Felonious Monk

On Saturday night Andrew and I converged at my table for some gentle pre-Christmas fare. With Sally busy baking in the kitchen, we repaired to the table in the front room, however, and what with the Christmas tree and the speakers that don't cut out, it made for a nice festive surrounds.

Possibly we sabotaged the genteel appearance by eating crisps like demented seagulls, but you can't have everything.

We began with a four-player game of Facecards with the boys. Stan and Joe's faces were now mixed into the cards too (the game comes with blanks) and Stan successfully identified himself as a Squirrel. Joe turned up as a bird. The bird seemed to always know what my pair was, but rarely guessed them; content to point them out to other people. The Squirrel ran away with it:

Stanley 14
Andrew 10
Joe 7
Sam 7

As the boys retired to bed, Andrew chose our two-player starter, Rajas of the Ganges. For the uninitiated, this involves using workers and dice to build palaces and markets. The former bring you fame, the latter money, and both fame and money have markers moving in opposite directions around the outside of the board - your aim is to make them meet, and ideally, hurtle past each other at speed.

We chose very distinct paths - Andrew eschewing markets and me building a solitary palace the whole game. At various times it seemed like we'd both made mistakes - Andrew was spending actions picking up a single die, whilst I went from having heaps to none at all. My markets were churning out cash, but Andrew's seemingly unproductive turns would suddenly coalesce into huge leaps along the fame track. And as my dice ran out again, Andrew built two palaces to end the game:

Andrew: Raja!
Sam: Not Raja.

my markers (yellow) stare balefully at each other; 

Andrew's (on the far side) have passed

Our Euro glands pumping endorphins now, we went straight from Rajas to Heaven and Ale. With two players there's only three rounds to play, so the sense of time-running-out loomed up at us at the start of the second round. Like Rajas, there was a sense of maniacal racing. Unlike Rajas, getting ahead on the track wasn't necessarily the right thing to do. I kept taking things Andrew wanted - inadvertently, mostly - but struggled to make ends meet whilst Andrew set sail for the final round in a cash-rich position. However Andrew's genial allowance of me having a do-over (I scored the wrong monk, only realising on my next turn) may have been the difference between winning and losing:

Sam - 34
Andrew - 22

The last game of the night was NMBR9. Maybe it's not knocked Take It Easy off the top spot of the Cries Of Despair table, but it's still a wonderful game. It looked like I'd perhaps put all my eggs in a doomed basket...

really need that 1

But fortunately for me the 1 came out, and my literal platform proved to be a figurative one as well...

Sam 92
Andrew 71

A most delightful evening.

We may lose, and we may win

Friday night games briefly threatened to be a four-player affair before settling into a cosy head to head between Andrew and myself. We started with Welcome To... which is a roll and write game with no rolling. Instead, cards are flipped and you choose one of three sets to add a number and a feature to your growing neighbourhood. Maybe you put up a fence, or build a pool. Maybe you plant a tree. It's all points, and though often it's hard to tell from an initial play, we found it a little underwhelming in comparison to the delightful agony of say, Rolling America, or Avenue.

I won, but should mention Andrew allowed me a significant do-over when I realised I'd built a fence in the wrong place.

Next up was Heaven and Ale, such a hit earlier this year and still much beloved by Andrew and myself. It was a very curious game, as I began spending big and realised I'd run out of money with little recourse to more. Instead I had to pick up scoring markers and sacrifice a card in order to get anywhere, and I felt it was all a terrible error as Andrew was moseying along grabbing as many tiles as it seemed he felt like, building sheds and the money rolling in. Weirdly though my early scoring meant I didn't have to fret over picking up scoring markers in the final round, and Andrew's momentum stalled slightly. The scores were close - we didn't write them down - but I nabbed it right at the end. A baffling play that suggests there are still avenues to be explored in this game...

My reward from Andrew was a fortune cookie that said I should learn from my mistakes. Oddly enough this is exactly what Andrew said he should do when next playing Heaven and Ale before I opened it.

The night was still young enough to squeeze in a nightcap in both gaming and whisky terms, so we broke out trusty old Take It Easy.

Andrew called video games and I did board games. It was noticeable for the agony absent from Welcome To... recognisable from every previous play, and our acknowledgement of our terrible maths as we both reached for calculators to work out the scores. My maths was so bad I turned on the torch my accident. Andrew won the first round, but was scuppered by nine-based optimism in the second, when Beowulf came out to stump him... meanwhile I recovered from some appalling hedge-betting as I skirted the edges, before finally having to commit somewhere more central...

Sam 308
Andrew 281

Lovely to play again! And now I have the Eagles playing in my head.

Andrew's Perfect Evening

Saturday night, and what better thing to do than play some games.

That was the opinion of myself, Andrew and Ian, anyway, albeit I lost track of time and they arrived on the street to find myself and Stanley attempting (and failing) to fit roof bars to our car. Whilst that was resolved, they stepped inside and broke out a 'ten minute' game of The Mind, that came to a dramatic end over half an hour later.

Having put the kids to bed, I watched the drama play out from level five onwards, at which point they had four lives but no shurrikens. It made no matter - an absorbing display of synchronicity played out right up to level 12, with almost no hitches at all, at which point Andrew - possibly distracted by Genesis - said "synch at 23" - giving away his lowest card. He discarded it and drew a new one, but the spell was broken and their tango turned into a drunken stagger home from the ballroom.

Nonetheless - they got through level 12 with two lives remaining, and played out an astonishing six levels of the Dark Mind before finally succumbing.

and look how close they were!

Nothing could live up to that, could it? Well, we gave it a go with Quantum. This is a favourite of mine and Ian's in particular, but hasn't seen the light of day in a while. I got off to a flier but was quickly caught. Ian surged ahead, before my dominance strategy saw me catch up, while Andrew somehow drew level as well. With all of us poised with a single cube to place, this particular three-way race went Andrew's way in a dramatic denouement - Andrew named it his dream before it happened, as he moved a 5 ship five spaces and needed to reconfigure his 6 ship to a 3 with a free action - he rolled a three, and Ian and I could only applaud.

Next up was Andrew's choice - Heaven and Ale, that classic game of brewmasters and ingredients needing to be as far up the track as they can so the position of the brewmaster can change the position of the ingredients by a certain amount depending on how far the brewmaster is itself and the poorest-performing ingredient defines your score although so does the brewmaster.

We were all a little ring-rusty and had to check the rules once or twice, but the game's seeming thinkiness suddenly drops away on the final round, which arrived sooner than we thought, somehow. Ian had neglected his brewmaster, whereas mine was at dizzying heights, but Andrew's middle path proved to be the winning one:

Andrew 29
Sam 28
Ian 16

With 11 looming we bashed out a quick game of Love Letter, where I fell foul of picking up the King in every round but one, and Ian found himself ousted before he could catch the man of the moment:

Andrew 3
Ian 1
Sam 0

Before we ended with the most ludicrous game of No Thanks that has possibly ever been played. Andrew picked up a card in the thirties, whereas I found myself tempted by two cards that were never going to combine. Another high card plopped out and Andrew took it - another lowish one for me. With both of us so card-happy, Ian ran out of chips, and it only got worse for him from there. Andrew had a seemingly inexhaustable stack of chips. I had an inexhaustable sense of optimism, and kept picking up cards before Ian could. Andrew needed the 32 to combine his high cards into one relatively harmless run. Ian picked it up because he had no chips. I needed the 27 to stop my score running away into the high reaches of acceptibility. It never came. The scores ended looking like we played the game all wrong - because we did.

Andrew 55
Sam 71
Ian 164

That's one hundred and sixty-four!

Brilliant.

Five wins in a row for Andrew if we include The Mind, which he shares with Ian. And I think we should.

Ian's final card combo

Ale's well that ends well

Tonight's games night was to have been a five-hander but the last minute apology from a potential debutant left us as a quartet. Sam was the host and myself, Ian and Martin were the eager gamers sodden by the rain.

But Ian was a late arrival, so we played a couple of quick games with Stanley. The first was a roll 'n' write game called Knister. This was Stanley's introduction to the genre and, by his own admission, he played pretty randomly.

The game is like a dicey Take It Easy, in that everyone writes the result of two dice into their 5x5 grid. The idea is to get pairs, three/four/five of a kinds, straights or full houses along the rows and columns and two diagonals. Sam had to explain to his son what a full house was.

The game itself was very odd, with the dice obeying the laws of probability to the letter, showing only results between five and nine. Martin even picked them up to check they did have ones on them. I suspect this meant we ended with some higher scores than average.

Martin 57
Andrew 54
Sam 52
Stanley 36

A fun game, but I'd like to play it again when the dice aren't so well behaved.

Next we needed a game to take us up to Ian's expected arrival and Stanley's bed time. Martin introduced us to Texas Showdown. It was Stanley's first trick taking game too. What an auspicious occasion. Two new game genres in one night.

This is a trick taker with a difference. Then again, aren't they all? In this game, the 60 card deck is split into eight suits. But the numbers are exclusive to each suit. For example, numbers 1-10 make up the black pistol suit. Then numbers 11-20 make up the orange cowboy boots suit (which look a bit like squid heads to me, but never mind). And each suit has fewer cards so that the highest grey buffalo skull suit runs from 70-74. Some numbers aren't included at all, which is why the highest is 74 in a 60 card pack.

So that's one twist. The other is that you have to follow lead but if you can't and you play another colour then that suit becomes another lead suit. For example, Martin plays blue but Ian has none so he plays green. Sam has the choice of blue or green to follow. If he can't and plays purple, then I have to follow blue, green or purple if I can. Ingenious.

And if that wasn't enough, the winner (and winning is bad in this game) is decided by the highest card on the suit which has most cards showing. Another example; in a round with three blacks and one grey, the highest black will win even though the grey will have the highest value. In the case of a tie, though, the highest value takes the trick.

The reason I'm going into such detail about the rules is that we kept commenting how amazing it was that new trick-taking games were still coming out with simple ideas no one had ever thought of before.

I loved it. It was so simple but so easy to screw over an opponent or, more likely, yourself that it had an appeal much greater than I'd expected during the rules explanation.

Sam looked like he'd sussed it immediately, going through the first round without picking up a single trick. But his clean sheet couldn't last and the game ended in a heart warming draw between father and son.

Stanley 9
Sam 9
Andrew 10
Martin 17

So after this Stanley climbed the wooden hill to Bedfordshire (with his sprained ankle and all) and Ian arrived shortly after.

We looked over Sam's games collection and Martin's suggestion of Heaven & Ale was quickly agreed upon. We set up, gave Martin a rule refresher and we were off.

Ian went entirely dark side early on, trying to build up some money making options. Sam began by picking up monks but then instead went for some low-value shed building instead. I forced myself to buy some monks, too, and after building a bit in the dark side, I focused on the lighter side of my game board. Martin focused on green, blue and yellow with a couple of monks thrown in there too.

As the game headed to a conclusion, we were all aware of the risk of a last round bun fight for the scoring tiles. Ian impressed us all with his monk's quarters and wide selection of barrels.

I got the two scoring tiles I needed and was especially pleased to learn I'd stopped Martin from making a mega move. I also managed to squeeze in a final shed right at the end. Sam sauntered on the final round, and did enough to fill his entire board. But Martin had a plan B. Unable to score his yellow tiles he picked up some barrels and this, along with his lofty biermeister, was the key in a victory every bit as convincing as the 5-2 score in the Liverpool-Roma game we kept checking on while we played.

Martin 49
Ian 28
Sam 24
Andrew 22

So there was time for one last game. Texas Showdown made another appearance and as we moved from a Michael Nyman soundtrack to a more suitable Johnny Cash backing, we delighted in the close escapes and cruel defeats of the game.

Martin 12
Ian 14
Sam 16
Andrew 18

And so we were done. The rain had stopped and, quite apart from the late hour, it seemed wise to leave while it was dry.

Mhing the merciless

Eight gamers squeezed into Joe's kitchen for some pre-Easter gaming fun. Along with Joe were Martin, Katy, Ian, Stuart, Sam, Andy and me.

We began with a nice communal game of Fuji Flush. Sam's opening hand was so bad the he ignored the usual rule of keeping them secret to show his neighbours: a veritable blue rainbow of cards below four. His luck changed slightly during the game, though, which is more than can be said for Katy.

Andrew 0 cards left
Andy, Martin, Stuart 1
Sam, Joe, Ian 2
Katy 4

At this point we embarked upon perhaps the longest discussion we've ever had about what to play next. Splitting into two groups of four was obvious, but who would be where and what was on offer?

Slowly, one game after another was brought to the table with varying degrees of reaction. Heaven and Ale was an early favourite but there were worries about the amount of space it would need. Joe then made an executive decision and got out the card table. With the chance of a card game on offer, Martin quickly moved his chair and sat beside it. He even grabbed onto it and drew it towards him, making him even more snug.

With more room on the large table, Heaven and Ale became the clear front runner and, in an effort to avoid further procrastination, Sam was encouraged to set it up and see who was interested.

Katy seemed keen but didn't want to learn a big game so soon before her year-long absence. So it was me, Sam, Ian and Andy who set off on our monastic beer quest.

The other group began their card game trilogy with The Mind. This game of consecutive guesswork played out in silence, punctuated by muffled laughter. The only talking was between rounds when they discussed the previous round.

And there were plenty of rounds to discuss. They managed to make it to the Dark Mind where the cards are played face down. Katy wanted to pee, but carried on thinking that the game was about to end at any second. But it didn't. They survived one insurmountable odd after another and cleared round three!

At this point, Katy had to go to the toilet. Did this interruption ruin their flow? Or was the task too great to continue, since once she was back, they failed round four. But only by a narrow margin.

Then they played Krass Kariert, which I paid less attention to. All I recall is the occasional comment about how mean you could be to people.

Joe and Martin won
Stuart came second
Katy lost

Finally, they played Mhing, a card game version of Mah Jong. I kept hearing calls of "Chow" and "pung" but since I was now deep into the endgame of H&A, I didn't follow it. Joe helpfully suggested to me that "Fuck the green dragon" could be used as a blog title, and as I was jotting that down, Katy began the next round with the words "that is the south wind... from my anus." Since the pen was already in my hand, I thought I'd preserve it for posterity.

Katy 128
Martin 64
Stuart 32
Joe 8

The reaction to the game seemed positive, but mostly prompted a longing to actually play Mah Jong. Joe even brought out his briefcase-sized, slightly stinky, set for all to admire.

Meanwhile, in Heaven and Ale we were in the final stages. Or, for Ian and me, the death throes. Andy had overcome his slow start where his biermiester seemed unwilling to go anywhere in a hurry, and was now bearing down hard on the monktastic Sam. I, once again, failed to put together a money making machine.

Ian had a healthy looking board and spent most of round five sauntering round and completing a cheap shed, but then he couldn't get to the scoring tokens in time in round six. This meant for the both of us the final round involved leaping absurdly ahead just to score any points at all.

Andy and Sam were playing a much more measured game. They took their time in round six with money in the bank. Andy managed to complete both sides of his board, to our amazement. He tried to insist that he didn't know if that was a good thing or not, but he did so in the tone of voice of a man sitting in front of a five course meal trying to tell people that it might not fill him up.

Sam played his usual monk-heavy game and with a very highly placed biermiester, he did enough to see off the challenge from the young upstart Andy.

Sam 49
Andy 40
Andrew 23
Ian 18

Actually when we ended, Mhing was still someway off completion, so we banged out a few quick games. For Sale was first, with some peculiar tableaux of cards whose values were all pretty equally shit. People picked them up for nothing usually with me as the main beneficiary. And then, when real high cards came out, everyone overpaid for them. Everyone except me. What I'm saying is my pile of cash pushed me from distant second into first.

Andrew 70
Andy 68
Sam 58
Ian 44

Then we played a couple of games of Fuji Flush. The first can only be described as Friendly Fuji Flush, as we seemed to follow the cards on the table rather than ruin them. It was the first game of Fuji Flush to have a sense of community, someone remarked. It was also very short, with Sam getting rid of his six cards in six rounds.

Sam 0 cards left
Andy and Andrew 2
Ian 3

Then we played a more typical spoiling game. It lasted longer and, if I'm being honest, was more fun. There's a moral in there, somewhere.

Andrew 0 cards left
Ian and Sam 1
Andy 2

Now we were all back together again and we decided on Dead Man's Chest to finish us off. This was Stuart's first game so we explained the rules to him (not that that's helped in the past). And we were off!

Andy was out first, since he merely passed on the chest, raising the bid by one. He never even looked at the dice. It could be considered an audacious tactic but the truth was he wasn't keen on the game. After that...

Joe out by accidentally looking
Stuart out to Kathy's bid of Dead Man
Martin out to Katy's blind bid of 1-1
Ian out to my challenge
Katy out wrongly challenged my 5-5
Andrew out when Sam challenged me
Sam wins!

And with that, we drew the curtain on another night of entertainment. Thanks to Joe for hosting and to everyone else for their company.

Bashing the Emperor

A 7.30 start in theory became a slightly more staggered affair tonight. I was first, prompt and on time, and we were expecting Joe and Katy shortly with Martin at 8.00 and Ian at 8.45. Sam set up the oddly named Viva Java: the coffee game: the dice game as a filler until Martin got here..

But Katy and Joe were a little late so we didn't get the rules explanation underway for a while and just as we were starting to murmur about how interesting it looked, Martin turned up, fifteen minutes early! Viva Java: the coffee game: the dice game was put away since it didn't play five. Pity. I had enjoyed saying "Viva Java: the coffee game: the dice game."

In its place we played Sakura. This Knizia game involves trying to be as close to the Emperor as possible without actually colliding into him (which gave us the phrase now adorning this week’s blog entry). Each player plays a card simultaneously, and carries out the orders on it, be that move the Emperor, or yourself, or the furthest forward or back.

It's a little gem of luck pushing and screwage, as players try to put themselves at the front but not so close that would put them in danger if the Emperor took a couple of steps back. I was pleased to win, especially so when I found out that Katy was under the impression that she had come comfortably in first.

Andrew 12
Katy 10
Joe 7
Sam 6
Martin 5

After this delightful episode, we wondered what we could play until Ian arrived. We chose Zero Down, the game of picking up cards to achieve a scoreless hand.

As I recall, Martin was quickest to knock and not necessarily to his advantage. I thought I did well. At least, much better than before. I still came last, though. On the other hand, Katy discovered that another sure win was spoilt right at the end.

Joe 13
Katy 13
Martin 21
Sam 22
Andrew 23

We ended when Ian arrived and we reorganised into two groups of three. Ian, Martin and Katy played Azul while Sam, Joe and I had a Heaven and Ale rematch. I had actually been hoping this would be suggested, since I couldn't stand having the humiliation of the last game hanging over me.

I began the game scoring categories early, on the assumption that although they wouldn't score as much, I needed to get something on the board. Sam went for monks and Joe catapulted his Brewmeister up the score track with a low scoring shed.

I just read that last sentence back. Frankly, I'm amazed that board games are as popular as they are.

Meanwhile, on Azul, Katy had had a nightmare start. Her slow beginnings turned into a becalmed section midgame followed by a bit of a lull at the end. Ian, though, surged into contention and scored something like 30+ points in the last round to give Martin something to worry about. But Martin had the bonuses from three complete colours to see him home.

Martin 101
Ian 97
Katy 62

We were still midgame, so they began Krass Kariert, a card game of playing increasingly good hands. Or something. To be honest, most of the game and the accompanying conversations were completely opaque to me. I had no idea what was going on. They ended when we finished our game, and it stood (albeit unfinished)

Ian 2
Katy 2
Martin 1

Heaven and Ale finished with a sudden dash for glory from me. On the final round I was very single-minded and selfish, as I jumped from one scoring token to the next, triggering bonus cards and, eventually, barrels. Joe had to skip half the board when he saw this, just to grab the last token. Sam, I think, picked up tiles to finish off areas at his leisure.

Sam's early dominance was too great for me to overhaul. Joe finished by admitting that the game still hadn't quite clicked with him.

Sam 28
Andrew 27
Joe 10

Now Joe bowed out for the evening, despite it only being ten o'clock. A shocking decision but, in his defence, he had driven all the way from Totnes to be here tonight. Fair enough.

As a five piece, we chose Voodoo Prince. A very excellent and very mean trick taker from The Knizia. Everyone got shat on, except Martin who avoided going out first or last all game. However, despite her one failed round, Katy scored top points in three out of the five rounds and came second in the fourth for a narrow win. But spare a moment of sympathy for Ian who started one round with a four black and found that everyone either undercut him or couldn't follow suit so he won that trick, sending him out of the round. Vicious.

Katy 45
Martin 44
Andrew 33
Sam 33
Ian 24

Then, despite the late hour, we craved one more game. The Mind is advertised as being for two to four players. But why not five, we asked. Using the declining rate of rounds according to number of players, we decided that six rounds was an appropriate number for five players. It was a triumph and someone needs to tell the designers that they're selling themselves short.

Round one was easy, since Ian had 2 and Sam had 100. We lost a life in round two, but battled through a fraught round three unscathed. In that round, Sam and Katy both moved to place a card at the same time causing a significant pause for thought, and later I had to move fast to get my 53 under Katy's 54. It ended in fine style with 78, 82, 85.

Then round four was cleared without loss of life, despite ending 94, 95, 98. But our luck hit a pothole in round five, where we lost two lives, perhaps distracted by Katy's pronunciation of "6nimmt" as "6nimpt". At this late hour and under this kind of pressure, we found that hilarious.

We cleared round six with the loss of only one life, and so we set off into the Dark Mind with two lives still intact. This level of challenge is an absurd idea. Yet tantalisingly possible. You play as normal, except you play each card face down. How do you know how far to 100 you are? Read the atmosphere. Take your psychic bearings and then hope for the best.

To our delight, we cleared round one! But we failed on round two, losing our last two lives. Regrettably, we still had a shuriken card we could've used, but didn't.

And so, at half past eleven and with me thinking Joe might have done the right thing, but pleased I got to experience five-player The Mind, we set off home. Thanks all, for another special evening.

Battered and Bruges

This week's gaming bonanza coincided (approximately) with Katy's birthday. Since the actual day wasn't for another two days, the festivities were kept to a bare minimum: cake a card and the vague offer of a game of Yokohama.

There were between eight and ten of us this evening, namely: Adam and Hannah (the hosts), Judith (Hannah's mum), Sam, Joe, Katy, Ian, Martin, Stuart (a friend of Martin's) and me.

We began with eight of us around the big table (all of us minus Hannah and Judith) for a rousing game of Fuji Flush. Stuart started well, getting down to two cards in next to no time. But  soon after, Joe got down to one card and then before anyone had worked out how best to stop him, he pushed through for the win. Sam grimly accepted that, in this life, his super power appears to be the ability to pick up only the very lowest cards from a randomly shuffled deck.

Joe no cards left
Martin, Stuart, Katy, Andrew 2
Ian, Adam 3
Sam 4

This was followed by delicious cake, courtesy of Hannah, before we split into three groups.

Cake! Split into somewhat more than three.

Judith was tempted into a game of Team Play with Adam, Hannah and Katy. Soon after the game began, Judith remarked "I'm already getting frustrated," and a laugh of recognition spread across the room. It could almost be the motto of board gamers everywhere. That game ended...

Hannah and Katy 30
Adam and Judith 21

On the big table, six players played two games. Martin, Stuart and Ian played Azul. I didn't follow it, despite sharing the same space, but Ian was in full pessimist mode mid-game and couldn't dig himself out by the end.

R to L: Team Play, Azul, Heaven and Ale

Martin 95
Stuart 67
Ian 49

Joe, Sam and I chose Heaven and Ale. I was keen to defend my title, but instead found myself making rookie errors while Sam, free from Explainer's Curse, played an exemplary game, ending with six large barrels.

Sam 40
Joe 17
Andrew 11

Team Play and Azul ended at more or less the same time so, without Judith, they rearranged into two new groups.

Stuart was tempted by the artwork on Eggs Of Ostrich, so he, Ian and Katy played a game.

Katy 14
Stuart 7
Ian 5

Meanwhile, Hannah, Adam and Martin battled through The Mind all the way up to level nine. But Hannah was counting under her breath. Apparently, this meant something but I, in my ignorance of the game, didn't understand the importance of this. (Actually, now I've played it, I'm still don't see how it's a viable option for victory but oh well.)

Then Heaven and Ale finished and more groups were shuffled. Adam, Ian and Sam went for the (in my opinion at the time) insane option of Calimala with its daunting 75+ minutes game time on the side of the box. And that was without factoring in the rules explanations. Hats off to them, though, they cracked through it at lightening pace, zipping around European cities (hence this week's tenuous blog title). The ending must've been tense since, when the scores were counted up, Sam had just squeezed a win. This caused a joyous declaration of "In your face, Hillmann!" from the victor who had just survived some major spoiling tactics from Adam.

Sam 33
Adam 32
Ian 28

While all this was happening, Katy, Stuart and Martin played Hit Z Road. I know very little about this game except that Martin tried his best to avoid zombies.

Katy 12
Martin 7
Stuart died "but did well," according to Katy.

On the blue coffee table, Hannah, Joe and I played Zero Down which is a simple game of having a hand of nine cards and drawing cards from a common source of five cards, and also discarding into the same source so it always remains at five cards. The aim is to score least. Each denomination (1-8) scores its value in your hand, ie a pair of eights scores eight. As does one eight or three or four. But five eights get you no points at all. Equally, five in the same colour (of which there are seven) also gives you no points.

It's a tricky game. Unless you're Hannah, who scored 4 points, 0 points then 1 point in each round to win the game comfortably.

Hannah 5
Joe 26
Andrew 48

Then Hannah retired to bed, so Joe and I played The Mind. This simple game of putting your cards down in numerical order but without speaking is a surprisingly exhausting ordeal.

We made it all the way up to level twelve and, with a little more courage, might have cleared that final level too. But we were proud of our efforts, especially round ten which ended with the cards 93, 96, 97, 99 and 100. Joe did try to argue that losing your last life meant you had one more left, like in video games, but Martin wasn't having any of it.

Now we were all together we finished with 6nimmt. Any reservations about the late hour to start the game were eased by the sight of Joe crashing into a death spiral in the first round, ending with 46 points. At the other end of the luck spectrum, Martin had 1 point and Katy had 2.

In the second and final round (Joe was worst player twice in a row) Adam and Ian, sitting side by side, both scored a clear round. Not enough to win the game, as it happened, but enough to give Katy a moment of doubt. But only a moment.

Katy 10
Adam 12
Martin 14
Ian 15
Stuart 39
Andrew 42
Sam 46
Joe 74

And, with that, we were done. Thanks to the hosts for hosting and for cake. And thanks to Joe for a lift back in his spacious new car.

Heaven and Ail

Last night the games were in effect. 

Chris, Ian and Andrew hovered around the table as we debated Heaven and Ale, Calimala, or some undecided other. It was Ian who settled matters, saying he'd like to try Kiesling and Schmidt's game of beer-brewing again. Andrew and I had played a two-hander on Monday, so it was only new to Chris. We breezed through the rules and hopped to it. 

Yeah, hopped.

The broad ins and outs of H+A were covered in Tuesday's post, but we discovered that with four the game plays very differently than with two or three. There are 6 rounds (instead of 3/4 for two/three players) and spaces are at a premium. Not really thinking ahead, both Ian and I triggered some early scoring that seemed to set us up well, but turned out to be the mere red carpet for Andrew and Chris to saunter down as they timed things much better.

Timing is key even in a head to head with Heaven and Ale, but it felt even more so now, as those big leaps along the track for a monk or a scoring marker meant leaving much behind for others to hoover up. But on the other hand, everyone was making those big leaps because scoring markers in particular felt like the keys to the kingdom. 

Andrew gazes down at his competitors

I also noticed that Ian and I played a steady stream of tiles to both sides of our hill (shady side, when activated, gets you money - sunny side moves those precious ingredient markers up the track). In contrast Chris populated his shady side with big numbers, and Andrew was working in the sun with 1s, 2s and 3s. This specialising seemed to serve them well, though I'm not sure that was the only reason we got left behind. This game continues to intrigue, and as on Tuesday Ian could be heard muttering "Weird" as the final round moved into view.

It might not be screwage but there's a lot of inadvertent dickery too. Five times Ian - left of me - took what I was after. And everyone felt that sting at some point. We knew the fight was between Andrew and Chris, and I must admit I though Chris's impressive hoard of barrels would see him crowned Best Boozed-Up Monk. But I was wrong!

Andrew 42

Chris 38

Sam 22

Ian 18

Great game! 

We continued the boozy theme with the only other Andreas Schmidt game I know - Polterfass! 

Everyone knew this one so we hit the inns. Except I kept walking into the door, and reeling around in a daze - going low when I should have gone high, and (many times) going high when I should have gone low. The scores at one point stood at 52-49-48 for the others, while I languished in single figures or less. 

Then Ian was suddenly poised on 74 points and Andrew realised that to catch him he needed to roll big - very big. He pushed and pushed... and it wasn't enough. Ian claimed the victory - although Andrew had at least done enough to snatch second place from Chris. Meanwhile I was back in the twenties. 

Lots of beer-based fun. Thanks chaps.  

Mind over Mutter

This week's Tuesday GNN saw a reduced table, with long-term absentee Andy suddenly unable to make it and Andrew, our usual blogger, also having to drop out. That meant there were five of us sat around my (Sam)'s table - Joe, Katy, Ian and Martin. At the start we were also joined by Stan and Joe, who requested Fuji Flush. We accepted the challenge, and the memory is foggy now but I think Katy won, with everyone else stuck on one, two or three cards.

That appetiser done, Joe (-little Joe) went up to bed and we split into two groups. Martin, Katy and Stan took on Martin's new co-operative game, The Mind, which Martin insisted was 'excellent'. More on that later.

At the other end of the table I talked Ian and Joe through the rules of Heaven and Ale, undergoing the usual heckling from Martin as I did.

Having already discovered that both Martin and I played a rule wrong on our first (separate) debut games, we now discovered that Martin had been going around the board anti-clockwise instead of (correctly) clockwise. He was furious, and vowed he'd never let anyone teach him a game again. For a moment, anyway - then he went back to laughing about The Mind.

Heaven and Ale is in theory about monks brewing. In actuality the theme is gossamer-light, and it's mainly about getting hexes and monks and triggering them. Or activating them. The rules aren't entirely clear on that and apparently there's a whole thread on BGG about it. Players move their piece around the central board for a set number of rounds, buying things, and can choose - more or less - when to trigger what of the developing brewery on their home board. It can be quite head-scratchy, especially on a first play, and Ian kept muttering that it was 'weird'. Joe was more enamoured, but as Stanley's bedtime arrived and the series of Mind games wrapped up, we agreed to play an abridged version with one less round.

My previous play-throughs and two-header against Andrew the night before saw me victor, though we all suffered heavily for want of a fourth round, when our carefully laid plans would no doubt have seen some exponential scoring shenanigans.

Sam 12
Joe 5
Ian 2

I wanted to play The Mind, having been witness to its hilarity for the past hour, when they'd played something like seven games in a row. But with five of us we were one too many, so instead we settled on another of Martin's new finds: Krass Kariert.

The unusual element of this trick-taker is that when you cards are dealt you cannot rearrange your hand - instead you must try and be rid of all your cards by playing singles, sets of two or three, or runs of two or three cards, with a poker-style hierarchy at play - but taking cards from your hand that must be adjacent! If you can't take a turn, you can add a kind of 'substitute' card into your hand (everyone starts with two of these) but if you're out of substitutes and still can't go, you're bust and lose the round. The other way to go bust is to be the only player left with cards. There's a couple of rogue cards too that add a bit more unpredictability. It was a clever game, played uncleverly by me:

Katy and Joe 2 lives left
Martin and Ian 1 life left
Sam loses.

There was some loose talk of Voodoo Prince but instead it was a third new Martin find we played - a Knizia called Zero Down. The deck is made up of many colours of cards numbered 1-9. "All the colours of the rainbow!" exclaimed Katy, until Joe pointed out one of them was grey.
"-Ian's rainbow" she corrected. I think it was around this point Ian started drinking whisky.

In Zero Down each player begins with nine cards and five are laid face-up on the table. On your turn you simply swap a card in your hand for one on the display, and what you're trying to do is create a hand that scores the fewest points possible. All cards of the same number in your hand only score once (i.e. three sevens only costs you seven points) and if you get five of a kind, in number or colour, that's worth zero. The ideal hand is five colours overlapping with five of a number - scoring you zero, at which point you can instantly end the round! If that doesn't happen, the round ends after the second person passes - choosing not to swap at all. I was one card away from a zero hand at one point, but Katy - to my left - claimed it before I could! But no-one could keep up with Martin:

Martin 29
Joe 39
Sam 42
Katy 59
Ian 71

There was now a game of guilt-tripping Joe into giving people a lift, which got very confusing when it overlapped with the game of Katy wanting to go home, as well as the game of everyone being interested in playing The Mind. I did point out Joe wasn't obliged to give anyone a lift, but by then Katy had her coat on and Martin had sensed Joe's defences crumbling.

Appropriately, we then played The Mind.

The artwork is interesting, and when Joe asked if the game was about electrocuting rabbits, Martin said Yes, and throwing shurrikins at them. "Just like my youth" reminisced Ian.

The Mind shares a lot in common with The Game, if anyone remembers that. In The Game players co-operatively try and shed all their cards (numbered 1-100) by dumping them onto piles that either ascend or descend. There was a nice little twist about 're-setting' the piles but it was otherwise kind of forgettable. In The Mind, players have the same challenge of shedding cards, but there's one pile, no shared knowledge, and no communication once the round begins. Instead it's all about waiting, and deciding when the right moment has arrived for you to play your card so you're not rushing ahead of someone who may have a lower card, but getting in there before someone with a higher one.

Level One is easy - each player has only one card each. But in subsequent levels the card count climbs, and it gets much easier to mis-time your interventions. When you get a series of close numbers out in the right order, there's a palpable sense of joyous relief.

We lost three times in a row,  and I can understand how multiple earlier attempts also ended in failure. Ian's increasing inebriation added an extra dimension, but as far as our success rate went, it was pretty much irrelevant. Great game. And a great night! I love Heaven and Ale. I think The Mind is a work of genius.