A Glorious Week of Gaming

After the long drought and then last weekend's gaming trip down to Bedford to see Terry and Andrew, who I used to game with weekly when I lived in the south, I've had another week of decent gaming.

The gaming didn't start until Thursday - the beginning of the week was games-free since I missed Tuesday's Newcastle Playtest session. But Wednesday night I finally made the January 2015 edition of Zombology and Thursday lunchtime we got to play it. Three times!

There were loads of changes from the December version (which I sent to Spain and Germany last week to my NaGa DeMon winners - Derek, your copy is ready to go, but I need to get to a Post Office for a customs label). The Boffins have become Gurus and are now treatment specific, the Fatal Mistake cards have gone along with some of the more complex rules. The new rulebook is actually significantly shorter (a good thing to my mind). I've also taken out the play a card, keep a card rule that knackered the drafting aspect.

With only three plays it's hard to tell if it's better or worse, but I tweaked a copy of things during the games and I've another idea I'd like to try out this week (that doesn't require any new components or printing - yay!). It's easier than I was expecting, I don't know it that's just luck of the draw from a small number of samples or a genuine effect, it should become clearer after more plays...

Then Thursday evening it was back to my weekly Games Night for the first time in a month, which was a great evening despite finishing unusually early. We played six games (mostly fillers) and somehow I managed to win four and tie another one. An unusually high win ratio!

Finally, we rounded the week out in style when Paul (who I used to game weekly with when I lived in York) and his family came up to stay for the weekend. Paul and I played games late into the night on Saturday (or what counts for late in my house: nearly 1am!) and then snuck another game in on Sunday afternoon during The Daughter's nap.

It was a great week of gaming, I've played two more games on my need to play this year list (Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia and Homesteaders), plus a couple of new to me ones: Bang: The Dice Game (much better than the card original) and Coal Barons. Plus it was great to catch up with old friends, guys who I used to game with every week and now see far too infrequently.

NaGa DeMon 7: A 7 Player Game and Major Changes Afoot

On Saturday, I went to York for six and a half hours of gaming :): my friend Paul had hired a church hall for the day to celebrate his birthday. Attendance was good with about forty-odd people, a mixture of friends from his games night (that I used to attend twice weekly for four years so know well but see very infrequently), people from Beyond Monopoly the local games club (which I used to attend once a month or so for four years, so I know pretty well but in most cases haven't seen for years) and friends of his daughter and their parents, of which a recognised a surprising number.

I'd taken Codename: Vacuum and Zombology, plus a few rarely played sci-fi games from my collection. In the end the only game I'd brought that we played was Zombology: a seven player game with a bunch of old friends (plus a couple of new ones!). The game lasted slightly longer than I had expected, probably about 20 minutes. There were lots of rules queries, plus a few people were taking it quite seriously (it's a game about zombie science featuring the healing powers of crystals - it's clearly not a serious game!). Afterwards we discussed it briefly and the feedback was generally positive, though again the scoring proved a bit tedious and people struggled during the game to identify the strongest suits, which made their choices slower as they tried to determine what was their strongest move.

Two interesting bits of feedback were:

• Robert's suggestion to put a time limit on the individual rounds to avoid people over thinking their turns and to keep it moving quickly.
• John's disapproval of the way the mechanics didn't fit the theme, since people played the best cards in the second or third round and then after that your spend the last five or six rounds playing the dross cards that are left - why if someone has already run a successful human trial would you bother trying to prove it in a Petri dish again?

All this got me thinking, along with the feedback I'd had during my lunchtime playtest, and gave me an idea.

On the weekends I tend to take The Daughter on a couple of walks to get her to have decent naps (and hence be chipper for the rest of the day). During the morning walk on Sunday I spent the hour working out in my head a new version to address those points. I've got a new version now to try out that makes use of the existing cards (pretty much!).

I'll try to play this version at work again, and also take it to the Newcastle Playtest session on Tuesday, it will be interesting to see if it's any better...

The other games I played at Paul's party were Oregon, Dominant Species The Card Game and Homesteaders (all new to me) and Ave Caesar. Of the three new ones, Homesteaders was my favourite and seeing as I think it was one of Tasty Minstrel Games' first games I can see why they got off to a flying start. It's a great game with worker placement, city building and auctions set in the Wild West. I thoroughly enjoyed it.