems to be a pattern for me with this game). All the level-1 cards got scooped up, but everyone else was ahead of me on diamonds and rubies, and I never really recovered.

We went on to Quantum (with shiny new dice). We started off well enough…

…but people kept running away from my slow powerful ships, and while I held out a reasonable second place for much of the game…

…in the end it wasn't enough.

We went on with a quick round of Hanabi, total score 21 out of 25 which isn't bad for people who mostly hadn't played before, and then finished with Suburbia. This was my first four-player game, and things went rather awry: there were big victory point bonuses available for both "fewest green tiles" (Capitalist) and "fewest black tiles" (Libertarian). I stayed in contention for both, so effectively restricted myself to yellows and blues, which didn't do much to help get my population up. (And a double Homeowner's Association, effectively tripled with investment, didn't help.)

I fell behind, hoping to catch up by scoring points for goals, but ended up not getting any of the public ones (tied on both Capitalist and Libertarian). My income ran off the end of the track (we assumed that an income higher than 15 should be capped at 15 - turns out this is correct), but reputation was hovering around -2 to +2 for most of the game. I think we probably messed up the details of the investment tiles, but in the end it didn't make a huge difference; one of the first-time players was the runaway winner.

The expansion, Suburbia Inc., remains on my "will probably purchase soon" list.

At the other end of the table they were playing bigger games: Shadows over Camelot first, which mostly seemed to be about hunting the traitor.

Everybody was sounding pretty suspicious to me. But they seemed to do all right in the matter of Picts, Saxons, and even (eventually) the Holy Grail.

But in the end siege engines did for them, and the traitor won.

They kept to the treachery theme with Dead of Winter, setting up the Secret cards to guarantee a betrayer. (Note bonus zombie figures.) But in the end, the crises and morale finished them off: nobody won, not even the betrayer, unless you count the zombies themselves.

A couple of the players stayed for a round of Quantum, augmented by a 3d-printed Death Star. ("Peace Moon.")

Thanks to everyone who turned up, and to my wife who (a) put up with us all and (b) cooked.


  1. Posted by chris at 01:18pm on 01 February 2015

    Why, thank you! But in fact, I enjoy having people around, and also quite like cooking fairly basic food (soup and baked potatoes and a cheese dip-thing is hardly a major trouble to provide, after all) and seeing people who seem to want to eat it.

    Just because I don't play the games that doesn't mean I'm not enjoying myself. Sometimes there is a great pleasure and amusement in overhearing the comments people are making. Ambient zombies, eh? I've travelled on tube-trains like that.

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