Bob Rimington

Super-Mega Interstellar Misery Farm on-the-Road Review: It’s Watch the Skies!

June 7, 2015June 7, 2015Bob Rimington3 Comments

Brutus Rating: 7 out of 10 back-stabbings to the back.
Pairs Well With: Alien-enhanced protein shakes.

We here at the Misery Farm have once been told off by you our loyal readers for doing ‘play through’ style game reviews when it’s only the first time one of us have played a game. This is probably fair, since trying to gain an overall impression of a game while learning the rules and often losing horribly is not particularly easy. So you’ll be pleased to know that we, here, at the Misery Farm, are offering a super-experienced review of Watch the Skies! We have played it twice.

'We can't eat those cows. Thanks though' -India — ‘We can’t eat those cows. Thanks though’ -India

For those who don’t know, WtS is a ‘megagame’ designed to be played by around 50 people. If you think setting up Eldritch Horror or Twilight Imperium is a ball-ache, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Firstly, you need a great big space, preferably with some kind of upper-story balcony and some smaller adjoining rooms. Then you need big maps, and tables, and lots of bits and pieces of game. And lots and lots of tea.

You also need a dedicated team of rules-explainers and –enforcers, who will basically herd the rest of the players to do the right thing at the right time (the Controllers). Usually these are also the organisers, and their state of being during the entire game appears to be one of high anxiety and stress. The first game we played in Southampton was organised by experienced controllers, and even they seemed close to breakdown at all stages. Our poor mates Charlie and Mac who organised the event this weekend didn’t stand a chance.

Teams represent countries, and are usually made up of four players; a Head of State to organise the others and divvy up resources, a scientist to develop exciting tech, a Foreign Secretary to sit on the UN council and hopefully avoid international disaster, and a military guy to explode stuff. Bonus points for dressing appropriately for your nation and role.

Oniony stereotype, 1967 Brigitte Bardot, Enthusiastic Suit, Les Mis with medals.

Up in the gallery sit the primary antagonists, the Grey Menace/aliens. Sightings have been rumoured for a while, but the public doesn’t know for sure that they exist. These guys might be good, they might be evil, they might be somewhere in between. All you know is that they’re showing up on Earth with alarming frequency, and they have some kind of mission. One final team is the Global News Network (GNN). They basically document what’s going on in the style of an international newsgroup, publishing a ‘newsletter’ as often as possible.

Bright and (very) early on Saturday morning, friends and acquaintances from all over the south of England gathered in a tiny village somewhere in the Oxford countryside for a good old-fashioned game of XCOM meets Model UN. Like the enthusiastic group of nerds that we are, everyone showed up early and eagerly, to the mild annoyance of the organisers who had barely had a chance to lay the flag-decked tables out. The aliens settled down in their balcony hideout, ready to watch the actions of the pathetic humans below them. While the humans obviously hoped for a peaceful outcome, they were not particularly comforted by the aliens’ Sith-Lord-meets-Borg-Queen aesthetic.

'Greetings earthlings, we come in peace' — ‘Greetings earthlings, we come in peace’

Lizzy and Bob were there representing the Misery Farm and, appropriately, playing as the global news team along with their beautiful and masterful ex-Cthulhu-GM Emma. Early optimism and merriment was only slightly marred by the presence of China one table over, who had brought along Durian sweets and were now stinking the place out with their gassy, eggy odour.*

By late-morning the game was in full swing. France was already mildly inebriated from their grape drinks ** while Britain’s main bribery tactic appeared to be biscuit-based.

'Would you like a biscuit?' -Britain — ‘Would you like a biscuit?’ -Britain

In the newsroom stress was high. It turns out that pumping out fancy-looking and moderately-highbrow front pages every 45 minutes is not easy. Finding the ‘big stories’ every turn is a particular challenge when heads of state constantly vie for your attention in the hope of increasing their public relations, while neglecting to mention juicier but less marketable stories. Everyone is still denying the existence of aliens, and no amount of coaxing will get the truth out of them.

'The penguin has been the official bird of America since 2017' -US chief of science — ‘The penguin has been the official bird of America since 2017’ -US chief of science

The USA was particularly guilty of trying to distract us from the real stories (as it is in real life, so it is in Watch the Skies), as in the same turn that they invaded Angola, attacked Madagascar, and publically announced the existence of aliens, they begged for a front-page picture announcing a new Holly-Bollywood film release (Hot Runnings is to be released in 2022, and will feature rising starlet Hannah Hendrix as a functionally-dressed heroine who dreams of Olympic success).

The team were getting pretty excited with our shiny printing press. Bob, ever the organised-one when it comes to avoiding her PhD work, had brought her laptop, a printer and made an excellent (if awkward to fiddle with) template for news stories. Over the course of the day we trotted out eight different editions of the GNN Times, printing out ten copies of each issue and distributing them around the room. By the second issue we even had the genius realisation of how far technology has come when we realised we could actually take photos of things going on in the room and feature them on our papers!

By the afternoon it was more or less chaos around the room world. This is no jibe at the

organisers – it’s pretty much an inevitable result of gathering 50 people in one place and givingthem alien technology. China was selling their babies to aliens, Brazil was trading cows for better, beefier cows, and France sabotaged the British laboratory to stop them getting ahead. Trying to keep up with it all was nearly impossible, and our newsletters reflected this by getting sillier and sillier.

After USA officially and publically declared the existence of alien life even the weather report at the top of our paper went from “Global rain” and “Cloud cover” to “Who even cares anymore?”

LizardQueen — Filler headline of the day: ‘Is the Queen a lizard alien? No.’

Our news-reporting tactics varied from actually occasionally being told about what the hell was happening from a few kind people to sneaking around and trying to eavesdrop for some excellent quotes.

BREAKING NEWS: “France is going bat-shit crazy” –President of France

Occasionally we would saunter up to a head of state to ask them what the haps were, and they’d casually reply “Oh yeah, nothing much. Someone just destroyed an alien base in Angola, though.” Which would leave us running back to the desk excitedly to knock Emma off the table and quickly type it all up.

Eventually we were awarded a Pulitzer Prize for … something. We actually don’t know, and nor do the organisers, but it apparently felt like time that we got one. We even managed to snag an interview with the aliens, who convinced Senior Correspondent Emma of their peaceful aims a few minutes before launching a psy-ops mission which made half of Europe believe that entire cities (buildings and all) had been abducted. Probably not the best way to convince us of their sincerity. Brazil, the ‘nice guys’ of the day, were the only team to continue to believe that the aliens were actually peaceful. ‘“Everything probably fine!” –Brazilian President’, shouted the smaller headlines.

As the afternoon was coming to an end, China and the USA got bored and frustrated with the whole affair and not knowing what to do, so decided to nuke Brasilia. The whole room stopped and mouths were agape as the two defence ministers went rogue, and as even their heads of state froze and looked flabbergasted. Their reasons are still unclear, but Brazil was pretty upset considering they’d just built a theme park featuring alien-enhanced beef called ‘Brazil-Land’. When questioned, the USA claimed that it was because the aliens were communists, while China told us to go away as they’d created their own free and independent news media, which had already won 286 Pulitzer-equivalent prizes.

The game works on many levels. It’s role playing, it’s strategy, and it’s highly competitive. Alliances are made and broken as countries try to fulfil their secret objectives, and rumour, hearsay, and espionage tactics threaten to bring the whole thing down at any moment. Your ally from turn one might suddenly turn around and steal your research, or Russia might initiate a bioweapon attack on the aliens under the guise of returning the corpses shot down in air combat. Both of which happened, of course.

Japan's foreign secretary got so upset at how useless the UN were that he defected to GNN. As in real life, so it is in WtS! — Japan’s foreign secretary got so upset at how useless the UN were that he defected to GNN. As in real life, so it is in WtS!

All the same, it’s a lot like hard work. The stress is very real and exhausting. Toiling and planning for turn after turn only to fail an important dice roll at a crucial moment is incredibly frustrating. Worst of all, an effective costume pretty much demands high heels, which hurt like Hades after five hours of rushing around looking stern at heads of state.

'JUST FUCKING SHOOT THEM DOWN' - Britain — ‘JUST FUCKING SHOOT THEM DOWN’ – Britain

At the end of the final round small summaries were given, and praise was given out to people in certain positions who had done particularly well. Dr Hates-Dice, Emma’s husband, was lauded as the best president the planet had seen, despite regular gaffes in what he’d said to the press (“We’re all tired and one of us is drunk” being particularly memorable). He had his face in the papers shaking hands with other heads of state twice and had been an excellent negotiator of pacts and treaties.

We earned out Pulitzer — We earned our Pulitzer

Meanwhile the overall best country turned out to be… Brazil! Despite having their capital nuked, they’d remained peaceful, resilient and friendly. Particularly to the aliens who, as it turned out, were actually quite nice apart from their anti-human prejudice.

Everyone applauded and collapsed and the wonderful beautiful organisers presented us with some beer which we gratefully crawled to after a hard day’s sky-watching. The beauty of the game continued to unravel for hours afterwards, as people discussed goings-on in different parts of the room across the day. So much happened over so many hours that it was impossible to have any idea of the full extent of what was happening at any one point. You might set something in motion at one point and have no idea of the consequences until hours later.

The first time we’d played Watch The Skies was amazing, this time was even better. Hard work, but amazing. Stay vigilant, humans. The next time it could be you.

*Apparently they tasted like cheese. Good work China.

** Fizzy grape juice in wine glasses.

We apologise for the quality of the photographs in this edition of Misery Farming. Bob’s point-and-click camera had an unfortunate case of early death and so we were forced to rely on an iPhone camera and prayer. We blame Dr Photographer-Friend for forgetting to sign up.

Cthulhu Gloom: The Clue is in the Name

May 17, 2015May 17, 2015Bob RimingtonLeave a comment

By Bob and Briony

Brutus Rating: 8 out of 10 gruesome daggers in the back
Pairs well with: Port, red wine, some Edgar Allan Poetry.

Cast your minds back to bygone days of yore. Days when still had a deputy Prime Minister to rein in our cartoon-villain overlord, and the horseless carriage was just coming into vogue (wait, no, too far back). The year is 2012, and your misery farming friends have been invited to a wedding. Well, to the reception anyway. Some of us (Bob) arrive way, way too early and have to find creative ways to pass the time while the proper grown-ups do things like ‘say their vows’ and ‘give speeches’. Luckily the wedding is at one of those fancy hotel/castle/stately home affairs with lots of turrets and nooks for exploring. Bob also finds a similarly left-out comrade in the form of former Call of Cthulhu RPG buddy Joss. Joss has a copy of Gloom, and Bob has a bottle of port and a plan.

You see, here at the Misery Farm we are all about three things:

Misery
Blanket forts.
Board games (obviously).

Therefore, it should be obvious that miserable board games in a pillow fort are the best things ever. And hotels, for those of you who don’t know, are prime pillow-fort territory. You simply call up reception and ask for extra pillows and blankets, and before you know it you have yourself a fabulous and comfy little nest – the ideal set-up for a two-player card game. With port.

Gloom is simple, cheap, and portable. Cthulhu Gloom is slightly less simple, but just as cheap and portable.*

The card art is appropriately Gorey-esque.

Both games are based on the premise of winning at misery. Each player gets a uniquely melancholic and gloomy card family and the aim of the game is to make them as sad as possible before killing them off. More sad means more points.

Here’s where it gets interesting. To make your family members miserable (or make other players’ families happy) you play modifier cards on them (see-through plastic, so you can see the modifiers below!), but you must tell a story to explain what happens to make them sad. Luckily there are prompts on the modifier cards so you don’t have to come up with a complete story on your own:

‘ 6D-34-97 Alas!** Poor Lavinia Whateley, she was travelling a dark forest path, driven in search of she-knew-not-what by dark, insane dreams beyond her comprehension. Suddenly there came before her a clearing, hideously illuminated by the moon, in which she saw mounds and mounds of misshapen mushrooms. And that is how she ‘found some funghi’.’

6D-34-102 Then you play the miserable modifier card on poor mad Lavinia and she gets however many negative points it indicates. Once you have deemed a family member to be sad (and therefore point-rich) enough, you kill them off with a ‘sudden death’ card. As soon as a whole family is completely dead the game ends, and you tally your scores. Only dead family members count, so it’s a payoff system between killing them quickly and scoring high. Of course, you can also sabotage other players with some happy points:

‘Joy be!*** Lavinia, after her squamous encounters in the dark forest walks through the night and, coming to the edge of the forest, finds before her the incredibly cheerful and fortifying sight of a family campsite. Yes indeed, it was in fact a completely harmless forest in Wales, and a whole host of achingly friendly North-English families are keen to welcome to her to their holiday party. There are breakfast bacon sandwiches and healthy nips of gin all round. And that is how Lavinia came to ‘forget the funghi’.’

6D-34-92 — Also pictured: Cthulhu leggings

In Cthulhu Gloom all the family members are based on Lovecraft characters, and modifiers and deaths based on narratives from the stories. Your Whateley family might be minced by Mi-Go or discover a strange new colour. Asenath Waite might finally get revenge on her father, or maybe just show up on your doorstep in the dead of night, dead. Charles Dexter Ward’s infamous cat even makes an appearance, though thankfully with a new name.

When we finally get round to playing it as a blogging cohort it is completely the wrong atmosphere. Late morning on a Sunday and we’re still not quite sure whether what we’re feeling is hangover or just some sleepiness and stress-residue from a busy week of being adults in the competitive world of post-graduate research.****

This mug is inappropriately cheerful for Gloom.

We decide to skip some of the more awkward bits of the rules, mainly because Bob accidentally threw away the rule book and can’t be bothered to find them online. This is not recommended, as the Cthulhu version does have some extensions and changes which means that even seasoned Gloom-players would do well to re-read the rules. There are, for example, full game objectives which will, if fulfilled, add a big pile of misery to your final score. This adds a stealthy strategy element distinctly lacking in the original. Otherwise the expansion mostly just clears up some fuzziness in the original rules like when to play one-off event cards, and how long effects like increased hand-limits last.

Don’t play Gloom, Cthulhu or otherwise, with people who have no imagination. It’s a dire experience as they take so, so long to play the damn card and stop rambling on, and without the stories it can be kind of boring in its simplicity. Do play this game with people who are new to board (card?) games as it’s straightforward and fun but definitely falls into this whole quirky ‘modern age of board games’ era. Despite the port, this actually doesn’t make a very good two-player game, so we recommend three to four players.

Bob appropriately wins this game, as she has the darkest lipstick and most morbid outlook. Death to some and misery to all the rest!

* OK it’s not actually that portable. It just looks portable because the cards are clear plastic so you think ‘wow, those are some durable cards, unlikely to suffer any water damage and therefore perfect for pub trips and long car journeys.’ But then you take them to a festival and try to play a game of Gloom in a leaky tent during a sudden rainstorm, but you’re a bit drunk and the tent is full of people and suddenly the cards are sliding around everywhere and you eventually give up on playing but by then you’ve lost a few in amongst the inebriated bodies and sleeping bags. Not that we’re speaking from experience or anything.

** We like shouting ‘alas’ when there’s some fresh woe. Makes the whole thing more dramatic.

*** See ‘alas!’ footnote, previous.

**** Ironically, Bob is actually the furthest-along in her PhD and has spent at least 15 hours this week playing Hearthstone. This was, obviously, a mistake.

Photos by Dr Photographer

Misery Farming on the Road: Misery at Marshals

May 14, 2015May 14, 2015Bob Rimington1 Comment

By Bob, Briony, and Lizzy

Here at the Misery Farm feel like we should encourage our audience to spread your dice and try playing games in some new settings, or even (god forbid) with some new people. In this sporadic mini-series, we take to the wide open road to review board game events all over the world. But mostly in pubs in the south of England.

A sick Bob is not a happy Bob. There’s a lot of pissing and moaning and complaining and ignoring good advice. She firmly believes that all you need to get well quickly is a regime of Hot Toddies and vitamin C. So, predictably, when our generic white male gaming buddy Andy invited Bob to Marshals on a chilly Monday night for an evening of board games and Tex-Mex she jumped at the chance. We say ‘jumped’ we mean ‘agreed before really thinking about what this would require’ (leaving the house, dressing like a proper adult, putting on pants). Seeing her hesitation Andy sent Bob the picture on the right and, unable to refuse this level of peer pressure, she blew her nose and made him promise to buy her a beer. For its medicinal properties, obvi.

Marshals is an American blues sports bar-type place in Southampton which Bob can’t decide if she loves or… eh. Big screen TVs are splashed around the restaurant constantly show worldwide sports channels, but this isn’t terribly annoying as they’re usually set to silent and occasionally show late-night WWF wrestling. The Misery Farm would like to say that they don’t get super excited when the Undertaker shows up, but that would be a lie. A complete and utter lie.

Marshal’s selection of spirits is frankly, inspiring. Shelves upon shelves of very fine whiskies, bourbons, and rums. They’ve got about 8 flavours of bitters alone. And such cocktails. They’re even perfectly happy to go off-menu or invent you a cocktail based on what you like, though unfortunately they haven’t the cloves on hand to make the tequila Hot Toddy of Bob’s dreams.

As a bonus, most of the male bar staff can all be rated on a scale of Hipster to Pirate. Beards and earrings for all!

Board games and Tex-Mex is a strange thing to combine. In fact, in many ways it’s the worst-possible combination of food and game. There aren’t many foods that lend themselves to the clean fingers and lack of drip required to keep laminated cardboard in pristine condition (sushi, pretzels, and boiled sweets being notable exceptions). Luckily Bob isn’t particularly precious about the condition of her games and cheerfully gestures for the waitress to plunk enormous plates of nachos unceremoniously among the notes and maps of Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective.

P1020661 — Nutrionally null but delicious.

Also on offer: medicinal margaritas. The bartender (approximately well-scrubbed Russell Brand on the Hipster-Pirate scale) espouses the virtues of both tequila and lime as cure-alls. Unfortunately he hasn’t factored in Bob’s staggering capabilities for encyclopaedic knowledge about random bullshit. He patiently listens while a twenty-something woman wrapped in a blanket adenoidally tells him about the massively-reduced Vitamin C content of limes compared to lemons, and how the nominative confusion between the two led to the re-emergence of scurvy among such prominent explorers as Scott of the Antarctic in the 19^th. Then he makes a lime margarita anyway because limes taste better than lemons. It’s delicious.

Thus fortified, they turn to the board games portion of the evening in earnest. There are two other groups of board gamers in the bar this evening, but it’s hardly packed to the rafters with nerds. Bob embarrasses the GWMs by bothering a large group to ask what they’re playing (this is something that the Misery Farm has become particularly used to – we enjoy simply appearing whenever a boardgame is being played, like those pretty but useless patterned D10s that everybody’s got at least one of). Eventually Bob is prised away for more Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective (our regular hit of addictive self-flagellation) and Shinobi WAT-AAH for its sheer joy.

P1020646 — “Leave me alone I’m sick and solving mysteries.”

Sherlock is, as ever, deeply frustrating and intriguing in equal measure. It’s not really a ‘game’ as much as it is a murder mystery which punishes you for needing to read too much of it before figuring out the entire plot and who did the dirty deed. Mr Holmes is always several steps ahead of you and will drop condescending hints, but you can outshine him at detecting by solving side quests. This game has the power to annoy the crap out of you but you’ll still want to play the next case immediately. It is, unfortunately, hard to find, expensive, and translated from French, which leads to masses of typos which are severe enough to cause irritation, if not full in-game confusion (a notable exception being ‘spirit’ mis-spelled as ‘spirbt’ and causing terrible trouble in case five). A stuffy head and snotty nose do not make this game any easier, and we give up unusually early; allowing Sherlock to patronisingly explain the ‘simple’ case to us.

P1020635 — Losing graciously to Sherlock.

Shinobi on the other hand is always fun. Contradictory to our official review, Shinobi actually pairs perfectly well with a heady single-malt (nothing peaty or smoky please, Bob doesn’t like drinking old-man-sofa smell). Andy and Mike for some reason bring their C-game so Bob wins each round and, convincingly, the game.

Bob’s not sure how regular of a Miserable event this should be, as it’s not really an ‘event’ as much as it is an evening in a bar. Not that we’re in any way averse to those, it’s just that Marshals is a bit on the pricy side to make a regular haunt. Is it a fun way to spend an evening? Yes. Is it better than ordering Chinese takeaway to your local and playing board games there? Hmmm… But at least Bob got out of the house, and next time, maybe even Briony and Lizzy will venture forth and try new events too.

Images © Cadbury’s, WWF Wrestling, and Marshals Bar (in that order).
Photos © TheMiseryFarm.com

Twilight Imperium: Friendly Space Race

May 10, 2015May 10, 2015Bob Rimington4 Comments

By Bob and Lizzy

Brutus rating: 9 zingy lightsabers in the back out of 10
Pairs Well With: Slurm! Romulan Ale! Anything pumped with sugar and caffeine

Look at this magnificent shit. You know you’re in for some intense game-time when the box art is this expensive and epic.

The story of the Misery Farm and Twilight Imperium begins with Bob and Christmas. Bob spends every Christmas with her family and a number of close family friends (as South Africans the lot of them are constitutionally incapable of negotiating ‘small, quiet’ events). There’s lots of food, wine, dogs, excited children and merriment.

It’s hell.

Initial plans were to go from family home to Reading for new year’s eve with the friendly robot boyfriend (FRB) before looping back round to the blessed isolation and wonderful silence of home in Southampton. Then the kids got an honest-to-god noisemaker as a Christmas present. The electronic kind, which plays loud, tinny jingles and farty sounds at the push of a button. Far from being a form of passive-aggressive punishment inflicted by child-free friends on their parents it turned out that their mum (!) had actually bought this thing (!!) herself (!!!) as a gift for her own kids (!!!!).

Naturally, Bob wanted to leave as soon as humanly possible. Unfortunately there wouldn’t be room for her at the FRB’s house until the late in December, and he had planned an all-day Twilight Imperium 3 game on that day. But there would be a constant supply of tea and biscuits if she was interested. Sold!

She had no idea what she had gotten herself into.

First port of call if you need a game overview is of course the blog Shut Up and Sit Down. If you are living under a rock and are somehow reading this without having heard of them, then know that they are nice young men who combine informative game reviews with a quirky and funny presentation style (so pretty much the opposite of us). Their review of the game as fun, complicated but not arduous, and epic in both scale and style was encouraging, and Bob proceeded to download the rules with a view to getting a rough idea of the components, win conditions, and what a turn generally looks like (the holy trinity of basic game understanding).

Here she hit a snag. Having only recently become the kind of special, habitual nerd who can visualise a game to any sort of degree just from reading the rules, these presented something of a challenge. It wasn’t the length of the rules which intimidated her, nor their complexity, poor structure, or incredible, gasping dryness. It was more that better things to do than reading them seemed to repeatedly crop up. Taking a nap, for example. Eating all the Christmas jelly beans. Re-watching Star Trek, Frozen, and the Muppets Christmas Carol (with all the scary bits fast-forwarded so the kids wouldn’t have to hide behind the sofa). If she weren’t under strict instructions from supervisors to Chill the Fuck Out and Take a Holiday then some work might even possibly have gotten done. Maybe.

This wasn’t entirely unfair, in hindsight. TwImp heralds from an era of Fantasy Flight games (i.e. their entire history) when writing down the rules was considered an unfortunately necessary afterthought to game creation. The amount of text in the FAQs on their website exceeds that of the written rules by a factor of about fifty, and even the super handy-dandy cheat sheet on board game geek (second port of call for the game explorer) is twelve pages of tightly-packed and colour-coded terror. Bob refused to be deterred though, forging bravely ahead. It was either this or another day of confiscating her mum’s 11am gin and being forced to watch a ten-year old play Pokemon Platinum* on their shiny new 3DS**. To some long-term gaming buddies this mission to Read the Damn Rules seemed one step away in terms of desperate foolishness from considering a career in crippling heroin addiction. Eventually even Bob had to admit defeat at page 14, and instead downloaded the TI3 app***.

Game day rolled round with an inauspicious start. Bob arrived late and without all the necessary supplies of crisps, cigarettes and sugary beverages that would make a ten-hour game bearable. Luckily the FRB has excellent friends. Ones complete with mandatory nerdy graphic Tshirts and an exquisite layout of appropriate snacks including Gagh (gummy worms), Slurm (Mountain Dew), and a handy supply of delicious codeine and Marlborough Reds to alleviate the crampy terror brought on by driving. FRB did his part by making Bob two whole cups of tea without complaining more than 6 times.

Delicious caffeinated sugar water. — Delicious caffeinated sugar-water.

And it only took an hour to set up the game and go over the rules. Briefly: a central planet (Mechatol Rex), the seat of political power in the galaxy now mired in civil war and petty bureaucratic struggles. It is surrounded by planet and space hexes, which generate resources if you invade take them under your wing. You play as a race fighting for dominance according to certain objectives. First to ten victory points wins. You can usually get a point per turn, and a turn takes an hour. No joke.

Okay, so this game. This game, guys. It’s insane. No one playing it for the first time can
possibly have any idea what the hell is going on. Going over every single rule would be exhausting, and remembering them all on the first try is impossible. It’s entirely plausible that everyone was cheating the entire way through but the fact that we were playing with two extra expansions (and therefore a whole bunch of new and expanded rules) meant that no one noticed or really knew what was going on themselves.

Luckily it’s definitely the kind of game that can be played without a fully-fleshed strategy as long as you have a rough overview of what you might want to do on a turn, and there’s someone around the table willing and able to walk you through the fine points. Some things, like spending resources, invading planets, and building technologies and spaceships are very knowledge-dependent, unfortunately, and messing them up can really ruin your turn. Mercifully the sheer size and duration of the game makes it weirdly forgiving until the very last few rounds.

Some parts are refreshingly simple, such as the straightforward dice-rolling ‘pew pew’ of combat. On the other hand some elements, like playing a political action card in order to pass a law in the galactic senate, are almost like bizarre meta/minigames in themselves, as you try to bribe each other for votes while assassinating other players’ delegates. Sometimes, if another player is particularly annoying you with their piractical trading methods or pointed demilitarisation of strategic planets, you can even assassinate them twice*****.

Romulan ale, for when your girlfriend has passed a motion to have you executed by the senate. Again.

The potential for greatness is there (and beginners can do just as well as experienced players with a bit of strategic placement and luck), but it is absolutely exhausting on your first time round. After having your ass solidly kicked across the galaxy by the Winnarian traders you might even swear off it entirely.

But then find yourself thinking, at odd moments, how you could improve your strategy to finally conquer Mechatol Rex and really show those damn space-lions who’s boss.

As you play and get comfortable with the rules (which can take several long, long games) it all starts seriously picking up in terms of mad, bonkers, shooty fun. Despite its enormity the strategic elements are reasonably flexible. Alliances are made and broken based on objectives and the layout of the planet hexes (ah, that nebula of hugs sure looks protective. Wait, guys, why are you launching that dreadnought? Guys…?). You learn the particular skills and weaknesses of your race and start to posture with great big spiny hedgehog death stars war suns.

This. This is what posturing looks like.

See that weird little fish-looking guy in the background? Flagship. 'Pointing the wrong way' apparently. — See that weird little fish-looking guy in the background? Flagship. ‘Pointing the wrong way’ apparently.

Bob’s first race comprised spooky space ghosts who love wormholes and for some reason have a super-90s-wildstyle-graffiti-looking symbol/crest thing. They have the unique ability to build an enormous flagship which then acts as a wormhole itself, allowing fleets of warships to pop up all over the map (entertaining but not recommended for beginners). Incidentally the flagship looks an awful lot like a fish with antennae bits all over it. Bob assumed this was to streamline it so that it might effectively fly through the massive friction and air resistance of outer space, but it turned out that she did in fact have the ship flying backwards. Other races include incredibly combative swarms of cockroaches led by a shadowy matriarchy (who for some reason no-one trusts. Damn speciesists), clouds of fungal spores, lion-people with civilisations built on the backs of elephants slowly traversing their desert home-planets, cyborg remnants of the once-ruling race spreading their mindnet low-cost broadband internet through the galaxy.

All that remains of the galaxy after a number of mad alien races have tussled over it.

This game is fun, and mad, but very very long. Set aside a full day for it, and don’t play it without an experienced player to guide you through.

*Sidenote: Pokemon game names are really dumb and not-intuitively chronological. Dem crazy Japans amiright?

**Sidenote 2: This kid wouldn’t let Bob take a turn and had the bloody cheek to tell her that an Umbreon was a kind of Pokemon in a tone of voice usually saved for the hopelessly elderly and out-of-touch. Since being informed that we had in fact had Pokemon when we were kids it’s been non-stop Poketrivia quizzing of seemingly every Pokemon except the original 152. She calls them the Pokemon from ‘back in your day’.

*** More useful than the 12-page cheat sheet**** by a factor of about 300. It helps you keep track of what technology you’re building and are able to build, and keeps an eye on your various battle stats.

**** This is a ridiculous fucking thing anyway. It expects you to print out the pdf on legal paper and then fold and staple it into a booklet. What is this, 1963? It has the potential to be amazing but only if it were turned into a beautiful, easily-navigated hypertext doc. With a fucking contents page and some kind of fucking recognisable structure. One day. In the future.

*****Sorry Chris. That’s what you get for not letting me invade Mechatol Rex.

Photos courtesy of Nick Lanng and Chris MacLennan

Glass Road: Why would you build a road out of glass?

March 29, 2015March 29, 2015Bob Rimington5 Comments

Brutus rating: 4 daggers in the back out of 10
Pairs well with: Bavarian beer, some sort of spirit in a flask that can be carried around while toiling in the German forest.

6D-32-45 — But why would they build a road out of glass, though?

Glass Road is a self-proclaimed ‘celebration of the 700-year-old tradition of glass-making in the Bavarian Forest’.* Just hearing the rules being read can make someone on the other side of the room sit up and ask ‘Are you playing Agricola?’. That’s right kids, it’s an Uwe Rosenberg game! For those that don’t know, this guy is arguably the king of European board games. His other offerings include Agricola and Le Havre, a game Briony has owned for more than a year and never played. It is said just looking at the rules booklet can cure insomnia. If you’ve any experience with European board games generally, and Rosenberg’s games in particular, you might reasonably expect this one to be heavy on the worker-placement, fairly abstract, and deeply German. Surprisingly, it’s only one of those things, and even then not as badly as some others**. It’s not even hideously long or punishing, and doesn’t make you curl up in a corner after screwing up your 3 hour long strategy in one single turn.

Let’s take a step back and tell a story. It’s the beautiful tale of why this game makes sense on both a conceptual and mechanical level, and is nerdily satisfying in the same way that all good game-lore is satisfying. Imagine you’re a rural baron in pre-Industrial Germany. You have a fair bit of land, though a lot of it is green and covered in trees. Lizzy informs us that these are called ‘forests’. You also have lots of extremely hard-working peasants who are happy to do your bidding. They’re invisible, but they’re there, toiling in the harsh German sunshine. For some reason you also have a glassworks and a brickworks. This is a bit odd because you don’t have any of the raw materials to make glass and brick yet, but just go with it. I’m sure you’ll find some sand and mud soon enough.

Your neighbourhood barons seem to be making a lot of money off this whole ‘production’ trend, so you decide to jump on board. You hire experts in the fields of farming and food production, irrigation, building, and quarrying to help you turn your land into useable raw materials. You can even get on board with a local feudal lord who has some excellent architects on exclusive retainer (‘The feudal lord is suitably fat. That’s good’ – Briony). Your invisible hordes of hard-working peasants, as soon as they’re given sufficient food and resources, immediately set to it in the glass- and brickworks and before you know it you’ve got some luxury items. These you invest into building factories, luxury second homes, and highly-efficient farming conglomerates. Eventually the buildings and luxury items earn you a bunch of cash moneys and then the game ends. Whoever has the most cash money at the end of the game wins. In this it’s very much like real life, and also extremely like Puerto Rico.

There are, of course, some complicating factors. If your neighbouring barons also want the use of the expert artisans then you will have to split the amount of work they can do. If you hack and burn all your forests to build farms there will be no pristine land to place a successful hunting lodge. If you accidentally over-feed your workers they’ll continue to produce glass and brick even when what you really wanted were the raw materials they were sitting on. Briony has a degree in geography and says that this is sort of how rocks and stuff work: cool stuff is usually underneath other more boring stuff, and it’s a shame medieval peasants didn’t know about taking core samples.

This game is actually kind of adorable and well-designed (though it is, according to Briony, geographically inaccurate). Some of the little resource tiles have unique bits of illustration, and spotting them is a treat. Not gonna lie, it has some haters, who seem to dislike it for the same unusual mechanic that other people love. That is, the big individual cardboard dials that tally your basic resources (coal, food, etc.) and determine when they get used up and turned into the more luxurious brick and glass. Tzolk’in lovers will probably have some familiarity with this from that game’s corn-and-worker gear machines, while Caylus players will enjoy the familiar feeling of not having tallied their resources properly and fucking up their entire turn. Some people blame this on the game rather than their own fuzzy-minded planning, but that’s on them. A more reasonable criticism of Glass Road is that it has no easy or clear way to tally point-scoring. There’s just an awful lot of counting at the end of the game, again a little bit like fuzzy-strategies during Puerto Rico.

At the start of the game it’s pretty difficult to know what you’re trying to do. However, like most worker-placement games, collecting resources is usually a good start. Each player begins by selecting 5 of the 15 cards which represent your agriculture/industry specialists (a water carrier, a slash-and-burn farmer, a sand-quarrier (is that a thing?) etc.). On playing these experts you will be able to transform the cardboard tiles representing your land (initially representing such useless things as ‘trees’, and ‘lakes’) into resources of charcoal, food, sand, and water. Briony begins by selecting 5 cards more or less at random and plays a fish farmer. Unfortunately she’s apparently either very good or very bad at determining a useful specialist to hire, as both Lizzy and Gord (today’s Generic White Male Gaming Buddy) reveal that they also wish to hire the fish farmer. This means they only get half the use out of their fishing expert. The fish farmer, being a dick, doesn’t like sign a contract of exclusivity saying he’ll finish one job before starting another; he just does two half-assed jobs at the same time. Again, this is much like real life.

Once the great cardboard dials of industry have turned, you may use the product of your workers’ labour to further your cause as a budding capitalist. Buildings have unique effects on gameplay, which can be long-term, such as upgrading your glass factory; one-shot, such as generating a wad of cash; or end-game, giving bonus points with the caveat of certain accomplishments like ‘not turning all your lakes into factory run-off’ or ‘flattening vast swathes of land into sandy Depression-era dustbowl wastes’. Which buildings are more useful and desireable becomes clear as the game progresses. Once Briony and Gord had gotten the hang of their first game she became quite adept at snagging all the buildings that Lizzy wanted.

This game requires flexibility as well as forward-planning. A perfectly-devised strategy is likely to go awry as there’s no way to be sure of which buildings will be available to play, or which specialists you’ll have to share with your opponents. This is why Bob loves this game. She has a lot of very clever, strategically-minded friends who can logic out the best path through a game like a shark swimming through custard. Bob has a slightly more… lateral (ass-backwards) approach, picking up whatever strategy looks best at the time and throwing her toys out of the pram when it inevitably goes horribly wrong (we don’t talk about Black Fleet. So many little cubes were lost that day…). Somehow this really works for Glass Road. Unfortunately, Bob was busy cleaning up gaming-snack detritus and sat out this game.

In conclusion, it’s a nicely designed game, with just the right of in-game mechanics. It’s themed well, and has multiple strategies that my lead to victory that keeps intense direct competition to a minimum. The dials, ever becoming more popular in modern board games, certainly give a new dimension to resource collection. We recommend it highly. Also Lizzy wins again.

Laid out in all its glory. image courtesy of boardgaming.com

*Fun fact, you can totally go to Germany and tour the black forest’s monuments to the real glass road. There are glass museums and craft workshops and everything.

**The most unashamedly German board game is quite possibly Glück Auf (and then only until someone with a name like Rosenmüllentheimermassbergsohn invents a game called ‘Strategic Worker Placement in an Industrial or Agricultural Setting’***). It’s set in the Industrial Revolution-era Ruhrgebiet (basically the Black Country of Germany) and is about coal mining profits. The title is traditional German pit-lingo for ‘good luck’.

***’Strategische Arbeitereinstellung in einem Industrie- oder Landwirtschaftsszenario’. Catchy, no?

Photo credit and thanks to Dr. Photographer

Steam Park: Robots Just Wanna Have Fun

March 22, 2015March 22, 2015Bob Rimington3 Comments

By Bob, Briony, and Lizzy. Go team!

Brutus Rating: 2 or 3 grubby knives in the back, depending on the number of players.
Pairs well with: Oil, petrol

Steampark is a beautifully steampunky game in which you can build your own little rollercoaster theme park with such mechanic-altering extras as casinos, tents and toilets. If there’s one thing Briony has learned from years of Rollercoaster Tycoon, it’s that you should never ever think “that’s enough toilets now”!

06_steam-toilet — Though in this game you can actually only build one toilet. What would your robot guests do with more toilets, anyhow?

Yet another Essen find; this one is light, frenetic, and sometimes blackly humorous, bordering on the dystopian. Bob obviously had to buy it as it was the gothest game at the convention.*

Team Awesome Blog came together with our generic white male friend (this one we call ‘Andy’ for short) for a game together as we wrote this review. For the sake of maintaining a strong sense of ethics in board-games journalism we should disclose that we forgot to invite Dr Photographer to play on this occasion and all of the photos are reconstructions.

As the many, many pieces of game are unpacked Briony looks more than a little apprehensive. She is, after all, the team’s dice-hater and the handfuls of dice coming out of the box do nothing to alleviate her fears. Contrary to popular belief, it’s entirely possible to develop post-traumatic stress disorder from playing Risk, Warhammer and Blood Bowl too many times. Dice! So many dice!

Plethora of dice aside, there are some friggin’ awesomely-designed rollercoasters and tents and such, easily making up for it. It’s a very enticing game.

Right, we should cover the rules. Each player is allocated a plot of land in the form of a grid of squares on a small board, on which they can construct their steampark. Rollercoasters, or any other buildings, cannot be built within one square of anything else, making board-space efficiency a good part of the game. Each player also receives a buttload of dice (that is now the official measurement of ‘too many’ dice. It’s approximately 6). Instead of numbers the dice have a different symbol on each face which corresponds to an action you can take during your turn.

There are 4 pucks in the middle of the table which only become available once a player has finished rolling their dice, and which determine turn order. The sooner you finish rolling your dice, the better puck you pick. This phase is particularly stressful as all players roll at the same time, and can re-roll the dice as many times as they like in order to get what actions they need, until there’s only one player left to roll.

Seems nice, right? Light-hearted fun? Forgiving of bad rolls? No. Instead, it becomes a stressful dice race!

Suuure, Briony says. She could get the perfect set of dice she desires with enough time, but Bob has already finished rolling and can now grab the first player puck! Panic for everyone! This gives her park-building benefits, while getting the last puck actively punches you in the guts by filling your park with ‘dirt’. Ultimately the dice-rolling stage is more like the ‘throw your dice around the room, swearing violently, resenting anyone who looks remotely calm or close to finishing, madly panicking to find said dice, praising the ones who rolled correctly, and hoping that everyone else is having as much bad luck as you’ stage. Andy’s method has been to roll a perfect selection of dice and then knock half of them off of the table. We’re going to rename it ‘The Panic Stage’.

In addition you must place your rolled dice onto a flat cardboard mechanical piggybank otherwise they don’t count. Because that’s what all the other board-games are missing…

6D-31- 356 — Wind-up piggybank dice mats. Officially the future of board gaming.

We’ve given this game an ambiguous Brutus rating because of the way that taking a puck can royally screw your competitors. In a larger game this won’t make too much difference: if one extra person finishes ahead of you then you’ll maybe have just a small amount more dirt in your park. If it’s a two-player game then the difference is much greater, lending a distinctly more cut-throat flavour to the game.

Back to our team play-through. ‘The Panic Stage’ is over. Looking around the table we each have 6 dice which represent the actions we would like to take for that turn (or to the nearest approximation of that). Now each player can do stuff and things according to this, beginning with whoever has most effectively managed the Panic Stage to get the first-player puck. Unfortunately, Bob doesn’t actually know what to do with this mighty privilege, and a chorus of sighs ensues. Briony got the last place puck as she was writing (taking one for the Misery team), and as such this is all of the suck. To better deal with her frustration she decides to build a super-awesome octopus-coaster. It’s holding tiny teacups with its tentacles. Adorables.

In the interests of staying calm, let’s move onto some of the scoring components of the game. Lovely, rational scoring. Or not. Victory in this game is determined by cash moneys (what is the point in running a steampunk theme park if not the money?), which is made by having little robot meeples ride your theme park rides, forever.

6D-31- 318 — Don’t worry about them, they don’t get bored or run out of money or anything, they’re robots.

You also have two cards that have a bonus feature for scoring, for example ‘For every purple rollercoaster you own, take 5 more money at the end of a round’. These are essentially your victory cards. Playing a victory card is one of the options given by the dice. The dice decide all, and it is supremely irritating when you’ve especially built a purple octocoaster to please your victory cards, then forgotten to make sure that at least one of your dice allows you to play a victory card. Once every player has finished the round ends and you collect your park revenue, which is the sum of all of the things you have built plus any bonuses from cards. And then there’s dirt. Dirt is bad (but calling other players ‘dirty’ is fun). Dirt is made by the meeples riding your rides, by building rides, by being too far back in the turn order, by making the eighth ‘Tim Burton’s theme park’ joke of the evening, etc. Dirt seems to build up more rapidly than you can clear it away by rolling the appropriate dice, and punishes you at the end of the game by taking away your revenue. Dirt is bad.

There is another slight hitch in our fantastic upcoming parks. You know when you’ve built your first attraction in Rollercoaster Tycoon and it’s utterly underwhelming? Think, Ferris Wheel. This is the current state of your mechanical park. In order to get a really awesome park you need to invest both into getting more people to ride the rides, and in park maintenance. To get more people (or, in this case, fun-consuming robots) you should roll the ‘get visitor’ action with the dice, and then selecting randomly from coloured robots in a bag. Only robots of the same colour can ride on a correspondingly coloured ride so there is some mileage in a strategy that has attractions of many colours. There’s some chance involved with this but being persistent pays off.

How many rounds does a game of Steampark have you ask? 6? Does it ever really end? Those robots are going to be riding and having fun forever while you age and eventually die. But for us mere fun-lacking mortals we only get 6 rounds to make our parks the best.

And here’s the happy ending to our playthrough: Briony stopped writing and turned her game around, winning the first player puck for most of the game. This is a viable strategy because you can almost always find a use for all of the dice mechanisms, even if they’re not ideal. Andy slowly but surely generated little more than a pile of dirt, and is probably still sat there quietly contemplating his little mound. Bob and Lizzy were solid throughout, but victory was ultimately Briony’s. The real winner, as ever, was board games.

In summary this game has some great design aspects and some cool mechanisms. To be honest there are slightly more mechanisms than necessary, but that doesn’t draw away from your goals. It’s simple to learn and has a relatively short play time with a distinct lack of hatred for your fellow players. I recommend trying it, and at the very least you should find someone who owns it and stare at the pretty little components in awe.

Why is there a one-robot Tunnel of Love? Why indeed.

*In fact Chris (friendly robot boyfriend) very nearly simultaneously bought it for Bob as it was the gothest game at the convention. Being deeply predictable sometimes has its dangers.

Photos credit to Dr Photographer
The toilet art is directly from the Horrible Games website

Shinobi WAT-AAH!: Everything changed when the fish nation attacked

March 15, 2015March 16, 2015Bob Rimington6 Comments

By Bob, Lizzy, Briony

Dicks in ear: 7/10
Pairs well with: Sake, meditation, wisdom. All three at once, no cheating.

Note before playing: Everyone always asks if yelling WAT-AAH is part of the game, and, if so, when you shout it. While the parameters for shouting WAT-AAH do not appear in the rules, it is said the shouty samurai spirit has been inside you all along, and all that is needed is for you to free it when you feel the call. We enjoyed a house rule of shouting WAT-AAH whenever you put cards down. Or pick up cards. Or look at someone funny.

This is a game about ninjas with magic powers. And that’s pretty cool, but much more cool is the fact that this game might even have magical powers of its own. We’re pretty sure it’s impossible not to enjoy playing it. Genuinely, we’ve not found a single person who disliked it, and we know people who dislike everything.

Shinobi7 — Check out this little guy. Is he an upside-down dude in a hat? Or two tiny men in a plane cockpit?

It’s another Essen find, and a very fortuitous one at that. Essen is a wonderful and exciting four days of board games but it is, nonetheless, four very long days of board games. By Saturday Bob was flagging. She hadn’t slept well in her overheated German hotel room and had more or less twisted her gastrointestinal tract into origami with German ham hock stew and pilsner (from this and the Sanssouci post you might have guessed that she has something of a complicated relationship with Germany. You would be correct). Running through pouring rain to catch our tram to the convention centre did not improve the mood and by the time we arrived, damp and itchy-eyed with tiredness, Chris (friendly robot boyfriend) was detecting all the signs of a classic Bob-style rage-quit (pouting, tearfulness, The Grumps). Worse; we had arrived early in order to be first in line to play Hyperborea and hadn’t even managed to secure first play spot. Nor, despite a mad dash, did we make it to Tragedy Looper before its first clientele of the day had casually picked up the instruction booklet and started reading (the boardgame convention equivalent of yelling ‘dibs!’).

Chris later confessed that when we spotted an available table with Shinobi WAT-AAH! laid out on it that he was more or less praying that it would be good, or a full-scale tantrum was going to occur. Bob of course informed him that she is an adult woman and she does not throw tantrums,* to which we all obviously agree, but conceded that the appearance of the Shinobi table was still pretty well-timed.

shinobi something edit — Explaining rules is the most fun Bob can have with her clothes on.

Mechanically it’s a fairly straightforward deck-building card game in which you’re a royal lord (or lady) trying to unite clans of epic fighting ninjas in order to trigger their epic ninja fighting skills so that you may defeat the final demon boss (WAT-AAH!) and place your royal rear upon the Imperial throne. The epic ninja fighting skills fuel conflict in the game as you fuck with other players’ cards, peek through the Jigoku (the discard pile – literally translates as ‘hell’), or copy other clans’ powers. We give it a rating of 7 dicks-in-ear for the irresistible opportunities to knobble each other with these powers. Although some of the clans’ powers are more friendly (pick up some cards, look at some cards, etc) you’ll almost certainly find yourself plotting some nasty moves and stealing an entire hand of cards from someone you sometimes consider to be a friend.

There are two modes to play in: Grasshopper and Grand Master. In Grasshopper mode you simply play turns until someone has laid four fully-formed clans (WAT-AAH!) on the table. You then tally up the scoring value of each clan on the table and the player with the highest number wins (not necessarily the person who ended the game). Grand Master mode begins the same but after the tally you retain the cards still in your hand (fully-formed clans already on the table get discarded) and receive a number of The Shuriken of Winning depending on your place in the running. You can spend your Shuriken of Winning on cards which will give you bonuses (WAT-AAH!) in the next round, or toward battling the final boss (which could be zombies or creepy old lady-demons or whatever).

You do this for three rounds and then the final showdown happens. The showdown is much more anti-climactic than it sounds, as it’s really just a scoring of a the number of shuriken you’ve already put toward fighting the final boss against the (hidden, mysterious) number that they want in order to give you the best possible number of points. There is no epic battle between ninjas and demons, sadly, but interestingly more Shuriken of Winning doesn’t always translate into more winning points.

It’s hardly the most complex or rich game in the world, but it is unashamedly fun. It’s the feudal Japanese card game equivalent of a pew-pew video game. Dicks fly everywhere and the art is about as fantastic as you’d expect from the guy who also did Seasons and that most scenic of games, Tokaido. It has a cartoonish feel that is both beautifully detailed and very bold and clean. This perfectly reflects the style of the game – simple, fun, yet with captivating little details. For example the wild cards which can be used to simply make up numbers in a clan are called Ronin – a feudal Japanese term for a samurai without a master or lord. Similarly, the powerful single cards which can be played as one-off additions to a clan are called Yokai – spirits or supernatural beings present in Japanese folklore. This is exciting if you’re incredibly nerdy and contributes to the immensely satisfying feeling of a well-balanced, well-designed game that just works. The cards are also taller than you’d expect, which is aesthetically very pleasing. It’s a neat touch.

Price-wise it’s a bargain. For some reason it seems that the more board games cost the more polarising and more rarely-played they become. Everyone will play a round of Coloretto or Hanabi but you actively have to search out friends interested in a game that costs hundreds and takes 6 hours. Twenty quid might not get you meeples of every colour and shape or a giant, detailed board but it will get you a game where even friends whose opinion of pretty much everything is that it’s ‘bullshit’, will sit up halfway through a round and mention how much fun it is.

Lizzy won again. But the real winner is board games.

6D-31- 417 — The winner is always board games. And Lizzy.

* She does kind of throw tantrums a little bit. But only when she’s really tired. Or hungry.** Or drunk.

** Before Essen she gave Lizzy a bag of Cadbury’s éclairs, with strict instructions to feed them to her if (when) she got cranky. It was a good strategy.

Image credit and thanks to Dr Photographer

Quantum: Space Dice!

March 8, 2015March 9, 2015Bob Rimington2 Comments

By Lizzy, Bob, and Briony

Number of dicks in ear: 6/10. Dick size will grow in inverse proportion to the size of the map.
Pairs well with: cheap vodka. (It’s what people drink in space.)

Lizzy loves a game where you know who you are. Where you really know what your motivations are and why you’re collecting <Generic Resource!>. Quantum is a game about space, and it does this quite well. It has a space background. You play as a kind of space conquistador, colonising the stars using cubes. Cubes are very important in Quantum, because cubes mean victory and the ownership benevolent leadership of galaxies.

“Which galaxies?” you cry!
Whichever galaxies you like!

Quantum3 — ‘Which map shall we use?’ ‘The one that looks like a swastika!’ ‘That is absolutely not what a swastika looks like, Bob’

The layout of the map is quite variable; there are several possible galaxies to choose from for each player number, and each has its own name. You can fight over the Outer Reaches, the Barren Empire, Terra Major, Terra Minor.

Even the planets themselves each have a name. Tau 18, Ursus Major 2, you get the idea. They even have lore and geography, if that’s your bag. It’s all very good sci-fi. Points for sci-fi.

Quantum4 — Here’s Bob posing for a photo and pretending to attack her own ships. That’s not how the game works. Silly Bob.

For further points, each of your dice are your loyal spaceships and the number on the die represents the kind of ship it is. Even better, there’s some kind of story to the mechanics behind each number! A lower number is a lot slower but better at combat because it’s a bigger ship. A 1-die, for example, is a battlestation, which is the best at fighting but can only move 1 square at a time. A 6-die is a scout, they can zip around like crazy but aren’t too hot behind the weapons. At this point in the game your in-house Bob or Bob-substitute can demonstrate agility by throwing dice around going ‘pew pew’. It’s helpful or something.

As well as the changing planetary layout, gameplay is also affected by cards, which affect the kind of play which your space-conquering race can undertake. After invading landing on a planet you can, as they say in the trade, ‘do a research’ and so learn to do fun stuff like shoot more effectively and fly across the entire galaxy to thrust your dick in your team-mate’s ear.

If you are the kind of person who hates dice combat you might hate this game. But even our friend ‘Dr Hates-Dice’ loves this game! And he hates dice, or any attempt at putting randomness in a game. Briony, of course, is sadly unable to roll dice or dice-shaped objects and so found this game something of a challenge. She also hates dice.

In the words of Lizzy it is a game of learning and fun, if you understand how basic maths works. Bob, for her part, is unable to count, making the ‘fun if you know how maths works’ description more of a threat than an incentive. She has, however, played games with Lizzy before and understands that when our dear Liz looks particularly gleeful after rolling a die and buying a research card that no one is safe and… oh god oh god we’re all going to die… why is no one stopping Lizzy… we all know what happens when we don’t stop Lizzy and… oh yep she’s won. And she has the cheek to ask why we don’t trust her in board games.

6D-31- 374 — We’re all gonna die when she gets that face on.

Nonetheless, this game doesn’t rub your face in your failure like a misbehaving puppy. If you do badly it’s because you’re bad at very basic counting, strategy, and rolling dice. This is in comparison with games like Terra Mystica where you feel like a failure from round 2 because you haven’t picked up on the very specific and delicate strategy required of your race. Quantum is particularly enjoyable if you bear your position as commander of the fleet in mind when communicating with the enemy. “The OrionRepublic welcomes the puny Kepler Imperium to our planet!” “The Orion Republic denies all knowledge of the weapons fire around Minim 2586. You must have been watching a training exercise.” Also humming ‘Duel of the Fates’ (literally the only good thing in ‘The Phantom Menace’) and the Star Trek theme tune are recommended during manoeuvring and battle.

6D-31- 393 — A lonely spaceship contemplates its fate at the edge of the galaxy.

All in all this is a pretty fun game. It’s still Lizzy’s favourite thing to have come out of Essen 2013, well over a year on. Good luck on your colonisation, loyal Space-Dice. May the solar wind be always at your back.

Bob does not take particularly well to losing. Shame it happens so often.

Image and photography credit to Dr. Photographer.

Cthulhu Wars: Indescribably Tentacular

March 2, 2015March 3, 2015Bob Rimington1 Comment

A Review by Bob, Lizzy

Number of dicks in ear: 8 inter-dimensional, squamous dicks/10.
Pairs well with: German beer, anti-psychotic medication.

Cthulhu1

You may notice that this game review is lacking in high quality Cthulhu Wars photos. That’s because none of us are insanely rich enough to own this game, so we’re relying on Lizzy’s camera from our time at Essen 2014. She hadn’t even realised that the lens was dusty at this point. Sheesh. Some photos have also been professionally recreated in a studio environment. See if you can tell the difference.

(Not actual game footage. Actors were used to recreate gameplay. Crocheted Cthulhu sold separately. Terms and conditions apply.)

Fun fact: If it weren’t for Sandy Petersen’s Call of Cthulhu role-playing game we wouldn’t be here today. I don’t mean that in an existential sense, just that this blog wouldn’t be here today.

Back in the mists of time of 2011 our friend Emma brought me, Lizzy, and a select few others together to roleplay some eldritch misery, unwittingly creating a gang of powerful lady-nerds.*

It was my first RP experience and I’ve been hooked ever since.

I've got some army guys and some robots. That's pretty sci-fi right guys? — I’ve got some army guys and some robots. That’s pretty sci-fi right?

Now I don’t have much interest in games beyond playing them. I’ve very little idea of which companies make good games and I’m regularly surprised when a game seemingly tailored to my interests appeared (looking at you, A Study in Emerald) so I had no idea that the cool-sounding Cthulhu game being exhibited at Essen 2014 was by the same guy who wrote the original role-play adventure. I wish I could say that the only time I embarrassed myself was when Petersen himself had to explain to me that he did not just jump on the Lovecraft bandwagon, but did to some extent start it. Unfortunately I also proceeded to get ridiculously excited and fan-girlish about the whole thing (to the extent that his wife told me to calm down), and to address him as ‘Sandy’ (to which he did not respond until I sheepishly reverted to ‘Mr. Petersen’).

In my defence it was a very exciting experience, especially when combined with the chocolate-

Cthulhu card game figurine v. blind bag Pony

covered-chocolate-ice-cream stall just around the corner. Petersen was there like a proud, balding Mormon Santa Claus showing off his game, and one of his sons (or possibly grandsons) had the dubious honour of patiently teaching the game to a parade of smelly nerd troupes** (I think we smelled lovely) in a course of fully-booked two hour slots over the four days of convention. By the power of sheer exuberance I even got to beta-test Petersen’s next game, Gods War, which was still in the sharpie-on-cardboard stage of development. Stay tuned for an extra sneak-peek review of that game at the end of this broadcast.

The game itself is impressive in scale, and bonkers in execution. It was funded through a Kickstarter campaign, and thanks to that can afford to take a stance of ‘Look mate, you’re either in this entirely, or you’re out.’ I can imagine the kind of board games nerds who get off on the fiddly tactile bits of games getting feverish over this baby. There is a $199 price tag for just the core game (expansions are $59 each), with no option for a less-expensive less-artisanal version. It includes 64 incredibly detailed miniatures of Old Gods, monsters, and cultists. If you look closely you can see everything from the relief outline of the death-masks on the tiny cultists’ faces, to the cleft in the King in Yellow’s butt. Even the marker by which you tally your power is a tiny, adorable tentacle. It must be said, though, that there is something a little bit odd about

monsters which are defined as being unknowable, unnameable, indescribable horrors (H.P. Lovecraft was terrible at detail) being cast in plastic to play with. Takes away some of the awe. We didn’t actually say this to Petersen though, as the whole thing was so clearly his beloved baby and I already felt silly.

The game takes place on a board illustrated with an approximate map of the world. This has lead some of our more soft-headed moon-faced friends to think that the game has completely left the realm of Lovecraftian epic fantasy and entered into Risk-style grognard territory. Now

I’m not going to lie, there are dice. A lot of dice. So many dice that you sometimes need two hands to cast them all as part of a mighty god-against-god battle (it’s awesome). And yes, there is strategy involved. But the game isn’t a simple struggle for physical space. Instead, it’s all about power. There are a number of ways to gain power (and yes, taking up more space is one of them), and gaining power will earn you more super-special doom points, by which you may win the game. The faction you play (Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath, Hastur/The King in Yellow) massively affects how you can most effectively gain and wield power, and is further specialised through your faction-unique spellbooks.

Tyrannids! They're monsters! They'll do! — Tyrannids! They’re monsters! They’ll do!

This is both great as it really absorbs you in the fantasy of the game, but also leads to the big, huge, massive, gaping flaw in the game. Namely, if you do not effectively figure out at least a starting strategy which integrates with your faction’s play style pretty fucking swiftly, then you are utterly screwed within the first two rounds of the game. The rules of the game and structure of a turn are hardly straightforward either, so you might need those two rounds to get a grip on what’s going on. This is something I usually hate in games (Terra Mystica! Why!?), and it does completely unbalance it. In our game, and in friends’, you end up with two players massively in the lead duking it out to be the first to flop their enormous eldritch cock across the board, and two players struggling to get out of their starting zones.

In fact we played this game with Emma (of previously-mentioned Cthulhu GM-ing glory) and she never stood a chance. We were merciless, and with good reason.

Way back when, during our time as Cthulhu role-players we were very attached to our characters: Smokey Peterson the jazz musician, Old (insane, phenomenally rich) Trewilliger, Prudence and her gin, coquettish Mabel and… Jeff. Oh, Jeff. The only real good guy in the team. He loved corn, kindness and photography. Jeff!

One day something happened to Jeff that we don’t like to talk about. It had wings.

Then, in Essen 2014, just as Cthulhu Wars was starting, Emma picked up one of her pieces and said “Hey… this is the one that took Jeff!”

And hell did Bob and I avenge our comrade. This also, unfortunately, proved that if one or two people want to gang up on you in the game then there’s not a lot you can do about it. Definitely a whole bouquet of dicks in ear.

Nonetheless, this game is shamelessly fun. It’s complex but not impossible, with lots of juicy details to get stuck into/drive you into hellish pits of insanity. The rule book comes with hints and tips toward getting the most out of your Elder God which apparently really helps to solve the balancing problem if you haven’t got a member of the Petersen family handy to keep you on track. Of course this is a moot point because I can’t afford it and this makes me sad.

PS: Lizzy won.

Extra bonus game review: Petersen’s new epic-style game Gods War!

… It’s the same fucking game.

*This was before she abandoned us to get married and live in the frozen north. Now she makes adorable nerdy crochet guys at justaddcrochet.co.uk

** Don’t get butt-hurt, we were smelly. It was hot in that convention hall, and full of fried foods and bodies.

Sanssouci: Aristocratic Meeples and Fancy Gardens

February 24, 2015February 25, 2015Bob Rimington1 Comment

By Bob and Lizzy

Dicks in ears: 2/10
Pairs well with: Tiny glasses of sherry or gin, fine wines, BBC radio 3’s evening concert.

Here’s a weird little story for you. For a year I lived in Germany, in a hideous Soviet-style concrete block on the edge of a beautiful eighteenth-century baroque palace and gardens. Built as a summer house in the style of the palace of Versailles by Frederick the Great, the villa is a sprawling arrangement of Roman baths, fountains, and glorified sheds covered in filigree. As a further nod to the Frenchness that was sadly popular at the time, the palace’s name, Sanssouci, translates as ‘no worries’.

6D-31- 247 Depressed, bored, and fat from a diet consisting predominantly of German pastries, I spent a lot of time strolling around the gardens so I’ll give you a run-down of the highlights. Firstly, the Chinese House. It’s a little bandstand thing covered in statues of the most Western-looking Chinese people you’ve ever seen in your life. Pretty much second only to the Brighton Pavilion in terms of shameless, state-preserved Orientalism. Secondly, Frederick the Great’s grave (and the surrounding graves, which belong to his dogs). Germans absolutely love Freddy, he’s the dude who introduced the exotic potato to the Mutterland (which for Germans is a Big Deal). Initially the locals ate the plant instead of the root and subsequently 6D-31- 241 died, but they soon got over that little hiccup and came to develop the delicate stodge-based Prussian cuisine we all enjoy today. They leave potatoes on Fred’s grave instead of flowers. Finally, the mosquitoes. Now I am a fairly well-travelled lady, hell I grew up in Africa; the sight of inch-long blood-engorged mozzies will barely raise an eyebrow. But these things. These fucking things. See, Frederick the Great, in a hilarious Pythonesque twist of history, built his bloody palace on a bloody swamp. The local mosquitoes are tiny and utterly vicious, to the extent that I could barely walk after one particularly ill-advised spring day spent wearing a skirt in the park,* and spent many a summer evening McGuyvering flame throwers out of aerosol deodorants.

ANYWAY, to make a short story unnecessarily long, the moment I saw a game called Sanssouci in a discount pile at this year’s Essen it precipitated such a flood of nostalgia that I knew I had to have it. The blurb, entirely in German and describing a garden-building tile-placement game, did not put me off. Would I like to compete to create beautiful flower beds, scented herbaceous borders, and cooling fountains for aristocrats to enjoy? Hell fucking yeah I would.

The instructions were also in German, and it became a point of pride for me to be able to understand and play the game without looking up the translation. As a result the first game, played some time later with Lizzy over tiny 6D-31- 243 aristocratic glasses of sherry (naturally), was a little… bumpy. We muddled through fairly successfully in the end, thanks to the game’s copiousillustrated rules examples, and Lizzy’s understanding of how a game should work. (“Bob! Do you think maybe the different sets of coloured cards might be for different players? Wouldn’t that be a neat idea Bob?”) Later, I looked up an English translation and you’ll all be pleased to know I got it mostly almost right. Undergraduate degree totally not wasted.

The game is Tokaido-esque in its chilled-outness, if not nearly as pretty. It does have adorable aristocratic meeples with tiny aristocratic meeple hats, which is a point in its favour, and it’s almost as simple as Tokaido. Each player has an empty garden grid in front of them, and in a turn will play a card and pick a tile to place in their garden. One of their noble meeples may then go for a lovely little walk around the garden to score points. Gardens gain points for their size (longer walks for the aristocrats) as well as their layout (you have a full set of pavilions? Spectacular). If you are unable to play a garden feature tile you may play a gardener tile. These do not contribute to your garden, but may bridge two garden tiles. This means that an aristocrat can walk across a gardener tile to reach the inviting vineyard tile that lies beyond. One cannot stay on a gardener tile because, let’s face it, the land workers are plebs and not to be associated with.

We’ve decided to give the game a two-dicks-in-ear rating because you need to pick up your gardening tiles from a communal tile-pool. Particularly savvy estate-managers can get a feel for what others are trying to collect and nab the exact water-fountain they need right before they get the chance. Of course, it’s far more likely that most dickery will be accidental and you will unwittingly and unjustly incur Bob’s wrath for the rest of the game anyway, through no fault of your own. I just wanted to extend my vineyard, is that too much to ask?

This game has some good roleplaying potential, particularly to the extent that you enjoy
pretending to be snobby aristocrats. One recommends pretending to talk to the other aristocrats as you walk you meeples through the garden and sip on your generous helpings of sherry. “Lady Snobbington! I didn’t expect to see you here by the shrubberies today. Have you seen the new bandstand? Splendid isn’t it. *shlurp*”

It’s a fun little game, with decent replayability thanks to its included expansions. I also found it quite absorbing, as the garden grids approximately match the Orangerie garden layout at Sanssouci. If you like your games particularly action-packed or combative then I’d give it a miss though. It’s more like a programme of rehabilitation for combat game addicts, who need to be supervised with the secateurs when they’re trimming the ornamental rose bushes in case they get twitchy.

*This episode even caused horrible bullseye-shaped rashes to appear on my legs. The local German docs were less than sympathetic to my panicked enquiry regarding Lyme disease, and told me to stop being an idiot and wear trousers next time.

Misery Farming

How to Win Board Games and Alienate Meeple

Author: Bob Rimington

Super-Mega Interstellar Misery Farm on-the-Road Review: It’s Watch the Skies!

Brutus Rating: 7 out of 10 back-stabbings to the back.
Pairs Well With: Alien-enhanced protein shakes.

Cthulhu Gloom: The Clue is in the Name

Brutus Rating: 8 out of 10 gruesome daggers in the back
Pairs well with: Port, red wine, some Edgar Allan Poetry.

Misery Farming on the Road: Misery at Marshals

Twilight Imperium: Friendly Space Race

Brutus rating: 9 zingy lightsabers in the back out of 10
Pairs Well With: Slurm! Romulan Ale! Anything pumped with sugar and caffeine

Glass Road: Why would you build a road out of glass?

Steam Park: Robots Just Wanna Have Fun

Shinobi WAT-AAH!: Everything changed when the fish nation attacked

Dicks in ear: 7/10
Pairs well with: Sake, meditation, wisdom. All three at once, no cheating.

Quantum: Space Dice!

Number of dicks in ear: 6/10. Dick size will grow in inverse proportion to the size of the map.
Pairs well with: cheap vodka. (It’s what people drink in space.)

Cthulhu Wars: Indescribably Tentacular

Number of dicks in ear: 8 inter-dimensional, squamous dicks/10.
Pairs well with: German beer, anti-psychotic medication.

Extra bonus game review: Petersen’s new epic-style game Gods War!

Sanssouci: Aristocratic Meeples and Fancy Gardens

Dicks in ears: 2/10
Pairs well with: Tiny glasses of sherry or gin, fine wines, BBC radio 3’s evening concert.

Brutus Rating: 7 out of 10 back-stabbings to the back. Pairs Well With: Alien-enhanced protein shakes.

Tell your friends:

Brutus Rating: 8 out of 10 gruesome daggers in the back Pairs well with: Port, red wine, some Edgar Allan Poetry.

Tell your friends:

Tell your friends:

Brutus rating: 9 zingy lightsabers in the back out of 10 Pairs Well With: Slurm! Romulan Ale! Anything pumped with sugar and caffeine

Tell your friends:

Tell your friends:

Tell your friends:

Dicks in ear: 7/10 Pairs well with: Sake, meditation, wisdom. All three at once, no cheating.

Tell your friends:

Number of dicks in ear: 6/10. Dick size will grow in inverse proportion to the size of the map. Pairs well with: cheap vodka. (It’s what people drink in space.)

Tell your friends:

Number of dicks in ear: 8 inter-dimensional, squamous dicks/10. Pairs well with: German beer, anti-psychotic medication.

Extra bonus game review: Petersen’s new epic-style game Gods War!

Tell your friends:

Dicks in ears: 2/10 Pairs well with: Tiny glasses of sherry or gin, fine wines, BBC radio 3’s evening concert.

Tell your friends:

Brutus Rating: 7 out of 10 back-stabbings to the back.
Pairs Well With: Alien-enhanced protein shakes.

Brutus Rating: 8 out of 10 gruesome daggers in the back
Pairs well with: Port, red wine, some Edgar Allan Poetry.

Brutus rating: 9 zingy lightsabers in the back out of 10
Pairs Well With: Slurm! Romulan Ale! Anything pumped with sugar and caffeine

Dicks in ear: 7/10
Pairs well with: Sake, meditation, wisdom. All three at once, no cheating.

Number of dicks in ear: 6/10. Dick size will grow in inverse proportion to the size of the map.
Pairs well with: cheap vodka. (It’s what people drink in space.)

Number of dicks in ear: 8 inter-dimensional, squamous dicks/10.
Pairs well with: German beer, anti-psychotic medication.

Dicks in ears: 2/10
Pairs well with: Tiny glasses of sherry or gin, fine wines, BBC radio 3’s evening concert.