Christmas party and a trip out!

For the Christmas party the team headed out to Board in Isca - faces have been obscured to protect the innocent. 

So from left to right we have DK (let's pretend that it stands for the Dark Knight), Snake-eyes, Steedo and Sylon. 

We managed 2 new games over the course of the evening - neither of which we have played before or that someone in the collective own. 

First up we played Century Spice Road.

This was a fairly light game involving trading up spices to buy point cards - there was a element of deck building, as you tried to get the right combinations to buy the points cards. The end ends when a player collects their 5th point card. I managed to get a number of collect spices cards which allowed to just pick up spices without trading, this meant I was able to finish the game with the 5th card - where as the rest of the collective only managed 3 cards - a win to me!

After a little bit of bimbling we moved onto Shadows over Camelot. 

This is a good cooperative game with a 'traitor'mechanic, which is always fun. It involves winning quests to thwart the forces of darkness. We managed to win the Grail, Excalibur and the Black Knight - we initially thought this was a little bit light and that we were going to win easily.

 But by the end 3 of the Knights of the Round Table were dead (although Snake-eyes would have used the Grail to resurrect ) and Camelot was one Seige engine from falling and Darkness winning. Steedo played a blinder as a traitor, but was in fact loyal! A close run thing. Certainly worth another play and a tough game if there was a traitor.

So a good trip to Board. Now what was my opinion of Board, well - food was nice if overpriced to be honest. I think we where a little disappointed by the lack of support/experts - we did get some help setting up Century Spice Road - but that was it! We muddled through Camelot to start with but picked it up pretty quickly. Someone about to rule check with or suggest a game I thought was part of the idea of a board game cafe. I have to say I'm not sure that they are set up quite right as once they did our initial food and drink order we didn't see any staff again - Sylon had to go to the counter to order a second round of drinks. Surely in a cafe trying to sell more food and drink to the customers who will be there for sometime - we were there for 4 hours (normally we get through a fair amount at a home venue) - so a visit to the table to ask "more drinks/food (do you want dessert?)/everything ok" could add to the turnover. So I think there is room for improvement ....

Overall a good night out with the collective!

Morts