Pushing through a number two

This week our regular GNN shenanigans found a home at Sam’s place. In the end, there were eight of us. Seven at first (Sam, Ben, Ian, Katy, Matt, Martin and myself) with Joe arriving as soon as he’d found a parking space. We chatted for a while and discovered that Martin had played Lancaster and “hadn’t hated it,” which from Martin is a ringing endorsement of a worker placement game. With eight players present, we all sat around and wondered if Joe’d brought Captain Sonar which is perfect for eight.

He arrived, and we asked. There was a wail of dismay when he realised how many we were and that he hadn’t brought it. And throughout the evening, in the quiet moments between games, he was heard to ask himself “Why didn’t I bring it?”

So what games did we play? We began with an eight-player game of Fuji Flush. This quick if luck-based game was a lot of fun with players ruining other players’ chain of cards only because they have no choice.

Martin explained the rules, and brought our attention to the phrase used in the rules to describe when you successfully survive a round: “pushing through” a card. And when Martin used the 2 cards to demonstrate how the value increases as other players play the same value, Joe used the phrase that now adorns this blog entry.

As for the game, well, it was hard to tell if there was any strategising. But it ended

Katy 0
Andrew 1
Ben 1
Sam 1
Martin 2
Matt 2
Joe 2
Ian 3

After this we split into two groups of four. Matt, Joe, Katy and Ian chose Isle of Skye while Martin, Ben, Sam and Andrew tried Martin’s new game HMS Dolores. It’s a quick set collecting game where people play two at a time. There are given two cards each, face up, and have to bid over them in a sort of paper, stone, scissors style. Then, the next two players do the same, trying to add to their tableau of cards with the proviso that only the highest and lowest scoring sets actually count for anything.

Before each vote, there is a little discussion between the two players as to what they should do, but these discussions aren't binding, and there was a lot of betrayal. Mostly from Ben. But as we see below, crime never wins. It comes in second, though.

Martin 20
Ben 14
Sam 10
Andrew 9

Isle of Skye was still only about halfway, so we chose another game: Pueblo. It’s a game of placing coloured and non-coloured blocks in such a way as they are as hidden as possible.

Martin read the rules and caught a couple of rules we’d got wrong (oh, how we’ve missed his input) but nothing major. Ben got hit a lot from early on, while I looked to be in third but the final scoring round was kinder to me than to Sam.

Martin 36
Andrew 39
Sam 45
Ben 58

And Isle of Skye ended soon after. Matt was slightly upset that his island had broken roads but Katy was far more annoyed that her lack of scroll tiles meant she fell back from first into third.

Matt 69
Joe 62
Katy 58
Ian 53

After this, we rearranged into different groups of four. Sam, Ben, Matt and Katy chose Fool’s Gold while the rest of us chose Ra. Both games involve a canny understanding of when to push your luck and also quite a lot of laughing at other people’s misfortunes.

Sam explained the rules to Ben, while at our end of the table Joe reminded everyone that this was one of the games that he’s good at. A fair warning? Or sheer vanity? Let us see...

There was a lot of battling for Pharaohs, something that I dropped out of early. In fact I went for very little except monuments. I did just enough not to fall back, but only scored a one in each of the first two rounds.

Everyone else went for a mixed portfolio, with Martin’s Nile looking good for a last round boost of points. However, he was stymied by me and my luck (and his inattention).

In the final round, my first two acquisitions got me a 3 tile and a 1 tile along with my goods. It seems that Martin then assumed I was a certainty to get the lowest-tiles punishment. But he didn’t see (or didn’t take it in) that I got the 13 tile with my last purchase.

How we laughed when my 17 beat his 16 and he had to hand over five points to Ian. That swing was enough to get me the game, as my monuments scored 35 points in the final round.

Andrew 47
Martin 38
Ian 30
Joe 29

Yep, it was vanity on Joe’s part. And with Ian and Martin calling it a night, while we waited for Fool’s Gold to end, he once again reflected on his choice to not bring Captain Sonar.

Fool’s Gold ended with another terrible final round for Katy as all her guys came home empty handed (apart from some silt). The two gem collectors came in first.

Sam 45
Ben 38
Matt 28
Katy 27

Joe and Ben left at this point, so the remaining four had a silly game of Dancing Eggs. This is a game were actions are decreed by the roll of a dice. The idea is to be able to carry as many eggs as you can. The game insisted that Katy carry all her eggs under her chin. She was the first to drop, but she had enough in reserve to claim a win.

Katy 4
Sam 2
Matt 2
Andrew 1

“That’s leaderboard, right?” she asked once we’d finished. Of course. And talking of which...

That end of term feeling

Tonight was the final evening of the most sparsely populated GNN season for a long time. For some reason, it had a knockabout craziness to it, perhaps because we were not battling until the final seconds over a hard-fought title, but instead watching me stroll over the finish line thanks to attendance alone.

We (Sam, me, Joe, Ian and Katy) began with Sam’s boys, Joe and Stan, indulging in a couple of rounds of Codemasters with pictures. I didn’t note the scores, but I do remember Katy’s impudence in suggesting I’d made a mistake in giving my clue. Although the spymaster is supposed to stay silent, I couldn’t let this go unchallenged, and I reminded her to “never patronize the Spymaster.”

Then, while Sam put the boys to bed, we decided what the next game might be. Isle of Skye was almost our choice, but we decided it might be a bit much with five players and two newbies.

Instead we went for Fool’s Gold as a nice push-your-luck game that everyone knew. Before long, the sledging started, with Joe loudly questioning my tactics on my first move.

After the generous first round (except for me, who’d played quite badly as Joe had noted) the game got meaner and meaner. Gems were snatched from our hands by false alarm cards, and gold nuggets were replaced by card after card of silt.

It was close at the end, with Ian beating Joe beating Katy on a tie-breaker.

Ian 26
Joe 26
Katy 26
Andrew 23
Sam 21

After this, Sam introduced us to Om Nom Nom, the simple game of trying to eat things without being eaten yourself. A load of dice decide how much of the lower two links in the food chain are available to eat and then the players decide which cards they want to play in order to eat those things. The clever bit is that everyone has a card from the uppermost link in the food chain. So, if you think “ah, there’s lots of flies, I’ll play my frog” then there’s probably someone else around the table who had already thought of that, and will play their hedgehog to eat your frog.

Doing things that no one else is doing seems to be a good strategy. I got lucky in round one, scoring 16 points while my nearest rival had but three. It was too big a gap to bridge. Meanwhile, Joe, with one point after two rounds decided to go Dirk for the third and final round. Dirk did better than Joe did.

Andrew 24
Ian 18
Sam 10
Katy 9
Joe 3

It was still early, and Joe had come to the realisation that you can keep drinking Budweiser and never get drunk. The games continued with Magician’s Night, the glow-in-the-dark game of pushing things towards other things.

Charging up our magicians

Since it’s only a four player, Joe decided to sit out the first game. There then followed a, shall we say, full and frank discussion about what Joe might be doing in the dark while we play. Sam claimed that there was a bit mid-game where the lights suddenly come on, in case Joe got any ideas.

As for the game, once we’d remembered how to set it up, Sam won.

After this, Joe played and Sam sat it out, with a win for Katy.

Since there are no placings, it can’t be leaderboard, but it was a lot of fun.

Next up, much to Katy’s despair, was Skull. She insisted that she didn’t like it and we insisted that she did. Or would, once she got the hang of it.

During the game, people kept coming up a cropper on Ian’s skull. However, he himself won no actual hands of his own, leaving him in last place.

1. Andrew, 1 flip, 3 tiles left
2= Katy, 1 flip
2= Sam, 1 flip
2= Joe, 1 flip
3. Ian, no flips

Finally, the played Pairs, as whiskey and Jaegermeister were brought down from the high shelf. Pairs was as Pairs is: blueberries killed off Ian and Sam. Joe didn’t score at all after round two. There was controversy near the end of the game when Katy, in first place, twisted for the match and Sam accidentally drew two cards. The card he initially showed was okay for Katy, but he took it back and played it again with the right card showing, which bust her. She complained, have briefly thought she’d won, but Sam was firm on the rules.

However, she only had to play safe in the next round and wait for enough people to go bust to win.

Katy 22
Andrew 18
Ian 16
Sam 12
Joe 8

Which ends the season! Congrats to me for my win in Points, and to Katy for the Medal Table, and to Adam for Points Ratio.

Gold, Blood, Art

Saturday night! Seeing as I (Sam) keep missing Tuesdays, and Sally keeps going out, I was grateful to have Andrew and Chris descend upon the house at 7pm. Whilst the boys caused havoc upstairs (my boys, not Andrew and Chris) we set up Fool's Gold on the kitchen table.

What more is there to say about Fool's Gold? It's the worlds-colliding combo of worker placement and push-your-luck, where the luck-pushing gets progressively more optimistic as the game continues. There's something delightfully funny about miners thinking sod it, I'll pan for gold in the snow, and turning up four bags of silt in a storm.

winter is coming

Chris and Andrew were both new to it, but it's not a hard game to learn. In fact the most confusing thing about it was Chris' money disappearing and Andrew accusing him of being thick, before it transpired that Andrew had been taking Chris' money, thinking it was from the bank. And at this point, we were all pretty sober. Oh, how we lolled etc.

Andrew 45
Sam  44
Chris 36

At this point Andrew and I indulged Chris in a game of Blood Bowl: Team Manager. Neither of us was really yearning to try it; it's a very Ameri-trashy, chit-heavy cross of fantasy and American Football. For a couple of Feld-positive Europeans, that's not exactly a siren, more a rock.

But we are nothing if not recalcitrantly begrudging, so we gave it a shot. It's about a series of football matches played out in a fantasy realm, rather violently. In each round players are contesting the matches via card play: cards have a value and the combined value of all your cards in a game decide who wins/loses. But individual cards can do stuff as well; like grab the ball (if you have the ball, you've more chance of winning the game) tackle (resulting in making opponent cards less effective) sprint (change up a card in your hand for a hopefully-better one) and, er, skull: which get your card a skull token. These are revealed when all cards have been played - they may help, but they may get the player sent off.

touchdown

The skulls make the game very swingy - which is fun, but also slightly undermines the idea of strategic play. I can imagine the longer the game is (we played three rounds) the feeling of arbitrariness growing from a sense of chaotic fun to mild annoyance. But overall the game was fine - Andrew said it was "not anywhere near as terrible as I thought it'd be" which, from his mouth, is praise indeed.

Andrew 22
Sam 22
Chris 18

What next? I brought out several options and Chris' phone chose Pueblo. This was the first play for me that wasn't a two-player, and I decided early on to get all my buildings of my own colour down as soon as possible. This meant I took a lot of early hits whilst Chris - and Andrew in particular - shimmied about, avoiding the eye of the chieftain and taking minimal point penalties. But when our building was completed and he took his final inspection, I was all but hidden, and I moved into a respectable first place. I didn't note the scores, but Andrew was second, and Chris third.

stroppy chieftain looms

We finished off with a couple of short games; Dice Heist is the game of the moment in the Morrison household - Stanley loves it and it goes down well at GNN too. Andrew and Chris fought it out over paintings, whilst I hovered around the edges, trying to pick up cheap heists in St Petersburg. But there was too much hovering, not enough heisting:

Andrew 28
Chris 27
Sam 17

Finally we bashed out Push It, which has not been seen for a few weeks now! At this stage, I was rather merry, and merriness and dexterity don't always go hand in hand. I flicked pathetically as the others jostled for position. Andrew surged off into the lead with Chris hanging on to his coat-tails. But as the pressure mounted around the ten-point mark, anxiety took hold and as the others bashed into each other, I came back into it. With the scores poised at 10-9-9 in Andrew's favour, anyone could win it!

Andrew 11
Chris 9
Sam  9

Lots of fun, thanks gentlemen. Enjoy Tuesday!

Cheap hills

Oh, Tuesdays. You wend through our lives like a glittering river through open dales and fens. This week it wended through Joe’s house, with Katy, Adam, Matt, Ian, Sam and myself making up the seven combatants for the night.

The main point of interest at the start were the snacks. I’d brought these new Dill Pickle flavoured Pringles, which were either loved or hated, while Sam broke out the Roast Beef Monster Munch.

By the way, combining the two was strangely underwhelming.

Then Joe brought out some Honey Mustard Broken Pretzels and Adam, not to be left behind, had a packet of Skittles. We need a leaderboard for snacks!

We began with a seven player version of Dice Heist. The official game only goes up to five, but when Sam asked Joe if he had any spare dice, Joe’s slightly offended expression that Sam even had to ask told us that he had. Before too long, we all had a black die each and plentiful supplies of white dice to use as sidekicks.

It works okay as a seven-player. A bit of a gap between goes, but otherwise perfectly serviceable. Mind you, I would say that: Some games and artifacts and the best collection of paintings pushed me into first. Poor old Joe had a hard time stealing anything, ending up with a solitary painting that at least meant he didn’t get the minus four points for worst art collection.

Andrew 18
Adam 14
Katy 14
Sam 8
Matt 5
Ian 3
Joe 0

Next we split into two groups. Joe, Katy, Ian and Sam went for Fools’ Gold, the new push-your-luck worker-placement game that’s taking GNN by storm. Adam, Matt and I went for Kingdom Builder.

Now, each of us have some kind of form on Kingdom Builder. I used to be top of the KB Division in points ratio, but that was a long time ago. Matt’s win ratio is 50% (played four, won twice) and Adam is... well, he’s Adam.

Once again I fell behind when it came to picking up those bonus-move tokens. Adam was quickest off the block to grab them, and they helped him finish off his settlements first and claim a win.

Adam 74
Matt 69
Andrew 51

Fool’s Gold was only halfway through, so we began a game of 7 Wonders to keep ourselves occupied. I found it odd to unbox Joe’s copy 7 Wonders after being so used to Sam’s copy. Where was the molded plastic insert? Why weren’t the cards already sorted for a three-player game? So confusing.

The game itself wasn’t, though. It was as familiar as old socks. I avoided military and went for blue buildings and my lovely 20-point Giza pyramid. It worked.

Andrew 65
Matt 58
Adam 49

At the same time, Fool’s Gold ended. It had certainly seemed like an exciting game, with everyone commiserating with each other about how bad their luck was, not matter if they were in mountains or hills, rivers or lakes.

Sam 35
Joe 29
Ian 23
Katy 23

And with us all back together it was time for Dead Man’s Chest! This game of bluffing is so simple that we keep forgetting the rules. Lower is bad, right? Anyway, I played well. At least, I just passed on Sam’s bid, raising it by one, to Matt who then had to decide what to do. He chose badly, and was out first.

Adam won kudos for getting Katy to lose a gem by bidding “Dead Man.” Your only choice is to challenge or shake and bid Dead Man again, neither of which are very likely to end in success.

That was the only gem she lost, though.

1. Katy
2. Adam
3. Andrew
4. Sam
5. Joe
6. Ian
7. Matt

And finally, it was time for Pairs. It’s been a while since we played it and we initially forgot the Lowest Card Starts rule. We played until 21 and Matt wrapped it up in four rounds, never going bust once.

Matt 23
Sam 21
Katy 13
Adam 11
Joe 10
Andrew 10
Ian 3

And with that, we were finished. Someone spoke about a league at Chance & Counters and also a singles night was mentioned. Joe said “Surely every night is singles night at Chance & Counters” and we all laughed heartily, taking our joie de vivre home with us.

Meanwhile, with one week left, the Division looks like this...

Ian is still top, but I take back my lead on the medal table. Hannah jumps to top in Points Ratio without actually playing since I noticed today that my spreadsheet hadn’t included the scores from A Fake Artist Goes To New York.

B-side babies

This week’s hosts were Hannah and Adam. Baby Arthur was safely tucked up in bed, but still audible on the baby monitor. This week’s other attendees were Sam, Ian, Matt (thanks to his new house, he’s now another gamer in the Easton bloc), Katy, Martin (with Effie) and myself.

Since Katy and Martin had both brought their copies, we began with eight-player Team Push-It. And, call us crazy, but we created a new house-variant, as we had both pucks in play at the same time. The began as a stack in the middle of the table, and once separated, being closest to either would score you points.

Adam and I sped off into a quick lead and we were soon just one point from winning, and so we became the targets for the other teams. Then Sam and Hannah also reached their penultimate point. Ian and Matt were still on zero, and promising that the comeback would start any second now. Martin and Katy did okay, but Martin couldn’t really bend down too far with a still-awake baby strapped to him.

Finally, Adam and I got the winning point as Ian and Matt got onto the scoreboard too.

Adam and Andrew 5
Sam and Hannah 4
Katy and Martin 2
Ian and Matt 1

After this, we split into two groups. Martin, Matt, Ian and I chose Imhotep, while Hannah, Adam, Katy and Sam decamped to the front room to play Fool’s Gold.

Imhotep was played recently at Martin’s, and it’s balance of when to use spoiling tactics and when to place your blocks on ships. Last time we played, we invariably put our blocks in first place on the ship, but this time we tried to be a bit more clever: placing them in the second or third spaces. So cunning.

It was a close game, and my end-of-game bonuses really pushed me up the scoretrack, only to be stymied by the game’s tie-breaker rule.

Ian 37+1 block
Andrew 37
Martin 35
Matt 30

Fool’s Gold was still progressing (we could hear the occasional whoop of excitement, and Sam drily remarking that “This is the wrong table cloth for Fool’s Gold”) so we tried In A Grove, a game from the publishers of A Fake Artist Goes To New York.

This is a simple guessing/bluffing game. There’s been a murder (in a grove) and we have to accuse the correct suspect. There are three suspects, made of cardboard, with numbers on their backs. And a victim. And the other four human shape things are dealt out to the four players. We can look at the number that we’re given, and the number of the player to our left. Then, in turn, each player looks at the numbers of two of the three suspects and makes an accusation of the murderer (which is the suspect with the highest number, except if there’s a five in the group – then it’s the lowest number). But you can’t look at the suspect that the previous player chose to accuse.

Then all three suspects are revealed. If you’re right, you get you accusation token back. If you’re wrong and your token is on top of the pile for that suspect, you get a bunch of liar tokens. Having more than eight tokens (or none at all) and you lose the game.

It’s a nice game. It’s certainly quite short. Perhaps too short to build up any kind of bluff. Although Martin and Ian tried to bluff in the last round, neither Matt nor I followed it. This meant Ian was top of the pile that was wrong, and he got enough liar tokens to lose the game.

There are no winners, apparently. After all, it is a murder scene.

At this point Fool’s Gold was entering it’s last round but we thought they’d want to play Gulo Gulo afterwards, so we decided to crack out Imhotep again.

This time, we played the b-sides: the other sides of the boards. Each part of the game has an alternative version. For example, on side a, cubes in the temple get you a point, but on side b the temple gets you points or blocks or a card. These changes were sometimes better, sometimes worse, but certainly changed things around. Matt got into a pattern of picking up and then using cards to devastating effect. It helped him to a sizeable victory.

Matt 45
Martin 39
Ian 36
Andrew 31

By now it was time for Martin to head back home. Fool’s Gold was over:

Hannah 35 + biggest haul
Katy 35
Sam 29
Adam 28

And they had also played Pharaoh’s Gulo Gulo while we’d finished Imhotep.

Which Hannah won.

Finally we all got together for a rousing game of A Fake Artist Goes To New York. There is still a debate about how to chose a word, what is too vague and what isn’t. But it’s still a fun game.

Hannah 6
Adam 5
Ian 4
Sam 4
Katy 2
Matt 1
Andrew 0

With two Tuesdays left to go before the end of the season, the Division looks like this:

Gambler placement

Monday, and with all GNN potential candidates otherwise engaged, I invited our old pal Andy Mosse over for a wee game. And fortunately, Ian also found himself available at late notice. So at 8.30 we sat down around the table to play Fool's Gold.

This is - as the name suggests - a game about gold-digging, with the inevitable down-sides of finding fool's gold, or maybe just a big pile of mud. It's worker placement, but unlike Lords of Waterdeep or Agricola, your worker may end up with nothing!

Everyone starts with a few workers in the year 1849. Dice are rolled to determine where the best spots for gold are reckoned to be - hills, forest, river, mountains or lake. Hills, we found, are notoriously shit for gold. Then players can send their workers to dig in said places, or gather a bit of cash. However many workers at a location multiplied by the dice there equals the amount of cards that get flipped for that location - BUT, around half the cards are either silt (ineffective) or actively bad, robbing you of cards. So it's quite possible your worker ends up with hands full of nothing...

another year, another worker placement

...in which case they can gather two more coins for the cause, or pan a bit more through the less rewarding winter months. Coins are helpful during play but worthless at the end, and winter could pay big, but is more likely to hit you hard.

 there's gold in them hills

After five rounds the game ends and you get hit with penalties for not getting gold from all the areas, and your most-collected gold is iron pyrites - worth nothing! Andy forgot this vital rule and only realised halfway through his stash of River cards was worthless. However he still managed to beat cash-rich Ian into third, as I claimed the debut win:

Sam 36
Andy M 25
Ian 24

We later agreed it was our favourite game of the evening; not dripping with theme in the sense of panning, but certainly loaded with risk. We found Pharaoh's Gula Gula a lot of fun, but the board and pieces were essentially appendages hanging from the fun of taking-balls-from-a-bowl...

Sam won

balls

then

Ian won

...and Billabong was great for a while, but just seemed to last for ever! Possibly we were all drunk at this point. Well, not possibly - we were. But also the AP factor was kinda mad, and Andrew was right that more players seems to equal more mind-melding.

boing

Overall though, an enjoyable evening and notable for the debut of a couple of games and welcome return of Andy.