This is the cover of another popular game over 25 years old which still has its following.

The last quiz picture was Apocalypse: The Game of Nuclear Devastation by Games Workshop back in 1980, an interesting world domination game where you had to nuke your own troops in order to provide enough units for the recruitment phase. Listed under Warlord on the geek its most interesting aspect is its combat system where the opponents in a conflict secretly choose a number on the die.

Sorry about the missed blog last week, this was due to visiting relatives naturally taking priority over other commitments. The games played 2 weeks ago on 4 tables were :- Tigris & Euphrates, Libertalia, Traders of Osaka, Russian Railroads, Medici, Star Trek 5 Year Mission, Mysterium, Roll for it deluxe, Werewolf, Codenames, Sauerbaum and Castle Panic. Links to all these games can be found Here

For the last session Coup was the warm-up game, this reminded me a lot of Hoax by Eon from many years ago but with a far neater mechanism. Each player has 2 character cards which they keep secret from the others and on their turn they take one action which could be to just collect a coin or two, the other actions revolve around claiming to be a specific character and taking their special action, this character does not have to be one of the ones the player actually has however they can be challenged by anyone and if they have played false they can lose one of their two character cards, a player can also lose a character by being assassinated, suffering a coup or incorrectly making a challenge. It is the last survivor that remains that wins. I do not generally enjoy elimination or deduction games and this has both, but this is a pleasantly nice exception.

Table 1 started off with Abyss with the Kraken expansion, i have explained this game before – I know not how the players fared.

Table 2 played Drum Roll, again I have covered this one before, players are circus owners and collect performers, workers and various equipment to create the biggest and best circus. It is a resource management game but timing is important with regards to recruitment and delaying can lead to some nice discounts, however recruit too early and you run out of cash very quickly, leave it too late and others end up with the bargain. It is a lovely game and very colourful.

Main action board (before game start) Large white circles are for the players action discs (each player has 3 to play each turn)

Sadly I do not know anything about the games played on table 3 the first of which was Innovation a card game.

S > Enjoyed Innovation, it played really quick for us so I'd be interested to play again just to see more of the cards. There seemed to be a fair amount of luck tho in what you draw not sure whether that was just our game or a general thing.

The next on table 3 was Mammut which was over before I realised it was being played.

S > Mammut is mine so I've played a few times and I think it's quite different with gamers and non gamers. Gamers don't steal shares as much, they just agonise over a share that is big enough without being at risk of theft.

Table 1 moved on to Splendor a simple card collecting game where on a turn you collect 3 different coloured tokens or purchase a card with tokens you have collected, cards provide discounts and the higher value cards also provide victory points, the first to 15 points wins. The main tactic is to create a discount machine allowing you to take a card every turn without wasting actions collecting tokens however it will be the player who can purchase the top value cards first that is most likely to win so that must also be borne in mind when planning what early cards to take.

Table 2 played Factory Funner a recent release by Corne van Moorsel of Cwali fame which I received through the post earlier in the week. It is based on his 2006 release Factory Fun the main changes are in scoring and visually it is now played on hexes as opposed to squares. The idea of the game is to build machines on a factory floor each player having their own factory, machines require coloured input and give coloured output however with only one source of each colour it is important to link machines so that their output provides input for the next machine.

Two of the players boards in our game, the lower board shows a machine valued 4 receiving 1 blue input from another machine whilst giving 3 yellow output to another which in turn is feeding 1 blue to another (bottom section of board).

The game is played over 8 rounds and the winner is the player with the most points, these points come from the machines themselves or from linking machines (you get 3 points per required input on a linked machine). The mechanic of the game is quite simple, each round every player simultaneously turns over a tile to a common pool, then each grabs the tile from that pool which they need for their factory – this is not always as rapid as you think as space is limited on the factory floor so you need machines that have the right input on the right side and it is more important to pick the correct machine rather than be the first to grab any machine. After you have chosen your machine you then place it in your factory wherever you want and build pipe-work so that every machine has the correct inputs and all outputs lead somewhere hopefully to another machine but more generally to a “cap”. Machines once placed may never be moved but pipe-work can be ripped up and rebuilt in any way you wish however each newly placed piece (even a piece taken from elsewhere in the factory) costs 1 victory point, so this can be an expensive process.

The next game on Table 3 was Nexus Ops from what little I picked up this is a combat game with racial powers where the winner is decided by collecting mission cards and winning combat. The pieces looked quite neat and had a nice “glow” factor.

S > I liked Nexus Ops, it's like a quicker, better version of Risk. My dice rolling suck tho.

Medway Area Boardgamers