Rhino Knizia

Joe's studio, now fitted out with a full games collection and a heater under the table, began its life as a regular venue with eight gamers in attendance: Joe, Martin, Ian, Katy, Adam T, Sam, myself and the long-lost Matt, making a return to GNN for the first time in oooh ages.

I arrived shortly before seven, only to find the games had long since began. Ian, Adam, Sam and Joe had already played No Thanks and Pickomino. I was immediately dealt into a game of Botswana, a simple betting game where animals are shares and their final value is based on the number of the last card (0-5) played to that pile. In the first game, an early zero card had everyone picking up leopards since they were bound to score. Everyone except me.

Adam 16
Sam 13
Joe 12
Ian 11
Andrew 9

We played again and this time I ended with a far better range of animals. During the scoring, Sam appeared pleased with his improved score of 16 until everyone else announced their scores.

Andrew 22
Adam 18
Joe 18
Ian 17
Sam 16

After this, Martin, Matt and Katy arrived. We discussed our options. I had never played Babylonia, so that seemed likely to be chosen. Sam had brought Rurik: Dawn of Kiev. Martin seemed unimpressed, despite everyone always referring to it by its full name (instead of just calling it Rurik). Sam tried the soft sell on Katy by telling her she probably wouldn't like it but Matt might. But since she didn't want to play Babylonia, she was happy to join in.

Being so involved in my game, I couldn't tell you much about Rurik: Dawn of Kiev except that one of the figures looked like it was moonlighting from Scythe. Matt built a stronghold in the North and that seemed to help him on his way to a win.

Matt 21
Adam 14
Sam 14
Katy 13

In Babylonia, I quickly fell behind and stayed there. Any solace I might have got from having scored about the same as Joe was swept aside in the closing stages of the game when he clocked up some pretty major scores, almost edging an unlikely win.

Martin 167
Joe 161
Ian 151
Andrew 104

Martin would've scored more were it not for a patch of bad luck: he picked up a special tile that allowed him to trigger a certain bonus without having the regulation tiles. Little did he know that the rest of us just so happened to have the correct tiles and we all triggered them and removed them off the board for twenty points each. Finally, he admitted he may as well join in and got the final bonuses available for twenty points too.

Rurik: Dawn of Kiev was still mid game so we filled the time with a rousing game of Die Crew. It was Ian's first go so we eased him into with a nice training mission. One which we almost failed were it not for Joe (cruelly referred to as 'irrelevant' due to his lack of suitable cards) who worked out a method of success.

With this victory behind us, we carried on the space epic. This time we got hit by a couple of rocks from Saturn's rings and damaged the flux capacitor or something. We did it and before long the gamers at the other end of the table were trying to work out the best way to put Rurik: Dawn of Kiev back in its box, so we put space exploration on hold and waited until we were an octet once more.

We decided on Wavelength, the new darling of the GNN-o-sphere. We split into two teams: Katy, Martin, Matt and Ian against Joe, Adam, Sam and Andrew and we seemed to have cracked it. Katy had “good music/bad music” as her categories and she said “hip hop” (actually, she said “hippity hop”, which required clarification) which they got perfectly. I forgot we were on opposing teams, and I made a few useful interjections.

Then Adam had “Powerful/Powerless” and chose “the next leader of the Labour party”. Somehow, after some prevarication, we got it spot on again. This was followed by the first team almost guessing Matt’s “Harmless/Harmful” clue of Hunting Knife for three points. We’d been so successful that we were considering introducing the “Calze” rule from Perudo for those occasions when you think the other team is spot on. Odd, really, since we never allow that rule when playing Perudo.

It was close at first but slowly Katy’s team started to build up a lead. Martin’s response to “Person you could/couldn’t beat up” clue was “Stephen Hawking” giving them an easy four points. Then Ian had “Dog name/cat name” and said “Kitty”. Well, you can guess the score there.

Katy et al 16
Joe etc 11

A remarkable game, but once over people began to talk about leaving, despite it not even being eleven o’clock (but some people had started at six). Ian and Adam were set to leave and then a sudden offer of a lift from Sam for those of us heading north convinced Katy and myself to abandon the games for an easy ride home. Thanks for hosting and thanks to all for another splendid evening.

Gravel in the Bag

At one point this week's GNN threatened to people no less than seven, but Andrew was lost to fatigue and Ian's mysterious friend Paul remained, for now at least, mysterious. Instead we began as a four: our host Joe, Martin, Matt, and myself (Sam). As we pondered over whether a fifth person would arrive shortly, we played Gold Fever: possibly one of the silliest games to somersault through the GNN door: each player has a bag of five gold pieces, and the first to draw four of them wins the game. But - you also have twelve gravel pieces (four each of white, grey and black) and if you draw two of the same type of gravel, you're bust, and must chuck everything back in your bag.

What adds a soupçon of strategy is the option to stick: instead of continuing to draw, keep any gold you drew and chuck your gravel in someone else's bag instead. It's not the sort of game where you can pause and take photos, as if anyone draws a ruby, it becomes a simultaneous race to pull out a gold piece. The result is a very swingy, silly, Take-That affair, which I now can't remember who won. Not me though. And not Martin either, who declared the game "stupid" - but in a fairly complimentary way.

With Mysterious Paul's absence now established, we realised we had an hour as a four to play with. And so we set up Oregon.

The board is a grid of sorts where you can play a combo of landscape cards to add a cowperson (or a 'guy' as we referred to them) to a square, or you can play a single landscape card and a building card to add a building. Both score when placed: guys score any building they're adjacent to, buildings trigger adjacent guys. I think. I found the very simple mechanic weirdly hard to get my head around, despite playing the game before. Matt surged off into an early lead as Joe struggled to get going. Martin gathered his guys together in a huddle (points!) and made sure he was adjacent to a lot of mines. I kept pace for a bit but started to lag when my hand was full of bird cards.

It got crowded.

It also got extremely thinky, and we were all mid-pause when Ian arrived and had to be patient as we lurched towards the end. It's not the sort of game you'll get a kick out of watching as it's mostly like wandering around a library and hearing someone murmur 'shit' under their breath every now and then.

Joe's late-game performance was such that he actually surged into the lead at one point, but come the final count-up, Martin's collection of coal and gold saw him crowned most convincing cowperson:

Martin 93
Sam 80
Joe 75
Matt 65

Matt realised his lack of coal and gold counted against him. Martin confessed to cockblocking Joe. The game met with lots of approving murmurs, if not the outright excitement of our next conquest: Decrypto. Martin and I teamed up again to see if our losing run would continue, whilst Ian joined with Joe and Matt. We - Martin and I - felt pretty confident early on, when we'd deciphered two of the other team's words pretty quickly. But our confidence evaporated when they successfully intercepted us. We intercepted right back, but then - disaster! - Martin's clue of 'end' for Bell was identified by Joe, and we'd need to intercept again successfully to even have the chance of a draw. It came down to the single word of 'Horn' which could go with word 4, which we'd already identified as Boat. But was it a bluff, designed to make us guess 4? We'd wagered it was a bluff, and put our money on the enigmatic second word - and we were right!

So it came down to the decider - which team could identify the most words? Thanks to Matt's horn  Martin realised that the second word (magical/horn) could be unicorn, and he was right. In the narrowest of wins, we identified all four words to their three:

Martin and Sam - win! (finally)
Ian, Joe, Matt - don't win

The hour was still early, and we had no less than four more games in us. First up was High Society, which I said might be my favourite Knizia. This got the room rustling like a Jose Mourinho press conference, what with the likes of Ra and Tigris and Euphrates out there. But I love the simplicity and silliness of High Society, where every card flip can be a mini-drama.

And this proved to be a particularly dramatic night: I began the spending with a x2 card the first to flip, but before too long there were three x2 cards on the table and Joe in particular seemed to have spent a lot of money. Martin was convinced he (- Joe) was nailed on for last place (so was I), but there was to be a twist in the tail. Joe made us all spend cash to pick up the -5 card, and Ian spent big on the 2. Then the fourth red flipped over and the game instantly ended. Contrary to expectations, Matt had somehow spent the most and was bust. Martin and I had 2x zero, and the convincing winner was Joe!

Joe 12
Ian 6
Martin/Sam 0
Matt - BUST!

Martin still reckoned Joe should have lost, despite the evidence. Another GNN story to tell our grandchildren.

Next up was Perudo, as canvassed for by Ian and seconded by me. It was the usual Perudo story of deception and brutality, as we hedge-betted and lied our way around the table. Matt was first out after he went into a semi-death-spiral and lost dice on subsequent turns. Ian followed him shortly afterwards. With three of us and Martin palafico, he bet on three fives. I had none, and he was out. Joe and I faced off with Joe palafico and me with three. He paused for so long I started convincing myself he was reading my mind, but fortunately whatever he discovered there was as unreliable as I've ever found it:

1 Sam
2 Joe
3 Martin
4 Ian
5 Matt

We then busted out another game of Gold Fever, notable mostly for Joe passing gravel to Martin when both Matt and Ian had gold in front of them. "I've got no fucking gold!" he protested.
"But you're Martin" said Joe.
Martin promised bitter revenge but we all got sidetracked by trying to shaft Ian first, whose bag was filling up with everyone else's gravel. I think Joe won, but oddly I can't remember. Games of Gold Fever are a bit like an Intercity 125 zipping through a station of steam trains.

Last game of the night, then, with Joe setting up Botswana AKA Wildlife Safari AKA They Must Have Had Loads of Plastic Animals They Didn't Know What To Do With (Martin).

This is another neat Knizia where you play an animal card, and take an animal (a plastic animal). You can take any animal you like, but you must take one. The cards have values between 0 and 6, though, and when the sixth card is played on any row, the game ends and the last card played in each row defines the value of your animals.

My lions were looking pretty valuable too, until Martin played the zero on them. But fortune smiled on Joe as the game ended before he had to play his last card on the zebras: the zero. Joe had a lot of zebras:

Joe 23
Martin 16
Ian 11
Sam 10
Matt 5

And that was that! A lot of foul-mouthed fun was had in an evening of short games. "They're all short games!" Martin said when I mentioned as much. We'd forgotten about Oregon.

Trees are good! Trees are good!

It is Spring, and as flowers bloom and birds sing their mating calls, on Tuesday I received an email with those three words that everyone wants to hear:

"Games at Joe's"

We were six in number, the host and myself, with Sam, Ian, Martin and Katy. We fell into what can only be described as a "conversation" until we came to our senses and started to play. We promised ourselves some six-player parks at the end of the evening, and we began by splitting into two groups of three. Joe, Martin and Katy went for the leafy delights of Arboretum. Sam, Ian and I chose Stefan Feld's Bruges.

Bruges is a pretty typical Eurogame. You roll dice, move up tracks, hire workers, earn and spend money, and all the while you'll be having enormous fun.

On the other table, Arboretum seemed straight forward enough: play a card to the table, and then someone swears at you. That was pretty much it. Oh, and no one liked Dogwood.

Joe 24
Katy 16
Martin 13

We three were still up to our elbows in workers and aristocrats, so they played Botswana. Another game of things' values suddenly changing, only this time it was animals, not trees. I’ve no idea about how the game went, except for Katy squealing with joy at the plastic animals, and Martin’s amusing positioning of two animals trying a bit of, shall we say, hybridisation. I do know it ended, though.

Martin 78
Katy 71
Joe 53

By the time they’d finished Botswana, we had completed Bruges. It had been a relatively lightweight game, with plenty of options, but not enough to cause an unbearable block of AP. We wouldn’t go so far as to say even Martin would like it, but it was a pleasant game and not too long.

Ian had a Queen that scored a point every round, I had some people multipliers and Sam went for canals (and so did Ian, now I think about it). All hail the Queen!

Ian 59
Andrew 48
Sam 42

Then we joined together again and split up in a different formation like one of those fancy T-1000s from Terminator 2. Except one that plays games, not assassinates people in the past. First, during some toilet breaks, Sam, Joe, Katy and Martin played Rattle Snake. It was Katy’s first go, and it took her a while to get used to the awesome power of the magnets. And in the time it did take her, Martin managed to get all his magnets onto the board.

Martin 0
Sam 1
Joe 1
Katy lots

Then Joe, Martin and I played Basari, a nice little card game of bluffing and bidding. Similarly, Katy, Sam and Ian played High Society on the big table. Trying to capture that much game theorising and double bluffing into one pithy paragraph is impossible so I’ll just give you the scores and you can fill in the rest.

Basari:
Martin 86
Joe 79
Andrew 60

High Society I:
Sam 26
Katy 12
Ian BUST!!

High Society II:
Ian 30
Katy 17
Sam BUST!!

Finally, the six of us got together to do battle in the fiercest arena there is: Take It Easy! During the game, Joe, Sam and I were the bingo callers. Sam went for the films of DeNiro, I chose defunct or obscure football teams but the award for style went to Joe who did the songs of Bob Dylan (suggested by Martin). After a while, he gave up since he was thinking about what to say more than the actual game. This lead to people just doing Bob Dylan impersonations, before Joe dropped the bombshell that his favourite Dylan album was Street Legal. To convince us he wasn’t mad, he put it on to show what a good album it was. If only it had helped his game.

Martin 498
Andrew 495
Sam 470
Joe 445
Ian 411
Katy 383

And that was that. Out the door, into the night.

I’m off on my hols now. I’ll be keeping an eye on the blog, so don’t go slacking off, now. You hear?

Meanwhile, on the Division, Ian remains clinging to top spot. Martin storms to first on the medal table and Andy regains Points Ratio.

The game Das Exclusive was made for?

We've had the mighty dice arena known as Das Exclusive in the GNN fold since I found it, still shrink-wrapped, in a charity shop years ago. However, rare is the game that cope with its majesty. Almost any game with a board is out, since DE takes up a large chunk of the table. And even dice games that have no board often suffer at its hands, since whatever other components are present are usually obscured by the long and weirdly inky shadow Das Exclusive casts. The only games that really work are pure dice-rolling and very little else; Decathlon is ideal, and Roll Through the Ages would probably be fine but we don't play it (do we even own it? Andrew might I think). And now Qwixx.

I recently bought a copy of this, a 2013 Spiel Des Jahres nominee; a super-simple game comprised of six dice and a pad of score sheets. Players attempt to cross off as many numbers as possible on four different coloured rows numbered 2-12 (or 12-2) - the catch being that once you've checked off a number you lock out all those before it. Thus your options diminish over the course of the game, and you find yourself rolling 'fehlwurfe', or mis-throws, which score -5 points. Once players have locked out two of the coloured rows, or someone has made four misthrows, the game is over and scores are tallied.

Sam and I had a quick game over lunch last Friday, and were underwhelmed (along with most of the BGG hardcore, it seems). It's true, it's no gamers game. However, I convinced Charlotte and our visiting friends Liza and Rick to play on Saturday night, and it was a big hit. We played twice, and on Sunday Charlotte and I played two more games, with Martha and Matilda. Last night I played with Martha and Bea - they all loved it. Okay 'loved' is a strong word when it comes to board games and Berger women - but Charlotte saying she enjoyed it and offering to play again is very much a thumbs up.

It reminds me a little of Take it Easy (without the maths-heavy tallying at the end), in that there are communal numbers that everyone can use; there's also the shot at a perfect eleven crosses in at least one colour (seven is the highest in any of our games so far).

It's simple, but not without its own little learning curve - and there are some subtle strategies; but in the end the luck of the dice is going to play a huge part. It's not going to set GNN on fire, that's for sure, and Sam and I both expressed surprise at its pedigree, but it's a very good example of what the Spiel Des Jahres sets out to promote - games so simple anyone can pick them up and play them without a lengthy rules explanation. It beat Hanabi to the 2013 prize*- it's not nearly so innovative or interesting; but it's certainly more approachable.

*this is nonsense, as pointed out by Martin in the comments. Hanabi won, Qwixx was nominated.

My money's on Mysterium for this year based on these criteria, though I'm not sure there's a German-language edition available yet, which would be a pre-requisite I think.

The other big hit of the weekend was Botswana, AKA Wildlife Safari - a 20 minute Knizia from the master's mid-nineties heyday. I've wanted this forever, but it's been hard to come by, and I finally nabbed a copy in a recent maths trade, along with Money and Gem Dealer.

It's brilliantly over-produced, featuring five of each zebras, elephants, rhinos, leopards and lions, all plastic animals of near Schleich quality. There are cards ranked 0 to 5 in each animal/suit, and all cards barring a couple are dealt to the players. Each turn you play a card to the relevant row, and take an animal of your choice. Once all six cards of a single suit have been played, the round is over and players score all the animals they've collected - the animals are worth the last card played in their suit.

Simple, ingenious fun of the kind the good Dr does so well. It's basically a stock-manipulation game, and as Martin pointed out last week, the animals could easily be replaced by five cubes of five colours. This is true, but I guarantee my kids wouldn't have wanted to play it if that were the case; as it is Martha and Bea both really enjoy it. Charlotte's verdict? "Unbearably tense".
This tells me all I need to know about her gaming habits - we won't be playing Rattlesnake any time soon then.