Tuesday 15th March

Paul (C) and I are planning to play pirate on Tuesday and bring Merchants and Marauders back to the table - anyone fancy joining us? It plays 4...

1, PaulC
2, DaveB
3, Dale
4, Sam

We [Karl, PaulyG, Lizzy, Kes and myself] will be busy Returning to Hoth - not that I remember ever being there... but - I must do what rebel high command... well... command. Or is it the Resistance? It's pretty futile either way.

Aneurin wrote:We [Karl, PaulyG, Lizzy, Kes and myself] will be busy Returning to Hoth - not that I remember ever being there... but - I must do what rebel high command... well... command. Or is it the Resistance? It's pretty futile either way.  

MEDIBOT

Rebel scum!

Would anyone like to try Archipelago again? We could include the War and Peace expansion this time. Anyone?

Other than that, if anyone wants to play Spheres of Influence or even Eclipse, I'd be happy to bring either along? (though, if playing Eclipse, we'd need to get an early start ... maybe do race selection beforehand).

DaveB wrote:Paul (C) and I are planning to play pirate on Tuesday and bring Merchants and Marauders back to the table - anyone fancy joining us? It plays 4...

1, PaulC
2, DaveB
3,
4,

Can I join you? Have this myself but only played it a couple of times.

Merchants & Mauraders please

Dale wrote:Can I join you? Have this myself but only played it a couple of times.

Sam wrote:Merchants & Mauraders please

That's the game full!

Dale - I've only played it the one time (I think PaulC is the same) and I think we were a bit timid in that game too (there was very little marauding and I believe no PVP at all)

Looking forward to giving it another pop!

Cool. I mean "arrrhh".

Jamie wrote:Would anyone like to try Archipelago again? We could include the War and Peace expansion this time. Anyone?

Other than that, if anyone wants to play Spheres of Influence or even Eclipse, I'd be happy to bring either along? (though, if playing Eclipse, we'd need to get an early start ... maybe do race selection beforehand).

I'm in for Archipelago Jamie!

evan wrote:I'm in for Archipelago Jamie!

Sounds good!

Archipelago...

1. Jamie
2. Evan
3. Andy
4.
5.

Jamie wrote:Would anyone like to try Archipelago again?

I'd like to play Archipelago again, please, Jamie.  Really enjoyed it last time.  As far as the expansion goes, I'm happy with or without.  Depending upon when Archipelago finishes, would we then be able to play a game of Resistance: Avalon?  I've never played it (or the original Resistance) and everyone raves about it.  I'd like to see what all the fuss is about.  I don't know how long it takes though; I really need to head home by about 10.

Cheers,
Andy

I have a new hidden role game, Spyfall. Games last 10 minutes or so, pretty quick and great fun. Basic pre use is that there is one spy amongst the group, trying to guess the location the others are in (police station, nightclub, etc) whilst the others try to figure out who the spy is.

If we get time after Imperial Assault, does anyone fancy a game?

karl_b wrote:I have a new hidden role game, Spyfall. Games last 10 minutes or so, pretty quick and great fun. Basic pre use is that there is one spy amongst the group, trying to guess the location the others are in (police station, nightclub, etc) whilst the others try to figure out who the spy is.

If we get time after Imperial Assault, does anyone fancy a game?

After Imperial Assault? Arent we playing 2 missions . I'll bring deception too.

Spyfall is really clever and funny. Even Kes and Liz enjoyed it! I liked Deception too, but still prefer Mysterium.

Colonial Andy wrote:I'd like to play Archipelago again, please, Jamie.  Really enjoyed it last time. As far as the expansion goes, I'm happy with or without.

Awesome! I'll add you to the list Andy.

I'd like to try the expansion; it's just more progress cards, that's all. So far as I can tell, they make the iron resource more valuable, and create more opportunities for player interaction.

Colonial Andy wrote:Depending upon when Archipelago finishes, would we then be able to play a game of Resistance: Avalon?  I've never played it (or the original Resistance) and everyone raves about it.  I'd like to see what all the fuss is about.  I don't know how long it takes though; I really need to head home by about 10.

Resistance: Avalon is the best game ever Andy!

It usually gets played on a Tuesday, but we normally start around 10. This week I was thinking of bringing regular Resistance, and playing that, with 'The Plot Thickens' expansion cards (makes a change from playing the Avalon variant all the time). It's all much of a muchness though, and basic mechanics are shared between both The Resistance and Avalon (main difference being the special roles you get in Avalon).

There's also talk about doing a Thursday evening session for Resistance / Avalon / Hidden Role games. We really should get more organised and sort something out. I'd also be up for playing hidden role games all night one Tuesday, sometime, just for a change.

Sam wrote:Spyfall is really clever and funny. Even Kes and Liz enjoyed it! I liked Deception too, but still prefer Mysterium.

Yeah, Spyfall is really cool. I struggle with it though. It seems a very different kind of lying and deception to what you get with Avalon; it's a more creative / story-telling kind of deception.

I also struggled a lot with Deception. Think I'd need to play it a lot more to get the hang of it.

While we're on the topic of hidden role games; have to say, I really enjoyed Salem! Hopefully Aneurin will bring it along again, sometime soon.

Jamie wrote:

Sam wrote:Spyfall is really clever and funny. Even Kes and Liz enjoyed it! I liked Deception too, but still prefer Mysterium.

Yeah, Spyfall is really cool. I struggle with it though. It seems a very different kind of lying and deception to what you get with Avalon; it's a more creative / story-telling kind of deception.

I also struggled a lot with Deception. Think I'd need to play it a lot more to get the hang of it.

While we're on the topic of hidden role games; have to say, I really enjoyed Salem! Hopefully Aneurin will bring it along again, sometime soon.

I'll grant you that Spyfall is pretty good for a hidden role game. Mainly because it's over in 10 minutes. Thought the app made more sense than cards, but c'est la vie.

I'll be along with Roll*. Probably slightly late as usual.



*http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/132531/roll-galaxy (Under-rated at 35th place in the global BGG rankings     )

I'd be up for a game of roll of it's up. Not played it yet but is near the top of the list in games I was going to buy.

So, really enjoyed Archipelago last night; and thought the expansion (new set of Evolution cards) worked really well, and created more scope for player interaction (warfare!). Our game ended quite abruptly, with the building of the 5th town on the archipelago; and resulted in a glorious victory for Andy! Evan came in second place, and myself, last...

We played the medium length game, with the War and Peace expansion; including setup and pack-away, duration was around 3 hours.

Jamie wrote:So, really enjoyed Archipelago last night...

I've played it twice now and really enjoyed it both times. For me personally, I'd prefer to include the expansion every time (mixed with the base game), but I think the base game on its own would probably be better if you have multiple players who have never played before, or people who prefer lighter games.

I'm not sure I'd play a 5 player game with the "long" goals; it seems like that would take quite awhile. That said, with 5 players, you have 5 game-ending triggers, so maybe it wouldn't take much longer than with 3 players. I thought it worked really well last night with 3 of us and the "medium" game length.

We all agreed that there are some accessibility issues with the components, especially the text on the evolution cards being very tiny. But Jamie has some good ideas to mitigate these.

This second play did leave me with one complaint. Throughout the entire game, I thought it was pretty apparent that Jamie was playing the best of the 3 of us. He seemed to have the best strategy and was doing a good job of seeing it through. I, on the other hand, had very little strategy aside from aiming to get the victory points from my personal goal card and a lot of my actions were a bit directionless. And yet I won and Jamie came third. Perhaps it was a fluke, but it does leave a bad taste in my mouth that a player (Jamie, in this case) can play with precision and do so much right and still lose. Despite not being convinced by the validity of the eventual outcome, though, I still thoroughly enjoyed the journey.

On a side note: played Spaceteam with Sam and a gent whose name I didn't catch, and I really enjoyed it. Daft, quick, a lot of fun. Might have to pick up a copy if I can find one.

Yep - Spaceteam was great (I was that gent, Andy ). I suspect it will be even better with a larger group of people and more chaos.

With Archipelago it's true that the hidden point conditions can mean you don't do as well as you thought you would in the final scoring but I like that - you have to watch your opponents a little more and decide if they're doing what they're doing for points on their scoring card or not. And whether to try to follow them...

Really enjoyed playing Merchants & Marauders last night. It was the second time I'd played it and have memories of the first time it falling a little flat (but was a long time ago that we played so don't remember it all that well).

Last night's was a lot more interesting and was excellent fun (although I think for the most part we were all a little too timid as far as attacking each other was concerned). Was pretty close too - Paul C forced the endgame and won, I was a turn away from doing the same and I think Dale was fairly close behind me too. Sam was a bit further back but had run into some pretty bad luck along the way.

We all screwed up lots of the rules (one of the big complaints about the game is how terribly the rulebook is organised) but I can't wait to have another crack at it

Spaceteam is a lot of fun; I got to play it at the weekend. And you're right - if you enjoyed it with 3 people then you'll like it even more with 5. The main difference is that you can't just directly pass the cards. If you need to get something to someone on the opposite side of the table then you have to pass it through your neighbours which, if they're concentrating on something else, can be a little tricky!

On their website they also have some downloadable atmosphere/music files for a 3, 5 or 7 minute game which we found made it more tense. I'll bring it again next time I'm down :-)

DaveB wrote:Really enjoyed playing Merchants & Marauders last night.

Wouldn't mind giving this a go Dave, if it get's some more play. Seemed quite a lengthy game, how long did it go on for?