The quiz picture this time has had a one time appearance at the club, this is from the box lid.

The quiz picture last time was of Aya , it is hard to place this game in any category other than to say it is co-operative dexterity game played against a 20 minute egg-timer.

Apologies but I could not get the links to work properly so they are missing this week. (Cut and paste does not always work how I expect). To see more about a game go to Boardgamegeek all are listed on that site or checkout our page of what has been played - the clubs username is MABG.

Oregon at the end won by green. The board shows groups of meeples around the buildings.

Table 1 started with Oregon a game I believe I have covered before, it is simply an area control game however the areas are quite small, players on a turn play a pair of cards to place either a building that can be used by any player or one of their own playing pieces, players get various amounts of points depending on which building they place adjacent to, they also get bonuses for making groups of three of their own pieces. If you play a building next to players pieces they all receive points. There is some skill in the play but I believe that there is an overly large amount of luck in the cards you draw as they dictate where on the board you can place your pieces and buildings.

Table 2 played Scythe , this new game from Jamey Stegmaier and Stonemaier Games looked magnificent on the table with large chunky bits and a nice big board, my copy arrived just the other day so I am looking forward to giving it a play soon, it is shown as 1-5 players so it looks like a few solo games first to get used to the rules I am really looking forward to it.

My table played Quebec which can be best described as a points grab game, it is played over 4 rounds during which players collectively develop the city of Quebec. The board is overlaid with a grid of circles and onto these at gamestart are placed coloured discs which all have three building spaces and show a colour and in which round of the game they may be built. On a turn a player does one action, which could be to send a group of workers to a building site where an architect is, if the architect at this site belongs to another player they get a bonus associated with the coloured disc which are generally sending some cubes to one of 5 camps around the board.

The board at the game start - Architects can only be placed on discs with "I" in phase 1.

Another option is to move your architect to a new building space, when you do the building your architect is currently at gets built and you put a token on it depicting the number of worker groups it had when built, these tokens are important because at games end you score points for each building you have and you get bonus points for each building you have in your largest connected group, the workers that were on this disc then get sent to the camp of the colour of the disc. At the end of the round you score points for cubes in each of the camps around the board, there are additional bonuses for majorities in each group.

The white pawn has quite a lead from concentrating on the camps around Quebec

The game is a mix of area control and resource management but all with the intent of grabbing points, I enjoyed the game a lot and hope to play it again soon, it certainly plays a lot better with five players than with two (my one other play) and one I recommend to those who want some depth to their game.

Table four played a selection of lighter games the first of which was Takenoko which is a nice game with nice pieces, players take two different actions a turn which allows them to either expand the bamboo garden, grow bamboo, take a points card, grab an irrigation marker or feed the panda; the points cards have either a specific layout of bamboo garden tiles, some bamboo food tokens eaten by the panda or a specific growth of bamboo, if you meet the criteria at any point in your turn you can cash in your points cards.

One players Keepers in Pirate Fluxx on Table 4

Their second game was Pirate Fluxx, not a favourite of mine but one I can appreciate being a lot of fun, however when you have been locked into a game of Fluxx that refused to end for over 40 minutes you can forgive me perhaps for not being enamoured with it, saying that though I do own at least 3 Fluxx versions and will play it if pushed.

The third game on table 4 was Spookies which I briefly explained last week, this week they played the family version (as opposed to the tactical version) which involves a die which randomly chooses the character you move, I was informed that this actually works better than the tactical game and requires a little more decision making on your move and the risks to be taken. The fourth and fifth game on this table was Sushi Go Party! which is an upgrade on the original game and adds an element of deck building.

Mystic Vale sleeves containing 1, 2 or 3 card parts

Table 1 in the meantime played Love Letter: Batman which has been covered several times before, they followed this with Mystic Vale a game which has been on my watch list for a while now but I am reluctant to but before playing, I know little about it other than you create your own cards in a card deck building them up in plastic sheets (card sleeves) which hold 3 card parts at a time. If you want more information I can recommend the short video on the Alderac Entertainment Group website to give you a brief feel for it, I understand this system is called card crafting.

My table played Dragonwood which I covered last week, I have since played it several times 2 player where it works equally well and the scores have always been fairly close, as a 2 player filler it has crept into being my current favourite.

Cards with which to make sets in Dragonwood

For the final half hour most gathered for a couple of games of Secret Hitler where there was some confusion among the facist party in both games allowing the liberals a 2-nil victory, the remaining club members played Cheating Moth a variation on the card game cheat.

Medway Area Boardgamers