More Sunday Afternoon Games

We got together with our friends again today for an afternoon of boardgames and food. Last time we spent the whole time playing 'History Of The World', so we opted for shorter games this time.

We started with Carcassonne. And, yes, Catherine really does have bright blue hair.

We then moved on to 'James Ernest's Totally Renamed Spy Game', which used to be known as 'Before You Die, Mr Bond', until a cease and desist order forced a bit of a redesign. Regardless it is a game where you take the role of evil villains luring secret agents into your devious lairs so you can kill, or maybe taunt, them.

Here we see Heidi Nguyen come to a sticky end i the Tank of Killer Fish.

It is compulsory to read out the taunt cards in the style of a movie villain and ham it up as much as possible. Here we see Cei doing just that.

This spy was taunted in a lair which featured a luxury yacht and a flying wheelchair. I opted to run the villain as Professor Stephen Hawking.

Finally we got out 'Cosmic Encounter'. Our family hadn't played this for a while, and our friends hadn't played it at all, but we all soon picked it up.

I have the 1985 GW edition, but have added loads of alien powers I discovered on the 'net. Some are ones from official editions of the game, some are one produced by other players and some are my own design. Note that we play a basic game with no flares, moons or other additions.

In this game I was the Illuminatus, who could look at cards from other players' hands and mix them up a little.

Catherine helps John with one of the Edict cards. She was the Philanthropist in this game, whilst John was Envy, who could block the use of other players' powers under certain circumstances.

In the second game I played the Skeptic, which is one of my favourite aliens. It allows you to bluff your way to victory by telling your opponent that you doubt they will win.

Maya looking quietly confident in the third game. She was the Siren, who could lure people to her system and make them attack her there. If she won, she got a base in their system. I did well in this game with the Prophet, who could predict who would win a challenge, gaining a base if they were correct. But Maya pipped me to the post, attacking my system for her final base when my hand was down to a single, measly Compromise card. No-one could stop her.

It's been a busy weekend overall I managed about an hour's work on the bases of my 6mm DBA armies. We also took part in a Doctor Who Trivia Night (we came third after being robbed of second place by a strangely eccentric scoring system), and got together with a couple of other gamers for a family meal and, oddly enough, no games. Two of us did discover a mutual desire to learn to play the ukulele though. Our wives despaired*.

*So will the rest of the wargames club if they discover our plan to get together on club nights for a bit of a practice.