Fishing for Experts

Although we had unfortunate late drop-outs (Pete and Andrew) there was still a solid six last night at the table. Long-time absentee Adam T was back, and he, Ian and I kicked off the evening whilst we awaited the others with a game of sumo-wrestling shoving match Slambo. I didn't snap pictures but here's my hand v Martin at the weekend.

It's super-simple. All we're doing is playing cards to a shared discard where we keep track of the current, cumulative value, as blue cards (positive) force it up and red cards (negative) down. If anyone is forced to take the value over ten or below zero, they have lost the bout and everyone else gets to crow 'Slambo!' at them. Shame is enforced - in the form of a card - and as soon as someone loses three bouts they lose the game - whomever has least shame at this point wins. We didn't get to three, as other sumo wrestlers were arriving around us, but Adam was least shamed when we packed it back into its tiny box again. 

Adam - top sumo
Sam - average sumo
Ian - abashed

Now Katy and Adam H were here I took the liberty of setting up Whirly Derby. Martin's infamous greens (win most races) had been replaced by a new set from the publisher, and Katy dismissed insider advice on the outsider-ranked black marbles, saying she would navigate the problem with skill. Joe arrived to find himself already marbled, so to speak, as we began racing in earnest. 

Katy's confidence seemed to evaporate fast as the blacks stayed true to the bookie's predictions early on, and Ian - playing green - got off to a solid start. Despite the new green marbles being clearly larger than the old set, class is permanent and they seemed keen to dominate. 

Not entirely though - Adam T's reds pulled off the result of the game with this finish...

...causing him to - temporarily - change his feelings about Whirly Derby not being a 'proper' game. However, it wasn't enough to catch Ian, and again there was talk about perhaps adding a bidding phase for the marbles: green still seem strong, and blacks trailed in nearly last:

Ian Green 45
Adam T Red 43
Sam Blue 21
Joe Orange 20
Katy Black 14
Adam H White 10

We split into trios for the evening's main courses, with Joe, Adam H and I keen to try out Martin Wallace's condensed Railways of the World game, Steam Power, and the others perusing the alcove of joy before deciding on Mille Fiori. 

Steam Power shares a lot of genetics with Railways. There's no turn-order auction or special cards, but you're building track to deliver cubes from factories - this time to fulfil contract cards. There's only four resources and, as with Railways, you can share connected networks. Unlike Railways, once you've started building track, you can only extend from there and not jump around the map - Germany, in our case.

Adam - yellow - and Joe - red - began contesting the mid-west whilst I struck a more independent note in the south. I forgot to take any photos again (apart from the one above) but overall the vibe is recognisably Railwaysy whilst being faster: as soon as anyone completes X amount of contracts (11 with three players) endgame is triggered, so there's a balance between building an empire and exploiting it for all you can. As players can take cubes from opponents factories there's a tangible, and not always totally inadvertent, dickishness to things. We enjoyed it, although Joe and I probably knew what would happen score-wise going in:

Adam H 64
Sam 60
Joe 48

Mille Fiori wrapped up at exactly the same time, having exhibited the same levels of shenanigans and muttering throughout. All three players had taken turns leading, but it was Ian - green! - who emerged triumphant in what, for Mille Fiori, was a tight finish. 

Ian 210

Katy 202
Adam T 190

We shuffled seats. Adam T suggested getting back in the Fellowship trick-taking saddle, and Ian and I joined him. The others went to bathe in the alcove's golden glow and returned with a selection of boxes before ultimately deciding on Fishing, which all of them had played before. I'm not as good as Andrew at keeping track of what's happening on the other side of the table, but I did snap Katy looking very excited by the prospect of fish. 

In the Fellowship, we took on Chapter 13, where we set out from somewhere or other hoping to reach Moria (I think) and mechanically, this meant a 'long' chapter where multiple hands are played until all 7 (or 8, if you include the optional Bill the Pony) characters have made it through.

We got off to a solid start, with a clear opening round as Frodo, Merry and one of the Elves made it through the gauntlet. But Boromir - morally compromised - and Aragorn - picky with numbers - both harpooned the second round. 

Then we rallied somewhat, used the Mithril shirt to protect Frodo, and finished our jaunt to Middle-Earth with a solid victory. There was a brief debate about continuing into Moria, but it was another long chapter so we elected to move on to the different speed of Gadget Builder. 

This is an UNO-inspired card-shedder where you can play like UNO - play matching colour-or-number cards to a shared discard pile - but you can also spend cards to build gadgets which give you special powers. The gadgets are helpful, but you can only use one per turn and you can't go out if any of them are unused. First to three rounds wins, and we were poised at a 1-0-0 score when the others finished Fishing, with Katy the victor in an incredibly tight finish, as all anglers brough their hard-won North Sea experience to bear:

Katy 94

Adam 93

Joe 90

We were going to pack Gadget Builder in, but all three of them were exhausted by their time at sea and bade us goodbye, not even taking up the offer of So Clover! Incredible scenes. More credible scenes followed, as we continued Gadget Builder with all of us utilising gadgets and winning rounds, leaving us poised again, this time on 2-2-2 with a next-round winner. Ian and I conferred this morning that we'd both forgotten who won, but knew it wasn't ourselves. So it must have been Adam!

Adam - 3

Ian and Sam 2 each, plus bonus senior moment

And that was that!

Two-sday

An unusually quiet Tuesday evening saw just two gamers present. I (Ian) made the short walk to Martins for an evening of two players.

We started off with Rebirth, on the Scottish map. 

This recent Knizia works well with two players, which sees a number of spaces blocked off to reduce the player area. Martin managed to build a fairly large Energy Farm that scored big points repeatedly, and despite picking up more personal missions (or maybe because of, as my attention may have been more on reaching those targets than the state of the board) landed in a comfortable victory.



Martin 196

Ian 176

Next, we played Chu Han. We used the event deck, and after the “no-effect” event was drawn a couple of times, we opted to ignore fate and draw a new event. There was an event neither of us had encountered before, Mandate of Heaven (I think it was called), which allowed the player passing to draw from that trick, which gave the hand an interesting twist.



Martin pulled into a lead early (helped by me deciding to use the “pass to take lead” card a few times, giving him points, and I just couldn’t catch up


Martin 31

Ian 19

Next, we played Toy battle, with Martin taking a fairly aggressive stance and rushing into my base for the instant win. Three times. My defensive approach clearly no match for an influx of T-Rexes.

Martin wins (x3)

Ian loses.

Marabunta was suggested by Martin, a game I hadn’t played before. I quite enjoyed this recent Knizia area control game. Simple mechanically, with each player taking it turns to roll a set of dice, splitting them into two groups. The twist is that the opponents get to choose which set they want first, so there are nice considerations to be made.

Despite offering up a few dice-splits that gave Martin pause for thought the game was perhaps inevitable his. I would like to play this again though, a surprisingly deep game for such a small box.

Martin 15

Ian 9

We finished with Viking See-Saw, another Knizia, though possibly the least-Knizia like Knizia I’ve played, being a dexterity balancing game. I do like the pieces, the metal cubes having genuine heft.

This proved to finally be a game I could win, and finished the evening with my sole victory, though I didn’t make a note of the exact score.

Ian wins

Martin Loses



All in all, a most enjoyable evening of two-players.

Losing ones marbles

Joe, Martin and I rolled up to Steve and Anja's last night at the allotted hour of 8pm and whilst we waited for our final member Pete, I took the liberty of setting up Whirly Derby, which I'd brought with Louie in mind - but also myself, as I find coloured marbles spinning in ever-decreasing circles somewhat hypnotic. 

Pete arrived and without further ado we began racing. The rules are simple: each player has a 'paddock' of five marbles and over eight races you secretly choose how many to enter. Any raced marbles are lost - maybe they use the opportunity to escape captivity - but twice a game you can re-up and refill your paddock again. The basic game offers points prizes for first, second and third, but we played the advanced where some prizes combine (for example. the player with the most 1pt cards scores 15pts). 

There's some fuzzy edge cases that the brief rules don't cover, so we house-ruled them. The 'Slowness' bonus of the last marble to finish returning to its owner was a good rule, almost raising more drama than the winners did. But the game - or my copy - we found somewhat flawed as both our 8 races and several experiments we did after proved that Martin's green marbles were marginally smaller, and Joe and Louie's black and orange marbles seemed destined to finish last. Steve's blues were also quite innocuous.

Martin 54

Sam 29

Pete 15

Joe 11

Louie 6

Steve 5

Anja returned from packing Lennon off to bed just as we packed up, and split into two groups, Joe talking our hosts through the delights of Into the Blue as Martin explained Tower Up to Pete. 

Pete took to the game rather well. I think I got my best score ever as I decided to forego my usual flippant moves for a marginally more considered approach. This kept me competitive and elicited the odd satisfying noise from a chagrined Martin. But it wasn't enough to stop Pete, who nabbed first place on two objectives and took the laurels. 

Pete 56

Sam 54

Martin 48

We took a stroll to the impressive front room, where the contrast between the decor (floridly resplendent) and the activity (a Knizia dice-chucker) made for an enticing spectacle. Molly felt there was room for a final touch, however, and she sat on the activity to prove it. 

Steve took this one, pipping Anja by the narrowest of margins.

Steve 20

Anja 19

Louie 17

Joe 13

Louie now made his way to bed too, leaving six of us. We plumped for For Sale, which - I seem to say this a lot - was more fun than my photo makes it look. 

We actually played twice. In the first game Joe ran out of money and ended up with two very high property cards and three rather low ones. In the second he changed strategy but suffered a similar fate. Steve forgot that money was also points in the second game, and a recount boosted him into runner-up position. I managed to win both; I'm still not sure how. 

It was getting late-ish now so we pulled out those green plastic clovers and set about it. Oddly the clue 'marble' came up here, on Anja's clover, and we debated how likely a marble cup might be, although this gave way to Martin saying 'a jar of marbles' several times. Martin's 'Ramadan' for moon/fast was a highlight, and we successfully matched marble with dream/hearth. Despite some stumbles over Steve's clue of Argos (our mythology was a bit foggy) this was a broad success, racking up four sixes and two fours for 32/36.

And that was that for another Tuesday. I'm not around next week, have fun!

49 auctions

 Tuesday games night began with message fro Sam containing a photo of a pile a Heck Meck tiles with the comment “Joe just beat me 15-0”

By the time I'd arrived, though the attendance had swelled to six of us. Joe and Sam were joined by Martin, Pete, Katy and myself.

Katy joined last and tried to remember if she'd met Pete before and she wondered whether or not to turn down the c*nt level. She discussed this out loud such that, whatever level she finally chose, Pete was prewarned about what to expect. 

Although, as it transpired, there were to be few opportunities for evil tonight, as the games tended towards the more party end of the scale. We began with Invaluable, an auction game in which players bid on cards of two colours and add it to their tableau to try and make continuous runs of the same colour for points. All cards were dealt out, and each one would be put up for auction by the end of the game.

“49 auctions?” asked Joe, incredulously. And he kept a rough count of how many auctions were remaining. “Only 25 auctions left,” he cheerily pointed out, mid game.

Martin and Katy were the last players who bought anything, with Martin bidding 3 every time, trying to push up the price. We began with only 12 tokens, so I wonder if we were too timid. The money from winning bids would go to the player auctioning the card and if the auctioneer bought their own card ("eating your own shit," we soon dubbed it) then the money would leave the game entirely.

In the final reckoning, my row of seven yellows scored me a bumper crop and I ended up winning.

Andrew 48

Sam 46

Katy 46

Martin 41

Paul 37

Joe 35

Interesting game, but that’s quite a slim game mechanic to stretch across 49 auctions.

Since there were six of us sitting around a circular table, it seemed to lend itself to a couple of team games. First was Team Trio, the game where you have to collect three of a kind by choosing from other peoples’ hands, asking “play your lowest card”. We split into teams of two, and every time someone completed a three-of-a-kind, the other two pairs were allowed to exchange cards, and Katy and I demonstrated some top level psychic connection as we kept swapping cards of the same value.

Martin & Joe 2

Katy & Andrew 1

Sam & Pete 0

We stayed sitting where we were for another team game: Team Play. Joe experience a little bit of a Mendela Effect when he seemed convinced that the cards in this game went up to 9, whereas they only reach 8. I was actually about to agree with Joe until Martin pointed out the truth of the matter.

So, with the fabric of the universe back in place, we began. It was close at first, with all three teams having three tricks each. Then Martin and Joe got three more tricks in their next turns.

I often got “style points” for completing missions that don’t rely on matching colours with cards in matching colours. But style points don’t have a value. Not even as a tie-breaker. Instead Katy and I went for high value missions, meaning that although Martin and Joe triggered the game end, we had more points at the final count.

Katy & Andrew 30

Joe & Martin 27

Sam & Pete 25

I had time for one more quick one and it was Captain Obvious. In this game, we use our wipe-clean board to write a sentence of random length containing a word chosen by a player from a card. Then our boards are passed to the left and our neighbours delete one word, replacing it with “blank”. The idea is to read out the sentence and hope the other players can’t guess what the missing word is. A point to the reader if no one can guess, but a point to the writer and the guesser if they get it right.

Martin 11

Joe 7

Katy 7

Sam 6

Pete 4

Andrew 3

And with that, I had my rucksack back on my back, despite talk of So Clover, and off into the night. Thanks all.