Wyrm Sweet Wyrm

 A new venue always feels special, like GNN is slowly extending it’s influence across this great nation. And so, at 7.30, four of us (Katy, Sam, Joe and me) squeezed into Sam’s car and drove away to the far reaches of Bristol. It almost felt like a Novocon. Steve and Anja were the hosts, in their converted ex-care home. Anja welcomed us while Steve was upstairs on bedtime duty. Due to the delicate nature of trying to get a child to sleep, we weren’t given a tour of the whole house but what we did see was pretty impressive.

Then Martin, Adam H and Ian arrived and we began to play. Sam had brought Sticky Cthulu, thinking that Louie might enjoy it, but he wasn’t here tonight so instead eight grown adults found themselves whipping the table with sticky plastic tentacles, trying to pick up illustrated bits of cardboard chosen by the roll of two dice, with the illustrations having a vague HP Lovecraft theme. It was frantic and a bit insane. Only one of my photos did it justice.

“This is monstrous,” said Martin. “Literally,” replied Anja. Finally, Ian was awarded his third coin of the game and he was declared winner. Steve arrived and despite the look of intrigued excitement on his face, we couldn’t be persuaded to play again. As the game was being put away, mentioned that the tentacles needed to be cleaned after every game which seems like very high maintenance for a board game.

We were a nine now and Steve chatted about the supposed haunted qualities of their new home. The automatic lights on the hallways keep turning on, apparently, which initially was a bit spooky but now Steve finds it quite useful.

We split into three groups of three. Katy, Adam and Ian played World Wonders. Joe, Martin and Sam squeezed onto one half of the table and played Dawn of Ulos while Steve, Anja and I took up the rest of the table with Wyrmspan.

The room hummed with rules being explained. Joe noticed that the orc meeple in Dawn of Ulos had boobs. I was disappointed that a booklet in Wyrmspan was called “Dragon Facts” since, strictly speaking, those two words shouldn’t go together at all.

Soon after Wyrmspan began, I heard Adam say “My first wonder!” so we were clearly the last to start. Wyrmspan initially looks like Wingspan with a new look, but it is different enough to be considered a new game. So I’m told, anyway, because I couldn’t remember anything about Wingspan. We explored caverns, and enticed dragons with names of varying silliness into our sanctuary. It was all quite sedate without any real interference in other people’s plans.

Meanwhile World Wonders ended with Katy ruing her habit of building wonders whenever possible.

Adam 41 (broke the scoretrack)

Ian 32

Katy 30

And Dawn of Ulos ended after an odd episode where Sam had to take cards from Martin’s hand and Joe advised Martin “why don’t you just pretend they’re shuffled.”

Martin 154

Joe 121

Sam 90

The other six players reshuffled into two groups. Katy sat at the end of the table not fully aware that she was volunteering herself into a game of Faraway (the me of building up a high-scoring tableau of cards backwards) against Joe and Martin.

Martin 85

Katy 64

Joe 53

And Sam, Adam and Ian set up camp on the small table where they played Misfits. Sam’s audacious early use of the drunken elephant couldn’t seal a win, as Adam took first place.

Then they played Little Tavern.

Ian 28

Sam 26

Adam 17

By now, it was late and the only thing left to do was wait for the last round of Wyrmspan to play out and then listen to the scores being totted up, with help from Martin as Steve called out sums that were too difficult for him to deal with at this hour.

Waiting for the scores for Wyrmspan to come in

Steve 94

Anja 93

Andrew 73

And with that, we were off! A new venue was christened and everyone was excited by it, especially at the thought of a game of Hugo in the damp basement of a genuine* haunted house. Thanks all. See you next week!

* approx