A game of Polterfass was already underway by the time I reached the club, a simple dice rolling game but where the dice are barrels with digits on either end.

8 Barrels of Beer and either the 5 or the 3 MUST be doubled

The barrels are shaken under a cup then the cup gently lifted, only barrels on an end score, you may reroll fallen ones but the fewer the barrels that are shaken under the cup the less likely that any of them will be stood on end – a failure to have a standing barrel is bust.

Whilst the shaker is having his turn the other players play cards to indicate what they think the score will be when the shaker finishes his turn.

In the meantime I sat down to a 2 player game of Roar-A-Saurus which I described in the last write-up, this is definitely my favourite filler game at the moment as it is fun, fast and did I mention, fun?

More people arrived and we played Waggle Dance from a British games designer Mike Nudd. The game is all about making honey with you as the controller of a hive of Bees. Each player starts the game with 3 Hive tokens (hexes) and 6 Bees (dice of your colour).

To speed up play it is handy if players set out their dice in numerical order. Note the hexes as dots on the dice - a nice touch to this game.

All players roll their dice and in turn place a die on any free location, once all players have placed their dice the dice are then auctioned in action space order. The first space allows you to increase the size of your hive, the next allows you to breed another bee from an egg, the next laying an egg, then there are 6 flowers to take pollen from, the last 3 spaces allow you to swap pollen, change pollen to honey and take a power card.

Some of the power cards in the game, the sun and moon relate to whether they are played during Bee (dice) placement or on bee retrieval

All seems straight forward however certain spaces have limited spaces and once taken no-one else can go there, these spaces are numbered 1-6 and only those numbered dice can go there, the next difficulty is that there are 6 different types of pollen collected again by the relevant dice numbers, pollen can only be turned to honey when there are 4 pollen cubes of the same colour on the same hex and accompanied by a pair of dice bearing the same number.

A hive just prior to night phase with breeding and honey making about to be activated.

These added complications make for an interesting game, the power cards help add a little chaos to well laid plans but do not imbalance the game. The game is most enjoyable and a little bit of a brain bender, when you try to fathom out what other players are going to use their pairs for and as the players breed more bees the decision making becomes more complex.

In the meantime Table 1 had moved on to Pandemic – The Cure (one I know nothing about again).

Then Table 1 played Abyss a collecting game, players either have a choice of 3 options. 1) Collecting cash cards which can be in one of 5 currencies however as a player reveals a cash card he has to offer it to other players first for which they pay pearls to take, a card declined may be taken by you (which ends the turn) or placed in tone of the currency stacks.

2) Take all cards of a given currency from a currency stack. 3) Purchase a Lord card which will stipulate a cost and what currencies it must be paid for with.

Lord cards carry a power, a number of victory points and a number of keys, should a player accumulate 3 keys they must take a land card and place Lords under it (which nullifies their in-game power) but each Land also gives further victory points.

A player owning 7 Lords will end the game and it is the player with the most victory points that wins.

Roar-A-Saurus play mat carrying 2 damage counters but 2/3 of the way to an attack to the left

I would like to have crammed in another game of Roar-A-Saurus at the end, but time was not on our side.

Medway Area Boardgamers