October 2013 – Victor Gannon Games

7 in boardgaming is an unlucky number, well not so much unlucky as awkward. Most games are designed for a max of 4,5 or 6 players so when you get 7 people around a table the obvious thing to do (apart from ignore one person) is to split into two smaller groups but somehow last night that wasn’t going to work for us so it was 7 players all the way

First up was TSURO

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/16992/tsuro

It’s a very simple game akin to pipe dreams where you lay ties with paths on them and move your marker and anyone on the same tiles marker to the end of that tile. go off the edge or collide with someone else marker and it’s game over. very simple and I THOUGHT practically no strategy, so… why do I still like the game? I don’t know. It intrigues me, I got it for the iphone and it still intrigues me.

The game itself if beautifully presented, nice quality pieces and a lovely oriental theme. It’s very light and you wouldn’t play a huge amount of it BUT it does have the one more go quality and it plays up to eight. Try it on the iphone first

Still with 7 in place we moved onto CARDS AGAINST HUMANITY

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/50381/cards-against-humanity

This is a winner. Quite simply it’s Apples to Apples for grown ups. The box says 17+ age for players and it’s accurate. it’s also HILAROUSLY funny, bawdy and very cleverly written. Oh and it’s good value for money, I ordered it from amazon half way through the first game, it’s that good. if you haven’t seen Apples to Apples it’s a great party game especially for children but it works well with adults too. I recommend CAH it was the game of the night

Still holding fast with 7 we moved onto 7 Wonders

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/68448/7-wonders

7 wonders is a card based civilisation type game with no map, a LITTLE like through the ages but way faster and a little like Magic the Gathering insofar as if you’ve ever played a grand melee it will be instantly familar. You can only attack the person left or right of you.

The players get a hand of cards, pick one and pass the reduced stack to their left, play the card and take the stack coming from their right. The idea is to build the best ’empire’ you can whilst messing up the other players turn. it’s fast, it’s very strategic and it’s good fun. Especially the crys as you hand a hand of rubbish to the player on your left

Then without a pause it was King of Tokyo

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/70323/king-of-tokyo

This is a great little game by Richard Garfield. It’s nippy, it’s lite and it’s in your face. You take monster and duke it out with other players in Tokyo (where else) until all the other monsters lie dead and you do your victory dance.

After that we wound down with Love Letter

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/129622/love-letter

A favourite of mine since Knavecon. Great little game and I learn more about it every time I play which is saying something since there’s only 15 cards in the deck!

So all good clean fun and more of that sort of thing next Thur

Huzzah!

Vic

Zombicide (death by Zombies I assume) is a coop game. WAIT, WAIT ! come back, it’s actually very good and yes you can stab your friends in the back…. ok take a seat I’ll start again…

Zombicide is Left4Dead in Tabletop form. You get a mission (collect some items, get to an exit point, kill a certain amount of zombies) and you and your team of survivors have to complete it. Well you don’t HAVE to but it would be a very boring game if you gave up so early.

It’s a pretty simple game (my six year old loves it), the production values are high and it’s all very logical.

Each player starts with one or more survivors each with their own attributes (the cop starts with a pistol, the drifter is good at searching and so on) and they have to wade into a world where the zombies just keep coming. Each turn your get to search for items, move, attack zombies, drive a car and so on, then it’s the zombies turn, they spawn and come stumbling (or in the case of runners running) towards the noisiest players (shooting, smashing open doors and so on causes noise tokens to appear next to the player), rinse and repeat.

Stay too long searching for weapons and you’ll get swamped, go in half cocked and you’ll get murdered, so it’s a fine balance.

In my case it would appear on reflection that running ahead and smashing in a door that contained a shit ton of zombies may have not been the best strategy for all involved. I’m sorry, I ended humanity again.

What’s clever about the game is as you kill more zombies, the difficulty level racks up so more and more and tougher and tougher zombies start appearing. it works very well with a lot of difficult choices. nicer still is it’s very easy to die if you’re not smart. two wounds and it’s over

I really liked the game. I was lucky enough to get a gift copy of it at Knavecon from the Wee Gamers (great bunch of lads).

Given time I’d love to paint the models for it, they’ve lovely

There’s a number of expansions on kickstarter and a lot of download missions for it along with a pile of extra characters you can play (snake pliskin anyone?)

It comes recommended. It’s a bit pricey but you DO get a lot for your buck. The models are excellent and you get a lot of them and believe me you WILL need them all.

Next up was….

Actually I forget. I think we played Munchkin and it was a suprisingly long time since we played it. It hadn’t changed a lot, it’s fine, I’m not the biggest fan of the game but it leaves me alone and I leave it alone generally and it’s a fine introduction game for players. I’ll leave it at that

Bit more love letter (really liking this game, a complete game with just 16 cards)

The coffee flowed, the gaming was constant, it was a good thur

More of that I say

Huzzah!

Month: October 2013

Still October Thur – Being a Drax Report

Winter Thur – Being a Drax Report