Lazy Susans in Spaaaace!

 I knocked on Joe’s front door at 8pm and while I waited, Sam sent me the results of the game they’d just finished which meant I was able to congratulate Joe on his victory at Oh My Brain as he opened the door.

Downstairs sat Sam, Martin and Adams T and H. Since there were six of use we began with Challengers. Sam wasn’t hugely keen and so he was given the seat where he didn’t need to move for each match. I started well, but a victory in round one is barely a victory at all when you consider the rich pickings later in the game. I didn’t win again, consistently losing as my bench overflowed. I slimmed down my deck in round five and then consistently lost due to running out of cards.

Martin decided to go big on pyrotechnicians who then never came out at the right time so their super power never triggered and Adam T used UFOs to draw extra cards and had two overpowered Stable Boys. These were the winning tactics, it turned out, as they both qualified for the final.

Martin 37

Adam T 37

Joe 30

Adam H 17

Sam 8

Andrew 3

Martin and Adam T faced off in the grand final while the rest of us packed away the rest of the game in a faint display of disinterest. Sorry about that but at least we didn’t start putting chairs up on the tables. In the end Martin won when he played a Villain and caused Adam T’s bench to fill up.

Then we split into two groups. Sam, Joe and Adam H chose Planet Unknown, whose huge box put me off slightly as I imagined a Feast For Odin style epic. By contrast Martin, Adam T and I went for the tiny-boxed Impulse. In between these two space-themed games sat a bowl of snacks that, if I recall right, Joe described as being “over-flavoured” and he wasn’t wrong. They were a shade of red that, if you saw it on a plant, you’d assume it was poisonous. And when we ate them, we went through a journey of saltiness, spiciness, overwhelming aftertaste and finally an almost automatic desire for just one more.

The reason for Planet Unknown’s large box was revealed when they set up – in the middle of the play area was a large circular receptacle for all of the pieces that the player would need to tessellate across their planet’s surface. And this rotated! Finally, a game that comes with its own lazy Susan.

I know nothing about the game, nor if you can turn the lazy susan as you wish or if there are rules guiding its use, but they seemed to have fun.

Adam 67

Joe 58

Sam 51

As for Impulse, it was very pacifist with no battles at all, even if Martin and I sabotaged each other. Not that we were picking on each other deliberately. It’s just that Adam T was always out of reach, sitting in his corner mining and trading for points.  Most of my points came from trading too. And then Martin went from 12 points to the game-winning target of 20 in a single turn and the game ended.

Martin 20

Andrew 9 (? I think)

Adam T 8 (ish)

Since Planet Unknown was still being explored we played Kingdoms, a very simple Knizia game that is as mean and cunning as you’d expect. Place tiles with values on the board and then put your castles next to them to score an entire row and column. But beware negative numbers, dragons that scare off positive numbers, mountains that split rows and columns in two and goldsmiths that double your score, for better or worse. Adam sighed that he wasn’t doing enough to hurt Martin, and he was right. I had a good round three to make myself look like a contender for a while.

Martin 183

Andrew 176

Adam T 169

After Planet Unknown had finished they played Art Robbery. Don’t know what happened except for the result

Adam H won!

Joe 2nd

Sam: most points but least alibis.

At this point everyone was together again but not for long as it was half past ten and I had to dash. Even the sight of Not That Movie could tempt me. I’ve no idea what happened but according to the late night messae from Sam, they didn’t do very well: just a score of 24.

Then the Adams left and Sam, Joe and Martin played So Clover twice: 16 out of 18 and 13 out of 18.

Thanks all. See you next Tuesday.

Fist ‘n’ Chips

 After it became clear there’d be no host and few attendees, this week’s Tuesday was moved to Friday. I arrived at Sam’s house and Katy answered the door, telling me I could help her “being alone,” which made no sense until I found out she was watching Ian, Joe, Martin and Sam playing L.A.M.A. Dice. 

While walking to Sam’s, I’d already been sent a pic and scores from the evening’s first game: The Number.

Joe 109

Ian 89

Sam 68

L.A.M.A. Dice ended with Sam blowing on a perilously balanced die that helped him do something (no idea what the rules are) and end the game. A game that, according to Joe, “could literally go on forever.”

Martin 9

Ian 21

Sam 23

Joe 24

I think that points are bad, but not entirely sure.

Then the six of us sat down for a nail-biting game of Heat, the racing game vaguely set in the 1970s where the tents reminded Joe of Filofaxes, Ian was distracted by the crowds of people that resembled disturbing AI-created blobs and the clouds made Sam think someone had spilt salt on the board. But enough about the artwork, what about the race?

Joe had a nightmare start, and soon fell behind after playing three stress cards for a totally random move and then drawing 1-1-1. I was the clear leader at the end of lap one, cleverly slipstreaming round a slow corner past Martin and onto a straight but I was soon caught up and was soon back in last with Joe overheating his engine dangerously to push himself into first!

Near end of lap one: me and Martin (green, obv) battle for first with Joe a distant last.

But the winner was decided at that same corner when Martin gambled on a boost which would probably leave him stuck in fourth over overheated but instead sent him into first, past that tricky slow corner and onto the straight. He crossed the finishing line while we all tip-toed around the hairpin bend.

Same corner, but lap two. Katy leads me and Ian while Sam, in 5th, is about to overheat

and Joe is back in sixth again. Martin is about to unleash his winning move.

1st Martin

2nd Ian (+1 turn)

3rd Katy (+1 turn)

4th Andrew (+1 turn)

5th Joe (+ 2 turns)

6th Sam (+2 turns)

While Martin commented on his stroke of luck, Sam showed Katy and Joe the crazy extra rules that could be added to the base game, including weather.

Then we set up Auf Teufel Komm Raus! The luck pushing game of avoiding the devil while taking coals from his cauldron. We remarked on how nice the poker chips were, but we just wish there were more of them. They’re also quite large and Katy sometimes struggled to keep her bids totally secret (hence the blog title, in case you were wondering).

She was upset with me on the very first turn when I pulled out enough coals that Martin’s big gamble paid off: she wanted me to continue until I went bust, just to spite Martin. But then when she was in the same position later, she didn’t make herself go bust, so I call shenanigans!

I was confused by people’s habit of raising their bets the more we went on, noting that taking coals at random doesn’t get easier the more you do it. Meanwhile, I like Joe’s method of nonchalantly pulling coals casually one after the other although I noticed whenever he paused, for whatever reason, he pulled a devil. Not that he cared, as he finished a round exactly on the winning total while Martin was left ruing his mid-game bet of 300 when he tried for his second audaciously lucky win of the evening.

Joe 1600

Sam 1420

Martin 1370

Andrew 1030

Katy 840

Ian 640

Since it was Friday, we ploughed on towards 11pm with Not That Movie, where imaginary films get annoying reviews and we have to put them all together. 

Katy’s promise of making the first film that we guess perfectly was made real today as we all chose Time Of The Condor as a sequel spy story that wasn’t for kids. But I think we all wish that instead she would make Parallel Brothers, a sports movie starring puppets.

27 points, which I think Joe said was “Blockbuster”

Finally we finished with good old So Clover. There was no slow excitement at the chance of another perfect score after we messed by Ian’s and Martin’s clovers. We got the rest right, and Katy declared that she’s getting the hang of it. We struggled with Joe’s clue of “Crib” at the end. We got it right, but using the wrong reasoning, which is fine in So Clover. And in life, now I come to think about it.

So we left at about half past eleven. Thanks for hosting Sam. Sorry for being so loud that you had to close the doors in the house, but it was a lot of fun. And Tuesday is only a few days away...

Happy Birthday, Das Exclusive!

 I enjoy reading old blog posts from a decade ago to reminisce about the old times with myself and this month I noticed that it was Das Exclusive's 10th birthday! I couldn't let the anniversary of the world's greatest dice tray go unmarked so here's a quick run down of some of the highlights of March 2013.

Steve and Anja hosted a games night only two weeks after the birth of Luther.

Sam managed to teach the rules of Stone Age after his third mojito.

During a game of Lords of Vegas we decided that smelling another man's burp was the same as kissing him.

Sam and I invented Extreme Biblios. "Extreme" only in the sense that saying "eat shit" when handing someone a 1-gold card is somehow edgy.

In Bracknell, imaginary player Dirk beat James and Chris at 7 Wonders.

Also in Bracknell, Paul won a game of Tikal thanks to his expert skills at hoarding goods and I commented “if there's ever a national crisis that involves staying indoors all day, I know where I'm heading.” Just imagine - once there was a time when such a crisis was the most absurd thing anyone could think of.

An old photo from 2013

Amazing times. 

Enjoy your temporary wetness

I rolled up to Laura's front door at eight and rang the doorbell. Then I texted Joe but he couldn't work out how to open the front door from the inside, and finally I went down the overgrown footpath to the gate at the end of Laura's back garden where I was let in and I startled a cat.

I sat down to discover that the other gamers there (Joe, Martin, Gareth, Katy and Laura) had already played The Numbers and Laura had won again. Katy didn’t seem impressed by the game.

We played Challengers. This game of deck-building is like a football manager game inasmuch as you put together a team as best you can and then watch the game unfurl. In round one there was a bit of controversy when it was discovered Gareth had beaten Laura with a B card when only A cards are in play. But a few minutes later we found out Laura also had a B card, so it was okay after all.

Joe started as a clear leader, going through the first six rounds unbeaten. He looked like he was definitely going through to the final. And Gareth, with his trophies and fans looked like he’d be the other finalist. But then Martin won the last three rounds (after losing each of the previous three by a single point) including a win against Joe and when we added up our points, the tally was

Joe 29

Martin27

Gareth 20

Katy 18

Laura 14

Andrew 12

The nail-biting final

So Martin and Joe faced off for the final and, thanks to Martin’s ability to keep his bench clear for more cards, he was able to win! What a comeback story. And his winning strategy? “I had lots of animals and a stable boy and then I got loads of vacuum cleaners.”

Then we stayed as a group of six for a co-operative game of Not That Movie. It’s a simple game of groupthink. First, two columns of cards are laid so. These have the names of real films, except they’re flipped so that once they’re laid out they make titles of new films.

I think a photo can explain it better than I can.

Then, once we have eight new film titles to look at, two “reviews” are drawn from a deck, one bad, one good, and we all had to secretly chose which of the titles these reviews refer to.

It proved tricky, even on those occasions when it seemed obvious. In one round the reviews referred to “ultraviolence” and “too complicated” so I thought The Dark List seemed like the only candidate, but Laura and Gareth disagreed. And why Katy didn’t think that The Silence Of The Dog wasn’t an introspective three-hour movie all shot in the same room, I’ve no idea. Mind you, I think everybody had “The Lady In The Shell” as the perfect film for those two reviews except that Laura’s other half was listening in and when she heard the reviews she said “Well, it’s obviously The Lady In The Shell” and there were scenes not dissimilar to LaLa Land getting the wrong Oscar as we had to replace it with a different film.

There was a scoring system and I think our rating was “good”. Laura didn’t seem to rate it, wondering where the cooperation was and Martin didn’t see the point of keeping score.

Then we split into two groups. Laura, Martin and Joe played Ra: The Pharaoh's Edition and Katy, Gareth and I played Azul. Despite not being a fan of Ra, Katy admitted she’d be happy to play that version. Halfway through that game, Joe must have won some floods at Martin’s expense because I distinctly heard Martin say “enjoy your temporary wetness” and not in a good way.

Joe 63

Martin 39

Laura 16

We gave ourselves a rules refresher on Azul, which seems amazing considering how often we used to play it. It was quite a nice game, with little attempt at ruining each others game although Katy did declare that “I’ve cock blocked myself on the bottom”

Andrew 59

Katy 49

Gareth 36

Now it was 10.30 but this would be my last chance to stay up late for weeks so I stayed for a six-player game of So Clover. Martin was first and his clues were pretty straightforward, even if “multigenerational” (for full/heritage) didn’t quite fit on the clover. Katy, too, had some simple definitions (snail/room = “shell”) and I started to have a sinking feeling. Laura went a little bit surreal with “octopus” as her clue for plastic/medusa but we still got it. Three down, three to go.

Gareth clued nicely, with human/rooster = cock. Then Joe’s caused a bit of difficulty. I was sure “gameboy” was the clue for vacation/console but that didn't fit with the rest of the clover. In the end we tried bucket/console out of desperation and it was right! He explained that it meant it in the sense of Bargain Bucket, since it’s the cheapest console.

Finally there was me, with my dissatisfyingly vague clues. “Silver”? “Yellow”? I didn’t have much hope. But then they got chalk=limb/marker and after that paper/beer=mats. Then it was just a case of which words fitted the last two clues best and they got it right! Pandemonium! Delirium! A chance to immortalize ourselves in the book of perfect results!

We were so excited I tried to take a group selfie

Or two..

And then five of us crammed into Joe’s car for a journey around Bristol as he gave lifts home for everyone! Thanks for hosting Laura. See you all next week.

Glass is blue

 Joe’s kitchen was the happy venue for this week’s gamers and we began as a five: Joe, Ian, Laura, Adam H and myself. A bowl of unsalted peanuts sat in front of Adam until he asked them to be taken away.

The first game was a new one: The Numbers. It’s a very simple game where you have to write a three-digit number. Then they are arranged in order of value, highest at the top, and starting at the top numbers are eliminated if they use any digits that appear in the numbers below. Any remaining numbers score according to their leftmost digits. 

But then, those players who successfully score have to cross off the numbers they used on their player mat and those numbers can’t be used again.

The rules were simple, but the strategy wasn’t. Adam wrote numbers with all the same digits which seems sensible but rarely worked and Ian scored nothing at all in round two. It seemed like only Laura got a hang of this and she graciously shared her tactics with us after the game, which was something about ending with middling numbers to get the better bonuses in rounds four and five.

Laura 66

Joe 57

Andrew 49

Adam 22

Ian 21

We all voiced our appreciation of the indented player tiles which allowed us to place them face down without fear of the ink smearing off onto Joe’s clean white table top.

Next we dug out an old classic: No Thanks. Another new game for Laura so Adam and Joe shared the rules explanation. We played twice. Ian went for high cards and Adam went low. I ended the first game with no chips, which I thought deserved a bonus point or two. Laura did the same on the second game and then I thought maybe it shouldn’t.

Adam 5

Andrew 10

Joe 10

Ian 49

Laura 49

And then...

Ian 8

Adam 19

Joe 21

Andrew 27

Laura 28

With Sam expected shortly, we banged out a quick Art Robbery. A third new game for Laura this evening! And the unsalted peanuts were poured back into their packet with Laura promising to do something with them: mix in szechuan sauce and roast them a bit. And add salt.

As for the game, Adam seemed curiously attached to the guard dog. Is he hankering after a pet? When Ian had a 5 token and the guard dog, Adam tried to steal from him. To his surprise Ian handed over the 5 token, not the dog. Ian then immediately stole the 5 token back with his next turn. A smooth move.

Joe 24

Adam 21

Andrew 18

Laura 13

Ian – fewest alibis (but had 18 points)

Then we discussed the guard dog token, with Joe assuming it was a severed head and Laura saying it was a complete dog with a disproportionately huge head sitting down. Joe decided that if we ever meet Reiner Knizia, we’d have to ask.

Sam arrived mid game and we split into two groups of three. Joe, Laura and Ian went for the lush opulence of the Pharaoh Edition of Ra. While he unpacked its enormous pieces, including metal money tokens which looked like they might actually be worth something, he gave Laura her fourth rules explanation of the evening.

The game was a sight to behold. They’d certainly overcome the old criticism that the bag for the tiles was too small: this edition had a bag large enough to carry groceries.

Joe 49

Ian 39

Laura 30

Adam, Sam and I played Cat In A Box, the quantum trick-taker. Adam was taught the rules and seemed so confused that he actually asked if it was a good idea to screw over other players. Who was this impostor? I thought.

Sam 13

Andrew 12

Adam 11

Since Ra was still in its second epoch, we played a quick Block Party. I sped off into a quick lead while Sam and Adam provided comedy moments such as:

Adam: Is it an elf?

Sam (sighing): yeah, it does look like an elf, doesn’t it?

(It was Robin Hood)

Sam: Is it France?

Adam: It’s a bottle of hot sauce.

This last one attracted Joe’s attention who asked why the bottle was blue instead of red and I had to remind him that, as every child knows, glass is blue.

Andrew 9

Sam 7

Adam 5

Then Ra ended and the Block Party expanded across the table. Laura got her fifth rules explanation (a probably unique perfect five) of the evening and we began. Adam managed to finish his guessing round getting none at all and Sam forgot to give us a countdown so that a few of us hadn’t finished. My “moustache” was just two rows of cubes. 

Joe tried to do “bottle” but he used green cubes and no one got it. We reminded him that glass is blue. Ian’s “peacock,” in retrospect, was very good but if I hadn’t already used up my guess I was going to say “quad bike.” Sam had a last-second structural collapse in one round, meaning no one could guess his “dice”.

Ian 11

Laura 10

Joe 8

Andrew 7

Sam 6

Adam 6

Then Adam and Laura left but I had no work the next day so I stuck around and the four of us played Stinker. Joe’s answer to “worst thing to say at a job interview” was “I am not a doctor” while Sam invented a new insult when he answered “eat me tits, airbone.” Possibly better in an Australian accent, we decided.

The most interesting aspect was how prophetic Stinker had become. Sam vetoed a number of cards which were once amusing asides but now referred to very real dangers facing us: Putin, climate change and Kim Jong Un were all topics that were swiftly replaced by lighter fare.

Joe 39

Ian 29

Sam 28

Andrew 20

Finally, Joe tempted us to one last game The Fuzzies. Very simple. Draw a card and remove a fuzzy ball of that colour from the tower and place it somewhere higher. Ian, already dressed in high-vis jacket and cycle helmet, looked as if he were taking the risk of the tower collapsing far too seriously.

Joe made the tower fall down.

Was there a scoring system? I’ve no idea.

Then, way past my bedtime I went home and found that my phone was on 3% battery but would no longer change. I transferred tonight’s pictures at a smaller size to make sure they uploaded before it finally died hence the lack of 4K HD style widescreen imagery. 

Thanks all. See you next week.