Eel of Fortune

 It was games night, it was Tuesday, it was Sam's. 

The evening began early with a quick game of Chu Han between Ian and Sam. 

Shortly they were joined by Joe, Ian, Katy and Martin before I and then finally Pete arrived. We began with a game of Dice Pool Party. 12 dice of different colours and sizes are shaken in a dice arena shaped like a swimming pool. These dice are revealed for three seconds before being hidden again each player has to use whatever memory they have of those dice. Did the Purples score highly? Or the 1s, 2s and 3s combined?

In order to keep track on our scoresheets, we needed 7 pens. Cue such scrabbling around in the back of Sam's chair where the struts are little wooden troughs capable of holding all manner of things. Pens, you would hope, but Katy initially found a toothbrush, a candle and some nail clippers. “It's not looking good,” she sighed.

As for the game, I played pretty poorly, scoring below average in most categories I chose. Initially, Katy and Martin chose identical categories to score. But Martin displayed the better observational skills in the end. 

Martin 207

Katy 196

Joe 170

Sam 167

Ian 166

Pete 165

Andrew 151

Then we split into two. Katy was keen to play River Dragons again after having tried it on Sunday with me and Sam. He, Katy and Ian set it up. Meanwhile, Pete, Martin, Joe and I set up Bomb Busters - the first mission of a new box! Who knew what excitement lay before us once we’d opened up the box containing the game’s next levels.

Well, some stickers, allowing us the chance to award each other “most hot-headed” or suchlike. As it turned out, none of us were in the running for that particular category since we spent a lot of time thinking over our choices. There were four bad wires out there and this round’s special rule is that one random safe wire is placed out of order on the far right on your rack. Pete was our captain and he kept us motivated with phrases like “I’m reasonably confident we’re not about to die” as we eventually succeeded in our mission!

Over on the other end of the table, River Dragon ended with a victory for Katy. This happened only a few minutes after Katy let fly with a high-decible expletive after Sam blocked her move. She declared that she won “quite convincingly" and wouldn’t be persuaded otherwise even when Sam pointed out he was just one card away from finishing too.

Then they played Farm Hand, that I know little about except for Ian saying “perfectly judged… I get 2 points” which seems like a fairly meagre return on a perfectly judged move.

Ian 17

Katy 8 

Sam 7

Next we tried Trick & Snipers as a big group, which we played with a Skull Queen deck of cards. Very simple trick taker which involves winning tricks with a 7 in them or cleverly playing off-suit so that values add up to 13. These will get you a point and 2 points are enough to win.

Andrew 2

Pete 1

Everyone else 0

Katy expressed a concern that it was getting late, so for her finale we played Wriggle Roulette. This push-your-luck game is very dramatic and exciting - two qualities that I entirely failed to capture with my only photo of the game.

It involves pulling black eels from a bag, and everything is fine until the fifteenth red snake is pulled out. Then, the greediest player(s) lose everything and the round ends. Joe amazed us with his singular life as he told us three stories about eels. Surely an autobiography is required. As for the game, Martin pushed his luck a little too far and went bust in every round. I started so badly that people reminded me to collect my points from round two and I grimly admitted that I already had. Katy looked like a certain win, only to be pushed into fourth in the final round.

Joe 22

Andrew 22

Pete 21

Katy 20

Sam 11

It was fun and we will have to play again, if only because we only just remembered to play Eels on the stereo in the final stages of the game.

Katy left and the remaining six gamers got out Magical Athlete for a rousing end (for me, anyway) of the evening.

Magical Athlete is fun but it does feel a lot like watching a game rather than participating in it. The trick is to chose your athletes well and hope that their powers can exploit their opponents’s moves. It’s a fine line, though. For example, round two saw Joe win with Scoocher, an athlete that moved forward whenever someone else used their power. It was a commanding victory so, in round four when I had an athlete that could copy a previously used power, I chose Scoocher. But this time I was undone by Sam’s magical power of swapping places with another player so any lead I built up quickly evaporated.

Joe 16

Sam 10

Andrew 8

Pete 5

Martin 2

Ian 1

That was it for me, but the guys banged out a quick game of So Clover.

Thanks all. Another special evening.

Ego-friendly

 This week, once I'd knocked on Sam's front door, Adam H ushered me in to a game of Cross Clues already featuring Joe, Ian, Pete, Martin and, of course,  Adam and Sam. Pete handed me a card before I'd even put my rucksack down.

A whirl of an introduction and, with hindsight, I perhaps shouldn't have been so keen to guess Martin's clue of Firefighter since I noticed that “cat” was one of the words and firefighters save cats, don't they?

Well, this one didn't. 

Best clue/guess went to Martin and Pete. Martin clued “Jenkins” to which Pete said “war and ear,” getting Martin's reference to the war of Jenkin's ear which is a real thing, apparently. 

23 out of 25

Then we paused about what to play until Laura arrived. We decided to set up two games which she could join once she was here. Me, Martin, Pete and Sam played Ego (a bit like Beowulf) while Adam, Joe, Ian and eventually Laura played Silos (a bit Municipium). Nothing in common, except for a large spaceship piece as the centrepiece of the game.

Pete had never played Beowulf so Sam explained the rules from the ground up. The risks, the betting, the scoring and the disapproval of the aliens - shiny red tokens swiftly named “angry babies.”

Ego played like a sci-fi themed Beowulf: you take risks, prepare for expeditions, bid on things and so on. From very early on, Martin complained that he had too many cards and as the game drew to a close, his collection of cards swung into action. Sam, meanwhile, was doing fine until the last two rounds where his luck ran out and the angry babies began moving in his direction. Pete ended with no angry babies at all for a 20 point bonus which meant that Martin wasn’t completely alone at the top of the scoreboard.

Martin 62

Pete 42

Andrew 16

Sam 15

Martin said he missed the storyline of Beowulf and also the sense of risk. Looking though the game box, we looked at some extra optional bits of the board which can add to the game and bring in new challenges. Maybe the game would be better if we used those.

Silos was still underway. I hadn’t paid much attention to the game apart from noting the repeated use of the phrase “pull a human from the bag” and the fact that some of the meeples wore hats.

Laura won and Ian “a distant last”

Meanwhile, Martin, Pete, Sam and I had played two other games. The first was Bomb Buster. It was Pete’s first go, and so Martin talked him through the rules. He then looked at the special conditions for Chapter 18 (out of 66, still a ways to go) and found they removed a lot of what he’d just explained.

Never mind, we had use of a “general radar” for our piece of equipment, allowing us to search of wires according to the turn of a card. Slowly we picked off one value after another until we had succeeded.

Hoorah!

We also played Chocolate. A grid of 4 x 4 face down tiles and five discarded (also face down) tiles depicting chocolates of various shape/flavour are revealed one by one and players have the opportunity, on their turn, of picking up a card with a potential end result (ie, three dark chocolate next to each other or more green than pink in one half of the grid) and a value which will count towards you if that card proves to be correct.

It’s rather enjoyable. Slightly luck-pushy but not overly so. We did ponder a variant in which a card with an end result that is already apparent should be removed and a new one revealed. Maybe next time, then.

Andrew22

Martin 20

Pete 15

Sam 15

And with that, I was gone. Thanks al and I leave Sam to fill in the rest of the evening’s doings...

*

After Andrew left someone suggested 6 Nimmt and without further ado the cards were dealt out and people began cursing in earnest. The cursiest were Ian and I, who did appallingly. Whilst Martin was chortling insufferably on the other side of the table - enough for me to call him the C word as I picked up another haul of cards - we just kept on picking up bullheads, and even Pete's diabolical last round of 40 points didn't get him anywhere near us. 

Martin 15
Adam 27
Laura 37

Pete 51
Joe 53
Ian  63
Sam 70

Now Laura and Adam left too and the five remaining decided it was So Clover time. We opened with a bit of a damp squib - I forgot to take pictures but there were some fours and even a three witnessed. Mostly it was notable for Ian's weekend combo (throne/explosion) popping up in exactly the same formation for Pete. Ian had clued 'regicide' - Pete went for diarrhoea. "I prefer diarrhoea" Ian admitted graciously. 

So - although we lost Joe before it happened - the four of us went again. This was an improved effort, although we did start with a 3: Martin's combos of jelly/cavalry and skin/revolver throwing us for/from a six. But everyone appreciated Darcy as a clue for moist/master. 

We followed it with three sixes and ended the night with a decent 21/24. Thanks all!

Greenbank rangers

 This week, with a lack of available venues, five of us converted on the Greenbank pub in Easton for the week's bout of games. This meant I took the train, which gave the whole thing a sort of games weekend vibe. I got off at Easton, and found that Katy was on the same train. She'd even got on at the same station as me but, for whatever reason,  we hadn't seen each other on the platform.

And so we arrived together at the pub where we found Joe, Martin and Ian already playing a game. I didn’t recognise it nor take a note if its name but I do know that Ian won again soon after we sat down.

The first game the five of us played among the hubbub of a busy pub was Bomb Busters. Martin asked if anyone needed a rule refresher and I admitted I’d never played the game at all. I was quickly brought up to speed and thrown in at Chapter 17. This meant that the “captain” had to lie about whatever clues they were giving regarding the value of their wires. 

Since I was the newbie, Martin suggested I rethink my first guess since it was a number that could be a red wire and thus end the game. I did so and we were safe. Until the very next turn, when Katy confidently chose a wire, and Ian revealed it to be red. Game done after three turns. “Did you enjoy it?” Joe asked me.

We played again and this time we were a little more circumspect and we were able to complete the chapter, with Martin having both red wires.

Then I noticed that there was a couple in the corner also playing games. I was impressed that this pub had such a pro-gaming clientele until Martin explained that they’d leant them a copy of So Clover. And they were playing the competitive variant. Amazing.

In a far corner of the pub, the strains of folk music could be heard. “Is that live?” Joe asked and, confused by the background chatter, I asked if he’d said “Is that Laibach?” which would have been a remarkable change of style for Slovenia’s greatest band. But the music was live. Every Tuesday, apparently.

After a lengthy break to cue at the bar for drinks, we got out The Gang, competitive poker. It didn’t end well. We did so badly at our second attempt that the hands were almost perfectly ranked in the opposite order that we’d bid. When we’d finished (ie gave up) Joe expressed confusion after how successful they’d been last time. Martin bemused me by saying there was a competitive variant of The Gang. But surely that would just be Texas Hold 'Em, wouldn't it? 

Finally (for me) we played Mamma Mia! It had been a while since I’d played this game and I had a brief rules refresher. It was a harsh game - bombastic pizzas (needs 15 ingredient cards to complete the pizza) were surprisingly successful which meant the table was often swept clean of any available ingredients. In round one, Ian, Joe and Martin didn’t make any pizzas at all, while Katy managed two.

But right at the end, I came good - I was the last to play cards and so, of course, I put down some ingredients and a pizza. It turned out that this was to be the winning move as my final pizza could be completed and I took a last-minute win!

Andrew 5

Katy 4

Martin 3

Ian 2

Joe 1

And with that, I was out the door, retracing my steps through Easton’s backstreets, and arriving at the station with minutes to spare before my train home.

Thanks all. It was a blast.

Mothers of Incension

Just the four of us last night in the end: Joe, Ian, Martin and myself (Sam). Martin was justly cheery about his fresh new best-in-world ELO rating at online Tigris and Euphrates and when I said it's better than being number 1 shithead, he said "Well, I am that as well". He had a bag of new goodies with him and after some heavy sprue-popping, we began with Die Patin, the game of the raccoon mafia. 

 

yellow (Joe) green (Martin) red (Ian) and blue (me) start feeling the heat

Die Patin translates as The Godmother, but this is a Mario Puzo reference rather than any benevolent fairy. Over five rounds, we send our four raccoons out onto the board, either to patrol our own territory, setting up illegal card-playing 'back rooms' and extort loot - or to extend our turf across town, whereupon we start bumping into each other and having the gangster equivalent of a squabble. 

my fledgling hood

As well as the card games and protection rackets, the raccoons can also add to their presence on the street corners/manhole covers of the city - or remove an opponents' - and it's these 'rats', along with the presence of a raccoon, who determine who controls each area. At the end of each round players can add score markers to the board if they dominate in one of the ongoing objectives (biggest territory, most loot etc) and achieving them later is better than earlier: in round 1, they're only worth a point, but when round 5 comes around they're each worth 5 points (though you can only claim one per round). 

crazily, nobody currently occupies the city centre!

It was a game of punch and counter-punch. We more or less divided the board into two wars - Ian and I came to serial blows in the north whilst elsewhere Martin and Joe wrangled with each other so regularly that by the end of the game they'd basically swapped territories. Martin grabbed the loot objective and then cock-blocked it for the next few rounds, until I nabbed it in the finale. Both Ian and I suffered for our expansionist tendencies, as late-game Joe and Martin both made inroads into our territories - there's not much sense on holding on to what you have here, other than to stymie: the game, just like a capitalism-loving gangster boss, demands expansion. We ended bloodied but unbowed. Well, Martin was unbowed anyway. 

Martin 22
Sam 19
Joe 18
Ian 15

Joe and I felt it was maybe a little too brutal for the 90 minutes it took - a slugfest of underhanded moves and overhanded face slaps. But Ian and Martin disagreed. It's certainly an interesting game though, if you're up for a bruising brawl. 

Joe felt we needed some remedial ludic loving and so we decided to defuse some bombs. 

In our first mission we had to cut certain wires in sequential order, and we succeeded easily - although Joe (and in fairness, all of us) forgot about the specificities of the number 11. It was such a tiny (reversed) mistake though, I think you really need to peer close to see the asterisk. The game was still out on the table, so we thought Why Not defuse some more explosives. The next mission was interesting: Joe was new recruit Rhett Herring, and the standard game now had the additional challenge of Rhett always lying (with his number signifiers) about what numbers he had. For example if someone asked him if he had a six, Rhett will tell the truth about whether he does or not, but if he doesn't then he'll lie about what number wire it really was. 

Rhett's problem with the bomb disposal department is never made totally clear, but we accidentally cheated again and then lost anyway. 

It was already Clover o'Clock, so we set up for our standard evening-closer. "What is Fun Facts doing on the table??" Martin said, as though it was an actual steaming turd. All was forgiven when I explained we just needed the pens. 

Our first attempt was not a classic. There were some lovely clues in there (I enjoyed Joe's inferior for short/lake and my own Model T for garage/bone) but we were dealt some bastard Rhett Herrings and scored something pretty average. 

So, employing Bomb Busters logic, we went again. But as with Bomb Busters mark II, we couldn't pull off a success. Ian's Vogon for grate/poetry was a highlight (after I was reminded who the Vogons were) and both he and Joe harvested sixers, but Martin and I couldn't match them. This one was 19/24 - not awful, but not championship form either. 

And that was another GNN wrapped up and sent on its way. Hope to see you all next week. 

Not so clover

It was a scarce night in terms of regulars - with many missing, we only made up a four at full count: Joe, Martin, Andy M and myself (Sam). Joe was first to arrive and we had a couple of games of the very brief and stupidly-named Pina Coladice. This is a Yahtzee-style dice-chucker where you get three rolls to claim territory on the board:

Each tile scores points, and you also get points for any tiles adjacent you occupy as well. The catch is that if you make any row/column/diagonal of four, you win instantly. I pulled this off twice, then Martin arrived and we had a couple of three-handers which he and Joe won. 

The notable takeaway for me was how much it encouraged us to cajole each other to, for example, 'stop Joe' when doing so would help one of us win. By now, Andy was here, and with four of us it seemed the perfect moment to go Bomb Busting.

We attempted the mission we'd failed last time. On this occasion I was assigned the rookie card, which meant if I made a mistake we'd be instantly blown into oblivion. Fortunately the guys cleared a risk-free path for me throughout, and I only had to take one gamble. Mission cleared! And for good measure, we did the next one as well, where the helpful equipment was hard to get hold of. It transpired that we didn't need it. Another bomb busted, despite some early-evening confusion over numbers.

Next up we tried the latest trick-taker with a twist: Prey. There are no trumps, it's a must-follow, and the goal is to win X number of tricks: how many that is is determined by dice rolls. The additional twist is that halfway through the twelve tricks everyone flips their cards upside-down, changing their value.

So more than one player can win a round, and hitting your target in any subsequent round wins you the game. Joe was victorious after he and Martin both hit their targets in round one and Joe and Andy (I think) were successful in round two. I bust out on both occasions. 

Next in our evening of tapas was Gambler x Gamble. I'd only played this once before, and Andy not at all, so Joe and Martin talked us through the intricacies, which are not many: it's largely a game of table-reading and trying to make sure our collective bid values match one of your payout cards. 

Andy and I did best here, maximising our 5-value payouts whilst on the other side of the table, Joe and Martin gnashed their teeth at the repeat failures of their 6 and 7 cards to do anything other than look flashy. I managed to get myself close to winning, but it wasn't as close as Andy, who hit the 15 coins mark to take his first victory of the evening. I don't know if there are second places. 

Andy had suggested Tiger & Dragon and I was more than amenable. After the numeracy shenanigans of Bomb Busters, we jumped the shark here as Joe, Andy and Martin all managed to take too many tiles at some point, quite an achievement for such a simple game. My idiocy didn't extend that far in Tiger & Dragon, but it was in the pipeline for later. 

Martin took round one with a 4 point haul, then I grabbed round two. I could have taken round three easily, but using a dragon for a single point. I gambled on a bigger win, and lost to Andy, who then won the next round as well to wrap up another triumph. The table seemed somewhat divided on this admittedly opaque game, but I love it. 

Andy - 10 points
Sam 6
Martin 4
Joe 0

We moved on to Gang of Dice! I can't remember why I took this photo, but obviously in context these numbers have incredible drama:

This was a two-horse race, as for half the game Martin and I didn't win a single round. Then, in the second half of the game, I continued not winning single rounds until on the last card I couldn't compete at all, having run out of dice entirely! Martin performed better, but it seemed like Joe and Andy shared the majority of wins. And it transpired that Joe won the bigger hauls, as his huge stack of chips attested, making even Andy's second place look feeble.

Joe 88
Andy 53
Martin 23
Sam 0

The four of us had played six games by now and it was late-ish, so we moved on to So Clover, where I had a cognitive catastrophe and gave four bad-to-awful clues, the worst of which was probably Honeydew for cabbage/size. The first attempt to solve it was a write-off, and the second came back with an ignominious 1. How embarrassing! 

I'm blaming Gang of Dice. Collectively we scored an unimpressive 17/24 and I felt responsible. We went again, and my clover got a redemptive six, though I was still traumatised enough to forget photography at this point. This was a slightly better haul overall, with 19/24 instead. I wish I could remember some of the clues, but that was it for the evening. 

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.