RogerBW's Blog

This small one-day boardgaming event happened twice a year in a village hall in Deepest Buckinghamshire. This was my sixth visit; I wasn't expecting to get to it, but YSDC Games Day was moved.

We started with Potion Explosion, and a rather less ratty copy than the one in Thirsty Meeples. (Though I'm still working on my 3d-printed replacement design, which has conceptually now grown a hyperbolic funnel and five-rayed distributor plate to make it easier to return marbles to the stack.)

I won, but not as handily as I thought I had.

We went on to seven-player Colt Express. I need to work on my teaching of this game, and on some more quick-reference sheets so that all the bandit-player information is in one place; one player in particular simply didn't pick up some rules even though he was nodding along as I explained them, so I'll need to modify the blurb and maybe put it in a new order (bottom-up perhaps, cards, round structure, then overall goals). But we had fun, and I won as the Marshal (with poorest bandit as co-winner - which could have been Belle, but she had little faith in me and went on a last-round looting spree).

Mafia de Cuba handles seven well (it really prefers more), so we went on with that. I didn't get any pictures, because most of the game is in the discussion, but as the Godfather I managed to recover all the diamonds and only make one false accusation (of the Driver). I'd like to play this more, but I'm rarely in a large enough group for it.

Citadels came next: the older edition, not the 2016. Some of the art is lovely, particularly the district card backs (a cut-down version of the cover that you can see at the Amazon link for the game); but this is a classic "abstraction gap" game for me, where what you do has little relationship to what you're supposedly doing, and your plans can be completely upset by someone else's minor error in judgment. It's all right, and I can see why people who aren't me might love it, but it's not for me. Didn't come last, yay.

Last game of the day was Alien Frontiers, the first time I've had the chance to play with my own copy – still not using the Outer Belt, or Factions, or any of the other expansions. (Soon! They have arrived! Actually early, even though they were Kickstarter products!) Two players were new, and one of them won, while I tied for second with the other (I probably over-did the alien artefacts). I'm still not very good at this game, but I enjoy it more each time I play.

Keith has run 21 of these events, with his wife and a friend providing food, and has decided it's time to hang up his hat. I'll miss them; I like the friendly, no-frills atmosphere of a church hall rather than a hotel. (Hmm. There's a Royal British Legion hall quite near me. I bet they'd be available for hire.)