Friday 15 March 2024

Once more unto the beach

 This week, six gamers arrived at Joe’s house in alphabetical order (Adam, Adam, Andrew, Ian, Martin, Sam) for another dose of gaming goodness. This was my first games night in a few weeks and immediately people started making jokey references to a game that I knew nothing about. How swiftly things move on without you.

We split into two groups. A quartet (Martin, Adam T, Adam H, Joe) played Challengers! Beach Party. Ian asked what new features this variant had and Adam ummed and ahhed a bit before saying “different cards”. Oh, and each player has their own special power and there’s some kind of change in the drafting method. Nothing to do with beaches, as far as I could tell.


The trio (myself, Ian and Sam) played World Wonders, a tile-placement tessellation game that allows players to build famous historical buildings with little concern for cultural or temporal fidelity. For example, Ian built Easter Island’s famous statues of Maoi near his Trojan Horse. It’s a nice game, nothing groundbreaking but fun. I build the pyramid complex at Giza for two points, even though it covered three natural resources, costing me a potential three points. A bad move, strategically, but it looked nice on my board. The scores were so close, they needed a recount.


Ian 37
Sam 36
Andrew 35

Challengers was still ongoing, so we set up Little Tavern. This is a silly, dickish game where a player picks a card at random and decides if they want to keep it at their table or place it at someone else’s. There are event cards, allowing characters to be swapped, removed or added to a table face down so that no one else knows what it is. If you get the right people sitting at your desk, then you can score big points. Ian cleverly got three romantics around his table which, instead of being the start of a menage a trois, actually got him 20+ points.


Ian 35
Sam 35
Andrew 30

Around this time, Challengers ended. Martin had won four out of the first five games, but it was Adam H v Joe in the final, with Adam coming out the winner.

After this, we reshuffled. This time the quartet (Ian, Sam, Adam and Adam) played Forest Shuffle, a game that looks lovely but I know little about. Halfway through Adam T said that he was enjoying it, but he wasn’t sure if anyone else was.


I was involved in a game of Faraway, an odd game with a wafer thin theme of going on a journey tacked onto a quite brain-burning card placement game. The idea is to put down cards that then score bonuses according to other cards in your tableau. However, in a normal game the cards would all be visible when you add up your scores, in this game that cards are revealed in reverse order and bonuses only score for whatever’s visible at the time. For example, you play a card that scores 15 points if you have three stone cards and then you have to make sure that you later play three stone cards otherwise that card is worthless when it gets turned over. There’s a certain amount of player interaction such as when Martin looked at Joe’s cards and said “What are you collecting…. Pineapples?” and I asked Joe when had Martin started calling him Pineapples.


We played twice. I managed to grab a fifth stone card right at the end which meant my 24pointer card was valid when it was revealed!

Joe 81
Martin 72
Andrew 48

Andrew 84
Joe 80
Martin 63

I had to go at this point. Any regrets I had about leaving Martin and Joe as a couple were dispelled when Martin said the next game worked better as a two-player.

I don’t know what that game was, but when Forest Shuffle ended the scores were (according to Sam’s memory)

Adam T 125
Sam 125
Adam H 116
Ian 96

Then five of them played So Clover and “did rather well”. Looking at the photo I have to tip my hat to the audacity of clueing “Water” when “river” was one of the words on a different side.


Rather well out of 30

Thanks all. See  you next week.

Wednesday 6 March 2024

Fibonacci Secrets

With the family soon to move house, we joined Steve, Anja and Louie at Stepney Walk last night (Lennon was in bed) for the final time before they box up in earnest. Katy and I were a little late and arrived to find Adam H, Ian and Martin in a discussion about chairs. Louie went off to change into a onesie, Anja appeared, and we settled straight away into two groups, the hosts plus Ian and Martin playing Old London Bridge...


While the rest of us - belatedly joined by Laura, who formed a semi-co-op with Katy - went to battle in the Robot Quest Arena. 


This is apparently Louie's favourite game, maybe because of the lovely minis or maybe because of the moreish deck-building and rapid turns. But probably because he kicked the crap out of all of us, with only Katy and Laura getting anywhere close to competitive with him.


Channeling the anti-Martin, this is the first time in a long while I've heard anyone cry out that the game 'just isn't long enough'. It was for me though:

Louie 28
Katy and Laura 26
Adam 19
Sam 11

London Bridge was still ongoing/falling down (not actually sure what happens) and Louie had time for one quick game before bed. Despite its alleged 45mins playtime on the box, I was pretty certain we'd get through Tipperary significantly faster than that. Maybe the ticking clock is why I forgot to take pictures, but here's one I made earlier:


Over ten rounds players simultaneously add tiles to their bucolic Irish idyll, putting distilleries next to grain, lining up ruins to get towers and proliferating sheep with which to make jumpers/stew. There's a few different ways to score but a critical one is the fact your largest unbroken rectangle will get a point per square in it, something Katy had to be reminded of mid-game and spent the subsequent rounds in a state of crestfallen anxiety, occasionally casting mild aspersions at me.

Laura 89
Sam 86
Adam 79
Katy and Louie 61 each. 

While this was happening, Old London Bridge came to a conclusion!

Martin 54
Ian 44
Steve 42
Anja 38

Louie said his goodnights but Laura and Katy were both keen to go again on Tipperary, with Martin subbing in for our departee. Again, I didn't take any pictures, so here's another one from earlier, showing how tiles (a choice of two each round) get allotted, using a spinner:


While we polyominoed with intermittent cries of Banshee grief, the others played Misfits, and again, I neglected to snap pics! Sorry. I'm not even sure who won, but I think it was Steve. There was definitely a huge collapse at one point...

Over on our side of the table, Martin led the way on flocks for most of the game, but Katy herded some extras her way at the death to claim the biggest flock bonus. But with her geometric confusion now out of the way, she didn't even need it to claim the laurels!

Katy 89
Adam 78
Laura 75
Sam 69
Martin 68

Laura now left us as well and we shuffled seats, with Anja, Steve, Ian and Martin playing Gang of Dice. 


Whilst Katy and I took on the unenviable task of playing Adam at Ticket to Ride: Berlin. 


Somehow I managed to convince myself I was in with a shout, but I'd missed that Katy and Adam both had three tickets to cash in at the end. And unfortunately for Katy, she now realised she hadn't completed one of them. 

Adam 49
Katy 40
Sam 39

Fuelled by no more than resentment, jealously and immaturity, Katy and I both decided to pretend Adam hadn't won. But it got confusing when we couldn't agree on who had.


Meanwhile, despite "pissing around with a single die" (-Martin) Steve wrapped up Gang of Dice with a very convincing win. 

Steve 73
Ian 51
Martin 29
Anja 9

"Not my game" said Anja. 

We decided to round off the night with So Clover before realising nobody had So Clover. Similar confusion -mostly on my part - about Fun Facts followed, before we settled on a very funny episode of Just One, punctuated by Martin's slightly lewd grunting noises whenever he felt someone could use a prompt. 


Steve's first word as guesser was 'Series' and two of our clues (Television) were duplicates, leaving him with the following:


Steve said 'sequence' aloud, but not in a way that sounded like his final guess. Apart from his occasionally wailing "Thrones?" at the ceiling, this ten-minute chapter of the evening was largely Steve's Existential Crisis and the rest of us being Increasingly Unsympathetic. 


Sorry Steve. He gave up in the end, only to find that his next word was similarly tricky (Crepe) and Katy's clue of Póo was apparently no help, especially in that it seemed to combine with other clues of tissue and paper in a possibly misdirectonal way. Nevertheless, Katy kept saying Poo in an exaggerated French accent, hoping Steve could make the breakthrough... but no. In fairness to Steve, both tricky words and probably not helped by us all giggling and Martin's sexually suggestive noises. 

We scored a pretty shabby 7/13, I don't remember how the rulebook judges that but I don't think it's very effusive. A very entertaining end to the last night at Stepney Walk though! 

Wednesday 28 February 2024

The Happy Filcher

Games night arrived again, and so did the gamers. Adam T was first to materialise and chatted with Sally whilst I freshened up and bought beer and Quavers. Then Martin, Joe, Adam H and Ian all came through the door and we got cracking, kicking things off with a six-player Phantom Ink. 


Adam T and I teamed with Joe (our happy medium) and Adam H and Ian were ethereally clued-to by Martin. The secret word, unbeknownst to us, was Helicopter. We asked Joe would would happen if you buried it for a year, and he replied with SYC, which we figured to be sycamore. But Ian and Adam H figured it too, and Adam T's eureka moment prompted them to guess, knowing already that the study of whatever the word was began with AER. They jumped in ahead of us and guessed correctly, ending the game after about five minutes!

We split into threes with Martin, Adam T and Joe all keen to wrestle with Carl Chudyk's cards-with-a-billion-uses battle of Aegean Sea. I introduced Ian and Adam to World Wonders, with its delightful wooden bits. 



In World Wonders, we're buying buildings each round - and occasionally, wonders as well - and trying to surround them on our board; surrounded building being worth points. Connecting to natural resources is also points, and so is the lowest-value resource on your player board, in a mildly Knizian twist. We found that the flexible towers were at a premium, and unsurprisingly Adam regularly bought what I wanted from market. Ian began fretting that he was going to be last, despite the alluring cluster of wonders he'd built on his board.


I'm not sure what was happening in Aegean Sea, except for the general vibe of chaotic overwhelm, with Martin exclaiming "This is mental!" several times. I am vaguely aware that each player has an 'island' upon/under which they can play cards that Do Things. Like Innovation, how the cards combine in a given game can vary the experience massively, and there's more than one possible endgame I believe. At one point Adam announced he'd won, before Martin explained to him that he hadn't.


We wrapped up World Wonders to find to nobody's shock that Adam had won:

Adam 36
Sam 33
Ian 32

And began playing Misfits, which I didn't realise Adam hadn't played yet. He kicked things off by placing a column in the middle of the table, and I thought this wouldn't last long. But it did.


After about 6 minutes though we were running out of options, and someone was going to take the fall. That someone turned out to be me when I rejected the idea of placing my last cube and tried to shed a column, with catastrophic results, The entire thing fell, including the base, and Ian started a new tower from scratch:


Which despite our best efforts at sabotaging him, Adam won in short order. And, after Martin accused Joe of being a filcher and he turned to beam radiantly at me, unfortunately too briefly for me to get a photo, Aegean Sea finished at the same time!

Joe 13
Martin 10
Adam 6

Who knows what occurred, or if it'll ever make the table again. Everyone seemed happy to experience it though. New groups assembled with with Joe leading the Adams off to play Robo Trick and Martin cajoling Ian and I to play Armadora, possibly the ugliest game I have ever seen, with some artwork that is so generic it's almost not, and an everything-dipped-in-honey glossy finish. This photo sadly fails to capture the dazzling sheen whenever any light caught the surface.


But the game itself is dickish fun. There is a shared board with a bunch of gold scattered around it. On our turn we can either place one of our tiles somewhere on the board, or place two 'palisades' (wooden bits) that divide the board into smaller territories, with the caveat that no territory can be smaller than four squares. 


Although our tiles have varying number values (most are ones, but there are 2's, 3's and a 4) and they are placed face-down, the palisades are what really make the game spicy, as we all try to cordon each other's tiles off from the juicy gold. When there's nothing left to place all is revealed and the player/s with the highest tile value in each region claim the gold. I'd ducked out of a couple of battles in one part of the board, and it turned out well for me, as Martin snagged two big areas from Ian:

Sam 19
Martin 18
Ian 3

Meantime Robo-Trick was still going and unfortunately I cannot illuminate what was happening, as I've never played it and was distracted by Armadora. But we had a couple of cracks at Accuse! in the meantime...



The first one I ended too soon by taking a bit of a wild guess, holding two characters in my hand making me somewhat overoptimistic. There wasn't enough info for either Ian or Martin to subsequently figure out the murder, but we played again and this time Martin ended things, but found his accusations unfounded. I was next to go and took my first win of a game I am pretty shite at. 

Robo Trick finished as well with the happy filcher taking another win!

Joe 2
Adam H 0
Adam T -7

And with a bit of a drive ahead of him, Adam T bade his farewells and left the five of us to play MLEM, the bonkers luck-pushing cats-in-space area-control and moons game. 


Ian set off for the various moons (moon bonus) as Martin and I raced for the planets (planet bonus) and Joe's previous strategy of going for Deep Space at every opportunity was tweaked to just doing so now and again. Adam played shrewdly, as one might expect, but found now and again that shrewdness and dice do not make good bedfellows. After a lot of dice-chucking and several rocket explosions, I chickened out of the active mission just in time - ka-boom - and ended the game by placing my last cat. 

Sam 32
Joe 24
Adam 20
Ian 15
Martin 10

And that was that! Thanks all, it was golden.

Wednesday 21 February 2024

Cakeblazers

After a last-minute change of venue, Katy and I (Sam) were first to arrive at Joe's, and our host set the tone for the evening with a lighthearted quip about masturbation. As we pondered what kind of day Joe might have had, Martin arrived and before long was setting up Accuse! the game that we all profess to be terrible at, but I definitely am. 


I was first to accuse, and got almost everything wrong. Katy followed me and missed out by just one factor. But of course with a murder, knowing where it took place can be critical and Martin's decision to go with the airport won him the game, and we all rued the fact we never challenged him when he said "Hairport".

Martin: Promoted
Joe: Passed over
Katy and Sam: Fired

Steve and Adam had arrived and although Steve briefly vanished again, we were now at our full capacity of six, so promptly split into two groups. Whilst Joe, Steve and Martin played Tajuto...


Katy was keen to try Trailblazers, and a freshly-shorn (but according to himself, grumpy) Adam was happy to give it a go. The game has three different 'settings' and we played twice, first on Adventurer mode and then Animal mode. 


On Adventurer mode, you're building two trails. They have to loop back to the campsite they started in to score, but the longer the better, because adventurers move along said trails, establishing campfires for points. I made it more complicated than it needed to be, panicking that I'd previously played it wrong - before later realising I hadn't - so we ended up with far too many campfires that we subsequently snuffed out. But it was fun anyway. 


Katy took a narrow win, as Adam's scheming fell apart on the final turn, possibly because we drafted our cards in the wrong order to be fair to him:

Katy 46
Sam 43
Adam 26

Tajuto was still going, with Martin complaining that all he'd achieved so far was an aneurysm. Steve went to the toilet and they marvelled at his collection of tiles (on the table, I mean). 


We Trailblazered again, this time forfeiting adventurers and campfires to just go animal mode: now, all your looped trails score points and distinct animals on the trails score escalating points, instead of the basic 2points-per-animal happening in Adventurer mode. Katy loved the animals. 


And I think they both preferred Animals mode, as creating numerous overlapping loops certainly had some agonising fun. Adam said he really liked it despite the fact there's some tangible luck-pushing in how far your trails go, and the fact we kept screwing up the card draft. But this time Katy completely mullered us, scoring so many points she needed to ask Martin to do the addition.

Katy 82
Adam 56
Sam 53

Tajuto finished at the time, with Martin and Steve celebrating their shared victory. I missed the fine beats of the drama here, but everyone seemed happily sated, even Joe.

Martin and Steve - 12 each
Joe - 6

We regrouped as a six and played Auf Teufel Comm Raus (or as my phone likes to call it, Said Refuel Comm Raid) the game of pulling coals from the devil's cauldron - obviously - until you are caught by the devil himself, and his 'disturbing' bellybutton  (-Martin). This was new to Steve, who requested a player aid and nobody seemed sure how serious he was. 


We seemed to get caught by the devil a lot, except when we didn't. Numerous busts would be had then suddenly someone - usually Katy or Adam - would pull out six hot coals in a row. Joe seemed to bust himself nearly every time, but despite a poor start, and serial lagger Martin constantly rinsing everyone for cash when they busted (-he made a deal with the devil) Joe recovered to sail off up the track courtesy of some preposterous bidding coming off, seeing off Adam at the death to claim the win as they both passed the 1600 finish-line:

1 Joe 1840
2 Adam 1710
3 Steve
4 Sam
5 Katy
6 Martin

At some point around the devil's bellybutton we also had cake, provided by Katy. Thanks Katy! Steve cut his slice into two, enjoying the fact he now had 'an extra slice' on everyone else. 

Post cauldron, Adam and Steve took their leave and the remaining four set up So Clover. Katy was even studiously gazing at her freshly-arranged cards when Martin swept all aside and announced we would play MLEM first. Katy's protests weren't strong enough to prevent her being assigned a cat, as we all suited up our catstronauts, ready for space travel. 





It was a first game for Joe, who may not have embraced the strategy but definitely embraced the sense of adventure, as time and again he sent his Deep Space x2 Cat onto the rocket, only to see it return one life down from multiple doomed missions.


It was slightly surprising the game didn't end from our serial failures, so many times did we crash. But Martin's eighth catstronaut making it into the cosmos instead triggered the finale, and unsurprisingly, with so many cats in space, he took a convincing win. 

Martin 33
Sam 20
Katy 13
Joe 12

Then we did play So Clover! And it was a triumphant set of leaves, even if Martin did hiss at us to look at all the words again. We'd missed the fact that 'dead' went quite well with his clue of 'extinct' but having had the ambient tip-off, rounded off the evening with maximum points. Thanks all!




Wednesday 14 February 2024

Dominoes in excelsis

 I arrived at Laura’s house in the rain to find an even wetter Adam H locking up his bike. We were let into the house by one of Laura’s children and went down to the kitchen where we found Katy already excited about reliving her childhood with a game of Ghost Castle, currently being constructed by Laura. Sam, Ian, Joe and Martin watched from the other end of the table, clearly not convinced of the joys of MB Games.


While Katy, Laura and the two smaller gamers began playing Ghost Castle, Joe, Sam and Martin set up Azul and Ian, Adam and I squeezed a game of Kingdomino in the space between them. The cries of excitement from Ghost Castle were mirrored by our cries of disappointment, as we drew tile after tile of crownless-countryside. But Adam didn’t mind, as his forest expanded to absurd proportions. 


Adam 74 (50 for forests alone!)
Andrew 53
Ian 37

At this point, Azul was still in full flwo but Ghost Castle had been replaced by Dragonimo. During that game, Maddie kept calling out “cracked eggs!” and I thought she was saying “crackhead!” until I looked at the board, saw the egss and put two and two together.

So we played Kingdomino again. By chance, I made Adam pick up a tile that he couldn’t place thus ruining his 5x5 bonus. I wish I could say I did it on purpose, but I’m not that cunning. 

Ian 56
Andrew 49
Adam 46

The other games ended:

Dragonimo
Katy & Riker 15
Laura & Maddie 10

Azul



Martin 83
Joe 79
Sam 39

“That was pretty close,” said Martin. Sam begged to differ, although his board was only two tiles away from a big payout.

The two youngest gamers were sent up to bed and we turned our attention to more grown-up matters: cats in space! Martin, Laura, Ian, Sam and I buckled up for a trip to deep space. It was a first play for me and Laura, so we got a rules explanation, but it was all pretty clear. Roll certain dice values to move, and then land your cats (each with its own special ability such as x2 planet score, x2 moon score, Parachute to safety even if the rocket explodes, etc). Our first journey was the most successful for a long time and Laura reached the last planet before deep space.

Joe, Katy and Adam were more grounded. Literally – their game, Renature, seemed to be all about reintroducing wildlife onto a board that initially resembles a Pac-Man maze made of grass. It was the third game of the evening to use a domino-placing mechanic. I didn’t really follow this game, apart from the occasional cry of surprise like “Double tortoise!” and also a request by Katy to go over the rules a few minutes before they ended. But it was fine.


Katy 86
Adam 67
Joe 58

“I didn’t gloat, and I didn’t ask you to thank me,” she said after the game.

As for Mlem, our poor rolling was getting out of hand. Laura rolled five twos and a booster when we needed ones and fours. On Sam’s first turn as commander, he turned up with his parachute on while Ian went one better – when he was commander, he chose his Saboteur Cat to represent him. A lot of fun.

Laura 28
Ian 26
Sam 21
Andrew 20
Martin 19

There was also a game of Misfits at some point during the evening. I'm not sure when, though. Most likely while Renature was finishing up. Misfits doesn't really play five and, apart from the photos, my only note about the game was "Martin loses."




We reshuffled for the next games. Joe, Martin, Laura and I played Big Top. Ian, Adam, Sam and Katy played Robot Quest Arena.


Katy 21 or 22
Sam 20
Ian 17
Adam 15

While Big Top was a little odd in that we rinsed the bank of money, meaning me, Laura and Martin all ended the game with a lot of cash. Joe, alas, ended the game with no stars. I needed Martin to add up my scores for me, since he refused to believe I’d only come second. He was right. Of course.


Andrew 56
Laura 53
Martin 37
Joe out.

At this point I left, but not before the Robot people began playing Stomp The Plank. After carefully setting up the board, Katy ruined everything by winning in the least fun way possible: draw six different symbols on the first turn.


Katy wins!

Of course, they had to play again and, although Katy could’ve won in the same way again, she bottled it at the fifth card. Adam didn’t so much Stomp the Plank as Shuflle Forward Slowly. 


Sam won the rematch!

And, I’m told, they ended with So Clover.

Thanks all, see you next week!