Merry Christmouse

Christmas comes round earlier each year, they say, and this year it came round at two o’clock in the afternoon. I arrived only a little late and found Laura (masked, overcautious, due to being a contact of a contact of a covid case, but asymptomatic (something like that, anyway)), Katy and host Sam. The first game was the Lateral Flow Test Game which has some pretty harsh player elimination rules for those who fail, but both Sam and I won so that was okay.

Our first real game was Whirling Witchcraft, a game I’d watched last week but couldn’t quite work out. It’s pretty simple: you have to keep using ingredients in your cauldron to make more ingredients, but the stuff you make ends up in your neighbour’s cauldron. If they can’t fit it in, then it comes back to you as points. There’s more to it than that but that’s the jist. 

We were mid-way through the first turn when Adam H arrived so we paused the game while he was given a rules explanation from Sam. Katy took the opportunity to indulge in some snack demolition, cleverly combining two separate snacks into a soft cheese and Japanese cracker sandwich.

Once Adam was up to speed, the game commenced and we swapped cubes with cheese-feulled abandon. Katy was first to reach four points, just one off the game winning total, but then she stalled and, two rounds later she found herself very disappointed with the final result, complaining that “all that cheese has gone to my head.”

Adam 8

Andrew 7

Sam 6

Katy 4

Laura 4

Next we played a co-op game: Siege Runedar, in which four players (Katy and Laura teamed up) try to escape from a castle that is under constant attack from orcs.

Before long we remembered why we rarely play co-op games, as failed dice rolls were greeted with sarcastic comments regarding the rollers suitably at orc-repelling. Adam was first to kill, but after that his luck ran out. Given his lack of fondness for dice rolling and co-op games we should have cut him a little slack. But we didn’t.

Mid-game Laura had to go somewhere and while she was away Katy kept the orcs at bay by herself, stating “Laura would be proud” after a particularly successful roll. Then we thought the game had ended, killed by a catapult while Katy was answering the front door, but we checked the rules and found that we’d been far too hard on ourselves: a quick reset and we recommenced.

We lasted long enough for Laura to return (in a new mask) but were soon in a hopeless situation, as we were only one mistake away from triggering any one of four of the game’s criteria for losing. In the end, the monster deck was exhausted, which did us in. Still, lots of fun.

I had to dash off at this point, promising to be back later. In my absence, more games hit the table...

They played Wavelength and got a world record [citation needed] 23 points. Ian won Tsuro, beating (in order of bestness) Adam, Katy, Sam and Laura. Sam won Heck Meck: Sam 7, Laura 6, Adam 4, Ian 1, Katy 0. Finally, Adam won Avenue: Adam 66, Katy 44, Ian 26.

By the time I get back it was 7.30 and Laura had gone, replaced by Martin and the aforementioned Ian. The next game had already been decided for me: Tinners' Trail, and I was up against Ian and Adam. Martin, Katy and Sam played Brian Boru, the game of medieval Irish matchmaking, or something.

In Cornwall, it had been so long since we last played that we had to reference the rule book several times. I started in audacious fashion by selling a pastie. Not sure if that’s a good move. Anyway, Adam bossed round one while Ian was king of the hill in round two. I was in dead last, worried that I might not even hit 54 points – the score you’d get if you only sold pasties all game. But I did have four mines on the board, compared to Adam and Ian’s two each.

Brian Boru was ticking along nicely. “It really builds up,” commented Martin. “Yeah,” agreed Sam, “as the board fills up, those high numbers become really important.” And then Martin said he was referring to the spicy crisps. Sam clarified he was merely externalizing his internal monologue rather than replying but, still, that’s one for the sitcom.

Back in Tinners' Trail I made a comeback of sorts (even getting past the 100 point on the money track), and I scored more in round four but by then the gap was too big to bridge. In the closing stages, Adam was convinced Ian had nabbed the win and he was surprised at his comfortable margin.

I am the Elon Musk of Cornish tin mining

Adam 148

Ian 135

Andrew 120

But if he was surprised by his win, then that was nothing compared to the surprise when cries for help emanated from the front room. Sam leapt into action and Adam followed. The rest of us stayed seated, not wanting to intrude, and soon found out that Sally had seen a mouse. Charlie the house cat, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen so Sam had to catch it. Which, amazingly, he did and he took it, in a cereal box, outside to the end of the garden.

What an exciting episode. And after that, he sat down and finished of Brian Boru. By now, Martin had married twice (Niall and Connell) while Sam bagged himself Estrid, Princess of Denmark but it didn’t seem to help him.

Martin 45

Katy 41

Sam 28

Getting ready for the quiz

Finally, with mice ejected and everyone calmed down, it was time for the annual Christmas quiz. With five of us, it didn’t make sense to split into teams so we sort answered as a co-op team. Round one was “Spot the fake BGG comment” which we did well at, detecting 7 out of 8. Sam simply doesn’t have the sort self-righteous stupidity that the true internet hermit possesses. Then we did a GNN round, based on the post-online meetings. I was surprised how much I couldn’t remember but it was nice to be reminded that “cock-flavoured sand” was once used in Wavelength as the Worst Thing To Put In Your Mouth.

With the quiz done, we played a couple of six-player games. First was So Clover. We got 32 and we could’ve done better with a little more thinking. Ian’s clue of “Webber” made us think of Formula One, but we really should have noticed “cat” and “theatre” to make us think of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Adam’s clue of “Fishnet” for “String” and “screen” was well received.

Martin's

Finally we played Texas Showdown. For a long time it looked like either Ian or Katy would be the ones to go past the game-ending score of ten tricks as the game was swiftly rechristened Texas Bullshit. But they both had good fourth rounds and the game went on long enough for Martin’s form to collapse. Meanwhile, Adam and I vied for first place until I got stung in round four meaning the final round was a cakewalk for Adam.

"The sphincter of safety" (c) Sam 2021

Adam 2

Andrew 5

Sam 9

Ian 11

Katy 11

Martin 12

And with that, Katy and I were done. And, after I came back from the toilet, I discovered that so was everyone else. But what a great day. Sorry that so many weren’t able to attend but there’s always next year. Or did I say that last year...?

Thanks Sam for hosting and quizzing. See you all soon.

Missing whirled

 When I arrived at around eight, I was surprised to see only three people around Sam’s kitchen table: Sam, Joe and Ian. What with people ill, isolating or absent for some other reason, we were down to a quartet for this week’s gaming. The three of them were midway through a game of Whirling Witchcraft and I sat down and tried to work out the rules but, apart from turning cubes into other cubes, I was kind of baffled. People said things like “My toads are overflowing!” which didn’t help. In the end, Joe won so easily he admitted he wasn’t sure if he’d been playing it right.

Joe 8
Sam 4
Ian 1
 
Then the four of us brought out Search For Planet X, the app-based game of logical deduction. Each player, via their phone, is drip fed a number of clues such as “no comet within two sectors of a gas cloud” or information about how many of a certain astronomical object are with a certain number of sectors. With these facts, we are left to deduce the location of Planet X, the only astral body to elude our sensors.

The board came complete with dazzling sun in the middle

It was nice to play it again, and I went scanning for gas clouds while Sam targeted two sectors with his first two moves. And I was progressing quite nicely and had worked out the comets, gas clouds and asteroids when Joe asked what he should do if he knew where Planet X was. He followed the apps instructions, typed in his guess and a little jingle told him he was correct. All that was left for the rest of us was the make two final guesses on whatever we thought we knew for sure, and that was the game. Well done, Joe.
 
Joe 22
Andrew 14 + tie breaker
Sam 14
Ian 7
 
Next we played Art Robbery, a quick game of stealing points from your opponents while trying to make sure you don’t have least “alibis” (little white dots on certain tiles). It was fast and mean and Joe won again with the highest score and most alibis. He ruefully noted, however, that having lots of alibis isn’t necessarily a good thing. “I was ice-skating and…”
 

Joe 29

Andrew 25
Ian 23
Sam, fewest alibis
 
Could Joe continue his run of form? We would have to wait and see as the rest of the evening belonged to So Clover. We played twice when I was there. I didn’t right the scores, but neither was a full house. A couple of guesses made me sad when they turned out to be wrong, such as “Friend” and “Moist” wasn’t loveheart although it surely should have been. It was fun as always, and I did have the interesting feeling of watching my friends guess every single one wrong before they reconsider and end up with three out of four.

Ian did not hint at "dirty" with "sister" although we felt confident he had

A tricky one, especially with Sunday, school, brother and religion all possibles for "Church"

 

Then I left, and the three of the kept going with scores of 10, 13 and 16. Finally, after Joe and Ian went home, Sam and Sally played and got 21. Or maybe they played 21? Anyway, next week is the Christmas do. Assuming it’s not illegal, of course.

Vi-kingmaker

A Friday night before an evening shift allows me a little freedom regarding bed times so when Sam sent out a call for four potential gamers to play Viking 878, then I was happy to accept.

Ian and Steve were the invading Vikings while Sam and I were the defending Saxons and the game starts in 865 when the first invasion hit English shores. Ian and Steve went further south than is historically accurate, sensing that East Anglia was full of easy pickings. And they were right. The Viking hordes cut a swathe down through London and on to Winchester.

Sam and I looked on grimly as city after city fell and our sources of reinforcements dried up. The local fighters, who only appear when defending a city shire, were pretty useless. They either ran away or just gawped at the battle, motionless.

The turning point in the battle was, I think, Oxford. Perhaps roused by my observation that Radiohead came from there, I rolled five hits and suddenly sent the Vikings packing. News of the defeat must have spread, since the Vikings seemed to put up less of a defence than before.

Ian and Steve’s late excursion into Northumbria threatened to tip the game in their favour again, but during round five King Alfred popped up and the end-game trigger was activated – both Viking tribes playing their treaty cards. All Sam and I had to do was reduce the number of Viking-held cities to below nine and that would count as a victory to the Saxons. And we did it! Sam played a card that meant his “running away” dice rolls became “active in battle” dice rolls, and his victories were decisive in reducing the Viking Occupation to acceptable levels and no doubt the two factions went on to live together in harmony.

With history firmly rewritten, I set off home at a late (by my standards) half past ten. I strode down a busy Gloucester Road when a young woman took me by the arm and walked with me, saying that we’d met that day on Redland Road and said something about e-scooters and inflatables. I had been on Redland Road, but I was oblivious to any inflatable. Must have been someone else, and she unlinked arms and went back to her friend.

But Vikings 878 was good. It’s a bit fire-fighty, with not much long term strategy. At least, not how we played it. When ever Sam or I put an army in the way as a blocking tactic, the Vikings just walked around it.

*             *              *

Narrator changes to Sam...

Before Andrew - or Steve, or even the fictional vikings - had even arrived, Ian and I had tried out Whirling Witchcraft, the game of demented Wiccans trying to explode each other's cauldrons. It's really simple - each round you create a new potion, and then use all your ingredients to brew potions - which is basically turning them into other ingredients, like Splendor eating itself. The somewhat dickish catch is that everything you brew goes to your neighbour, and if they don't have room for the ingredients on their 'workbench' you get points, and first to five points wins. 

Apart from three 'arcana' abilities, that's the entire game, and it took Ian about thirteen minutes to cause my cauldron to explode, at which point we set up the Vikings board, and Andrew and Steve arrived...

We also played some games after Andrew left, being as it was a Friday and all. Ian won both games of Spicy, surviving many challenges simply by virtue of being truthful.

Then we rounded out the evening with Cross Clues, where we might have done a little better (was it 13?) but we ran out of time! And likewise, the evening came to a close as well. Good stuff - I very much enjoyed 878: Vikings, which conjured plenty of conversations as well as battles. 

Busted and broken

What with both Adam T and Martin falling foul of Covid and Andrew a late withdrawal, it was a sparsely attended GNN last night. Indeed, at 7.30 we were a mere quartet, with Katy, Laura, Ian and myself sat around the table as Sally and Stanley cooked and Joe orbited scooping up crisps. We nonetheless embarked on a quick game of Ticket to Ride: New York, before Joe joined us a little later. 

Katy's yellow cabs carved a worryingly easy path through Manhattan, as the rest of us looked less in control of our destiny. Laura and I both fretted over our turns and picked up extra routes that didn't work. They mainly didn't work because Ian - more in control than it seemed - ended the game, giving everyone one last turn when we needed at least two to complete the extra routes. Despite Katy's yellow highway, Ian took the laurels:

And we ended things just as Joe arrived, with Reiner Knizia's new card game Art Robbery in his bag. We set up and started playing straight away. 

In this feisty game, the players have made off with the loot from the robbery and are now 'debating' - via cards - how to split it. There's four rounds and in each round you play cards to either grab a number tile from the communal pile or, possibly, off someone who's already taken one. Cards match the numbers (which equal points) but there are some Knizian wrinkles, like the 'Boss' card only scoring if she's attended by a 4 or 5, the guard-dog protecting your tiles, and some of each set containing 'alibis', which are relevant come the end of the game: the player with fewest alibis automatically loses. 

It was fairly chaotic-feeling compared to something like High Society, but fast and fun, with dick moves aplenty and a reasonable amount of swearing at each other as tiles kept getting stolen. Joe and Laura lost with joint-fewest alibis, and Ian took his second win of the night:

Ian 28

Sam 26

Katy 16

Joe and Laura - Nicked!

After that, we kept to the breezy-games-pace with a blast through Cross Clues, scoring an impressive 24, despite numerous discussions where someone or other initiated the finger of executive decisions. So close to that perfect score!

Then, after some pondering, we introduced Laura to the charms of QE. It's simple, right? Just bid on everything, but make sure you don't spend the most. This almost blew up in my face when everyone was appalled that my opening bid (as auctioneer, so a public bid) was £10M. My protests that I was auctioning the financial system of one of the world';s biggest countries and this was a comparative pittance moved nobody, and Joe - usually so non-evil - encouraged everyone to bid zero to shaft me over before the game had even got going!

There followed a succession of low public bids just to ram home my mistake, but inevitably the prices began to rise, and Laura seemed unable to control her impulses as the winnings piled up in front of her: she was clear points leader, but at what cost? Even my opening salvo was beginning to look like a bargain by the end, when Katy priced her final auction at £30M. As expected, Laura blew us away on points, but was hamstrung by financial ruin. Ian spent by far the least (£19m!) but it was Katy who claimed victory, as I realised my hidden industry wasn't the one I thought it was. 

Katy 39

Ian 36

Joe 31

Sam 15

Laura - Bust!

I wanted to make a note of Laura's spectacular score, but my notes here say "Laura goes home as Katy yells at her" which is probably putting it a little dramatically (and I think she was yelling at me) but not that far from the truth.

Now high on alcohol, crisps and Ian's snack mash-up of dark-chocolate coated nachos, we played Skull. I took one frankly rubbish photo...

And then forgot to take any more. Joe took us to the cleaners, wrapping up a game win before anyone else won a round. With the hour now pressing towards half-ten, we cracked into co-operative Wavelength, playing twice partly because we did so badly on game one, and partly because I drunkenly hectored everyone into trying again (sorry everyone). Inevitably there was mention of Gwyneth Paltrow, and many discussions along the lines of is X thinking of everything in the universe, or just all types of fatty snacks? There was a long debate about Skips, and I discovered that I was the sole member of the party who thought Monster Munch are unhealthy. "It's natural maize!" cried Joe, almost as if he was in the payment of Walkers, like a covert Gary Lineker. 

In the second game everyone started yawning and I felt so guilty I made snacks. Then I discovered I was the only person who didn't think toast wasn't the least meal-like snack. What was happening?!?!

Despite the inebriation, fatigue and stupidity (mine) we triumphed in the second game with a card to spare, coming back from the near-dead. I finally lifted the portcullis and allowed everyone to leave. 

Into it. Clover it.

I arrived at Sam’s and Katy answered the door, having only just arrived herself. In the kitchen, Sam, Martin and Ian were playing Whale Riders which is currently my most-watched, not-played game of the year. Still don’t know what’s going on but Sam went from “I’m feeling confident” to “I might be third” in the space of one round.

Ian 24

Sam 23

Martin 21

Then Laura arrived and, after the table was dragged from the wall to make more room, the six of us played So Clover – Laura’s introduction to the game. It was a mixed bag: Martin and Sam gave clues that netted six points, Katy and Laura got four points each with their clovers while Ian and I, last to finish writing our clues, only got three points each. My clue of “Casino” for “Luck” and “Patio” wasn’t a huge success.

26 out of 36

Next we split into two groups of three. Martin, Katy and Laura played Biblios while Sam, Ian and I once again crashed on an inhospitable alien planet in Cryo. Katy remarked that, after she’d played it, the game had given her nightmares, or at least some sort of fever dream in which she was playing it. A tleast, I think that’s what she meant: the mime she did to describe it involved plucking things out of the air. Also, she thinks she may have cheated the last time she played, but I don’t think anyone was that bothered except her.

Laura was given a rules explanation and she seemed to get the gist pretty quickly, judging by Katy’s wail of “Are you yanking my chain?” midway through the game. Also, everyone seemed keen on the brown die as it soon rose to six in value with everyone putting it up. I think Katy got it in the end, but it must’ve gone down by the end.

Martin 11

Katy 4

Laura 2

We were still halfway through Cryo, with Ian schooling us on how to max out a super power, rescuing an extra man each time while also spending less. I kept running out of resources and scrapped three ships to get me out of a tight spot. As we still had a way to go, Martin, Katy and Laura played Biblios again.

This time was much closer with it all being decided on the final red dice, which people had been ignoring or discarding for the whole game. In the end, Laura picked it up for 3 reds.

Laura 5

Katy 4

Martin 4

Finally, we finish Cryo when Ian cuts his turn short by returning the only drone he’d used, thus triggering the end of the game with Sam and I still with unfinished plans in progress.

Ian 36

Andrew 28

Sam 28

We’d finished at the same time as the second Biblios so, after Laura left, we played Ten. This is basically a simple push-your-luck game with a few slightly confusing rules regarding money and the circulation thereof. Halfway through, Martin was still unsure we were doing it right while Katy said she liked how it worked. Honestly, will those two ever agree?

Sam 20

Ian 16

Martin 16

Katy 16

Andrew 13

Then I left, but the night was far from over. According to the late night text from Sam they played Spicy.

Sam 21

Ian and Katy 18

Martin 1

Then Ian must have left, unless he was just happy to watch them play Whale Riders the card game.

Sam 78

Martin 70

Katy 48

And then again…

Katy 50

Martin 49

Sam 40

Finally with a win under her belt, Katy left and then Martin ended the evening by beating Sam 21-12 in Letter Press.

Thanks all. Do it again soon please.