Two noes for triangulation

 This Tuesday i walked to Sam's place past a set of.chalk drawings on the pavement, where someone had scribbled messages to any passerby. One seemed particularly apt, so i arrived ar Sam's with the sense that today's games had an air of destiny about them.

There were seven of us, The host, Sam and Joe, Adam H, Katy, Martin, Pete and myself. We consider a big communal game to kick us off and Triangulation was suggested, only to receive two swift vetoes from wordgamephobics Adam and Katy - giving us the blog's title.

Instead, we split into two factions. Joe, Sam and Adam played Rebuilding Chicago. This looks like the sensible half of the table, as it looks like a mass of complexity with each player’s area looking like a cardboard spreadsheet. 

Pete, Katy, Martin and me play Maya. This, too, is a thoughtful eurogame like Rebuilding Chicago but as we play, we dub various moves as "sacrificial  peppers” and “spunking our potatoes,” doing our best to make it sound silly.

We had little idea about how to approach this game. Early on, Martin grumbles about how bad he's doing. “How can you tell?” asked Katy as she grooved along to T Rex. Katy’s early good mood could be down to how well she was doing, picking up 75 points in the first few rounds. Martin tried to keep up while Pete and I kept each other company with less that 20 points.

Katy promises “the move of the century” before she admits it actually isn't that great at all. I am mocked for how long I'm taking over my turns, especially when I fall into a distant last. We never get to see Katy’s move of the century since it is ruined by Martin. “What am I going to do with all these fucking gourds?” she cries.

As The Blue Nile drifts from the Bluetooth speakers for a few songs, Pete takes the lead! He’s timed it perfectly since the game is almost done and there’s no time to react.

Pete 140

Katy 128

Martin 123

Andrew 90

Since Rebuilding Chicago is still half an hour from completion, we play Gang Of Dice. This dice rolling game was a burst of fun, as we react with amazement at how our rolls failed/succeeded.

Pete 77

Martin 47

Andrew 21

Katy 17

We then have a quick one round game of Jungo, that Pete wins comfortably. Martin remarks that he finished with more cards than he started with.

At this point, Rebuilding Chicago finishes. 

Adam 174

Sam 154

Joe 138

With everyone all together, I felt that this is the best time to bow out and have an early night, so I do. Thanks all.

*                    *                    *

The door had barely shut on Andrew when Martin was coaxing the remaining six into a game of Mongoose Poker, a title so gleaming new that it's not even made its way onto the BGG database yet. Seemingly inspired by The Gang, this game sees everyone trying to predict the strength of their own (unseen) poker hand. Unlike The Gang, it's competitive. And unlike The Gang, you can't see your own cards, only everyone else's. 

There's the deal, the flop, the turn and the river, like a standard game of Texas Hold'em. But between each phase players get to play and information-gathering card from their hand that the other players will answer for you. These are all about maths and logic and appear to be simple. But they didn't account for our collective capacity for bewilderment. 

If the answer's yes, orient the card towards yourself. 

If it's no, have it face everyone else. 

Katy was first to confess her confusion, not helped by her desire to decode the infographics instead of just reading the text. Then Adam admitted that he didn't have a clue about anything, and Joe, now on his fourth pint of beer, began serenading Martin with damning comparisons to The Gang. "Jesus Christ" Martin said to the room at one stage, before clarifying he wasn't directing it at Joe, whose turn it was. 

At the end of each round (-there are three) you can both guess at your cards (a point per correct guess) and guess your overall position, which scores - assuming you guess correctly -  according to the points on the cards you used to glean information, which also establish an initiative order. IT was all too much for Joe, who said he had some feedback for the designer. "What's that?" Martin said. 
"Has he played The Gang?" said Joe.

But Joe rallied from his mid-game slough to claim joint third with myself and Katy. Martin was a clear winner, with Adam back in 'fourth' as he happily called it. 

Martin 13
Pete 11
Katy/Joe/Sam 8
Adam 3

After the highs and lows of Chicago and Mongeese, Adam left for home and as a quintet we inevitably set up So Clover. Joe and I were on the whisky at this point and memories are a little fuzzy, but I do recall my disappointment that the answer to cows wasn't the one we wanted. 

I think was also around here that Joe began his soliloquy about being victim of co-ops 4-for-3 beer promotion; only because he'd now drunk them all he insisted on called it the 3-for-4 promotion instead. I should really have stopped giving him whisky at this point. 

Joe and I were both also victims of some mild portobello nonsense and Martin struggled with his combo of jelly/temple, eventually plumping for ruined as a clue. As we speculated in silence, Joe murmured 'ruined octopus' happily to himself, like a psychopath perusing the menu at a dark-web restaurant. 

22/30, with Pete's ass for horse/clown a nice clue.

Katy now had to go and Pete and Martin also made for the door. But when they saw Joe and I setting up our clovers again they found themselves sitting back down and uncapping the pens of destiny. Again I went first and again I fell short of a six, with a self-portobello of sorts, having not spotted that cross went with my clue of stitching. But after that it was sixes all around, with Martin's Minecraft for cube/place and Joe's Martini for evening/lemon being amongst the highlights. 

It was now around 11.30pm and for us old crumblies, even whisky-infused ones, that meant bed was calling. 

Mille Fury

With a multitude of people unable to make Tuesday games for various reasons, including being elsewhere in the country or watching the football, it was a relatively small attendance. With Anja and Steve volunteering to host, Martin and I (Ian) headed up the short distance up the Bristol-Bath Railway path - there was a moment where it looked like we might have a fifth attendee as Adam cycled past, but he was on his way to watch the aforementioned football. Still, 4 is a fine number for games.

When we arrived though, Anja was settling Lennon to bed, and Louis, having recently turned into an actual teenager, was too busy with email admin relating to his VR headset to play stuffy old boardgames, so we were temporarily a three. Martin, Steve and I played Jungo first – classic Jungo rules, not the Hachi Train variant. Fate smiled on me as I had some very lucky cards and after picking up some played cards was able to play 7 ones in a single turn. My luck meant I reached the winning condition of 2 fairly swiftly.

Ian – 2

Martin – 0

Steve – 0

We then played an edition of Timeline – I can’t recall the exact theme, but it just seemed to be “events”, but again fate smiled on me as one of my cards was “The Extinction of Dinosaurs” which seemed such an outlier compared to anything else it felt like cheating. Steve and I both got rid of our cards in the same round. We decided to guess at the remaining card “First Superhero” in a homebrew tiebreaker, whoever guessed the closest would win. I guessed 1936, only slightly earlier than the actual year of 1938.

Ian – no cards left

Steve – no cards left

Martin – 1 card left (I think)

Having settled Lennon Anja was finally free to play games. If it had been Christmas, Anja’s red-and-white arm cast (following a nasty fall down the stairs) would have been very festive, but alas we’re in May. After some brief gaming debate we settled on an old favourite, Mille Fiori.

It was a strange game in some ways, lasting maybe a tad longer than expected but full of twists, and the Townspeople areas relatively untouched for most of the game. Martin had an early lead, but after a slow start I was the first to reach 100 points. Martin scored big in one round and rocketed back ahead. Anja played a steady game throughout though and was able to pull into a comfortable lead when her early placements started allowed to start scoring bonuses. 

There was a lot of swearing with numerous utterances of “bollocks” and Steve, seemingly stuck languishing at the back, could only say “fuck you all” after finding the spaces he wanted to play in repeatedly blocked.

Anja’s consistent approach proved victorious, and Steve regained a lot of ground towards the end for a close finish.

Anja – 205

Martin – 188
Ian – 188
Steve – 178

Next up was Catan – On the Road. This card-based twist on Catan has seen a few plays recently, and it’s good fun. At one point during his trade Steve asked, “Does anyone have a sheep?”, and when Anja offered the said sheep Steve responded, contemplatively “So, you’re offering a sheep?” as if the offer wasn’t the exact request resource. It amused me, anyway.

It became very clear that Martin was going to win on his next turn, unless we could stop him. We tried, and Steve agonized over his final choice but couldn’t catch up to Martin, who ended the game as expected.

Martin – 7
Steve – 6
Ian – 5
Anja – 3

Steve retired at this point, leaving Anja, Martin and I to play a final game of Misfits. I do wonder if playing an arm in a cast would hinder Anja slightly, and a couple of tower collapses on her go seemed to suggest this could be case, but I also experienced a collapse leaving Martin to dispose of his pieces with relative ease. As usual, Misfits gave rise to wonderfully pleasant constructions best represented with pictures.

And with that Martin and I headed back to Greenbank, another lovely games night. Thanks all.

Green Bum

As I drove towards Greenbank Cemetery last night, the rain came lashing sideways in waves, ending a period of relative calm. I texted Adam suggesting he might want to abandon his plans to cycle, and he agreed: joining Martin as they both materialised out of the rainy night to climb into the car. We set off for Steve and Anja's, where our host was Louie. Now accustomed to nerds coming in with bags of games, he furnished us with drinks, glasses and bowls for snacks. Soon enough Anja appeared as well, and then Pete, and after a brief discussion of comics Louie chose our first game: Telestrations. 

Oddly Martin had never played this, but Louie talked us through the rules and we set off on a drawing and guessing spree. Notable highlights were Martin's drawing of a needle in a haystack being identified by Anja as 'pin' - she ignored the haystack - and Martin's guess for 'grilled cheese' which hopefully gave nobody else the bad dreams I had. 

The scoring is kind of a nonsense, but for what it's worth Louie, Anja and myself took a joint win with 1.5 points each. Steve joined us for the last round, so as we pivoted to the evening's main courses everyone was already at the table. Anja, Adam and Pete chose Thurn and Taxis and myself, Steve and Martin went to Ape Town. 

Pete was new to Thurn and Steve new to Ape Town, so there was some Rules Mumblings for a little while before we struck out establishing a postal service/menacing simians. As is my habit - sorry - I lost track of the other game as I was laser-focused on trying to be a mafia monkey, succeeding in making the early running but becoming increasingly concerned about my lack of lemurs. 

My worries were well-founded. Though we clung onto Martin's coat-tails - or actual tail - for the majority of the game, he pushed his way forward in the finale far enough to take a pretty convincing win. 

Martin 100
Sam 89
Steve 73

Germany's network of postboxes was still being developed, so we blasted through a quick game of Jungo. Martin won this too, in pretty short order. 

Then we embarked on a brutal game of Misfits, with all of us collapsing the tower at different points - most agonisingly for me, it happened placing my very last piece. 

And when that happened we all had around ten pieces of wood each - almost as if the last 15 minutes had been a complete waste of time. As Thurn and Taxis was now packing up, we declared it a draw. I'll have to leave the German drama to the comments, as I was distracted by being clumsy and don't really recall any of the rules. I know Adam won though.

Adam 30

Pete 24

Anja 16

Astonishingly it was now late enough that our next game was our last: So Clover, of course! And a triumphant So Clover at that. Martin's Spinal Tap was almost portabelloed by Movie coming out, and Anja's clue of Gallery had us foxed for a while as well until we connected to the underwater elements in zoo/tunnel. Most contentious turned out to be my clue of Battle Axe for Dungeon/Accessory, as Steve felt manacles would be a better clue, and I said not all dungeons are sex dungeons, Steve. Martin fleetingly thought one might go in fancy dress to a poetry party, before blinking in surprise at his own thought process in a way I haven't seen before. 

Regardless, look at this! 36 points. 

Adam had been first to finish, and whiled away his waiting time trying to draw an actual clover leaf on the back of his clover, before deciding it looked more like a bum. I"m presuming he added the hair afterwards. To be honest, there are a couple of other things it looks like now. 

 

On that physiological bombshell, we called it a night. 

The Third of March

The 3rd of March 2026 was a Tuesday, so that means it was a time for games, and so convened at Anja and Steve’s. As well as the hosts, the expected gamers included Adam H, Martin, Paul (a visiting friend of Anja & Steve’s), Pete, and myself (Ian), and we also expected young Louie to join us for an early.

Whilst we waited for everyone to arrive or finish parental duties, we had a quick game of 6 Nimmt. It’s been a while since I’d played this once perennial game, so it was good to revisit. We were playing Adam’s Walking Dead themed copy, and I think somebody pondered that bullets were more thematic than the bullheads found on the classic design.

Regardless of theming I had started to slip into a typical death spiral. We ended the game early when others had arrived at the table at the scores were thus:

Adam 10

Paul 16

Martin 27

Anja 36

Ian 43

 

As our numbers had increased, we split into two groups. Martin enticed me, Pete and Steve to try out a new acquisition, Maya – so new that we had sprues to punch. On the other end of the table, Adam, Paul, Anja and Louie set up Cottage Garden. I didn’t really follow much of what happened in their game, but think it took longer to explain than Maya did.

Maya is designed by Gilbert & Benjamin, but if you’d said this was a Knizia I would have had no reason to doubt, as it did feel very much like a game from the prolific German designer. A tile laying game, it reminded me of Rebirth and Babylonia. The theme is that we’re cultivating various crops in the ancient Maya civilization, and the theme led to some interesting phrases being banded around, such as the chain of potato farms being referred to as both a “potato wall” and “the potato belt”.

I rather enjoyed it and put in a decent performance, but Martin proved victorious.

Martin 139

Ian 121

Pete 114

Steve 95 (ish, I forgot to get scores before we started packing away)

Cottage Garden was still ongoing, so we played a quick game of Jungo. I was first to shed my cards and won, with fortuitous timing as Cottage Garden was wrapping up. I can only apologise for my lack of notes, but the scores made it sound like a fairly close game for 2nd, 3rd and 4th, but Anja had a clear lead over the others.

Anja 51

Adam 43

Louie 41

Paul 40

 

As all gamers were present, we decided to mix things up and rotate groups slightly. Adam, Paul and Steve embarked on a 7 Wonders, whilst Anja, Martin, Pete and I tried the partnership version of Gazebo.

The partnership certainly added some interesting wrinkles. The game ends when one player has placed all their Gazebos, but the winner is decided by which pair has the fewest remaining once the game has ended. Players sit next to their partner and play continues in a clockwise fashion, and Martin demonstrated the value in setting up his partner, Anja, who getting her Gazebos down with alarming pace.

Pete and I couldn’t really keep up, and Anja had soon depleted her Gazebo stash. The scores were interesting, as whilst Anja had placed all 15 of her Gazebos, Martin had only placed 3. Pete and I had a more balanced split, as we had managed to play 5 each, but the victory was Anja and Martin’s

Anja / Martin – 12 Gazebos remaining.

Pete / Ian – 20 Gazebos remaining

7 Wonders had also drawn to a close. I had been too focused on the battle of Gazebos to pay heed, but the scores make it sound like a close run game.

Steve 52

Adam 50

Paul 48

After this we finished with a game of So Clover. Strictly speaking we had more players than the official player limit of 6, but Adam fashioned a makeshift clover on a notebook and away we went. Some clue highlights include “Halberd” for “Spicy” + “Axe”, “Longbottom” for “Wizard” + “Leaf”, but there was a bit of head scratching for “Spoor”. Fortunately, somebody had managed to remember that it was something to do with animal scent, which allowed us to eventually get to “Animal” + “Marker”.

It was all going extremely well, scoring 6 after 6, but alas we fell apart when trying to decipher Adam’s clues.

Strictly speaking though, as So Clover is only marketed as a 6 player game, you could actually claim this as a perfect 6 player victory…

And with that we stepped out into the night to make our various ways home (except for Anja and Steve who were already home, and Paul who was visiting.)

You are Dewan for me

 I arrived at Joe’s house to find Martin knocking at the door as I approached. Martin looked at me quizzically and asked “did I just walk past you?” I was dimly aware of someone having strode past me a minute or so ago so maybe he had.

We began the evening as a quintet, with three others expected along the way. I was introduced to Link City “the Martin Variant”.In this game, a player draws three (or four) city sectors into their hand and decides their location on an already existing city in such a way that we’re able to guess where they would go.

The Variant is in the fact that the person who knows the city sectors also choses where the coloured cones go as opposed to the official rule where someone else places the cones. It was fun trying to work out if Ian would put a 5-star hotel next to an Intelligence Headquarters or a Leisure Centre. The only issue with the Martin Variant is making sure you’ve properly hidden your choices before revealing the options, as Martin himself forgot to do.

Katy arrived during this game and even took part in a round, scoring only one point. I wonder if there’s a thing whereby new arrivals joining games always do badly. But actually, overall we did pretty well.

43 points

Adam H and Pete join us around this point and we split into two groups. Martin, Sam, Joe and myself play Dewan. Katy looked at her co-gamers and sighed “we’ll never agree on what to play”. She made an early bid for Lords of Vegas but instead Mlem was chosen. 

And what a game it was. Ian seemed hopelessly optimistic as he immediately loaded his Deep Space Double cat onto the ship, but he made it all the way there. In fact it was a very high scoring game, with the top half of the board heavily populated while the lower reaches were largely ignored. Ian got the Deep Space Twice token and towards the end of the game Pete noted that they’d been to deep space more often than they’d exploded. Amazing scenes.

Ian 47

Pete 42

Adam 37

Katy 33

As for Dewan, this was my first game but the rules are quite straightforward. Place settlements on the map and score according to criteria on your story tiles. As we played, bits of Joe’s table fell off and I asked if we were safe as we jammed them back on again.

Joe said “it’s quite stressful” (referring to the game, not his table which he didn't seem worried about) and it ended very close. Martin scored 22 points from his story tiles while I got points for separate groups of settlements. Only an unfair and totally arbitrary tie-breaker could separate us.

Martin 38 and more cards left in hand

Andrew 38

Joe 37

Sam 34

Next up for the four of us while we waited for Mlem to finish was Jungo. My second variant of the day: this was called Hachi Train, and the deck was made up of the cards from 1 to 8 and the “two value” cards to one side as a draw pile. When putting down a stronger hand, you have to pick up the cards you just beat. 

We didn’t finish the game, playing only two rounds, so we never found out the overall loser but, for the record, I lost round one and Sam lost the second.

Now everyone was together, I decided to take a bow and leave. Without me Ian, Adam, Joe and Sam played a tiny version of Azul which Ian won with an almost indecent margin of victory.

Ian 103

Adam 56

Joe 66

Sam 45

After this they failed five times at Yubibo.

Meanwhile Pete beat Martin and Katy at Mongoose before they played 1am Jailbreak.

Katy 8

Pete 5

Martin 4

Then they played So Clover twice. Some people must have left because Sam sent photos of five then four clovers.

Another special evening. Thanks all.

No balls on balls

There were six of us at my (Sam's) house last night, and we played a medley of new and (somewhat) old, with chief purchase culprits Martin, Joe and myself all introducing new titles. I sinned first, as Martin was first to arrive and I proposed we play Link City whilst we were waiting, as the others could chip in as they joined us. 

This is a co-operative venture not a million miles from So Clover, but rather than looking for word connections on a leaf, we're building a city from tiles. One player takes a turn being the mayor, who secretly assigns the three new tiles to the three locations chosen by the deputy mayor (ie player on the mayor's left), which are represented by the road cones. Then all the non-mayor players try to figure out what the mayor would have chosen. Public toilets next to the train station or the park? Consulate next to the bank? As the others arrived - Joe, Katy, Ian and Adam H - everyone took a turn. 

But despite triggering the bonus cone with our all-answers-correct early on, we serially failed to agree on the best-laid town plans. Correct guesses are placed where 'planned' whereas wrongly-guessed tiles still get placed, but in non-scoring locations: those with no orthogonal adjacency. In theory you can rescue the situation with subsequent turns, but we never looked in danger of doing so. After Adam pronounced the town population 'idiots' - we got all his wrong - Link City ended with us on 14 points, 6 below the cut-off for 'funky town' and well into the zone of disdain. 

We flirted with the idea of splitting into threes but then Joe coquettishly showed us YUBIBO, a co-op game that played six, and we felt why not, especially when we saw the sticks and balls in the box. 

In this game, each player has a colour and on your turn you flip a card which tells you which other player you're going to combine with to hold a stick - and using which finger. Players can only use one hand for the stick work, and the game swiftly escalates from curious to madcap. 

It's a tricky game to get action snaps of, but fortunately Little Joe (-now taller than me) was on hand to help out in the paparazzi department.

The goal is to get all the sticks airborne at the same time, a task to which we did not seem suited, collapsing at first six and then eight (I think) before we pivoted to the 'balls' version of the game, where instead of adding a stick, you can place a ball into the structure. Balls can't touch fingers or other balls!

Unfortunately we discovered this morning that each pair of sticks can only support a maximum of one ball, so our triumph evaporated overnight. Meantime though there were other triumphs to be claimed: Martin began teaching Joe and Katy his new game, the trick-taker Dr Science, and I ran through the rules of TwinStar Valley with Ian and Adam. 

Both took about an hour, but other than some audible scorn at the other end of the table I missed the empirical parameters of Dr Science as I was focused on the grave ramifications of fruit delivery in fictional future Norway. 

As with Railways of the World, we're building a shared network where players can use each other's routes at a cost. Unlike Railways, the destinations themselves - the markets - are also owned, but each one specialises in two kinds of fruit: deliver that kind there and you pay the owner a coin for each one. Deliver anything else and it costs you nothing, but the fruit must be sold instantly, rather than kept back for a later transaction - prices are constantly fluctuating depending on what is sold. 

The actions you take are on a separate board, bringing a slightly puzzly euro-flavour to it all, as players can and do get in each other's way on this board. We found it interesting and pretty fast-moving, with the caveat that as newbies we seemed to hit clutch points where someone was forced to grow (add fruit to the board) only for the next in line to instantly deliver it. Maybe it's all about those early routes. 

Ian 46
Sam 34
Adam 29

Martin had already won Dr Science:

Martin 30

Joe 27

Katy 24

And they were now playing Fives, so we started more town planning with Tower Up. 

I decided fairly early that I wasn't going to focus on bonuses but instead try and get lots of visible roofs. Then I noticed Adam was in contention for bonuses and had more roofs than me. Meantime Ian put his energies into the bonuses, and ended up with a whopping 19 points for them. It was enough for another victory:

Ian 53
Adam 49
Sam 45

Fives had now finished too. Once more, I missed everything at the end of the table, lacking Andrew's multi-tasking skills on this front. But I did make a note of the scores.

Joe 14

Katy 6

Martin 5

As Tower Up was concluding they played a couple of rounds of Jungo, with Martin and Joe taking one apiece as Katy called them names. She now said she would go home unless we played So Clover, so we did, twice. In the first attempt, we overcame our bafflement at one of Joe's clues (akubra) to gather a decent 31/36

Then in the second, we made an incremental improvement, scoring 32/36 instead. I liked Joe's bar for chocolate/weather, and Katy's initiative to invent a word (automusic) for violin/robot.

We now lost Adam and Katy to fatigue, sadly, but the remaining four felt with the hour not yet 10.30 there was time for another something or other. We settled on Take Time, another co-op, this time about playing a bunch of numbered cards around a sort of clock - largely face-down - and trying to make sure their values ascend around each segment. 

New to Ian, but it's not heavy on rules so we brought him in on Chapter 2 and kicked things off with a convincing win. The next clock - there are several - was rather more tricky, and took us several attempts. Then with clock number three we made surprisingly short work of it, ending the night with a collective victory. The rain from earlier was now thankfully gone, and shortly so too were the gamers. Fun night.