A quantum paradox

With festivities at a minimum, perhaps it's no surprise to see so many people with nothing better to do during the Christmas period than play board games online. Martin, Sam, Ian, Katy, Adam T, Andy and me met on Discord and since there were seven of us, with Martin's begrudging acceptance, we played 7 Wonders.

Andy built no resources at all in round one, while Martin and I go big on sciences. Martin expresses surprise at how well he's doing and is gutted when he saw how close he came to a win.

Sam 60, plus cash

Martin 60

Ian 55, plus cash

Andrew 55

Adam 50

Andy 49

Katy 36

With all those tie breakers, I consoled myself with the thought that I was, effectively, joint second. Less happy was Katy, who couldn't understand why she was last. She was told that both her neighbours, Ian and Andy, overtook her military forces with the last card of the game. 

Then we split into two groups. I expressed an interest in Marrakech and people quickly joined me. Ian, Sam and Andy pondered what they should play and, apparently, they also chose Marrakech.

Ian 65

Andy 39

Sam 28

On the four-player game, it was Adam’s first turn and it was a close swingy affair. And Martin pointed out that, as last player, he was able to decide who came last by whose carpets he covered up with his final move. He chose Katy.

Martin 46

Andrew 42

Adam 37

Katy 36

Then we all joined up again, and I mentioned Quantum - which Ian had requested earlier. Sam was keen too so the three of us set off to another Google Hangout while the other four played a new trick taker, Segment Trix.

Quantum started off fine, with us placing cubes and fighting each other as per usual. Before long, Sam and I had one cube left and Ian needed to place two and there were only two spaces left. He went the war route, getting his dominance up to four then researching to six, picking up a tech card (aggression: dominance + 2) and thus his dominance hit 6 and he could put down a cube. A classic move.

Then we noticed an issue. Wherever he put the cube, it would mean that either Sam or I wouldn’t be able to finish the game since you can’t put a cube on a planet where you already have a cube. At first it was Sam who couldn’t place, but we ploughed on and, luckily, a Relocation card became available. Sam researched, picked it up, moved a cube and now I was unable to win. We started to get uncomfortable at this, since the only available strategy to me was to keep researching and using that to change all six tech cards, hoping for a Relocation card. We decided that this wasn’t workable, so we agreed to abandon the game.

Next we thought about which short fun game to finish the evening for Sam, and we went for 7 Wonders. I won, having gone big on war.

Andrew 55

Ian 45

Sam 42

Ian and I returned to the other Google Hangouts to find Andy was missing and Katy was stressed over her connection. Meanwhile, I couldn’t work out what was going on, game-wise. Still not sure who won, if anyone.

So the six of us played For Sale. We remarked on the disparity of ELO ratings, from a bunch of us in the mid-200s to Adam with 21. In the opening rounds, I picked up a 1 to much scorn from Martin and I had to pointedly remind him who had the best ELO rating in this game. Alas, hubris is usually followed by nemesis and I went into the buying round with a poor hand. I did pick up $15k with a 15 card, though. That was nice.

Andy 52

Ian 49

Adam 46

Martin 40

Andrew 38

Katy 35

For the record, Ian now has the highest ELO and Adam’s now stands at 62.

I left at this point, but the rest played Butterfly.

Andy 73

Martin 63

Ian 59

Katy 58

Adam 56

Cheers all. See you next year!

Eight gamers gaming

Another week of GNN. Except this was Christmas week, and previously this involved some kind of cake and a quiz by Sam but this year, all of that was passed over in favour of online gaming.

There were eight of us: Katy, Ian, myself, Sam, Martin, Andy, Steve and Anja. Once technical difficulties were ironed out we tried Fuji Flush and we were reminded how difficult it can be to explain rules online. Sat around a real table, Fuji Flush is pretty easy to understand but somehow the same can’t be said for staring at a screen. Steve professed to be confused and, as is usual when Steve insists he’s baffled, he won. The next couple of minutes were spent with people hitting the deal and recall buttons and generally behaving in a way that would get you thrown out of Vegas.

Then we split into two groups. Steve, Anja, Andy and I chose Thurn and Taxis since Steve and Anja were familiar with it and no one wanted to put them through more rules explanation. I was happy to play, having only recently played it myself. Andy is also familiar with it, mentioning that he’d played about 200 games of it on Yucata. As we began, I didn’t fancy my chances.

The other four of Katy, Martin, Ian and Sam played American Bookshop and Katy won by a country mile.

Katy 31

Sam 3

Martin 3

Ian –5

Then they played Marrakech on BGA and I can attest that it works well as a spectator sport. All the information is available meaning that you can play along with them. And I did enjoy imagining what kind of fruity language Martin came out with when he landed on Ian’s huge carpet and had to play him nine coins.

Sam 50

Ian 40

Katy 39

Martin 28

Then Sam left and the remaining three played Eggs of Ostrich while we finished off T&T.

Martin 14

Ian 9

Katy 7

Meanwhile, in Germany, I was feeling much better about my position after a 6-link route that allowed me to put down six houses. I’d been somewhat helped by Steve and Anja both having to abandon routes, which could explain their joint last place. 

Andy 28

Andrew 17

Steve 7

Anja 7

After this point, Andy left and the six of us finished off with a game of For Sale, with Steve initially daunted by some 200+ ELO ratings among us but we reassured him it was largely meaningless. Recently, a six-coin opening bid has become a classic move but this time Ian showed the power of a four-coin bid as a means of making people commit to a bun fight for treasures or pick up some trash for free.

In the end, the results more or less reflected our ELO ratings after all. And Steve and Anja tied again.

Andrew 52

Ian 47

Martin 46

Anja 40

Steve 40

Katy 27

And with that, we were done. Happy Christmas everyone. See you all soon.

Rude if you do, rude if you don't

Six gamers congregated in virtual space like a genteel version of Tron where the biggest threat is the sound of cutlery on plate or a crisp bag being opened.

We began with For Sale. Katy amazed us all with her opening gambit of taking the one. Sam was a little too frugal and as we began the last buying round he admitted that his highest card was 11. He went big(ish) on the last round and picked up a 20. However, during the game, that 20 card netted him only $4k in money. Ian managed to pick up $15k with only a 19, but that wasn’t enough to get him into the top half of the table. The victory had to be shared between Martin and Andy.

Martin 47

Andy 47

Andrew 45

Ian 41

Katy 40

Sam 38

So, after a little reminiscing about the Division, we decided to split into two groups. Katy, Ian and Martin set off for Marrakech while Andy, Sam and I went for Alhambra. Andy kept saying “it’d be rude not to” when taking an optimal move that ruined someone else's plan. Sam got stymied by the lack of an undo function, and I had such a quiet second round that I was never able to recover.

Andy 139

Sam 118

Andrew 101

Marrakech ended;

Katy 48

Ian 43

Martin 39

And then they played something called Ambiente Abassall (sp?).

Then all six of us were together for a quick round of Codenames. Sam and I were spymasters and I was given Ian and Andy while Sam got the louder Martin and Katy. I started with what I thought was a definite: “pontoon” for “Queen” and “Jack” but Ian and Andy only thought about boats. A poor start. Luckily, Sam’s clue lead Martin and Katy to one of my clues. 

We never lost the advantage, and when Katy mentioned Jack the Ripper when considering Sam’s clue of “Abduction” (for “Kid” and “Alien”) I realised I could use that clue to link “Jack” and “cloak”. Thanks Katy.

Quiet ones win

Loud ones don’t

Then Sam went. I was fine for a quick fun game but, funnily enough, there aren’t many fun quick games on BGA for 5 players. After some deliberation, I decided I would bow out too rather than stick around too long.

According to BGA, the four of them played Butterfly twice and Ian won both times. Well cone, Ian. And thanks all for the evening. We can probably squeeze in one more before Christmas, so see you next week maybe?

 

How Bazaar

In the absence of several of the regulars, I (Martin) convened with Ian, Andy and Laura for a brace of new arrivals to BoardGameArena set in North Africa. 

Fist up was Caravan, which I'm half-way through a turn-based game of, enough to know that it has the GNN-approved combination of simple rules and plentiful interaction. Laura had even gone to the trouble of watching a video to prepare, but was a little concerned that it had taken that group 3 hours to play. Fortunately it was more like one for us. 

The main idea here is familiar from Railways of the World: you're trying to pick up coloured goods cubes from around the board and transport them to their matching destination. But the tricky part is that you have only five camels available to you and often you'll want to move a cube over a longer distance.

Peculiarly, once a camel has picked up a good, it is rendered motionless, while the cube itself can be transferred to any other camel in a connected chain. So you have to shuffle goods along your chain, periodically moving the further back camels to the front, and hopefully planning towards your next drop-off too.

So far, so peaceful, but it's also possible to spend an action robbing a cube from a camel you share a spot with. To moderate this, each player starts the game with just one 'permit to steal', which you have to pass on to your victim, giving them an extra opportunity to pinch a good in the future. It's quite amusing watching someone painstakingly transport paper or cloth across miles of desert only to step in at the last moment and complete the delivery for them.

In our game, Laura took the moral high road, gathering up 3 of the 4 permits but then insisting she was too busy delivering her lawfully-obtained salt, despite my plaintive exhortations to steal from the leader Andy. His swift pair of deliveries of high-value cloth proved decisive:

Andy - 51

Martin - 45

Laura - 42

Ian - 36

Next Laura suggested Marrakesh, a game I've seen around for years but somehow never actually played. The BGA implementation can't match the tactility of the physical game, with its carpet segments of real cloth, but the game is still a lot of fun - again in the 'few rules, many chances to be a dick' mode. 

In this one, our market trader friend Assam moves around the souk according to a dice-roll, stopping to buy and sell carpets. On your turn you get the chance to turn him through 90 degrees before rolling a die to see how far he goes. If he lands on an area of someone else's carpet, you have to pay the owner according to how big the connected section is. Then you get to lay a new piece of your own carpet, hopefully covering over some of the other players' sections and connecting up sections of your own.

There's certainly plenty of luck in the dice rolling, but always in a fun playing-the-odds kind of way, not an irritating one. Andy rode his luck better than anyone else and the final scores ended up looking rather similar to the first game:

Andy - 57

Martin - 39

Ian - 33

Laura - 31

At that point we called it a night, but I'd love to return to Africa for either of these games on future occasions.

Dog Carlo

After last week's no-show, we reassembled ourselves as a sextet. Martin, Joe, Ian, Katy, Andy and me. After a little bit of chat where we confirmed with each other that nothing had changed or happened in the last fortnight, we began with an intriguing word game, Haiclue. In this game there are four shared words and each player has to make a clue from the random letters in front of them. It’s like Dixit with words, as Joe explained. Sometimes, it was easy and sometimes you were left struggling. Andy’s main struggles were with the internet. Joe was left baffled that his clue wasn’t a huge success: his word was “daily” and his clue was “Start prey exit wolf.” No one got it, and no one was massively persuaded by the explanation - at the start of the day you pray and at the end of the day, wolves come out.

Martin 27

Katy 26

Joe 25

Ian 22

Andrew 22

Andy 20

Then we split into two groups of three. Joe, Martin and Katy set off for a game of Don Carlo, complete with mafia dogs. They played twice and Katy won both times. The second game was closer and that ended…

Katy 60

Martin 58

Joe 49

Meanwhile, Ian, Andy and I dug out Kingdom Builder. We got a spectator mid-game, but they didn’t stick around very long. Before long, Andy B predicts his own last place. I say that at least he’s having fun and he replied that he doesn’t like this game online. Oh well.

Ian 43

Andrew 39

Andy 28

Next up was a little Lucky Numbers, which is a rip snorting game of luck and cruel fate that we played in near silence. 

Andy 16

Andrew 14

Ian 12

Next played Coloretto, mostly notable for Andy losing his internet connection twice within the first six cards.

Ian 45

Andy 36

Andrew 32

Now we were all back together we had a game of For Sale. Martin was appalled at his play: he paid 3 coins for a 3 card which he later sold for 3. Symmetrical perhaps, but not a winning strategy. Instead that belonged to Katy who came first despite never having won a single buying round. 

Katy 53

Ian 49

Andrew 48

Joe 46

Andy 33

Martin 30

Martin’s last place saw his ELO rating drop below mine and Ian’s!

And on that bombshell, all that was left was for us to say our goodbyes and go. Cheers all, see you soon.