31st May 2023
Another week where the blog title wrote itself with all three long games featuring islands but very different game mechanics. There were 12 gamers exploring and researching, cooperatively placing workers or shipping goods around and influencing market prices in this session.
The session started with Braggart back for its fourth outing at club for some silly story-telling and boasting fun. Then another table tried Coloretto a colour collecting card game where you score your best three colour sets but are penalised for any other colour cards collected.
Then the negotiations started for the long games. Lost Ruins of Arnak was a popular choice and the four seats were soon filled. This is now on its fifth play at club but not seen since session 35. As there were a couple of beginners we stuck to the base game with a symmetric start but had some of the new locations, guardians and items from the expansion mixed in. The game is a mix of deck building and worker placement with options to explore and obtain resources and tame guardians or research or buy new items. In the end the two beginners had a convincing win with some fine research and card management with both acquiring the top temple artefact as well as enough island exploration to tip the balance.
There was also a lot of interest in one new game to the club this session Atlantis Rising, a cooperative worker placement game with the aim to collect enough resources to build a cosmic gate and save your citizens from the rising floodwaters around the island of Atlantis. This was the second edition printing of the game and the island board is very pretty with 6 zones to the island providing different types of resource and as the floods rise they are flipped over. There were four gamers this time but the game can accommodate up to seven.
The aim is to work together to collect all the required resources to build the components of the cosmic gate, once some are built they offer new actions and benefits to the team. Resources are obtained through worker placement and then dice rolling, though the dice result can often be manipulated through library cards, mystic energy or unique skills of each player character. However every turn the floods rise and some even more nasty events can occur and scupper your plans. In the end as there were new players the lowest difficulty level had been set and despite a few early setbacks the cosmic gate was completed before the last island tile was flipped and the Atlanteans were saved.
The final table chose Container another popular game for our hard core gamers back for its fourth session. See session 23 for a more detailed explanation of the game play mechanics. However it matched the nights theme as there is an island board in the centre of play which players ship goods in to and out of, so they can manipulate the economy of the five goods types.
When the trading was concluded the Container table got stuck into another game of Coloretto while the Atlantis table continued with Concept which is a sort of mix of charades and pictionary. The aim is to guess people, films, places etc but from a series of icon clues on the gameboard selected by the clue giver. There was a lot of excitement and confusion as Igloo, Fidel Castro and 20,000 Leagues under the sea were attempted to be explained as a series of abstract symbols.
The next session is 14th June, please suggest some games in advance or just turn up, there is always a wide selection and something to suit all with people to teach new games. Contact us via discord, twitter or email for more information.
- Total Session Attendance: 12
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Board Games: