3rd September 2025
Early September saw nine gamers sit down to play four games, 3 shorter ones and 1 longer affair that had been organised ahead of time on our Discord channel. Defeating monsters, rolling dice, rolling some more dice and cruising the stars were the entertainment for the night.
Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze made its debut tonight. This is a co-operative version of the popular Unmatched family of battle games, in which up to 4 players take on an enemy, all in the style of 20th Century pulp adventures. Four of us plucky adventurers (James, Dave, Dan and Graham) set out to defeat Mothman and his evil minions. Mothman starts with 40 health points, 10 for each player. There were also 4 minions, this time one for each player. This makes it different and more challenging than the single player mode played to date. Mothman and his minions start in the middle of the board, with the players in the corners. The player’s characters all have different health and special abilities, as in the rest of the Unmatched games, and indeed there is potential for switching characters between the various iterations (Bruce Lee pairing with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was one suggestion).
On the first go there was little to do except move and attack. This proved to be a mistake, as it left Mothman and his minions concentrated in the centre. One of the minions kept healing all enemies in his zone - which happened to be all of them! It may have only been 1 health at a time - but it still added up. We managed to kill a couple of the minions and inflict some significant damage on Mothman himself. Unfortunately, we also had sustained substantial damage – enough that one of the players died - which meant that we were defeated.
Richie having joined and watched our defeat (was he acting for Mothman?), we then chose a 5-player game: Lords of Vegas, another first timer at the club. This is an updated version of the original from 2010, with nicer components, slightly streamlined turn order and the inclusion of the Up! Expansion, which increases player count and adds a 3rd dimension to building. Players are building casinos in small lots, looking to expand across neighbouring plots, take over rival casinos by way of a quick paint job, and of course, make sure the house always wins. Expand your casino, build up your cash supply, get set to take over the entire strip – then loose it all by gambling everything. It’s Vegas baby!
A lot depends on dice rolls (as you might expect) and card draws. You gain money from games, but victory points come from controlling (large) casinos - which may mean controlling casinos built by another player. We had good fun, enjoying the luck of the dice rolls and card draws, and the uncertainty of when the end of game card is drawn. When all was done, James was the winner.
A couple of folk left, which left Richie, Dan and Graham to play Spots, making a 4th appearance, having last been seen in session 107. It’s a push your luck style affair, where you’re trying to place dice on matching positions on your dogs. To win, you need to take risks - but take too much risk, or be unfortunate, and it sets you back. The 3 of us were all quite close - but Dan completed the 6 dogs first to win the game.
Meanwhile a Galactic Cruise rematch was taking shape on another table, 4 players having played it at the pub session the preceding week, with Steph, Steve and Darren hoping to show Iain the error of his ways – his ways being a win in the previous game. This was the 3rd time it had made a club outing, with the last game back in the 98th session. Players are competing over three years to build the best rockets to go on the best cruises to the best destinations to prove they’re the best candidate to become CEO of the Galactic Cruise corporation. All done through the miracle of worker placement. The base game was played, albeit with random placement of the action spaces – each space has access to 2 actions, which in the ‘beginner’ game are useful pairs (take blueprints & build blueprints, or take cards & refill cards for example). Randomising these means it becomes much trickier to plan your moves, as a worker takes 2 available actions per turn.
Steve’s Otter Space service made an early grab at placing a network of cogs, creating more opportunities for actions (cogs can be used to link adjacent action spaces) and granting access to useful technologies, such as using less fuel to launch. This was also putting him in good standing to grab the first company goal (randomised set of 3 each game, which can create big scores at the end of each year). He was however disappointed by Darren’s grabbing of both the Distillery and Cocktail Corner blueprints, clearly looking to set up a booze cruise in space. Meanwhile Steph had opted for the calmer Tea Room, aiming her SSC line at the family and relaxing guests. And Iain? Well, Iain was mainly moaning about nobody bumping his workers (returning workers gain an income bonus, plus become available to place next turn – you start with just 2 workers and once placed they can only be moved by being bumped or using a turn to recall them). He really should have tried Steph’s oft-heard battle cry of “Pick me”, which does sometimes work.
Darren was first to send a rocket into space, although ‘twas but a small rocket to be fair, trying a strategy of small and often, as opposed to his normal strategy of searching for the canteen then realising he should really launch a ship – generally in the late stages of the game. Steph was not far behind, having spent a little time building a bigger ship. Soon multiple starships were crossing the galaxy, taking guests to the far reaches of space where they could enjoy such exotic pastimes as going to the cinema, playing paintball or eating burgers. With a constant dribble of victory points Darren was flying ahead, again causing Steve some consternation, although it was pointed out that in the last game DC had led for a fair chunk of the game before the dreaded endgame scoring saw him relegated to somewhere behind where last place should be expected. Steve was however the clear leader on the reputation track, which meant he was getting some bonuses at the yearly AGMs, Steph’s larger ships meant she was keeping in the game, and Iain, well Iain was definitely playing.
With the final year ticking by rapidly there was a general rush to get final cruises launched (each year is timed by the number of cubes filling slots, with cubes being placed for launching ships and meeting company goals – as a rule of thumb the first year takes almost half the game as resources are gathered and plans are laid) and a desperate search for whatever actions could garner more VPs. When the ships had returned and the dust had settled Darren emerged as the new CEO of Galactic Cruises Ltd (his first win of his own game after about 8 plays), but the scores were much tighter than in any previous plays, probably due to the short span of a week between games.
The next session at the Corn Exchange is Wednesday 17th September. Join us on Discord to suggest games or bag your seat at one that’s been suggested, or feel free to just turn up on the night to see what’s on the table of joy.
- Total Session Attendance: 9
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Board Games: