Pandemic Fail!

The Koffee Klub met at Whitehead Primary School on Sunday 27th May and we played Bucket King, Pandemic and our favourite fill-in game Bluff. It was a pleasantly warm evening and the craic* was fine. We had four players this week, namely GaryG, AndyA, Dale and myself GaryB. AndyB joined us for the last few games.

We started off the evening with a light game or two of the Bucket King. GaryG brought this game and whilst you would think that this would give him an advantage you would in fact be very, very wrong. I won both of the games of Bucket King but this was to be my only victories of the evening.
Pandemic is another of GaryG's games though one that he had yet to play. A such this was a new game to the group and we spent the first thirty minutes or so setting up and learning the rules. After this we got started and played for about two hours or so before coming to a conclusion.

We made a fairly critical mistake in the first few turns which really put us on the back foot and made it very difficult for us to win the game. And in fact we were not able to defeat the four viral strains and the world was lost. Oh dear. However we were all very happy with the game and will be trying again at a later date.
We finished the evening with a series of quick fire games of Bluff. This is a great game though one that did not bring me any success this evening. AndyA blazed a trail of wins with some amazing dice rolls and his honest joe tactics which had us all stumped. Well played Andy, well played.
We will be posting more detailed reviews of the games played this week together with the coffee club game ratings system. Next week we will be playing Guards! Guards! by local gamesmiths Backspindle games.
* For those of you unfamiliar with irish colloquialism craic is not a reference to any form of hard drug and instead alludes to the friendly banter and social atmosphere had.

Games Of Thrones

Here is a Koffee Klub report from a few weeks back. We continue to grow in popularity due to the smooth roast blend of relaxed atmosphere and friendly competitiveness, if not in fact for the quality of the coffee on offer. The high standard of the boardgames we have been playing recently has swelled our numbers so much so that we are going to have to branch out a couple more tables.

Last night was no exception as I rolled out the much anticipated Game of Thrones board game (Second edition). This was a timely selection given that the second series of the HBO adaptation of George RR Martin's fantasy epic starts tonight on Sky Atlantic. Having played the original board game and remembering it fondly I immediately snapped up the new edition also by Fantasy Flight games. I hoped that it would serve as a taster for the new series of the TV show, and boy was I right.

We selected the houses randomly with Andy (R1Pped) selecting House Baratheon, Dave (BloddshotDAVE) House Martell, Dale (corpze) House Tyrell, John (johnkell) House Greyjoy, and most fitting I thought given our traditional sparring Gary (twyearling) House Lannister and myself House Stark. The game started slowly with a few scuffles between Baratheon and Tyrell and Martell with Tyrell coming out the early forerunner eventually siezing both the Iron crown and King's Landing. Greyjoy and Stark had somewhat of a bash bosh at this point but in the end this amounted to nothing more than handbag slinging. The real victor of the mid game was Lannister who made solid territorial gains against Tyrell and after Baratheon rebuffed and counterattacked a Tyrell castle assault that would have fairly much wrapped up the game for the Flower-Girls, it was Lannister who suddenly looked the most likely House to win. In the end it was House Stark through sneaky use of my ships to transport my troops into key positions and then a cruel un-Stark-like betrayal of House Baratheon to sieze the final castle to win the game.

The Game of Thrones was a great, fun game to play. More than that it is a game that plays very true to the feel of the stories from which it has sprung. I think everyone enjoyed the game and certainly there was a lot of enthusiasm for a replay. Bring it!

Introducing ... The Koffee Klub

The KoffeeKlub is a bunch of boardgame afficionados and a club in only the very loosest of senses. The club meets once a week on Sunday evenings to play and discuss our favourite boardgames. The group originally formed in 2011 in a gaming centre in Glenoe Northern Ireland but has since moved to a new venue nearby namely Whitehead Primary School.

The name of the group originated from our other shared love. A part of the dynamic of the club was that each week someone in the group would bring a jar of coffee to the meet. There was free coffee offered by the gaming centre of exceeding poor quality and generally the coffee supplied by the KoffeeKlub is of a much improved blend.

We are currently playing a variety of classic and modern boardgames including Shogun, Tigris and Euphrates, Game of Thrones, Power Grid Manager, and many many others. One of the goals of the KoffeeKlub is to play those games that sit on our shelves and do not get the attention they deserve. Many times it is because such games require four or more players which can be hard to organise.

The purpose of this blog is to document the games we play. Perhaps in the process we will introduce games that you may also want to play, we hope so.

GaryB