I’ve come to this boardgame thing late – hitting the Big Five-O in 2016, and this Otherworld has remained hidden from me until now!
It started with one video (a Movie-trailer I think!), and as is usually the case with YouTube, one watched video led to another ‘suggested’ video, probably totally unrelated to movies, which then led to another, then another, and down the rabbit-hole I went, finally stumbling, unsuspecting, into a “Dice Tower Top 10” of something-or-other – it was amusing, engaging, and intriguing in equal measure, and started me on an adventure that I hadn’t expected – discovering Will Wheaton, Rhado, BoardGameGeek, Ricky Royal, Rodney Smith and a host of others has consumed hours of my life over the past 6 months, which I have surrendered willingly and without complaint.
It’s a bit like coming to ‘Game of Thrones’ in the middle of Season 4 – you have the unbridled joy of 3 and ½ Seasons to devour, 3 or 4 episodes a night, immersing yourself in a world you never knew existed, but letting it consume you completely, until you catch-up and suffer the despair of realising you have to wait forlornly for Season 5 to appear. And you have no choice but to take it…
”…for the Watch”!!
It has, however, been a voyage of discovery, joy untold! Does Maria (my partner) feel the same way? More of that as we go…
I’ve spent way too much money in the last 6 months, but again, it is, for the most part, without regret (apart from the purchase of ‘Zombies’ which I quickly realised was way too light and random for my liking, and it, and they, stumbled, groaning and wheezing onto eBay, quicker than a survivor could make it to the helicopter and escape!)
I don’t have a huge collection (yet!), but I have discovered my tastes, and been somewhat selective with my cash.
First to the table was ‘Pandemic’ – all the reviews and commentaries pointed in that direction and it wasn’t a disappointment – a game where you play the game; a game where the game bites your arse; a game where your head falls into your hands and actually makes you groan with the despair of another Outbreak…
BUT…the fact that some plastic cubes, plastic ‘houses’, counters and a couple of sets of cards can be that immersive, inspire that level of emotional investment, and provide a genuine feeling of triumph at that first victory was an amazing discovery.
Maria loved this game from the start – a licence to spend money – win-win!!
Second to the table was ‘5 Tribes’ – I used to play Mancala when I was younger, so the idea of that as a mechanism in the game intrigued me – and again, it didn’t disappoint – a good, thinky game with a reasonable amount of choices to be made throughout.
My only criticism - and this may be because we play 2-player for the majority of the games we play – is that the opportunity to bring out the Djinns in the game doesn’t happen often enough. Now maybe that’s our skill in playing, which I suspect it might be, in part, or that our focus in the game is elsewhere – Meeple-positioning can be a brain-fryer sometimes, though I suspect that the level of frustration increases in a 3 or 4 player game as you watch your planned moves evaporate away as Meeples migrate to squares that you don’t want them to!
But that mechanism is enough to bring me back to the game each time.
Sadly that’s not the case for Maria – the box remains resolutely on the shelf when we’re deciding what game’s going to fill our evening – I can’t quite get to the bottom of what makes her choose anything but ‘5 Tribes’ because she’s beaten me more than I’ve beaten her, but there it stays, the Meeples weeping silently in the box.
Third up was described as a ‘Filler’ game, good for whiling away 15 or 20 minutes before ‘Eastenders’ or ‘The Apprentice’ starts – enter ‘Biblios’…!
Maria loves this game more than me, though we both love the simplicity and speed at which it can be played – I’ve even managed to persuade my daughter to play it – at 18, she has better things to do, but hasn’t complained, and even fashioned a win on her 2nd game, much to my chagrin!
I find myself drawn to Euro-style games more and more, but couldn’t resist splashing out on my next purchase – difficult to find at a reasonable price, but the premise drew me to it, and despite my reservations about how it would work with only 2 players, I couldn’t keep my wallet shut.
So, I opened the box and covered my table with a vast expanse of beautiful board and settled for the first time, fog-blind and full of foreboding, to play… ‘Letters from Whitechapel’.
I took the part of Jack the Ripper for the first (and Only game, to date), and for me at least it was a gratifying experience – the idea that you know where Jack is, and the Hunters (in this case Maria playing all 5 Policemen!) stumbling around, certainly in the first couple of rounds, without any real idea where the heckity-heck Jack might be, is very satisfying.
BUT…there is definitely a real sense of tension as the rounds progress and the 5 Policemen (Maria, by round 3, her eyes spinning in her head, steam coming from her ears, trying to remember where she’s been) close in, refine their movements, zero in on Jack’s possible routes home – the last round was unbearable from my point of view, particularly when I almost sealed my own fate!!
For those of you who know the game, on the last turn, there are only 2 possible victims for Jack to kill, so I chose one of them, in secret, choosing the one closest to Jack’s secret hideout, reasoning that I wanted the shortest run home to win the game.
Only after I had chosen the victim did I realise that there were 2 Policeman pawns who could reach Jack’s space on their first move – and if Maria realised this, then the game was over – I broke out into a cold sweat, and was trying to keep the pokerest poker-face in pokersville.
Luckily one of the policeman tokens was a decoy, which only left one dangerous policeman – and again, luckily, I think Maria’s brain was so dishevelled by the preceding 4 rounds that she totally missed the opportunity, Jack snuck off into the fog and made it back to his hideout to win the game!
We haven’t played the game since – Maria is in counselling, traumatised by the enormity of the task, and I think we’re waiting for the opportunity to open the box again with a few friends joining in – Christmas is almost here – what better game to play at this time of year than hunting a hideous, sadistic murderer through the fog-bound streets of London.
Maria is insisting however that she gets to don the cloak and play Jack, and I am looking forward to seeing the game from the other side of the board! Straightjackets at the ready…!
Right, I am off for a coffee and a piece of Christmas cake – if you’re at all interested, I’ll be back with part II sometime over the festive period, probably after the 25th, when I know for sure that Santa will be bringing a sackful of joy, in the form of Last Will (and Getting Sacked), Kill Shakespeare, The Castles of Burgundy, Tsuro of the Seas, Troyes and, perhaps most excitingly, Pandemic Legacy…
Maria has no idea what this means for our social-life!!
Merry Christmas,
Slipperythings
