Wednesday 14 November 2012

The Resistance is Futile!

Tonight was the first "big" game night since my return from Japan, so I brought some Japanese Green Tea Kit Kats by means of celebration with me. Kit Kits are very popular in Japan because the Japanese pronounciation sounds very similar to "kitto katsu" which means "surely win" and they're often handed out at exam times, etc. I should've kept this in mind and made sure I ate them all before I arrived at Steve and Anja's. Instead, I shared them around. And I think Anja took two, which may have been the decisive factor.

The secret of success.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We (me, Steve, Anja, Sam , Adam and Joe) began with a rare contribution to the communal games cupboard from myself in the shape of Tsuro Of The Sea (or Tots, as Joe calls it). This new version of the classic lacks the purity of the original and the dice rolling slows things down, but having several menacing dragons marching around the board is quite exciting and I think we all did well for lasting as long as we did. In the end, it was Adam who sent Anja down a path straight to a dragon, and took first place.

Dancing with dragons

1. Adam
2. Anja
3. Sam
4= Steve
4=Andrew
5. Joe

After this, we split into two groups of three. Sam and Steve were tempted by the gleaming newness of Mission: Red Planet, and Joe was happy to talk them through the rules. Adam, Anja and I went old school. Perhaps inspired by Chris' recent rediscovery, we went for El Grande.

I'll leave it for the others to fill in the gaps regarding their mission to Mars. But it seems like Joe managed to avoid Instructor's Curse this time.


Joe 51
Steve 43
Sam 40

Meanwhile, back in the olden days, El Grande was set up and our rusty memories of the rules were given a squirt of WD40 and put back into motion. And what a great game it is. All about bluffing and challenging and not annoying Anja early so she picks on you, using your bloody and bruised body as a stepping stone to greater heights. That's the mistake I made, and I paid for it in spades. At least that's how it felt.

But, in fairness, her tactic was the winning one as she sprang into first place in the final round, despite being in stoney last for the first half of the game. She admitted she wasn't sure how she managed to squeeze into first, and Adam seemed equally bemused, but the scoretrack doesn't lie.


Anja 150
Adam 149
Andrew 125

I'll be honest, I was very relieved that my happy memories of El Grande weren't the result of naive ignorance, and that it is a great game that still stands up today.

After this, the six of us joined together again for The Resistance. In this game, we secretly are assigned roles of resistance members or spies. We are then given five missions to complete. Spies can chose to ruin the mission, by slipping a Fail card into the deck of mission cards. The idea is to sniff out the spies quickly, allowing you to complete three missions before it's too late.

However, our innate suspicious natures came into play. I giggled, Adam was too quiet, Joe protested too much, and Anja didn't give herself a mission. All of these brought us into suspicion. In fact the only one who obviously wasn't a spy was Sam, whose air of bafflement and confusion was akin to James Stewart at his best. Steve was the only doubt.

I had him labelled as a spy, but no one listened to me, and thus it was that he was able to sabotage the third mission to take the victory with his partner-in-crime, Anja.

1= Steve
1= Anja
3= Andrew
3= Sam
3= Joe
3= Adam.

It's a game that's a lot of fun, and it's hard not to have a big smile on your face, spy or no-spy, while you're playing it. And it felt good to have a games night with more than three people there. Thanks everyone! Same time next week! Or earlier, if someone's wife is out for the evening?

On the form table, Steve leaps upwards and congratulations to Anja who takes first place for the first time. Meanwhile, Sam impresses everyone with a perfect score of sorts: all threes.







Points
Anja1 1 2 51 10
Adam 3 2 1 2 3 11
Steve1 2 4 33 13
Joe3 1 5 3 1 13
Andrew3 3 4 1 2 13
Sam 3 3 3 33 15

17 comments:

  1. Tsuro of the Seas, Mission to Red Planet, The Resistance.. I enjoyed that. Very nice way to start the non-teaching part of the week. If I could just exercise some self-control on the snack front I reckon I might even wake up still in a good mood, instead of feeling like I'm stuck in a Wotsit.

    Tots was a much better game with more players than when Andrew and I played a head-to-head. But it does move slowly, so I like Joe's suggestion of the eliminated players still rolling dice for the dragons.

    I'm not sure how I feel about The Resistance. Because of the similarity to Citadels I guess I was expecting a little more control, but it felt slightly random. Though Joe said that was his first experience of it too and a second play is easier. I'd be happy to take it on again.

    But the success of the evening was definitely The Resistance. I've never had so much fun getting everything wrong.

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  2. Thanks Steve and Anja for a great evening.
    I liked TotS, though because of the player elimination, the extra length did start to drag a little. My suggestion is that even when eliminated, players should get to roll for the dragons - that would keep everyone engaged and speed the game up by increasing the number of dragon moves, whilst slowing it down by keeping everyone rolling.

    I felt a lot more in control of my fate in Mission Red Planet - familiarity with the cards helped, but it only takes one game for that stuff to start to bed in, I would say. It's just the right length for what it is, I reckon.

    So next time we play the Resistance, and I'm a spy, I will continue my histrionic insistence of innocence, right? Well played Steve - you had me completely convinced it was Andrew; or I was so pleased someone was at last believing me that it didn't cross my mind that that person could be a SPY!

    Here's a link to a very funny video review of The Resistance:
    Shut Up and Sit Down Episode 3

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  3. You meant Mission Red Planet when you first mention The Resistance, right Sam?

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  4. I'm glad that The Resistance was a hit. I've often wondered if it would work as a non board game playing party game in the same way werewolf does. Or murder in the dark......

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  5. Yes I think it would - there's a bit more fiddliness to the rules than Werewolves; I have a home-brew version I made when the game was a free pdf download, and the number of people on missions, voting and all that stuff is quite a headful. The proper version we played has cardboard tokens and a board for tracking the missions, and it makes it all much clearer. And the lack of player elimination is an improvement on Werewolves too.

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  6. Joe - yes, I meant Mission Red Planet.

    I can see The Resistance as a hit with non-gamers. Or non-intensive-gamers. Surely there's a collective noun to be applied here? One that is hopefully optimistic rather than perjorative?

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  7. Touche!

    I don't get No-tails either. Maybe the resistance did something to my brain.

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  8. To be fair, there wasn't much to get. Friend of Dorothy is theatre-speak for gay.
    We could have a similarly oblique euphamism for gamers (though I realise we're supposed to be finding one for casual gamers).

    See that chap over there with the huge bag of pretzels and the I heart meeples t-shirt - do you think he might be a "colleague of Wolfgang"?

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  9. No-tail is a League of Gentlemen reference.

    How about Block Botherers, Victory Point Victims and Meeple Molesters vs Cardboard Contrarians, Geek Gainsayers and Board Begrudgers?

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  10. I like Colleagues of Wolfgang best...

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