Arctic Dawdler

I was supposed to return to Bristol on Wednesday, but the Beast from the East saw my flight back from Dublin grounded. My flight on Thursday was cancelled an hour before take-off, and the booking for Friday lasted all of twenty minutes before Dublin Airport announced nothing would fly...

Only Norwich

I'd heard that Gamers World was a good games shop, but it was shut - along with most of Dublin. I had entered some weird twilight world of snow outside, and work and Netflix inside. Fortunately on Friday some locals rode to my rescue, as Muireann invited me to meet her and her partner John at a local pub. As I made my way there through the snow, the world seemed oddly empty.

Snow

But the pub itself was so rammed to get a table we had to migrate to the pub next door. Muireann and John are gamers and brought a selection along from home, so after some talk (mostly about games) we played the suitably snowy Arctic Scavengers: each player is trying to build a tribe in the post-apocalyptic snow, via the medium of deck-building. 

Most of it is pretty standard Dominion-type manoeuvres: using cards to get more cards. What prevents it from sinking into mechanical drudgery is the skirmishes - in each round there are resources available that players can fight over, so you can hold cards back for the skirmish, unrevealed to the other players. There's also the end-game goal of the Gangs, who'll join the player who has the most of a certain type of card (medicine, tools, etc)

scavenging/drinking

I thought I was having a pretty good debut as I won a couple of skirmishes and looked in good position to win at least one gang. But after a 40 minute fight John emerged the winner, having done very well out of the skirmishes. 

John 42

Sam 38

Muireann 32

There was some talk of trying out Kana Gawa and John even got as far as setting it up. But considering the hour, we switched to FUNemployed, a game of trying to sell yourself at an interview. John described it as Cards Against Humanity for actual humans, and it was a game probably best played after a couple of pints of Guinness. The winner is almost irrelevant - it's all about the nonsense of trying to apply for the job of executioner or school nurse and rationalising your pyromania or habit of carrying a sawn-off shotgun. 

The snow was still falling as I made my way back to the hotel, where I learned the red weather warning had been extended until 9am...

*

On Saturday, after watching Everton's latest capitulation on the telly, I made my way into the city to meet with another pal (and gamer (and game designer)), Robin. After catching up over lunch we negotiated the increasingly slushy snow to have a gander around Gamers World, by the river. Being stuck in a hotel for four days with nothing to do except (when I wasn't working) browse the internet, I had to stop myself making games purchases sheerly out of boredom, but in the shop I found that just as in the UK, prices are fairly ludicrous. But I did get something, spotting a coffee-themed dice game by TC Petty (of Spires fame) on the 60% off table. 

We then made our way to Robin's friends' house, Peter, where we were joined by Joe, Itor, and after a while three young women from the flat below. Before that happened though, we played Chicago Express - a game I played at Joe Berger's house so long ago I think it must have been pre-blog. It's a share-auctioning, company-investing, track building game replete with the opportunity for dick moves. I enjoyed it - it's not Railways, but then what is... Robin won, though I managed to grab second place despite only ever investing in a single company.

Robin and I were keen to try out his new trading game, but first there was a game of Codenames to be played with the new arrivals. I'm not sure how they realised what they were letting themselves in for, but the explanation for the game took far longer than the actual play, where my team uncovered the assassin on our third round of guesses.

sneak peek of prototype!

We still couldn't get any movement on Robin's play-test, and with pizzas and chips joining various other snacks on the big table, Robin and I broke off for a quick game of Okiya, which is kind of like noughts and crosses (you need a row of four to win, or a square of 2x2) but when you place your geisha pieces, there are limitations about where they can go, based on what piece was played previously: as geishas go into the grid, they replace landscape tiles, and at least one element of what's on the most recently ejected landscape tile (birds, ferns, sun, flowers) must be present on the next ejected one.

Okiya

It's quite a sweet game that I lost at miserably. In our house I'm the Connect Four king, but in our best of three Robin attrition-ed me into defeat in game one, and I made a foolish error in game 2, not realising he was one move away from getting that 2x2 set. 

Despite doing bugger-all for days, I found myself exhausted and headed back to the hotel, despite the early hour. Hoping that in 12 hours time I'll be home!