Indian Plumber

Last night Chris joined Andrew and I for our occasional sorties into Euroland, this time picking Rajas of the Ganges as our main meal. It had been a while, and we needed a quick refresher on set-up before diving into the business, where we construct all manner of buildings like the most exceedingly competent handymen

I like Rajas a lot - there are a multitude of options and combining them in the best possible way shuffles your markers (money, and/or glory) along two opposing tracks - when the twain meet, the game ends. I seem to recall Adam schooling us on how he'd won convincingly, but I couldn't remember what he said. Always have dice, probably, as although there's a worker-placement thing going on there's also dice, dice, and more dice. Just like real Rajas, if you want to build a market, and trigger a glory bonus, you need to roll high. If you want to move your boat, roll low.

I focused my efforts on two dice colours (green and blue) and, though success may have been coincidental, it worked:

Sam - Raja!
Chris - Raja's assistant
Andrew - Raja you than me

Then we overcame Chris' misgivings about Cryptid and set it up again. Chris was as bamboozled as I was on my first play three plays, but now on my fourth outing to Cryptoworld, I finally had enough familiarity with the clue types to forge a sense of what was going on on the board.

I figured out the other clues and actually won the game with a proper deduction, rather than a random guess. Andrew cursed his hesitation, as he was on the trail too and nearly made the same search I did!

Sam - Crypto!
Andrew - Pipt-o
Chris - Transfixt-o

We ended a fine evening with Chris' request of Ganz Schon Clever, Wolfgang Warsch's game of bonus overload. There's no real narrative to describe here, as we are basically parcelling out dice and getting (eventually) a zillion bonuses in return. But it's a fun dice-chucker all the same.

My misspent summer playing solo paid off. it was looking a close-run thing with Chris, until - classic GNN sentence finish coming up - my fox heads came up trumps.

Sam - 271
Chris - 226
Andrew - 158

Chris pointed out I'd won all the games and for a brief moment we speculated as to whether, including Tuesday, I'd won a 'spectacular' (me) or 'smug' (Andrew and Chris) six in a row, but then we remembered that I only won one game on Tuesday. C'est la vie.

Thanks for making the trip, guys, much fun.

Monster Hunch

Tuesday night, and with Andrew a late withdrawal due to a cold, it was myself (Sam) Joe, Andy, Ian and Martin sat around the table. Joining us for the first part of the evening was Stan, and whilst (big) Joe coaxed another game of Carta Impera Victoria out of Martin and Andrew, our trio began the night with Welcome To... which I'm beginning to feel could be continued with ...the mildly underwhelming roll-and-write. But as we didn't play the entirely proper rules, I could be doing it a disservice...

The game sees you as rival developers building estates and scoring points for pools and trees and pleasing the city planners. Like Avenue, it's a roll-and-write with no rolling. Unlike Avenue, it's a mite fiddly and we had to keep referencing the rules. It feels a teeny bit bland - for me the fun of a roll-and-write is all about that sense of frustration and hoping your numbers come up (literally, in this case). It doesn't need this amount of options. I don't think my opinion was influenced by the score, but feel free to draw your own conclusions...

Ian 87
Stan 60
Sam 52

On the other half of the table, CIV was in it's final stages, and a second play didn't seem to be really changing Joe or Martin's mind. Martin said it was clever, but not much fun. Joe was quietly reflecting on the opinions of Space Biff, whose review had convinced him to buy the game. I'm not sure what Andy thought.

Martin 3 (wins on tie-breaker)
Joe 3
Andy 1

With those palette-cleansers out of the way, and Stan off to bed (in theory, he snuck down later) we combined into a five to play Cryptid.

Like CIV and Welcome To... this also had its GNN debut over the last week, but possibly to a more appreciative crowd. The board is set up; the cryptid occupies a single hex on it; no-one knows where. But everyone has some information, such as the cryptid being on one of two types of landscape, or in proximity to a bear. And a picture of its location is gradually revealed over time. That's the idea, anyway. It was a bamboozling affair, with all of us scratching our heads. I confess I found it hard to remember my own clue, let along figure out anyone else's. And it came to a sudden end as Joe searched for the cryptid and found it in the first place he looked!

Joe - wins
Everyone else - disappointed the cryptid isn't better at hiding

I was amazed that anybody had any theories at this point, seeing as when I look at the board all I can ascertain is some kind of DNA structure that I can't possibly understand. We all saw the comparison with Zendo, but weren't sure if it was a favourable one.

Now began The Great Ethnos Debate, as Martin disappeared into the front room and returned with the game Katy hates Most Of All. Martin said it needed some love, and I was amenable. But the other side of the table seemed unstirred. Ian said he'd need a rule refresher. Joe said he'd be ok with it, but without much zeal. And Andy said he could play it, in the same way one says I could unblock the sink. It looked like Ethnos was to be packed away again, but in the face of incredible odds, Martin persisted. He kept persisting when it seemed the whole table was swaying towards Beowulf instead. Twice the lid of Ethnos was heading onto the box, but eventually we set it up and played. Kudos to Martin.

In Ethnos we are in Slovakia a far distant fantasy island, struggling for control over six differently-coloured regions by building bands of warriors - in our case, Wingfolk, Merfolk, Giants, Trolls, Orcs and Centaurs. The basic scoring is simple - area majority on the map, and the size of the bands you build, which can be all of a colour, or all of a race. The catch is when you build a band, you must discard all your other cards, which are now available for everyone else to pick up. Do you play patiently, and hopefully? Or do as Joe does and 'whack off a Merman'?

Some extra wrinkles in scoring come off the back of your band's leader - the much-sought-after Centaurs allow you add a second band, Trolls break ties in the area-scoring and so on. It plays really fast, as if you're not playing a band you're simply picking up a card. All of us were surprised by our turns arriving seconds after we'd just had one.

After the first age, Martin was out in front but I was hot on his tail. After the second, we were level and the others seemed far behind. But the third and final age saw Martin streak ahead as I picked up what I could only describe as the Bash Street Kids of Ethnos - very little matching colours or races! Meanwhile Ian went from last to third (and briefly second!) with a strong finish.

Martin 88
Sam 75
Ian 73
Andy 58
Joe 55

Considering the table-wide pre-play reticence, Ethnos seemed to go down pretty well. Joe did say he enjoyed it, but didn't like area majority much. Martin announced that he loved area majority. I said the only thing I didn't like about the game were the plastic markers. Ian and Martin said they loved the plastic markers. Martin tried to get the plastic markers back in the box, and changed his mind.

With the whisky now flowing (a decision my feet are reminding me of regretfully today) we finished the night with Zero Down, Knizier's Rummy-style puzzler where points are bad.

Everyone receives nine cards and begin a series of swaps with a card from the tableau on the table, until people get a decently low score and start knocking, and a second knock triggers the end of the round. Ian began badly with a 23 point haul, whereas Joe set the pace with a piddling 5 points. In the second round Andy thought he'd zeroed (completed a point-free hand, which instantly ends the round) but had miscalculated. Then in subsequent rounds Ian and I zeroed. With a round to to go, Martin led with Ian in second and me third. A dramatic swing saw them fall second and joint-fourth!

Sam 39
Martin 40
Andy 46
Ian and Joe 48

And another GNN came to a respectable 11pm close. Until next time...

Circus with a smile

This week's GNN turned out to be a dry run of the games weekend in November since, allowing for a couple of absentees, exactly the same people were there tonight as are going on the 9th. Namely, Joe (the host), Sam, Ian, Steve, Anja, Adam and myself.

We split into two groups. Ian, Sam and Steve played Meeple Circus while the rest of us chose good old Azul. Meeple Circus is a stacking game in which you try to make a tower out of chunky wooden meeple, elephants, horse etc while obeying several rules in order to score points. It comes with its own app, that plays music while the stacking part of the game is underway.

It looked like fun but a bit fiddly. Of course, that's probably the whole point. It also wins the award for Most Entertaining Catch Up Mechanism because, in round three, whenever there was applause on the soundtrack, the player in first place had to stand up, bow and say "thank you" before continuing with the game. It ended

Sam 54
Ian 42
Steve 34

Steve was up for another attempt, but Ian preferred to play something different. And so they played Cryptid. Another new game and it's a deduction game in which you are cryptozoologists searching for some mythical creature. Each player has a clue (ie, one space away from water) which are cleverly designed such that only one space on the board satisfies them all. On their turn, a player chooses a space and asks one of others if it is possible that the creature is there. If the space obeys their rule they place a circular disk. If not, they put down a cube.

Steve won the first game in little time, so they played again, this time using the expert clues. At first it looked like they'd cracked it early on when Sam cheered in victory before he realised he'd put his "yes" disk in the wrong place. They struggled and started to run out of cubes. They checked the rules to see what they should do and, in terms implying that the game designers couldn't believe anyone could be that stupid, they found they could simply use the cubes from an unused player.

Finally, Sam found the right spot and the game was complete. Ian still had to explain what his rule was, though, since neither Sam nor Steve had worked it out. But a win is a win.

But what about us on the other table? We ended up in a bit of a bun fight. Adam insisted that he wasn't trying to stop me (at least, not always) so I suppose it was just his innate ability at spoiling any rival plans that left me frustrated.

Not a great formation

I tried to stop Joe, since I still had unfinished business from our last game. Meanwhile, at one point Joe was trying to work out how he could screw over two players at once. I tell you, Azul has gone from gentle entry-level game for newbies to the kind of game that the mafia would play to settle old scores. Talking of which...

Joe 69
Anja 64
Adam 58
Andrew 54


After Azul, they were a long way from finished, so we banged out a quick Team Play.

I feel like I should apologise since I was hugely distracted by the neighbouring game of Cryptid, since it's the kind of game you can play even if you aren't playing.

Still trying to work out Ian's rule

On the other hand, I was half of the winning team, even if Joe completed most of our tricks.

Joe and Andrew 28
Anja and Adam 24

Since we were all back together again, we ended on a couple of rousing seven player games. First was Word Slam; Adam, Joe and Steve against Anja, Ian, Sam and me. I discovered a borderline psychic ability as my team raced into an early lead. I correctly guessed Sam's clue of "in turn hot eat" was "microwave" (Joe's clue for the same word, "zero metal science container eat in," is poetic enough for a mention ) and then I got "Bill Gates" from Ian's "name man technology". Then Ian guessed that my clue of "water drink movie" was "cocktail" to put us ahead 3-0. The other team came back into it, but never closed the gap. I expect Joe is still kicking himself for saying "funeral director" instead of "undertaker" which Ian then guessed.

Sam, Andrew, Anja, Ian 6
Adam, Steve, Joe 2

We ended with Face Cards. It may seem churlish to complain about your cards in a game as silly as Face Cards, but that's what we did. And, in fairness to us, luck was in short supply this night. We thought long and hard about our choices, best illustrated by Ian's lengthy silence followed by a doubtful "... No." in round two.

But it's not a game that rewards deep thought. Joe did his best to play obvious pairs, declaring that "slow and steady wins the day" or something. Meanwhile, in round four Anja tried to pair Martin Luther with two fried eggs. That was the level of desperation we had reached. In fact, there was only one correct guess in the final seventh round, when Adam paired the thermometer with my skier (because skiers want to know the temperature. That was honestly the best I had).

Sam 15
Joe 14
Adam 13
Anja 11
Ian 11
Andrew 10
Steve 6

A lovely evening and one that bodes well for the games weekend early November (not to be confused with the games weekend in mid November, but more on that some other time). And also for next Tuesday, of course.