Five Get Over-tired

Originally, there were going to be ten hardy GNNers around the table last night, but something happened in the firmament and one by one, people dropped out. It were Ian who begun it, followed swiftly by Andrew, then Andy Bate, on whose hot heels came Steve, and finally Laura. Looking at each other in shock and dismay were Joe, Katy, Adam T, Martin and myself. Still expecting Laura to arrive as the curtains rose, we'd begun with Gold Fever. Martin said it was a terrible game. I said what made it so great is that when people turn up at the door halfway through, nobody minds packing it away.

Joe began badly, twice pulling out matching gravel. Adam did the same and said "this is why I hate this game". Martin was tickled no end, and reversed his opinion on it based solely on Adam's discomfort. However he was less enamoured of Katy's decision to repeatedly throw her gravel in his bag. I made my way to three gold as the pair engaged in a battle of grits, but surprisingly the winner was actually Adam, who reversed his opinion of the game just as Martin decided it was shit after all. Either way, it packed a lot of drama into ten minutes.

Adam: Gold!

At this point we discovered we'd lost Laura, and all Joe and Martin's carefully packed bags for six people went up in metaphorical smoke. Instead we debated what to play from the Alcove, with Katy pooh-poohing Tulip Bubble and Martin ignoring my suggestion of Orbit, even as Adam murmured approvingly at the idea. We finally settled on Taj Mahal, the classic Knizia of yore!

It's been so long since we last played it (it seems to appear once every 30 months) we needed a refresher from Martin. The essence is simple - play cards containing various suits; if when your turn arrives you are leading in any particular suit you can choose to drop out (-you can also drop out in misery as well) and gain the rewards. Four suits allow you to place palaces on the board (points) potentially scoring more (points!) if you link to previously-placed palaces in other regions. One suit allows a 'Ghost' palace that can share foundations with an otherwise solitary palace of another player. And one suit (elephants) allows you to collect the goods from that region - more goods of the same previously-collected type will score collectively, and repeatedly, and it was this route that Adam took...

But the early leader was Joe, with such dizzying speed and economical frugality that everyone was reeling with alarm, Martin in particular. Katy started badly, getting into a 'pissing contest' that she lost. "Beowulf is more fun than this" she pointed out.
"Yes, this is more cerebral" Martin conceded.

I tried to play a kind of guerrilla tactic, picking up what I could when I could whilst building a reasonably strong hand... the problem with that approach is that dropping out early hands easy picking to the other players - oh Reiner! Joe meanwhile was claiming palaces all over the shop and chaining them together like a bunch of point-scoring brick-built daisies. Adam was shrewdly building his goods collection, whilst me, Katy and Martin were mostly complaining about Joe, who in turn was complaining about having a card that scored him 2 points every time he played it, which invited even more scathing from the other side of the table. Joe defended his observations by reminding us how cerebral the game was, and in his position we might understand.

Suddenly Adam surged past him and into a six-point lead. Katy and I got into an expensive pissing match that I lost, and it cost me seven points. "Katy!" I wailed. "What about me?!" Katy shrieked back, pointing at her score marker. At this point my sympathy wasn't overwhelming, though. We were like the kids playing with the adults, who were now clearly going to finish way ahead of us.

Another pissing contest between Adam and Martin went the latter's way and Adam suffered a devastating fate - not only did Joe surge past him again, but Martin had kept an enormous chain of cards of the same colour (points!) for the end game scoring, and barrelled by him as well for a sneaky second!

Joe 46
Martin 39
Adam 38
Sam 33
Katy 28

Adam had time for just one more game, so we let him choose, and the choice was the thematically appropriate Just One. We've played this so much now we're getting a little bit familiar with the words, and sailed to an impressive score even despite our final word not providing a single clue for Katy: Joe and I wrote 'fiddle' Martin and Adam wrote 'Stradavarius'. With nothing to go on at all, Katy guessed water, completely ignoring my charades-style violin-playing on the other side of the table. Maybe she thought I was being sarcastic.

Martin then started canvassing for The Crew before Adam had even got his coat on, and by the time he reached the front door we were already laughing about the rulebook's "gazing at Uranus". We started with a new mission - it didn't matter who won what cards, as long as no player had two tricks more than another player at any one time. It proved very tough, taking us four attempts to pass. In between the tense space-ship repair and anus-related laughs, there was also time for Martin and Katy to continue calling each other c**ts in inventive new ways.

We played two more missions after that, before ending the game with co-operative Wavelength, where Gwyneth Paltrow's vagina still proves to be a surprisingly apt clue for so many cards, as Katy pointed out. Maybe a bit embarrassed about our Uranus behaviour though, we resisted. It was as fun as it always is, but we did very badly, gaining zero bonus cards and finishing on nine points. Lowlights were Joe's "late afternoon" being dramatically light, and Martin's "Michael Gove" being unexpectedly acceptable. "I'd forgotten how reactionary you all are!" Martin complained, when we practically aligned Govey with the Nazis by twisting the dial all the way to Least likeable living person. "I mean, I don't like him" he quickly added.

I also clued Doctors as a fairly bad TV show, only to have the others decide it was pretty much the worst TV show ever even though they'd just been discussing Naked Attraction! Where everyone picks partners based on the appearance of their shaved nobs.

Everyone: 9 - dismal failure!

And that was that. Thanks all, a miniature classic. Hopefully everyone else got a good night's kip and we'll see you soon!

Shaken, not spelt

Has it really been a year since the venerable Andy B graced us on a Tuesday? That’s what we thought, but were too lazy to check. Nevertheless, it’s been a long time since he was here. Long enough that we’ve acquired a new regular member – Adam T, although it turned out the two knew each other from Eastbourne. It’s a small gaming world.

I got to Joe’s studio at six and found Joe and Ian eating supper. We were dealing out Coloretto when the aforementioned Andy B arrived, and so he was dealt in too. The game required a bit of rules refreshing for all concerned, since none of us were up to speed, but once we got going, it was plain sailing. Except for Joe.

Andy 36
Ian 35
Andrew 34
Joe 24

During this, Adam T and Sam arrived and since we weren’t expecting anyone else for a while, we all sat around the big table for a game of Team Play. I paired up with Andy and we soon got stuck with two difficult mission cards (is that what you call them?) while the others sped off without us. Sam and Adam were first to hit seven tricks (not really tricks, you know what I mean) and then Joe and Ian had a late surge to bring them back into contention.

Sam and Adam 32
Ian and Joe 32
Andy and Andrew 29

We were trying to find a tie-breaker, but Martin told us there weren’t any. However, for the rest of the evening, we kept finding Team Play cards around Ian’s chair making us suspect that they’d completed more tricks than they’d counted up.

As well as Martin, Katy and Adam H were also here. It seemed like the perfect moment to bring out Sam’s birthday cake to celebrate his half century. For some reason, our rendition of Happy Birthday was an octave or two lower than normal. I suppose as we age, we find the baritone range more natural.

Happy birthday!

We split into two groups. Andy, Adam H, Martin and Joe played Babylonia (back after its one-week absence) and the remaining five played Letter Jam, the surprisingly stressful co-operative card game. This time, we went for six-letter words: a step up from the usual five-letter standard game. I think I’ve played it three times and failed to get my word each time and this was no exception. At least this time I wasn’t alone in my failure. Adam failed to get “HOLING” despite getting all the letters, since he convinced himself that the G and H should go next to each other. Katy, meanwhile, blamed her dyslexia for her mistake. She’d successfully got SHAKE but couldn’t work out where the N would go. “Shaken,” we prompted. She looked suitably crestfallen.

With only Sam and Ian getting there words, we scored a mere two strawberries.

Babylonia ended

Martin 162
Adam 124
Joe 108
Andy 99

At this point a spate of reorganisation was achieved, with the nine of us forming into three groups of three. Ian, Joe and Martin played Ra and it was notable for Martin’s many pharaohs, Joe’s many monuments and Ian’s very long Nile. Joe was confident that he’d won until the final count.

Ian 64
Martin 54
Joe 50

Followed by Eggs of Ostrich…

Joe 10
Martin 10
Ian 8

Then Ian went home, mumbling something about getting back at “a sensible hour” so Martin and Joe broke out the Res Arcana.

Martin 15
Joe 4

Meanwhile, Andy, Adam and Sam tried the new game Crown of Emara, with it’s two (TWO) rondels and it’s pretty typical medieval-type Eurogame setting. I didn’t check if you could turn wood into sheep but it looked like that kind of game.

Andy 78
Adam 72
Sam 62

Sam insisted that he won a victory of sorts since he ended as Marquis, the highest ranked noble.

Adam H, Katy and me broke out Lords of Vegas since it was the only game that we all had some kind of enthusiasm for. We began with a lot of plots in seedy back streets and a lot of brown cards coming out early on.

Seedy back streets

I started well and stayed well. Katy built up then lost all but one of her casinos, but towards the end she started to close the gap on me. I was nervous that her strong presence on the strip would be my downfall but happily the game over card came out and saved me.

Andrew 73
Katy 60
Adam 26

Adam said that halfway through the game he’d remember that he had issues with the advantage of being first player and during the game he started searching for rules variants to counter this. Katy pointed out that she went third.

At this point Adam T and I set off, leaving the rest of them to go crazy with 6nimmt. No idea how that ended, though.

Thanks everyone.

Bubble Trouble

This week, five games were sat around Sam’s kitchen table, quite unaccustomed to the space available. We were Sam, Joe, Martin, Katy and myself. The numbers weren’t right for Babylonia and so we passed the first games night for some weeks without a sight of Knizia’s latest classic.

Instead, we chose Tulip Bubble. This was new to me and Katy, but the other three all said how happy they were to have another go at it. This game recreates those heady days of tulipomania in the Netherlands in the 1600s. The five of us bid on cards representing tulips of three different colours and if we were the sole bidders for one cards we got it for face value. If there were multiple people bidding on one card, then an auction would begin and this is where prices could get crazy. Then, at the end of the round, the value of each type of tulip would be adjusted according to how many cards of that colour remained. It is a clever mechanic, ensuring that tulips that were expensive one round would usually fall in value in the next (and vice versa).

In the first round, Sam asked for a do-over when he realised he’d put bids on two of the most expensive tulips available, despite only having 20 guilders. This early faux pas seemed to haunt him as he would occasionally berate himself for that terrible opening move and then struggled to remember the sequence of the rounds. “I understood this a lot better the last time I played it,” he mused while it dawned on him that he was already quite drunk.

Martin wasn’t drunk but giddy with luck. His early despair at seeing the price of white tulips collapse was wiped out when they rallied again and he was able to sell some of his cards to “a collector” for a bonus return. The same thing happened again a couple of rounds later leaving him with a surely unassailable lead. The next person to reap rewards of their speculation was Joe who had to endure our scepticism regarding his investments in the already expensive reds, only to see them rise again, netting him a decent profit.

Katy, Sam and I battled for most pessimistic and Sam won.

Martin 123
Joe 57
Katy 43
Andrew 29
Sam 14


After this we broke out Mamma Mia. This game might seem like more luck than judgement but that wasn't the way Joe played it. Twice he ended the “making pizza” part of the game with no cards, having used them all to complete pizza recipes that he’d played earlier in the game. This cool-headed efficiency was a joy to watch, but he fell foul of the tie-breaker rule which requires a player to have lots of ingredients left in their hand.

Sam 5 recipes completed (5 cards left)
Martin 5 (4 cards left)
Joe 5 (0 cards left)
Katy 4
Andrew 2

After this, we went all co-operative and lovely, with a game of Wavelength. The co-op version involves beginning with a set number of clue cards and then, every time you score a 4, you add another card. In this way you can keep going, like a game of keepie-uppie, and score as many points as you can.

Notable event was Martin’s clue of “Good Day Sunshine” by The Beatles for the spectrum “Happy/sad song.” Sam, Martin and I had to sing it to Joe and Katy while Martin implored Joe to try listening to the album Revolver. Joe, whose apathy towards the fab four is legendary, didn’t seem hugely excited at the thought. But our singing must’ve been good, because it got us three (maybe four) points.

Overall score: 18, a good score!

We ended with more co-operative shenanigans: Just One. We were remarkably duplicate free and Katy can count herself unlucky that our clues all pointed to boots as well as socks, and she chose the wrong option. The first duplicate was for me: all I had was Joe’s clue of “Bixby” and Katy’s clue of “Milk.” Bixby had to be a reference to Bill Bixby, the actor from The Incredible Hulk, but what about “milk”? I plumped for “Incredible” as my guess, but it turned out to be “Hulk” and there was once an advert for milk featuring the Incredible Hulk. If only I’d known.

Overall score: 9, not good apparently.

At this point we decided to leave so Martin ordered an Uber which was waiting in the road outside by the time we’d left the house. Amazing.

Babalabalonia

Saturday night games at Steve and Anja's house began with a visit from Louie, who came downstairs to see what was what. At that point there was no games on the table however, so in the absence of exciting wooden bits it was merely three middle-aged men nursing their alcohol.

Martin's Yeastie Boys beer was the stand-out. "I can see why they did it" he said, "But it does smack a bit of fungal infections" Anja then appeared and after a brief catch-up, the first game onto the table was Babylonia, GNN's recentest Knizia hit.

Martin went through the rules - which thankfully take about five minutes - and we were off. I began scoring ziggurats and claiming bonus cards whilst Martin chained tokens together. Anja started claiming cities and Steve fretted over his tiles; forgetting that a hand full of Farmers can all be played at the same time.

Despite the simple rules, there are always a multitude of things you'd like to do on your turn, and though I think I'm reasonably competent at what's best for me personally, I struggle with the idea that I need to compute other players' options as well. Martin has no such issues, and as the game wore on he surged to the front of the scores and stretched out his lead. I had told Steve and Anja we'd have to watch Martin, but we didn't watch him closely enough.

Martin 147
Sam 128
Anja 105
Steve 88

Everyone liked Babylonia so much, when Anja suggested we play again straight away, they were no demurring voices. This time things played out very differently: both Steve and Anja began very strongly on the ziggurat front, and Steve in particular putting together a juicy group of tiles on one side of the board. With me doing something similar on the other, Martin effected a kind of spoiling officer role, making sacrificial moves to stop us both scoring big.

While that was happening, Anja collected bonus tiles and put them to good use, harvesting a bunch of fields and accelerating into a large lead. My beards did what they could to keep pace, despite Martin's sabotage, but Anja's canny tactical plays kept pushing her forwards. "How the fuck did I end up here?" Martin cried, pointing to his marker some sixty points behind Anjas...

And as the game closed out, my desperate last move was enough to get me past her. "Knowing what you're doing really helps" Anja reflected. Hats off to Martin though; he came fourth, but after a considerable recovery:

Anja 144
Sam 140
Steve 125
Martin 123

Anja's observation about knowing the game was just about slap us all repeatedly about the face though when I innocently suggested Azul: Summer Pavilion. Because everyone had played the original I thought it would be fairly straightforward, but I'd not really registered how thinky this version is. In the original, options on your board are limited, and the game - as Martin observed - really takes place on the factory tiles: what you leave behind almost as much as what you take. With Pavilion, there's much more flexibility (you can even save four tiles for subsequent rounds) and there are also wild colours each round.

The bubbling fun we'd had with Babylonia slowed to a ponderous stodgy grind as Steve and Anja stared accusingly at their boards and Martin launched into various monologues about the games' failings. I also began to flag. I didn't get rules sweats; instead I had game guilt the like of which I've not felt since I made my family play... Azul: Summer Pavilion. I only remembered today that that didn't go well either!

For all of us it felt comparatively fiddly. For Martin it simply wasn't interactive enough. Although I'm not sure Anja shared that opinion when I claimed the last purple tile and bust her potential 20 points. Sorry Anja. Sorry everyone! It looks a beautiful game and I still think it's lovely for two, but last night it felt less a Pavilion in summer, more a shed in winter.

Martin 102
Sam 87
Steve 81
Anja 49

"Don't worry" Martin assured me, "I love to have things to rant about on BGG!"

We'll always have Babylonia though. Literally. 

The six o'clock special

Six o'clock in Joe's studio. That's when the evening began, although when I arrived at 6.20, Joe was out getting pizza and Ian, Sam and Adam T didn't seem to have begun a game yet. After some polite chat, we began team Push It, me and Adam against Sam and Ian. It was a whitewash, with Sam and Ian picking up the maximum four points in one round as they glided towards victory.

Sam and Ian 11
Adam and Andrew 1

Joe returned with pepperoni pizza and Adam H arrived too. We split into two groups of three. Adam T, Sam and I went for Kodachi, card game based on the combat section of Ninjato. Adam H, Joe and Ian played Kribbeln, using Das Exclusive as the dice arena for that extra touch of class.

Adam H 20
Joe 18
Ian 15

As for the three of us, Kodachi was clipping along at a fair old rate until we found ourselves stuck in a rut. In order to finish the game, certain cards needed to be played but these needed to be bought and, for whatever reason, we never seemed to have the resources when they were available. To add to this, Adam found himself with an increasingly middling hand, full of cards that scored points but weren’t much use in a fight. This all meant that the game outstayed its welcome which is a shame since it started brightly.

Sam 74
Andrew 62
Adam 48

During Kodachi Martin, Steve and Katy arrived and so the five of them set up the card table while we three stayed on the big table - something wrong there. But anyway, they played a game whose name I didn’t write down which seemed to involve grabbing sticks from the table according to the criterion on a card. According to Katy, the winning order was...

Katy
Martin
Steve
Adam
Ian
Joe

It was loud and chaotic, and was followed by a game of Happy Salmon which was also loud and chaotic. Katy won that, and then they played Silent Happy Salmon. Not sure who won that.

Then they played Team Play. Still as a group of six, and still on the tiny card table. Kodachi had ended by now and we played Memoarrr just as a filler. Adam T said he wasn’t keen on memory games, but not liking them is clearly not the same as being bad at them. Early on, Adam and I teamed up to leave Sam with a blue walrus card, which he consistently failed to find a match for.

Adam T 7
Andrew 6
Sam 2

Team Play ended

Team Play, but Martin and Joe still seem to 

be playing Happy Salmon

Katy & Adam 31
Joe and Martin 30
Steve and Ian 28

Now there was a chance to reshuffle the groups, and Andy M called to see if there was a game going on, so he was soon on his way. Sam, Martin, Adam T and I set up Babylonia. The other five then six (still on the card table) considered I’m The Boss, but Joe got the rules sweats halfway through explaining them so instead went for Incan Gold/Diamant. I was lucky enough to witness Steve pushing his luck beyond all reasonable boundaries and also watch Joe and Andy go further into a dungeon together, not daring to be the first out.

Steve 61
Joe 39
Andy M 34
Katy 26
Adam H 24
Ian 18

Babylonia went all Martin’s way as he got a continent all to himself, picking up a load of early cities. At the end of the game, Adam mused that there were two strategies: either play your own game and let Martin win or try and stop Martin and let someone else win.

Martin 153
Sam 105
Adam 102
Andrew 71

Then Katy beat Adam T in paper, rock,scissors and insisted I write it down. Adam T then left. Not because he lost at paper, rock, scissors: he was leaving anyway.

Now the groups changed again. Ian, Joe, Steve and I played Ra. During it, I experienced a strange kind of better’s fallacy whereby I called Ra to trigger an auction with every intention of paying 7 for it. But when the only competing bid for it was a 2, it somehow seemed like a waste of a 7, and I let it pass. With that kind of clinical thinking, no wonder I did so badly. Steve did well on his debut, picking up monuments and Niles, but no one could stop Pharaoh Joe from taking top spot.

Joe 31
Steve 28
Ian 24
Andrew 17

On the card table, Martin, Andy and Sam played Sissi: Die Bohnenkaiserin. I’m sure that Martin likes German games only so he can say the titles in a theatrical German accent. And because he wins them.

Martin 27
Andy M 24
Sam 23

Adam and Katy played a head-to-head game of Yokohama. They started setting up at about 9.30 and the first points were scored at 10.10.

They were done by 11 o’clock when Katy claimed victory while admitting Adam might have won.

Katy 108
Adam 105 (or 109)

Lastly, the other six of us joined together for a final game: Wavelength. This time we weren’t quite as in tune as previously but when the chips were down, and we needed them to fail and us to pick up a point to keep the game alive, Joe got the only perfect score of the game: cluing “sloth” to “stationary/mobile”.

Andy felt he needed photographic evidence to prove

that such a game actually existed

Joe, Ian, Martin 12 (estimated)
Sam, Andy, Andrew 8 (I think)

And so we were done. We picked up our crisps packets and beer cans as if we were obeying the country code and left Joe’s studio almost as we found it. Thanks all. It was a good one.