GNN games weekends are the semi-regular binge of board games that allow us to experience things that simply wouldn't happen during a typical evening session. Such as a hungover Ian trying to sleep in a nook by a window while all around him is chaos, or Katy swearing loudly at noon or my attempt at playing a dense, convoluted eurogame while also making pizzas.
It all began on Friday. I got a lift there with Sam and Stanley. We off at four o'clock, and the journey was pretty straightforward, taking about an hour. No such luck for Joe and Katy who had left Bristol at one, but managed to get lost three times, meaning it took them three hours. "We were so lost, we found a games shop in Monmouth," explained Joe.
Either way, when we arrived at Crickhowell (in Powys), Joe Katy, Hannah, Adam and Arthur were already there. And, far from chucking our stuff into rooms and getting straight down to some serious gaming, we stood around and chatted, apparently oblivious to the neat stacks of games in the corner of the room.
The earliest sign of our competitive spirit was a brief spell on the table tennis table while Joe and Katy cooked. After a delicious meal, we finally started gaming with Bandu. Stanley impressed us with his withering look since Katy made no allowances for his young age, handing him some terrible pieces.
Adam
Joe
Sam
Stanley /Andrew
Katy
This was followed by Hannah beating Joe and Katy (77, 71, 68 respectively) at Isles of Skye, and Sam beating Stanley, me and Adam (130, 128, 112, 107) at Ethnos, with its irritating base-60 score track.
Ethnos
During these games, Steve and Jon arrived (Jon, without Power Grid! For shame) and kids were put to bed. There were a couple of games of Happy Salmon, an action game that involves drawing cards and then trying to find someone else around the table who has the same action, while everyone else is doing the same. It looks absurd, and the silent version doubly so, but it seemed popular throughout the weekend.
At first, we split into two groups of four, for Ticket To Ride and Clans Of Caledonia on offer. Then Jon made the switch across the table to TtR, leaving Clans as a three-player affair.
This was possibly a wise move, since even as a three-player (two of whom were novices) Clans of Caledonia lasted a long time. Long after Ticket to Ride ended, and they were deep into Tumblin’ Dice.
Ticket To Ride
Hannah 176
Jon 164
Joe 138
Katy 113
Steve 92
Tumblin’ Dice
Jon 138
Joe 112
Katy 102
Steve 39
Two remarkable an inexplicable defeats for Steve, who only escaped negative points in Tumblin’ Dice in the final round.
Clans of Caledonia was a struggle for me, and I probed the various options with all the timidity of a man pushing a button in a wall, convinced it would open a trapdoor under his feet. Adam, despite yawning through most of the rules explanation, had a much better idea about what was going on.
Adam 136
Sam 127
Andrew 89
By now it was late, and travel-weary and somewhat tipsy, we all got together for a game of Dead Man’s Chest, the game where explaining the rules is never quite enough. Steve and Jon were newbies, and they seemed as baffled as we once were. And sometimes still are.
As for the game, it had three Dead Man rolls (i.e., a one and two). One of which cost me a life on the very first roll of the game. Then the next two both hit Joe, one of which he opened by accident (“Oh. I looked.”). Sam finished in first, with both lives still intact.
Sam
Joe
Katy
Jon
Steve
Andrew
That was that for day one. On Saturday morning, people arose in the following order: Hannah, Stanley and Arthur at 7.30 (probably earlier), then me, Jon, Joe, Sam, Katy, Steve and then a big gap before Adam finally emerged at 9.45. The first game to be played, after all the various breakfasts, didn’t get going until 10.25, and it was Junk Art.
Steve 16
Adam 13
Joe 9
Katy 7
Meanwhile, Jon introduced me to Patchwork and won 15-2, but I was impressed by the game. Ian was collected from the station by Sam and they played a tight game of Heck Meck with Ian winning 13-12.
Next up was a true challenge: A Feast For Odin. Adam, Stanley, Ian and I all set off on this epic undertaking. Adam, though, had a trick up his sleeves: the rules. He’d watched a review or two and noticed that no one else builds up from the corner as we do, and he discovered that that rule only applied to calculating the income. Everything else was a free-for-all.
I had suggested playing a six-round game, but Adam quickly insisted on a seven-round one. I didn’t think anything about this at the time but looking back I remember that, although Adam had populated two islands, his main player board had almost no minus points covered during round six. Without that seventh round, things could’ve been very different. But we did have a seventh round, so things were all too familiar.
I went for animals, Stanley went pillaging and Ian started slow before suddenly filling his board with blue tiles.
Adam 111
Stanley 86
Ian 72
Andrew 65
In the kitchenette area, a game of Downforce was played, with the general consensus that the two-car strategy was a non-starter, with the eight-wheeled Jon and Steve trailing.
Sam 27
Joe 14
Steve 11
Jon 7
Steve was keen to get back on this horse, as it were, and another (five player) game of Downforce was set up. Again, Steve ended up with two cars, although I don’t think he had planned it that way. The race ended with both of his cars still on the track, racing each other for fifth place, until Steve ran out of cards and they both ended with a DNF.
Katy 24
Jon 20
Ian 18
Andrew 17
Steve 6
At this time, a game of Flipships was underway with Hannah, Joe, Stanley and Sam trying to keep the invading aliens at bay. My notes for this game read simply “Earth died.”
Meanwhile, Steve taught Katy and Jon the card game Tenbo. Possibly because he likes it or possibly because he wanted a game he knew he’d do well in.
Steve 21
Katy 15
Jon 13
Then, if last night’s Clans of Caledonia weren’t enough of a warning, I allowed myself to be recruited to another long game beginning with a hefty rules explanation: Yokohama. Even though I’d played it before and had some idea of what it entailed, I needed a rule refresher as much as the two beginners: Steve and Jon. Joe was the rules-explainer, but even he’d forgotten a great deal, and the rule book was never far from hand.
Yokohama
During Yokohama, Ian, Katy and Hannah comfortably played two medium sized games: Mad King Ludwig (Ian 95, Katy 89, Hannah 63) and Hit Z Road (Ian and Katy both survived – I don’t recall who won – but Hannah died early on).
Also Sam and Stanley played Near and Far. According to my notes, it was a draw.
As for me, I had to start making pizzas while still playing Yokohama. This made things difficult, not least because the layout of the kitchen meant a lot of walking back and forth, and I had to keep washing my hands before making my move.
My efforts at making pizza outlasted the game, and lead to a largely game-free period as people got their food one after the other. The scores for Yokohama were:
Jon 116
Steve 111
Joe 78
Andrew 60
The last of the food was being served (and thanks to Joe for knocking together some burritos to make up the shortfall in my pizzas) at nine o’clock and some restless gamers were after some gaming.
Hannah, Katy, Joe and I chose Lords of Vegas while the others set up a much-requested (by Stanley) game of Captain Sonar. Captain Adam, Steve and Jon were up against Captain Stanley, Sam and Ian. This game ended with a victory for Captain Stanley after Radio Operator Steve admitted he missed one of their movements and, from then on, didn’t know where the other submarine was.
In Lords of Vegas, it was a surprisingly swingy game. Katy started well, building lots of one-tile casinos of many colours, but then stalled as she couldn’t convert them to two-tile casinos quickly enough. So Joe took over, surging into a lead. But then he was undone by some reorganising from Katy and especially Hannah, who reduced his previously presidential presence in a five-tile casino to two miserable one-pip dice. I, meanwhile, faced early frustration in the lack of brown casinos paying out. My luck turned towards the end but too little, too late.
Hannah 40
Andrew 36
Joe 26
Katy 23
With Stanley off to bed, the other five played Tortuga. Ian won. “He was Dutch” says my not very helpful notes. “Everyone else lost. Weird conversation about nationalities” it continues.
Tortuga
People slowly peeled away to bed, leaving six players refusing to buckle under the weight of fatigue. Myself, Jon, Joe, Steve, Katy and Ian stayed up for more. And, just like last night’s Dead Man’s Chest, we chose to introduce Steve and Jon to a game that never seems to make sense, no matter how much you try to explain it. Namely, Bemused.
Ian pours himself a beer for Bemused
This game of adopting personas is more an event than a game. A chance to throw insults at people according to which muse they’ve been dealt. Painter, Thespian, Actor (who, invariably, is accused of never being able to play The Dane), Musician, etc. This time, though, I was the Dancer and I must’ve been pretty good since I was largely ignored. I made no secret of my animosity to my gemina, the musician (Jon), because no one else was going after him. And it worked. I finished the game sane and healthy, with my gemina safely “not sane” (i.e., dead, in this case. Actually killed by Katy, who finished him off while Jon was having a rule explained by to him by Joe. Harsh).
Andrew 8
Joe 6
Katy 5
Jon 3
Ian 3
Steve 2
Midnight had come and gone, but we all felt we had one more game in us. Katy asked for something she could play while lying on the sofa under a blanket. Joe suggested I Crossed The Border. This is a simple word game where one person thinks of a rule regarding things that people can take across a border. They then give an example of it, followed by everyone else trying to get stuff across the border. The rule-maker tells them if they’re successful or not. And we go round and round until one person is still clueless.
For example, Joe’s first rule was “Words with ‘oo’ in them” so “I crossed the border with a pair of boots” would be fine but “I crossed the border with a copy of Vogue magazine” would not.
Katy chose items that began with K, A, T or Y. Ian’s rule was that you had to have your hand against the side of your face when you crossed the border. Jon’s rule was don’t hesitate when you cross the border, which I totally failed to get.
My rule was that you had to say the item with a rising inflexion, like a question. Oddly, this meant Ian did very well at crossing the border, since he always framed his crossings as questions, whereas the others were more confident and made their crossings as statements. As such, Ian crossed back and forth, but never really knew why but the others didn’t. It wasn’t until Katy got it that it slowly dawned on the others what we were doing.
We ended at 1.10 on Sunday morning before we tore ourselves away from the buzz of competitive conversation and went to bed.
Sunday morning, and we slowly crawled from our rooms. The first game was played before 9 o’clock so, in that respect, we did better than Saturday. But the game in question was the lightest of games: The Pyramid’s Deadline, a new game I’d bought in Japan from Oink Games (Deep Sea Adventure, Fake Artist, Insider).
It involves building a pyramid-y shaped structure before the pharaoh dies (indicated by the last red square being chosen). The selection of building materials is determined by the roll of some dice, so obviously the speed at which the red squares deplete is random.
This might be why in game one, none of us (Hannah, Sam and me) completed our “pyramid”. Then in game two, Hannah was too cautious since both Sam I and completed our buildings after her, and I won. But, then again, in the third round Hannah won when neither Sam nor I finished.
By 9.15 everyone except Adam was up. Well, Ian was up, but seemed to be in constant danger of falling back down again as he struggled under a hangover.
At some point around now, I introduce Steve to The Pyramid’s Deadline, but I made no notes about the outcome.
Eventually, Katy took pity on Ian’s attempts at a nap on a window seat, and arranged for him to get some sleep in a proper bed (rather than the mattress in the utility room he’d had during the night).
Then we played Deep Sea Adventure. At least, Joe, Steve, Katy and I did. We began quickly and it wasn’t until it was Steve's turn that he asked for a rules explanation. It hadn’t occurred to us that he hadn’t played before!
Luckily DSA is the kind of game you can explain while you play, so it didn’t hold the game up too much. There was a remarkable lack of drownings, apart from Katy and I in round three.
Joe 42
Steve 35
Andrew 24
Katy 13
Sam, Stan and Jon played Near and Far, with Stan running out a clear winner, but that didn’t stop Sam from saying he’d enjoyed it more than the other night when he and Stan had tied for first.
Stanley 79
Sam 42
Jon 38
Next up was a game of Downforce. I ended up with three cars in my team, which was not my plan even if I had boasted beforehand that it was. If two cars is a curse, then surely three cars is a death wish! But, no! Thanks to some clever betting and keeping an early lead, I did okay. Not first, but pretty good.
My team in Downforce
Sam 13
Andrew 12
Ian 10
Stanley 8
While this was happening, another game of Yokohama was being played. Joe was keen to try it again while the rules were still fresh and he was confident that he could teach it better this time, too. Katy was drafted in to the game, along with last night’s conscripts Steve and Jon.
They kept saying it’d be quicker than last night, and maybe it was. But not by much. After Downforce had ended, Sam and I played Clans of Caledonia again. It was much quicker as a two player, and I did better, too.
Sam 126
Andrew 118
Hannah put together salad and cold meats and cheese for lunch. Still Yokohama kept going.
People started getting anxious about not having enough time for a walk. But Yokohama wouldn’t be rushed.
Finally it ended. Scoring was calculated, and it turned out to be the same person who won last time!
Jon 123
Joe 98
Steve 95
Katy 91
After that, it was time for the walk before being ferried back to Bristol by Sam. Five other gamers stayed on for one more evening, and I hope they’ll add their comments to the end of this post.
Meanwhile, thanks all. It was special!
A bird! In the sky!
Adam reports the final scores...
Capital lux
Joe 80
Adam 65
Hannah 39
Mysterium
We all won. But I won most and Katy won second most. Because we're overcompetetive. Joe was an excellent ghost.
Ticket to ride
Adam 178
Hannah 161
Katy 145
Joe 142
Jon 138
Apparently Katy isn't going to play with Hannah or I ever again.
Kingdomino
Jon 53
Adam 51
Katy 46
Joe 29
Team play
Adam & Joe 25
Katy & Jon 24
Good night folks!
