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!