10th March 2020
Tuesday night at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking continues. The final game of the night was 'Death on the Cards'. Read my blog about it here.
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10th March 2020
Tuesday night at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking continues. The next game of the night was Port Royal. Read my blog about it here. 10th March 2020 Tuesday is here and we're at 'The Sovereigns in Woking with the Gaming Club. The first game of the evening was 'Quacks of Quedlinburg'. Quacks of QuedlinBurg is not a game about ducks as I thought when I first heard the name. It's actually a push your luck game about disreputable, dangerous, deplorable and downright dishonest doctors. Actually YOU play the quacks in question trying to create the most amazing and wondrous potions. Amazing and wondrous that is, until they blow up in your face. What's in a game? Quacks of Quedlinburg has quite a few components, there is a game board and personal game boards. There are also tokens - and lots of them too, as they are the most important component of the game.
That the player boards look like pots, flask tiles look like potion bottles and ingredient tiles look like ingredient books shows that some thought, effort and care has been put into the their design. How's it play? Setup.
Quacks of Quedlinburg is played over 9 rounds and something new or different is introduced over several of the rounds.
When players are drawing ingredients from their bag. They can use their flask to return the token to the bag - provided they had not gone bust because of the token. Endgame Play continues normally until the start of the 9th round. The final round is a little different. When drawing a token from their bags, each player keeps the token in a closed hand and every player opens their hand at the same time. When a player wants to stop drawing tokens they simply keep their empty hand closed until it's time to reveal it. After that they drop out of further rounds of drawing ingredients. The phases for spending coins on ingredients and rubies on the droplet/flask are ignored because they are pointless at the end of the game. Instead; every 5 coins and/or 2 rubies will earn the player a victory point. After this, victory points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Quacks of Quedlinburg is a fairly easy game to learn and easy to play. It moves along briskly too as there's very little downtime and it doesn't outstay its welcome as it's finished after 9 rounds. When I played it, it felt like a lot was occurring in a short game time. Pulling ingredients out a bag to put into a pot is a brilliant use of the 'push your luck' mechanic. It fits the game perfectly and surprisingly makes it a lot of fun. Additionally; unlike most 'push your luck' games, going bust does not totally kill a player's turn, they still reap some of rewards of their potion making and they can still carry out most of the other actions. The engine building mechanic works well too, as players introduce tokens into their bags, it makes going bust a little harder, giving players longer more productive turns. Combined, the 2 game mechanics always gives the player meaningful and interesting decisions to make, when to and when not to push your luck? What ingredients to buy? And so on. I liked it and will definitely play it again. 8th March 2020
It's a Sunday lunchtime and we're at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking. Well... we were, but that pesky Surrey half-marathon has filled the pub to capacity and we've relocated to Vicky's place. There was no 50 Fathoms this week as we were 2 players down. Instead we played Concordia. Read my thoughts about it here. 7th March 2020
Saturday night at Matakishi's means time for gaming. Since we are 1 person down, we're playing a board game instead of Clockwork & Chivalry. Tonight we played 'Isle of Skye'. You can read my blog about it here. 5th March 2020 It's a Thursday evening and time for WFRP, session 8, the last session was 5 months ago. Unfortunately, due to the spread of the Covid-19 virus it looks like it will be the last session for some time. Anyway; on with the game. 'The Enemy Within' campaign that I have been running for the last few years continues. Our party are still in Altdorf and still investigating the death of the 'The Grand Theonogist'. In the last session, our party were interrogating four individuals who had 'confessed' involvement in the conspiracy to murder The Grand Theonogist. The questioning continued this session, but our heroes could not get any new information from the four, only confirm what they already knew. Eventually the questioning ended and party left. During their walk back to their town house they caught a strong acrid whiff in the air. As they passed the Konigsplatz, they saw that the Ulrican temple had been burned to the ground along with some neighbouring buildings. The party asked some questions and discovered that -once it became public that 'Ulrican sympathizers' had murdered The Grand Theonogist- a mob had gathered in the plaza and a demagogue had appeared and whipped the crowd into a frenzy. The mob then lynched three Ulrican priests and started the fire. The demagogue matched the description of 'Mayor Gauss', a man the party have been searching for. Upon their return to their abode, they found a letter from 'Inga' the Morrian High Priestess requesting their presence early on the following morning. The following morning the party met with the High Priestess. They all discussed what the party had discovered and how to proceed next.
The party asked Inga to write a letter of introduction to a high ranking member of the Emperor's court on their behalf. Once again, whilst returning to their town house, the party became aware of an event occurring! This time from the vicinity of the docks. They went to investigate and found a gathering crowd of city folk watching the arrival of a small fleet of boars flying Imperial flags. The ships docked and The Emperor's nephew disembarked - along with his retinue and bodyguard. The Royal Carriage arrives, then what looks like a hastily prepared royal reception is laid out. It occurs to the party that this royal visit was unexpected. The party returned home to await a response to the letter. 3rd March 2020
Tuesday evening gaming at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking continues. The final game of the evening was 'Love Letter'. Read my thoughts about it here. 3rd March 2020
Tuesday evening at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking with the gaming club. The first game of the evening was Concordia. Read my blog about it here. 1st March 2020 Sunday lunchtime at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking can only mean one thing. Time for more 50 Fathoms. Location: Paltos.
We've prepared for the big battle to free Tomas from the prison on Paltos. It was the time to begin our assault. In the first moments of our attack, a 'foghorn' blasts out from the prison! Whilst the former crew of 'The Valiant' stormed the front of the prison, Rackham used his magic to assault and damage the buildings in the prison. We attacked the prison from the rear and headed to the main entrance, we managed to quickly defeat the guards and secure it. We then noticed that a group of soldiers were charging up the hill from Paltos towards the prison, there were thirty of them. This could proved a serious problem. We cut the portcullis rope and it came crashing down with a booming thud. The reinforcements could not get into the prison... for now. So we turned our attention to the main building and fought our way there. Our attempts to break into it were proving futile. The building was well constructed and our entry was significantly slowed. Eventually we managed to break in! |
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