What a fantastic Saturday night again at Coastal Board Gamers on the 20th of August 2022, over 30 plays of 19 different games were completed with many laughs, combos, questions, pauses, and strategic moves made.
Small fun card games like The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, Cards against Humanity, Splendor and Machi Koro 2, were in amongst larger table hogs such as Root, Petrichor, Mercado De Lisboa, Tulip Bubble, Gizmos and Aeon’s End. Classics such as Hansa Teutonica, Villainous, Crash Octopus and Dune Imperium as well as 2 player duels of Raptor and Odin’s Ravens also showed. Plus some new Kickstarters, So You’ve Been Eaten, Keystone: North America and Endangered Orphans.
The game of the night had to be Endangered Orphans with 5 plays where the game was packed up each time and brought back out. I had a play of it, and it was a lot of fun, simple rules – be the last person with at least one of your 4 orphans left to win. Hannah said the game was about “killing orphans” but Jared was determined we were “rescuing and saving them” The game plays well from 2 to 6 players in about half an hour (depending on player count), it was a Kickstarter which came a year late but well worth the wait. Jared and Kathryn had the game for a week at home and played it nine times with different people before bringing it to CBG. The flavour text and art really made you feel for the orphans.
James had been trying to get a big game of Root with The Riverfolk expansion to the table for awhile and was very happy to teach and play this, newbie Katie took out the win coming up from behind.
Dune Imperium was played with 2 separate boards on neighbouring tables before dinner, one of our new members, Alice enjoyed learning this game.
We had a pizza and BYO cold dinner night, breaking at 6 as usual – one group had a huge cheese, meat and fruit platter happening!
Tulip Bubble had a 4-way bidding fight over a very beautiful prized white tulip at one stage, whereas another game which hit the tables twice – So You’ve Been Eaten shows us the inside of “My Gut” according to Carl – not quite so beautiful but got a lot of laughs!
I learnt to play Aeon’s End, a co-operative game which at one stage had Katie exclaiming – “But then I’ll die!!” and Jared’s reaction was cool and collected – “let me just check up the rules on death.” Ahh what fun board gaming is when even death means you might not die the same way as we know death in real life. By the way James thought we had no hope of winning about a third of the way into the game but we came back as conquerors.
Our next event is back up at Fuchsia Fantasy, Lillico Road, on the 3rd of September, from 2 pm. This event is our regular event combined with a special nationwide event RUOK 2 Play? This will not be a lot different from our normal events but will involve some play to win games and providing a supportive, friendly environment for everyone (as we always do.)
