Decocon!

GNN's annual tinsel-adorned day of games began at the early hour of 1.15pm, when Joe (Berg) rocked up at my (Sam's) house with a huge IKEA bag stuffed with games. After some festive chat, we kicked things off with a swift bash at Sea Salt & Paper (my notes say Joe thrashes Sam), before we got the Crokinole board down off the wall for a blast at Canada's hardwood export. My notes say Joe thrashes Sam. Let us not dwell on these events further: a knock at the door heralded the arrival of Adam, Hannah and Arthur. While Hannah and I chatted and Arthur read his book, Adam and Joe wasted no time in blasting through a couple of games of race-to-solve-the-puzzle polyomino game, Genius Square. 

Adam won the first. I think they tied the second. Checking various timetables we reckoned we had about an hour before Katy arrived, so Joe set up Reiner Knizia's multi-game plastic diamond festival, Mille Fiori. Although it's been seen a lot on various Tuesdays (and Novocon) I'd never actually played before, and it was new to Hannah and Adam too. But although it feels like five different tasks with subtly overlapping ramifications, each task (except the docks, which I never got the hang of) is pretty straightforward, and before long we were away.

I decided early on to focus on my boat, propelling it along the water to high-point-scoring (or bonus turn) places, and this gave me some early success on the scoretrack. But Joe was worryingly unfazed by my lead, and sure enough, I was soon overhauled by Hannah, who established a huge mid-game lead. Still, the Berge was untroubled, and as our tile-placements began scoring whopping hauls towards the end he sailed past everyone. 

Joe 194

Sam 182

Adam 178

Hannah 149

Then Steve and Anja arrived with Louie and Lennon, and Katy around the same time. As the children gathered with Little Joe - who now seemed comparatively huge - in the front room, we bunched into groups in the kitchen. Hannah, Katy and I played Living Forest whilst Joe, Steve, Anja and Adam set up Quacks of Quedlingburg.

I'm not sure what happened in Quacks, except Steve cried out in what sounded like existential grief near the end. In Living Forest, we were doing the classic nature triumverate: collaborating to put out the fire of a restless spirit (Onibi) growing trees, and deckbuilding.

You can win in three ways: putting out the fire a lot (12 fire tokens) growing a bundle of trees (12) or having a turn where your deckbuilt deck reveals a bunch of sacred flowers (12). I was pursuing the fire route, with Hannah close behind. Katy was growing lots of trees, pausing only to spray water on the fire before we could. I gathered my twelfth fire token, but then Hannah stole it off me, and Katy stole into win with her twelfth tree! Quacks was still continuing, but I hastened to Lidl, having remembered that I had promised pizza. When I returned to heat them up, Steve's mournful cries echoed across the kitchen as Quacks came to dramatic conclusion.

Anja wins!

Joe second

Adam third

Steve fourth/last

Pizzas were now devoured by everyone and post-tea, Steve was keen to play Clank, and began setting up with Joe and Adam. Laura arrived and was promptly sat in the catacombs with them (sorry Laura!) as, with Andrew and Gareth expected soon, Hannah, Katy, Anja and I played Spots.

Spots was notable for how fixated Katy became on getting treats - I guess we shouldn't be too surprised - and Anja's incredible ability to go bust, which happened (I think) four turns in a row. I briefly led the running with four banked dogs, but Katy's mountain of treats and their re-rolling power saw her swoop in for her second win of the night, insta-banking a trio of dogs. She insisted on a winner's photo:

Anja and Hannah made for home, taking the children with them - bar Louie, who was Minecrafting in the front room with Little Joe. But what was happening in the catacombs of Clank? Here, Adam takes up the story...

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The game is a deck-building exploration game with points scored for discovering or buying treasure, freeing prisoners, defeating monsters and picking up certain cards. You need to do all this stuff quietly though or a grumpy dragon will attack.

Joe and Laura specialized in warrior cards (Joe kept muttering something about being a dangerous guy), Steve seemed to waltz around the board teleporting from treasure to treasure, while I released large numbers of prisoners.

The dragon didn't seem to attack much and didn't do much damage when it did ("clank" cubes get put in the dragon bag when you do noisy stuff like stumbling or rioting, then there's a chance the dragon attacks whenever a new adventure card is turned over - cubes are drawn from the bag and if it's yours you take one damage), and we all had loads of health, so we pushed deep into the dungeon...

All of a sudden we all had excellent engines built for buying lots of new cards which meant the dragon started attacking multiple times every turn and we began panicking. Joe's band of fighters couldn't muster the movement cards and were first to die, deep in the caverns, Laura made it to the chamber by the exit before the dragon got her, I charged out of the dungeon with one health to spare while Steve got stuck in the chamber where Laura died with one health left and had to face 16 cubes from the dragon bag (due to one dragon attack, and the three of us having already exited). The tension built until the 15th cube finally got him and with the 20-point getting-out-alive bonus I pipped him to the win:

Adam 89

Steve 74

Laura 39 

Joe 0 (his body could not be recovered from the deep caverns)

It was a lot of fun!

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(Sam again...) By the time Catacombs ended, Laura had left and Gareth and Andrew had arrived, to find themselves drifting in the seas of Ahoy with myself and Katy. This is not one game, but two: whilst Katy and I contested areas of the sea (tiles) for points, Gareth and Andrew played a pick-up-and-deliver game of smuggling at the same time. The catch for the smugglers is that each item they deliver is then played as a wager on who, from Katy and I, would control the island they delivered to at the end of the game. 

This was a salutary lesson in not giving Katy a free hand, as she loaded cannons and sailed around bullying everybody. Like it's asymmetrical cousin Root, Ahoy isn't designed to be played less than aggressively, but I was struck by explainer's curse and my lack of sea-battling prowess gave not just me, but Andrew and Gareth an uphill battle in staying relevant on the score-track. She nearly ended the game on round three, but Andrew stymied her. Not for long though: my belated flurry of dickishness was too little, too late:

Katy 40
Gareth 29
Andrew 25
Sam 21 

Then Clank ended too - see above - and we discovered that Laura beat Joe into third place despite having left half an hour earlier. "We dragged her corpse to safety" he explained. After some interesting puddings courtesy of Katy (thanks Katy!) Steve and Louie left, bound for home, and Little Joe went to bed. The house now comparatively quiet, the remainder of us went for a series of co-ops to round off the evening, starting with So Clover. 

We began well, with three sixes, but then stalled slightly, perhaps as alcohol and fatigue began to tell. Gareth's clue of hotdog prompted a lot of discussion, as we pondered sand sausage (you get them at the beach) king sausage (are they the best sausages?) or perhaps elastic sausage (they do wobble about). It proved to be elastic, but we'd not gotten there first time and having stumbled once, we did so again with Katy's clues as well. "I hate this game!" she cried. But 30/36 was a decent score. Then Andrew departed for home, and we settled on Wavelength!

This is just one of several photos where I managed to make Joe look like a lost simpleton, courtesy of the wide-angle lens, and bad timing. Joe barred me from taking any more pictures after seeing them, but mostly we were focused on a near-miss (14 points! You need 15 to win) and a second crack where suddenly we seemed to hit the mark multiple times. True, we had some extremes. But we also had some corking clues and deduction work, triggering many extra rounds and finishing with a near-record of 32 points! There was a lot of laughter too, but unfortunately at this point I was a bit pissed and I don't remember much of the details. "I've been playing games for twelve hours!" Joe cried. I'm not sure if it was a celebration or a complaint. But either way, with midnight now gone, everyone staggered off home to await the first GNN of 2023. See you then!

Replenish!

A rare Thursday GNN extra session, as Ian and I made our way to Steve and Anja's for a pre-Christmas bit of competition. Louie joined us as Ian and I talked our hosts through the basics of Terra Nova, which we'd played on Tuesday. "We'll remind you of the rules as we go" I said "If you can just remember your own faction's ability" Sure, everyone said. And off we went. 

We were supposed to be hoovering up cash and power respectively, whilst Anja's reds got power moves on the cheap and Steve could form cities over the rivers, without even bothering to build a bridge. We were using the advanced sides, but playing like amateurs: Steve and Anja didn't know the rules and Ian and I kept forgetting to use our faction abilities. 

Louie was transfixed by the game, but also Ian's sack of chocolate that he carries everywhere, like a confectioneering Santa Claus. Despite our best efforts, we were nowhere near the bottom when the game ended. And it ended in a fight-off between the hosts: Anja built the largest network and hauled in twelve points for doing so, whilst Steve's comparative hamlet trundled in in fourth place, size-wise. But his round-by-round shenanigans meant his points cushion was big enough to hold Anja off for a narrow win, whilst Ian and I lagged some distance behind, possibly victim to the first twin-barrelled explainer's curse. Or possibly just out-done.

We debated whether to go again, but it was nearing 10pm and so elected to go with something shorter, landing on Tembo. Roles were reversed, as now the hosts were the explainers, and as they were a little rusty on the rules, there was some German translation (hats off to Anja) and online English version downloading from Steve, who having explained the rules to us kept forgetting to follow them - leading to repeated cries of 'replenish!' when he failed to replace spent cards from his hand. 

Your cards are animals, seeking to cross the river. At the start there are five paths across it, but during play three of them get blocked by lions, who eat everything. And there's also crocs, who eat some things (for instance, a croc may bag a gazelle but leave the zebras alone). But mostly there's tentative hope and temporary alliances, as crowds of animals gather together before crossing en masse, when someone plays an elephant to guide them over. Animals that make it across are points! (the cubes in the pic above just denote who is who)

No explainer's curse here, as Anja ran away with our first game and Steve came in second. Having enjoyed predation and shouting replenish so much though, we played again, and this time Ian took the win. A really fun 15minute filler where everyone cries with despair at least once felt like an appropriate way to see out the night. Thanks all.

The Glow of Dishonesty

An unusual games night in one way - no Martin, Joe, Katy or Andrew - but numbers swelled to six with Mel and Ben hosting and Gareth rejoining us after a short absence. Ian, Adam H and myself made up the sextet, and after comparing notes on general health and wellbeing, we kicked things off with Just One. 

It was easy at first. Too easy - we shrugged off the odd duplicate and advanced processionally towards maximum points, to the point that each correct answer seemed curiously procedural and lacked tension. But then, like a sneak thief, Just One crept up on us and dealt out a number of duplicates. Adam's word was Flintstone, and with two Bedrocks and two Wilmas cancelling each other out, Mr Hillmann was left with a single clue: knapping. Impressively, he knew what it meant in terms of definition. But he didn't know what it meant for Just One, and having stumbled once we did so again on Ben's final guess, leaving us with a merely reasonable 10/13. How the casually mighty fall.

Then we split into threes, with Adam leading Mel and Gareth to Mexico in Railways of the World as Ben, Ian and I set up Terra Nova. This is the short version of the epic Terra Mystica, which Ian said he'd attempted to play online and found a struggle. That mirrored mine and Andrew's experience on the table several years ago, but thankfully Terra Nova is considerably more accessible. 

Mechanically, you're simply building houses and upgrading them into trading posts, then upgrading trading posts into palaces. Thematically, the changing landscape of the board represents obstacles, as each of us prefer a different terrain to settle on, so we spend shovels to do a bit of preparatory landscaping. And, as there are rewards for chaining buildings together into towns, and having the largest chains at the end of the game, there are incentives to build in each other's way. 

Ben got off to a strong start, utilising his faction's abilities to outbuild Ian and I in the centre of the board. Terra Nova has round-by-round rewards which I tried to focus in on, possibly to my detriment. Ben and Ian were taking a longer-term, strategic view, possibly echoing Adam's progress on Railways next to us. 

I wasn't keeping track of this at all, except at one point Adam said "Oh. I forgot to tell you" and I sighed with relief inwardly that it's not just me who misses critical rules. There was some tense bidding at one point, between Adam and Gareth. Mel may have been struggling with cashflow, as she sighed as well: "I'm bidding nothing, obviously". Adam helped himself to another of Ian's kilo of Lindt.

On the Terra Nova board, we were nigh on hurtling towards the end. It's only five rounds and I'd been first to pass on all of them, I think. Meantime Ben's progress after a brief mid-game stall continued, and Ian ruminated on how badly he was doing - until he made a second town, joined his towns together for the biggest network, and accelerated past me into second. In the final scoring, it couldn't have been closer. Well, for Ian and Ben anyway. 

Ian/Ben 58 each

Sam 53

Terra Nova's tie-breaking suggestion is to play a game of Terra Mystica. We applauded the ambition, but passed. While Railways continued, we instead had a crack at Spots, the dog-collection game de jour. This was so fast-moving I forgot to take photos, but I survived a catastrophic bust to be first to six dogs.

Sam - top dog

Ben - hot dog

Ian - underdog

By which time, Mexico was fully networked and Railways had finished! Adam took the win here, shrewdly doing railway-y things I imagine. There wasn't enough time for a debrief...

Adam 55

Gareth 43

Mel 31

Because we swiftly moved on to Spicy, new to Ben and Mel. We played twice, and the first game was remarkable not only for how many times we challenged Adam, but how many times we challenged Adam on the number when he'd lied about the suit, and vice versa. Not only did he end the game by emptying his hand twice, he was also points leader by a huge amount at that juncture. I suggested we play again. 

Adam's confession that he found the duplicate peppers (red and blue) confusing, led to a lot of colour-announcing, which meant more words were being said and that meant it was easier, in theory, to spot a lie. But which part of the untruth was untrue? I felt confident on a few challenges - mostly on Gareth and Adam - but tended to challenge the wrong thing. Ben challenged as well, with a deal more success. Nobody emptied their hand twice (or at all?) but Ben's chiselling skills saw him take the victory on the last game of the night, as the mighty - Adam in this case - fell again:

Ben 23

Mel 14

Ian 12

Gareth and Sam 9 each

Adam 7

As we geared up for our walks and rides home, thanking our hosts, Mel remarked that Ben had the glow of victory about him. "I think it's the lying" Ben ventured happily. 

And with that, we fled to the night. Thanks to our hosts, to Ian's boss for the sack of chocolate, and everyone for another fun GNN night!

Two agents are better than three

My first games night in weeks and I arrived after 8pm, having driven around the block three times in search of a parking space. I was in time to watch Ian, Joe, Sam and Martin finish a game of Hit, with Joe doing so badly I (cruelly) asked him if he’d joined in halfway through.

Ian 112

Sam 91

Martin 84

Joe 31

Then Sam and Martin told me the night had begun with a game of Schnipp & Weg. Apparently it was very closed and they sounded like a couple of New York Jews reminiscing over an old argument. “I schnipped, he wegged.”

Then we had a protracted discussion about what to play but the five-player options weren’t really exciting us. Charioteer? Hansa Teutonica? Decrypto? Not even Railways of the World got much support. In the end, we spilt into two groups. Ian, Joe and I played Dune Imperium, a rematch from the Novocon days. Sam and Martin decided on a smorgasbord of two-player options, beginning with San Francisco.

Sam tried to play mean by taking things just so Martin couldn’t but by the end of the game, his over-emphasis on foundations had left him adrift on a number of point scoring possibilities and Martin took a handsome win.

Martin 16

Sam 4

Then they played Caesar! Battle raged across the Mediterranean until Sam cried “End it!” and so Martin did, and he won. I believe Sam ended with only three tokens and an unhealthy fixation on Rome.

As for Dune, I was first to score a point and Joe got his extra agent early on, but it was Ian who became the man to beat after a move mid-game when he chained together several intrigue cards and leapt into a commanding three-point lead. Conflict was often fierce, with Joe picking up third place reward with a single unit, saying he was “just dropping a dog” into the battle. This lead to a lengthy rumination between us about what kind of dog and what the actual consequences of such a strategy might be. “He looked at me as he fell!” I wailed in character as the soldier given the task of pushing a sausage dog out of a plane.

Sam and Martin had moved on to Spots, a dice-based luck-pushing game where you have to match your dice rolls to the spots on some dalmatians on cards dealt out to you, using a range of six possible options when rolling (thematically called Fetch, Beg, Stay etc). They played three rounds and Martin won 2-1, ending by saying “Anything low would be fine,” and then rolling a six, but then rolling the winning die the very next moment.

Back on the distant planet of Dune, despite his numerical agent advantage, Joe was lagging in third as I’d won a two-point battle and was right on Ian’s tail. Ian triggered the game end. I managed to drag him back one point but couldn’t overtake him. It was down to Joe, who needed water to do what he wanted. But his last move drew him level with me and it really couldn’t have been much closer.

Ian 9

Andrew 8

Joe 8

And Ian won this using only two agents for the whole game. Impressive.

As we closed out Dune, Sam and Martin played a game of Set and Match which I admit was quite distracting as they flicked a yellow puck back and forth across a tennis court. They exclaimed admiration for cross-court drop shots and made remarks about using “Hawkeye” when they scrutinised the puck sitting fractionally on the white lines of the court.

Sam 2

Martin 1

Then it was 10.15 and I was thinking about doing a Malmesbury but So Clover was mentioned as a nice way to bring the group all back together.

My heart sank when I saw my words. I was especially frustrated by “First/Salad.” For a long time I considered “Eden,” since the garden of Eden is, I supposed, where the first salad was made but it seemed a stretch too far. Then “Starter” popped into my head which was a much better fit so I wrote it down and finally finished my clover.

Dreams of a perfect start didn’t last long as we failed on both Sam’s and Martin’s. Sam’s clue of Garagin was an easy match for “Astronaut” but what kind of astronaut was he? We should’ve done better with Martin too. He’d written “Shooting” as one of his clues and we couldn’t bring ourselves to believe he’d be so tasteless as to pair that with “School/Bang” but our good intentions were misplaced. “I can’t believe you thought I wouldn’t be tasteless,” Martin remarked afterwards, almost offended at our high opinion of him.

We got Joe’s and Ian’s perfectly, although Ian’s clue of “Jedward” caused some debate. We got “pair” easily enough but then Joe wanted to add “old” because they were out of date. But surely “old/pair” would suggest something more ancient than two Eurovision entrants. Then we thought it might be “recent/pair” with Martin vetoing this idea because Jedward really weren’t that current. In the end he was overruled and the guess turned out to be correct.  Finally, I was surprised that my clover of torture was solved in maybe under a minute. All that hard work was worth it.

26 out of 30

Then I had to leave, despite murmurings of a second attempt and shots of whiskey.

Later I discovered that they’d completed the game with a score of 24 out of 24!

Then I was surprised at how long the Whatsapp messages kept coming as the whiskey flowed and Strike! Was played three times. No four... hang on, f- no, six times. Martin won games 1-3 and then Ian acted as combo breaker and won game four. Sam nabbed the fifth and the sixth was Martin again, and it was his 50th play of the game! 

Thanks all. See you next Tuesday.

Malmesbury!

A return to Steve and Anja's in Easton occurred last night after a couple of weeks delay, caused by a) gaming fatigue and b) quite serious illness (possibly brought on by playing Feast for Odin).

A few regulars were missing, but by the time Katy and I (Joe) arrived we were seven plus little Louie: Steve, Anja, Martin, Adam H, Gareth, Katy and me. Conversation eventually turned to the business of the evening, with Louie keen to max out his promise of one game before bed into something an hour long. We quickly established that we had nothing for 8 players, so Anja, Martin, Gareth and I slunk off to the other side of the room and played a couple of hands of Hit. Fortune smiled on me in both games... not so much on Anja. We enjoyed the bittersweet delight of choosing to stick when the next card was revealed to be a bust, even though that inevitably meant you lost all those points to the next player.

While we made like grizzled Old West poker players, Steve, Katy, Adam H and Louie had settled on Barenpark, the lesser-spotted polyomino zoo-building game.

They seemed to have only just begun, so when Hit ended we four turned our attention to something a bit deeper. I'd brought my home-made deluxe Ra set, for which I've (finally) found the perfect draw bag. The bag that came with the deluxe tiles was too silky and gaudy, and the painted tube I replaced it with was too constricted and flaky. On a recent trip to Ikea I spotted a woven bag that seemed just right, and it is! Not too floppy, easy to delve into without looking; I can't now find it on the Ikea website, let's call it Göldiloks.

Anja had played long ago, and it was new to Gareth, so Martin taught while I assiduously stiurred the draw bag to mix the tiles. The only thing missing from my set is a player aid showing what scores what; in fact that's the hardest part of Ra to remember for new players, but Martin did a good job of teaching it, and Anja and Gareth an excellent job of keeping this in mind. With the civilisation tiles, Martin explained, it's theoretically possible to get all five for 15 points; "but that's never happened in any game I've played". 

The first epoch was notable for the absence of Ra tiles among those being drawn, which is always portentous. Anja and then Gareth bowed out fairly early, followed by me, leaving Martin to clean up on his last sun tile with five Ras still to come. And out they all came, leaving him to cash in his 12 for a meagre 4 tiles. Later he rued his lack of gumption, feeling he should have kept going. Personally I think he was wise - we can all instinctively tell when an epoch is on the cusp.

The second epoch was an absolute corker for Anja, who ended with the fabled five civilisations, and more points to boot. I was nursing the 1 tile, and showed the newbies what to do with it - call Ra whenever it's your turn, basically. Not that it worked out especially well for me, I think I scored 0 on the second epoch.

Barenpark had finished, and Katy and Adam dabbled in a bit of Strike (a tie, apparently) while Steve checked on Louie.

Barenpark

Katy 97

Steve 82

Adam 81

Louie 72

On his return, they sat around and seemed at a loss with what to do with their time, waiting for us to finish. "Just play a game!" urged Martin, and after another go at Strike, they eventually gave up waiting for us and got to work on Ticket to Ride Germany.

Strike

Adam 2

Katy 1

Steve 0

Meanwhile in ancient Egypt, I was sure the third epoch wouldn't last long - Ra tiles must have outnumbered everything else in the bag. The game was also notable for the large number of monuments that came out, and a decent three way fight over the Pharaohs, which I eventually won. As the third epoch closed out in a flurry of angry Ra's, it was clear we were fighting for second place to Anja. Gareth's third epoch was hurt by a lack of floods to hydrate his large stack of Niles, but he at least took 5 points from me for highest sun tile total.

Anja 62

Joe 47

Martin 36

Gareth 29

Ticket to Ride Germany was in full swing, and Gareth bowed out, saying something about Malmesbury. From now on I think anyone leaving games night before the end should just announce "Malmesbury" and disappear in a puff of smoke.

Keen for a Knizia triathlon, we broke out San Francisco. This was new to Anja, and we again settled into a routine of Martin explaining while I laid things out and handed him relevant bits like a bald little Debbie McGee to his Paul Daniels (Martin has not sanctioned this analogy).

I really enjoy this recent Reiner; the contracts provide just the right sort of tension in whether to add or grab, and we all admired the decision to keep the overall scores as low as possible by having half points. Anja focused on cable cars, and was lightly dismayed at the end to discover she got all of 2.5 points for them. Martin and I fought over Master Builder status, and in the end his win may have teetered on him dumping two cards that would have been good for me, and despite my ire at discovering that was even a tactic, me failing to return the favour on a subsequent turn, allowing him to grab a 3rd 'scraper and the master Builder point.

Martin 13

Joe 11.5

Anja 8

Whilst we were in the final throws of San Fran, Ticket to Ride Germany had ended. I know nothing of what happened, sorry. It seemed to involve a lot of meeples, which I've never seen in a TTR game. The scores are pleasingly uniform, unless I wrote them down wrong.

Adam 182

Steve 172

Katy 162

While we packed away, Adam H Malmesburied and Steve and Katy chatted.

We knew it was time to go when a weary Steve was overheard saying to Katy "All it takes is a child to have a poo at the wrong time and your whole day is screwed." We bade our lovely hosts goodnight and headed out into the chill. "The moon!", cried Katy, and told Martin and I that this week's full moon is called Alan. Alan R Moon, perhaps? Who knows. 

Thanks for a lovely evening, and sorry to miss so many regular faces. And especially big love to Sam, whose mum passed away earlier this week x