Dominoes in excelsis

 I arrived at Laura’s house in the rain to find an even wetter Adam H locking up his bike. We were let into the house by one of Laura’s children and went down to the kitchen where we found Katy already excited about reliving her childhood with a game of Ghost Castle, currently being constructed by Laura. Sam, Ian, Joe and Martin watched from the other end of the table, clearly not convinced of the joys of MB Games.

While Katy, Laura and the two smaller gamers began playing Ghost Castle, Joe, Sam and Martin set up Azul and Ian, Adam and I squeezed a game of Kingdomino in the space between them. The cries of excitement from Ghost Castle were mirrored by our cries of disappointment, as we drew tile after tile of crownless-countryside. But Adam didn’t mind, as his forest expanded to absurd proportions. 

Adam 74 (50 for forests alone!)

Andrew 53

Ian 37

At this point, Azul was still in full flwo but Ghost Castle had been replaced by Dragonimo. During that game, Maddie kept calling out “cracked eggs!” and I thought she was saying “crackhead!” until I looked at the board, saw the egss and put two and two together.

So we played Kingdomino again. By chance, I made Adam pick up a tile that he couldn’t place thus ruining his 5x5 bonus. I wish I could say I did it on purpose, but I’m not that cunning. 

Ian 56

Andrew 49

Adam 46

The other games ended:

Dragonimo

Katy & Riker 15

Laura & Maddie 10

Azul

Martin 83

Joe 79

Sam 39

“That was pretty close,” said Martin. Sam begged to differ, although his board was only two tiles away from a big payout.

The two youngest gamers were sent up to bed and we turned our attention to more grown-up matters: cats in space! Martin, Laura, Ian, Sam and I buckled up for a trip to deep space. It was a first play for me and Laura, so we got a rules explanation, but it was all pretty clear. Roll certain dice values to move, and then land your cats (each with its own special ability such as x2 planet score, x2 moon score, Parachute to safety even if the rocket explodes, etc). Our first journey was the most successful for a long time and Laura reached the last planet before deep space.

Joe, Katy and Adam were more grounded. Literally – their game, Renature, seemed to be all about reintroducing wildlife onto a board that initially resembles a Pac-Man maze made of grass. It was the third game of the evening to use a domino-placing mechanic. I didn’t really follow this game, apart from the occasional cry of surprise like “Double tortoise!” and also a request by Katy to go over the rules a few minutes before they ended. But it was fine.

Katy 86

Adam 67

Joe 58

“I didn’t gloat, and I didn’t ask you to thank me,” she said after the game.

As for Mlem, our poor rolling was getting out of hand. Laura rolled five twos and a booster when we needed ones and fours. On Sam’s first turn as commander, he turned up with his parachute on while Ian went one better – when he was commander, he chose his Saboteur Cat to represent him. A lot of fun.

Laura 28

Ian 26

Sam 21

Andrew 20

Martin 19

There was also a game of Misfits at some point during the evening. I'm not sure when, though. Most likely while Renature was finishing up. Misfits doesn't really play five and, apart from the photos, my only note about the game was "Martin loses."

We reshuffled for the next games. Joe, Martin, Laura and I played Big Top. Ian, Adam, Sam and Katy played Robot Quest Arena.

Katy 21 or 22

Sam 20

Ian 17

Adam 15

While Big Top was a little odd in that we rinsed the bank of money, meaning me, Laura and Martin all ended the game with a lot of cash. Joe, alas, ended the game with no stars. I needed Martin to add up my scores for me, since he refused to believe I’d only come second. He was right. Of course.

Andrew 56

Laura 53

Martin 37

Joe out.

At this point I left, but not before the Robot people began playing Stomp The Plank. After carefully setting up the board, Katy ruined everything by winning in the least fun way possible: draw six different symbols on the first turn.

Katy wins!

Of course, they had to play again and, although Katy could’ve won in the same way again, she bottled it at the fifth card. Adam didn’t so much Stomp the Plank as Shuflle Forward Slowly. 

Sam won the rematch!

And, I’m told, they ended with So Clover.

Thanks all, see you next week!

Rhino Knizia

 I knocked on Laura's front door on a wintry evening, pleased to not have to negotiate the summertime entrance: the grassy side passage which, today, was pitch dark and featured plenty of scaffolding.

She let me in and I found Martin, Ian, Sam, Joe, Adam T and, apparently, Laura's young daughter Maddie all playing Skyjo. Then Laura took her seat and I realised that she and Maddie were a team. 

Skyjo seems simple enough. You want as few points as possible as you pick up and discard from the 4x3 grid of (initially face down) cards in front of you. But a column of three of a kind will vanish, making your chances of winning all the better.

Towards the end of the game, Adam discovered that cards that were still face down did not count as zero but would score whatever their hidden value was. He had five left and suddenly he looked in a very precarious position.

But he needn't have worried. Martin triggered the end of the game by having no more face down cards. But this game has a mean sting in the tail: anyone who ends the game but doesn't have fewest points will have their score doubled. And this is what happened to Martin. Adam discovered that his face down cards were all pretty benign. Laura and Maddie, on the other hand, had played a perfect game!

Laura & Maddie 0

Adam 15

Sam 18

Ian 21

Joe 29

Martin 46

Maddie was allowed to stay up for long enough to watch us set up the next game. What a treat! Martin suggested Zoo Vadis because it could play all seven. It's a negotiation game by Reiner Knizia where players move their meeples from area to area by convincing the other players to vote for them. If they do agree, they get one coin from the bank and whatever the negotiator promised. 

It's an oddly themed game. Apparently it was once about senators in Ancient Rome but then had a retheme whereby we are animals in a zoo. A zoo designed to look like a bit like ancient Rome.

Adam began by promising to be absolutely terrible at this game and then proceeded to be very adept at getting a good deal from Joe. Martin sent one of his meeples up a solitary track but that meant it wouldn't have to negotiate and therefore wouldn't make any money. This explains his shockingly low score.

Adam 28

Joe 18

Andrew 17

Laura 17

Ian 16

Sam 14

Martin 5

Then we split into two groups. Ian, Adam, Laura and Joe did some old school gaming with Zombie Dice while Martin, Sam and I played Big Top.

This auction game has you bidding on cards and if you bid a number showing on the card in question, that number is covered by a coin, making the card even more valuable.

Sam had a huge lead mid game. I ran out of money and Martin had few completed cards until later on. In the final tally, Sam's lead vanished as Martin had collected several big scoring end of game bonuses, pushing his score from a mere 15 up to...

Martin 71

Sam 58

Andrew 46

Zombie dice ended

Adam 15

Laura 5

Joe 5

Ian 3 (but almost 11)

They'd also played The Crew Deep Sea Adventure while we finished off big top. No idea how that went. But soon we were all finished and ready to mix things up.

Misfits was mentioned, but I didn't think I could cope so I joined Martin and Joe in a game of Accuse. It's a sort of cross between Coup and Cluedo. Coupdo, if you will.

It's a small game. So small that Martin had accidentally packed it away inside the box for Big Top, and that's already quite small itself. But there was some nice deducing inside that small pack. 

Joe was first to accuse but got the wrong suspect. After the first accusations, the other players have to (secretly) decide how many cards they need to reveal before they can make an accusation. I said one and Martin said none so he went first and was successful!

Ian won Misfits. It produced some typically crazy structures but Ian's winning move was simply to put a cube on top of two blocks z after Sam had a catastrophic collapse on his turn.

Adam left at this point and the rest of us played Team Rankster. This game of deciding who out of three random historical/fictional characters would be best in certain situations was new to me but very easy to learn. 

Interesting to note that Laura wouldn't want Da Vinci to design her house because it'd be too crazy, choosing instead Jon Snow. From Game of Thrones, not the newsreader.

Martin, Laura and Andrew 3

Sam, Ian and Joe 1

After this, even though So Clover was on the table, I had to leave. It was difficult to resist, especially with Sam saying “I'm taking the lid off!” as I put my coat on, but I was strong.

I later got the score (27 out of 30) and a photo from Sam with the note: “Martin, at one stage: All I can see is cabbage”

Thanks for hosting Laura and hope to see everyone again soon!

Alberto in the library with amnesia

After the fiesta of the xmas blowout, the first GNN of the new year was a sparsely attended evening, with just Katy and Martin stepping in out of the perpetual rain to see what the night would bring. 

It started with revisiting Big Top, the circus-themed bidding game. 

In our debut play the other night, I'd won courtesy of nabbing early auctions before the prices rose. This time I was given no such licence as bids went up earlier. But it was also a game of over-expenditure, as we all found ourselves cash-poor at times, something Katy was concerned by as she had a card that gave her a great exchange rate for coins. Martin twice bought his own cards, and fretted about that. It was a game of ruminations.

Sam 61
Katy 49
Martin 41

Next up was Accuse!, where we are trying, Cluedo-like, to ascertain the location, weapon and personnel of a murder. There are two locations (three cards of each) three weapons (two cards of each) and six suspects (one card of each). A little information is shared but most is hidden; some in your hand. Turns pass with someone playing a card to the table face-down and announcing what it is. Airport, gun, person, etc. But the catch is you can lie and you can be challenged, which prompts a switching of cards from player to player or a card on the table being revealed. 

When you're ready, you can grab a pawn and make your guesses, revealing the crime cards only to yourself. If you're correct, you win! If not, the other players make bids as to how many cards they'll flip over before they make a correct guess, with the lowest bidder going first. 

Katy and Martin won a game apiece here, the second after we'd collectively suggested there were eight airport cards (there are three) and challenged just two of them. I might have won the second but I accused Bo, who I'd forgotten was in my hand just minutes earlier. 

Katy and Martin: Detectives!

Sam: Demoted

Next up was Misfits, the game of collaborative tower-building where you're actually trying to make the other players cause the tower to fall. 

For a game of even simpler rules than Bandu, it's surprisingly brutal, and together we concocted the kind of constructions that architects would shake their heads at. Or possibly admire, I'm not sure. Either way, I won both games, although apparently the first one didn't count, for obscure reasons. 

Next up was Romi Rami, or Rome Rams as my computer likes to call it. 

Katy got off to a strong start and was definitely points leader as Martin and I bemoaned our fates of heart contracts with only diamonds and clovers available on the table. But we came back into contention, and I even snuck ahead of Katy by the slenderest of margins, surviving Martin's abrupt ending of the game.

Sam 34

Katy33

Martin 28

I think at this point we had the first round of Katy's hot cross buns with Katy's homemade jam. Thanks Katy! Delicious. But more importantly there were games to be played. I was introduced to Bag of Chips, which I'd seen at Novocon but not actually played. It's a dumb but fun betting game that min-maxers would no doubt despise, as you discard/play cards as bets on what chips will come out of a bag. Naturally, I liked it! I won after two rounds and when Katy insisted we play a third, I won that too. MORE CHIPS PLEASE. 

We then played So Clover - I got no pics - and scored 13 out of 18 when Katy and I struggled with Martin's clover.We finished up and had another round of hot cross buns and jam to keep us going. We played So Clover again. This time one of Katy's clues was the letter 'O' which bamboozled us. We initially put it with limbo and Katy hissed 'look at all the words' which frankly is breaking the laws of So Clover, Martin what have you started here, before we tried putting it with boot and full (bootofull!) before finally spotting Cup and Soap (cup o soap) which was correct! 

So we did marginally better, 14 out of 18 and although I'm sure we'd all have loved to play again, it was time to wrap things up. 

Outside the rain continued to fall, so it was hoods up and off into the dark night. Until next Tuesday... happy new year all.

A turnip for the books

Two o'clock on a drizzling afternoon between Christmas and New Year is not usually an occasion to celebrate but this Saturday saw the annual GNN Christmas do and I was there right at the start. Katy was the only other gamer at Sam's table and, after a brief chat, we began the day's gaming with Misfits. This is basically Bandu but we all share a single tower and we're all trying to make it impossible for other players to place pieces without collapsing.

Katy initially thought it was co-operative but Sam assured her to be dastardly. So she left it almost impossible for him to add anything, prompting him to say “That's dick dastardly.” Katy won the first round, having never picked up a single piece. 

Joe arrived and we began again and Katy began with a very mean upright circle. It didn't last long but soon our tower had one section, a narrow but usually flat-topped part of the tower, where we kept building up and it falling down. No one went for too long without picking up more pieces and Sam soon said that it was the longest game he'd seen “by about 150%.”

Katy won again after I thought I'd stopped her from placing her last piece with a clever use of an upright circle. But her cube perched happily on top.

Then we played Word On The Street, a sort of tug of war with letters. A card suggests a topic and you have to think of a word that fits. Then spell that word while dragging certain letters of the alphabet towards you if you use them. Drag them far enough and they're yours. First to have eight letters wins.

All of this must be done within the time set by a very strict hourglass, which made it all very stressful. Katy left the spelling to Joe, lacking confidence in her own abilities. She also demonstrated a strange habit of answering "crucifix!" to a number of questions.

Sam & Andrew 9

Joe & Katy 7

During this, Laura arrived with pizza and then Steve and Anja turned up with crisps and children. After some rearranging and making sure the children were happy with videogames, we split into two groups. 

Sam, Steve and I played Apiary, the thinly themed game of bee-based science fiction. Laura, Anja, Katy and Joe played Quest for Eldorado. The table hummed to the sound of simultaneous rules explanations. Just as things were beginning, Martin arrived. We'd known he was coming but somehow we expected to be further into our games than this. “If I'd known, I wouldn't have been in such a hurry to get here,” he said.

Despite his insistence that he was fine to relax and watch, Laura decided she could happily sit out Eldorado and join him in a two player game, so they took over the sofa, grabbed a stool as a table and played Romi Rami, a variant on rummy.

Eldorado was new to Anja but it was Katy who found it hard going, spending ages stuck behind “a wall of nonsense.” Joe won and Anja came second.

Apiary was slow moving. Steve found parts of it baffling but it didn't seem to hurt his strategy. I, for some reason, focused on the favour track (“That's one up the Queen's favour!”) and ignored the end of game scoring. A hopeless idea. Even if I'd maxed out the favour track, I still would've been last.

Steve 81

Sam 71

Andrew 46

In the time it took us to finish Apiary, two other games were completed.

Hitster was a Timeline-style game with QR codes on cards, read by an app that would then play a pop tune, anywhere from the 50s until today. Put the card in the correct place (once you've tried to identify it). Since I wasn't playing, I found it easy to guess the songs but me and Steve agreed that, should we actually play it, we'd find it impossible. Katy had trouble with song titles, having to sing Dancing in the Dark by Springsteen right up until the chorus until she was able to guess its name.

Joe won, and Laura must've come last based on her (good natured) refusal to ever play it again. At this point Joe had to leave, because he had friends visiting from London who, apparently, would think it strange if he wasn't there to greet them.

Adam and Hannah arrived (with Arthur, who swiftly disappeared in the front room). They all played Cross Clues, and scored 22 out of 25. Anja had the highlight of the game by cluing Red and Light with “district.”

Finally, with Apiary finished and back in its box, everyone was available again. The next game we played was Food, which is a resource management game concerning the pizzas that Laura brought from Lidl and Adam and Katy walking through the rain for chips, mushy peas and curry sauce. Just like Agricola, we had to also feed the children but unlike Agricola they weren't able to eat wood.

During the meal, we did the annual GNN quiz. With Sam as the quiz master we split into teams according to where we sat around the table. 

This lead to a slight imbalance in terms of regular attendees, with Martin, Adam, Laura and Katy on one side and Steve, Anja, Hannah (“I think I was at the start of one games night this year”) and me on the other side.

But we did okay. Steve got up to get a beer just as Sam asked a question that he would've known, which was irritating but equally he did help me get the answer to What was Joe's clue for Nail/Young in So Clover.

In the end, we did okay, but I think that if I'd just answered Joe every time, I would've scored 6.

Katy etc. 14/25

Andrew etc. 10/25

So, having been reminded that Joe kissed Kylie Minogue and finding out how much Katy loves Fields Of Arle (she had to stop playing it when she began dreaming about it) we began gaming again.

In a tussle for players, Martin lost Katy’s commitment to Big Top when Sam and Laura started to set up Raccoon Tycoon, leading to some falsetto claims/denials of betrayal between the two of them.

Adam, Steve and Anja set up Cascadia at the sensible end of the table, while Martin and I returned to the games cupboard to choose a game for us and Hannah. We plumped for Spots and we were just setting up when Laura got a call from home, asking for help with getting the kids to bed. She had to go, leaving Raccoon Tycoon not yet started. 

With this new development, Martin gallantly did not insist that's exactly what Katy deserved but instead we joined together for a five player game of Texas Showdown. We played with the New Rule, in which playing the highest card in a winning suit means that suit is cancelled and can't win, unless all the other suits are cancelled too. It makes the game much more uncertain as playing a suit that you're sure no one else has may still win the trick if everyone else plays a suit that is subsequently cancelled.

It was great fun. Sam's first round was appalling and maths genius Martin helpfully pointed out that he was already halfway to the losing score of twelve. But then he turned it around and by round three he was still last but level with me and Hannah and only three behind leader Katy. But he picked up four tricks in round four while Katy went clear for a comfortable win.

Katy 5

Martin 9

Hannah 11

Andrew 11

Sam 12

Cascadia had been bubbling along with occasional phrases drifting across the table. “Anja, always with the fish,” said Steve, sounding like a disappointed Jewish grandfather at Passover. “I've got no elk,” Anja realised late on while Adam wondered if it was “too late to get into bears.”

It looked like being a tie for first place, until Adam mentioned that pine cones also score points, a rule that newbie Steve hadn’t been told about.

Adam 94

Steve 92

Anja 87

Then there was a period of general kerfuffle while Adam & Hannah and Anja & Steve made arrangements to leave, taking their clans with them. Laura, meanwhile, returned from parenting duties. Despite it being 8 o'clock, I only had one game left in me, so we chose So Clover.

We played twice and during the first game, Martin got so agitated by our logic when doing his clover that we began to worry that he was genuinely annoyed.

“Look at all the words,” he hissed, unable to stay silent any longer. Sam said that was cheating but Martin insisted that he was merely telling us the rules. But thanks to this rules refresher, we noticed that Medusa went better with his clue of Snakeskin than whatever we had at the time.

24 out of 30

In the second attempt, we started well and Katy, Sam and Martin all created perfect-scoring clovers. Then Laura turned over her clover and we were intrigued to see that “Joe Berger” was one of her clues.

Our sense of intrigue changed to bemusement as nothing seemed to fit. Soon we saw Paintbrush which seemed good, but what to pair it with? Putting Foot/Envelop with her clue of “sock” seemed right but that gave us Turnip/Paintbrush for “Joe Berger” which seemed unnecessarily rude.

In the end we settled on Old/Paintbrush even though it didn't quite fit with the other clues. 

“I like old paintbrush,” Martin insisted.

“I like him too,” said Sam, “but…” 

In the end we went with it, but it was wrong. This left us with only one option: Old/Turnip. It was correct. We were baffled and unfortunately Laura was laughing too much to explain what she meant. 

We then thought about phoning Joe to tell him about this before he read the blog - a conversation that quickly digressed into a discussion about how posh his visiting friends might be. If Joe's ears were burning at this point, no one would've been surprised.

My final (and relatively boring) clover was solved, giving us a final score of 28 out of 30. Not quite a perfect score, but a game worth remembering for its own reasons.

But on that note I went out into the persistent rain. What a Christmas do. Thanks all. 

I'll hand over to Sam for coverage of the final stages...

*            *            *

After Andrew left we found ourselves an incongruously tiny four and debated what to play. We kicked off with Big Top, Martin's new auction game. This is quite bonkers but basically you score points by getting cards and everyone takes turn auctioning them. You can buy your own cards but, as Martin pointed out, it's not a great habit to get into. The cards themselves then need to be 'filled' by covering the numbers with coins, and you do that by bidding that number on subsequent cards (whether you win them or not). It's crazy. 

Being a little drunk possibly helped me. I think Laura was the most sober of us and subsequently the most confused. But we were all confused. I won this one with 71 points, with the others back in the 50s and 40s.

What next? Katy introduced her strawberry gin so that helped us decide, jettisoning Misfits in favour of Hitster. This was my first experience of it and we tried the co-op version, playing tracks and trying to align them in chronological order (much like Timeline) before revealing our triumphs/errors. It didn't take that long to make the five mistakes we needed to end the game, but it was enough time for Laura to display impressive audio prowess, correctly placing a track she didn't even know just going on the production style. 

I drunkenly demanded we followed that with Rankster, and the others allowed me my little fit of pique. With this little ditty, players are trying to match their rankings (one active player, then everyone else, Wavelength-style) of three historical characters in a given situation. EG Who'd make the best drummer in your rock band? Martin favoured Henry VIII over George Washington, and we agreed. We also agreed that Pele would eat more donuts than the Queen. 

This was incredibly funny even though Martin and I both managed to interpret King David as King Herod, which explained our slightly inebriated/jet-lagged mirth. We wrapped up Rankster scoring (I think) 5 out of 8. I drunkenly demanded more games but was this time ignored as three tired gamers went out into the abysmal weather to end a dramatic day in a dramatic way. A lot of fun, thanks everyone!