Table Top Game Club Week 18: Madness!

Week 18 has come and gone, and we had a great week of gaming.  Tuesday's session featured a new game to our collection, The Big Book of Madness, a clever deck building game from IELLO.  In TBBoM, players take on the role of first-year students in a wizard college (*cough* Hogwarts *cough* *cough*) who have accidentally opened a grimoire of magical creatures.  The players each have a deck of cards made up of symbols representing the four elements.  Players use element cards to thwart curses, cast spells, and deal with ever increasing doses of madness inflicted by the aforesaid grimoire.  The cooperative aspect of the game is reinforced by players having the option of sharing their element cards, and casting spells that benefit your fellow wizards.  We played two games, with a loss for us the first time around, but we rallied to a win the for the second game.  The more I played the game, the more I was hoping we will get a second chance to have a go at this game.  There is tremendous replayability built into the game, and I want as many students to get to try it.

Friday's open-gaming session was a treat when a student brought a game from home that is a tradition in her family.  Her family apparently has played the game for decades, and they call it "Ching", but the more common name for it is Gimme Five.  It's a fun game that can be played by up to six people.  It's a game with a simple concept; two decks of standard playing cards are shuffled together and dealt out to players.  As you lay down a card, you play a chip on a board that has pictures that correspond to the cards.  The goal is to lay down five chips in a row while preventing opponents from completing their rows of five. We played in teams of two, and my student brought her custom made board from home along with customized chips (not pictured above).  It's a simple game in concept, but the strategy is surprisingly deep.  Looking for possible five in a row while thwarting your opponents takes some great multi-tasking.  We had tremendous fun while playing this game, and I can see how it can be a family tradition akin to cribbage.  It's a great game, so I might try to get a hold of the game for the club's collection.

I'll be taking a couple weeks off from the blog as we head into final exams.  The club doesn't run during finals, but when we return, we'll jump into Specter Ops!

I recently learned my little blog has had a thousand page views.  Thanks for all of the support, and please stay tuned.

Thanks for reading!

Table Top Game Club Week 17: Good Things in Small Packages

Hey folks!  This week we busted into the new year with our first game session of 2016.  To kick off the new year, we celebrated Micro-games, great little games that are quick to play, and although they're not particularly long, they are loaded with solid strategy.  We played all three games on both Tuesday and Friday, and they were exceptionally well received.  Our games included:

Rumble in the Dungeon: I think this is a great little game, and is especially endearing to fans of Dungeons and Dragons as there are little visual references and homages to the classic game.  Rumble in the Dungeon begins with the quick creation of a dungeon using colourful two-sided tiles, and then adding a treasure room and exit.  The treasure room gets a small plastic treasure chest, and then twelve cardboard standees are placed throughout the dungeon, one per tile.  Secretly, each player is designated two-three characters (depending on how many people are playing), and then the game can begin.

      Players decide to move or eliminate characters until one is left standing with the treasure chest.  The trick is to eliminate certain characters while preserving your own, but not be too obvious that you are favouring your secret tokens.  It's not the deepest game-play experience, but as a quick micro-game, it serves its purpose, and the art has some humorous notes.  As a group, it was well received on both game-days.

Age of War: Look at that box art!  I love a good samurai, and Age of War delivers a nice little experience of strategy and conquest in a "push-your-luck" dice-rolling game similar to Yahtzee, with an interesting mechanic for acquiring and protecting territory.  Some students felt too much was determined by luck (it is inherent to the game's mechanics mind you). Others got into the subtle strategy of trying to manipulate what territories other players should be interested in, while at the same time trying to reach their own goals.  Three-way grabs for territory can get very intense.  This is a new game for the club, and I think it was a success.





No Thanks!: This is easily the best micro-game for one's money.  Who knew a simple math game could pack so much fun and strategy?  No Thanks! is like combining blackjack with a game of Russian Roulette.  It blends pushing your luck, a little bluffing and manipulation, and some decent strategy.  Considering how some games with massive production values and price-tags sometimes fail to deliver, it's great to see an iexpensive math game strike a chord with the students.  This was easily the game of the week as we played it multiple times.  That said, all three micro-games were well received, and the variety was a nice way to start off the new year.

Next Week, time for some co-operative gaming as we try our newest accquisition, The Big Book of Madness.

Table Top Game Club Week Fourteen and Fifteen: More Cowboys, Pirates, and Wizardry

Sorry for the late update folks.  December 18th began our Christmas break.  That day I began typing this blogpost, but I have only had the chance to pick up where I left off today.  I'll try and make the most of it, so I'll salvage as much from my original post.  These sessions go back a bit, but now that we're back at school, My reports will be a bit more regular (I hope).

The Table Top game club kept the cowboy spirit alive.  We recently played the game Flick 'em Up, and even though I wanted to feature the game Takenoko, the club wanted to try Flick one more time, now including the possibility of horses courtesy of the Stallion Canyon expansion.  Right before the game started, another teacher wandered in to check out the action.  After one look, he was hooked, and it was now even teams of males to females and teachers to students.  We played two games of guys vs girls with teachers and students on both teams.  The guys' lawmen took out the girls' outlaws in the first game, but the girls easily won the second game with some amazing horse manoeuvring.  Poor Takenoko did not get any love, but the return of Flick 'em Up was a great treat.

Friday's open gaming had a good turn-out, so we broke out Libertalia once again.  I wrote about the game on a previous post.  It was an excellent session.

The following week we tried Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre (love the title). Prior to trying it with the group, I decided to buy the sequel called Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Rumble at Castle Tentakill, because apparantly I didn't notice the small warning on the front of the box.  The original game has some cheeky humour, but the sequel has quite a few cards that are rather inappropriate for school.  I don't consider myself a prude, or a supporter of censorship, but the fact is I couldn't justify including cards like the Auto-Erotic Sexsquatch.  Saddly, it was not a good purchase because I didn't feel cofortable with too many of the cards.  For the very same reason, I'm glad I didn't buy the Oatmeal's Exploding Kittens game.  Although it is fun, the theme and imagery on some of the cards just doesn't work for school.  The session itself was fine, as a couple new players were exposed to the original game.

Anyway, now that I'm back at school, expect regular updates once again.  This holiday I managed to pick up The Grizzled, Specter Ops, and The Big Book of Madness.  Here's to a great start to 2016.  Thank you all for reading and supporting the blog.

Cheers