Reading practice

This Wednesday saw me pitching up to a pub on the outskirts of Reading with a bag of games searching for the accurately named Reading Boardgame Social. Almost immediately though the door I was met by a couple playing Monopoly over, or rather around, dinner. Pausing long enough for us to awkwardly stare at each other I promptly turned on my heel hoping that it wasn't them. Thankfully the next enclave presented a gang of chaps shifting cardboard around on a table. After introducing myself and instantly getting titled Chris 278 owing to a sticker one of my kids had slapped on me before leaving, I was invited to join a game of Libertalia.

Libertalia is pirate themed card management game played over 3 rounds (Days). Everybody receives the same 6 cards from a deck of 29 different types of piratey roles. After each day the cards you still have in your hand are carried over to join the next 6 drawn, all others are discarded. The days are split into night and day sections and the cards that you hold have a mixture of abilities that are activated at a certain time. The key to this game is that all cards have a number on them 1 - 29 and are played in sequence. The object is to collect as much booty and doubloons as possible. At the end of each day your money is converted into points and you start again.

Got anything a little less piratey?

I wasn't doing well. It pays to be a little bit swashbuckling to gain the big money and I was fannying around not making much progress. Unfortunately, after I had got a grip on the mechanics, I got whalloped with a double whammy. Matt, next to me, laid a card which meant he could move all of his curses onto me at -3 points each. On my deck I had a card that meant I lost a further 3 points per curse. I was sunk.

Paul - 67
Shane - 68
Matt - 66
Chris - 39

Next up was another new game to the group Heroes Wanted. This game which was awash with components, had an element of co-op about it but it was very much every hero for themselves. It's a game that doesn't take itself to seriously and there is a lot of humour generated by the genre embedded in the game. The optional Quirks card is a definite nod toward party games where each superhero exhibits a predisposition toward some element in the game. Mine was that every time someone used their superpower, I was to clap and congratulate them or else lose points. It didn't say that I had to do it enthusiastically though which suited me because I'd decided to be quite a sarcastic hero. It wasn't as bad as it sounds but toward the end people were getting a little jaded.

Mistress Caveman is not confused

The crux of the game is to try and stop a super villain from doing some nefarious deed whilst beating up all his henchmen and minions. (In this game it was Mistress Caveman who was naughtily littering, loitering and Jaywalking. The fiend!). My character (Selected from 2 decks of cards), Leather Thunder, had a useful superpower which allowed me to take extra points way from the villain and add it to my achievements. This meant that Robo Bullet (Matt), Mysterious Elephant (Shane), Naked Machine (Paul) and Heavy Metal Hawk (Gregg) couldn't match the 14 points I received plus add ons for my work at duffing up the super villain.

Chris - 40
Greg - 34
Paul - 30
Shane - 30
Matt -22

The initial amusement and excitement was somewhat quelled by the fairly long waits between turns and there was a feeling that maybe the game wasn't best suited for 5 players.

Last up was Incan Gold, which I had brought with me, but some of the others hadn't played before. As expected it was an instant hit with the chaps really getting into the tension and baiting of others trying to bluff whether they were staying in or not.

Shane - 48
Paul - 30
Chris - 30
Matt - 29

It was great to meet up with a new bunch and experience some different games and get out of the house for a change! I will be making return visits in the future....

Hannah and her systems

It seems that Thursday is too late in the week for some of us hardy gamers, and so it was that Adam and Hannah hosted a Monday evening for the cardboard-deprived.

At first, there were four of us: the aforementioned hosts and Sam and myself. Joe was due to arrive later in the evening.

We began with an old favourite, Medici. Once upon a time, it was over-played and fell out of favour, but recently nostalgia has set in at GNN Towers and old games are being reassessed. And so, after a brief rule refresher, we were trading goods and chucking them in the sea with gay abandon.

It was a game of differing strategies. Sam spent big, while I picked up unwanted cargo for next to nothing. Hannah almost handed the game to Adam when she pulled two tiles worth five from the bag, when they could only be bought by Adam. However, as it turned out, Hannah's strategy runs a little deeper than that. And Adam's doesn't.

Hannah 118
Sam 114
Adam 109
Andrew 87

After this, Joe was expected soon. We contemplated Biblios, but instead we went for the slightly more challenging Ra. Another classic that recently come back into favour, this is another bidding game, this time hoping for favours from the gods, a flooding Nile and advances in architecture in return for points.

It ended with a second win for Hannah, despite her claim that she's rubbish at bidding games.

Hannah 36
Sam 34
Adam 33
Andrew 26

During this game, Joe arrived and spent his time waiting for us to finish by looking over the rules of Libertalia, Sam's new game. This game is in the style of Citadels or Mission Red Planet, in that everyone has an identical hand of cards from which they play their characters who have effects/bonuses that effect the way the game plays out.

While I enjoyed it, we did notice that the cards in the final round (at the start of each round, one player chooses their cards randomly from a pack of about thirty, and then the other players make up a hand of the same cards) did not make for exciting or fun times. And, unlike Citadels, there are no occasions when one character will stop another, which means there's little opportunity for deliberate sabotage. As Sam said on the drive home, it is a lot like everyone is playing their own game.

Another problem with the game was that we started far too late in the evening. It said it was a short game on the box, but it was our first time and we spent ten minutes looking up a rule on the internet. This posed a unique problem in the annals of GNN history: Hannah's bed time.

We had completed two rounds out of three when she retired, and the scores were

Hannah 64
Joe 62
Adam 52
Sam 51
Andrew 45

The four of us carried on through the final round, and it ended

Adam 91
Joe 90
Sam 74
Andrew 64

But how should this be scored? It can't be considered two separate games (as Keeper Of The Spreadsheet, I won't allow it) so is it a first place for Adam or Hannah? For now, I've left it off the form table completely, but we need an official decision.

On the form table, Sam gets rid of that "6" and moves up to second as a result. I continue on my journey southwards. At least I can't go any further.

EDIT: with the scores from Libertalia in, we now see Hannah jump up to second, with Adam up to third.

						Points
Anja	2	1	2	2	3	10
Hannah	4	1	1	2	3	11
Adam	1	3	3	1	4	12
Joe	2	3	1	2	4	12
Sam	3	2	2	4	2	13
Steve	1	2	2	4	6	15
Jon	3	5	1	5	5	19
Andrew	4	4	4	5	3	20