<h2>Welcome to your friendly local board games club</h2>We meet at Ousebank House in Newport Pagnell - see <a href="/find-us" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">directions here</a>. We meet every Thursday night at 6:30pm and once a month on Saturdays from 9am.<ul><li>We advise you <a href="/#" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">pre-register</a> on this website and <a href="/games" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">book into a table</a> to play a game.</li><li>Aim to meet at 6:30. If you are going to be late, please let your table know.</li><li>The attendance fee will be £2.50 (£3 non-members) for 2024 evening sessions, and £5 for whole-day Saturdays. This can be done via contactless payment.</li><li>The next Saturday games day will always be listed on <a href="/games" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Looking to play</a>. For future games day dates, and other club events, see <a href="/calendar" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Calendar</a>.</li></ul>New visitors are most welcome –&nbsp;read <a href="/about" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">about the club.</a> If you wish to arrange your first visit with us please either email npbgclub@gmail.com or contact us on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/NPBGClub" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">facebook.</a> Once you are all setup on the site,&nbsp;<a href="/say-hello" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">say hello</a>&nbsp;if you want to introduce yourself.<h3>How to use the site</h3>You will need to sign up in order to interact with the site. This is very simple: just press the Sign Up button at the top-right, provide your email address, and click the link on the email confirmation. You can then join games or suggest new games on the <a href="/games" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Looking to play</a> tab. Once you are known to us, we will mark you as a "trusted" user: then you will also be able to post comments.If anything is unclear, please check out our <a href="/faq" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">FAQs and Troubleshooting</a> page, where we will provide answers on any difficulties you report on using the site.<h3>Note on booking tables</h3>The club will normally use the downstairs front bar, and the upstairs room. We will be using the club's tables, which are stored in the upstairs room.There are 4 "standard" size tables (6' x 3') and 4 "large" tables (6' x 4'), along with the fixed table in the front bar. Apart from the fixed table (table 1), these are all stored in the upstairs room. In general, we advise games using the large tables to play upstairs, as the smaller ones are easy to move down the stairs.There is space for 3 tables downstairs and 4 upstairs. The "book a table" dropdown list allows you to specify your room and, where there is a choice, your table type. You can use a large table downstairs if you are prepared to carry it - just put a note on your booking to say so. There is no lift, so please make every effort to accommodate those who can only play downstairs.

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It's time for the umpteenth instalment in the regular series of Steve's shelf of shame, or, more specifically: "Games that no-one's heard of but Steve picked up when they were new many years ago and then forgot about." Which may not sound promising, but to those of us who regularly subscribe to this series, it's been a gold mine. In the past it's brought us <a href="/posts/fri-sep-08-2023-7th-sep-2023-league-of-six" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">League Of Six</a>, <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/84772/sun-sea-and-sand" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Sun Sea &amp; Sand</a>, <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/13780/in-the-shadow-of-the-emperor" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">In The Shadow Of The Emperor</a> and, more famously since its appearance in the <a href="/tournament/2022" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Tournament</a>, <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/39927/last-train-to-wensleydale" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Last Train To Wensleydale</a> - all of which I've really enjoyed.Back in 2010, a little-known designer released a new board game all about making wine, with nice mechanics woven into the thematic elements like aging in a cellar, and regular wine fairs; with the notionally different aims of money and prestige somehow combining into a single scoring mechanism in the end. The game was a hit, and quickly developed a cult following that has accompanied the designer from strength to strength in the years since... Or rather, that was <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/42052/vinhos" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Vinhos</a> and Vital Lacerda. Meanwhile, another wine game with all that stuff from 2010 didn't quite make the same impression: that one was <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/75212/grand-cru" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Grand Cru</a> by Ulrich Blum.So what's the difference? They're obviously completely different games, with just the thematic elements in common. <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/75212/grand-cru" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Grand Cru</a> is certainly simpler than <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/42052/vinhos" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Vinhos</a>. There are a couple of really nice mechanics that I've not come across elsewhere. Of all things, it reminds me of <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4098/age-of-steam" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Age Of Steam</a>, but without the network building; insofar as each round you have to decide up front how many loans you're taking, and you need that to cover both auctions and upkeep. Running out of money is really bad - but what you've borrowed will count against you later.<a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/42052/vinhos" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Vinhos</a> is about Portuguese wine so, thematically enough, you win through prestige, and you gain prestige in general through making high-quality wines. Whereas <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/75212/grand-cru" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Grand Cru</a> is about French wine, for which prestige is gained through advertising. I think we are playing as the large wine producers or cooperatives, not the little specialists; so the aim is to make lots of money. You start with nothing and a bunch of loans, and you aim to win by selling lots of wine for lots of Francs, paying off your loans and having more net worth than any other player.The main gameplay is nice and straightforward. You take turns, doing one thing each turn: buy stuff for your vineyards through auctions; harvest grapes and do other things to make wine; and sell wines. At the end of the year, you receive prestige at the wine fair and pay interest on your loans - and also take more loans or pay off loans. The nice thing is, the year-end is triggered by the first player finishing their harvest. You have lots of actions you want to take, and the order you take them in is important - but working out the ideal sequence is completely undermined if the year ends too early. You can end the year early and ruin it for everyone else - but make sure you're not also ruining it for yourself!It's a most-money game, and you get money by selling wine - and also at end-game for the number of vines and other things in your vineyard - so the best strategy is to make a lot of wine, right? Apparently not, with this end-of-year mechanic. The best strategy is to get your wine made and sold promptly - and to sell more of it than the others in that same prompt timeframe. It took us a while to figure this out.After a while it became clear that David and I, who had both built only small vineyards with few vines, were managing to run a steady production line of key wines. We'd then trigger the year-end, while the others, who had all invested in bigger, more diverse sets of vines, were never able to get all theirs harvested or sold in the time available. So we were able to focus all our efforts on advertising our single wine types and selling at high prices, while the others spread their bets into multiple varieties, none of which yielded the same returns.If it weren't for the end-of-year mechanic, this game would be unremarkable. But with that mechanic, it reaches the high bar set by all the other Steve's-obscure-finds games. Maybe not the best, but I really liked it. And there's lots of scope for replayability: winning ultimately comes down to who manages to sell the most, and how best to do that depends on how everyone else plays the game - which is always my mark of a good game. In our game, the second-priciest grape variety (Cabernet Sauvignon) did the trick for me, because almost everyone else went after the priciest (Pinot Noir). If everyone goes after Cabernet Sauvignon next time, then another high-end grape will probably be the way to go.Apart from the good track record of obscure games from Steve's shelf of shame, I signed up for this one because it claimed to take just 90 minutes - and I needed to go early. The problem was, the end-game is triggered by someone paying off all their loans. We took nearly 3 hours to finish, which probably tells you something about how well we played the game. Maybe we'll do better next time...There was a lot of wine washing around the gaming tables this week. They were celebrating their return from LeiriaCon with champagne at the next table in <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/332853/dom-pierre" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Dom Pierre</a>, which Paul managed to wangle a free copy of from Rola and Costa themselves as a reward for going to Leiria. Or possibly he gave them one of our coasters. We'll look forward to a Rola-And-Costa Night in future to join the existing <a href="/posts/sun-nov-17-2024-14th-nov-2024-vital-night-speakeasy" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Vital Night</a> - they might even get a free week, if Paul can find the funds for a second and third free entry in the budget in addition to Vital's. Anyway, from what I saw it looked like a game I'd like to try; if it's ended up in the club's cupboard then I guess we'll all get the chance.

17th April 2025 - Grand Cru

I was very lucky this year at LeiriaCon 2025 to meet so many great designers and test some games in various stages of development.It is one of the best conventions out there.I will try to post separately some photos and a little bit of info on each game that I played.First up is Nippon: Zaibatsu which reimplements the 2015 game Nippon.This is the same design team as before, which is Nuno Bizarro Sentieiro and Paulo Soledade.I was lucky enough to have played a copy of this, kindly lent to me by Paulo at the con this year.Note that the version we have played is subject to change and is a pre-production copy.What a great game though. I am coming at this from not having played the original so I guess by view is from a new player.The game itself at heart is an area control gam,e but instead of "dudes on a Map" it is about producing goods in your factories and shipping those goods to the various region,s which will score. The goods can vary in value based on the type and the amount.For example cotton can be worth (I think) 1, 2, 3 depending on if you ship 1, 2 or 3 crates of it whilst clocks are 5, 6 or 7 if you ship 1 to 3. Each region has a variable setup as well so some areas might not need fabric whist others might need two lots.You get the different goods by building factories, which require various resources for. Some resources are obtained by actions (Coal) whilst others (steel) is obtained either via placing a good on a map or by a reset phase.Your actions are determined by various coloured workers that are across the top of the board. Each "action" has 3 workers, and when they are empt,y they get refilled. When the refill area is empty that is one round gone. This essentially is the game timer.So your actions are:Build a factory - These will give you either a one-time bonus or an in-game change. This is how you also build more lucrative goods.Build 1, 2 or 3 Trains - These are used to give you a +2 for area control in each region.Increase knowledge - You need this to build better factories.Produce Goods - Uses coal, and then you produce what your factory can.Get Coal - See above.Ship Goods - Take goods from your warehouse and put them on the board (and get area bonus)Buy Boats - This helps with boosting your income bonus and adding another worker.Add Automations - Allows you to produce more goods in factories.There are a couple of mid game scoring rounds which check for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in each region. You get influence in those regions by shipping goods of a certain value.Finally there is a reset action where you get income. This is quite clever as you get up to 2 bonuses based on the colour of meeple you took and where they are on your order on the board. However, you have to pay income based on the total different colours you have. Ideally, you just want two colours but that might not be possible based on what choices you have.The game itself looks amazing and feels very good to play. Initially, I thought we would have too much time and end up doing everything, but the game speeds up towards the end and its clear you can not.This is one I will back on Kickstarter when it comes out later.

LeiriaCon 2025 - Game Review - Nippon

It's been a while now since the West Herts Playtest UK group disbanded, and I had not realised how much I missed it until I got to do a playtest at the club this week. Coming to us all the way from Milton Malsor, which I learnt is somewhere south of Northampton, was John with his prototype game Space Traders.When I write these reviews, I'm by no means always nice. If you read my <a href="/posts/sun-nov-17-2024-14th-nov-2024-vital-night-speakeasy" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">notes on Speakeasy</a>, you'll recall that even the great Vital isn't safe from my constructive feedback. But I really enjoyed Space Traders.John's cause was perhaps helped by setting my expectations low: it was, we were told, "complexity-wise ... similar to something like <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/148228/splendor" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Splendor</a>". This was true, though in most other respects it was not similar to <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/148228/splendor" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Splendor</a>. It had a bunch of things that I always like about a board game... modular board, wrap-around board, lots of incentive to screw other players over; and driven by a set of cards that are all nominally as good as each other, but which suddenly become really good or really useless depending on what you've got on the board.There are a set of 16 (modular) board tiles that represent star systems (or constellations, or possibly moons in the Solar System, based on their names). You're aiming to supply them with resources - which means putting your counters on them. You get points at the end for counters on systems, plus accumulators for majorities and complete "control" of systems, and other things like that. But your counters can be displaced by other players also "trading" there after you. Once a system is fully supplied with resources, it starts manufacturing goods, which you can then pick up and deliver to other systems for more points.You have a hand of 5 cards that you use to move, each of which specifies a direction, a distance and a type of resource to trade when you get there. So on any turn, you can normally get to about 4 of the 16 tiles, and trade something. But, like a good Eurogame, you can't score big on all the different scoring mechanics: you have to focus on a few of them. And once you start doing that, you really care about what's on those cards!John said he was unsure about whether to pitch this game as a family game or a "gateway game". It was certainly a gateway game in terms of that tactical challenge, though I discovered you could also succeed by just bumbling around cluelessly. Not having fully understood the rules, I just went where my cards took me in the first game without any particular aim, and I did win - though as Paul kindly pointed out, this was probably a fluke. We played it a second time, and the second time I tried to focus on selected accumulators - and I came joint-last (with Paul 🙂). So you can definitely do it as a family game too, in that the aimless bumbling method works at least as well as the considered strategies.After the first playthrough, I felt there was plenty more mileage to be had from this game, even without the set of added-chaos expansion tiles that John had also included. Of course, once I knew there was an added-chaos option, we had to use that. John recommended we only include one expansion tile in a game, and I chose the one I thought sounded most chaotic (moving the tiles around if you land on it). And it added just the right level of chaos: the underlying course of the game was broadly preserved, but with intermittent injections of randomness that each tended to benefit someone and annoy someone else. If the other expansion tiles are anything like that one, there's loads of scope for replayability.Each playthrough was about 45 minutes. If it had been longer, it would have started to feel a bit procedural; but as it was, I was completely engaged in the arc of the game, building to its crescendo as the cards ran out. At a Thursday at the club, this would be a filler - but one of the more considered fillers like <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12/ra" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Ra</a>. And we'd definitely play it more than <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/148228/splendor" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Splendor</a>.So I would definitely play this again - and I hope John can be persuaded to bring it again. Paul did his part, in that John has now been press-ganged into signing up for membership. And above all it was fun to do playtesting like this: a mix of playing the game and trying to break it. We failed to break it, but we did all chuck in some ideas for what might improve it - which always makes you feel like you've made an impression, even if none of our ideas actually gets used. So I'd recommend this all round: playtesting in general, and playing Space Traders in particular.All these low-downtime games... once again we got to the end of the evening and I hadn't looked around the other tables. Sorry. I'll make sure I write about what everyone else was playing next time, I promise.

Good write up, Robin, and certainly echo your thoughts.

Thanks Robin for the honest review (and that it was a positive one) Happy to bring along any time and hopefully join you all for a game of something else later in April.

Welcome to your friendly local board games club

How to use the site

Note on booking tables

17th April 2025 - Grand Cru

LeiriaCon 2025 - Game Review - Nippon

27th Mar 2025 - Space Traders