A series of unconnected events

Gamers gathered in Fishponds on a balmy April evening. Joe, Martin and I (Adam) arrived to find Steve and Anja engaged in emergency plumbing, so we introduced the kids to gambling with a quick game of Hot Streak. 

In Hot Streak players make two bets on which of four mascots will win each race or on a weird side bet (two mascots will be sprawled on the ground at the same time, one will fall off the track, etc). We got to see some of the cards to be used at the start of the game which seemed pretty good for Hurley (the hot dog). Then over each of three races we added one card of our own to spice up the race deck and the comedy began. 

In amongst the swerving and tumbling Hurley won every race, which left me confident as I'd backed him every time, but Joe's smart side-bets nudged him into second and Martin's risky play (you get extra reward for first place if you flip the betting slip to the "risky" side) galloped him to victory. 

Martin 62
Joe 59
Adam 57
Lennon 33
Louie 22

Steve and Anja (having defeated the toilet) arrived in time for a 7-player game of Just One. The game was a hive of cheating and treachery, notable for Louie and Lennon conspiring to put complimentary words into the mix. We only played 7 rounds, but somehow got a perfect score.

Anja took Lennon off to bed now and the rest of us turned to No Thanks. In spite of never knowing when it was his turn Steve put together a nice run and trounced us, not far from a positive score!

Steve -15
Adam -39
Louie -43
Martin -55
Joe -57

Anja returned and Louie reluctantly bade us goodnight as Whale Riders was set up. Molly the cat sulked on one end of the table (disappointed at the lack of real fish?) as the rest of us were distracted by Steve's choices of background music. Whale song gave way to Inuit throat singing and then on to whaling sea shanties - not really the vibe of the game at all. 

Joe was least distracted, managing to fulfill three contracts in one go and never really looking back. 

Joe 21
Adam 19 + more money
Martin 19
Steve 15
Anja 13

As we tried to decide on the next game Steve showed off his new glasses.

 

Bluffit was selected as a quickie which everyone had played before, but the rules seemed baffling to everyone, even Martin as he attempted to explain them. Everyone started with an identical hand from 1-10, then hidden bids and theft ensued as we competed for the previous hand's cards throughout the game.

Joe and Anja's bitter feud didn't work out for them. My strategy of only bluffing occasionally did.

Adam 65
Steve 50
Martin 49
Anja 42
Joe 35

We finished as ever with So Clover, notable for Anja's "Cruise" for Cocktail Demon and Joe's "78" for Attic Record. I was Portabelloed when Chameleon snuck into my "Camouflage" for Landscape Uniform and we only got 24/30. But we didn't mind because we'd all had a lovely evening.

Just F(Inis)hed

Here's a belated report of the January shenanigans back on the 4th from Pete!

I arrived to Steve and Anja's on the final Sunday before returning to work, still pretending it was full the Christmas holiday, to find a stack of games on the table for potential selection.

With a whole afternoon before us (there is some foreshadowing here) we (Adam, Anja, Steve & I) selected Inis. We took a little while on the rules, as Adam hadn't played before and the rest of us not for a while, and then started drafting our action cards.

Steve & I both chose to further delay getting into the action by passing our first turns, which Adam professed to be baffled by (pick your guess as to the endgame conclusion now).

The first part of the game seemed to mainly consist of Anja stocking one side of the board with citadels and repeatedly filling them with orange clans. Meanwhile Steve or Adam built some sanctuaries and Adam also held quite a few festivals. I'm not really entirely sure what I was doing. I recall feeling peturbed that I had to keep passing good action cards to Steve, but I don't recall achieving much with the ones I decided were better to keep 😂.

With time advancing we decided we had better pause to arrange dinner - which turned out to feature a succession of challenges including the initially chosen fish-and-chip shop being shut, and the backup choice requiring cash only, requiring various forays. Those of us in the house cleared Inis off the dining table to make way for for a very nice dinner.

After eating we then played Just One to include everyone - so now Lennon, Louie, Laura and Arthur to bring us up to eight.  We got a couple wrong early on but recovered to a fairly convincing win. I don't think I've played it with that many before and we seemed to eliminate less words by duplicating clues than I expected. In fact, I mainly remember it being useful that Adam and I had doubled up on 'diplomacy' as a clue for 'panda', as it turned out this would not have been a helpful clue..

Next Steve, Adam, Louie and I selected Tsuro. Adam and Louie stayed clear of trouble to start with while Steve and I went down one side. The timing worked well for me and I sent Steve off the board before nearly flying straight off of one corner. Fortunately I was able to turn round but then found myself heading for Adam. Meanwhile Louie had achieved a diagonal across to the far corner. Adam and I crashed straight into each other with Louie finishing the winner.

We then performed some successful tectonic shifting to bring Inis back to the table, and resumed with Anja's hoards of orange clustered around the capital and to one side.

The game did reach a climax in fairly classic Inis fashion. I reluctantly vacated the hills and managed to seize the capital, and together with a deed I briefly met one of the winning conditions by ruling over 5 clans. However I didn't hold it long enough to even take a pretender token as Anja and Steve both contested it.

It looked like Anja or Steve could potentially win, before we all realised that Adam had timed his plotting to perfection, making his bid for leadership just as everyone else had largely exhausted their action cards.

An excellent debut win, though long-term stability of ruling various quarrelsome clans in a hotly contested capital has to be questioned.. And where is the food going to come from, with hardly anyone left in the countryside?

We then finished with a fairly successful round of So Clover! - 6 on Anja's, and then 4 on everyone else's. I think my favourite was (Steve's?) escalator for ladder /luxury.

Another very fun afternoon, but then back to work - hence finishing the blog taking a while!

Rolling with Alan Moon

It was a busy night in Fishponds with Joe, Katy, Martin, Mel, Ben, Anja, Steve, Louie and me (Adam) in attendance. Louie had just finished school for the summer and so bed time had fortunately become somewhat negotiable.

We started off with the coloured-line-matching joy of Take it Easy (Joe had ten boards with him just in case) and Joe was elected caller. A few of the newbies (I think Louie and Ben hadn’t played before, perhaps Anja and Steve too?) missed calls which led to a human megaphone system to ensure the integrity of the game.

We thought about scaling up further and between the sets owned by Joe, Martin and Sam it sounds like we could get 30 players. Do we know 30 gamers?

Anyway, somehow Martin and I managed to play the exact same pattern, but inverted, for all except the last three tiles which meant we scored the same:

• Adam/Martin 173
• Joe 164
• Anja 157
• Mel 154
• Ben 145
• Steve 129
• Katy 121
• Louie 110
  

We then split into two with Katy, Ben, Martin Joe and I picking Oasis by Alan Moon (Ben wondered if the game required dice, and would we need to roll with it, and was then forced to repeat his joke for Martin’s benefit.) Anja, Steve, Mel and Louie went for Robot Quest Arena. I know little of this game except that Louie picked his favourite robot, the heavy-duty Crate, loaded it up with weapons (“I love Tesla Coils!”) and as usual battered his way to victory, clanking four kills along the way:

Metal action!

• Louie 28 
• Mel 21
• Steve 19
• Anja 17
  

Over in Mongolia Oasis consisted of a mostly-dusty map with a few bits of green sneaking in at the edges. Amazingly the 20-year-old game which Martin discovered in a charity shop had never been played and to everyone’s delight tiles needed to be punched out.

Can you tell which bits are camels?

To play the game each player would turn over 1, 2 or 3 cards from their stack of five (replenishing 2, 1 or 0 cards respectively) and then in turn order we got the opportunity to take someone else’s offering with the first taken becoming starting player next time.

The cards could feature grass, gravel or sand tiles (which we could add to the map to claim territory), camels (which claimed a different sort of territory - the roady-sandy bit in the middle), bonus multipliers and extra-card cards.

Martin claimed it wasn’t like Kingdomino, but it is a bit. Joe and Ben went for early camels, the rest of us going after tiles and trying to block each other in dastardly fashions. In the end Katy quietly built up a pile of ten gravel-multipliers, meaning her eight gravel tiles scored more than any other player in the game.

• Katy 124
• Martin 66
• Joe 58
• Adam 56
• Ben 46
  

While we waited for the robots to stop clanking into one another we got So Clover to the table. It would have been a perfect 30 except that we thought Meteorology was meant to be Storm/Rain when it was obviously Log/Rain. Sorry Martin.

• 28/30

Then everyone (except Louie, who finally had to go to bed) was back together for a slightly truncated Just One. The first two rounds featured bonus points aplenty as we had two duplicates in both. Martin was somewhat puzzled by Manure, but when Steve changed Brass to Ass it seemed to help. Throughout the game Lego Aragorn helped to balance the clues as we pushed the game to it’s limits.

Lego Aragorn. Helping.

We were on a winning roll until Joe was subjected to a field of obscurity – what would you guess for Quadrophenia, Ray, Ali, Redford, Entertainer?

What if we added in Tantric?

No?

Highlight this text to find out:

Sting

At that point we decided that was quite enough of that. I'm not sure what the final score was, but probably loads.

And with that we congregated outside for farewells and adieus until next week.

Putting on the Rats

 Another week, another trip over the M32 for our gaming fix. Adam and Hannah were hosting Martin, Ian, Joe and me. We began with Arthur too, for a quick Just One. We did surprisingly well. We never had more than one couple eliminated due to duplication. Arthur was never in danger of having his clues duplicated. For “belt” he wrote “knife” (because that's where you keep a knife) and for “Sahara” he wrote “deasert” and when Hannah rubbed out the erroneous A, Arthur carefully wrote it back in. And for “Godfather” he just drew a turd. “Obviously a reference to the third film,” I quipped.

With our variant of an extra point for guessing any duplicates, we actually got over 100%.

14 points in 13 rounds 

Then Arthur and Hannah left, after Hannah reminded me that eleven years ago I made her a dish with Kimchi. I was worried that she disliked it so much that she couldn't forget the date, but instead she told me that she now makes her own!

But now we were a five piece band of gamers so we got out Show Manager. This game has artwork ranging from the perfunctory to the ghastly. “Why does he have black lips?” asked Joe after picking up one potential star of his show.

The game involves buying actors for various productions. The better the stars, the higher up the score track it will go. But the twist is that no player has enough money so you have to exchange some of those points for cash which will inevitably send them back down the score track.

I started well, with two early box office smashes but that was before Adam got going and by the time we ended, he had three shows at the top of their score tracks.

Adam 55

Martin 41

Ian 36

Joe 32

Andrew 28

Next up was Mlem. 

This time we added in an expansion, and not just the dice arena - this expansion placed random bonuses (score points, gain an extra die or a satisfyingly old school “go forward X places”) if you land on certain values. And, remarkably, we got to Deep Space. Joe assured us that it had happened plenty of times when he’d played with his family (because, he explained, his wife and daughter “don’t know when to stop rolling”) and it happened to us. In abundance!

Not to me. I took the foolish option of really making sure of first place on the most distant planet with three cats, even if no one else was really bothered about it.

Joe played an interesting game, picking up a ton of points from the expansion. At one point he argued persuasively that a “+1 die” bonus means that you can go from your last die up to two die even though, technically, you use your last die and the +1 die should, strictly speaking, just get you back up to one. Then, having done that, he immediately left the mission with his saboteur cat, taking the extra dice he’d just gained us.

Joe 50

Martin 40

Ian 36

Adam 34

Andrew 24

Martin was appalled that he’d lost, despite getting to Deep Space twice. I rued my planet-only strategy.

It was late so we ended with So Clover. And what a classic. 

Despite the curious sight of Adam leaving his clover on the table while he thought about it, it was replete with great clues, especially Joe’s clue of “Sweating” for “Ammo/Thermometer” but maybe only I think it’s a classic because I got the “sweating bullets” link.

In the end, we got them all right, even squeezing through Ian’s difficult one right at the end.

30 out of 30!

And so we left. Thanks all. It was a beauty.

Fibonacci Secrets

With the family soon to move house, we joined Steve, Anja and Louie at Stepney Walk last night (Lennon was in bed) for the final time before they box up in earnest. Katy and I were a little late and arrived to find Adam H, Ian and Martin in a discussion about chairs. Louie went off to change into a onesie, Anja appeared, and we settled straight away into two groups, the hosts plus Ian and Martin playing Old London Bridge...

While the rest of us - belatedly joined by Laura, who formed a semi-co-op with Katy - went to battle in the Robot Quest Arena. 

This is apparently Louie's favourite game, maybe because of the lovely minis or maybe because of the moreish deck-building and rapid turns. But probably because he kicked the crap out of all of us, with only Katy and Laura getting anywhere close to competitive with him.

Channeling the anti-Martin, this is the first time in a long while I've heard anyone cry out that the game 'just isn't long enough'. It was for me though:

Louie 28

Katy and Laura 26

Adam 19

Sam 11

London Bridge was still ongoing/falling down (not actually sure what happens) and Louie had time for one quick game before bed. Despite its alleged 45mins playtime on the box, I was pretty certain we'd get through Tipperary significantly faster than that. Maybe the ticking clock is why I forgot to take pictures, but here's one I made earlier:

Over ten rounds players simultaneously add tiles to their bucolic Irish idyll, putting distilleries next to grain, lining up ruins to get towers and proliferating sheep with which to make jumpers/stew. There's a few different ways to score but a critical one is the fact your largest unbroken rectangle will get a point per square in it, something Katy had to be reminded of mid-game and spent the subsequent rounds in a state of crestfallen anxiety, occasionally casting mild aspersions at me.

Laura 89

Sam 86

Adam 79

Katy and Louie 61 each. 

While this was happening, Old London Bridge came to a conclusion!

Martin 54

Ian 44

Steve 42

Anja 38

Louie said his goodnights but Laura and Katy were both keen to go again on Tipperary, with Martin subbing in for our departee. Again, I didn't take any pictures, so here's another one from earlier, showing how tiles (a choice of two each round) get allotted, using a spinner:

While we polyominoed with intermittent cries of Banshee grief, the others played Misfits, and again, I neglected to snap pics! Sorry. I'm not even sure who won, but I think it was Steve. There was definitely a huge collapse at one point...

Over on our side of the table, Martin led the way on flocks for most of the game, but Katy herded some extras her way at the death to claim the biggest flock bonus. But with her geometric confusion now out of the way, she didn't even need it to claim the laurels!

Katy 89

Adam 78

Laura 75

Sam 69

Martin 68

Laura now left us as well and we shuffled seats, with Anja, Steve, Ian and Martin playing Gang of Dice. 

Whilst Katy and I took on the unenviable task of playing Adam at Ticket to Ride: Berlin. 

Somehow I managed to convince myself I was in with a shout, but I'd missed that Katy and Adam both had three tickets to cash in at the end. And unfortunately for Katy, she now realised she hadn't completed one of them. 

Adam 49

Katy 40

Sam 39

Fuelled by no more than resentment, jealously and immaturity, Katy and I both decided to pretend Adam hadn't won. But it got confusing when we couldn't agree on who had.

Meanwhile, despite "pissing around with a single die" (-Martin) Steve wrapped up Gang of Dice with a very convincing win. 

Steve 73

Ian 51

Martin 29

Anja 9

"Not my game" said Anja. 

We decided to round off the night with So Clover before realising nobody had So Clover. Similar confusion -mostly on my part - about Fun Facts followed, before we settled on a very funny episode of Just One, punctuated by Martin's slightly lewd grunting noises whenever he felt someone could use a prompt. 

Steve's first word as guesser was 'Series' and two of our clues (Television) were duplicates, leaving him with the following:

Steve said 'sequence' aloud, but not in a way that sounded like his final guess. Apart from his occasionally wailing "Thrones?" at the ceiling, this ten-minute chapter of the evening was largely Steve's Existential Crisis and the rest of us being Increasingly Unsympathetic. 

Sorry Steve. He gave up in the end, only to find that his next word was similarly tricky (Crepe) and Katy's clue of Póo was apparently no help, especially in that it seemed to combine with other clues of tissue and paper in a possibly misdirectonal way. Nevertheless, Katy kept saying Poo in an exaggerated French accent, hoping Steve could make the breakthrough... but no. In fairness to Steve, both tricky words and probably not helped by us all giggling and Martin's sexually suggestive noises. 

We scored a pretty shabby 7/13, I don't remember how the rulebook judges that but I don't think it's very effusive. A very entertaining end to the last night at Stepney Walk though! 

Oregon and on and on

 After a long queue at a late night pharmacy and google maps vague awareness of Easton’s backroads, I arrived at Steve and Anja’s house at almost half past eight. Around the table were Adam H, Louie, Anja, Martin (one team) and Katy, Ian, Sam (the other team, which at this point, now included me).

The game, Rankster, was already halfway through when I joined in and everyone was trying to guess who Ian thought would give the best wedding speech out of John Lennon, LeBron James, Julius Caesar. Ian chose Lennon, by the way. Caesar would be too dramatic and LeBron would contain too many bouncing balls. 

Steve arrived and he was put on the same team as Anja. Her selection of famous people included Hamlet and Steve immediately put this particular Prince of Denmark in last position because he knew that Anja hated Hamlet. To prove it, he told us about a time he took her to see Hamlet – a highly regarded production directed by Jonathan Miller – and afterwards her verdict was “If I’d wanted to see a man dithering about for three and a half hours, I’d have stayed at home.” A brutal judgement on both Shakespeare and Steve. (Plus, Steve was wrong. Anja put Hamlet second.)

Adam, Louie, Anja, Martin 7

Andrew, Katy, Ian, Sam 6

Then we split into three groups. Louie was allowed to stay up long enough to join Ian and Sam in Robot Quest Arena. They were at the far end of the room, and I know nothing about the game except that it is now Louie’s favourite.

Louie 28

Ian 21

Sam 17

Martin, Steve and Anja played London Bridge. At least, they tried to but a determinedly not-sleepy Lennon kept creeping in. Eventually, Anja had to abandon London Bridge so she could get him back to sleep, so Martin and Steve played it as a two-hander. This, apparently, made it quite speedy. And that’s all I know about this game too.

Martin 56

Steve 46

The reason for my general ignorance about the state of the other games was because Adam, Katy and I were playing Oregon. It was my suggestion, even though I had only the vaguest memory of the rules. “It’s like noughts and crosses,” I assured a skeptical Katy.

Long story short: it’s nothing like noughts and crosses, but frequent references to the rules by me and Adam guided us through the early stages. 

Despite the interruptions from Lennon using us as a shield to hide from his parents, and from me trying to find my phone (during this search Katy found Anja’s credit card), the game was fun. Coal mining was inevitably accompanied by a burst of “Workin’ in a Coal Mine” by Lee Dorsey. I don’t really remember but Adam must have sung it most often. Katy also did her fair share of mining, generously removing all of the 1 tiles from the pile!

Adam 80

Katy 67

Andrew 59

While we populated Oregon, Robot Quest Arena ended and Louie went to bed. Sam, Ian and Anja played Misfits and Sam won. 

Then they played Bag Of Chips. I think it’s mostly to do with condiments and fried food, but my notes tell me that, halfway through, Anja said “Do you see my point about Hamlet?” Don't know why.

Alas, I didn’t see how it ended. After an evening of sitting on a sofa that kept threatening to make me fall asleep, I gave up on the evening and set off home and so did poorly Adam. But that wasn’t the end for the rest of them. Goodness me, no. Thanks to Sam for the timely updates.

After Ian won Bag of Chips and then they played Just One. Sam discovered that his name upside-down is “Wes”

And he also sent a photo of the remaining clues from one round so I was able to guess.

I got it right (and so did Ian) but they didn’t do too well overall, with a score of “average.”

Thanks to Anja and Steve for hosting. Hope to see you all next week!

Just 11

Steve, Anja and Louie were our hosts last night, and joining them around the table were Ian, Gareth, Adam H, Martin and myself (Sam). Adam T was hopeful of coming but couldn't make it in the end, thankfully not down to me giving him the wrong address. While Anja was completing a job application/getting Lennon settled, we kicked off with Just One. 

And although Martin did some mild cheating, we started pretty well, hitting the marks consistently until too many duplicate clues left Gareth with an uphill task to identify Google, with only the clues Browser and Lens. Perhaps sensing his despair, Molly came to offer comfort. 

But Molly stuck to the rules giving no clues - my photo almost gave it away - and we lost a point. Then somewhere down the line we lost another, leaving us with 11/13, fatefully correlating with the correct address I hadn't sent Adam to. With Anja imminent, we split into two groups playing two short games: whilst Louie, Steve and I played Order Overload: Cafe, Martin introduced the others to Prey Another Day. 

Order Overload: Cafe is all about memory: each round, a bunch of orders are read out and then the order cards are dealt out to the players. Then the co-operative goal is to go around the table and call out the orders you don't have in your hand, and - assuming the orders exist - they get discarded. This continues until any one player is out of cards, meaning the level is complete! On Level 1 this is dead easy, the starting player just needs to remember one of the other orders. But every level the orders multiply, meaning by the time we reach level 6 there are no less than eighteen orders, including the bizarre Iced Coffee with No Ice. 

Another catch is that  if you call a non-existent order - which we all managed to do - you can't call orders any more in that round but can only answer them. Despite Louie's impressive recall, we stalled at level 6. Steve's face was a picture of agony, and he ruminated that he didn't have any truck with fun. 

At the other end of the table there was a similar boisterousness but more at each other and less at our failing brains. Ian won the first game with 6 points, (Martin 4, Gareth and Adam 2 each) then Adam took the second game, which Anja also played in:

Adam 5

Gareth 4

Ian, Martin, Anja 3 each

Not having Andrew's impressive table-wide vision or note-taking habit, I confess I was none the wiser to Prey Another Day at this point, other than Adam insisting it was a game of skill, in a tone that suggested perhaps it wasn't. Who knows? He did win. 

Louie now made his reluctant way to bed - along the floor - and we briefly flirted with Quantum + Noli (3 and 4) before settling on Hansa Teutonica and Aristocracy (4 and 3). 

I was excited to get Hansa played again and pleased for Gareth who had tentatively mooted it more than once in recent weeks. However my pleasure for Gareth was to slowly evaporate, as he took route-building advantage of us repeatedly, by getting in our Teutonic shit. Admittedly he wasn't alone, as this sabotage soon became a table-wide affair. I was so wrapped up in it I forgot to take any pictures of Aristocracy, sorry. That ended before we knew it:

Martin 71

Ian 66

Adam 58 

And also before we knew it, Ian and Adam were out the door - the evening had flown by. Hansa Teutonica, despite always making you feel like you want to do more than you can and each decision a minor agony, also sped by. I pushed Anja over the finish line before anyone could take any more turns, but although it kept me in third ahead of Steve, it wasn't enough to stop Gareth's impressive haul of networking points:

Gareth 42

Anja 35

Sam 25

Steve 21

Clearly Gareth has some kind Martin/Babylonia type knack for HT, and needs to be policed. 

The remainder of us fancied 'one more' game, so Martin brought out Prey Another Day again.

He talked us through the rules, which are like Citadels role-calling mechanic crossed with a competitive version of The Mind. Everyone has a set of (the same) cards and secretly chooses one, before all are called and revealed, starting with the Bear (1) and working up through the numbers - but down through seniority - to the lowly Mouse (5). If more than one person selected the same animal, nothing happens. But if you're the only person to select, say, the Wolf, you can announce which animal you're hunting, and eliminate any players who chose that animal. 

So players are eliminated - or not - until either there's only one player left (2 points!) or every left standing has played three cards, in which case the player with the highest collective value of their animal trio wins: ie, at this point the apex predator Bear is a damn sight less useful. 

Steve had a shocking game, thrice eliminated through hunting and scoring nothing. "That was fun" he said, in the manner of a man leaving the waterboard room.

Gareth 6

Anja 4

Martin 2

Sam 1

Steve 0 

"I could have had an extra 20 minutes sleep" he added, staring accusingly at the table. Nonetheless, he agreed to a rematch. This time it was Martin's turn to be serially dicked over, although he managed to avoid a zero. It came down to Anja and I poised for a win, but it was Anja who pounced:

Anja 6

Gareth and Sam 5

Steve 4 

Martin 2

And with that another marvellous Tuesday came to a close. Thanks all!

The Glow of Dishonesty

An unusual games night in one way - no Martin, Joe, Katy or Andrew - but numbers swelled to six with Mel and Ben hosting and Gareth rejoining us after a short absence. Ian, Adam H and myself made up the sextet, and after comparing notes on general health and wellbeing, we kicked things off with Just One. 

It was easy at first. Too easy - we shrugged off the odd duplicate and advanced processionally towards maximum points, to the point that each correct answer seemed curiously procedural and lacked tension. But then, like a sneak thief, Just One crept up on us and dealt out a number of duplicates. Adam's word was Flintstone, and with two Bedrocks and two Wilmas cancelling each other out, Mr Hillmann was left with a single clue: knapping. Impressively, he knew what it meant in terms of definition. But he didn't know what it meant for Just One, and having stumbled once we did so again on Ben's final guess, leaving us with a merely reasonable 10/13. How the casually mighty fall.

Then we split into threes, with Adam leading Mel and Gareth to Mexico in Railways of the World as Ben, Ian and I set up Terra Nova. This is the short version of the epic Terra Mystica, which Ian said he'd attempted to play online and found a struggle. That mirrored mine and Andrew's experience on the table several years ago, but thankfully Terra Nova is considerably more accessible. 

Mechanically, you're simply building houses and upgrading them into trading posts, then upgrading trading posts into palaces. Thematically, the changing landscape of the board represents obstacles, as each of us prefer a different terrain to settle on, so we spend shovels to do a bit of preparatory landscaping. And, as there are rewards for chaining buildings together into towns, and having the largest chains at the end of the game, there are incentives to build in each other's way. 

Ben got off to a strong start, utilising his faction's abilities to outbuild Ian and I in the centre of the board. Terra Nova has round-by-round rewards which I tried to focus in on, possibly to my detriment. Ben and Ian were taking a longer-term, strategic view, possibly echoing Adam's progress on Railways next to us. 

I wasn't keeping track of this at all, except at one point Adam said "Oh. I forgot to tell you" and I sighed with relief inwardly that it's not just me who misses critical rules. There was some tense bidding at one point, between Adam and Gareth. Mel may have been struggling with cashflow, as she sighed as well: "I'm bidding nothing, obviously". Adam helped himself to another of Ian's kilo of Lindt.

On the Terra Nova board, we were nigh on hurtling towards the end. It's only five rounds and I'd been first to pass on all of them, I think. Meantime Ben's progress after a brief mid-game stall continued, and Ian ruminated on how badly he was doing - until he made a second town, joined his towns together for the biggest network, and accelerated past me into second. In the final scoring, it couldn't have been closer. Well, for Ian and Ben anyway. 

Ian/Ben 58 each

Sam 53

Terra Nova's tie-breaking suggestion is to play a game of Terra Mystica. We applauded the ambition, but passed. While Railways continued, we instead had a crack at Spots, the dog-collection game de jour. This was so fast-moving I forgot to take photos, but I survived a catastrophic bust to be first to six dogs.

Sam - top dog

Ben - hot dog

Ian - underdog

By which time, Mexico was fully networked and Railways had finished! Adam took the win here, shrewdly doing railway-y things I imagine. There wasn't enough time for a debrief...

Adam 55

Gareth 43

Mel 31

Because we swiftly moved on to Spicy, new to Ben and Mel. We played twice, and the first game was remarkable not only for how many times we challenged Adam, but how many times we challenged Adam on the number when he'd lied about the suit, and vice versa. Not only did he end the game by emptying his hand twice, he was also points leader by a huge amount at that juncture. I suggested we play again. 

Adam's confession that he found the duplicate peppers (red and blue) confusing, led to a lot of colour-announcing, which meant more words were being said and that meant it was easier, in theory, to spot a lie. But which part of the untruth was untrue? I felt confident on a few challenges - mostly on Gareth and Adam - but tended to challenge the wrong thing. Ben challenged as well, with a deal more success. Nobody emptied their hand twice (or at all?) but Ben's chiselling skills saw him take the victory on the last game of the night, as the mighty - Adam in this case - fell again:

Ben 23

Mel 14

Ian 12

Gareth and Sam 9 each

Adam 7

As we geared up for our walks and rides home, thanking our hosts, Mel remarked that Ben had the glow of victory about him. "I think it's the lying" Ben ventured happily. 

And with that, we fled to the night. Thanks to our hosts, to Ian's boss for the sack of chocolate, and everyone for another fun GNN night!

Garden of Delights

Last night's GNN coincided with Adam H's birthday, and what better way to celebrate than by playing some games and swearing gaily at each other? As the insane heat of the last two days slowly subsided, we gathered in Mel and Ben's back garden: as well as the hosts there was the birthday boy, Ian, Katy and Martin. I (Sam) was last to arrive, coming from a school gala (Stan played bass on Ain't No Mountain High Enough!) drenched in sweat and trying not to sit too close to anyone as a result. In fact my first ten minutes were pretty much recovering from getting there, as we kicked things off with Just One.

As there were seven of us we abandoned the game's suggested 13-card structure (and the scoring, in fact) to deduct - or attempt to - two cards each. There were duplications ahoy, with sine appearing twice for wave, waffles for potato and so on. Katy and Martin both seemed to feel we should be able to read each other's minds and avoid these situations, showering the culprits with disdain when it occurred. Just One remains as fun as it's always been.

Then we split into two groups with Martin leading Adam and Ian on a sortie to Babylonia whilst Katy and I introduced Ben and Mel to Llamaland. But first we sang Adam happy birthday and were all treated to cookies and ice cream!

Katy ambitiously thought we'd get Llamaland and Whale Riders both played whilst Babylonia ran its course, but the former, even without objective cards, proved to be something of an epic. Mid-game Ben appeared to have manoeuvred himself into a strong position, with more llamas than anyone and a heap of coins to go with them. Katy took the tile I needed and I called her a dick.

"A dick, but not a cunt? Smash the patriarchy!" she cried.

I reassured her I was happy to insult her in whatever way felt appropriate.

The llama-ing, meantime, had passed peak-Ben as we hit the the last couple of rounds: he ran out of land and we caught him up in llamas. It was close, but on this occasion I was Llamafarmer Supremo:

Sam 71

Katy 70

Mel 68

Ben 64

At the other end of the table they'd completed Babylonia, with Adam threatening Martin's now-alarming run of consecutive victories without quite pulling it off.

Martin 162

Adam 151

Ian 122

And they'd also bashed through a three-player game of Overstocked. 

Locking furry swords with Katy at this point, I missed the ins and outs. Adam's first play of this had seen him finish with minus points. He did better this time, but has yet to properly channel his inner toy investor:

Martin 28

Ian 22

Adam 2

Not only that, they'd played Eggs of Ostrich so quickly I didn't even get a photo (Martin won that too, edging out Adam 12-11, with Ian back on 8points). I did manage to snap a picture of Mel and Ben's frog though, who was rustling about in the bushes, probably wondering what all the noise was about. 

It was suddenly dark, so we heaved the table inside, got confused counting chairs and then shook up the groups a bit. I was keen to play Kiitos, and Martin and Ben joined me. Katy cajoled the others into the Knizian delights of Whale Riding. 

Kiitos is a word game where you're trying to get your own word spelled. Whomever starts a round lays announces the word they'd like to spell and lays down the opening letter from their hand. If the next player can play the next letter, they must do so, and we keep spelling the word. If they can't, they can announce a new word as they lay the next letter (with the caveat that you can't announce a word and finish it on the same turn). 

If you can't see an option on how to proceed (eg in the above, you don't have an n for locating or an o for location, and you don't see a way to make a new word) you get the cards as minus points. If anyone's word gets completed, the cards are taken as plus points by the player who announced it. The game gets more interesting when you mix in the Super Kiitos (add a letter at either end of the word) and Squeeze (add a letter anywhere!) rules. We agreed it would be best with two, but I love the scoring system and how it suggests you can play defence: Ben won despite never getting a single positive point!

Ben -11

Sam -12

Martin 16

There was more talk at that end of the table, but I missed most of it, as I was cursing letters, or sometimes Ben, who was sat to my right. But whilst we were ruminating, Adam was getting a birthday victory under his belt in Whale Riders. It was tight, though:

Adam 22

Katy 21

Ian 19

Mel 18

Ian then bowed out, feeling the fatigue of an early morning catch up with him. Could the rest of us do one last game? We felt we could, and cracked into So Clover. Instantly cries of dismay echoed around the room as everyone felt they'd been dealt impossible word combos. I was looking at crap like quilt / Switzerland and soap / ray. It sounded like others had similar issues. "I used the write the first word that came into my head" Katy explained to Mel, "But now I write the second. Or sometimes even the third!" 

We took a long time to figure our linking words - so long, in fact, that Ben migrated from the room. In the circumstances, though, we did pretty well, getting everyone's clues with just a few initial missteps. Martin was apoplectic that we didn't get assassination / region from his clue of Dallas first time, however, going into a sweary rant about Kennedy like a history teacher berating a bunch of talented but stubbornly unapplied pupils. I was more disappointed we didn't see the pet / cemetary link sooner.

So Clover: 22/30 - not bad considering our initial chagrin. And with that, another delightful, if foul-mouthed, chapter in GNN history felt the whispered breath of the curtains falling. The visitors stepped out into the night to feel the blessed relief of an air that didn't feel like hot cardboard on your skin, and we made our various ways home. Until next time!