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Anthony Boydell
United Kingdom
Unspecified
Unspecified
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The cloistered halls seemed particularly empty last evening with much of the Order away at a Hair Shirt and Chastity Belt 'fact-finder' in Las Vegas and the 'Youth Club' visitors we had over celebrating their GCSE results upping sticks and taking their Strongbow Cider recycling with them.
Due to a downpour of Genesissian proportions, those of us remaining were driven from the Monastery gardens into the Refectory for shelter and the evening - so much the better for our temporary visitor, Sister Rebecca, who had been struggling to trim her unruly bush in the Nun's Garden after polishing her gourds in the squash patch; it's certainly hard not to be impressed by the quality of her pumpkins. Brother Benjamin, himself a fan of a well-swollen fruit, remarked - only the other day - that Sister Rebecca certainly performs well in a raised bed.
Despite the foul tempest and rough winds, and the bad weather too (I blame the cabbage glut, myself), the few of us (Brother William, myself, Brother Benjamin and Sister Rebecca) huddled around a Votive Candle to play some boardgames.
First up was Innovation - rather, this was in progress when Brother William and I arrived. Sister Rebecca was quite brutally exploiting Dogma to subjugate a contrite Brother B. He was unable to resist her mighty hand and reached a premature climax - a contrite Benjamin muttering that it was down to 'all these people watching' and that 'it had never happened to him before' etc
Next, to accommodate a four, we plumped for Guilds Of London - the area-control, deck-driven prototype that has been knocking around my cell for a few years now. The last time I played, I was horribly humiliated by the Sister Rebecca in particular (and she won Guilds of London) so I was out for revenge - though, in religious orders we don't like using a word like 'revenge' ...preferring, instead, terms like 'negative application of free-will' or 'the Lord moves in mysterious ways his kick-ass wonders to perform'. The game revolves around a series of tiles in the playing area to which players can recruit, and then relocate, 'liverymen' cubes. When a tile has a minimum cube limit ('majority') exceeded it becomes eligible to resolve - giving bonus points and effects to the winner. Scoring is in-game and at the end (through bonus cards that are, a la Princes of Florence, gained during the game - again, through resolving certain tiles). Each tile represents a Guild or Company of the City of London and is keyed to one of five 'suits': Compass (Merchants), Anchors (Naval), Crowns (Noble), Cross (Church) and Scythe (Common). A large deck contains cards of each suit (21 of each), which have a variety of effects and bonuses themselves - each suit has a 'general theme': card-drawing (Cross), recruitment (Scythe), Movement/Relocation (Compass), Emmigration (Anchor) and powerful one-offs (Crown). Players play their cards, hire and move liverymen and win Guilds and bonuses - the most points (after a set number of rounds) wins.
Despite Brother Benjamin doing his level best to deprive me of end-game scoring cards, I managed to gather enough of a lead in normal play to protect me from impressive jumps-from-behind. I'm very, very pleased with how this has developed - the timing, 75 minutes, for 4 players was excellent (and well-within pre-defined parameters), lots of interaction (the dreaded 'black abstainer' cubes) and Brother William didn't do too badly for a first-timer! I am mulling over the possibility that I could, perhaps, take this further as a Kickstarter project...
Next up, Brother Benjamin reached into his rough sack and pulled out something he tossed off a few months ago...an 18-card card game about being the first to make up a series of drinks orders: a pattern-making and matching affair with a few wooden cubes thrown in for good measure. The 18 card theme comes from something that Alan Paull and myself kicked off as a Surprised Stare Games 'in joke', but its taken on a bit of a life of its own since: the challenge is to design a game that has a maximum 18 cards in its deck (they can contain anything needed for the game, can be double-sided or whatever). The design can also make use of ANYTHING you would reasonably expect to find in a Gamer's collection someone ie. dice, a few meeples, wooden cubes etc - nothing bespoke or 'specialized'. My own effort is the daft Bad Grandmas, which started life as a promo game for an IT Project I worked on for 3 years - the grandmas being members of the Project Team depicted as super-heroes! (FYI: Alan has designed a WWII aircraft combat wargame called Carrier Strike which I am badgering him to develop into 'a proper game'). A few of our designer pals have also taken up the challenge...
Brother B's 'first effort' has a surprisingly sturdy foundation and the four of us enjoyed the 30 minutes or so. A couple of meaty suggestions accompany the prototype back to the Scriptorium, and we look forward to version 0_3 in the near future. What with this, and his recent work on final playtesting / finessing of On The Cards, Brother Benjamin is becoming quite the games engineer!
We were fast approaching the end of our diversionary activities for the evening and broke out another 'light' filler with which to wind, gracefully, down: Don. The more I play this twisted, bastard child of Coloretto and 'an auction game', the more I haven't the faintest clue what the over-sized cucumber is going on. We played a second game to see if it really was as obtuse and ridiculous as the first game implied, only to find that it WAS...only MORE SO. I love you, Michael Schacht, but this should've been drowned in a bag with all the other unwanted puppies - in a word: bonkers!
With the chimes of Eleven approaching, and obligatory Prayers to be performed, we were all keen to be on our knees before bell's end. Meditation is an important element to spiritual life: one is often required to consider a slippery issue in the privacy of one's own Dormitory.
Amen.
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