2020 Visions

In case anyone has missed us comparing notes, Martin and I have agreed to end 2020 with a net spend of zero on games: trades are allowed, and even purchases, as long as the money spent is raised by selling games.

Self-control is,  just perhaps, easier for Martin than I, but the handy thing about having no self-control up to this point is that I have several unplayed games to work through in the cupboard - a welcome distraction any time I see an alluring picture on Twitter.

That's why I finally played Gugong last week (Andrew and I were schooled by Adam and Katy) after it sat on a shelf for a year. (To be fair Andrew and I did get as far as setting it up one night but then Steve knocked on the door and we changed plans) But Adam and I enjoyed Gugong so much we played it again the very next night, and although I improved my score considerably... so did Adam.

Adam 53
Sam 35

I did at least have the satisfaction of beating him at Blitzkrieg! and Ankh'or afterwards. Blitzkrieg is a nifty chit-pull game where Axis and Allies fight over five theatres of war in WWII. Ankh'or is a set-collecting game where the sets can overlap. In each case however I'd had several previous plays to hone my skills. "This is what it's like playing Odin with you" I told Adam, when he frowned at my second victory.

On Friday, my last purchase of 2019 had arrived in the form of Rurik: Dawn of Kiev, and Ian and Adam rocked up to give it a whirl. On the board players fight for control of regions, tax regions, construct churches (flip opponents soldiers to your cause!) forts (defend better!) or markets (tax more!) in order to move up four point-scoring tracks: control of regions, buildings built, goods acquired and battles undertaken.

It's all surprisingly simple on the rules front, but implementation is something else: what the publisher calls auction programming. It does sound a bit of a stretch, admittedly, but I haven't encountered it before: players assign numbered workers to auction tracks that give you actions on the board (muster, move, attack, build, tax, or scheme: cards that give you extra actions) and higher-numbered workers will push lower-numbered workers down the track... But: lower numbered workers will activate first. This is a real puzzle and makes the auction almost as interactive as the board, as you can guess (or try to) opponent's plans and react accordingly. In fact there's a real sneakiness to proceedings that reminded me a little of Battle for Rokugan, albeit the mechanics are entirely different.

I was pleasantly surprised to win too: Adam and Ian probably gave me too much freedom in the north to build, and although I scored nothing for combat I was highest on two other tracks and it ended something like:

Sam 18
Adam 13
Ian 9

We finished the night with Push It - what can be said about this classic that hasn't already escaped our lips? Well, I could mention that I won.

Sam 11
Adam 10
Ian 9

And then, on Saturday, Wavelength arrived! This is has been long-anticipated; a party game co-designed by Wolfgang Warsch (The Mind) that I suspect we may play tomorrow night. Teams are trying to clue the location of a target on a spectrum between two extremes: the target's position is assigned randomly, and the spectrum changes with every turn: from simple concepts such as good/bad or hot/cold to more random things - there's even an advanced deck with things like Dictatorship/Democracy.

It seems like it could be a GNN favourite, and we put it through its paces yesterday when Sally and I played with some friends - all of us were enamoured of it. The spectrum categories can sometimes seem easy, sometimes hard, and it illuminates the differences in perceptions around the table. Both teams are involved in both rounds (the non-active team can win points off the potential inaccuracy of the active team's guess) and the whole thing is probably quicker than Just One. A winner!

Ten of the Best

On Saturday night, Chris, Jacquie and I convened over their kitchen table for what would turn out to be something of an epic night of short games. After tea - which also involved a discussion of tactical voting with the kids - the three (relative) grown-ups kicked things off with Azul. Chris mentioned that Jacquie was evil in Azul, and I noticed with some alarm that I was sitting to her left. As it happened though, Chris got the worst of the broken tiles in a fairly close-run battle:

Jacquie 82
Sam 80
Chris 69

Before we moved on to slightly sillier fare with Letter Jam. For the uninitiated, Letter Jam is a co-op where everyone is trying to help everyone else figure out what letters they have - like Just One, your own cards face away from you - in order to figure out their word. It's surprisingly easy to go wrong, even for seasoned Scrabble players like Jacquie. We tried again - Ashton joining us for the second attempt - but once again failed. A clever game though.

one I took earlier

By now it was approaching nine so we kicked the kids into bed and re-introduced Jacquie to the murky world of High Society. Despite our warnings, she spent too much money in our first game and ended destitute. I won with something like ten points, whereas Chris had both the x2 cards but with no points at all, it was double nothing. In the second I grabbed to early high cards but undid my good work - I bid to force up the prices of two subsequent cards and both times Chris and Jacquie deviously passed on me, leaving me points-rich but cash-poor. Chris won this one.

Jacquie then retired to bed and Chris introduced me to Jaipur, the game of trading for two in India. It has been around for years but I'd never actually played it, and I can see why it has a good reputation: the basic idea is collecting cards and cashing them in for chips (chips being points) but the way it works allows for safety-first or luck-pushing and spoiling tactics galore as you see what your opponent is picking up and play accordingly.

We liked it so much we played it twice, although in between them we also had a double-crack at Blitzkrieg!

This is another two-player, but rather than trading you are trying to kill each other in a "20 minute" reenactment of WWII. One player is the Axis, the other the Allies, and you are drawing chits from a bag and deciding where to lay them in five theatres of war across the globe, each subdivided into two or three campaigns. Adding a chit swings momentum your way on a battle track, and when a campaign is finished whoever is in the lead on the battle track claims the points. Most places on a campaign also give rewards as well, so although the mechanics are very simple, the decisions are extremely meaningful. I really like this and Chris seemed enamoured of it too, despite me claiming a win just as he was one turn from a 7point swing in his favour...

After our second play of Jaipur we realised it was rather late however, so we finished up with NMBR9, deciding halfway through to go through the deck twice and build some epic, high-scoring constructions. As always moments of delight and confidence were outweighed by our castigating fate, God, kismet and anything else you could mention as the pieces refused to align meaningfully. Kind of like life, one might say.

Ten games in one night - and very excellent games too. Thanks again!