5th February 2025
Thirteen gamers joined us for a Sci-Fi and Movie themed evening of games.
A few of the games had been suggested on Discord before the session so the hosts got straight on with setting those up on three tables.
On Mars is a heavy Euro-style board game designed by Vital Lacerda, where players take on the role of colonisers attempting to establish a human presence on Mars. The game combines a mix of resource management, action selection, and worker placement mechanics as players develop the Martian colony, completing projects that the colony really needs to score points. The game has a complex system of actions, with players needing to balance their efforts on Earth and Mars, ensuring that they manage to plan around the shuttle that travels between both locations at varied frequencies throughout the game.
This was the first time On Mars was played at the club, although other Lacerda games like The Gallerist and Kanban EV have been popular at previous sessions. The host, Jyo K, who had trialled the game online once and had a bit of a head start on the two other players - Steph H and Iain D, who were new to the game but had done some homework. Despite some confusion with regard to placement rules, the group managed to move forward fairly swiftly for a game of this weight. As the game progressed, Jyo K used her prior knowledge of the importance of acquiring contract cards to score points, which ultimately helped her secure a victory. The game’s complexity, combined with the unique mechanics, made for an engaging but challenging first play. Although given that this was a learning game for the two other players, all players agreed that a rematch is certainly warranted and we will definitely be seeing more of On Mars at future club sessions.
The sandworms were back as Dune: Imperium Uprising returned from session 86. Four gamers attempted to tame the desert planet of Arrakis and be the first to 10 victory points through siding with factions, military conquest and card related bonuses. Freshly taught the rules Kathy J. took an early lead by siding with the Bene Gesserit (scheming witches) faction and started amassing a lot of resources but then the necessary cards weren’t coming out of the deck when required and she couldn’t also influence the Spacing Guild leading to a failure to convert those resources to points. Joe (also a first timer at Dune) was steadily working away building up influence with all the factions, collecting location bonuses and intrigue cards and winning a few strategic conflicts. Richie W. bided his time and waited for the later conflict cards to come up and despite Dave’s best efforts hiring sandworms secured some significant victories.
The game ended with an impressive battle with both Richie and Dave playing intrigue cards thinking this would swing the victory their way, but a miscalculation by Dave left him one spice resource short and Richie was victorious. Then it was a draw for second for Joe and Kathy while Dave was last, abandoned in the desert by his sandworms.
Neil donned the famous mantle of Star Wars “entrepreneur” Lando Calrissian and taught Jeremy - playing a female Mandalorian bounty hunter called Ketsu Onyo - how to become famous in Star Wars: Outer Rim. Fame can be gained by completing jobs - from cargo runs to collecting bounties to heists and space battles. You start off on your own with a basic ship and try and do simple jobs to earn cash to recruit crew and upgrade your ship so you can go for the bigger prizes. First one to a set number of fame points wins. There are 4 other factions involved in the game - rebels, imperials, hutts and the syndicate - and your standing with these can change depending on what you do in the game, either hindering or helping you. With these factions come some patrols that will fly around and you can engage them or they will engage you in a battle if you have a bad reputation with them.
Ketsu started off well in the game completing some bounties, getting a better ship and acquiring a few crew - becoming quite famous for her deeds - including taking on the imperials at the request of the rebels and delivering some needed supplies along the way. Lando had a tougher start and had some luck, but also got way laid by some difficult bounties, even with the help of Chewbacca on his crew. So changing track he managed two smuggling deliveries and completed the Kessel run (on the second attempt) which shot him up the fame track past Ketsu. It was all over shortly after that once he installed some very expensive armour in his ship that allowed to gain double fame from his next patrol battle and pushed him to 10 fame points!
This Star Wars game has been at the club once before and is a reasonably quick and simple game to pick up so hopefully will be back again for a bit of “swashbuckling” in the Star Wars universe.
Which left the fourth table choosing from the table of games and selecting two medium length games, Mad Max inspired Thunder Road: Vendetta and a more peaceful Scottish crofting game Isle of Skye.
Some games you can choose to be “nice” and mind your own business, or to be “nasty”. Thunder Road: Vendetta is not like that - the game is all about knocking other players cars out of the game! You start off with 3 cars, and never get any more. If cars are damaged, they can be repaired. If cars are knocked off the board, they’re out of the game and don’t come back. You have 4 dice. A round consists of 3 turns - moving each car once, and using a special action on the command board once (don’t forget!). I (Graham) lost a car after my first turn. This got worse, as my second car got knocked off shortly afterwards. This left me only one car. I managed to stay in the game, whilst others lost 1 or 2 of their cars (sometimes with my “help”).
Before we completed our first lap, Alice knocked out my last car, which triggered the end game. (The end game / finish line is triggered when and only when one player is knocked out of the game.) Janek’s last car was in prime position to reach the finish line, and won the game. I was keen to try again (well, I couldn’t do much worse, could I), but the group decided to play something a bit less destructive!
Isle of Skye is a tile laying game (like Carcassonne). However, ways of scoring vary, depending on the round, the four objectives set at the start of the game, and the tiles that you lay. Each round you earn money, and take 3 tiles. In secret, you discard 1 and put money on the other 2 tiles. This is then made public, and each player may buy one other tile. So you want to put enough money on your tiles to discourage other players buying them, and have enough money to buy a good tile from another player. The game has 6 rounds, with scoring at the end of each round and at the end of the game. There is a good “handicap” system, where players that are behind get more money at the start of the round, and this increases through the game. I managed to score points through out the game, especially with a boat/lighthouse combination and with lighthouses at the end to win the game. A good game, with interesting dynamics and short duration.
Whilst On Mars and Dune were finishing, the remains of the other two tables combined for a couple of games of Mysterium Park. This had premiered at club last session. In the first game, there was only the ghost (Neil) and a medium (Jeremy) trying to locate the murderer and location by eliminating innocent people and places from the roster of 9. It started off well with a single premonition to identify the innocent person, but then the link between ghost and medium was severed and it took 4 guesses to identify the location! But all was redeemed when the ghost gave an amazing last vision that made it easy to identify the culprit and place from the possible three options.
A second game followed this with Graham joining as medium and Neil and Jeremy switching roles. In some ways it is easier with more people (mediums) to help discuss and guess, but in others it makes it more difficult to attain a link as there is so much speculation! It went well though as the mediums managed to guess their innocent people and locations within the 6 turns and got to guess the murderer and real location. This proved more difficult than the ghost thought it would be as both mediums ignored the clue about the balloon in one of the cards to indicate that the clown did it! But they did correctly guess even though it was for different reasons!
The next session is the 19th February, brave the wintry weather to join us for a warm room full of interesting games. If you have any special requests then let us know in advance on Discord.
- Total Session Attendance: 13
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Board Games: