Windy Plops

Adam was our host last night as Katy, Joe, Ian and myself arrived at the magic hour of 7.30pm - well, actually, Katy was there earlier and had a strange tale about a mystical shadow that she told us out on the deck. However, it cannot be shared in full here, as we were sworn to secrecy on the details just in case any strangers read the blog. 

We stepped inside and began the evening with Ito, a kind of micro-Wavelength in that each round - and a game is a single round - has a spectrum from 1-100 (for example, Things You Might Do When You're Happy) and everyone is dealt a number card and must give a bespoke clue for their number. We discuss and arrange the cards face-down in what we hope is ascending order, before revealing, in the hope we are right. 

In four attempts, we were never right, often beginning well before falling away catastrophically. Our most confusing spectrum of the night was Popular Board Games, as our subjectivity needles were all over the shop. Everyone apart from Adam felt Snakes and Ladders was far more popular than Carcassonne. But Snakes and Ladders was his clue - we should have listened. In Things That Will Last Until the End of Time, I immediately regretted my clue of YouTube, but we successfully decoded that the video platform would be less durable than the Concept of Sausages (- Joe). Martin joined us for the last couple of games of Ito, which seems to have a high quotient of accusation in it for a co-op game, but then I guess a modicum of righteousness is not necessarily always a terrible thing. 

Martin pulled Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves from his bag and we set up, optimistic that the game would come into its own with 6 players rather than the trio of last week. Certainly there was more tabletalk, which was good, but the verdict after a couple of rounds was that maybe six was one or two too many. It was fun while it lasted though, and Katy took the mildly-asterisked win - as Martin took Explainer's Curse right in the face.

Katy 63
Ian 45
Joe 41
Adam 28
Sam 24
Martin 1

The reason we stopped a little early was that Steve, bereft of moustache but equipped of tooth, had arrived and it was time for the evening's main courses. There was some hopeful proffering of various titles before we eventually settled on the equally various win conditions of Living Forest for Adam, Katy and Steve...

And Ian was talked through the vagaries of Free Ride USA by Martin and Joe. The latter began his business in the east, Martin more westerly, whilst Ian and I - leery of being too isolated - started track-laying in the swing states. 

Martin's criticism of Free Ride was that it feels like it should take an hour but play is closer to 90 minutes, and I kind of get that. For me though turns are - usually - so quick that I can forgive the playtime because of the pace. Notably here Ian ran low on cash, I picked up long routes, and Joe seemed to be - to our dismay - the recipient of a lot of short routes that popped up just as his train chugged into a nearby station. Because of that, I at least was anticipating that he might be the man to beat. But I was very wrong. 

Martin 119
Sam 113
Ian 105
Joe 103

Another Explainer's curse? Joe had a lot of completed routes, but little cash. Living Forest was yet to reach its sudden-death finale, and the tension was palpable, if somewhat undermined by the regular invoking of the phrase 'windy plops' - so we busted out another newbie from Martin: Viking See-Saw. He doesn't make many dexterity games, but this is a Reiner Knizia title. 

We all begin with a bunch of stuff in front of us:

And on your turn you must add one of your stuff to whichever side of the viking boat is titled upwards - onto to deck proper: you cannot use the two central areas with the brown blocks (chests) in. The goal is to be rid of all your stuff first - an instant win - but if you cause the boat to tilt, you have to take anything that falls off it, plus a chest the from the middle. What adds an additional level of intrigue is the fact that the bits and pieces you add vary considerably in weight: the large plastic gem is considerably lighter than the bronze cubes, for example, which weigh quite a bit. 

Martin came a real cropper here as his very first turn caused the ship to flip over, and the same thing happened to him later. Joe and I also took a hit each, which meant the cantilever king, Ian, sailed to victory:

Ian: all stuff gone 
Sam and Joe: one thing each left
Martin: had loads of stuff left

By now Living Forest was over, and Katy - lamenting - and Steve - stoic silence - were both coming to terms with Adam's tree-based victory. I mean, they knew the risks when they sat down, but sometimes that just makes it worse, I suppose.

Adam - King of the Forest
Katy and Steve -  Jacks of all Trades.

Arthur materialised before us and wanted to play Wavelength, but the hour was such that Adam had to veto and take him upstairs to bed. While we waited on his (Adam's) return, we first played Wanted Wombats, new to Steve, Katy and Ian, but quick to teach and almost as quick to play. 

Katy and I managed to pull off a $10k draw, but I bust on each subsequent turn, whereas Katy didn't.

Katy $15k

Sam $10k

Ian and Steve $3k

Martin $1k

Joe $0

Steve then took his leave. Adam hadn't returned yet, and the word was that he wasn't imminent, so we cracked into So Clover. There was some moderate harrumphing over words but we got off to a good start with a couple of sixes and kept going in that vein. It was so exciting, I forgot to take pictures here but we came a cropper in the last clover - Joe's - through no fault of the clue-giver as we failed to combine circle/base with Joe's clue of Standee. A shame, as that would have given us a perfect 30/30, but no mind. Adam hadn't reappeared yet but as he had seemed tired earlier, we decided to vacate the premises and, hopefully, see him next week. Thanks all!

Suspect Log

A night of inclement drama begin innocuously enough, although in the early running we unfortunately lost both Andrew and Mel. I arrived at Joe's first, followed by Katy, Jo, and Adam H, and after a little conversation Joe broke open his custom deck of In Vino Morte, the reductionist elimination game reminiscent of the poison scene in The Princess Bride. Will you drink, or not? Adam won two games in a row before Katy finally triumphed in a face-off with Jo, who had declared themselves 'too nice' to poison anyone, and was mostly true to it. Katy won, and I realised I hadn't snapped any pics. 

Andy M had arrived during this fiesta of death, and so with 20 minutes before Martin's arrival, we filled the space with Belratti. 

It's been a while since this Visual Clover game has been seen so we needed a rules refresher. Most of the game was spent ridiculing my pairing of maracas with a donut, even though - as I pointed out - the donut had pink glaze and sprinkles. But the art world is a fierce critic. Despite this however we - abetted with Martin, who arrived just in time to harangue us all for not connecting hat and scarf - scored impressively. I don't recall the rulebook's judgement, but it rated us highly. 

Then we split into two groups. Jo, Katy and Adam joined Joe for Free Ride USA, whilst Andy, Martin and I played Reiner Knizia's seafood punch-up, Nyakuza. 

In Nyakuza, more seafood - the tiles - become available every round, and players bid for the right to claim ownership, using transparent control markers. If you connect certain tiles (salmon and tuna, octopus and squid or a pair of crabs), and also have connected plot on land, you can build a seafood shack. The first person to build seven shacks is the winner. 

Even by Knizian standards, it's a fairly dastardly undertaking, with 'fishblocking' making its GNN lexicon debut. Martin cut off my imminently-rewarding mini-networks, and I returned the favour, denying him the privilege of building two shacks in one turn. As we cursed each other out, Katy called over from the USA that our game sounded great. I'm afraid I missed the nuances of Free Ride. In our seafood-obsessed gangster world, Andy won just moments after declaring that winning was impossible. But then he saw the octopus. 

Free Ride had a little way to go, so we - joined briefly by Katy - popped the sprues on Martin's new luck-pushing Arabian Nights-themed game, Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves. Here we're in a race to 80 coins, and we collect them by flipping card to move a shared marker along a track, and gathering the coins we land on. There are two catches - you can't flip your own cards, and if we collectively go over eleven, the active player busts and loses ten coins. 

It's a game with a lot of luck, but we found it came to life once we'd - somewhat belatedly, in mine and Andy's cases - grasped the rules and began a bit of table-talk. As you can either flip from the deck or other player's cards, conversation/bullshit sprang up about what we all might be hiding. Each player's three cards are arranged in ascending order, but even here you can be harpooned by the special cards - which usually bust you. 

Sam 87

Andy 40

Martin 32

Free Ride continued, so we bashed out a game of Moonrollers, a luck-pushing dice-chucker with a side-order of engine-building. 

Basically this is a Yahtzee-style game of committing dice to cards for points, whilst also harvesting hazard tokens for extra points. Everyone can contribute to the same card, but whomever completes it - while we all score - gets the card itself. As each card has a special ability, there's an incremental element of additional options creeping in. As soon as someone has all five colours, or three of one, the game ends. Andy did the latter, but fell foul of the twist in the tale: the player with the most hazard symbols, a la High Society, does not score their tokens. 

Sam 31

Martin 29

Andy 25

While we were finishing, so was a tightly contested game of Free Ride. There was some clarifications in the count-up, in that Adam and Katy both scored extra for their empty trains (I think). But naturally, Adam had won either way!

Adam 99

Katy 94

Jo 86

Joe 83

Andy now had to go on family business, so after Adam had for reasons that escaped me went and sang a song in mandarin in the kitchen, the remaining six combined into one group for another crack at Joe's design, Change Up. I took one of my famously unflattering group photos here, which I will forego in favour of detail.

Joe's addition of the option to pay to change the exchange rate on doubles didn't entice many people in -  but it did pay off when he rolled two twos. However, even with six players we managed to roll precious few sevens, I think only rotating the exchange values around twice the entire game. So a lot of us got away with saved white chips, and Joe took a designer curse right around the chops when he lost a big stack of them. 

Sam 6 reds, 1 white

Katy 6 reds

Adam 5 reds, 2 whites

Martin 4 reds, 5 whites (bad exchange rate at the end!)

Jo 3 reds

Joe 2 reds, 1 white

Now Adam left too as we pivoted to perennial GNN closer, So Clover, playing twice. There was an unusual lack of lamenting our words at the opener, so maybe not surprising that we managed a perfect 30/30, Joe perhaps prophetically getting the words suspect/log as a combo. 

Dramas unfolded in our second attempt though, firstly when everyone instantly decided playing again was a mistake upon seeing their words. Then Martin said he could smell a doggy smell, then so could Jo, then me and Katy and Joe all picked it up too as the scent made its literal way around the table. Joe made a quick inspection and found Sybil had obviously looked at the rain outside and decided that turding behind Martin's chair was the better option. Joe's thought process had to be parked as he dealt with the matter, and then - having opened the back door to the fresh evening air - we went again. 

Despite our chagrin, this was so nearly triumphant. 

We hit four sixes in a row and only came a mild cropper on the final clover - Joe's, who not unreasonably said his thinking time had been compromised by canine shenanigans, and we couldn't quite put stale with subway/perfume at first. But I'd say 28/30 is not to be sniffed sneered at. And on those bombshells, we wrapped up as best we could and said goodbyes, stepping out into the rainy Bristol night.

Flip off

Tonight was my first games night for a while, and I was keen to get back around the table after a stressful day which included an interview for my own job. I managed to crowbar board games into one of my answers so we'll see how that turns out. 

Assembled at Joe’s house was Sam, Ian, Adam T, Joe, Martin and newcomer Jo, making their introduction to the group thanks to Martin.

The seven of us sat and pondered our options: A jovial seven player game, or “a real game.” In the end we chose Flip 7. “It's the greatest card game in the world,” insisted Joe. “If you like pairs,” countered Adam, “prepare to be disappointed.”

It is basically Pairs but with numbers instead of fruit (1 to 12 cards of value 1 to 12) and a few special cards to spice things up: you can give a Freeze card to an opponent to stop them in their tracks, or there’s the Take Three card that you can give away or use on yourself.

Despite the photo, pointing at opponents isn't an integral part of the game

As for the game, I scored sensibly on every round whereas Ian, for whatever reason, scored nothing at all. Martin came painfully close to winning the whole game (we set a target of 100 points) with only his second hand, going bust with a hand that could have scored 110 if he’d survived. Jo, on the first card of their first game in their first games night, went bust immediately. “Welcome to Games Night!” said Martin. If that weren’t enough, Jo crashed out early again with a pair of fours. But Adam took the win, with only three scoring hands in the five rounds that we played. Nice work.

Adam 101

Andrew 88

Joe 80

Martin 39

Jo 24

Ian 0

As the game ended, with the verdict of the game decidedly split, we rearranged ourselves into two groups. Four of us (Joe, Jo, Martin and Sam) played Ride the Rails. Ian, Adam and I played Impusle. This was Ian’s first game in ages. In fact, the three of us last played each other on 25 September 2019. Amazingly, we even chose the same colours.

I built a lot: actually having every available ship on the board at one point, but I was stymied by the complete lack of move commands, meaning my deadly fleet mostly floated menacingly just out of reach.

Adam built a little points engine of Draw, Mine and Trade and then Ian attacked Adam, until Adam only had one ship left. With this lone cruiser, Adam retaliated and won - allowing himself to re-establish his fleet on the board.

I reach 14 points and, with my mega-fleet, should be in a winning position but I am stranded in space, picking up peanuts for my lone ship on the Sector Core. Ian attacked me while Adam got his factory working again and was able to go from last to first.

Adam 20

Andrew 16

Ian 15

Ride the Rails was still underway. I had listened in only long enough to hear Martin persuade Joe to join him by investing in yellow while Jo and Sam teamed up with orange shares.

We played Misfits, but I was already flagging after a stressful day. Ian began the game in a feisty mood, placing a triangle painting upwards on the table. After that, gravity did the rest. None of us escaped with at least one collapse and by the time Ride The Rails had ended, we were nowhere near finding a winner.

Scores on Ride The Rails

Jo 285

Martin 259

Sam 252

Joe 219

At this point I left, too tired to continue.

*Sam takes over narration

Joe and I were both mildly bamboozled by Ride the Rails' impressive opacity, but I think everyone enjoyed it. Now down to a six in Andrew's absence, we broke out some silly card games Jo had brought, the first of which was the wonderfully named Galaxy Cat Extension. 

Here we simply take turns to flip cards, before assigning them to anyone (including yourself) around the table, with goal to have matching cat cards making cats, and maybe some cat bodies in-between them if you're really lucky. And luck plays a definite part, as outside of Short Cats and Buddha Cats in the mix, that's pretty much the entire game. There was a lot of giving of unwanted feline gifts until the final count-up (I think when the deck ran out) at which point I found myself galaxy-bound:

Sam 16

Joe 6

Adam 4

Ian 3

Martin and Jo: both zero

Next up was the even sillier, although it may not seem immediately possible, Wanted Wombats. We also take turns to flip cards here, but now only for our own benefit. The deck is made up of £1k, £3k, £5k and £10k cards and before you flip you announce what you predict you'll get. If you're wrong, your turn is instantly over. If you're right, you can either bank it or push your luck with another card, and so on. 

This game prompted a lot of laughter, as it seemed 90% of the experience was going 'Oh shit' or variants thereof. If I recall correctly someone actually called a £10k (there are only two in the deck) and Jo rallied from their explainer's curse in Galaxy Cat Extension to take a win here. We played again and almost-namesake Joe took the win. At some point my son Joe was texting me as well and it got a bit confusing. 

Then Adam T departed as well and as a quintet we busted out way through For Sale. I'm not sure how but I took a win here - not like me - and then I departed as well. Not sure if the others played anything at the end?

Methnos

Tuesday night and Joe, Martin and I rolled up at Anja and Steve's house to be admitted by Lennon, who was showing some skills on the Diabolo, reminding me slightly of Andrew's juggling years, when we shared a flat and he used to go to festivals with his clubs. I can't remember what I did with my time. I probably played a lot of Playstation. 

With Lennon and Louie and Louie's pal Jago also present, we quickly split into two groups. Joe entertained the kids with Change Up, his own luck-pushing design, and Anja and I took on Martin and Steve at Agent Avenue. I took some quite bad photos. 

As we approached a finale, Steve and Martin were catching us in Agent Avenue but Anja pulled off a fine bluff to hand them a Daredevil defeat. The gang next to us were still playing Change Up so we went again, and this time my gamble backfired and we lost!

Our second game had taken long enough that Change Up had ended with Joe falling victim of Explainer/Designer's Curse:

Louie 8
Lennon 7
Jago 5
Joe 4

And Joe and Lennon had blasted their way through no less than four games! Joe won three sets of Dobble 2-1, but Lennon had revenge in the speed-reaction-game Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza. 

There was now an interlude of sorts, as Steve was tasked with Lennon's bedtime as Anja cleared up the post-dinner detritus in the kitchen, from where we occasionally heard her yawning melodically. We filled the time with a breezy-ish Ticket to Ride: Berlin.

This game remains a mystery to me. Even when I feel like I'm doing well and complete my routes plus extra routes, I always come last. Maybe I should book a tutorial with Adam. But it's fun regardless, a Ticket to Ride experience but condensed into 20 minutes, with the additional quirk of five of your trains being trams. I came last as expected, but it was close. Both Martin and I anticipated a win for Joe, but though he'd completed a trans-Berlin expressway, he had also failed on a smaller route:

Martin 49
Joe 46
Sam 44

Anja and Steve rejoined us and we debated what to play. My hopeful suggestion of Luzon Rails got no traction, especially after Anja called it Luton Rails. Martin's Bomb Busters was also proffered, before we settled on Ethnos, Paolo Mori's Slovakia-shaped area-control band-builder. Martin went through the rules and we were off.

This was our evening's main event, and in the early running things were tight. The first era ended with Steve in the lead courtesy of a couple of large bands. But his presence in Slovakia was light, something he would come to regret as the second era saw him fall behind. It was a curious thing: Steve led while bamboozled by the rules, then sank to fifth once he understood them. This is a malaise I fully recognise.

I made hay with the Giants, earning me a chunky ten points or so over the first two eras, before Anja claimed them in the third. I also harpooned a whopping nine points for Joe when I pulled the last dragon to end the first era. Sorry Joe. He had a strong second era but going into the final one I had a sturdy enough lead to hang on for victory:

Sam 88
Joe 79
Martin 73
Anja 69
Steve 60

It had been an epic, but we still had time for one more game, and plumped for Knizia's Take-That-athon, Art Robbery. 

We're basically either taking cards from the haul in the centre of the table, or stealing them from each other. Or you can steal the dog and have it protect your cards. I twice ended round when I had a reasonable haul, and it seemed like perhaps Martin was the main threat. But in the final round Anja and Joe stole his shit and I ended the game. Initially I thought I might have too few alibis (fewest alibis and you're eliminated) but Anja took that unwanted distinction:

Sam 24
Joe 20
Martin 15
Steve 10
Anja: Takes the fall! 

And with the time hitting 11 o'clock, I was tired enough to drag Martin and Joe away (sorry all) and bring an end to another fine night of ludological delights. 

Not so clover

It was a scarce night in terms of regulars - with many missing, we only made up a four at full count: Joe, Martin, Andy M and myself (Sam). Joe was first to arrive and we had a couple of games of the very brief and stupidly-named Pina Coladice. This is a Yahtzee-style dice-chucker where you get three rolls to claim territory on the board:

Each tile scores points, and you also get points for any tiles adjacent you occupy as well. The catch is that if you make any row/column/diagonal of four, you win instantly. I pulled this off twice, then Martin arrived and we had a couple of three-handers which he and Joe won. 

The notable takeaway for me was how much it encouraged us to cajole each other to, for example, 'stop Joe' when doing so would help one of us win. By now, Andy was here, and with four of us it seemed the perfect moment to go Bomb Busting.

We attempted the mission we'd failed last time. On this occasion I was assigned the rookie card, which meant if I made a mistake we'd be instantly blown into oblivion. Fortunately the guys cleared a risk-free path for me throughout, and I only had to take one gamble. Mission cleared! And for good measure, we did the next one as well, where the helpful equipment was hard to get hold of. It transpired that we didn't need it. Another bomb busted, despite some early-evening confusion over numbers.

Next up we tried the latest trick-taker with a twist: Prey. There are no trumps, it's a must-follow, and the goal is to win X number of tricks: how many that is is determined by dice rolls. The additional twist is that halfway through the twelve tricks everyone flips their cards upside-down, changing their value.

So more than one player can win a round, and hitting your target in any subsequent round wins you the game. Joe was victorious after he and Martin both hit their targets in round one and Joe and Andy (I think) were successful in round two. I bust out on both occasions. 

Next in our evening of tapas was Gambler x Gamble. I'd only played this once before, and Andy not at all, so Joe and Martin talked us through the intricacies, which are not many: it's largely a game of table-reading and trying to make sure our collective bid values match one of your payout cards. 

Andy and I did best here, maximising our 5-value payouts whilst on the other side of the table, Joe and Martin gnashed their teeth at the repeat failures of their 6 and 7 cards to do anything other than look flashy. I managed to get myself close to winning, but it wasn't as close as Andy, who hit the 15 coins mark to take his first victory of the evening. I don't know if there are second places. 

Andy had suggested Tiger & Dragon and I was more than amenable. After the numeracy shenanigans of Bomb Busters, we jumped the shark here as Joe, Andy and Martin all managed to take too many tiles at some point, quite an achievement for such a simple game. My idiocy didn't extend that far in Tiger & Dragon, but it was in the pipeline for later. 

Martin took round one with a 4 point haul, then I grabbed round two. I could have taken round three easily, but using a dragon for a single point. I gambled on a bigger win, and lost to Andy, who then won the next round as well to wrap up another triumph. The table seemed somewhat divided on this admittedly opaque game, but I love it. 

Andy - 10 points
Sam 6
Martin 4
Joe 0

We moved on to Gang of Dice! I can't remember why I took this photo, but obviously in context these numbers have incredible drama:

This was a two-horse race, as for half the game Martin and I didn't win a single round. Then, in the second half of the game, I continued not winning single rounds until on the last card I couldn't compete at all, having run out of dice entirely! Martin performed better, but it seemed like Joe and Andy shared the majority of wins. And it transpired that Joe won the bigger hauls, as his huge stack of chips attested, making even Andy's second place look feeble.

Joe 88
Andy 53
Martin 23
Sam 0

The four of us had played six games by now and it was late-ish, so we moved on to So Clover, where I had a cognitive catastrophe and gave four bad-to-awful clues, the worst of which was probably Honeydew for cabbage/size. The first attempt to solve it was a write-off, and the second came back with an ignominious 1. How embarrassing! 

I'm blaming Gang of Dice. Collectively we scored an unimpressive 17/24 and I felt responsible. We went again, and my clover got a redemptive six, though I was still traumatised enough to forget photography at this point. This was a slightly better haul overall, with 19/24 instead. I wish I could remember some of the clues, but that was it for the evening.