The Sponge and Nestle

Anja and Steve were our hosts last night, so we kicked off the evening with an update on the latter's fly-by-night plumbing activities. What does Anja do when Steve is hurdling rooftops with a tap spanner in his belt? Maybe she mixes cement. But in this instance she was getting Lennon to bed, so we began without her, kicking off with Meister Makatsu, new to Steve, but familiar to the rest of us: Pete, Martin, Joe, Ian and myself. 

 

We'd only just kicked off when Anja and Louie materialised, happy to watch and wait as we played out Knizia's tricks-are-bad semi-trick-taker. If I knew the tie-breaker rule before I'd forgotten it, so was interested to hear that if points leaders are tied, whoever holds the Meister Makatsu token wins instead. I decided early on to try and engineer this position for myself, but though I had the card I needed in the last round, I didn't have the circumstances.

Ian 7 wins on tie-break
Steve 7
Martin and Sam 11 each
Pete 13
Joe 'a horrible amount' 

We split into two groups: Pete, Steve and Ian joined me for Medina as the other four played 2 Win. 

On our end of the table I talked newbies Steve and Ian through Medina's thankfully-simple rules and refreshed Pete, who hadn't - I belatedly remembered - played it with me on Saturday after all (at OGFest). Collectively, we're building the city of Medina, which consists entirely of palaces, stables, and a single street along which citizens march in an erratic procession. 

But it's not a co-operative game: you're trying to maximise the size of your palaces (one of each colour) and position them by the walls and street for extra points. The catch is that as soon as you take ownership of a palace, you can no longer make it any bigger (exception: add a stable). There's some structural ordinance in Medina too: no abutting of buildings, and the walls each side must leave room for a gate (even if, as we subsequently discovered, it's blocked by a building.) We were a short way into our adventure when 2Win finished with a victory for Joe. 

1 Joe

2 Martin

3 Louie

4 Anja

Louie retired to bed, and Joe, Martin and Anja set up Renature, with Joe's new board that changes the mechanics slightly (in ways I unfortunately missed). 

Back in Medina, Steve was constantly foiled by the rest of us grabbing palaces before he could, as I held onto the largest orange palace and Pete held a big brown palace he managed to nuzzle up against the point-giving citizens. 

I forgot to take a picture of the finished thing, possibly because I was focused on sabotaging Steve's late-game attempts to build anything that might push him into the lead. I thought I was harmlessly littering the perimeter with walls but it transpired I was helping Pete nick a wall bonus off Ian. He and I were first out of pieces as Steve and Pete entered a tit-for-tat finale, hedge-betting on who could be the Last Dick. It was Steve, but it wasn't quite enough:

Sam 36

Pete and Steve 34 each

Ian (stolen wall by Pete) 31

Very close! Renature still had a short time to go, so we filled it with the magnetic fun of Kluster. 

Actually not all of the fun is magnetic. Some is in the bizarre rules translation, which tells you to set up the string to make a play area as above, and then instructs players to place their magnets in 'any groove of the sponge'. There were also references to a Nestle which left us none the wiser. The game was fun though, especially after we made the play area smaller. I think we all won once, except possibly Steve. And then Renature finished. 

 

Anja enjoyed her debut, but suffered a little at the hands of non-debutants Joe and Martin. We didn't have precise scores but it was something like

Martin 60ish

Joe 50ish

Anja 40ish

We rejigged, with Martin keen to play Better Letters and me unable to coax Steve into it so I could play Robo Rally instead. He splintered with Anja Pete and Ian into a game of Hey That's My Fish, whilst I sat down with Martin and Joe to make words. 

With no Jo here to maximise the personal scoring I wondered if I might be in with a shout. But my 'shortest word' wasn't as short as Martin's - who had en - and I misread the board, leaving me lagging early on. You can't lag against this pair: Joe was putting in words like liminal and Martin transubstantiation (or similar). Whilst this wordy drama played out, Pete was savaging the other penguins in HTMF.

I'm not sure how he did it, but look at that face. Clearly a self-hating sphenisciphobic. 

Pete 39

Ian 21

Anja 17

Steve 15

They grabbed Misfits off the shelf and went into the front room to play, possibly anticipating me bashing my fists on the table in a fit of pique. 

Better Letters finished just after 11, with Martin narrowly taking the laurels from Joe. 

Martin 50

Joe 44

Sam 32

And I left for home with Misfits still continuing! I heard later from Ian that he caused a huge collapse and Steve jumped in for the win. Whilst that was happening in the front room, Joe was beating Martin at Le Chocolat next door. I don't know much about this other than you're having to split a bar of chocolate and try not to eat - as Martin put it this morning - 'too much shitty orange'. Don't know if there's a score?

Apparently they even considered more gaming with So Clover available, before common sense took hold and everyone went home. 

How to win 2 Win

 My first games night in over a month and I strode towards Joe's with such purpose that I walked straight past it and had to turn back.
In Joe's kitchen were the six friendly faces of Joe, Jo, Martin, Ian, Adam H and Sam. They had done that old familiar trick of starting a game, safe in the knowledge that this would magically cause another gamer to arrive at the door. And it worked, but they kept playing while I sorted myself out. 

The game was Win 2. A card game where you play two cards from your hand to make a two digit number. The player who plays the highest gets a new card to add to their hand. The trouble is, in each round you have to play a higher number than before. The winner is the player who lasts longest.

Sam started cagey, keeping his numbers low such that by round three he was still only on 19.while Joe had 66. But by round 7, his cards had forced him to advance to 98, meaning he really needed to draw two nines to avoid defeat. He didn't, but equally Joe, Martin and Adam also couldn't progress. That left Jo and Ian and Jo found they couldn't play again. Ian, last man standing had won and did a little showboating by putting down 99 as a final hand.

Ian wins

Next we split into two. Jo, Martin, Sam and I played Better Letters while Adam, Joe and Ian chose Renature.

Better Letters is a word game which is played on a grid of cards which describe a rule that a word has to obey, such as “Must start with a P” or “must have two syllables”. The players have one minute to come up with a word that meets as many rules as they can, tracing a path across the grid. Each square gives points, especially if you're the only player who uses it.

I got lucky in my first round as the very ordinary word FLOATS landed on some unused tiles and picked up 5 points while other longer and more inventive words didn't score as high. And that's kind of the interesting part: the notion that long words would score highest isn't always true. For example, my FIREFIGHTING was outscored by Sam's MUNCH.

It was fun, although the games one minute time limit seemed punishing, but at least it kept things moving. And it was fun. I know Adam won't believe it, since he seemed to physically recoil when the game was described to him, but the agony of trying to come up with a word that maybe fits just one more rule is quite a challenge. 

Jo 45
Martin 31
Sam 29
Andrew 27

After this, Renature was still half and hour from completion so we left them to their curious incantations of “badger, badger, badger” and we played The Crew: Journey To The Centre Of The Earth. 

This new member of The Crew family had a twist. Each round had a score allocated to it, either according to difficulty or by how well you do. And overall success is measured on a little track which we make our way down, trying to reach the destination before another meeple does.


We thought this new format worked well, and it meant that there was no risk of getting stuck on one hand, getting frustrated at playing the same rules over and over.

There was one round in which each player secretly wrote down how many tricks they would win. In that round, at least, the camaraderie among us was replaced by something more dickish.

But we achieved our goals and got to the destination before the automatic meeple did.

Success!!

Also at this point Renature ended,  with Joe sadly adding up what his points might have been if things had turned out differently:

Adam 82

Ian 53

Joe 40

At this point I left. Nice to be back after all these weeks. I'll let Sam take over…

Post-Andrew, we were still at six and as Martin said to the room, the night was young. There was some low-level debate before we all realised we were happy to play Phantom Ink. At least initially. Joe and Martin became the spirits (ie clue-givers) and the rest of us the Media (ie idiots). Martin was paired with Jo and I whilst Joe teamed up with Ian and Adam. 

Jo and I asked Martin if the word was (associated with) a Greek or Roman figure of mythology, who would it be. Martin wrote DEM and I honestly didn't have a clue, but Jo figured out it was Demeter. Then Joe's first clue was AG before he was silencioed, leading us to think of agriculture. Jo suggested Bread, and we went for an early guess. Wrong! Martin gave us the first of many meaningful looks. 

Fortunately the other team were struggling too, and we were all - even Martin - baffled by Joe's DISS, even after he added an O to the end. Jo and I were still on a wheat theory but more guesses proved wayward, conjuring only an air of jadedness from our spirit, like he'd done a long week at the clueing office and didn't need this shit on a Friday. Ian and Adam went wrong again too and Jo and I were left with our two theories: the long-mooted wheat, or Jo's recent theory of jam. I was allowed to choose and guessed wheat - it was jam! The other team won. My biggest contribution was selecting defeat from victory. Or maybe just being generally baffled. 

Next was So Clover. I bashed out my clues feeling reasonably okay about three of them, but the fourth hit the rocks and we kicked off with a 4. We followed that with three sixes, however, before we reached Joe's, who had - with some ambition, it seemed, clued apple and scrumpers next to each other. Amongst his cards were the words fruit and orchard. We were initially flummoxed, but when we looked closer and tried some things out, we were still flummoxed as well. "Joe!" Martin castigated him. Joe chortled. In fairness though it did make sense in the end - we'd maybe just ported a little spirit confusion over from the previous game. 

Both Ian and started making moves to go, and Adam did go, but Martin suggested Slow Co-ver, his invention of last week where there's a single clover and you're all trying to come up with the same clues. We did very well! The scoring is still under discussion but Ian and I combined, and then there was a trio of hits, and a couple more and we were so enamoured we played again. At this point Jo stopped, reaching peak clue for the evening, and merely watched as the scene played out before them. It was another minor triumph. Tweak the scoring, pdf the rules, stick it on BGG and before you can say 'solo mode' it'll have it's very own just an activity thread. 

Until next week!

Tom Selleck

Games night. After the extremely rare occurrence of a Missed Tuesday last week, Joe was first to arrive at my house and, out of practice at opening boxes, we sat and chatted with Sally and our guest Cassidy for a good twenty minutes. Then Adam H and Katy arrived and normal service resumed. 

First up was Joe's madcap trick-taker, the hairily-themed Moustache.  

This is a must-follow game where each round players split into temporary teams, with the goal to win the cards with stars (ie points) on them. Whilst there's no trump as such, there is a ranking of suits, so if you're out of the lowly green you can effectively trump in with any other suit. But over four rounds a new rule is introduced in each one (there are sixteen rules total in the box): in round one, we had all pink cards are placed face-up on the table so everyone can see what everyone has. In round two pinks became worth extra points, in round three a card was passed to the left after every zero was played and in the last round something else happened that I've now forgotten. 

Joe and Katy rinsed Adam and I initially, and then did the same in round 2. Katy and Adam narrowly beat Joe and I in the third round and then I lost again with Katy at the end. My experience of this game was basically being some kind of curse on my partner. 

Katy 10
Joe and Adam 9 each
Sam 0

I suggested we try out my mini Robo-Rally dice game, which dumps the card programming in favour of dice instead; the catch being that everyone rolls at the same time and as soon as any one player is finished they start putting a time pressure on everyone else. 

It's speedier than the original in that you can tick off a checkpoint just by going over it, and there's no falling off the board. But it still manages to produce a fair amount of chaos, to which I added by not explaining it very well and forgetting the order things happened in. 

Martin, post-gig, turned up just in time to see Adam win, whilst I punched the air in excitement that I finally reached the first checkpoint on the same time (and relief it was all over). We heard the gig was full of 'old bald men' and Joe and I wondered where our invites had been mislaid. 

We debated what to play next and Joe lobbied for Knizia's Hollywood Blockbuster. Martin gamely took on the rules-explanation and did it far better than my Robo-efforts: basically whilst the theme is making movies the mechanics are all about auctions (Katy: "Not auctions!") with the goal being to assemble the various persona needed to complete your movie: director, actor, camera, special effects and so on. The movies vary in their make-up, with the only hard and fast consistency being a director and the optional guest star. 

Over four rounds we bid for these people and the winning bid gets distributed amongst the losers. A completed film instantly scores the sum value of its component parts (the title also has a value) and there's prizes for best movie in each genre, best movie overall, and even the highly-contested worst movie overall, which was won by Joe after I, perhaps understandably, couldn't get an actor attached to my dogshit sci-fi Star Battles. How can you resist a title like that? Especially 'Keanu Breeze' in it.

This was a tie in the end. Martin's collection of actors stood him in good stead throughout but Adam's focus on quality over quantity meant his late surge of releases pulled him level. 

Martin and Adam 73

Katy 59

Joe 55

Sam 37

At this point Adam left for home, unable to to be tempted by So Clover. So it was just the four of us for our traditional closer, and we did pretty well, only being thrown off by the idea of camp-stick for Martin's clue of flagpole, to his chagrin/palpable disdain. 

After that we tried a game Martin had come up with this very evening, which Joe christened Slow Co-ver (rhymes with clover). We placed a single clover on the table with cards in it as per usual, but then take a clover each and secretly write our own clues for the shared clover. The goal is to try to write the same clue as everyone else, for a point - although as Martin pointed out, Slow Co-ver could be played competitively. 

Though I neglected the pictures front we enjoyed this so much we played twice more, improving a little each time. Weirdly our last effort had the same combo Sally and I had encountered the night before: past/drink, so I put the same answer she had, mead. Joe and Martin did the same, whereas Katy went for port. It was the closest we came to a perfect point. 

And on that high-note, the games concluded.