Kingdom Rebuilt (in beta)

I logged on to Discord around twenty minutes late, with a game of For Sale in full swing with Martin, Ian, Andy, Adam H and Katy. I let them chat in the background while I sorted out my candles and alcohol.

Martin won, having spent on average only 1 for his cards. And having spent least thinking time, he pointed out.

Martin 61

Andy 55

Adam H 48

Ian 45

Katy 43

After this it was almost 8, and we were expecting more arrivals. But time waits for no game, especially when that game is Kingdom Builder in beta on BGA. Me, Ian, Adam H and Martin swiftly leave choppy old Discord for the sanctuary of a Google Hangout, only to be followed by Steve who’d just arrived and didn’t quite understand the exclusive nature of our little enclave. He is dismissed back to another Google Hangout where he, Anja, Adam T, Andy and Katy played 7 Wonders twice with Steve winning both times. In fact, everyone replicated their standings twice.

Steve 59

Adam T 58

Anja 48

Katy 41

Andy 31

Steve 61

Adam T 57

Anja 55

Katy 54

Andy 37

Kingdom Builder was a quiet game. Banter was at a minimum, as you’d expect in such a clash of the Titans. If Titans used barns and paddocks to gain territory. I don’t think they did. The beta program worked fine except for when we drew a grass card and it told us we “must build on a Grass.”

When Adam played his final house, I still had ten left. Never stood a chance. Good to play KB again, though.

Martin 63

Adam H 61

Andrew 38

Ian 31

We change Google hangouts, but I’m too busy pouring myself another drink and Katy, Martin Ian and Adam T zip off for a game of American Bookshop. This game is notable for the mid-game update posted by Martin with a quote from Katy “If I was allowed to touch you, Adam, I’d touch you and not in a nice way.” It was notable enough that Joe texted us about it when he got the notification from Discord.

Meanwhile, we (Steve, Anja, Adam H, Andy and me) played Rallyman GT, which was new to most of us so we got a rules explanation from Andy B. I led at first but was swiftly overtaken by everyone. Anja was first to spin off the track so at least I was no longer in last. There was a lot of downtime, and I worried how long this would go on for as we turned the third corner after about half an hour. By the end, Andy crossed the finishing line and then he estimated another ten minutes before we all end. I span out, and got frustrated. I creep across the line in fourth. And I showed such promise.

Andy 25

Adam 18

Steve 15

Andrew 12

Anja 10

In the time we took to play that, American Bookshop finished. Not sure who won, nor if Adam T ever got touched or not.

They then banged off a triplet of Eggs of Ostrich once Ian had left (Adam T 10, Katy 8 Martin 4 and then Adam T 15, Martin 12, Katy 4 then finally Martin 13, Katy 11, Adam 9) before they joined us for 7 Wonders. I got a phone call and decided to bow out, as did Martin and Katy. The remaining players played twice.

Adam T 53

Adam H 45

Andy 41

Adam H 66

Andy 54

Adam T 42

Well done to all. See you next week.

Socially Distanced Thrashings

Friday night Martin rocked up at Talgarth Towers for a few face to face games, beginning with Spies and Lies. From the mind of Don Eskridge (The Resistance) and the format of Stratego, this is a two-player battle of getting the Spy through the door of your opponent's castle - or, if you prefer, to their end of the track, whilst they're attempting to push it up the path towards you. 

It's pretty simple - you 'program' four cards out of nine (you have ten cards total, but one is always removed) face down, and they're then revealed. Catch one: they must be laid in ascending order (outside of the rogue '4' card, which can go anywhere). Catch two: if your opponent successfully guesses what your next card is, it doesn't activate.

On a first play I was utterly bamboozled as Martin seemed to read my mind - I felt like a toddler lying about eating the chocolate while it was smeared over my face. In the second, I managed a win. It was the last win of the night for me! 

Next up was My City, Reiner Knizia's surprisingly unKniziary take on legacy gaming with a Take it Easy style placement of tetris pieces on your own board - try to cover up rocks, but not trees. The first game is really that simple, but subsequent games give a slight escalation in complexity as now your buildings want to be grouped by colour, and now you have a well you want to surround with a different building on each side. Though I won game 2, Martin emerged 2-1 winner overall as his third city was marginally less ramshackle than mine. 

Then we played Glasgow. Martin is the third person I have introduced the game to, and the third person to beat me, this time in spectacular fashion. I thought his focus on factories was going to be misguided, but it was most certainly guided. By whom I'm not sure, but Martin kept his factories working hard and by the end - the 20th building built in the titular city - I think he'd constructed about fifteen of them. It was a total shitshow from me. Good game though. 

We finished the night with Watergate, and Martin - the Washington Post - looking for revenge on my last victory as Nixon. I played a suitably dirty campaign, but Nixon, possibly mildly inebriated by this point, which is no way to see off a combative investigation from two or more sharp-minded journalists, took his eye off the ball. Martin won and I never saw it coming. 

Glasgow... two

Only one day after our weekly gaming fix, I got a text from Sam to see if I was around for a sneaky game. I was, and this is how I came to be introduced to Glasgow, a 2 player game that came in a small box but still took up most of the table space.

It involves two meeples going around a rondel, a circle of possible actions, with the usual rule of the player in last goes next. If I thought it would be just a Tokaido esque experience of just choosing the next available space, moving as little as possible, it soon opened out. Once you're happy with your resources, certain tiles become more attractive and it's a case of balancing the benefits of racing ahead with the pitfalls of giving your opponent too many free turns.

The motive behind all this is the chance to build Glasgow, in a 4x5 grid of factories, shops, banks, etc. Different things have different abilities or point scoring options. It seemed fairly familiar and nicely put together. I won by about ten points, forty-something to Sam's thirty-something.

Next we finished with a two-player game of Codenames. One round each of being the codemaster and we did pretty well each time. I can’t remember our best clues, but some of the more tenuous ones were me cluing “Resistance” for “France” (obv) and “Parachute” (less obv) and Sam offering “Orion” for “belt” (easy) and “vacuum” (tricky).

And so, after barely an hour, I set off home. Early nights are the new late nights, it seems.

The weariness of long distance gamers

This week I arrived later than usual, at around 8pm to find Sam, Joe, Andy, Martin and Ian already online. I have no idea if they'd played a game or had spent the past half hour chatting, but before long Katy joined us and, as is traditional for a septet, we played 7 Wonders.

It was the usual affair, notable for being very red, with military cards built by everyone except Joe, who preferred science. But it was the quiet one who got back into winning ways, and with the least thinking time, too.

Ian 61

Joe 55

Katy 53

Martin 50

Andrew 49

Andy 47

Sam 43

Then we split into two groups. Joe, Martin and Katy chose Ninety Nine, which seems appropriate since Joe had been eating an ice cream earlier.

Ian, Sam, Andy and myself procrastinated at length over what to play. Without an admin account we couldn't do anything with playingcards.io and so in the end we chose Red7. 

Sam needed a rule refresher and we had to start twice after Ian had set up the game with an unwanted option still turned on.

The game certainly didn't outstay it's welcome, with Andy being the first to win two rounds in a healthy 2-0-0-0 win. He was nice enough to mumble something about playing Red7 a lot on yukata lately. 

After this Sam left for bed and we chose Downforce as our next game. It was the track with all those ramps again and the three of us sped round in more or less silence. It ended in Andy's favour again, although none of us actually bet on the winning car.

Andy $19m

Ian $13m

Andrew $8m

By now Ninety Nine had ended at almost the same time. Katy had, I believe, lead for most of the game, only to see a late revival from Joe.

Joe 177

Katy 169

Martin 155

And here marked the end of Ian's gaming since he was flaking and we couldn't tempt him with a game of For Sale (which BGA seemed to think was Joe's first ever go. How odd). 

Odder still, in the buying round, both zeros came out in round one, followed by some very generous rounds where players dumped their low cards knowing they'd get a good return. Martin won, despite having forgotten earlier that with only five players there's an extra round of bidding.

Martin 55

Andy 54

Andrew 49

Joe 44

Katy 41

And now Joe left so we remaining four played Hanabi. Peculiarly, while Downforce was played in silence, we played Hanabi with a steady stream of chatter. Or "cheating" as it could be called. Clues were applauded or given the Martin "that's what I would've done" seal of approval, indicating how prescient it was.

And we didn't discard any cards that would ruin our chances but, alas, time caught up with us. The draw deck was exhausted with little chance of a successful completion.

Andy, Martin, Katy, Andrew 20

And so we were off into the night. Or back into our kitchens with our empties. Thanks guys. See you next week.

Double Baron Shotgun

This week, with numbers depleted to the usual mid summer level, four gamers gradually logged on. Ian first then, about ten minutes late, I arrived. Followed by Martin and then finally Andy,who entered with his signature method of logging on and off repeatedly until he properly arrived.

While waiting for him, the three of us had decided on Turn The Tide as our first game, previously seen some years ago as Land Unter.  It was so long ago that Andy couldn't remember if he'd played it or not. So he looked it up: he had, and had given it four out of ten. Clearly not his type of game. Meanwhile, Martin was initially upset by the slurping noise the game made when he lost a life, but I had to admit that it’d been me eating.

Martin 16

Andrwe 12

Ian 2

Andy 1

Next up was Downforce with a track chosen especially by Andy, with ramps. This made it a lot more swingy. My red car managed to get from a distant last to a fourth place finish and, more importantly, Andy’s blue car was in third when the first bidding round happened, but finished first. As such, he was the only one to bet on it three times and thus came out the winner. 

Andy $27m

Andrew $15m

Martin $7m

Ian $6m

Next, for a change of pace, some co-operative play with Hanabi. Except that BGA now has a “hand of the day” option where you can try a particular deck and see how well you do against other teams. Finally, Hanabi has gone competitive.

The game was going well, except the blue one didn’t come out. At on point Andy confidently said “I know I haven’t got the red 5” while the red 5 was in his hand, and then I ruined everything by throwing away the second yellow 4, making a perfect finish impossible.

Our score: 21

Finally, with Ian flaking, we decided to finish on Love Letter. Except with four players and first-to-four winning condition, it wasn’t quite as quick as we’d expected. Martin sped into a 2-0-0-0 lead but Ian was first to reach match point on 3-2-2-0. That was me on zero.  But then the tide turned and I started picking up points.

I think a couple of times people got stuck with two Barons in their hand, which is almost certain doom, especially if the guards and a priest have already been played. And at the start of one round, Ian played a King to swap his hand with Martin. I knew that there was only one reason to play your King right at the start so I immediately used my Guard to accuse Martin of being the Princess. Which he was.

By now I was back in the swing of things and in that very round I closed out an unlikely win.

Andrew 4

Ian 3

Andy 3

Martin 3

And, forty minutes after that game had started, we were done. Thanks all. See you soon.

Big Farmer Conspiracy

This week we began our games night as a quartet. Martin, Ian, Adam H and myself began with Kingdomino, hoping to squeeze in a game before the imminent arrival of the other three gamers who were no doubt frantically eating food or completing domestic tasks before arriving.

The game was pretty straightforward. Martin had a moment of blindness when, mid-game, he picked up a tile he couldn't place. The lack of bonuses was to prove costly. Not as costly as Adam's enormous forest that scored no points at all.

Andrew 81

Martin 77

Adam H 64

Ian 51

Then Joe, Andy and Adam T logged on and, as is now compulsory when there are seven of us, we played 7 Wonders. Adam T luxuriated in his work monitor which was large enough to see everyone's boards, although he found his peaty cider disappointing.

Was there a lack of things to do in round two? Joe sighed that he may as well finish his wonder, and Adam T, Adam H, and Andy also had their wonders done and dusted early on. I had Halikanassos which involves building as late as possible. It didn't go well.  My neighbor Joe built a massive army simply because he couldn't build much else.

Martin was delighted with his first place, saying that he never wins. He was not enthusiastic about a suggestion of a rematch, saying the game isn't good enough to play twice in a row.

Martin 61

Andy 59

Adam T 54

Joe 47

Adam H 46

Ian 37

Andrew 34

Then we split into two groups. Martin, Adam T and Joe went off to play 99.

Martin 389

Joe 237

Adam T 165

The rest of us chose Carcassonne, with inns and cathedrals. I played my big farmer on my first turn not knowing about it's special powers when deciding majorities. I declined the opportunity to start again figuring may as well go there as anywhere, but found myself constantly trying to  to connect it to the more lucrative areas in the south.

Ian and Adam got into an early fight over a city but then decided to share the points just so they could get their meeples back. How genteel.

Andy 94

Adam 88

Ian 86

Andrew 83

As the others waited for us to finish, they played a quick Eggs of Ostrich which Adam T “won handsomely.”

Then we played 6nimmt and it was a bit of a classic. Lady Luck appeared to desert everyone evenly and it wasn’t until round four that one of us passed the game end trigger. No one went clear in round one, and Joe had an attack of indecision, as he repeatedly chose and rechose his card, causing “Joe picked another card” to scroll up the text commentary box multiple times.

As we progressed, Adam T’s bookcase seemed to be getting bigger. Adam surmised that this was because he was slouching back in his chair more. Meanwhile, at the end of the game, the cards 101, 102, 103 and 104 were all successfully played. Talk about hanging on by the skin of your teeth.

Adam H 38

Martin 24

Ian 18

Andy 9

Joe 8

Andrew 2

Adam T -8

Then everyone left except got me, Martin and Andy so we played out a quick game of Coloretto.

Martin 33

Andy 29

Andrew 26

And with that we were done. Thanks all. See you next week.