Chieftain o' the Pudding Race

Games was back at Joe's house this week, with a fresh tablecloth ready for the hot breath of avid gamers, intent on fun. I confess I was super-tired before the fun could commence, but having missed last week I forced myself to attend - for a bit, anyway. 

When I descended the stairs, Martin and Adam T were already at the table, and Ian just removing his coat. With only Adam H now in the offing, we discussed what we could play, Someone mentioned we could just wait instead, but Joe pointed out that if we did that, Adam wouldn't arrive. And sure enough one round of Sushi Go was all it took to make him materialise, like Marley's meeple-loving ghost, out of the cool night air. 

Martin was already happily reminiscing about how shit the game is at this point, but Adam H was happy to be dealt in with seven random cards to score. There were quite a few jokes about how it was basically 7 Wonders without all the icons, but I don't remember them now. I dodged the competitive rolls of rice and concentrated on Nigiri, and an excess of puddings. It seemed to work. 

Sam 41
Joe 35
Adam T 33

Ian 31
Martin 27
Adam H 23

I was pleasantly surprised by my victory, but I have to concur that the game is pretty bland. "I could name a thousand better games for non-gamers!" Martin harrumphed. Then he thought for a moment and changed the number to a hundred, before anyone could challenge him. 

We split into two threes, with Joe, Ian and Adam H capering off around the globe in Expeditions and Martin, Adam T and I capering with marginally less frivolity towards Mordor in the Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking game.

What happened in Expeditions I am unsure, as I was busy being confounded by the sneaky chapter 14 in LotR: tFotR, where we make our way through Moria, confront the Balrog and curse Boromir's feeble heart once more (discarding the Mithril shirt to make up for his shortcomings). It was a 'Long' chapter, meaning there are multiple characters that need completing, across multiple rounds, and officially the ruling is that any mis-step means you restart the entire round. But the game also does allow you to just restart from where you had got to previously, and that's what we did. The rounds are interesting, but not for the first time I felt that the long chapters feel attritional and the 'doing characters twice' option detracts from an-already flimsy sense of narrative. But at least we completed it - sort of. Our initial triumph did involve leaving Pippin behind. "I don't give a shit about him" Martin confessed. Adam and I were more of a mind to bring him along though, so we played one last round, failed, and then announced we'd won anyway. Almost as though Gandalf has his own Truth Social feed. 

Expeditions finished now too: 

Adam H 22
Ian 20
Joe 15

With apologies I missed any late drama, as I was now wrapped up in the shenanigans of Martin's latest addition, Pumafiosi, a mini-Reiner with quite nice production and a lot of dickishness. The rhythm of it is sort-of trick-taking, but instead of the winner it's the second-strongest card that gets added to a hierarchy of points cards in the middle of the table. During around, these can get bumped down the ladder (minus points for being bumped) and you've some one-use special abilities to take advantage of. 

After ten tricks are played the rungs on the ladder score, and Adam T gets lots of points. My catastrophic middle round and Martin's feeble third round meant there was only ever one winner. 

Adam T 45
Martin 31
Sam 30

They'd now finished Expeditions and were playing Ra. 

And I was feeling the pace of all this fun and threatened to leave, so Martin coaxed a game of Jungo out of me. Adam took to this very quickly as well, winning the first round in no time before Martin took the second. Then Adam added the third and hit the two-rounds-wins victory objective! I do like Jungo. Any game where you get to say the word 'invoke' can't be all bad. 

Martin and Adam began setting up Agent Avenue as I headed for home, which is where Joe takes over the story...

Joe here, thanks Sam. Ra weaved its relentless way towards the end of the ancient Egyptian era, and it was, as it always is, gloriously tense. Ian was on course for the win, but a generous final epoch plus winning sun tiles gave me the late running. "I'm rubbish at Ra", sighed Adam H, in a similar intonation with which he'd announced "I love this game" after beating us at Expeditions earlier. 

Joe 60

Ian 44

Adam 27

By now Sam had gone, and both Adams made noises about leaving. In the end only AH did;  AT stayed, coaxed by the promise of So Clover. Martin threw a cardboard spanner into the works, brandishing Llama Llama, but as he began the rules, Adam wrinkled his nose and said "Shall we just play So Clover?" And so we did. 

We acquitted ourselves decently, with a score of 22/24, only undone by Ian's perfectly reasonable paring of coil with wind, which we all read to rhyme with binned, not bind. Doh! 

I was pleased with my clue of magazine to go with ammo and life. And with that, the bell tolled, and the lights faded on another Tuesday night. Earlier than is perhaps usual, but with a full Sunday of gaming in the offing, in the form of Decacon, we all needed to get some rest.

 

Methnos

Tuesday night and Joe, Martin and I rolled up at Anja and Steve's house to be admitted by Lennon, who was showing some skills on the Diabolo, reminding me slightly of Andrew's juggling years, when we shared a flat and he used to go to festivals with his clubs. I can't remember what I did with my time. I probably played a lot of Playstation. 

With Lennon and Louie and Louie's pal Jago also present, we quickly split into two groups. Joe entertained the kids with Change Up, his own luck-pushing design, and Anja and I took on Martin and Steve at Agent Avenue. I took some quite bad photos. 

As we approached a finale, Steve and Martin were catching us in Agent Avenue but Anja pulled off a fine bluff to hand them a Daredevil defeat. The gang next to us were still playing Change Up so we went again, and this time my gamble backfired and we lost!

Our second game had taken long enough that Change Up had ended with Joe falling victim of Explainer/Designer's Curse:

Louie 8
Lennon 7
Jago 5
Joe 4

And Joe and Lennon had blasted their way through no less than four games! Joe won three sets of Dobble 2-1, but Lennon had revenge in the speed-reaction-game Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza. 

There was now an interlude of sorts, as Steve was tasked with Lennon's bedtime as Anja cleared up the post-dinner detritus in the kitchen, from where we occasionally heard her yawning melodically. We filled the time with a breezy-ish Ticket to Ride: Berlin.

This game remains a mystery to me. Even when I feel like I'm doing well and complete my routes plus extra routes, I always come last. Maybe I should book a tutorial with Adam. But it's fun regardless, a Ticket to Ride experience but condensed into 20 minutes, with the additional quirk of five of your trains being trams. I came last as expected, but it was close. Both Martin and I anticipated a win for Joe, but though he'd completed a trans-Berlin expressway, he had also failed on a smaller route:

Martin 49
Joe 46
Sam 44

Anja and Steve rejoined us and we debated what to play. My hopeful suggestion of Luzon Rails got no traction, especially after Anja called it Luton Rails. Martin's Bomb Busters was also proffered, before we settled on Ethnos, Paolo Mori's Slovakia-shaped area-control band-builder. Martin went through the rules and we were off.

This was our evening's main event, and in the early running things were tight. The first era ended with Steve in the lead courtesy of a couple of large bands. But his presence in Slovakia was light, something he would come to regret as the second era saw him fall behind. It was a curious thing: Steve led while bamboozled by the rules, then sank to fifth once he understood them. This is a malaise I fully recognise.

I made hay with the Giants, earning me a chunky ten points or so over the first two eras, before Anja claimed them in the third. I also harpooned a whopping nine points for Joe when I pulled the last dragon to end the first era. Sorry Joe. He had a strong second era but going into the final one I had a sturdy enough lead to hang on for victory:

Sam 88
Joe 79
Martin 73
Anja 69
Steve 60

It had been an epic, but we still had time for one more game, and plumped for Knizia's Take-That-athon, Art Robbery. 

We're basically either taking cards from the haul in the centre of the table, or stealing them from each other. Or you can steal the dog and have it protect your cards. I twice ended round when I had a reasonable haul, and it seemed like perhaps Martin was the main threat. But in the final round Anja and Joe stole his shit and I ended the game. Initially I thought I might have too few alibis (fewest alibis and you're eliminated) but Anja took that unwanted distinction:

Sam 24
Joe 20
Martin 15
Steve 10
Anja: Takes the fall! 

And with the time hitting 11 o'clock, I was tired enough to drag Martin and Joe away (sorry all) and bring an end to another fine night of ludological delights. 

These late scores just in…

 I may have been only a few minutes late but even before I reached Joe's, I had a text informing me of the first result of the evening. 

Rainbow

Sam 32

Martin 32

Joe 38

Ian 44

I'm guessing, based solely on Martin's position on the list, that low scores are good. 

I arrived in time to derail a game of For Sale, and the seven of us split into two groups. 

Katy was gaslit into believing she'd enjoyed Bomb Busters the last time she'd played it. And so she, Joe, Sam and Martin set up to bust some bombs. 

Meanwhile, I joined Ian and Adam H in a game of Monkey Palace. It's a nice puzzle game in which you build an increasingly Escher-esque construct of arches and pillars all, apparently, just for one monkey. 

It's quite lovely and thinky with a bit of an engine building aspect in that the cards you pick up as a reward for simian architecture give slightly different supplies of building supplies for as long as they're visible on your player mat.

As we totted up the scores, we were surprised at how close it had been… until i asked about 3 bonus cards next to Adam's drink. 

Adam 36… no, wait, 48

Ian 42

Andrew 36

As for the busting of bombs, I played them scant attention until the mission failed. Joe guessed one of Sam's numbers and got it wrong. “Why did I think it was safe?” he asked himself. A terrible moment of self reflection for any bomb disposalist. 

And now Steve arrived. Monkey Palace was still in full swing, so they became a quintet. They played Reif für die Insel (Ripe for the Island).

This is all about bananas. Ripe, brown bananas in particular. They scored points, I think, while yellow and green ones got you nothing. The only other thing I know about this game is that two parrots are bad. This happened towards the end of the game and prompted all manner of anguish. 

In an echo of the scoring for Monkey Palace, this game also had a late addendum when Martin texted me saying he'd forgotten a rule and could I add 5 points to his tally. Didn’t change the standings in this case, though.

Martin 71 (not 66)

Katy 65

Steve 60

Sam 54

Joe 43

During this, we had finished Monkey Palace and started on Cities, a new worker placement city building game. Ian went big on water, I made a big park and put almost nothing in it while Adam pursued point scoring bonuses. Turns out that was the winning strategy. Go figure. 

Adam 78

Ian 65

Andrew 63

Before we finished Cities, the other half of the table played a quick game of Mlem. This has long been an achilles heel for Sam but he agrees. At first, his luck apparently remained stubbornly bad as he and Steve blew up.

But later he amazed everyone, maye even himself, by getting two cats into deep space. In fact, deep space became pretty full with each player reaching this final frontier.

Joe 42

Martin 35

Sa 32

Steve 31

Katy 30

Next, we all reshuffled. Martin, Joe, Katy and me played the game that Ludo always wanted to be: Agent Avenue. Sam, Ian, Steve and Adam set off on the epic journey that is Fellowship of the Ring. Sam read out the extensive flavour text to give a little context to the co-op trick taker. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t follow that game at all. I was too involved in an epic game (as epic as you can be in 20 minutes) of Agent Avenue. The gameplay is simple - one team plays two cards, one up and one down - but the knots we tied ourselves into trying to guess our opponents details was anything but. 

For most of the game, though, Joe and I were sitting pretty just a few steps behind our rivals. The game ended in dramatic style. We were one space behind Martin and Katy’s spy and we chose their face up card. When the face down card was revealed it actually sent their spy backwards to defeat. We were shocked that Katy had played a card that would inevitably have lead to a loss. But when she showed the rest of her hand they all would have done the same. It was a fait accompli. Typical espionage - you never find out until it’s too late.

Joe and Andrew - win

Martin and Katy - don’t

Then I pull on my coat and set out into the world. Someone else must have left too, since when I receive messages about the final games of the evening, there was glad news of a 36 out of 36 in So Clover.

Finally, Joe, Sam and Martin played Sunrise Lane with Martin winning and Joe in second.

Thanks for the evening everyone. See you next week.

And all that jazz

 Late as usual, I rocked up at Sam's place at 7.45. Most of tonight's attendees were perusing thr games collection while I got my coat off. Martin asked me if I liked the sound of a tile laying game about Jazz. An easy sell. I replied in the affirmative and booked my place on today's big thinky game, Bebop.

There were eight of us tonight. Sam, Martin, Katy, Pete, Ian, Andy M and myself. Katy expressed concern that she may have to reign in her usual aggressive style in the face of two relative newcomers but when she found out she was playing a game against three old familiars, she was happy that she could be a dick again.

I was joined by Martin, Pete and former semi regular Andy M, who I hadn't seen in years but in finest Games Night tradition, we just nodded and said hello. 

The other game,  chosen by Sam, Katy and Ian with Adam H in mind, who was on his way. He phoned once he was at the door, apparently unable to be heard by us in the kitchen. Once at the table, he got a rules explanation from Sam while Pete guided us through Bebop.

Any idea that this may be about Jazz was quickly quashed - it’s about a Jazz Festival and the idea of the game is to put our “fans” (the dice) next to the stage hosting their favourite instrument (drums, piano or trumper). First you put your seat down and on top of that, you put a die. The idea is to chain colours together in such a way that you have the majority of one instrument on your seats.

The game had a pretty simple mechanic, either place a seat or a fan and five of the seats had special abilities. But the strategy seemed to elude us. “What do I want?” cried Martin midway through the game. Even Pete, who’d only played once before - against himself - couldn’t offer any pointers.

Meanwhile, in Instanbul, Sam worked early on his wagon while Ian got the first jewel. There had been talk at the start of the game about Katy breaking the game last time she played.  I remember hearing about this but tonight she stayed firmly in the middle of the pack. Right up until the end. 

Ian 5

Adam 4 plus cash

Katy 4

Sam 4

After Istanbul they set up a game of misfits. Our jazz fest was showing no sign of ending. 

Whatever plan Katy had once had about being a dick seemed to have dissipated by now as she began with a disc placed flat on the table. Sam, far less amicable, put a cylinder on top of the disk, lying on it's side. 

After that, it was your usual recreation of 1970s public sculpture with exhortation to us not to bang the table. Not much chance of that, as we had entered the thinky standing up period of the game. 

Adam won Misfits 

After this, they played Gold Fever. Adam seemed to play the first part of the game while studying the rule book. They played twice, with wins for Katy and Adam. At the end of the game, Sam seemed to find a number of stones in the lining of his bag. 

Finally our Jazz Festival came to a close. We had, by now, long since passed the playing time suggested on the box. We were heading towards the final scoring with still not any solid idea about how well our strategies do. 

Andy M 98

Martin 97

Pete 87

Ander 71

Andy said he was happy with his win since he liked jazz. I don’t know what to make of Bebop! It was quite long and I never really got a grip of any possible tactics. I was tired, it was approaching 10 by now and I decided to bail out early.

Without me, the evening tore through more games@  Tower Up, Wavelength and two offerings of So Clover.

Some beautiful clues in there. Vampire/Pigeon for Bat is perhaps my favourite. Also, Sam played Agent Avenue four times, losing to Martin 2-1 and then playing against Pete later on. What a night.

Let them eat Cake

It was a winter of content as, not so long after Novocon, and just a few days after Laura's games day, a second festive get-together arrived. This time we were at Anja and Steve's: Joe drove myself and Katy over and we arrived just as they were finishing the first game of the session, with Steve coming a cropper in That's Not a Hat. Martin, Sarah and Effie were present and somewhere in the house Louie and Arthur were navigating pixel world. There was some chat and drinks prep and invasively-shaped breadsticks, and then Sarah and Effie made their way home and then remaining adults played Joe's recent acquisition, Awkward Family Photos. 

It's a party game where one player draws a card and chooses which demented photo they want the other players to provide a quote for. The quotes themselves are on cards, and drawn from movies, meaning there is fun to be had in the juxtaposition of lines we often know and strange people we don't, as well as the weirdness of the images themselves. I should have written some of these down but I didn't - anyway, the active player chooses which quote they thinks works best/is funniest/stupidest and the player who provided the quote gets the picture as a point. Katy cleaned up here, snagging three pics. The rest of us had one or none, but the highlight was no doubt Steve's enthusiastic embracing of reading the lines. 

We split into two groups, with Joe Katy and Hannah joining Martin in the perilous lands of Hold Your Ground and myself, Adam, Anja and Steve playing MLEM. 

Anja was concerned that her conservative approach was boring initially, but she warmed to the theme as serial explosions sent the rest of us into the ether whilst she watched from the warmth of a planet made of yarn. I missed all the fun of Hold Your Ground as I was too busy heckling her - to no avail. Steve and I tried to finish with a flourish making it into Deep Space, but only blew up again. 

Anja 27

Adam 25

Sam 21

Steve 15

Hold Your Ground had finished just before us, with Joe the victor on his debut play. There was some child-wrangling at this point, followed by some soup wrangling, and while we waited for the latter Joe introduced us to his game of counting from 1 to 20. It's always anyone's turn to say the next number, but if two or more people speak at the same time, you have to restart from one. We were all entertained by this - except Katy, who pronounced she couldn't stand it and left the room - but the furthest we got was 17 - unless you accept Joe and Martin's two-player version where they simply took turns. Steve, Martin and I also played a few rounds of Illusion at this point as well - but then the soup was ready! There was also home-made bread and cheese and a discussion about cheese between Louie, Arthur, Joe and I in the kitchen. But I forgot to take photos. When are you back, Andrew? 

After this lovely dinner Steve took some of us on a tour of the bouncy front room and we discussed such construction undertakings as joists and chasing. Then there was an amazing cake, the name of which I now forget but it's a bit like panottoni, and you - or Steve - can slice it into the shape of a Christmas tree. 

We broke into two groups again, with Joe, Adam and Katy playing Thurn and Taxis and the rest of us Mille Fiori. Louie was initially slated to build the German postal system as well, but the arrival of snow outside meant he was lost to the salad days of youth and cold hands. 

Meantime shit was getting slightly less real on the table. Anja's third or fourth turn was an early epic, as she triggered a bunch of bonus turns and catapulted herself into what looked like, to the uninitiated, an insurmountable lead. But we are all sadly initiated at this point, and Martin caught her up later on in the game as Steve and I took turns to make mournful little sounds with our mouths. With apologies, I missed the drama of Thurn and Taxis as a result, but my modest late-game surge in Mille Fiori was almost as pitiful as what came before it. 

Martin 238

Anja 210 

Sam 177

Steve 171

While they entered the final furlong in Thurn and Taxis, there was a lot of bodily movement around the house and I think at this point Steve showed me the upstairs, which I'd never seen before. It's huge! Then Martin and I played Hit! with Arthur and Louie. All of us regularly busted, but then endgame favoured Arthur and I somewhat.

Sam 84

Arthur 72

Martin 68

Louie 4

Thurn and Taxis wrapped up now, with Adam taking a convincing win:

Adam 24

Katy 16

Joe 10

And after some table shenanigans, I set up my Christmas gift Let's Go! To Japan with Adam and Joe, whilst the other end of the table played Agent Avenue. I had now completely abandoned my journalistic responsibilities, but fortunately Steve was on the case...

And here's some Let's Go! To Japanning from earlier times.

In this game we are planning our wonderful trip(s) to Japan by arranging three activities per day over six days - presuming, in my case, my travelling self has more energy than I do. When our final activity/card is placed, we then go on our trips, and each experience increases the holistic and cultural value of it by pushing the component aspects of the vacation (food, temples, unique experiences etc) up the track. If, at the end of the day, we have received enough of said aspect, then we can also score the Highlight of the Day as well. 

That's pretty much the game, save for a couple of wrinkles of your mood increasing (or not) overall, and the fact that your entire trip is based in Tokyo and Kyoto: any time you travel 'between' these cities, you must take the train. This was where Joe's planning fell down - he spent a lot of time whizzing between cities and without the tickets for it, he got hit with minus points. But for the activities themselves, Joe was having a grand old time, keeping costs low and enjoying a kind of thrift-store version of Japan. It was enough to win, though I inevitably made no note of the scores I think it was

Joe 115

Sam 111

Adam 109

But we all had a great trip. Katy's first play of Agent Avenue was less successful, as she and Anja came a cropper at the hands of Martin and Steve. But now it was getting on a bit - Louie had gone to bed, Hannah and Arthur had returned from the snow only to vanish again, and whenever the door opened I complained like an old man about the arctic wind that blew in. In other words, it was time for So Clover. I won't lie, I was smugly thinking about the fact I had a long record of sixes up until tonight when my clover - the first - blew up in my face: we scored three because apparently nobody sees Memory/Sky as poetically as I do (I wrote Dreamland: there were better matches). 

I was also responsible for harpooning Anja's clover when I said "This now looks insane" about the card placements and we started again only to subsequently discover they'd been in the right place. Katy's cake was a great clue for Fairy/Hole and Martin's deoxygenated for Summit/Heart was clever. Overall 35 from a possible 42 (using two sets of the game) wasn't too shabby. 

A fun way to end the evening, as always. Thanks to everyone, especially our hosts, and see you before too long I hope!

Great Balls of Squidge

I arrived at Laura and Lucy's house to find Lucy and Ryker upstairs creating a huge den from magnetic boards. Down the the kitchen, Laura, Maddie, Martin, Sarah and Effie were competing in the first game of the first GNN festive get-togethers: 5 Alive, which is a card game of shedding without taking the collective total over 21. Everyone begins with five lives and a life is lost when you bust (I think). 

Martin and Laura were joint winners with 2 lives left, and Maddie and Effie had one apiece when Sarah bit the dust and lost her last one. Christmas games were officially underway and next up was one of Martin's newbies, Hold Your Ground! Here we are trying to be last-ones standing as the ground literally explodes in camera-defying ways beneath your feet. 

As this only plays up to four, Effie and Maddie teamed up and so did Martin and Sarah. Laura and I both flew solo: each turn you play two cards from a hand of four that define number of your people to move and how far they can go, after which there's a die roll to determine whether the explody-stick will move (one space; your choice) or explode the tile it currently resides beneath, ejecting the plastic people from the game: and if anyone is cut off from the central helipad tile, they are automatically lost as well. The helipad is semi-safe in that it cannot explode - but as each tile has a max limit of six, a seventh entering will push someone off. The die may also trigger a round of area-control too, where dominant factions kick off the outnumbered. It's all pretty arbitrary-feeling, but fun. Especially the explosions. 

Effie was merciless when the opportunity to screw over her parents came - the apple falls not far from the tree, Martin - and having been in a strong position they were forced out of the helipad; and out of the game. Then the girls were ejected and it came down to a straight fight between Laura and I: she just needed to roll an explosion to win: and did!  A triumph, but at what cost? Look at the desolation. 

We moved on to HIT, the lesser-seen (recently) Knizia card-flipper. Sarah and Adam shared a win in game one, then Lucy joined us for game two, which I won. Nice to revisit this one. 

After all the subversion and theft though we needed something healing and went with Cross Clues. It was a triumph: 25/25 with zero cheating. 

There's only so much healing we can take though, so we reverted to type with Prey Another Day. Sarah made short work of us here, correctly reading the table and devouring opponents to take a victory in two short rounds. I struggled into second.

We moved on to Wandering Towers. I got off to a good start with two potions filled and one wizard home within a couple of turns, but after that stagnated a bit as everyone lost track of where their wizards might be in the vast apartment complex we managed to build.

There were shenanigans. Twice I was close to ending it only to be harpooned by the architecture moving around me. Martin plaintively cried "Where the fuck am I" at least twice. Sarah shared his existential despair. Eventually I claimed a win, with Adam second and Martin beating Laura to third on the tiebreaker. We all agreed the game is bonkers and whilst Laura took herself off on pizza duty, the four of us played something much more sensible: Agent Avenue. Adam and I dug a little hole for ourselves early on - getting two daredevils whilst Martin and Sarah claimed two Codebreakers meant we had to be extremely careful about taking any face-down cards. We briefly threatened to catch them on the track, but ended up daredevilled or codebroken (I now don't recall which) into defeat. Fun though! 

Next up was Stomp the Plank, the game of pirate elephants hating on each other. There wasn't a huge amount of busting and in fact my red elephant did no plank-walking at all. That lack of adventurousness was enough to bring me a solid win. 

Then, after a wonderful foodie interlude of pizza and salads, the entire house gathered together for Midnight Party!

Martin and I had disastrous first rounds as we both encouraged Hugo out and had him subsequently eat us. The Laura-Ryker team began well by picking up +3 points, but massive kudos to Maddie who pooh-poohed open doors in favour of running around the board to the plus-three rooms. It didn't get her the win, but she looked like an action hero compared the rest of us scrambling in a sweaty-palmed panic. Mid-game Sarah and Effie had to leave, and as Katy was arriving at the same time she took over control of their team.

Laura + Ryker -14
Martin -23
Sam -27
Maddie -28
Sarah + Effie / Katy -29
Adam -32

Ryker and Maddie were fully invested now and played Block Party with us. Really lovely to have them at the table as we continuously discovered our 'obvious' creations just looked like a bunch of cubes to everyone else.

Adam surged into an early lead here, and Ryker had a handicap of only actually starting in round two. Adam built a wonderful slice of watermelon and I successfully had my orange cube identified as 'an orange' by Maddie. I knew Martin's blocks were meant to be a slide but I wasted my steal on Katy's swirl-of-colours construct, which was "obviously" a donut. Meanwhile Katy insisted Martin's slide looked 'more like Chewbacca'. You be the judge:

Everyone had a little late-game rally and for me it was enough to catch Adam and share the win. Unfortunately that was Adam's last involvement for the day as he had to head off home, so he missed out on the hilarity of what was next: Misfits. We began as a quintet: Katy, Laura, Maddie, Martin and myself. But after Ryker won Pizza Party at the end of the table he joined my team and supplied both advice and some next-level heckling, trilling "Boooooring!" if he felt the placement wasn't ambitious enough. Around here was also Ryker's amazing 'Squidge my balls' routine, which gave all the supposed adults an even harder challenge than Misfits: keeping a straight face. Or trying to.

Somewhere in all this craziness - there were multiple collapses - Katy picked up a win despite her last two pieces being cylinders. There was time for one last game before kids' bedtime and so everyone was dealt into UNO - which today I discover in fifteen years of the blog, has never been tagged here before. Ryker and I stayed as a team, Maddie and Lucy paired up, and Katy, Laura and Martin all went it alone. 

I think it's been about fifteen years since I've played it at least, but if it doesn't scream hall-of-fame it is at least a fast-moving bit of silly good fun. Despite our best efforts to harpoon them, Maddie and Lucy took the win here and the kids were shuffled off to bed as we debated what to play next, settling eventually on Rebirth. 

During our cathedral-centric rebuilding of post-apocalyptic Scotland, the children reappeared and there was a bout of snacks and swinging. Ryker was at the table when I told Martin I hated him, which I had to quickly clarify was only in the context of the game. Laura admonished me for setting a terrible example, and I realised it really was. 

Katy broke out a colossal box of Maltesers and Laura added a bowl of Celebrations. On the board it looked a two-horse race between Katy and her proliferating energy farms and Martin and his spawny card draws: the first two missions he'd picked up rewarded his initial placements. That's my excuse anyway. I tried to balance the needs of farms and missions and castles and just ended up a kind of bland fourth place. Katy looked poised to sneak the win from her arch enemy, but she'd only picked up 4 missions - and only completed three of them. 

Martin 124

Katy 119

Laura 117

Sam 111

While Laura did some further bedtime shenanigans Martin set up his other Christmas present: Bomb Busters! This is a co-op undertaking with the theme of FUSE - we're defusing bombs - and a similar shared-information system to Hanabi.

Each round we successfully 'cut wires' by matching a numbered wire from our (hidden) hand of them with one from another player. At the start we can all share information about a single wire, but because wires are laid out numerically left-to-right, you can also transmit limited info about the tiles around it as well. There's four of each number (on the first mission, the numbers are only 1-6) and if two of a number are already revealed and you have the remaining pair in your own hand, you're allowed to pair 'with yourself' and reveal them. 

After the very easy first mission, the game makes things a bit harder with extra numbers (1-8) and now coloured wires as well (see 3.1 in pic above) that need to be 'cut' in  similar fashion. It gets trickier fast, and if you're not a naturally logical puzzle-solver (ie me) it can start to feel like the only thing you can grok is the fact you know nothing. But it's more intuitive than Wordy or Message From the Stars, and I enjoyed it. Each mission ramps up the difficulty, and gives you more to navigate. To help, you also get single-use tool cards that can get you out of a pickle - I used these more than anyone!

We succeeded our first three missions but lost our last life on Mission 4. Not a bad return for four slightly inebriated cadets, I'd say, even if our alcohol-infused body parts were now scattered around the academy. It's a bit Quirky Circuits too, in the mission-focused escalation - I look forward to playing this again. Laura and I were fading a bit now though - possibly the wire-cutting tension; maybe the post-chocolate sugar-crash - and we elected to make the last game the final one of the night, so it was of course So Clover. Katy got a bastard of a red herring tile, but we managed to call it out and ended the evening on a masterful 24/24! What a great way to sign off 2024. Thank you Laura, Lucy, and all for a cracking session...

Happy new year all. Here's to some great games in 2025 - starting on Saturday!