A turnip for the books

Two o'clock on a drizzling afternoon between Christmas and New Year is not usually an occasion to celebrate but this Saturday saw the annual GNN Christmas do and I was there right at the start. Katy was the only other gamer at Sam's table and, after a brief chat, we began the day's gaming with Misfits. This is basically Bandu but we all share a single tower and we're all trying to make it impossible for other players to place pieces without collapsing.

Katy initially thought it was co-operative but Sam assured her to be dastardly. So she left it almost impossible for him to add anything, prompting him to say “That's dick dastardly.” Katy won the first round, having never picked up a single piece. 

Joe arrived and we began again and Katy began with a very mean upright circle. It didn't last long but soon our tower had one section, a narrow but usually flat-topped part of the tower, where we kept building up and it falling down. No one went for too long without picking up more pieces and Sam soon said that it was the longest game he'd seen “by about 150%.”

Katy won again after I thought I'd stopped her from placing her last piece with a clever use of an upright circle. But her cube perched happily on top.

Then we played Word On The Street, a sort of tug of war with letters. A card suggests a topic and you have to think of a word that fits. Then spell that word while dragging certain letters of the alphabet towards you if you use them. Drag them far enough and they're yours. First to have eight letters wins.

All of this must be done within the time set by a very strict hourglass, which made it all very stressful. Katy left the spelling to Joe, lacking confidence in her own abilities. She also demonstrated a strange habit of answering "crucifix!" to a number of questions.

Sam & Andrew 9

Joe & Katy 7

During this, Laura arrived with pizza and then Steve and Anja turned up with crisps and children. After some rearranging and making sure the children were happy with videogames, we split into two groups. 

Sam, Steve and I played Apiary, the thinly themed game of bee-based science fiction. Laura, Anja, Katy and Joe played Quest for Eldorado. The table hummed to the sound of simultaneous rules explanations. Just as things were beginning, Martin arrived. We'd known he was coming but somehow we expected to be further into our games than this. “If I'd known, I wouldn't have been in such a hurry to get here,” he said.

Despite his insistence that he was fine to relax and watch, Laura decided she could happily sit out Eldorado and join him in a two player game, so they took over the sofa, grabbed a stool as a table and played Romi Rami, a variant on rummy.

Eldorado was new to Anja but it was Katy who found it hard going, spending ages stuck behind “a wall of nonsense.” Joe won and Anja came second.

Apiary was slow moving. Steve found parts of it baffling but it didn't seem to hurt his strategy. I, for some reason, focused on the favour track (“That's one up the Queen's favour!”) and ignored the end of game scoring. A hopeless idea. Even if I'd maxed out the favour track, I still would've been last.

Steve 81

Sam 71

Andrew 46

In the time it took us to finish Apiary, two other games were completed.

Hitster was a Timeline-style game with QR codes on cards, read by an app that would then play a pop tune, anywhere from the 50s until today. Put the card in the correct place (once you've tried to identify it). Since I wasn't playing, I found it easy to guess the songs but me and Steve agreed that, should we actually play it, we'd find it impossible. Katy had trouble with song titles, having to sing Dancing in the Dark by Springsteen right up until the chorus until she was able to guess its name.

Joe won, and Laura must've come last based on her (good natured) refusal to ever play it again. At this point Joe had to leave, because he had friends visiting from London who, apparently, would think it strange if he wasn't there to greet them.

Adam and Hannah arrived (with Arthur, who swiftly disappeared in the front room). They all played Cross Clues, and scored 22 out of 25. Anja had the highlight of the game by cluing Red and Light with “district.”

Finally, with Apiary finished and back in its box, everyone was available again. The next game we played was Food, which is a resource management game concerning the pizzas that Laura brought from Lidl and Adam and Katy walking through the rain for chips, mushy peas and curry sauce. Just like Agricola, we had to also feed the children but unlike Agricola they weren't able to eat wood.

During the meal, we did the annual GNN quiz. With Sam as the quiz master we split into teams according to where we sat around the table. 

This lead to a slight imbalance in terms of regular attendees, with Martin, Adam, Laura and Katy on one side and Steve, Anja, Hannah (“I think I was at the start of one games night this year”) and me on the other side.

But we did okay. Steve got up to get a beer just as Sam asked a question that he would've known, which was irritating but equally he did help me get the answer to What was Joe's clue for Nail/Young in So Clover.

In the end, we did okay, but I think that if I'd just answered Joe every time, I would've scored 6.

Katy etc. 14/25

Andrew etc. 10/25

So, having been reminded that Joe kissed Kylie Minogue and finding out how much Katy loves Fields Of Arle (she had to stop playing it when she began dreaming about it) we began gaming again.

In a tussle for players, Martin lost Katy’s commitment to Big Top when Sam and Laura started to set up Raccoon Tycoon, leading to some falsetto claims/denials of betrayal between the two of them.

Adam, Steve and Anja set up Cascadia at the sensible end of the table, while Martin and I returned to the games cupboard to choose a game for us and Hannah. We plumped for Spots and we were just setting up when Laura got a call from home, asking for help with getting the kids to bed. She had to go, leaving Raccoon Tycoon not yet started. 

With this new development, Martin gallantly did not insist that's exactly what Katy deserved but instead we joined together for a five player game of Texas Showdown. We played with the New Rule, in which playing the highest card in a winning suit means that suit is cancelled and can't win, unless all the other suits are cancelled too. It makes the game much more uncertain as playing a suit that you're sure no one else has may still win the trick if everyone else plays a suit that is subsequently cancelled.

It was great fun. Sam's first round was appalling and maths genius Martin helpfully pointed out that he was already halfway to the losing score of twelve. But then he turned it around and by round three he was still last but level with me and Hannah and only three behind leader Katy. But he picked up four tricks in round four while Katy went clear for a comfortable win.

Katy 5

Martin 9

Hannah 11

Andrew 11

Sam 12

Cascadia had been bubbling along with occasional phrases drifting across the table. “Anja, always with the fish,” said Steve, sounding like a disappointed Jewish grandfather at Passover. “I've got no elk,” Anja realised late on while Adam wondered if it was “too late to get into bears.”

It looked like being a tie for first place, until Adam mentioned that pine cones also score points, a rule that newbie Steve hadn’t been told about.

Adam 94

Steve 92

Anja 87

Then there was a period of general kerfuffle while Adam & Hannah and Anja & Steve made arrangements to leave, taking their clans with them. Laura, meanwhile, returned from parenting duties. Despite it being 8 o'clock, I only had one game left in me, so we chose So Clover.

We played twice and during the first game, Martin got so agitated by our logic when doing his clover that we began to worry that he was genuinely annoyed.

“Look at all the words,” he hissed, unable to stay silent any longer. Sam said that was cheating but Martin insisted that he was merely telling us the rules. But thanks to this rules refresher, we noticed that Medusa went better with his clue of Snakeskin than whatever we had at the time.

24 out of 30

In the second attempt, we started well and Katy, Sam and Martin all created perfect-scoring clovers. Then Laura turned over her clover and we were intrigued to see that “Joe Berger” was one of her clues.

Our sense of intrigue changed to bemusement as nothing seemed to fit. Soon we saw Paintbrush which seemed good, but what to pair it with? Putting Foot/Envelop with her clue of “sock” seemed right but that gave us Turnip/Paintbrush for “Joe Berger” which seemed unnecessarily rude.

In the end we settled on Old/Paintbrush even though it didn't quite fit with the other clues. 

“I like old paintbrush,” Martin insisted.

“I like him too,” said Sam, “but…” 

In the end we went with it, but it was wrong. This left us with only one option: Old/Turnip. It was correct. We were baffled and unfortunately Laura was laughing too much to explain what she meant. 

We then thought about phoning Joe to tell him about this before he read the blog - a conversation that quickly digressed into a discussion about how posh his visiting friends might be. If Joe's ears were burning at this point, no one would've been surprised.

My final (and relatively boring) clover was solved, giving us a final score of 28 out of 30. Not quite a perfect score, but a game worth remembering for its own reasons.

But on that note I went out into the persistent rain. What a Christmas do. Thanks all. 

I'll hand over to Sam for coverage of the final stages...

*            *            *

After Andrew left we found ourselves an incongruously tiny four and debated what to play. We kicked off with Big Top, Martin's new auction game. This is quite bonkers but basically you score points by getting cards and everyone takes turn auctioning them. You can buy your own cards but, as Martin pointed out, it's not a great habit to get into. The cards themselves then need to be 'filled' by covering the numbers with coins, and you do that by bidding that number on subsequent cards (whether you win them or not). It's crazy. 

Being a little drunk possibly helped me. I think Laura was the most sober of us and subsequently the most confused. But we were all confused. I won this one with 71 points, with the others back in the 50s and 40s.

What next? Katy introduced her strawberry gin so that helped us decide, jettisoning Misfits in favour of Hitster. This was my first experience of it and we tried the co-op version, playing tracks and trying to align them in chronological order (much like Timeline) before revealing our triumphs/errors. It didn't take that long to make the five mistakes we needed to end the game, but it was enough time for Laura to display impressive audio prowess, correctly placing a track she didn't even know just going on the production style. 

I drunkenly demanded we followed that with Rankster, and the others allowed me my little fit of pique. With this little ditty, players are trying to match their rankings (one active player, then everyone else, Wavelength-style) of three historical characters in a given situation. EG Who'd make the best drummer in your rock band? Martin favoured Henry VIII over George Washington, and we agreed. We also agreed that Pele would eat more donuts than the Queen. 

This was incredibly funny even though Martin and I both managed to interpret King David as King Herod, which explained our slightly inebriated/jet-lagged mirth. We wrapped up Rankster scoring (I think) 5 out of 8. I drunkenly demanded more games but was this time ignored as three tired gamers went out into the abysmal weather to end a dramatic day in a dramatic way. A lot of fun, thanks everyone!

Old Friends

T'was the games night before Christmas...  an intimate affair, with various regulars absent for a variety of reasons, including flying to the US, landmark family birthdays and gigs. And so just Adam H, Ian and I (Joe) convened at Steve and Anja's at 7.45pm for a night of classic GNN frolics.

While Anja did a bit of  last-minute adulting elsewhere, the rest of us plus Louie played Timeline. It was fun to revisit this old friend (a theme that would recur this evening), and we mostly got things right, until Louie and Adam finished the round with no cards each, forcing a chronological head to head. They both failed this, which meant they had to do it again, and Adam thought he was a shoo-in with the invention of GPS. His swagger turned to dismay as he discovered that it was invented before the launch of the first Space Shuttle (though with hindsight that seems reasonable) and Louie rejoiced in his unshared victory. 

Louie WIN!

Everyone else LOSE!

Anja arrived on the scene at this point, and we debated the merits of a 6 player versus two 3-ers. The 6-ers on offer didn't satisfy Louie's criteria for a 'proper' game - I've never heard the word 'Kites' uttered with such deep disdain - and thus we split into two 3s. Ian, Steve and Anja set up Mille Fiori at one end, whilst Adam, Louie and I reacquainted ourselves with another old friend, Dominion.

We played the 'Big Money' variant, and it didn't disappoint - Louie utilised several Adventurers to explore his deck for coins, whilst Adam used several Laboratories (pronounced 'Bloboratories' for reasons forgotten) to chain some big moves. I set to Mining, and it worked quite well in conjunction with my Throneroom; we launched into the points-harvesting phase of the game with all in contention.

It was close, but Adam took the win with 33 points. I had 30, and Louie 29.

Mille Fiori was drawing to a close, and Ian seemed to have discovered an overlooked rule - that the offer gets restocked at the end of the round not only with players' discards but also one card per player from the deck. I'm not sure I've played that way before, but I could be wrong. Martin will tell us in the comments.

The final scores were Ian winning with 198, Anja a close second with 192, and Steve elbowing various delicate glass objets onto the workshop floor with 162.

Whilst they finished up and Louie retired, Adam and I debated what next for us five. Adam, as noted by Ian, attempted a bit of Derren Brown-style subliminal influencing by asking me aloud what game we should 'railroad' the others into playing.

Perhaps it worked. I'd brought 20th Anniversary Ticket to Ride Europe, and as we got the bits out to admire its sumptuous stylings, positive noises from the other end of the table suggested it might fit the bill. So while the others packed MF away, we tried to understand the implications of the various route tickets, which can be combined for all sorts of variants. In the end we used all the base and 1912 tickets, plus Big Cities. Lots of tickets.

Steve made the excellent suggestion of using the Team Asia card holders; being able to see your destinations all at once really helps, it turns out! We started off all clustered around Paris, for some reason; apart from Steve, who built Roma to Brindisi on his very first go. And then ignored this little branch line for much of the game. Adam adammed, meaning top-decked like a mofo, and Ian followed suit. As did Anja. Ok ok, I did too a bit - what can you do?

The board gradually spidered out from Paris - it was feisty and tense (though I felt relatively un-messed-with), and there were various agonised noises coming from Steve, who seemed to feel unfit for the role of early 20th Century rail magnate.

Here's a distinctly unsophisticated time-lapse of the game...

Eventually Adam blew the final whistle, and on my final turn I gambled on a six link tunnel from Budapest to Kyiv, which paid off. Steve, Ian and Adam had nothing to do on their last turns, and all weighed up the option of taking more tickets, but balked. We turned over the top three to see if they should have taken the plunge, and there was a collective sigh of relief - except from Anja, who it turned out could have made all three!

Anja did take the longest route bonus, however; and then we started the final scoring from Steve, who was in last place. In the final tally, Adam held on to his crown as master of TTR in style, with over 30 point separating him from me in second place.

Adam 160

Joe 129

Anja 120

Ian 111

Steve 73

The final board state in all it's sumptuosity

It was quarter to midnight, shockingly, so we hastily packed away and tootled off (so hastily I forgot my jumper). Thanks S&A - it was a lovely final games night before Christmas, and great to play some old favourites.

Bee-curious

 It still feels like a rare treat to be able to leave my flat on a Tuesday evening and arrive at the games venue in barely five minutes. And so I was second to arrive at Joe's, pipped to first place by Sam. Ian, Katy and then Martin were next to join us, with Martin declaring his happiness at the Solid Six being in attendance.

We began with Team Trio, a new game to me but simple enough that I understood it by round two. Simply ask an opponent (or the other member of your team) what their highest or lowest card is. They have to reveal it, and then you continue to ask others, hoping to make a three of a kind. Any reliance on memorising what people have is ruined slightly by the occasional swapping of cards between team mates.

Martin & Sam won the first two tricks, followed by a brace for Katy & I. Joe and Ian got on the scoreboard but then Sam and Martin got a three of kind of sevens, which is an insta-win. But they were winning anyway.

Martin & Sam 3

Katy & Andrew 2

Ian & Joe 1

Then we split into two groups of three people. Martin, Joe and Katy played Big City: a sort of Sim City game from the 90s with its dour functional pieces contrasting with the exciting triple layered plastic inlay.

As they set up, Katy told us she'd almost seen a dead body: her neighbour hadn't been seen for a few days and she and someone else went into the house. Katy chose to investigate the bedroom while the other checked out the bathroom and that's where the neighbour was found.

And after that cheery note, they set forth into various civic planning adventures. A world in which Post Offices score double next to a street car or city hall and triple if it's next to both. A world where Martin can say “It's church time!” and no one thinks he's lost it. A world where Katy can have a park taken away from her by Joe and Martin and be livid about it for several minutes. She was already in last and without that, she never stood a chance

Martin 118

Joe 103

Katy 79

Meanwhile, Ian, Sam and I played Bees In Space, or Apiary, to give it its proper name. It's a new twist on space exploration, with a curious emphasis on making honey and wax as much as discovering new planets.

The mechanic is fairly typical worker placement except your workers’ value (1-4) influences what they can do. Level 4 bees are most powerful but they have to hibernate afterwards and be brought back by taking an action.

The board is rather fussy and I admit in the first couple of rounds I was a bit lost. Ian seemed to know what was going on as he devised a new dance that would make cheaper honey. Which I suppose is a priority for Space Bees. 

We approached the final round I became acutely aware that the score track went up to 100 but me, in the lead, had only scored 15. But the game is all about end of game scoring and any confidence I might have had from being in first quickly dissipated as Ian came from last into a slim first. It was all very close.

Ian 75

Sam 71

Andrew 70

Apiary was a longer game than Big City so while

we finished, the other three played Robo Tricks. After Big City, this was a game they could all enjoy.

Joe 7

Martin 2

Katy -5

Since Robo Tricks was a bit long, Sam, Ian and I played Stomp The Plank. Amazingly, for such a GNN favourite, this was my first game. We played twice. In the first, Ian repeated his trick of coming from last to first and in the second, my cautious chiseling tactic proved successful.

Now we were a sextet we joined together for a rousing game of So Clover. We seemed to finish quite quickly. So fast that we began deducing our first clover while Katy was still in the toilet. 

Katy's clover had a lovely reference to our recently departed (not dead) gamer friend Gareth. She used his name to clue the words “Beard/Patron.”

We did okay with 32 out of 36.

Since that seemed to be over too quickly, we set up for one more go. This time, though, the moans of impending defeat filled the room. But, in the face of adversity, we proved ourselves to be highly resourceful. 

Sam clued Mug/Dream with Grande and Joe clued Hardware/Smell with Cordite (his second word of the evening that we needed a definition for). Katy saved Martin's clover when she spotted that Bubble went with Invincibility, even though I pointed out that bubbles are pretty much the opposite of invincible. 

I was relieved when my four slightly dull clues were solved and full marks to Katy for cluing Television/Crow with carrion. “Carry on.” Get it?

We had a perfect score as we began Ian's clover. We obsessed over his reasoning for pluralising Circuses. It made us think that our first guess of Clown/ring must be wrong, since surely he'd only write Circus. In the end we chose clown/universe and we were correct! A perfect score! 

36 out of 36!!

So with the afterglow of achievement still warming my veins, I set off. Sam said he could be tempted by a quick fifteen minute game and later I received a photo from him with the comment “Incredibly rude game of medium!”

Thanks all. See you soon.

Gettin’ chilli with it

Joe's at 7.30 was this week's destination for the first weekly meeting since the big games weekend. Sam was already there when I arrived and Martin wasn't too far behind.

At least I think so. I'm writing this on Friday, a full three days late so, just like AI rendered hands, things might be a little out of place.

First we played Rome In A Day, a game in which you have to build areas of tiles with matching buildings to score points and you get these tiles and buildings from your neighbour who has taken their allocation of tiles for that round and split them in two.

Sam played while still in his fluorescent orange jacket and (unconnected, I'm sure) we kept forgetting which neighbour we were supposed to be taking from.

At the end of the game, Joe was counting up the scores and added up one column to the total 47 and said “urgh” in disgust, thinking it was his. But it was Adam's. 

Sam 57

Joe 49

Adam 47

Andrew 46

Martin 37

Sam's winning strategy was to simply take which ever set had the most tiles. Can it really be that simple? It was entertaining enough 

Katy was expected later so we began another quick game: Too Many Cooks. It's a game about German cuisine in that you have to collect cards to make soup (Pea, Mushroom or Onion) while avoiding chillies because they ruin everything, apparently. Unless you're making chilli soup, of course. You collect these ingredients by playing cards to the table until the value adds up to 10 or more, then that player collects all of them.

We played all of round one before we remembered the rule about one of the zeroes actually being worth 10. And I had trouble recognising some of the mushroom cards since they had illustrations of butter on them. But I was fine in the end, taking a win without really knowing how.

Andrew 23

Joe 22

Adam 19

Martin 11

Sam 10

Katy arrived and we split into two groups of three. Joe Adam and Katy played Robot Tricks and Martin and Sam introduced me to Havalandi.

In this game a hot air balloon glides around the edge of the triangular playing area and the active player can put down a landing site (cardboard counter) somewhere along the balloon's line of view. You score points for groups of three or more (on the same terrain) and also for flipping tiles as long as they are contiguous and cross the central path.

It was nice. Gently puzzly and a bit screwish. I forgot about the end of game scoring and, despite being quite competitive in the first half of the game, Martin and Sam (almost literally) drifted off, far above me.

Martin 104

Sam 94

Andrew 82

With that, both Sam and I got ready for an early night. I watched a little bit of Robot Tricks to see if the game was going to end. It didn't, but I did see Katy pick up an ace which, apparently, was bad.

Hopefully we'll get a result in the comments although it's pretty likely that everyone has forgotten.

Thanks all! It was special.