Green Bum

As I drove towards Greenbank Cemetery last night, the rain came lashing sideways in waves, ending a period of relative calm. I texted Adam suggesting he might want to abandon his plans to cycle, and he agreed: joining Martin as they both materialised out of the rainy night to climb into the car. We set off for Steve and Anja's, where our host was Louie. Now accustomed to nerds coming in with bags of games, he furnished us with drinks, glasses and bowls for snacks. Soon enough Anja appeared as well, and then Pete, and after a brief discussion of comics Louie chose our first game: Telestrations. 

Oddly Martin had never played this, but Louie talked us through the rules and we set off on a drawing and guessing spree. Notable highlights were Martin's drawing of a needle in a haystack being identified by Anja as 'pin' - she ignored the haystack - and Martin's guess for 'grilled cheese' which hopefully gave nobody else the bad dreams I had. 

The scoring is kind of a nonsense, but for what it's worth Louie, Anja and myself took a joint win with 1.5 points each. Steve joined us for the last round, so as we pivoted to the evening's main courses everyone was already at the table. Anja, Adam and Pete chose Thurn and Taxis and myself, Steve and Martin went to Ape Town. 

Pete was new to Thurn and Steve new to Ape Town, so there was some Rules Mumblings for a little while before we struck out establishing a postal service/menacing simians. As is my habit - sorry - I lost track of the other game as I was laser-focused on trying to be a mafia monkey, succeeding in making the early running but becoming increasingly concerned about my lack of lemurs. 

My worries were well-founded. Though we clung onto Martin's coat-tails - or actual tail - for the majority of the game, he pushed his way forward in the finale far enough to take a pretty convincing win. 

Martin 100
Sam 89
Steve 73

Germany's network of postboxes was still being developed, so we blasted through a quick game of Jungo. Martin won this too, in pretty short order. 

Then we embarked on a brutal game of Misfits, with all of us collapsing the tower at different points - most agonisingly for me, it happened placing my very last piece. 

And when that happened we all had around ten pieces of wood each - almost as if the last 15 minutes had been a complete waste of time. As Thurn and Taxis was now packing up, we declared it a draw. I'll have to leave the German drama to the comments, as I was distracted by being clumsy and don't really recall any of the rules. I know Adam won though.

Adam 30

Pete 24

Anja 16

Astonishingly it was now late enough that our next game was our last: So Clover, of course! And a triumphant So Clover at that. Martin's Spinal Tap was almost portabelloed by Movie coming out, and Anja's clue of Gallery had us foxed for a while as well until we connected to the underwater elements in zoo/tunnel. Most contentious turned out to be my clue of Battle Axe for Dungeon/Accessory, as Steve felt manacles would be a better clue, and I said not all dungeons are sex dungeons, Steve. Martin fleetingly thought one might go in fancy dress to a poetry party, before blinking in surprise at his own thought process in a way I haven't seen before. 

Regardless, look at this! 36 points. 

Adam had been first to finish, and whiled away his waiting time trying to draw an actual clover leaf on the back of his clover, before deciding it looked more like a bum. I"m presuming he added the hair afterwards. To be honest, there are a couple of other things it looks like now. 

 

On that physiological bombshell, we called it a night. 

Games Knight Knews

I arrived at Sams’s in the turmoil of a game of Cross Clues. I ignored the usual gaming wisdom of never playing until you’ve taken your coat off and sat down and I looked at my card which prompted me to give a clue for “Kinght/Night.” I said “homophone” and got an easy point and an idea for the blog post title. Other attendees apart from me and Sam were Martin, Ian, Adam H and Pete. Martin was a clue machine but Adam was stymied by two clues involving Cauliflower.

21 out of 25

The six of us split into two groups. I joined Ian and Sam in a game of Torchlit, a trick taking game in which you have to guess how many tricks you’ll win. You’re guess is hidden in the form of a face down card and your progress is shown as a meeple on a track.

If your guess is correct, you get 3 points but you can get extra points if that space on the track has cards placed beneath it. Of course, if you miss your target, you can still pick up the points from any cards placed on that particular space.

It was fun. I played the first round in a fog of confusion, trying to work out what was a good hand and what wasn’t. In round two Sam did badly as he won a trick he didn’t want that pushed him onto a low scoring space: just two points for that round. He couldn’t recover and, after three rounds, the scores were

Andrew 18

Ian 16

Sam 13

On the other half of the table, Pete, Martin and Adam played Maya. It’s minimalist design, pastel coloured hexagons with a distinct lack of Mayan flair, gave it a 90s look. I know very little about the game, apart from a typically Martin-esque phrase mid-game, “I have to do that to you to screw you out of ten points,” he said to Pete. Not that it made a difference as it ended:

Pete 157

Martin 147

Adam 131

After this some limited edition (for Easter, I think) chocolate and chili crisps were shared. They got a mixed reaction, but people kept eating them in a sort of fugue state of disbelief at the taste.

After Maya finished, the players discussed it and we soon realised that a lot of our geographical knowledge comes from board games. Although a lot of that knowledge was focused in Germany.

We then split into two groups once more. I stayed in my chair for the third game in a row and watched people move around me. Me, Sam and Adam played Dewan - placing our camps across a map to satisfy various criteria drawn at random from a deck of tiles. 

Adam seemed pleased when he heard there was no hand limit and, indeed, as he played he always seemed to have cards to choose from. I was living hand to mouth, cards-wise, despite my plan of putting camps in the middle of the board, hoping to get cards from anyone wishing to pass.

It was a close one and, to be honest, I was surprised I came last.

Sam 46

Adam 46

Andrew 43

There is a tie-breaker: player with most cards left over wins, but Sam disdained that rule and announced it was a tie, even though he would have won by it. I wonder if we can backdate that decision to my game when I drew with Martin...

At the far end of the table Rebirth: Ireland was in full swing. Clearly, Martin and Pete had not had enough hexagon-based map games for that evening. 

And as I stepped out into the evening, Sam picked up the blogging duties

After Andrew left, Rebirth was still continuing, and it sounded like Ian's early lead was getting pegged back by Pete and Martin. We had time for a two-platyer, so Adam and I stared at the alcove in the front room before deciding on card-shedder Chu Han, which Adam may or may not have played before. Even after beating me, he still wasn't sure.

I won the first round before Adam took the second. In the third round I had huge clutches of 4s and 5s and if I could just get rid of a single six, Adam would be in trouble. But shedding the six gave him the lead *and* doubled points for the round, something I came to regret when I just couldn't get it back and he went out to leave him poised for a win at 29-10. As Rebirth was packing up by now, we decided to award him the victory, as my comeback looked improbable at best. 

Adam - wins!

In Rebirth, Ian had been scampered past by late-game business from the other two, and on realising he had a forgotten objective Pete also realised he'd just completed it with his last tile - enough to take a St Patrick's Day win on the Ireland side of the board!

Pete 244
Martin 241
Ian 232

A triumphant but tired Adam now departed, but Ian said he'd be up for a So Clover. So we did that. Despite some hesitancy and trepidation, it was another Record of Legends night with a cement-hard 24/24. This was despite my putting Queenie for Perfume/Chess. Ian's cradle for Life/Grave was nice. 

Now we lost Ian as well but the three of us still felt we had enough energy for a crack at Biblios, with Martin and I introducing Pete to the Extreme foul-mouthed variant. I suspect Martin ate his own shit at one point, but he didn't say, and who can blame him. I tried to stay out of the battle for brown and blue and focused all my efforts on red and green. If they could outscore any other pair of dice I would be King Biblios once more! 

But this went wrong when I outbid Martin for a +1 Church card late on, only to find the very next auction was a +2 Church card. Pete and I were broke, Martin picked it up dirt-cheap, and with it the crown. 

Martin 7

Sam 6

Pete 3

And that was that for another GNN. See you all soon...

Gregory Peck's Bicycle

We had the tricky number of five gamers assembled last night: Joe, Ian, Katy and Martin joined myself at the spotty tablecloth. After pursuing the alcove of joy Martin and I brought in a small stack of games that suited a quintet, and - just as Joe arrived - we kicked off with Cross Clues. 

It was the usual blend of connection and confusion, and though we did pretty well - 22/25 on both attempts - there were still minor goofs, not least my clue of blue for heavy/dragon, neglecting to notice that blue went rather well, flag-wise, with red and white. With five of us, there were several moments where a grid location was proposed and someone would heavily demur, betraying the fact that that was the card in their hand. We speculated on solutions to this. Silence? A soft moan whilst touching your nose? Everything seemed to be like a flashing red light to highly-tuned Cross Cluers such as ourselves. 

Regardless, with that double warm-up under our belts, we moved on to the evening's main course. It's sat on my shelf for about two years since getting it in a trade, so from that perspective it was nice to break out Hoity Toity, which Martin felt he recalled well enough that we could tackle it. 

Designed by Klaus Teuber of Catan fame, this actually predates the wood-for-sheep innuendo generator by five years, and retrospectively we did decide that it showed its age a little. In Hoity Toity we are upper class twits trying to outdo each other by means of just Having Stuff, the more valuable the better. Ancient Chinese face masks, 1920's Belgium adverts for cheese, ornate ceramic smoking pipes - you name it. We get this stuff and then exhibit it for points, and points push us up the track around the outside of the board. But whilst that makes Hoity Toity a race, from a distance, close up it's a series of bids and bluffs and table-reads. 

Each round players first decide - secretly - whether they'll go to the Auction House to (in theory) try and get more valuables and grow their collection, or to the Castle to (in theory) Exhibit their collection, for points. The destination cards are all revealed first, and then everyone secretly chooses what they'll get up to at the locations in question. 

The auction house gets resolved first, with everyone who went their revealing their second card to show their intent. If they're bidding, then the highest bidder gets a valuable of their choice from the two available. If they played their thief, then they are - potentially - stealing the highest bidding card (the bidder still gets their valuable). Or if they played their Detective, they catch any Thieves, whether they stole anything or not. <<CORRECTION: detectives can only be sent to castles, see below>> So bidders increase their collection size, thieves get money, and detectives get points for throwing thieves in prison, from where they will return to the owner later. 

The castle happens next. If players played an Exhibit card, they exhibit their collection, which must have a sequence - a mix of sets and runs, so ABBCDD would be legitimate - and the biggest collection, with ties broken by oldest item, scores points and moves up the track. Second-biggest also scores. But here too, exhibited items can be stolen by Thieves and Thieves can be caught by Detectives. In both locations, Thieves with nothing to steal (or more than one thief!) or Detectives with no-one to catch all do nothing. 

What with some quirky scoring systems, it made for a funny but occasionally frustrating game, where playing the 'wrong' card is essentially a wasted turn, and you can very easily run out of money because successful bids in the auction that aren't stolen get removed from the game, shrinking the already haphazard economy. We all enjoyed it in parts, but felt too that it should have lasted half an hour rather than the hour+ it took. Despite my having no cash at all for the second part of the game, my strong collection was enough to get me the Poshest Twit status where, despite Martin's enormous last exhibit, I had enough to push myself past him for the second-largest confection of riches. 

1 Sam 

2 Martin

3 Ian

4 Joe

5 Katy

A special mention must go to Johnny Weissmuller's loincloth, which seemed a somewhat incongruous addition to Joe's exhibit. But Ian was impressed enough to steal it, and Joe stole it back. Posh people, eh. 

I was pushing for my new trick-taker, Torchlit, but despite having the Trick-takeriest player in the room, I couldn't get a bite. Instead we broke out Magical Athlete, and were stunned to find Katy hadn't played it before, even Joe's old version. The second race was the most interesting/annoying, as Martin pairing Scoocher (-activates whenever a special power activates) with Katy's Gunk (-all other players movement -1) on the wacky side of the board meaning most of the race was taken up with Martin's chortling as he shoved his stupid dog along yet another space. I announced that the Scoocher/Gunk combo should be outlawed. 

The finale however saw him caught and overtaken. Joe's Banana wanted to trip people up when they passed him, but he was too far behind to ever threaten as much. Katy's Slowcoach was at the back pretty much every time her turn arrived, and hauled her in enough points to overtake Martin and take the laurels overall. I had the satisfaction of winning the last race, at least, whilst Ian was left lagging, let down by Sisyphus' die-rolling. 

Katy 14

Martin 10

Joe 9

Sam 7

Ian 4

It was only tennish, so we decided to revisit The Mind, stopping only briefly for a round of crumpets courtesy of Stan.  I forgot to take photos of this occasion, though I did get one of The Mind. This may have been our first game, where we crashed and burned at level 4. 

So we reset and went again, and with doughy snacks to fuel us, did far better. As The Mind only officially plays 4, Martin announced that with five of us we needed to complete Level 7 to win, and because he told us this once we'd completed Level 7, we'd won! But of course, where there's a mind there's a Dark Mind, and that was our next challenge. We failed one level one. It was Clover time!

There was no record of legends last night, with a 6-6-4-4-3 on both attempts. We missed Pyramid/Wizard on Ian's clover (he clued Ra) in game one, and I was gnashing my teeth as nobody put Alliance with Countryside on my clover in game two. But there were some nice clues, as always, with Joe's low sperm count (-my italics) clueing us in to Lazy/Nut and Spa giving us vacation/hole. 

Having missed last Tuesday, and now slightly whisky-infused, I could have gone again, but it was now past 11 and bedtimes were calling. Thanks all, glad we gave Hoity Toity a run-out, it's not perfect by any means but I've played far worse. And probably will again. 

The Third of March

The 3rd of March 2026 was a Tuesday, so that means it was a time for games, and so convened at Anja and Steve’s. As well as the hosts, the expected gamers included Adam H, Martin, Paul (a visiting friend of Anja & Steve’s), Pete, and myself (Ian), and we also expected young Louie to join us for an early.

Whilst we waited for everyone to arrive or finish parental duties, we had a quick game of 6 Nimmt. It’s been a while since I’d played this once perennial game, so it was good to revisit. We were playing Adam’s Walking Dead themed copy, and I think somebody pondered that bullets were more thematic than the bullheads found on the classic design.

Regardless of theming I had started to slip into a typical death spiral. We ended the game early when others had arrived at the table at the scores were thus:

Adam 10

Paul 16

Martin 27

Anja 36

Ian 43

 

As our numbers had increased, we split into two groups. Martin enticed me, Pete and Steve to try out a new acquisition, Maya – so new that we had sprues to punch. On the other end of the table, Adam, Paul, Anja and Louie set up Cottage Garden. I didn’t really follow much of what happened in their game, but think it took longer to explain than Maya did.

Maya is designed by Gilbert & Benjamin, but if you’d said this was a Knizia I would have had no reason to doubt, as it did feel very much like a game from the prolific German designer. A tile laying game, it reminded me of Rebirth and Babylonia. The theme is that we’re cultivating various crops in the ancient Maya civilization, and the theme led to some interesting phrases being banded around, such as the chain of potato farms being referred to as both a “potato wall” and “the potato belt”.

I rather enjoyed it and put in a decent performance, but Martin proved victorious.

Martin 139

Ian 121

Pete 114

Steve 95 (ish, I forgot to get scores before we started packing away)

Cottage Garden was still ongoing, so we played a quick game of Jungo. I was first to shed my cards and won, with fortuitous timing as Cottage Garden was wrapping up. I can only apologise for my lack of notes, but the scores made it sound like a fairly close game for 2nd, 3rd and 4th, but Anja had a clear lead over the others.

Anja 51

Adam 43

Louie 41

Paul 40

 

As all gamers were present, we decided to mix things up and rotate groups slightly. Adam, Paul and Steve embarked on a 7 Wonders, whilst Anja, Martin, Pete and I tried the partnership version of Gazebo.

The partnership certainly added some interesting wrinkles. The game ends when one player has placed all their Gazebos, but the winner is decided by which pair has the fewest remaining once the game has ended. Players sit next to their partner and play continues in a clockwise fashion, and Martin demonstrated the value in setting up his partner, Anja, who getting her Gazebos down with alarming pace.

Pete and I couldn’t really keep up, and Anja had soon depleted her Gazebo stash. The scores were interesting, as whilst Anja had placed all 15 of her Gazebos, Martin had only placed 3. Pete and I had a more balanced split, as we had managed to play 5 each, but the victory was Anja and Martin’s

Anja / Martin – 12 Gazebos remaining.

Pete / Ian – 20 Gazebos remaining

7 Wonders had also drawn to a close. I had been too focused on the battle of Gazebos to pay heed, but the scores make it sound like a close run game.

Steve 52

Adam 50

Paul 48

After this we finished with a game of So Clover. Strictly speaking we had more players than the official player limit of 6, but Adam fashioned a makeshift clover on a notebook and away we went. Some clue highlights include “Halberd” for “Spicy” + “Axe”, “Longbottom” for “Wizard” + “Leaf”, but there was a bit of head scratching for “Spoor”. Fortunately, somebody had managed to remember that it was something to do with animal scent, which allowed us to eventually get to “Animal” + “Marker”.

It was all going extremely well, scoring 6 after 6, but alas we fell apart when trying to decipher Adam’s clues.

Strictly speaking though, as So Clover is only marketed as a 6 player game, you could actually claim this as a perfect 6 player victory…

And with that we stepped out into the night to make our various ways home (except for Anja and Steve who were already home, and Paul who was visiting.)