Bridge of Sighs

Anja and Steve's was the venue last night, as the rain returned to Bristol once more and I picked up Ian and Martin en route. We arrived to find Anja and Louie and also Ross, who I briefly thought was a newbie only to discover he was there to plumb, as our hosts had been without water for two days already. Fortunately, Ross was to prove successful at plumbing in short order - I was getting nervous about the possibility of bathroom trips being eliminated - though he chose not to join us for the evening's entertainment, but instead go home. By this time, we'd already failed twice at YUBIBO.

It's very much a game that requires a certain type of investment. As Pete pointed out, it's as much about endurance as dexterity, as keeping your hand in a certain position for x amount of time whilst various sticks lean on it isn't a Tuesday night staple. But it was fun. 

By now Steve and Lennon had returned from rugby and Anja set about household duties as Steve joined us for a crack at Link City. We began well with Ian as mayor, getting everything right. Then our successes were rather more mixed around the table, until final mayor Joe got 4 out of 4 to right some wrongs and transform our fortunes from workaday into a high score: 40 points and officially Wow City. 

Martin remained a little indifferent to the game, but I really like it. Although I also like his suggestion that the mayor choose the locations as well. Let's try that next time. 

We now split into groups with Joe leading Ian and Martin off to Sunrise Lane, and Pete talking Anja and I through the rules of 1am Jailbreak, the somewhat niche-themed card-shedder where we are funnelling escaped prisoners through a tunnel. 

Pete found Anja and I a slightly befuddled audience, as we both failed to understand what are fairly simple rules, I think because they are a little unexpected: there are no rounds, you simply keep playing on and on until all your prisoners (ie cards in your hand) have escaped. Also unexpected: Steve, who turned up as we were about to start, but then left again, unable to make it to freedom. 

You can play sets or runs, the only caveat being it must be the same amount of cards or one more or one less as whatever amount the previous player laid. And you can also make a run for it by adding a card to the previous player's cards in order to both hike up the possibility of a big set/run - and of course, ridding yourself of a card in the process. In what I like to think are my Eastwood-in-Alcatraz qualities, I proved best at breaking out of prison in the night. Points are bad:

Sam 0

Pete 6

Anja 17

Sunrise Lane was a slightly closer thing. In fact a much closer thing, for Martin and Ian at least, although Joe wasn't a million miles away.

Martin 101

Ian 100

Joe 88

We were still escaping the penitentiary at this point, so they began playing Martin's trick-taker that is also - I was later told - a melder of Rummikub-type proportions: Doctor Science. Ian said he struggled with it, but seemed to pick up speed as they went. Unable to synchronise groups, we finished 1am Jailbreak and debated what to play next. Steve had now joined us for the duration as well, so we wanted something good for four but not too long. When I suggested Old London Bridge, to my surprise about 2/3rds of the whole room spontaneously intoned "Old London Bridge" in a deep, singsong voice. I was both alarmed and intrigued, so we jettisoned all other ideas and Steve set it up. 

I think Andrew has previously explained the rules so I won't regurgitate them here, but I really enjoyed this. Thematically it's entirely nonsensical - everyone builds their own bridge and bids for buildings - but it's speedy and interactive and different strategic approaches are available. Anja began her bridge with a bucolic park, and focused early energies on the chapel track, which determines the very common tie-breakers. All of us - except Pete I think, who was less wasteful - pushed previously-built buildings into the Thames to replace them with others, and Steve was most effective on the pink track, the name of which now escapes me. 

Anja pulled a fast one on Steve in the final round, giving the post its title. But it was Pete - the only player to complete their bridge - who was to triumph, as his sprint up the chapel track, highest-bidding cards and collection of cash saw him dwarf our efforts. 

Pete 50

Sam 42

Steve 35

Anja 26

They finished a crazy Ra around now as well. When I looked over in the first round, there was a solitary Ra tile out on Joe's bespoke mat, and yet Martin had a collection of tiles in front of him that suggested the entire game was nearly over. Fifteen of them!

I also heard Joe bemoaning his filthy luck, as various Disaster tiles emerged, turning his potential haul into a bag of Egyptian dog turds before his very eyes. Ian grabbed a snap of this horrifying ordeal for posterity.

Joe's anguish not pictured

Neither he nor Ian could catch Martin after that spectacular first round. 

Martin 48

Ian 29

Joe 28

And that was it for the night - it was already 11pm somehow so the social commuters made their way back to their cars and home again. Thanks all, it was constructive. 

No balls on balls

There were six of us at my (Sam's) house last night, and we played a medley of new and (somewhat) old, with chief purchase culprits Martin, Joe and myself all introducing new titles. I sinned first, as Martin was first to arrive and I proposed we play Link City whilst we were waiting, as the others could chip in as they joined us. 

This is a co-operative venture not a million miles from So Clover, but rather than looking for word connections on a leaf, we're building a city from tiles. One player takes a turn being the mayor, who secretly assigns the three new tiles to the three locations chosen by the deputy mayor (ie player on the mayor's left), which are represented by the road cones. Then all the non-mayor players try to figure out what the mayor would have chosen. Public toilets next to the train station or the park? Consulate next to the bank? As the others arrived - Joe, Katy, Ian and Adam H - everyone took a turn. 

But despite triggering the bonus cone with our all-answers-correct early on, we serially failed to agree on the best-laid town plans. Correct guesses are placed where 'planned' whereas wrongly-guessed tiles still get placed, but in non-scoring locations: those with no orthogonal adjacency. In theory you can rescue the situation with subsequent turns, but we never looked in danger of doing so. After Adam pronounced the town population 'idiots' - we got all his wrong - Link City ended with us on 14 points, 6 below the cut-off for 'funky town' and well into the zone of disdain. 

We flirted with the idea of splitting into threes but then Joe coquettishly showed us YUBIBO, a co-op game that played six, and we felt why not, especially when we saw the sticks and balls in the box. 

In this game, each player has a colour and on your turn you flip a card which tells you which other player you're going to combine with to hold a stick - and using which finger. Players can only use one hand for the stick work, and the game swiftly escalates from curious to madcap. 

It's a tricky game to get action snaps of, but fortunately Little Joe (-now taller than me) was on hand to help out in the paparazzi department.

The goal is to get all the sticks airborne at the same time, a task to which we did not seem suited, collapsing at first six and then eight (I think) before we pivoted to the 'balls' version of the game, where instead of adding a stick, you can place a ball into the structure. Balls can't touch fingers or other balls!

Unfortunately we discovered this morning that each pair of sticks can only support a maximum of one ball, so our triumph evaporated overnight. Meantime though there were other triumphs to be claimed: Martin began teaching Joe and Katy his new game, the trick-taker Dr Science, and I ran through the rules of TwinStar Valley with Ian and Adam. 

Both took about an hour, but other than some audible scorn at the other end of the table I missed the empirical parameters of Dr Science as I was focused on the grave ramifications of fruit delivery in fictional future Norway. 

As with Railways of the World, we're building a shared network where players can use each other's routes at a cost. Unlike Railways, the destinations themselves - the markets - are also owned, but each one specialises in two kinds of fruit: deliver that kind there and you pay the owner a coin for each one. Deliver anything else and it costs you nothing, but the fruit must be sold instantly, rather than kept back for a later transaction - prices are constantly fluctuating depending on what is sold. 

The actions you take are on a separate board, bringing a slightly puzzly euro-flavour to it all, as players can and do get in each other's way on this board. We found it interesting and pretty fast-moving, with the caveat that as newbies we seemed to hit clutch points where someone was forced to grow (add fruit to the board) only for the next in line to instantly deliver it. Maybe it's all about those early routes. 

Ian 46
Sam 34
Adam 29

Martin had already won Dr Science:

Martin 30

Joe 27

Katy 24

And they were now playing Fives, so we started more town planning with Tower Up. 

I decided fairly early that I wasn't going to focus on bonuses but instead try and get lots of visible roofs. Then I noticed Adam was in contention for bonuses and had more roofs than me. Meantime Ian put his energies into the bonuses, and ended up with a whopping 19 points for them. It was enough for another victory:

Ian 53
Adam 49
Sam 45

Fives had now finished too. Once more, I missed everything at the end of the table, lacking Andrew's multi-tasking skills on this front. But I did make a note of the scores.

Joe 14

Katy 6

Martin 5

As Tower Up was concluding they played a couple of rounds of Jungo, with Martin and Joe taking one apiece as Katy called them names. She now said she would go home unless we played So Clover, so we did, twice. In the first attempt, we overcame our bafflement at one of Joe's clues (akubra) to gather a decent 31/36

Then in the second, we made an incremental improvement, scoring 32/36 instead. I liked Joe's bar for chocolate/weather, and Katy's initiative to invent a word (automusic) for violin/robot.

We now lost Adam and Katy to fatigue, sadly, but the remaining four felt with the hour not yet 10.30 there was time for another something or other. We settled on Take Time, another co-op, this time about playing a bunch of numbered cards around a sort of clock - largely face-down - and trying to make sure their values ascend around each segment. 

New to Ian, but it's not heavy on rules so we brought him in on Chapter 2 and kicked things off with a convincing win. The next clock - there are several - was rather more tricky, and took us several attempts. Then with clock number three we made surprisingly short work of it, ending the night with a collective victory. The rain from earlier was now thankfully gone, and shortly so too were the gamers. Fun night. 

... of course

 Downstairs at Joe's place could be the name of an exclusive speakeasy in prohibition era Chicago but is, in fact, the location to which eight ardent gamers gathered. I arrived at the same time as Martin and remarked on Joe’s new dining table to which he replied it wasn’t that new at all. We put it down to the fact I hadn’t been to his house for a while, but then more people arrived and commented on Joe’s new table. He tried to explain this Mandela Effect by saying maybe there’d previously been a table cloth on it, or perhaps the new curtains were contributing to the sense of newness in the room. Either way, the mystery of Joe’s “new” table remains unsolved.

Anyway,we began with six of us (Martin , Adam H, Sam, Joe, Ian and myself) playing Continuous Pairs. Adam changed seats just after the game began, causing a little confusion in the dealing and Sam misremembered the rules for when to deal people in, but nevertheless we muddled through..

Adam played an amazing game, having a run of five consecutive values. I tried to get a photo of it but Sam had folded and he decided to take the lowest card in the run just before the photo was taken. 

Martin lost and Joe declared himself winner until someone pointed out that I had fewer points at which point Joe reverted to the official rules of there being no winner.

We played again, Katy arrived, and Sam lost.

Now we split into two groups. Martin, Adam and Katy played Gazebo, despite Katy’s reservations about the amount of plastic. Joe, Sam, Ian and I played “Fives” a trick taking game where the sum total of the winning cards in your tricks can’t exceed 25. What makes the game unique (and, some might say, unintuitive) is the fact that every card can be a purple 5, allowing you to get rid of some unwanted high value cards in your hand. 

We spent some time trying to understand when it is permissible to play a purple 5 and then we began the game. Then, after round one, Joe looked at the rules book again and noticed something in tiny writing, explaining that players can’t play more than one purple 5 cards in a trick “of course.” And it was the “of course” thing that really bothered us, as we tried to work out what part of the game set-up would suggest that particular rule. “I’m being gaslit by a rule book,” complained Joe.

So we started again and Ian impressed us all by finishing the final round with exactly 25 points in front of him, getting him a 3-point bonus.

Ian 13

Andrew 10

Sam 9

Joe 8

Gazebo had finished 

Martin - no gazebos left

Katy 4

Adam 6

And they went on to play Soda Jerk with Katy apparently unaware that this was a real thing and not just a phrase made up for a board game.

Adam 23

Katy -2 

Martin -45

Around this time Andy M arrives and he joins Martin, Ian and Katy for a game of Jungo which Martin wins, exclaiming “Soda Jerk is erased!”

Then there was a reshuffle in personnel and I was introduced to the joys of Big Wave, along with Martin, Katy and Sam. This trick-taker is “a very mental game” according to Martin although he only said this halfway through. It’s a trick taker where you have to not follow suit to any card that’s been played before in a trick. 

There are a bunch of rules that tweak the typical trick-taking procedures for those who don’t win a trick. I usually “caught a wave” allowing me to boost a future card by 2 or more points. Martin often took a point and nominated the next person to begin a hand, and invariably chose Katy. It didn’t seem to help.

Sam 58

Andrew 46

Katy 43

Martin 38

Then I left. I think Katy left too, since I later heard from Sam that he and Martin played So Clover twice, scoring 10 and then 9. Sheepy time ended with a victory for Ian with Adam in second and Joe and Andy “nowhere”.

Thanks all, it was special.