Real Life Trolling

We briefly threatened to be a six last night but as soon as Laura joined, Andrew dropped out, and a quintet it was. The sparsely-populated GNN evenings continue! Maybe Mel should host again, we had to turn people away that night. 

Anyway Joe was hosting and Ian, Laura and I were early enough to try a team crack at the officially-two-player A Little Wordy to kick us off. Each team draws vowel tiles (4) and consonant tiles (7) and from the available eleven letters, makes their own secret word: it can be any length, from one to eleven. Then the teams swap tiles, and try to work out what the other's word is. 

The deduction is done via cards that request X information from the other team. It might be the first or last letter, the amount of vowels, word length et cetera: but each card has a cost - when the other team gives information they are rewarded with a certain amount of berries, and when the words are finally guessed most berries wins. Asking if a particular tile is in the secret word is relatively economical: one berry. But asking the first letter is costly: 4 berries! Despite this Laura and Ian won the first game when they paid for the first letter and worked out our secret word was GIZMO (wrong guesses = two berries). Although Joe and I could have forced a tie (you keep playing, if necessary, until it's clear one team is berry winner, so despite us having more berries when they guessed right, we were forced to keep awarding them berries... ) we failed to do so.

Steve was yet to arrive, so we went again. This time Joe and I, after paying to establish the first letter was V, worked out the word was VERANDA and our secret word (AUNTIE) remained safely undetected as they made a vain, final tie-salvaging guess of UNTIED. One win each. Watching on for the final throes of the second game was Steve, looking somewhat windswept. With the classically tricky number of five to entertain, Joe suggested introducing Laura and Steve to Ethnos, and embarked on a wonderfully protracted and meandering teach - assisted/sabotaged by me - of a game that is very simple but manages to be extremely opaque in the learning. 

For the uninitiated, the isle of Ethnos (both curiously named and shaped, as it closely resembles Slovakia) is populated by various fantasy creatures, working in 'bands' that jostle for area control in the six regions. There's a slightly Ticket-to-Ride-y feel to proceedings as you either pick up cards or play them: cards of a matching race or colour form a 'band', allowing you to (probably) add a token to the board and also (probably) activate the power of the chosen 'leader'. The catch is when you play cards the rest of your hands go to the table, restocking the tableau for others to snatch up. Additionally, bands score at the end of each round - there are three - for their size, so you can compensate for underwhelming map presence by having 'big bands' and/or vice versa. 

Although the game explaining involved much laughter and Steve at one point sinking his head into his hands, one of the great things about Ethnos is the almost out-of-control speed it plays at, with turns coming around in literally seconds - unless it was Ian's turn, which was oft accompanied with Steve eventually saying "Sorry, is it me?" before Ian apologised and picked up a card. On the map, I got off to a good start and Laura was hampered by trolls not doing what she thought they did. This troll-related shenaniganery gave her a bad start she was to never fully recover from. Meanwhile, Joe's motley bands were bigger than everyone else's and he established an early lead.

We had one other way to score which was Orcs: when you played a band with an Orc leader, you could add a token to your Orc board, symbolising who knows what. These orc board tokens could be cashed in for points, something I took advantage of in round two when I kept picking up (and playing) orcs for not much kop on the map, but garnering me 20 points at the end of the round. Joe still led, however, and in round three he was first to lap the scoretrack, and proved ultimately uncatchable despite a late surge from Ian:

Joe 86 / Sam 75 / Ian 62 / Steve 53 / Laura 39

We all liked Ethnos and agreed Katy would too if we could ever get her to try it again. Next up was Raj, although we only actually played a single round as Laura and Steve, as if called by the night itself, suddenly upped and left. For what it's worth, I won (or was leading) the aborted game, aided no end by picking up the 7 tile with a bid of two...

The remaining trio played a trio of So Clover, pushing our scores slowly up (13-15-16) but never hitting the perfect (for three players) 18. I confess my clues were the smuttiest we've ever seen at GNN Towers, but in fairness with combinations like SEWER/KISS I was hard-pushed to keep them clean. Fortunately Joe and Ian were competently gutter-minded enough to decode them. I quite liked my romantic clue of 'lovemaking' for EVENING/SAFARI as well... despite some confusion over whether Godzilla resembles a bear or not (a long story, involving King Kong, who is "also not a bear" as Joe pointed out) we managed to decode enough to feel, if not triumphant, at least competent. And smutty. 

The evening had flown by and although Joe was up for a fourth crack at So Clover, Ian and I decided to hit the road. Lovely to revisit Ethnos, and a fun night once again.