16th September 2026
A wide variety of games were selected this session, including time travelling bus trips, and dice rolling alien survival and secret role games.
The early arrivals got tucked in to Patchwork Doodle - a simple game of tessellation but with an emphasis on creating the largest squares! Its a quick roll and write game where you have to attach 6 polymino shapes to your individual starting patch per round. You then score for your largest square. Repeat for 2 more rounds and add up to find the best patchworker. There are a few special abilities you can use over the course of the game to help you out, but best quilter wins.
The next players to arrive tried ever popular and simple to learn Kingdomino now on its 19th club session. Kathy taught 3 new arrivals this simple domino based tableau builder, which was so popular they played it again.
Then the longer games started with the pre-advertised on Discord Project: ELITE. Inspired by playing Zombicide at the last session, Dave brought Project: ELITE, a game he has owned for a few years but never managed to get to the table. Re-printed in 2020 by CMON this is a new version of the original 2016 game with better quality components. Project: ELITE is a cooperative game where players try to complete objectives while swarms of aliens move across the map. There are three regular types of aliens (runners, shooters and biters) plus a number of bosses that have special abilities and take more hits to kill. They spawn each round at one end of the map and move on pre-determined routes across the board trying to reach the players’ base. Of course they will attack anyone they meet along the way. If any aliens reach the base, it’s game over, likewise if any of the players die it’s game over. Players have 8 rounds to meet their objective or they lose (again, game over).
Like Zombicide, players can move, search for items, equip new weapons and shoot, but the twist here is that all players act simultaneously. Each round consists of a planning stage where players agree what they are going to do and then two minutes of dice rolling action where they do the complete opposite. Players are free to re-roll the dice as many times as they want taking whatever actions they want, however as soon as a red symbol is rolled, they have to stop and move an alien. Neil, Darren, Jeremy, Richie and Dave started off facing what looked like insurmountable odds, with more and more aliens joining the fight and little progress being made towards the objectives. However, after a couple of rounds they got into a rhythm and started slowly ticking off the objectives while mowing down hordes of alien scum. With only mild to moderate cheating, the team emerged victorious and had a great time in the process.
Then 3D tile game Planet was chosen. After a quick explanation the 4 players were adding pentomino tiles to their magnetic planet core trying to work towards their secret terrain based goal and entice animals to their planet. Which animal recruits would be available each round was known from the start of the game so some planning ahead could be attempted. Animals have particular terrain based needs, either the largest terrain touching or not touching another terrain type or the most fragmented sections of a terrain type. Each round 1 tile is selected and added to the core and then everyone compares their growing planet to the animals requirements. The first animal, a blue whale, that liked lots of ocean areas was hotly contested, it took three rounds to break the deadlock as a draw means the animal continues into the next round. In the end animal enticement based scores won out over the secret terrain goal scores.
Vrroomm?
Vrroooomm?
Vrroooooomm!
The final table was tempted into trying Bus, in Simon’s opinion one of Splotter’s top three and definitely a brilliant game… coming to you from 1999 (which is old). However, we played on the Capstone reprint from 2019… which is really nice. As arguably one of the earliest worker placement games, Bus shines in making every choice hard, the need to do three things first, then you need to do a fourth thing this turn but that’s another action.
Bus might look nice… but it’s not. The rules are simple, and it might look like a gentle ride but there is no dawdling here… you might say the game is about speed (if you don’t get that bus-related reference, well – “pop quiz, hotshot. There’s a bomb on a bus”). You only have 20 actions for the whole game, and winning scores are typically in the 10-15 point range, each point is for delivering one passenger (to the office, the pub, or home).
About half way through everyone was getting the idea of the game (and making the appropriate vrroom sound when delivering passengers), and being relatively quick the end game soon after. There was much jostling for final deliveries, passengers going all over the city in strange routes. It was a good day on the buses.
Then with plenty of time to spare after planet building that table moved onto temple building with Cleopatra (And The Society Of Architects). This is a fairly simple game, on your turn you either visit the market to acquire building materials or you visit the quarry and add some of the 6 types of architecture (column walls, doors, pedestal and throne, mosaic, sphinxes and obelisks) to Cleopatra’s latest temple. The twist is that some of the materials are a bit dodgy and Cleopatra will notice, so you need to find ways to reduce your corruption by incorporating sanctuaries for Anubis into the mosaic or giving the highest offering to the Priests in a hidden bid. Once 5 of the 6 building types are completed the game ends and the corruption tokens hidden in each players pyramid of shame are compared and the player that cut the most corners is thrown to the crocodiles.
In this game it was teacher Kathy who failed to shed enough corruption by end game who was busted by Cleopatra and became a repast for the reptiles, while Alex had managed to stash the most cash to take the win.
The other tables then teamed for a few round of BANG! The Dice Game. This was a full game of 8 players, where you have 1 sheriff and 2 deputies, 3 outlaws and 2 renegades. Its a deduction game as you only know who the sheriff is at the start of the game. The sheriff (and deputies) win if the outlaws are eliminated, but the outlaws win if the Sheriff dies. A renegade wins, only if they are the last standing! Everyone has a different character with an ability that helps you break one of the rules of the game. Each turn a player gets to roll the dice up to 3 times, where the dice heal (by drinking beer), shoot the players next to you, cause arrow attacks by indians, blow you up with dynamite, or allow you to shoot everyone with a gatling gun.
Richie explained the rules and then proceeded to tell everyone about a time where he got killed on the very first turn and nearly flipped the table in annoyance. So of course the first round of the game had several people pick on Richie, though luckily didn’t quite finish him off. It was all quite cagey with pot shots going off everywhere, apart from a few people still being picked on by others! Then a win for the outlaws as the Sheriff was struck down by one too many arrows, just before deputy Simon had figured out the outlaws and was going to pull a win for the good guys.
Next session is on Wednesday September 30th 7.30pm at the St Ives Corn Exchange. Do join us to see what games will be on the tables, cooperative manic dice rolling or more sedate but crunchy competitive games?
- Total Session Attendance: ??????
-
Board Games: 7