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Anthony BoydellUnited Kingdom
Newent. Glos
Unspecified
Every homo sapiens needs an outbuilding within the curtelage of their property
Welcome...to my Shed!
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Recent encounters with other Forest of Dean-based (non-Newent) gamers - via the Museum's fundraising 'Modern Games Sale'* and UK Games Expo - put me in mind to make a trip through the green, sunset-combusted landscape to Chepstow on a sort-of ambassadorial mission. Without any insight into the tastes and level of the group, I packed a range of items: Nusfjord, Senators, Snowdonia and Chinatown.
Nine of us gathered in the beer garden of The Two RIvers Pub & Restaurant then proceeded to our reserved tables - tucked in a far corner - for bar snacks and board games. While burgers were scoffed and paté polished off, we - Julia, Steve, Hannah, Darrel and myself - breezily opened with Century: Spice Road:/pic7559423.jpg)
Darrel is entirely new to all of this, so needed some gentle reminding and coaching for the first third but soon settled in to flying solo. This is entirely not my cup of hot bovril - I detest Splendor - but Century is a friendlier affair all round and proved a perfectly pleasant way to begin.
The other table had also finished but were reluctant to exchange personnel so I suggested the always brilliant, rules-light and perfect at this player count Chinatown:/pic7559424.jpg)
I adore Chinatown and, frankly, get a little exuberant during play; the delicious deal-making, the cunning planning, the (mild) interfering with negotiations, the counter-offers and the joie de jouer of it all. I apologise to my fellows if I was little 'over the top' but this game just gets under my skin and I love it! Hopefully, everyone enjoyed the shenanigans despite me winning; a special shout out to Julia for being just 80,000 behind in the final tally - our combined, complete Factory was very lucrative indeed (more so for me than she but - hey! - that's Chinatown).
Now, a little bird mentioned this is getting a reprint with a reskin to avoid any problematic stereotypes/connotations but I can't remember the details - can anyone enlighten me?!
*it's still on, should you be passing by?!
Life and Games (but mostly games) from Tony Boydell: Father, Grandfather, Husband and Independent UK Game Designer.
Archive for Session Report
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Anthony BoydellUnited Kingdom
Newent. Glos
Unspecified
Every homo sapiens needs an outbuilding within the curtelage of their property
Welcome...to my Shed!
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Now that June is here, old superstitions can be cast aside* and a daily sally-forth into the busy, burgeoning countryside is almost a mandatory requirement. After the UKGE weekend, where I seem to have picked up a touch of dodgy tummy**, I had been trepidatiously confined to the house and unwilling to move at all; however, with whatever ails me now flushed - literally and figuratively - from my system, I felt confident enough to drag the dog out for a 90 minute escape:
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Poppy./pic7557690.jpg)
Thorn./pic7557692.jpg)
Bee./pic7557693.jpg)
Dog (Rose)
Later, the weekly gathering of Forest-based gamers proceeded with the return of an occasional member (Ralph) and a new face altogether (Nick): on table 1, it is the year somewhere between 2025 and 2300 as Tom, Dave and Sandra carried on from their first game (a few weeks ago) and dropped Nick into the deep end somewhat!/pic7557696.jpg)
On table 2, it was the year of our Lord 1289 and King Philip the Fair would like a new Castle, thangoovairmush, and so we - skilled artisans - got to work:/pic7557694.jpg)
As part of my ongoing mission to evangelise the Cult of the Old, Steve and Joe and Ralph were inducted into the pleasures of worker placement on the road. There was a bit of scuffle at the very beginning when Steve sent the Provost backwards to screw me (in particular) out of some opportunistic stone gathering but this is entirely the way and to be accepted (if not encouraged)./pic7557695.jpg)
As you can see from the final board, this was a satisfyingly-busy game of building - particular the Blue tiles - which I've not seen often before. Ralph committed to the VP prestige track - earning himself 35+ points from it in the process - only to be overtaken by the one when Joe found a lone Gold in his supply - a fabulous introduction, all round, to this classic and the #goodteacher badge for Yours Truly.
While waiting for the spacers to complete their exciting (from the noise) exploits, out came the small-but-perfectly-formed The King of Frontier with, for the first time, the more buildings expansion:/pic7557697.jpg)
Joe's commitment to huge, all-scoring Cities won him the first and third play, while my own Church building (and board coverage) edged me the second. For everyone, though, KoF was an excellent and rather-addictive diversion. The new buildings were very fun too.
The sky was clear and a luminous dark blue as I star-/planet-gazed the short walk home; good to be feeling better again.
*“Ne'er cast a clout till May is out,” the saying goes. Many believe this to mean that you can be “clouted” or caught out by a cold spell up until the end of the month of May, but in fact the old English meaning of the word clout, means cloth or clothing. Basically, don't walk around naked until the middle of the year?!
**it may have been that delicious, Friday-evening Balti
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Anthony BoydellUnited Kingdom
Newent. Glos
Unspecified
Every homo sapiens needs an outbuilding within the curtelage of their property
Welcome...to my Shed!
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I'm not sure I recall there ever being an NEC-based UK Games Expo that isn't always bathed in glorious, hot sunshine and - as we parked up in East 1 and wandered the leafy path and underpasses to the Viking encampment/main entrance - so it was: already working up a sweat before the day had begun proper.
The coffee franchises in the public areas were an avalanche of first cup of the day-ers, so it was good to find one of the restaurants inside Hall 1 open for business; I had intended to have that large steak and stilton pasty for breakfast but, instead, it would end up being my supper! From the brief moment I had to set up the first demo of the day until the last one closed at 5.30PM, I had two brief loo breaks away from the Stand./pic7549854.jpg)
Whodunnit?!
Saturday was mainly about the Florida Overseas Railway scenario with a tense, extended hiatus over lunch for some murder mystery investigations (see above) with the Caroline Black party; the latter was extremely pleasing to observe as the tension began to bite and the train edged closer-and-closer to Instanbul.
Pals were the order of the day (and the show), though, and made the uninterrupted demoing more bearable: Matt Green (I) bought me a well-needed beverage:/pic7549853.jpg)
Matt seems to have picked up someone else's cup?!
My oldest gaming pal Mark kept me company through the deduction session and dear friend Neil made sure my spirits were up by giving me a massive hug as the afternoon saw me flagging!
Disappointingly, the fully pre-booked Snowdonia: Grand Tour demo schedule fell foul of a number of no-shows this weekend: a couple of singletons here-and-there where I could stand in an play instead but particularly galling was one lad who chose to queue up for a limited copy of Earth instead* and the entire Who Dares Rolls crew (three of them) seemingly having disappeared off the planet when their session had come. No-shows are, of course, par for the course BUT the number of people who had wanted to try out but couldn't made the latter void particularly frustrating.
Reflecting on the Event, it was a pleasingly bustling affair - despite the rail strikes - and many non-English speaking voices warmed my heart and made it feel rather Spiel-ish. I didn't meet most of the folks I'd hoped to bump into and seeing other reports makes me feel rather melancholy that I wasn't around longer to make that happen.
From all accounts, the Bring and Buy was simultaneously magnificent and a total shitshow: nothing exemplifies the crass excesses of modern boardgaming more than folk with trolleys you could transport cattle on delivering their 'for sale' items to the admin staff!
I had 30 minutes before the Halls closed for a quick wander, so stopped by Moaideas Game Design to gawp at the Mini Express Map Pack 1: Taiwan & United Kingdom, did a quick elbow dance with a very exhausted-looking Bez and the Ragnar Brothers. I even tried to influence the outcome of this year's Spiel des Jahres by remonstrating/cajoling two of the official Judges, who were manning a tiny SdJ booth in the corner!/pic7549855.jpg)
Bidding a fond farewell to James, Vic and Millie at Naylor Games (Jaya was off somewhere else
), I sore-shoulder shuffled to my searingly-hot car and drove home.
No 'new' games were bought and, to be frank, absolutely nothing stood out to be of even passing interest - I remain entirely numb to the frantic FOMO. Everything I did acquire was delivered to me at the Stand while busy teaching:/pic7550468.jpg)
Games and puzzles!/pic7550469.jpg)
Books!
It was quite the experience being back in full Exhibitor Mode after nearly four years.
*the wonderful** exercise of hyping your games by limiting the quantity for sale each day to keep the stand forever busy; we all knew there were plenty of copies palleted in a nearby van...
**as in 'despicable', 'cynical' etc
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Sun Jun 4, 2023 9:58 am
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Anthony BoydellUnited Kingdom
Newent. Glos
Unspecified
Every homo sapiens needs an outbuilding within the curtelage of their property
Welcome...to my Shed!
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The preamble to the evening's gaming was a trio of Kings Arms' (in)famous Dirty Burgers: fully-loaded and BBQ-sauced towers of meat and flavour to help put hairs on your chest:
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Absolutely delicious, it took a caravan of staff to deliver these behemoths to the table; it reminded me of this:
Will, our keen but least-experienced gaming pal, nervously-popped his head round the dining room's door and we waved him to "Come hither!". The core rules - as mentioned in yesterday's post - are extremely simple, so much of the five minute teach was pointing out the various methods of scoring: simple points, set collection, cohabitation and 'per':/pic7544810.jpg)
Despite his nervous babbling and wandering concentration, Will put up an excellent first fist of the opening game - coming second to yours truly. Of course, the others - Tom and Dave and Paul - were now fully up-to-speed with the way it all hung together and we (forest) shuffled for the next.
Tom pulled off a set of Horse Chestnuts (with the help of some friendly Bees); Paul, a mish-mash of various animal combos; Will floundered with only a handful of sparsely-populated trees to frame a disappointing second score; and, my own bird-heavy forest was solid but unremarkable. Dave, however, trampled all-comers with an arboretum featuring one of everything, a couple of 'one per tree' bonuses and a cave stuffed with bear-gathered Clearing cards!/pic7544811.jpg)
Will wanted to be away on his pushbike while it was still light (he travels EVERYWHERE on his trusty velocipede), so we paused to chat about the Club's Snowdonia: Grand Tour scenario prototypes that I'm bringing to the UKGE and then shuffled, once more, for just me and Paul and Dave:/pic7544812.jpg)
There's more space to move and - importantly - more time to build up your tableau with three; this just might be the game's sweet spot! All of us scored very handsomely and Paul achieved a magnificent 172 points - not even my Watership Down-like warren of seven (7) European Hares, with their square scoring, could rein in his cloud of avians.
If you love Wingspan then you're going to adore Forest Shuffle - keep an eye out on the feeds, my pals; this one is going to be a monster hit!
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Anthony BoydellUnited Kingdom
Newent. Glos
Unspecified
Every homo sapiens needs an outbuilding within the curtelage of their property
Welcome...to my Shed!
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There's no better way to spend a Summery Sunday than doing a variety if gardening tasks then seeing the afternoon into the evening into a starry night in front of a real fire with gins & tonic, barbecued meats and a groaning table of salad sides. Top the whole basky, bakey, stressless-soughing experience with the first Mölkky of the year:
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Ready, steady...
As the light dimmed and the beers fizzed:/pic7538038.jpg)
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Mrs B clouts the required 12 for Victory!/pic7538039.jpg)
The final record!
Perfect.
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Anthony BoydellUnited Kingdom
Newent. Glos
Unspecified
Every homo sapiens needs an outbuilding within the curtelage of their property
Welcome...to my Shed!
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Another Wednesday, another session at The Kings Arms preceded by a request opening of The Museum of Board Games - the latter for Dan and Fiona, holidaying in The Forest of Dean, who I know from those distant London working/Hemel Hempstead gaming days. 'As per' I rambled and anecdoted, directed and filled-in before realising we all had 30 mins to a) get to the Kings Arms and b) order a meal before the real gaming kicked off!
Down in numbers again - and still no showing from the many local gamer folks who have recently-discovered the Museum and expressed interest in our weekly session - we split into a table for Discordia (Dave - who bought the copy from me - and Dan and Tom) and Reavers of Midgard (Paul and Steve and me):/pic7531507.jpg)
I was rather pleased to not have to teach anything this week and it was up to Paul to get us going on this worker-placement, action-following, resource management, set collection affair: the usual suspects neatly-assembled into an entertaining - if not entirely riveting - ninety minutes./pic7531508.jpg)
Everyone has the chance to get actions off other people leading into a WP space - provided they have the payment resources and actually want to - with reduced bonuses depending on your turn order when performing the action thusly: something for everybody, mostly.
Having played this before, Paul spammed the 'set collection' space (something to do with raiding villages?) and hoovered up a fat deck of scoring cards - enough, in the final reckoning, to make up a 50 point deficit and overtake us for the win. It feels, in the post-play glow, that this might be the only way to approach 'Reavers'./pic7531509.jpg)
We came together, as the six, for a closing first-run at 7 Wonders: Architects:/pic7531511.jpg)
Constantly-frustrated by shit cards in the decks to either side (if they're not taken, they just stay there) and, therefore, forced to blind-draw from the shared deck with an equally-frustrating 'failure rate', I watched Tom blind-take what he needed three turns in a row. Dave finished his Wonder (and ended the game) with seeming ease, Steve and Dan scienced into Prestige tokens and everyone seemed to score extra card draws without any effort. First impressions linger and my first impression was of a tiresome, heavy-luck knock-off of a bona fide classic:
If we had the original in the room, I would always play it over this. If we didn't have the original in the room, I would rather hammer nails into my own eyes than play such nonsense again.
To be fair for a picosecond, I did like the unpredictability of the 'Wars' based on certain shield icon plays (and the accompanying 'rooty-toot-toot' horn noises encouraged by the rulebook) but the rest is just an homeopathic aberration.
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Anthony BoydellUnited Kingdom
Newent. Glos
Unspecified
Every homo sapiens needs an outbuilding within the curtelage of their property
Welcome...to my Shed!
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With work and holiday commitments, the Club is just about hanging on to a couple of tables each session - which is nice - encouraged, occasionally, by committing to a multi-play of a particular favourite in advance. This week, everyone was teased into coming with the promise of some Victorian Societal malarky ie. the utterly-splendid and entirely-wonderful Obsession:
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With at least one new player each time, we're not yet at the point where we can add Obsession: Upstairs, Downstairs but the base game - with the miscellaneous promos - is heartily-sufficient.
I took both Will and Sandra under my wing on Table 1 and left (the experts) Richard and Paul and Joe on Table 2. Will - often visiting the Museum - is very much new to the whole board gaming world and, to be honest, I was very worried when he popped into the Kings Arms' back-room - how, on Earth, would he react to this immersive Euro?! The teach was rather schoolmasterly as I was keen to reinforce each of the key concepts while, deliberately, ignoring some of the fringe elements like spending reputation for free actions./pic7519359.jpg)
The general mood of play was encouraging and focused on the capacity for storytelling rather than cold action efficiency and mechanics - not that this stopped Sandra from absolutely killing the process and sailing over the 200VPs threshold with relative ease! I'm not sure what Will thought but I hope he, at least, enjoyed the narrative. On Table 2, Joe - confidently hiding behind his five Monuments - was pipped to the win by Paul by just two points - that's just one, half-decent Guest!
In other news, I have been chatting with Mr Dan Hallagan about something Grand Tour-related and, from me, something to add to the Obsession Universe - exciting times!
Thu May 18, 2023 9:43 am
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Anthony BoydellUnited Kingdom
Newent. Glos
Unspecified
Every homo sapiens needs an outbuilding within the curtelage of their property
Welcome...to my Shed!
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On the "rolling" TV adverts in The Kings Arms.
After seeing a LOT of fluster on the Internet about Darwin's Journey - and I mean a LOT of fluster - I looked a little deeper. Trying to ignore the usual "Best Game EVAH!" preposterousness, at its heart we have a richly-themed, worker placement affair with a couple of wrinkles to stave off the staleness. I do like worker placement, so I took advantage of a very well-priced (at least when compared to the majority of hand-offs) Collectors' Edition.
Oddly, every copy available in the 'Groups' seemed to be a spare ordered mistakenly: quite how you miss an intended pledge of 70 euros and hit 140 euros by mistake, I'm at a loss. It would be churlish of me to suggest the generously-stacked 'final package' looked ripe for harvesting future gamer FOMO - with a healthy return on investment - so I won't.
The box arrived, hernia-inducingly pregnant with upgraded components, punch sheets, flimsy plastic trays and expansions. Taking me a good hour to unpack, separate and re-pack - there is no handy-dandy guide to what bits belong to what extension - I, eventually, retired to my bed for a long lie-down with the rulebook...which sent me in a drowsy torpor because there are lots of actions, icons and clauses to be digested. After a second attempt - which ended with me dropping the square tome to one side with an "I'm bored now" sigh - I decided that watching my old pals Heavy Cardboard might be a better preparation for delivering this beast to the Wednesday club at some point:/pic7506477.jpg)
DJ _is_ just good ole worker placement and the core actions are standard enough despite the over-complicated rulebook: Move an Explorer (gain money, final scoring elements, straight VPs, a free action from this list, research a new species) Move your Ship Send some letters (stamps) Improve your workers' skills (seals) - action spaces need workers (your crew) with more seals - in specific colour combinations - to unlock their more powerful versions Turn Order adjustment Place a Lens (dibs a 'better' action space somewhere with an initial free, worker seal-ignoring trigger) Take an Objective (unlock abilities and bonuses on your personal board) Deliver a researched species to the Museum (for money and final scoring elements) Research something already delivered to the Museum
A bit like RISE (and others), the gaining of something in one area may trigger the gain of something else - eg. sending the last stamp from a stack of four (you have three stacks) / dropping a Camp Site on an Explorer space can trigger a free action - in a pleasing chain of effects; careful to make sure you've not forgotten anything, the opportunity for "a big turn" is pretty easy to engineer.
Each of these mini-games contribute pails of points to your final pond and the (Natural History) Museum is a big source of both VPs and cash income, keeping you figuratively and literally afloat./pic7506478.jpg)
My own explorers forged deep into the islands and gathered a healthy hold of specimens; cash was flowing easily, so there was never any struggle to pay for the actions I wanted at the time I wanted them. Indeed, in general, I never missed anything I wanted to have or do: I 'completed' the education of my Crew for good bonuses, almost entirely filled my player board with achieved objectives & researched species' and almost entirely emptied it of Camp Sites & Stamps. Frankly, the only reason I paid any attention to Ian and Joe was to see if it was my turn yet.
There are such a lot of paragraphs and caveats - and the iconography puts Guilds of London in the shade (albeit without the howling that my design garnered back in the day) - that you're initially blindsided to the relative straightforwardness of the whole shebang.
There was plenty of fun to be had putting together the explosive turns and naming the species ("spikey beast", "wibbly flower thing", "feathery bastard" and so on) but, overall, this was a colourful and solitary affair - not as complex* or as interactive as it looked. Will definitely play again - with noble Paul (see below) included this time, hopefully - to see if this was an aberration or the norm**.
In other news, Steve arrived late in the middle of the setup of DJ and David's space game; Paul nobly ducked out of Botany and Biology to teach him Viticulture instead./pic7506476.jpg)
In the end, we had three well-stocked tables to pique the attention of the Bar Manager whenever she stopped by to collect empties and take refill orders.
*fiddly, yes, but not 'heavy'
**maybe we should add in some of the expansion material?
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Anthony BoydellUnited Kingdom
Newent. Glos
Unspecified
Every homo sapiens needs an outbuilding within the curtelage of their property
Welcome...to my Shed!
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I've been staring at the wall of games in my (overflowing) library room and finally buckled under the weight of "never gonna play it"s and "never gonna play it again"s. With the Coronation of King Charles III* just a couple of days away, I decided one of the weekend's Museum attractions should be a game sale:
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Just some of the outgoing items.
With an element of perfect timing, an on-the-spur-of-the-moment article I knocked together for a local advertising booklet plopped onto the doormat; hopefully alerting the sleepy residents of my sleepy town that there's something of passing interest to be seen between the Church and the Spar convenience store::strip_icc()/pic7494526.jpg)
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With the car stuffed to the tops of the windows with boxes, I trundled it down to the Museum and let it steep in the hot P.M. while I attended to the specially-booked visit from Matt and Martha: Bristolian gamers and part-time podcasters (Boardgame Buddies). As is now traditional, I welcomed them with quiz sheets and set them on their quests immediately: chatter, banter, facts and anecdotes. Rumbling tummies took them away in the mid-afternoon so I decanted the sale items into the shade; we would meet again just a couple of hours later at The Kings Arms. These young folks are big on games but short on some of the older, classic fare so I felt legally-bound to introduce them to Keyflower:
Quickly, with the straightforward teach out of the way, we settled in to the usual high-interactivity, conflicting decisions, distraction techniques, bluffing and paranoia that underpin this ripe-for-a-twenties-reprint magnum opus./pic7494089.jpg)
David is a very good analyst and it was really a race between him and me for the laurels; while offering some advice along the way, one's first Keyflower is always a learning experience, and the air was filled with Matt's frustrated "Fuck a duck!"s as Autumn transitioned to Winter. Thankfully, he and Martha very much enjoyed the experience, despite being (a little) sharked by the two old men!
We chatted for ages while the other table called their Nations early and then we scattered into the night; it being Ted Lasso day, I had an urgent appointment with Mrs B and the television.
*less hair but bigger ears in this unnecessary sequel
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Anthony BoydellUnited Kingdom
Newent. Glos
Unspecified
Every homo sapiens needs an outbuilding within the curtelage of their property
Welcome...to my Shed!
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Social media posts showed one of our Club members in the thick of a Team Day Treasure Hunt where the 'treasure' was a delightful little Public House in the middle of Worcester: my sixth sense suggested that they probably wouldn't be making Games@The Kings Arms later. Indeed, despite a rather weather-pleasant day, the Pub itself was unusually-quiet and, by extension, so was our mid-week session. What could've / would've been eight or nine ended up being three:
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Old lags all, David and Paul and myself settled in for a tranquil evening of Ecclesiastical Jiggery Pope-ry and Rome-based Tomfoolery:/pic7479905.jpg)
David settled into heavy Alms-giving - something I've seen him pursue before - while both Paul and I spotted the easy-clockwise/NE confluence of the Production Duty -> Allocation -> Road/Shrine Building: a clear indicator we should get all 18XX about the main board! Dave continued to stay well clear of this routes maneuver and tarted up his Abbey with a variety of tasty (and highly donate-able) Buildings.
Though Paul seemed a bit bewildered getting to grips with the mancala/what should I do next? conundrum - and not a little frustrated by a long rules discussion between Dave and myself that had me phoning the Designer up in the middle of his own Evening - the final results were very close and - for his first game - highly-creditable: 42(D)-42(T)-38(P). We don't do tie-breaks in Newent, so a shared victory was an honorable outcome.
With time still to spare, the only packed game that would fit into an hour-or-so was my multi-use cards prototype Rome Sweet Rome:/pic7479906.jpg)
Long in development, RSR has evolved a great deal and I'm very happy with the latest version; it certainly feels like I need someone independent to cast an objective eye over it now:/pic7479907.jpg)
Despite a flying start from myself - first to gain a top space in Culture (innit) - Dave reined me in and exploited some fruitful Science effects to steal a bonus turn right at the last moment: 30(D)-23(T)-14(P).
Still light(ish) - and still quite warm - there was just time, before bed, to catch the latest (bloody marvellous) episode of Ted Lasso: a tight evening of goodness.
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