19th March 2025
Sixteen gamers joined us for a night focused on space, bus networks, and art.
Dave brought Dune: Imperium Uprising, which is a deck-building, worker placement game. This is the third time Dune Imperium Uprising has been played at the club, the Uprising version adds Sand Worms to battles and makes a number of tweaks. Victory points are harder to come by, and take deliberate effort to acquire. Dave, Reynaldo, Diego and me (Graham) played, We learnt the game readily enough, but the play allows quite a bit of choice, I went early on for an extra (3rd) worker to place every round. This is quite powerful, but was not used to best effect. I did not have the ability to purchase higher value cards. At the same time, Dave went for additional credits to enable him to purchase higher value cards. Several players used spies, which enable workers to be played in a slot already taken - but these did not seem to feature greatly. At the end of each round is a battle - choosing when to commit is important. The Sand Worms featured in a couple of battles, by Reynaldo and I. Dave was slightly ahead leading into the 3rd phase - when winning the battle gives victory points. Dave amassed an overwhelming force to win the battle and the game. I came a close(ish) second. I would readily play again.
For the next table, it was time to catch the Bus. The club has seen several games designed by Splotter, who have become slightly more “mainstream” of late. However Bus comes from the early days, originally from 1999 (yep, that old), although the copy played was the Capstone reprint from a few years ago (with updated art and components). The aim of the game, get passengers to take your buses to where they want to go (and score yourself some points). This is one of those low scoring games, where a single point is a very big deal - this winner (who was also the teacher and owner) scored 12, that’s only 12 passengers delivered the entire game.
What makes Bus special, is that the players build their networks, the players determine where the three types of buildings are, and the players actively get in each others way and steal passengers using turn order. What elevates it to an exceptional game, is that you can stop time. In the normal flow, passengers want to go: home, to work, to the pub/bar; then repeat. So each round they want to go somewhere different… unless you stop time, and then they want to go to the same place again. Stop time too often, and you rupture the space time continum and the game ends.
Although originally published in 1999, Bus remains a brilliant game where the players drive (pun intended) the whole development of the board and scoring. It also has the honor of being one of the early (exact order is debated) worker placement games. You only have 20 actions the entire game, you must use two per round but can use more. This sets up really interesting dynamics where you can over-invest in a turn to score highly but then run out of action markers later in the game.
After missing the last bus, the table moved on to Petite Pastiche. A delightful little game about mixing paint colours to “paint” master pieces - the theme excellently matches the mechanics of set collection and trading in sets of cards to score points. The heart of the game is working out how to most efficiently collect the right paint colours when adding your blobs of paint on to the palette. There’s also trading between players, which adds a certain “Catan feeling” to the game - driven by a very strict hand limit at the end of your turn (better to make a bad trade than simply discard cards for nothing).
As a bonus, the rule book includes an explanation of the colour model that the game uses (it is not the RGB model of computer screens). This is entirely unnecessary, but adds to the charm of the game. Also, each artwork details who painted it and where it (at time of publishing) was on display.
The end of the game is triggered when someone reaches a certain point total, however you also score for partially completed paintings meaning the person who triggers the end game might not win. A very close game with final scores of 31, 31, 30, and 26.
Four players sat down to an amazing Galactic Cruise. The theme is a cross over of a luxury cruise liner offering innovative events and space travel! You need to build the ships, satisfy the guests, increase your network, invent new tech and have enough workers to keep all this going. Sounds like a blast, surely nothing could go wrong! This game was a hit for the players, so I am sure it will be back with a longer dive into the gameplay in future.
Four bounty hunters took on Star Wars: Outer Rim last played in session 95. This time it was Doctor Aphra (apparently a morally questionable, criminal archaeologist initially employed by Darth Vader), Jyn Erso (Deathstar plan stealer), IG-88 (assasin droid) and Boba “He’s no good to me dead” Fett the bounty hunter, out for, well, bounties and space coin. The game started slowly as the players acquired their first jobs and bounties and then set about trying to locate what they needed and deliver them, usually to the other side of that galaxy far far away. Dr Aphra picked some difficult jobs that might have paid off big, except she needed to locate Hera Syndulla (rebel leader) and that was literally the last yellow character token to be revealed having searched all of the most wretched hives of scum and villany across the galaxy. Then Hera took three attempts to be subdued (bad dice rolls) before a relatively short hop to the correct planet to hand her in.
In the meantime the other bounty hunters had completed some jobs and bounties or cargo deliveries, upgraded to new ships, bought some weapons and other gadgets, hired crew, and mostly completed their personal goals. Bounty attempt two by Dr A. was similarly ambitious, on Grand Admiral Thrawn, which went slightly better having aquired a grenade launcher and robot “muscle” as crew to help and only took two tries. But the game ended before the bounty could be claimed and Dr A. was well behind the others, should probably stick to archeology. After a good start Boba Fett (who after recruiting Chewbacca as a crew mate then handed in him for a bounty) was blocked from completing some of his goals by IG-88, meanwhile Jyn Erso was steadily flying around completing jobs and blowing up Imperial planets to be first to acquire enough fame to end the game.
The next session is the 2nd April, do keep an eye on Discord in the days before to see what games are being suggested and book your seat if they tickle your fancy. Or just turn up and see what is on the table to select from.
- Total Session Attendance: 16
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Board Games: