He's so shell-fish

 I arrived at a little after 8 to find Ian, Joe and Martin sitting around a table of Polynesia, all set up and with Joe having already received a rules explanation, we were ready to dive in.

This game's special scoring criteria for today made masks and archipelagos very valuable and so it was no surprise to see Ian and Martin make a bee-line for the half of the board with the richest pickings. I, using the logic that you do well at games by not doing what other people are doing, set off for the less congested areas. Joe, not sure what he was doing, did a bit of both.

It was a quiet game, with a lot of pondering going on. I did ask, since it was us four, why we weren't playing Time Of Crisis only to be told it was still in the studio. But our thinking time was so long that it may as well have been ToC.

I found that I was frequently stranded, waiting for other players to land on my island so I could get a ride with them. This was usually Martin and I usually took him in a direction that he didn't want to go. Joe, meanwhile, found that most of his meeples ended up on the same island, which was swiftly dubbed "party island". Very sociable but no good for scoring points. Ian and Martin, who both played on Saturday, clearly has a better idea about what was going on.

In the end the game was getting perilously close to the full nine rounds, so in round seven we agreed that the next round would be the last, whatever the volcano did. Which was fair enough, since the tiles had all been taken and there was little else to do.

Martin 19

Ian 17

Andrew 13

Joe 11

There was a fair bit of ambivalence from Joe afterwards, who seemed to find it too opaque and it didn’t interest him enough to keep looking.

Next, we played Take The A Chord, which still baffled us. Joe explained the rules to Martin who must have done some research already since he filled in a few gaps in Joe's explanation along the way. As usual, playing a card was often accompanied by humming a note that may or may not have had some relationship to the note on the card.

I initially found myself frustrated because whenever I was about to win a trick, someone started improvising! Just like real jazz, that became quite annoying after a while. Nevertheless, I seemed to mostly have the right cards at the right time and scored highly on each round.

Andrew 125
Ian 95
Martin 60
Joe 40

After this, feeling somewhat tired and unwilling to play much beyond half past ten, I bowed out, leaving them to consider their three player options. Ra was mentioned, but I was out the door by the time a decision was made. Sorry to leave so soon, but thanks for the evening!

Rouge in the Cheeks

Last week the boys, Sally and I went to Katie and Mark's for a few days away from the big city. After the travails of hiring a car (power cuts at the car rental place, extra charges for not having a credit card, the bank suspecting fraud and declining payment) and then the travails of the M5 (five hours to reach south Devon!) we finally arrived, remembering that we'd not done our lateral flow tests before leaving. This is how all holidays start now...

Monday

Safely in the clear, we spent a while catching up before heading out with dog Nellie for a walk while the weather was reasonable. Nellie isn't pictured here, probably because she was running around or pulling plants out of the ground elsewhere. She's bonkers. 

In the evening the first of the games arrived. These were Love Letter (winners: Peppa and Stan) In Vino Morte (Peppa) before everyone else went to bed (bar Stan) and Mark, Peppa and I broke out the first of our attempts at Flamme Rouge. We plumped for a Tour, where finishing places carry over and scores are cumulative. On the first race, Peppa led from the front, picking up numerous exhaustion cards. She then blocked both Mark and I from overtaking, and afterwards I realised that we were definitely playing something slightly wrong, and we should have been able to overtake. Nonetheless, the scores stood, and Peppa was off to a flyer. 

Tuesday

Early in the morning - well, 10am - I led the boys and Lula off to Kingsbridge for a poke around the games shop, which has now moved from a tucked-away corner to a slightly smaller space, but on the high street itself. After ten minutes perusing the shelves we emerged with Dragomino and Decrypto (me; my Decrypto pad was exhausted and both stands broken) and High Risk (Lula). Sporting some other holiday goods (free books, nectarines, aubergine pickle) we returned to the house and Lula, Mark and I broke out High Risk. 

This is a super-simple luck-pusher of getting your guys to the top of the mountain first. Dice or rolled for movement; do you settle for what you have or roll your duds again and risk going bust? When you move, all movement is assigned to a single climber, and while the bivouac spaces can be shared, the smaller mountain spaces can't, so an arriving climber will shove the current occupant off ('like an asshole' - Mark) to the next available spot below. If you go bust, your highest climber falls in similar fashion - although climbers at the summit won't go anywhere, preventing the game from lasting forever. It's fun enough; not as elegant as K2, but not as long as Pickonimo. 

Then everyone refused to play Dragomino with me, so I played it twice myself. This is the little sibling of Kingdomino: there's no area scoring or multiplication and no claiming of next round's tiles. Instead you simply take one tile from the array and add it to your kingdom - I think the theme is exploring an island - and if any land types match, you 'find' a dragon egg there; taking a face-down egg from the supply and flipping it over. If it's a dragon, that's a point. If it's an empty egg, that's not, but you do take the Mother Dragon token which means you'll choose first in the next round (it's also worth a point at the end of the game).

I enjoyed this so much that at various points in the day I managed to get Stan, Peppa and Sally to all play with me (though I rarely won). The entire game takes ten minutes but despite the simplicity, it certainly doesn't play itself, with Peppa in particular on the lookout for taking tiles others might like. We also tried a small variant where the tiles with watering holes on allow you to take two eggs and choose between them instead of the standard one. 

In the afternoon we trundled down to the beach. Lula was the sole heroine in terms of actually getting in the sea, hurtling off the breakwater while the tide was high enough. The rest of us took turns digging an enormous hole and then inventing a game called Holeball where the hole was the goal and if you scored you went in it as keeper. Surprisingly good fun. I had slept really badly though so at one point I laid down under a towel and closed my eyes. And Joe and I walked out on the breakwater.

We buried Stan's legs in the hole before we left. 

In the evening there was more Dragomino and the little-seen Tomatomato, where you say all the syllables of 'tomato' (plus one rogue potato) in fast but random order. If you make a mistake, all the other players get to pick up a tile, and the winner is the player whose tiles can spell 'tomato' the most. 

My tactic was leaning in like an old man and moving my head along the line of tiles as though peering shortsightedly at a bus timetable, reading as I went. Old man wins!

There was three games of Spicy between Peppa and I, then as tired children and adults tottered off to bed, it was time for Flamme Rouge again. With a huge amount of flat before any hills, Mark and Peppa shot off early and I struggled to catch them. 

I was so far back I was picking up as many exhaustion cards as the leaders, and although I managed to catch them (my rouleur finished second) in the overall positions my team was a distant third as things stood. Noticing that the riders seem to have enormous butt cracks ("that's a seam" Mark pointed out) was scant consolation.

Wednesday

There was a trip planned to Adrenalin Quarry for the early evening, for much cavorting on massive inflatables atop freezing water, so I had to go and get myself a wetsuit. This was a bit like the car hire adventure all over again, as my card was declined and I didn't have the back-up with me, so had to call Sally and get her to transfer money on my laptop back at the house. Factor in the negligible Devon 3G signal and me holding my arms in the air halfway up a hill and you have a decent portrait of the level of chaos I have, day by day, being a scatterbrained halfwit of the highest order. Fortunately, we got there in the end, and I came away with a rather expensive new all-in-one outfit. 

Back at the house Peppa was up, and up for games. We cracked through another two Spicys (one win apiece) before Mark joined us for the next leg of our Flamme Rouge tour. My riders lurked near the back again for most of the race, but ended things a little less lamely this time - true, my sprinter limped in last, but my rouleur sped through the peloton for a win!

Then in a stunning turn of events Joe wanted to play Dragomino, and he beat me 7-4. After a little while we also tried out Pugs in Mugs, which is a fairly standard Exploding-Cats style thing, only a little gentler. Collect three matching coloured card to claim a pug in a mug, and claim all coloured pugs to win. It's okay. Not my kind of thing, even if there's a pug wearing a bra. 

Then we hurtled off to Adrenaline Quarry, where I had 45 minutes of hilarious fun, but felt my age for the last 40 of them. That was it for the games, except for a couple of rambunctious whirls around In Vino Morte as we waited for chips in Plymouth. Owing to Mark's planning and blessed providence, we were also well placed for the final of the UK fireworks championship as it exploded above the sea, not far from where we sat.

Then it was time to go home. Firstly Katie and Mark's home, and this was an adventure in itself with wrong turns, cantankerous GPS systems and eventually, everyone bar myself (-driving) asleep. And the next day, home home, with no final games to play, but a stop off at Hound Tor on the journey back.

Many fond memories, Katie's olive bread, Mark's margaritas, and some great games!

Archipela-go-go

 Tuesday games at Joe's new kitchen arena and seven of us (Joe, Adam T, Ian, Katy, Sam, myself and, at long last, Martin) squeezed around the table, looking for some fun and expressing mixed feelings about the tube of sour cream Pringles in front of us.

Our first game was Bliss20. A game where we all take it in turns to say consecutive numbers from 1 to 20. Except that after each time, an extra rule is added, eg, swap 2 and 17, or instead of saying 16, you have to trace the shape of the numbers with your finger.

At first we did okay. Certainly, well enough that the pile of twenty gems representing lives seemed hugely over generous. But as the rules began to build up, we made more and more mistakes. It was funny and agonising to see people forget which rule was for which number and also, after a run of consecutive rules, forget what number it was at all. A nice game and we cleared level 2. But as Katy said, not sure I'd want to play it at the end of the evening.

Next we indulged in a discussion about what to play next, featuring some games I'd never heard of. Did everyone stock up on games during the pandemic? Eventually, we went for Polynesia and Cosmic Frog, and once the decision was made Sam expressed relief that he could now stop saying "cosmic frog". 

Joe, Sam and Ian went on the coffee table but during the rules explanation, Sam felt that he wasn't as familiar with Cosmic Frog as he'd thought, so they changed to Hardback. This is a game I know nothing about but Sam won.

Sam 62

Joe 54

Ian 52

As for Polynesia, it was a pretty deep and thinky game, where points were scarce. I’m sure we all played sub-optimal moves as we explored the islands and archipelagos around Polynesia. I moved all my guys off one island, leaving one of Martin’s meeples stranded and unable to move. All very funny but, at the same time, now all my guys were in the wrong place. Katy didn’t realise about one scoring method until late in the game. Meanwhile, Adam seemed to be one step ahead of all of us but the final score had a familiar name at the top. Much to his surprise.

Martin 14

Adam 13

Katy 12

Andrew 8

Next, we play Snakesss, the game in which we’re all trying to answer a multiple choice question, except there are three snakes among us trying to slyly push people to make the wrong choice. I was pleased about my reasoning to make people think that “Rock em Sock em Robots” was a cartoon in the 1980s, but I was helped by the fact that the real answer (Rubik, the amazing cube, or something) was pretty outlandish. Joe and I were heading into the final round neck and neck and it was very exciting but then we were both chosen as snakes, meaning we crossed the line in joint first whatever happened. But then there was a tie-breaker: a game of rock paper scissors! How odd, but okay, then. My scissors cut into Joe’s paper, and I won. Sam was pleased with his late comeback, having scored nothing at all for the first half of the game.

Andrew 19 + scissors

Joe 19 - paper

Adam T 9

Martin 9

Sam 9

Katy 7

Ian 7

After that, I was exhausted and Adam and Ian left at the same time. Katy, despite having a job interview next day, stayed on for one more. According to Sam’s text, they played Scout.

Sam 33

Martin 29

Joe 12

Katy 11

Thanks all. See you next Tuesday.

The Silly Olympics

It was a balmy August night as I returned home from the park with the boys, cutting things a little fine that we bumped into both Ian and Adam on the way. Katy swiftly followed and after catching up, we realised we had time for a short game before Joe joined us at 8pm. That game was Cabo, the unicorn-themed something or other that is mostly about remembering your cards and, in my case, remembering you're supposed to remember other people's cards as well. Katy and I failed miserably on most counts, as we careened off on a point-scoring spree in a game where points are bad. Adam steered a more conservative path, but it was again Ian who took the plaudits, with an impressively unabundant score:

Ian 30-something / Adam 60-something / Katy 90-something / Sam 112

didn't take a pic of Cabo

Joe had arrived during our final round and as he graciously took and remained on the Stool of Discomfort, we tried our hand at Snakesss. This is a guessing, deduction and bullshitting game where - not hugely unlike Insider - the snakes (always 2 in a 5-player game) know the answer to a somewhat niche quiz question, and are trying to steer the humans into guessing incorrectly. One of the 'human' team is actually The Mongoose of Truth, who reveals their identity at the start of the round: they don't know the answer either, but at least the human players know they're not a snake, so can be trusted. 

crisps are optional

The dynamic probably changes with more players, but with 5 of us it felt less like a question of figuring out who the snakes were, and more what they were trying to do. The first round snakes had no chance because Adam knew what a truel was, and indeed demonstrated it was some impressive recall. After that, suspicion was rife, and the snakes did well if they stayed unmasked. On the other hand, the humans realised that if everyone was in agreement on what the answer might be, it was probably wrong... Not to take anything away from Adam's impressive win, but I do think the game might be weighted against whoever gets dealt snakes cards the most? 

Adam 13 / Ian 10 / Joe 9 / Sam 8 / Katy 6

Next up was the lesser-spotted Magical Athlete, where a third of the game is spent bidding for the athletes in question, before they all run a series of races with bonkers special powers, most notably Katy's demon that caused her to cry "Demon!" before every single turn for the entire duration of the opening race.

dice tower optional

 It didn't work out for her, though. We all finished first or second at least once, so when the final race took place everyone had a chance of winning the contest overall. But like the Olympics, for every victory, there are a clutch of tearful defeats. I still feel the best athlete was Adam's spy: no superpower at all, just honest hard work.

Joe 8 / Katy 5 / Ian and Adam 4 each / Sam 3  

rubbish ninja

"It's a good game to break out once every three years" said Joe. But if it's a slightly protracted experience, it's stupidly funny one too. And we stayed in that vein with Perudo, risking the wrath of Stan (who had just gone to bed) by shaking and slamming cups like a bunch of plastic vikings. Katy was first out, followed by Joe and then Adam. That left Ian with a single die and me with two. I couldn't cock this up, could I?

Ian wins

Joe still believes

We stayed in the silly realm for four plays of In Vino Morte, another new one to Adam but possibly the simplest game there is after Win Lose or Banana. Your card is either a wine or a poison: drink it now (ie reveal it) or swap it, and reveal at the end of the round. Poisoned players are knocked out of the game, and the last player standing wins. This was Katy in game one and myself in game two, then in game three Ian pulled off a spectacular by poisoning everyone but himself. 

you're poison (ed)

In game four, Joe announced he was going to do the same as Ian. I took him at his word and swapped his card with mine. Ian drank and died. Adam swapped with Joe's new card (my old one). Katy - sadly for me - also took Joe at his word and swapped her card with mine (Joe's old one). We all revealed, and we all died - except Katy.

After this incredible drama, Adam took his leave of us and headed home. The four of us tried our hand at Telestrations: Upside Drawn, which is a simple matter of identifying what is being drawn. The catch is that the guesser is also the player drawing: a team-mate moves the drawing surface around under their pen to create the picture. It's weird, and kind of funny, but also difficult. Katy and I won, but this was as much to do with listening to Joe and Ian's guesses as it was decoding our alien scrawls.

chauffeur!

Katy and Sam - chief telestrators!

And after the high-octane creativity of Telestrations, we were done for another evening. Thanks all.

President Hickman

A week might be a long time in politics, but 20 minutes gave Ian and I (Sam) time to play a couple of games of Love Letter while we waited for Adam to arrive. This was notable mainly for Ian thrice playing barons when I had the princess, the third time saying "this has to work at some point" before his countess went down in flames. We played with the new 6-player version, which adds two new characters in the spy (potential point if you played the only spy and make it to the end of the round) and chancellor (draw two cards, place two of your three cards at the bottom of the deck).

Then Adam arrived through the rain, and we sat down to a game of SHASN, which tells the story of an election: the regions, the voters, the underhand tactics (my copy is the Indian version; there's also a USA edition). The board is broken into nine regions that the players contest: simply put, voters are the currency of victory - or not. The currency of progress is down to four political resources: funds, media, trust and the somewhat nebulous clout. Basically, you gather resource tokens representing the public's faith in you and 'spend' them to influence (or buy) voters, which you then add to the map. Having the most voters in a region means you can gerrymander: dicking about with voters in your own or adjacent region to swing things in your favour. Having a majority (-not just the most, but over half all the possible voters) means - if you hang on to it - you'll score points at the end of the game, which arrives when all majorities are claimed. 

But although it sounds, and broadly is, an extremely swingy take-that affair of screwing each other over on a regular basis, SHASN's theme comes through clearly in part because of how you get these resources: at the start of your turn you're asked an interview-style question on policy from a deck of Ideology cards, and you're permitted one of two binary answers. In either case, you take the card and collect the tokens on it: if you answer in the style of an idealist, say, you're going to improve the public trust in you. If you take a more populist view, you'll be a hit with the media. As well as gaining resources, you keep the card itself, and the gathering of cards builds an impression of your political identity, as sets of cards spark first bonus resources (for every two matching cards you have) and then additional abilities - usually of the nasty, interfering kind. Five matching cards endow the players with the really brutal stuff: I, predominantly playing the role of the Trump-esque supremo, could steal resources from other players on every turn and force their voters away from the polls. Adam - a more idealist identity - could get voters at less expense and convert others to his cause. But Ian's extra voters and ability to gerrymander not one, but two voters for every region he controlled was brutal. 

When you hear the question, you don't actually know the ideologue identities of the answers you're offered, and must instead work on your hunches. The idealist and capitalist are usually easy to spot, but the lines between the supremo and showstopper are a bit more murky. They both sound like twats, and oftentimes you feel like each question deserves a bit more nuance as to how they are answered. But the fun of SHASN is in the humour of these moments, and the fact that in order to win this election, you can't take a consistent position: simply having loads of the same type of card is ultimately unproductive, so the idealist is forced to tax sanitary towels, the capitalist must make concessions to healthcare and the populist might decide to be anti-capital punishment. 

As a game it feels like an inelegant punch-up, foregoing the control you might enjoy for round after round of face-slapping and shin-kicking, with interesting seams of luck, trading and pact-making running through it. But that's what we signed up for, and we all enjoyed it as a sort of event: particularly Ian, seeing as how he closed out the game in one fell swoop - suddenly polling day was upon us, and Adam and I didn't have time to form a coalition against him.

Ian 34 / Adam 23 / Sam 12

If a week is a long time in politics though (sorry), SHASN only took a couple of hours so there was plenty of evening left to fill, and we began with Fae, or Land of the Old Men's Penises as I immaturely insisted on calling it. 

I love Fae's simplicity of simply pushing old men's penises druids around on your turn in order for them to throw a party once no-one's looking; the catch being each player's colour is secret. Adam's afternoon siesta perhaps came back to haunt him, or maybe he was fatigued from all that canvassing. I snuck a win despite gifting Ian multiple points for getting the parties started.

Sam 47 / Ian 41 / Adam 39

Next up was For Sale. This is a copy Joe gifted to me and we found after our online adventures in 2020 that the older version had a slightly different make-up, with both properties and cheques numbering zero to 20. Ultimately, it made little difference to my experience of For Sale, which often ends something like this...

Adam 72 / Ian 68 / Sam 60

we were baffled by how the boring 20 skyscraper is considered 

better than these bonkers abodes

And we rounded off our night as a trio by playing Project L, which I thought I was rather well set to win until Adam revealed his score. Adammmmmm!!!

Adam 23 / Sam 19 / Ian 15

The winner hit the thankfully-dry road, but Ian and I felt we had one more game in us, and it was Wavelength. I wrote down all our spectrums and clues, but somehow this morning they don't seem quite as compelling as they did last night. Still, we overcame our different spheres of knowledge (Star Trek; Pokemon Go) and different paradigms of perception (IKEA furniture) to scrape a win. A fun way to round off a fun evening, thanks chaps!