A Potted History of Games Night News, part one: 2010-2015

2010

GNN was born back in 2010 when we found ourselves gaming frequently enough - for a short while we alternated weekly between poker and board games - that someone suggested starting a blog, and so Andrew did. Back then, Andrew created a leaderboard into which he inputted all games results, creating a kind of meta game. I've no idea how he calculated the points, but the names on the first leaderboard were:

The top five names - and Hannah, albeit less gamey - are still around today. Jonny, Quentin and Will are all still in Bristol so who knows, maybe they'll return one day. 

The first game on the blog was Brass. Imagine that! Actually you don't have to, because Andrew condensed it in a comment. 

On 17th November, Jon Burgess shows up at Joe's house and discovered - though he probably already knew - that Adam is good at games, as he battered everyone at Age of Steam. 

Joe was discovering the world of BGG and began experimenting with bringing these wonderful board games to the masses...

In December, we discovered a game that was to return to the table multiple times over the next decade - 7 Wonders. Steve took an inaugural victory, but maybe the most interesting thing here is how long it took: we played twice, and that was the entire evening done, and the same thing happened a couple of weeks later. If only Martin had been there to chivvy us along, but he was still three years away...

Come late December, Adam won the first ever 'season' - of course - and we all decided we hated Farmers of the Moor. The blog was still in its infancy, and at this point the authors referred to themselves in the third person. Crazy times.

2011

Joe at this point was our board games pioneer and he'd discovered the disconcertingly named StabCon convention. Early January it was when he, Andrew, Adam and myself headed north to unearth its delights. The report for the weekend is enigmatically brief, considering how nerdy we've become since with stats etc, but we were immersed enough in games at this point for Andrew to refer to Tikal as 'an old favourite'. 

First doubts about the leaderboard system begin to creep in. Andrew adopts a new system (the Q system, named after Quentin) but Adam suggests a more idiosyncratic approach. 

February is the first mention of Ra, although the context suggests most of us had played it before. Adam won - naturally - and Jonny is back after a few months absence thanks to the birth of his daughter. In March, Stone Age makes its first appearance and Adam appears to win another season of the leaderboard, though Andrew and I both make appearances in categories I don't actually comprehend.

And Joe mentions High Frontier for the first time: 

As winter turns to spring we play Tinner's Trail for the first time and it's a hit. Poison begins appearing frequently, and Andrew tells Joe his purples are fine for the first time. I wish someone in the future reading this could conclude GNN weren't prone to immature innuendo, but unfortunately we were and are. Also we played Tsuro for the first time in late April. In May, Chris appears, although only in the comments section initially before arriving in the flesh a few weeks later, and the Feld game Notre Dame appears. I don't play it, as I'm away in Norway with a tiny Stanley. 

Come June, and the blog makes a Great Leap Forward: the first photograph. It's not very flattering of Joe, but it's evidence of Quent, Jonny and Chris, and a huge jar of peanuts given pride of place in my kitchen. 

It's remarkable that my ability to take unflattering photos (which continues to this day) is evidenced both here, and in the comments section. 

I come top in five leaderboard categories but I don't understand any of them. Summer arrives, and Joe's daughter Tilly makes her first appearance, playing Trans Europa. Andrew keeps trying different leaderboard methodologies, and this leads to all kinds of crazy suggestions, especially around the midnight hour, it seems.

In July, Joe attends board game night at Area 51 (playing Alien Frontiers) and we discover the mystical bird crisp. As summer passes, Joe discovers Aton, which whilst looks little-played on the blog, saw a lot of lunchtime action over the subsequent couple of years. August marks the first GNN appearance of Paul Jefferies, from the old London gang (me, Chris, Andrew, Paul) and the leaderboard is suddenly a populous place, with no less than eleven names on it. As if enthused by all this activity, Sally is also seen for the first time, and Chris begins his regular reportage from the Bracknell branch. Someone I never actually meet - Yo - joins Hannah and Adam fleetingly in Easton to get thumped at Ticket to Ride. 

Joe's girls Bea and Matilda make their debuts, albeit from a distance as Joe reports in from France. His fetish for dice arenas also begins to manifest around now, and come September the name Andy - I think it's Andy Mosse? - appears for the first time, and Adam triumphs on the leaderboard in most categories. As we hit autumn, James (Bracknell) is spotted for the first time. He never actually makes it to Bristol though, so nobody meets him except Chris and I. October rolls up, and so does Dan Clamp, and Andrew Adam and Jonny indulge me by playing a game of my own design: Henchman. I'm excited enough by it to email Martin Wallace, and he's gracious enough to reply. "This sort of thing has been done to death" he sighs. 

On October 26th, suddenly the blog goes nuts with a series of lavish games-in-play pictures, with the game being played called Cuba: oddly, it was never seen again.

It doesn't herald the deluge of images we see these days, but pictures begun cropping up more frequently, including of the night High Frontier went on so long I had to leave (at midnight) before the game ended. 

This was a Saturday night, as gaming was now central to some of our social lives. Both Andrew and I started spending more time than would probably be viewed as healthy generating reams of spurious content - content that we loved - and doing Thursday night sessions, usually by ourselves. Joe and Steve played Twilight Struggle and Andrew came up with the idea of the Form Table, meaning the concept of the Perfect Five (- five victories in a row) was born. On 29th November, Lords of Vegas was played for the first time, and for the record Andrew won it (Adam was last!). 

As the year heads toward its conclusion, Katie and Mark appear, playing Alhambra and Poison. We have begun standing up at critical gaming moments, and Adam and I still have luxurious mops of hair.

Anja makes what I think is her GNN debut, but we definitely gamed with her in the pre-blog days I think. The leaderboard ratio king is Steve, although if anybody can understand what else is going on here, I commend them. Absolute madness.

2012

Steve joins the previous four StabCon attendees this year, and Andrew returns with an odyssian write-up. For the first time, Joe and I compare our list of unplayed games. 6Nimmt appears on 14th of February, and Joe mentions trying to play Caylus with Charlotte. Quent takes the honours on the first season of the year, and I spend about a week putting together completely pointless data on who won what games. This is just a tiny fraction of it...

Joe goes on holiday with Henry and Rachel and they play all manner of mad stuff from Lords of Vegas to Hansa Teutonica. Oddly, his post from thirteen years ago (as I write) received numerous spam comments during 2020. 

Come April, Adam and Hannah host for the first time at their new house in Easton. Paul Jefferies invents a game called Cargo and I discover one of Sally's best mates loves board games. 

May sees GNN hit by a raft of fateful interventions, as Andrew is locked in his own house and I have to bail on a game of Cargo and end up in surgery the next day, having my appendix whipped out. In June, Steve and Anja host for the first time and Lords of Waterdeep makes its bow, and perhaps more significantly, so does Railways of the World, with Adam winning the first play. But Steve takes points ratio at the end of the season, despite Adam's thirteen victories... Hannah wins the first game of San Marco, and announces proudly and shockingly:

Although in fairness I should give this isolated quote its' full context:

 In the balmy days of June, we squeezed in a weekend all-dayer, which happened to include a new little card game called Biblios...

Andrew moved into a new flat in Redland and we christened it by playing London. 

Macao made an August debut, Dan C returned to triumph at Wallenstein (Anja and Steve finished last!) and then when September arrived we all went off to somewhere in the midst of the country - the location now escapes me - for the inaugural Gaming Weekend. 

Andrew made his own copy of Tsuro, and designed a solo challenge using dice.

And for reasons I no longer recall, Joe, Andrew and I all went to London on the same day and played Decathlon on the train. We all began playing a lot of The Resistance. Some documentary film-maker friends of Joe's came to watch us play games, like Diane Fossey with cardboard. Adam and Hannah wrapped up all the seasons medals and both Snowdonia and Las Vegas arrived. We ended the year with a festive get-together and the first GNN Christmas Quiz. For what it's worth, here are the results:

Despite it being Christmas, Joe Adam and Andrew played Pax Porfiriana. Crazy. 

2013

The year kicks off with our last jaunt to Stabcon, as we realised we all preferred the sanctuary of our own gamer pals, in a cottage somewhere ignoring the sun. But it was still fun to go, even though Steve couldn't make it this time. In February, Quentin - now a less frequent attendee - returns and introduces us to Eclipse, which becomes our go-to epic for the next few years. I don't recall how it came to happen in February, but there was also a games weekend! 

Joe missed this, but attended his own gaming weekend of sorts in London at the same time. Love Letter appeared in February. Then children begin to arrive!

Chris introduced Ashton to Hey that's My Fish, Kingdom Builder arrived at GNN towers, and all of Joe's daughters played Winner's Circle with us (and Bea won it). Although he was only three, I tried to get Little Joe to play Railways of the World. Stanley stayed the course until the end and pipped me by a point. 

A quietish season ends with Chris as points-ratio king. April arrives, and with spring so life: Louie joins the ranks of GNN, albeit for now a spectator. Andrew blogs an entry entirely devoted to individual game divisions. You can read it here. Jon made one of his occasional sorties to Bristol, Joe designed his own Can't Stop board and there was fleetingly a leaderboard showing Adam in fourth place. Joe outdid Andrew by devoting an entire blogpost to his dice-rolling arena. You can read that one here.  In May, Extreme Biblios arrived, with its mild house-ruling and non-mild insults. The spring season wrapped up with Anja as points ratio Queen. 

Summer kicked off with Agricola making its long-mooted return to the table, and Adam came a distant third. He made up for it by winning everything else he played the same night. Cube Quest arrived and <almost> everyone loved it. We should play it again... 

Miles and Lizzy made fleeting appearances in the early part of summer, but on 9th April - a Friday, fact-fans - Adam, Hannah and Andrew played games at Roll For The Soul, which would prove to be a seminal venue for GNN history. A couple of weeks later, a newcomer called Katy joined us, and her first game was Tsuro. In a RFTS-less interim, Andrew smashed Anja and Steve at Wallenstein and led the form table. Then in September Martin arrived, having established contact with Joe via BGG. 

On the very same night, Gonz also joined us. He, Andrew, Martin and Joe played Palaces of Carrara, and sure enough... 

And you have to wait a month of Martin-winning-Carraras before next event of note: in October, Adam wins five games in a row. Incredible, custard-infused scenes.

In November, Steve and Anja hosted a games weekend at their house which ended with you-know-who as top dog. I didn't check which games he was involved in though. Maybe he only played Cube Quest.

On 30th November another new face joined - Matt Walker, who would also become a regular (and still pops up once in a blue moon). Halfway through December, Martin was still thrashing everyone at Carrara, and yet they came back for more. Take It Easy was sighted for the first time. Although photos are now there in every entry, we glimpse Katy for the first time at the Roll for the Soul evenings in December, and Martin shortly afterwards at my house. 

Jon takes the season's points ratio crown, and Andrew and I play a huge amount of games over Christmas. 

2014 

The year began - actually it was New Year's Eve, but whatever - with the crashing of hobby v reality as I tried to teach Tinner's Trail to drunken friends, with predictable results. Andrew and I played a game of Agricola that ended 18-9 - surely some kind of (crap) record. We also played Railways twice in the same evening.

Russian Railroads arrived at the table, and Andrew found himself locked out of his own computer and forced to do his usual Tuesday-night write-up on Wednesday morning, confessing he:

Roll For the Soul nights continue, with Katy, although she is yet to appear on an 'official' Tuesday GNN. Probably wise. The Bracknell reports also come in more or less weekly, where a gingerbread version of Carcassone is seen hogging the table. After two years of low-expenditure group-think in Railways, Martin wins his first two games with incredible high-outlay strategies, expanding our horizons and making us regard him with suspicion at the same time. What devious mind takes so many bonds??? Joe hosted a Saturday/Sunday session and Caverna was seen for the first time courtesy of Gonz. Joe took the debut win. 

He'd been seen before, of course, but Dirk made a notable appearance in February when he finished second in a two-player game of 7 Wonders (Chris v James). Then, on February 20th, Ian comes to a Roll for the Soul night, having been animating all day in my studio. But at this point, he just plays the one game (Divinare) and the melts away into the night. So he's not around to witness a blogpost that accrues a whopping 50 comments, something Andrew and I can only dream wistfully of these days. Largely the chat is debating what should be game of the month, as at this point our rate-of-newbies was already getting a bit out of hand, and we had the idea of - HA - playing the same thing four weeks in a row. The very next post mentions that the Game of the Month "did not get played" and, following that, our attention appears to move on to other things, as Andrew creates game graphs for everyone. Here's Anja's. 

The biggest takeaway overall is that Chris' pessimism appears to be well-founded, as he has no luck at all. Russian Railroads is subsequently decided on as the game of the month, but then doesn't get played again because there are five hungry gamers and it can only satiate four. It does make the table a week or so later, but the evening is more notable for the first Tuesday night appearance of Ian, who becomes an immediate regular (unlike Charlotte, also seen below). 

Almost as monumental is the March appearance of Quantum, still going almost as strongly as Ian all these years later. It's a hit with everyone, and Martin celebrates his debut victory with a near-whitewash of the season-ending leaderboard. Game of the Month Russian Railroads appears and sustains a place on the table, but to mounting degrees of indifference, it seems. RR disappears and the new Game of the Month is Pergamon. Andy Bate arrives at Roll for the Soul, but it seems like the gaming nights there are numbered, as one week it's only Andrew and Martin, so they decamp to my house instead.  Andrew and I team up with my brother Martin to make the comedy-drama pilot Games Night, which subsequently wins us a development deal with CBBC - another story - and everyone contributes their games for the set and acting skills as extras. 

More importantly, Arthur was born! Hopefully he or Louie will be taking over blogging duties in the next decade or two. It does mean Adam and Hannah both vanish for an entire season through, meaning there's no-one to really get in Martin's way, leaderboard-wise (although James in Bracknell actually gets the points ratio crown!).

As spring turns to summer Gonz departs for Spain, Matt wins a five-player game of Concordia and Andrew and Ian are brave enough to take Martin on at Palaces of Carrara. They lose, obviously. 

As the blog hits its 500th post, Andrew releases an epic division table that covers its history up to that point. 

But if Andrew was at all disheartened by his points ratio, just a few days later he became the first player post-Adam to sweep the board with a Perfect 5. In fact, the same evening he made it a Perfect 6. Not sure Adam did that! Martin brought a new game called Impulse to the table - a decade later I still haven't played it - and in Bracknell they began playing the epic that is Terra Mystica. In September, Katy finally makes it to the official GNN evening for the first time, well over a year since she was first seen at RftS. Incredibly, after the intro game of Timelines, she is forced to play Railways of the World. 

Perhaps understandably, she doesn't return for a while. Meantime Steve is the points ratio king and Ian is now so submerged in games and encroaching midlife fatigue that his first play of Kingdom Builder turns out to be his second. In late October I write 'I need to stop buying games' in a comment. Andy arrives at GNN proper and Matt, Ian and I have a crazy game of Raj. Admittedly, I'm the one writing this blogpost and other crazy scores are available, with other obvious biases. But check it out!

I just wish I could remember it. On the same night, Katy was back and brutalising everyone at Istanbul, something that would become a bit of a habit. In November there's no less than two games weekends - both at my house - and Jon makes a mad dash up the M5 to join us for the second. 

Martin and Joe played several games of Wir Sind Das Volk over the closing months of the year, and both seemed rapt. Palaces of Carrara surfaced again briefly too. 

A seismic (for me) blogpost appears mid-December, when resident statistician and keeper-of-the-spreadsheets Andrew discovers that I achieved a Perfect 5 before the advent of the form table. I'm extremely excited, but disappointingly there are rather less than 50 comments at this turn of events, and most of them are mine. Steve and Anja hosted a three-table Christmas GNN where each table had a big game that at least one person hadn't played before (for the record: Ascending Empires, Lewis & Clark, Olympos). I've neglected to mention Love Letter, which appeared this year, and got played a lot. 

Andrew wrote a detailed and newspaper-inspired write-up of the year's events - in case this one is too vague/potted - and the final season of the year wraps up with a Dalton-Dale double whammy: Anja as points ratio queen for the season and Steve king for the year as a whole. Andrew's attention to detail simply can't be faulted, and some of his number-based insights perhaps shed light on the reasons behind our most and least-boisterous members joie de vivre/lack-of. 

But I'm pretty sure Ian's results have picked up since then. He's certainly won Quantum plenty of times. 

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That concludes the first five - well, four and a bit - years of GNN revisited. Expect the 2015-2020 report in a week or so, and 2020-2025 at the end of the year!