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. 

Punnet of the Apes

Louie was our genial host last night, welcoming a bunch of old-ish farts with offers of drinks and glasses. Was this the handing of the GNN baton to future generations? Will the blog still be going in 100 years, written by Louie's children? Quite possibly. Last Tuesday's monkey-dominated evening still fresh in some of our minds, Ian and Martin had brought their simian-themed games with them again - and while they didn't dominate, they both made an appearance. But we kicked off with Rainbow. 

We quickly discovered that Rainbow isn't great with six. But at least it only takes ten minutes. 

Ian 30
Martin and Sam 27 each
Joe and Louie 26 each
Adam 23

Anja was still upstairs so we busted out, with a jaded sigh from Martin, the greatest card game in the world. "I'll try not to finish with zero this time" he said. He ended second-last, as Adam took Martin's traditional role of perennially busting. Joe and Ian were rewarded for their bravado, and though nobody hit the official 200 point finish line, Ian secured a win as we wrapped up when Anja materialised. 

We split into two anthropomorphic groups: Ian and Adam talked Louie through the joys of building a Monkey Palace, whilst Martin introduced Joe and Anja to Ape Town. 

Ape Town was as tense as Charlton Heston's jaw muscles, as we tried to grab juicy instant points and control of neighbourhoods. In comparison, the building of the palace beside us seemed pleasant and almost collaborative. 

I nudged myself into a chunky lead courtesy of some lemur action, then stagnated for a bit as everyone caught me up and I ran out of cash. But lemurs came to my aid once more as the board filled up, the neighbourhoods closed out, and the finale loomed. 

While we approached it, Monkey Palace wrapped up with a win for Adam. Explainer's curse?

Adam 38

Louie 29

Ian 24

Louie, threatened with the fart apocalypse after several bowls of chilli peanuts had been consumed, exited for bed, and Ian and Adam went at it in Misfits. They constructed some kind of mad thing, that kept collapsing. Looking at it you can see why. 

 

Meantime Ape Town was a close-run thing. Joe and Martin had strong finishes but I just about held on. 

Sam 76

Martin and Joe 70 each

Anja 56

Ian and Adam abandoned their Misfits game here, seemingly convinced it would never end. Apparently Joe managed to knock it over as well, despite not playing, but I didn't witness this as I was having a wee. We split into two groups: the Misfits duo teaming up with Martin to play Rebirth whilst Joe and I introduced Anja to rainbow while we waited for Steve to arrive home. 

Anja picked up a debut win in Rainbow:

Anja 46

Sam 44

Joe 41

While Joe reminisced about the show Rainbow, which prompted both some dubious impressions and the theme tune staying in my head for the rest of the night. Meantime Steve returned, and after a brief catch-up we played Sunrise Lane. 

I've serially finished last in Sunrise Lane, I think, every time I've played it, and I confidently announced I could keep this streak going. Something about the dovetailing of situational cards v situational opportunities seems to escape me. Steve was confounded by the hard-to-determine colour scheme on the board, and the fact the player pieces contain two different iterations of 'shit-brown'. Subsequently we referred to Steve - well, his colour - as babyshit. Oh, what larks. Rebirth continued, with Martin haranguing Adam at reasonable volume. 

The game finished with the Creeping Custard victorious, despite being unable to play his beloved yellow - Rebirth had a kind of jaundiced brown instead. Not sure who played that. 

Adam 181

Martin 168

Ian 163

They bashed out another Rainbow while they waited for us to finish, and Martin exacted some small measure of revenge:

Martin 37

Adam 35

Ian 28

And in Sunrise Lane, for whatever planetary reason things finally gelled for me, probably not hindered by the fact the game was new to Steve and Anja, and Joe had of course been the doomed Explainer. 

Sam 91

Joe 83

Babyshit 81

Anja 69

Adam could not be convinced to stay, and rode off home while the remaining six of us played So Clover. It was near-perfect, but my clover let us down with some interchangeable words. 

And after a brief tour of the house renovation updates (lovely parquet flooring! game table plans!!) we left our hosts, tumbled into the car and weaved off home. Thanks all, it was opposably-thumbed. 

Monkey Night

A relatively sparse GNN kicked off when Martin and Ian arrived at my house. While we waited for our fourth member to join us we played Rainbow, a card game that sort of flips Fishing on its head. The cards are numbered 1-6 and you're playing singles or sets to claim cards from the middle of the table as points - but the catch is that whatever you bid will become the points for the next round.

It's a clever game, but  not entirely devoid of luck - dealt a bunch of fives and sixes, I won the first play fairly easily. 

Sam 38
Martin 35
Ian 26

But it only takes ten minutes, so we went again. This time things everyone upped their game a little, which the scores reflect:

Martin 56
Sam 46
Ian 42

Laura had arrived at the finale, and so what was to become the unofficial Monkey Night kicked off: three games with simian flavour, although that's where the similarities ended. We began with one of Martin's: Ape Town, a Knizia tile-layer where we're a kind of monkey mafia, trying to get the most points from a combination of momentary opportunities and longer-term area control.

The track around the edge of the board shows what tiles are available to you: you can take the next one available, or pay money to hop past it to the next one, and so on. Monkeys and Bananas simply score via adjacency. Orangutans and Lemurs score when the neighbourhood they are in is complete: Orangutans for the monkeys in that neighbourhood, Lemurs for the monkeys in adjacent neighbourhoods - as long as they outnumber the Lemurs in it. 

I think we all began with the anticipation that perhaps Orangutans were where the juice was, as they effectively boss the neighbourhoods. But as play continued it transpired that the Lemurs could, at the right moments, haul in huge points. Ian and I sailed off ahead of Laura and Martin, and they didn't catch us. Martin's enforced investment in the empty areas didn't work out, as they filled up with worthless bananas. 

Sam 89
Ian 77
Laura 70
Martin 66

The presentation is a bit bananas too, but it was a fun game. Next up was Monkey Palace!

This is a Lego-based task of building aforementioned palace in order to generate monkey points and cash them in for cards, which represent both end-game points and Lego income for the future. Every turn you must build from the ground up, and the amount of monkey points depends on how many arches you build (1mp per arch) and whether the decoration you place on top is the highest of its' type (+1mp). It's simple mechanically, but quite challenging spatially, especially when the structure grows a size befitting of its name. 

An unusual beast. I snuck a narrow win here.

Sam 26

Martin 24

Ian 15

Laura 14

Though it was getting on a little, Laura felt she couldn't go home without completing the monkey triplet and so Martin explained the rules - thankfully simple - to Reif fur die Insel, yet another Knizia! This is a bidding game where you collect bananas over three rounds. Brown bananas score at the end of the current round, yellow only at the end of round two, and green only at the end of round three: the entire game is thematically a ripening process. 

Four bananas (bunches, to be precise) are drawn randomly from a bag, and then we bid on them with these cards, and keep going until everyone is bidding on a separate banana bunch. Then we put whatever we got onto our boards:

As you can see, space is limited (the round ends when the boards are full) so having too many green bananas early on restricts your involvement in subsequent rounds. But on the other hand, they do tend to be high-scoring. Inevitably, as this is Knizia, there are also rotten bananas and parrots that eat bananas, and someone has to take that shit. 

Your bid cards are gone for good - except for the zero, which always comes back to you. Any cards you still have after round three are worth points! Ian and I held onto our tens, but it was Martin who came away the victor, by a banana-peel margin.

Martin 75

Sam 74

Ian 67

Laura 61

At this point Laura left, uncoaxed by So Clover, but Ian still had beer to finish and Martin requested a whisky as we broke out the traditional closer. Despite the also-traditional mumblings of dismay, we turned in a perfect score. 

"Let's go again" I said, even though we all knew that the second play of So Clover always leads to catastrophe. I said we needed to break the curse, so we summoned what wherewithal we had left after an evening of simian shenanigans. It was another triumph, and the curse was broken.

All that remained was the downing of whiskies, the shucking of coats and grabbing of things. This was slightly held up by Charlie, who was so reluctant to get off Martin's bag that he travelled halfway across the kitchen floor. "He's not one for hints" I admitted. 

And that was that.