September Games Night at The Library Pot

This week was the first Tuesday of the month so we were back at The Library Pot in Richmond, West London, for games night.
Just Janet and I this week, as the others were off having lives.

First off we had Kitty Cataclysm, a card game in the mould of Exploding Kittens, for 2-5 players

Source - I kept forgetting to take photos

Every turn you place a card in your kitty (yes, the puns are part of the game design) and follow the instructions. When a player starts their turn with no cards to play, the game is over and you count the 'meowny' in your kitty (I'm really, really sorry, but these are not my puns. Mine would be purrfect).
It's not a bad little game, with some interesting pay-offs between points and effect.

We had one game which ran to the end of the deck and I won by playing a card that put all of Janet's kitty in the litter tray. We had another game that Janet won by emptying my hand after about 8 goes so she had twice as many cards to score as me.
I'd probably place the game above exploding kittens, as this is about achieving victory rather than avoiding losing.

Reef is a pattern-matching game, of the type we keep playing at the Library Pot, for 2-4 players

You draw cards from the centre and then in a later turn play them to place coral on your reef and hopefully match patterns on the same card.
In the picture, I have just played the card next to my reef. I placed two green pieces for later use and then scored three points for each purple piece sitting next to each yellow piece in an up/down or left/right orientation. So 4 x 3 = 12 points.
The pieces you place (almost) never match the scored patterns, which makes it tricky.

It's not a bad game, but nowhere as good as the panda and bamboo game Takenoko which we played last month. It's not really a two-player game either because the cards don't change fast enough between turns.
That said, it's probably good for a family, as it's much simpler than Takenoko or Azul, which are both in the same genre.
We won a game each and didn't have the urge to play again.

The big game was Duelosaur Island, a BoardGame Geek-award winning two-player adaptation of Dinosaur Island. It is not influenced in any way whatsoever by a well-known film franchise. You can tell, because the word 'jurassic' is not used anywhere. Nowhere at all. Except in every review or comment ever made about the game. But, you know, lawsuits...
This is a complex game.

Source - failure to take pics shows how engrossed I was in the gameplay

You draw cards that can either be a dinosaur or a park amusement/concession/merchandising opportunity. You then go through a process of obtaining DNA to make your dinosaur or money to build the park building. You convert the card by either playing the right combination of DNA, or paying the money.
Money also pays for security, because otherwise the dinosaurs eat your visitors, and visitors are victory points.
The bigger and more exciting the dinosaurs, the more people flock to your park, but also the greater the threat. If the threat exceeds the security, then at least you don't have to buy dinosaur food.
There's also 'specialists', which act as bonuses either during play or at the end of the game.

We played one game, which took ages and Janet won because she had a card which gave her extra money every turn, so she could afford more security. I took the approach that a few dead tourists was an acceptable level, which may not have helped my progress.
I'd considered buying this a while back, but I'm glad I didn't. It's a lot of faff all the way through. I had the rule book open all through the game so that we did everything in the right order. So while it is a good simulation of how one might go about creating a dinosaur petting zoo, it lost a bit for us in playability.
We may yet try the four-player version that they also have, unopened.
What the game really needs is plastic dinosaur figures, but there aren't any, which seems a ludicrous failing...

A word about the The Library Pot - they are always welcoming. On weekdays there's no cover charge but they do ask that you buy some of their very nice Japanese-inspired food. We had a meal and drinks for £25 a head and played some good games. Can't ask much more than that.

Lastly, if you're planning to be in the area on the first Tuesday of a month, let me know.