Date: 1st February 2014
Venue: Roond Mah Bit
Participants:
- GC - 'I think you'll find I DID tell you about those victory points.'
- KM - '...they were just misunderstood.'
- LT - 'Wood, I'll have more wood.'
-CG - 'F**k cooperation, I'll have the money.'
Itinerary:
- Smash Up
- King of Tokyo
- Archipelago
- regular food drops
There was some sly pre-beardgamage involving an absolute victory for some allies in Memoir '44 (grats LT) and an epic bout of Netrunner. The Netrunner could have gone either way, but after much thrusting, parrying and riposting(?) the Jinteki Corp eventually triumphed by executing enough of its dastardly agendas... (yay me). Anyway... on to the main event. Yuletide Rules... even in February!
Game 1 - Smash Up!
CG wasn't going to make it until after lunch as he was busy gathering money from 'The Man'. The heartless acquisition of cold, hard cash is a common theme for CG.. but more of that later.
Smash Up! was a first time played for all of us, except for a very limited attempt about 7 months ago with a very tired better half. To speed us through the game, the excellent Tabletop play through of Smash Up! was viewed the previous night. Cards were divvied out and the decks ended with:
GC - Piratical Zombies
KM - Robotic Aliens
LT - Ninja Wizards
Much backward and forward with this, as anyone who has played shouldn't be surprised about. The Ninjzards kept sweeping in and grasping points as bases were scoring, much to to horror of the Rolians and Pimbies. Bloody magic stealth fiends. The game boiled down to a couple of tense base scores with the Zombates going for it to try to deny the others the win and get themselves back into the running... failed epically and the Albots swooped in and abducted victory from the Wizjas. And probably took it into lower orbit and probed it.
They're sick that way. Or maybe that's just KM.
Game 2 - King of Tokyo
The arrival of CG brought an end to KM's victory whoops, a fresh round of hot beverages and the set up of King of Tokyo.
King of Tokyo was the game that kicked off Beardgamage back in The Oktoberfest. The success of it then prompted the purchase of the little expansion Power Up! which adds a Panda and monster specific powers. Today was the first play with the powers.
Failure to adequately explain things to CG did not prevent us from diving in headlong to a good ol' pagger for the rights to pillage the city. Initially there was a reluctance to enter the city, with everyone holding back to gather points and power cubes (or 'juice' in beardgame parlance). Eventually GC and CG started trading position in the city as falling back on points led them to try and catch up. LT surged ahead on points only to be cast down by a swedgy right claw from GC's Kraken. The same round saw CG flattened leaving just KM and GC to batter it out whilst the dead dined on the burgers that had just been served up.
The ongoing failure of GC and KM to actually finish the fight suggested the mighty blows being exchanged were probably a bit more of a floppy play fight nature than any jungle rumble. Eventually, after a little confusion that there may have been a draw with a simultaneous KO - it became apparent that KM's bony hide blocked one damage and he there fore stood victorious, once again, on the city strewn corpses of his fellow monsters.
No aliens this time, but I am sure he did bad things to victory again.
Game 3 - Archipelago
Burgers devoured we plunged headfirst into some hardcore worker placement of an, apparently, semi-cooperative nature. We all hopped on our little wooden ships (shipples? sheeples?slooples?) and set forth in search of a tropical paradise to plunder... I mean bring the benefits of civilisation to...
The first turn was a bit slow as we started to grapple with the rules. There are alot of options with all the worker placement and everything. Even with my trial play through, there was still alot of rules exposition. This pain was lightened by many, many references to the acquisition of wood, in best Catan style. Not bad since only one of us has actually played Catan.
Anyway. After much taxation, gathering of wood and failure to stave off dissent amongst the islanders by providing them with fish we managed to muster together the start of a colony. This was followed by repeated failures in exploration, more taxation (CG and his money fixation kicking in) and more gathering of wood to the point that the natives were on the cusp of revolt when KM's noticed that his endgame conditions had been met and we averted complete failure.
A quick tally revealed that GC had managed to accumulate the most Victory Points through an inability to expend resources and sheer luck.
Victory briefly flirted with GC before eloping with KM as he sashayed out of the front door.
Overall result for the day... KM, despite all claims of uselessness, towered over the rest of us lowly beardgamers.
