The envoys are all glistening with chip fat

 I arrived at Joe’s to see the host, Ian, Katy, Sam, Martin and Adam H in the middle of a game of Cross Clues. I was offered a card to join in, but my mind hadn’t caught up with my body and was still a few minutes from getting here. There were a few mistakes, which I didn’t note, and a nice clue from Martin, using “Vet” to signify “cow/firefighter”. Amazingly, Katy started chatting before the game had concluded.

22 out of 25.

With all attendees present, Katy instantly suggested Lords of Vegas - insisting that the usually dice-phobic Adam was keen. Katy put the box on the table, "just in case anyone was interested" and Joe and Ian joined. No doubt Ian was keen to erase the memory of his last game where he scored only six points.

Martin, Sam and I played Cascadero. I was keen since I hadn’t played it since I’d learnt it, and needed to revisit it before I forgot everything. Apparently, I was up against the two most experienced players in the world, according to game count on Board Game Geek. An awesome achievement.

Early on in the game, Martin professed to being worried by Sam’s lengthy caravan of meeples. “This disquiets me,” he said. But he soon started to chain moves together, storming off into an impressive lead. “We're sitting at the same table but that's as far as it goes,” says Sam as Martin reached the top of his track and opened up a 29-13-12 lead.

I finished the last crisps in a bowl, reaching the point where Ian’s high class posh sea salt and peppercorn crisps mixed with some fake frazzles, and Martin made the observation that now adorns this blog post: “The envoys are all glistening with chip fat.” At first, Sam and I thought he was being poetic and commenting how rich and opulent the envoys would be if they were real but, no, that was the literal state of some of the meeples at this point. An amazing sentence, though, and one that could only be used in the context of board games. Or one of those orgies in Ancient Rome, perhaps.

It ended as a cake walk for Martin. “But you enjoyed yourself?” Katy asked Sam. “No,” he bluntly replied.

Martin 52

Andrew 20

Sam 21, but didn't finish his track 

Vegas was still barely halfway through, with various quotes drifting across the table such as “You can't lose more than you have,” Joe. “That really hurt,” Katy and “Fuck it, it’s Vegas,” Ian - at that point he was once again in a distant last.

Martin, Sam and I played Via Nebula. Before we began Sam told me and Katy that we’d played it before. “It's like being gaslit by Martin Wallace,” I said, as I couldn’t remember anything about it, if I had ever played it.

After the rules explanation, I went first and - not knowing what else to do - I made some resources available. Martin expressed bemusement about what he was actually aiming for. What “the shape of the game should be,” I think he said. He checked the rule-book mid game and found a rule that made the game less of a dickish co-op game and more conventional. Sam admitted to some disappointment.

Martin built buildings and I kept uncovering resources, both of which gained points. Our two very different strategies got us a joint first place.

Martin 22

Andrew 22 tied, and we shook hands as per the rule book's instructions

Sam 15

Then we played seaside, a game of pulling tiles from a bag and deciding which side of the tile you want to action. One side will usually let you have another turn, while putting more resources into the shared area in the middle. Or the other side will let you pick up some of what is available. At the end, we stacked up your tiles to see who’s the tallest!

Sam wins!

I was dimly aware of a lengthy discussion in LoV while Joe asked for donations to reroll a casino, but eventually the game ended with an impressive win for Katy. And an almost-as-impressive comeback for Ian.

Katy 54

Ian 23

Adam and Joe 20

Katy commented that Adam only rolled ones throughout the game. Adam the dice-skeptic didn't seem to want to comment.

And that was it for me. But the others played on and scored a perfect 36 out of 36 in So Clover.

And finally Martin, Joe and Sam played Klink.

Joe 93

Martin 82

Sam 64

Thanks and see you all soon.

Elephant, Eldorado, 'elicopters

 When I walked into Sam's kitchen at about 7.10, the games were already underway. Sam, Ian and Adam T were deep into a game of Dice Miner. This game involves a nicely designed dice stand in the shape of a mountain and players take turns to pick dice from it. Players are aiming to pick up runs of numbers, point scoring dice, or beer dice which they can then sell to opponents, allowing them to take two dice from the mountain.

In the final round I watched, Ian sold a lot of beer to Adam which made him mine more efficiently but also gave Adam an extra dice each time, which he rolled with great skill/luck. 

Adam T 69

Ian 58

Sam 57

Next up, with Katy, Martin and Adam H expected soon we decided to play Cross Clues, a game that people can just jump into halfway through. In fact, Sam was on domestic duty elsewhere when Adam T, Ian and I began. Sam joined in and then Martin and Katy joined in too. We were going well until we became unstuck on Adam T’s clue of “Robin” which we did not guess was “Detective/motorcycle.” Perhaps we should have been more aware after his early clue of “Batman” for “Detective/car.”

24 out of 25

Interestingly, we had five chances to clue “helicopter” but no one said “Airwolf”. Tragic.

Next the six of us dug out Wilmot’s Warehouse, a curious memory game in which tiles with vague images are drawn at random, one by one, and everyone decides what it is and where to put it in the “warehouse”. It is placed face down, but we invent a story to help us to remember where it is. Then we all search through cards and place them on top of the matching tiles.

Thanks to our memorable tale of an elephant with, trunk, ears, poop, who was standing on a flower and there was an information booth with someone who had cake, and there was weather overhead. Sometimes new rules are brought into play. Some are odd and pointless, but a highlight was the round in which we could only talk in single syllable words, making us all sound remarkably like cavemen.

Adam H came in halfway through and he kindly operated the stopwatch, timing us in the final stage of the game where we all race to match cards to tiles. We did it perfectly, no mistakes, in only 2 minutes and 38 seconds. Eagerly we checked the rule book to see what brilliant rating we’d achieved.

“Congratulations. You’ve met the operational requirement.”

A strangely discouraging result. Like a team leader at an Amazon distribution hub grudgingly accepting that you’d hit your daily target.

Now we were all together, we split into two. Ian, Adam T and Adam H wanted to play Quest for Eldorado and I agreed, purely on the basis that I didn’t want to change seat. Martin, Katy and Sam played Klink.

I didn’t follow Klink at all, but I couldn’t miss the end of the game, with Martin announcing “And Katy loses!” sounding like a game show host revealing that night’s big prize.

Martin 46

Sam 71

Katy 84

In Quest for Eldorado, Ian and the two Adams took their time early on, picking up tiles and trashing weak cards, while I sped off into the distance. I had a healthy lead - at one point a full tile ahead of my nearest rival - but it was an illusion. My opponents’ better cards meant that all passed me by. But Adam T also seemed to struggle with his hand, deciding twice to simply discard a hand when it was his turn. 

Adam H 1st

Ian 2nd, one tile away

Andrew 3rd, two tiles away

Adam T 4th, six tiles away

But Adam T felt that the win was tainted by the three of us all picking up barriers between tiles without passing through them, strictly speaking against the rules of the game.

Sam and Martin had, by now, introduced Katy into the world of Cascadero, with Sam promising her “at least second place” emphasising how bad he was.

They were still half way through the game when I decided to call it a day. Ian and the Adams were considering Mlem as I left, but I later found out they’d chosen Quantum, with Adam H just sneaking a win over Adam T.

Cascadero ended with Martin scoring 50+ with Katy and Sam tied on 44 and as the games that went on into the night, Katy won Spicy and then two attempts at So Clover scored 18/24 and then 19/24.

Finally, a quick recap of the scores from last week’s unblogged games night:

Spots

Adam 6

Martin 3

Ian 0

Cascadero

Adam 53

Ian 49

Martin 43

(and Martin came last after being in the lead right up until the final round)

Havalandi

Adam 79

Martin 69

Ian 64

Klink

Martin 73

Adam 82

Ian 82

First contact

 After a week dealing with Bengin Proxymal Positional Vertigo and then, after that, a cold, I was keen to get back into my weekly gaming habit.

When I arrived at Joe’s I found Adam T and Ian there ahead of me. We were expecting Adam H at some as yet undefined point in the future so we decided that, while we waited, we could play at least one hand of The Crew: Deep Space Mission. However, it is gaming lore that when a game is set up to fill a gap before another arrival, a knock on the door will herald said arrival the moment you’re about to begin. And so it proved to be, which Adam T was pleased about as he admitted he’d misdealt the cards.

As a five we chose a new game: A Message From The Stars. It’s a co-op game, where one player is an alien and you have to guess what words they’re trying to communicate. Nothing like that game where two players are ghosts and are trying to communicate words to the others, Joe assured us.

Both the alien and the rest (scientists) have messages containing three random words chosen by die from a card. We can only come up with four words to clue each other to the three mystery words, and not only that but the alien has six letters from the alphabet chosen at random hidden behind a screen that we have to guess.

How do we do that? Well, the alien gives every word (theirs and ours) a score, worked out accordingly: the six secret letters are grouped thus: three “trust” letters. If these appear in a word, then they score 1 point for each appearance. Then there’s a group of two letters (whose collective name escapes me) and they double the score each time they appear in a word. Finally one letter on it’s own – the suspicious letter and this converts the score into a negative number, no matter how often it appears in the word.

As such, we have to chose our words according to which letters we want to know more about. Not only that, but we often stared at the words, trying to work out which letters scored what, leading Adam T to remark that he’d been lead to believe this was a word game, but now he had to do maths!

It was fun, in a very brain-burny way. At one point we were interested in A, N and M so I suggested (in secret) Bananaman, since it had 4 As, 3 Ns and an M. It would have told us exactly what we needed, but wasn’t a great clue to the words in our message.

During this, Adam H commented on how much he was enjoying the mix of chocolates, beer and cashew nuts. Such decadence must have sparked a memory since he then told us that he used to melt twixes onto his chips.

As for the game, we finished with 11 out of 12. Joe correctly guessed our message and we gueesed the six hidden letters, but we were one word off on Joe’s message since his clue of “Pump” could’ve have meant water or air. Or fuel.

11 out of 12

Then I announced the next game would be my last, since it was only 8.30 but I was starting to feel tired. Mlem was brought out. We played with the extra tiles, which everyone agreed made getting to deep space much more likely. 

With this in mind, I started off by landing on the lower planets expecting them to be ignored. I looked to have misread the game when, early on, Joe and Ian got into deep space with their deep space doubling cats. But then everyone fell back into typical form and ship after ship exploded after I’d left. And once, memorably, after Joe had declared “I like these odds.”

In fact, by the time I was going to place my final cat, having got the two trophies for planet-landings, Ian had still only placed one cat. I successfully landed my cat, triggering the end of the game, leaving Ian with no choice but to get as high as he could. And what a stroke of luck as he landed his planet doubler on the biggest planet of all. With only two cats used, he came a very respectable third.

Andrew 39

Adam H 28

Ian 24

Joe 23

Adam T 18

I left at this point, sadly missing Adam T’s first ever game of Take It Easy. 

Joe 198

Adam T 148

Adam H 145

Ian 144

I didn’t hear about any other results so I suppose that was it for the night. Thanks everyone. See you all soon.