You are defeated, I have the moral high ground!

As it was a bank holiday we convened earlier and started by playing The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth boardgame. We did not succeed with our mission, sadly.

Then we went into the edges of Davokar, pretty much, on the hunt for the escaped gargoyle. We found it - or it found us - and it decided to attack Elindra. She got two permanent corruption for her trouble. Fortunately we had given that seed to the witch in a previous session, which she had grown to a tree that can remove permanent corruption, so she's "only" on one now.

The engagement between Murmei and Elsiosi Garlaka went ahead, and she left town with Murmei's mum. Not before trying to convince Murmei that Elindra is just a mercenary who doesn't really care about him and would turn against him as soon as someone else paid her more than he did.

As a parting gift Elindra and Valgai were given bottles of expensive wine, as a thank you for looking after Murmei. Valgai re-gifted one of the bottles to Elsiosi's brother, who was visibly uncomfortable by it. HMMMM. The party decided to try the wine on a rat, but all that happened was that the rat got drunk. Did that mean the wine wasn't poisoned, or was it maybe a human-only poison somehow? Because even Murmei finally had to admit something fishy was going on with his future wife.

Two Thieves and What Am I Doing Here?

One of the group went on a well-deserved holiday and the rest of us decided to spend the following two sessions playing the boardgame Gloomhaven, which comes in what's possibly the biggest boardgames box ever. It's YUUUUGE.

We played a Mindthief, a Scoundrel, and a Tinkerer. Lots and lots of tokens. Fun game, though! :)

Call me salty, but ...

Our Deadlands session was two hours shorter than usual, and we didn't do a whole lot, so there wasn't much written down.

However, we also have a boardgaming session saved up for times like these.

We're a bleak bunch of bastards

Having some delicious cake and a long, very good game of Cards Against Humanity with a special guest star. :)

A great game to get to know new people

We were meant to have the (potentially) final session of Legend of the Five Rings this time, but two character sheets were missing, some friends from Sweden were over for a quick visit, and when the GM had phoned one of his flatmates to bring him a book he had forgotten at home we decided to scrap the session in favour of Our Favourite Card Game. Everyone could join!

Of course, mutterings of a "Swedish conspiracy" were abound, yet in the end there was no outright winner, as four people had the same amount of wins, and those people were not all Swedish. So much for that conspiracy, eh? ;)

Impatience is a virtue

This is what happens when you have us play Tokaido and then follow that up by mixing the Firefly and Monty Python versions of Fluxx into one. It gets very, very silly.

There was also something along the lines of the person who brought Tokaido didn't quite bother explaining the rules properly, which meant that he of course won, and someone else got a bit upset about that. Ahh, good times.

Flatpacked in the name of

We bought this game a while back but have yet to actually play it, so we thought we'd finally get around to doing so, in the last session before our annual roleplaying break over the holidays, especially as we were two players down and therefore couldn't continue the adventure anyway.

It's a game where you build your village, hire Vikings and go on raids. It was really complicated to begin with, but got easier as we played. Good game, would play again.

Let's be mean in game terms!

Because people are away next week and we finished this bit of Rifts last week, we decided to play some light boardgames, i.e. cardgames, namely Exploding Kittens followed by Cards Against Humanity.

Meanwhile, we tried to figure out what we want to do after the Christmas and New Year's break. It's looking like we're starting out by trying the Doctor Who roleplaying game, so that should be interesting. We're all going to be inept companions, no doubt ...

Morality is overrated in the 'Verse

Again we were a couple of players down so we decided to play the Firefly boardgame with all the expansions again (except the Kalidasa expansion, which we didn't know about until we had finished). This time we actually managed to get a winner, and with a little time to spare! It was a closely fought match.

People were eaten by Reavers, the Alliance space deck was reshuffled an ungodly amount of times and fun was had.

First, however, we start with some "before the session" chatter from Facebook because this is why I love our group!

There are Reavers in St Albans

Again we were a couple of players down so we settled in for another game of the Firefly boardgame. This time we played with all the expansions - specifically, the Blue Sun expansion which we hadn't tried previously.

We also had another player joining in, as he saw us setting up and hadn't played the game. Unfortunately none of us actually won by the time we had to start putting all the stuff back in the box, but we were quite happy to just enjoy the ride along the way. After all, the Firefly 'verse is pretty darn shiny.

Mansions of Butthurt

A couple of players down, we did a bit of boardgaming. In this case, Mansions of Madness. The GM of the game targeted one of the players first, because he had the lowest stats, and the player wasn't too pleased about it. We all got to be the target at one stage or another, and in the end we all died and Cthulhu took over the world. Oh well ...

We need a flowchart at this point

We're doing a bit of boardgaming at the moment because various people can't make the sessions for various reasons.

Last Tuesday, we played Once Upon a Time, which went from a children's game to something along the lines of Game of Thrones, but even more convoluted - hence the need for a flowchard. We followed this up with A Study in Emerald, where the game play was straightforward but the setup was about as convoluted as the previous game's storyline.

The bonus round was written down playing Boss Monster, Runecast and King of Tokyo. There were some spectacularly bad foreign accents during Monty Python Fluxx as well ...

Relic is like Talisman, but enjoyable

At very nearly the last minute we realised that the GM had the week off, and so there would be no Rogue Trader that session. Keeping up the 40k theme, we opted to play the 40k boardgame Relic instead, and for once I actually brought the quote pad with me and kept notes.

I'll use a spell-checker if I have to!

Last week we generated characters for Rogue Trader, but that didn't generate a lot of quotes, so I figured I'd put it together with the first session instead.

Here's one we made earlier.

In fact, it's not roleplaying at all, but instead it's boardgaming during this year's International Table Top Day! #ITTDatChimera

I've never been so tense to start a boardgame

After finishing Hunter, we've had a couple of sessions of boardgaming. The first one was zombie survival game Dead of Winter, and yesterday, we played the XCOM boardgame - which is a very stressful (yet fun) experience.

We also started putting together characters for the next roleplaying game we've got lined up: Deadlands: Hell on Earth. It's like Deadlands, but in the FUTURE. With MUTANTS. And RAD POISONING.

The person who comes last can be Wil Wheaton

For the past few years we've hosted a New Year's boardgaming extravaganza at our place. This New Year's Eve was no exception.

We warmed up by playing Dixit, then Cards Against Humanity, and Betrayal at House on the Hill - which saw in midnight - and the next day, we rounded off by a few games of King of Tokyo.

That's right, we sure know how to party! #wearehorriblepeople

You're not rolling particularly high, are you?

Two regulars down but with the addition of an occasionally recurring player, we decided on playing Betrayal at House on the Hill for this session. We were doing okay, and then the little boy turned out to be a traitor (AGAIN - seriously, third time playing this game in the group and all three times that kid's been the baddie!) and summoned a ghost.

The ghost took down three of the explorer characters and the traitor died but there was one guy left standing - who finished off the ghost and lived to tell the tale. Somehow they were making it out to be some kind of feminist conspiracy, because the female characters died first. Methinks feminism isn't a word that means what they think it means.

Can I take your Sanity?

For this session, we did two things: levelled up our Rifts characters, followed by a game of Mansions of Madness, one of the expansions. The GM had had a bad day, so he was definitely in the mood to inflict pain on us - but first, getting us into a false sense of security by being nice.

We got the clues, were doing okay, and when the character with the silver tablet was making a run for the exit, hell broke loose ... quite literally. And then we all failed horribly and the GM won. It was a fun session. :D

Oh dear, we haven’t even started playing

One player down, we decided a game of the boardgame Pandemic would be a good idea. And it was - we won. By the skin of our teeth, perhaps, but still. After that, seeing as how we had plenty of time left, we started rolling up some characters for the next roleplaying game we're doing: Rifts.

There wasn't a lot written down from this evening, but luckily, a couple of us went roleplaying over the weekend as well.

The Saturday game will be perhaps one session a month, and is the Warhammer 40k based Only War. A group of Imperial Guards have been trapped in a hive for quite some time, until one day, the tech priest finally managed to get the doors open.

No one's outside.

Trying to find some supplies, the party headed out and ... were eventually shot at. And we ended the session on a cliffhanger!

Is Mansions of Madness like Cluedo for Satanists?

As we had to fill a session with something due to being a player short, we decided to try the Cthulhu boardgame Mansions of Madness - a relative of Elder Signs and Arkham Horror. Three investigators went to an old mansion, where axe murderers abound!

... We didn't succeed. The GM won. Oh well.