Our September meet-up was a great day for games!  As always a couple of tables got stuck straight into some meaty games that would take up a lot of the day (and brain power!), whilst others went for (slightly) lighter fare.

The big games on show this month were SETI and Yonder.  SETI has made a few appearances in the past.  It’s a heavy euro-game where players take the role of scientific institutions searching for signs of alien signals and life beyond Earth.

Yonder, the latest game from Haakon Hoel Gaarder (Villagers, Streets, Moon), is a fantasy worker placement game with a few really interesting twists.  Players will try to acquire various resources in order to fulfil envoy requests (like contracts), but once you’ve accepted an envoy, you have to fulfil their requirements every single round or suffer a hefty penalty!  The great twist when on usual worker placement games is that there are different types of workers with different abilities (skeletons don’t need fed, ogres gather double resources, etc), and they only stay with you between rounds, if you play them into your own tableau… but if you do so, you have to be able to afford to feed them or they won’t hang around for long!  Lots of decisions hidden under deceptively cute artwork.

Sniper Elite: the boardgame made its first appearance at the club this month.  Based on the popular video game, this asymmetric hidden-movement game sees one player fill the boots of a sneaky allied sniper, whilst the others play the axis soldiers trying to track them down.

We also saw power network building game Power Grid, and a Lord of the Rings game I’m not familiar with, Adventure to Mount Doom.

Whilst some players were getting to grips with Yonder and SETI, others moved on to (what seems to be a new favourite) Deep Sea Endeavour, and cooperative heist simulator Burgle Bros.  I’ve not had a chance to play either of these yet, and they’re both high on my “want to play” list!

After lunch Power Grid finished up and Potion Explosion found its way to the table - there’s rarely a month when it doesn’t get played!  The Burgle Bros crew moved from heisting to privateering in the pirate-themed game Plunder (who doesn’t love a good pirate themed game!)

Later in the afternoon with the big games finishing up, people had a bit of a reshuffle for the last few games of the day.  Tense cooperative deck builder Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game (the mechanic is in the name!) had players desperately trying to survive the onslaught of the perfect organism in the Nostromo.  The game allows you to play through scenarios from most of the Aliens saga, whilst also being able to mix and match characters from the different films.  Definitely looking forward to trying this again.

As Deep Sea Endeavour managed to get its second outing of the day, some players dove into the depths of push-your-luck adventure Clank! and others took a calmer approach and opted to build animal habitats in Sanctuary.

As I said at the beginning, a great day for games!  See you next time.

Our next meet-up is on 10th October; feel free to connect with members or arrange a game in advance on our Aftergame page, or see upcoming events on our calendar.