Circus with a smile

This week's GNN turned out to be a dry run of the games weekend in November since, allowing for a couple of absentees, exactly the same people were there tonight as are going on the 9th. Namely, Joe (the host), Sam, Ian, Steve, Anja, Adam and myself.

We split into two groups. Ian, Sam and Steve played Meeple Circus while the rest of us chose good old Azul. Meeple Circus is a stacking game in which you try to make a tower out of chunky wooden meeple, elephants, horse etc while obeying several rules in order to score points. It comes with its own app, that plays music while the stacking part of the game is underway.

It looked like fun but a bit fiddly. Of course, that's probably the whole point. It also wins the award for Most Entertaining Catch Up Mechanism because, in round three, whenever there was applause on the soundtrack, the player in first place had to stand up, bow and say "thank you" before continuing with the game. It ended

Sam 54
Ian 42
Steve 34

Steve was up for another attempt, but Ian preferred to play something different. And so they played Cryptid. Another new game and it's a deduction game in which you are cryptozoologists searching for some mythical creature. Each player has a clue (ie, one space away from water) which are cleverly designed such that only one space on the board satisfies them all. On their turn, a player chooses a space and asks one of others if it is possible that the creature is there. If the space obeys their rule they place a circular disk. If not, they put down a cube.

Steve won the first game in little time, so they played again, this time using the expert clues. At first it looked like they'd cracked it early on when Sam cheered in victory before he realised he'd put his "yes" disk in the wrong place. They struggled and started to run out of cubes. They checked the rules to see what they should do and, in terms implying that the game designers couldn't believe anyone could be that stupid, they found they could simply use the cubes from an unused player.

Finally, Sam found the right spot and the game was complete. Ian still had to explain what his rule was, though, since neither Sam nor Steve had worked it out. But a win is a win.

But what about us on the other table? We ended up in a bit of a bun fight. Adam insisted that he wasn't trying to stop me (at least, not always) so I suppose it was just his innate ability at spoiling any rival plans that left me frustrated.

Not a great formation

I tried to stop Joe, since I still had unfinished business from our last game. Meanwhile, at one point Joe was trying to work out how he could screw over two players at once. I tell you, Azul has gone from gentle entry-level game for newbies to the kind of game that the mafia would play to settle old scores. Talking of which...

Joe 69
Anja 64
Adam 58
Andrew 54


After Azul, they were a long way from finished, so we banged out a quick Team Play.

I feel like I should apologise since I was hugely distracted by the neighbouring game of Cryptid, since it's the kind of game you can play even if you aren't playing.

Still trying to work out Ian's rule

On the other hand, I was half of the winning team, even if Joe completed most of our tricks.

Joe and Andrew 28
Anja and Adam 24

Since we were all back together again, we ended on a couple of rousing seven player games. First was Word Slam; Adam, Joe and Steve against Anja, Ian, Sam and me. I discovered a borderline psychic ability as my team raced into an early lead. I correctly guessed Sam's clue of "in turn hot eat" was "microwave" (Joe's clue for the same word, "zero metal science container eat in," is poetic enough for a mention ) and then I got "Bill Gates" from Ian's "name man technology". Then Ian guessed that my clue of "water drink movie" was "cocktail" to put us ahead 3-0. The other team came back into it, but never closed the gap. I expect Joe is still kicking himself for saying "funeral director" instead of "undertaker" which Ian then guessed.

Sam, Andrew, Anja, Ian 6
Adam, Steve, Joe 2

We ended with Face Cards. It may seem churlish to complain about your cards in a game as silly as Face Cards, but that's what we did. And, in fairness to us, luck was in short supply this night. We thought long and hard about our choices, best illustrated by Ian's lengthy silence followed by a doubtful "... No." in round two.

But it's not a game that rewards deep thought. Joe did his best to play obvious pairs, declaring that "slow and steady wins the day" or something. Meanwhile, in round four Anja tried to pair Martin Luther with two fried eggs. That was the level of desperation we had reached. In fact, there was only one correct guess in the final seventh round, when Adam paired the thermometer with my skier (because skiers want to know the temperature. That was honestly the best I had).

Sam 15
Joe 14
Adam 13
Anja 11
Ian 11
Andrew 10
Steve 6

A lovely evening and one that bodes well for the games weekend early November (not to be confused with the games weekend in mid November, but more on that some other time). And also for next Tuesday, of course.