The Stupidest Game of All Time

Our hosts were Anja and Steve last night - or at least, they were eventually. As Joe, Andy M, Martin and myself arrived we found Louie had taken on the duties himself, and was entertaining Ian in the lounge with some small assistance from Molly. Steve was in the other room, power-tooling his way through some fireplace renovations, and Anja was upstairs getting Lennon to bed. Under Louie's capable supervision however, we cracked on with the games. While Martin set up Hold Your Ground for everyone else, Joe and I played Kribbeln. 

Hold Your Ground was new to everyone except Martin, but the rules are pretty straightforward and before long they were all dicking each other over. Meantime I beat Joe in a narrow and fairly jammy finale to Kribbeln, recovering a 6-10 deficit going into the final round. As the others were still knee-deep in Hold Your Ground - we could hear Ian's laments - Joe and I set up Tiger and Dragon and Anja appeared just in time to join us. 

I really enjoyed revisiting this game, even though the best strategies escape me. Joe won twice: in the first game, it only took him a single round as he went out with the '1' tile as defence: that's ten points and an insta-win. Anja and I resolved to be more canny as we reset, but our best efforts were no match for Joe, who won again in two rounds. Maybe next time it'll take him three. 

Joe: Tiger!

Anja and Sam: Gazelles

We finished around the same time as Hold Your Ground, as Ian found himself jettisoned into the stratosphere. 

Louie followed him out, leaving just Andy and Martin, and Martin admitted fate favoured him in the face-off.

Martin: Held his ground

Others: Ground to pieces

We did some mild seat rejigging, as Louie retired to bed. I was up for Foundations of Metropolis but had my head turned by Bomb Busters, which was set up for myself, Andy, Joe and Martin. With Adam H a late cancellation, Steve, Anja and Ian plumped for Mille Fiori. 

Joe and Andy were new to Bomb Busters but we took a risk, skipping the training missions and diving in where we'd left off on previous plays with Katy and Laura. We started poorly when Andy took a slightly lassez-faire approach to existence and boomed us into atoms, and had to reset. However, this was a forgivable error for a cadet: it soon transpired the biggest risk in Bomb Busters is having me on the team: I kept costing us lives, and in the second mission completely forgot there were wires to cut of colours other than blue. 

Meantime the glassblowing was hotting up, as Steve cursed Ian's name for depriving him of points. "This is exactly what happened last time!" he cried plaintively. Little did he know there was worse to come - much worse. For a start, Anja wrapped up a fairly comfortable win:

Anja 166

Ian 155

Steve 127

Then, as we saw out our fourth mission in Bomb Busters - (a great game, but not a relaxing one) failing twice; succeeding twice - they collectively failed at flying Kites, which was so rapid I didn't even get a picture. We gathered together again as a seven to crank out a tournament of Champions, which was reason enough for Martin to mildly berate us again about PlathversusKermitgate, now fully established as a GNN meme. 

The first round had some bankers: Hagrid is far more likely to scratch his butt in public than Claudia Winkelman, and Bagpuss seemed more of a toenail biter than Hermione. In fact the most notable moment in these early stages was Andy confessing he read the latter's name to his children as Herm-y-own. Consternation set in in round two however, with the Titchmarsh-Paxman face-off: backing the wrong horse here set you back several furlongs. Steve was maybe distracted by his reminisces of meeting Mickey Dolenz, an anecdote he wanted to indulge further but found himself barraged with get-on-with-it Steve input from across the table. In a bit of competitive celeb-bathing, I recalled the Fonz slapping me on the back at the BAFTAs, although I had to admit he wasn't in character and it was only because I moved a chair out of his way.

Martin 30

Joe 24

Anja, Ian, Sam 22 each

Steve 19 

Ian now also retired, maybe saving a bit of energy for his birthday (today) and we were left as a crestfallen six as we realised nobody had a copy of So Clover. Instead, we played the self-proclaimed 'Greatest Card Game of All Time', Flip 7, which is basically Pairs with a few special cards thrown in. "What promoted this?" Steve asked of the claim.

"I think Christmas was coming" said Joe. 

But it wasn't for Steve, who took Ian's mantle of serial-buster-supreme (see: Novocon) and ran with it. I blew up in the first round and the early running was made by Anja. Steve exploded so often that his verbal contributions settled on various iterations of the post title, as he scorned the idea that the game was even competent. 

Martin caught Anja up, and found himself the target of several freezes. Then Anja caught Martin again with a spectacular turn: emboldened by a Second Chance card, she twisted her way to a huge haul of nearly a seventy or so points. But it wasn't enough to stop Martin, who took the plunge and got the card he needed to hit the 200 point winning mark!

Martin 201

Sam 165

Anja 161

Andy M 79

Joe 77

Steve 34

And that was that! Happy Birthday Ian. 🎂

We're all the 99%

At 7.45 there were seven of us clustered around Steve and Anja's table: along with Steve and Louie, Joe and I were first to arrive, then Ian, Adam and Martin made it a septet. Lennon made a brief appearance too, but mainly to collect a squidgy toy for bed. At Joe's suggestion, we set up 7 Wonders Architects, one of a clutch of new games in his bag. 

This is like an even-speedier 7 Wonders, or at least it would be with less players. Everyone's cardboard wonder starts scaffold-side up, and as soon as you've the resources to build it it's mandatory to do so, discarding the cards and flipping it over, starting from the bottom and working up - as Louie pointed out, you can't build from the top down in real life either. 

Ian's Big Dude, with pedestals flipped

Flipped wonder sections score points and - as with the original game - may also trigger bonuses. So far, so similar. But rather than drafting cards simultaneously, players take turns taking one card from the decks placed between players face-up, or - as I kept forgetting - from a shared face-down central deck, representing a mini-gamble. Wonder resource needs are fairly flexible: it's usually x number of matching or non-matching resources and what they actually are is immaterial. I think someone built a pedestal out of glass at one point. 

Science cards are cashed in for science tokens (one-off rewards/end-game scoring) and military cards compete with neighbours whenever war is triggered, which is less predictable than the end of a round. In fact, there are no rounds, and the game chugs along at a fairly rapid pace until someone - Adam, in this case - completes their wonder:

Adam 35

Louie 34

Ian 30

Sam and Joe 28 each

Steve 26

Martin 24

It was a bit long with seven of us, but the reaction was mostly positive. "I enjoyed it" I said. 

"I'll enjoy writing about it" Martin muttered. With Anja now joining us and Louie wanting one quick game before he was exiled to his bedroom, we set up That's Not a Hat.

The chalice of palpable disdain passed from Martin to Adam as confusion reigned supreme - the game's actual aim, rather than an inadvertent by-product. Ian and Anja confessed to having no idea what cards they had, and Ian's speculative skateboard proved his undoing. 

Ian loses (three penalty points)

Adam, Joe, Steve, Martin and Sam all win (no penalty points)

Louie left us and we split into groups. It was now Martin's turn to break out a new game in Hot Lead, for which he was joined by Joe and Ian. 

Anja was keen to try Hansa Teutonica and I needed no encouragement. Steve looked slightly askance at the busy board but signed up, and soon established a classic confused-Steve-scores-loads-of-points strategy. I missed what happened in Hot Lead, other than it finished before before I'd concluded teaching Hansa Teutonica, as Martin crowed happily. Joe win twice and Ian once before they moved on to Gang of Dice. 

Ian's view

We'd kicked off in Hansa Teutonica by now, and Steve's early trading post in Guttingen (I think?) started hoovering him up points. We kept remarking on it, but didn't actually do anything about it, each of us busy concocting our own little schemes. 

But you know in a game where one concocts their own little schemes, Adam will probably concoct more efficiently than anyone else, and so it proved in a tense - for some - conclusion. Steve triggered the end of the game by hitting 20 points, with the rest of us some way behind. Anja had no network to speak of, as our scheming around Guttingen kept her on a miserly two actions for half the game. I had some end-game points to score, but not enough to catch the breakaway leaders: Adam and Steve tied on points, and were only separated by the second tie-breaker!

Adam 48 and most valuable network
Steve 48
Sam 35
Anja 15

Brutal stuff. At the other end of the table Ian was wrapping up a win in Spots, of which I missed all the drama as we were hypnotised by Adam's scoretrack action in HT. Joe and Martin finished with three dogs each. We made a big group again for another new game out of Joe's magical bag: Fun Facts. 

This a slightly Wavelength-esque co-operative where in each round we are asked a hypothetical question such as How much would you need to be paid to work for a year at a research station in Antarctica or a factual question like How long have you been doing your favourite hobby. Everyone writes their answer - always expressed as a number - on the back of their own plastic chevron and then we go around the table adding ours to the column, placing it where we think it's correct relative to everyone else's. Once that's done, the starting player has the option of moving their own chevron before they are revealed, starting at the bottom. Collectively the hope is we're in ascending order, but of course the game throws up surprises. 

We score points for each chevron that keeps to the 'order' we're trying to establish. Above we are discovering everyone's liking for celebrating their own birthday. Ian (35) is perhaps unsurprisingly at the bottom. Joe (orange) and Anja (red) are the numbers slightly out of kilter. 

I loved this game, even if some of the questions skew it rather heavily away from joyful innocence and into unabashed smut. How comfortable are you around nudity? Do you enjoy time with old people? By the time the relatively innocuous query about favourite hobbies arrived, everyone was basically talking about wanking and how much Steve likes reading on the toilet (99%) which he not unreasonably argued was a percentage of the time he enjoyed reading, imagining one would assume that if he's not enjoying it, he'll stop. 

We didn't do brilliantly but it was a fascinating insight into everyone's psyche, sending Ian and Adam home with possible big thoughts. Steve was starting to yawn but we coaxed another game out of him that turned into four games - the rapid and tense Kites. Our first attempt was the most successful as we weren't that far off emptying the deck. But every time we said one more time, we seemed to get worse.

So much so we had to eventually accept that we are just shit at flying kites, and better at judging each other's peccadillos. After decades of our favourite hobby (exceptions: Ian (video games), Adam (football), Anja (listening to music)), at least there's something to show for it. 

Hourglass Vigour

 Tuesday at 7.40 and Joe answered his front door and let me in. As I entered his kitchen I saw that he, Ian, Martin and Sam had set up to play Gang of Dice, which is like high score in that you have to roll dice and you score according to certain criteria, such as “bust if you roll three odds” or “all the same value.” The trick is that you get to chose how many dice to roll. So, if “three of a kind” will bust you, then you can choose to roll only two dice with absolute confidence. Of course, your maximum score will only be twelve while other more luck-pushy players will roll more dice.

If you lose a round, you lose those dice to the winner and you have to buy them back. Your final score is money plus remaining dice. Sam started well, despite never being quite sure what score everyone had. Ian kept rolling well and then seeing Joe roll even better. Martin did astonishingly badly, and ended so far behind everyone that I’m obliged to use the old vidiprinter method of spelling out the score in brackets in case anyone thinks there’s been a mistake.

Joe 68

Sam 56

Ian 29

Martin 9 (nine)

“I can’t believe Knizia’s found something else to do with dice,” exclaimed Martin who enjoyed it, despite his display of misfortune.

Then we set up for a quick game of Kites while we waited for Gareth to arrive. In this game there are six egg timers and five cards in your hand. All you do is play a card from you hand that will allow you to flip an egg timer or two. We just had to make our way through the deck of cards while making sure that no egg timer runs out, and they all run at different speeds. It was a neat game, building to a climax of nervous timer-flipping. Gareth knocked on the door midgame, sparking a second of panic as we debated whether one of us dared answer the door in the face of six impatient hourglasses. Joe made the dash and Sam took his go for him until he got back.

But right at the end, only a few cards from victory, Joe didn’t have an orange card and the final grain of sand trickled through the neck and into the lower ampule.

Then we were a sextet so we split into two. People with three-letter names played Thunder Road while people with six-letter names set up a game of San Francisco. I didn’t follow Thunder Road much, except for noting Sam’s exclamation of “Holy shit, Ian.” In the final reckoning, Ian didn’t make it to the end of the game and Sam was immobilised, so Joe won.

As for sunny San Fran, Martin went for skyscrapers and I loved workers and cable cars. Gareth held out for a particular foundation, always making sure he was able to pick up at a moment’s notice, but it never came out. The pivotal moment was when Martin picked up some cards just to stop Gareth from getting them, even though they didn’t help him. That certainly stopped Gareth but did it also allow me to sneak past Martin?

Andrew 12

Martin 11

Gareth 9.5

Then we played Spot while Thunder Road ended. Gareth built up a huge pile of bones that gave him extra rolls of dice. In fact he had so many that when I discarded a bone, I put it in his pile since I thought it was the supply. However, he wasted 11 of those 12 bones trying to get a one so he could instantly win the game. With one bone left, he stopped, unwilling to go bust. But the next turn, he picked up loads more bones and then easily rolled a one the next chance he got.

Gareth 6

Martin 3

Andrew 3

Then we were all together so we rearranged our seats and began again. Gareth, Sam and I played Mille Fiori at speed while Ian, Joe and Martin played Ra. Martin seemed distraught for most of the game, convinced that Joe was going to slaughter them all. It was close but Joe won again.

Joe 50

Martin 47

Ian 30

Me, Sam and Gareth banged out a speedy game of Milli Fiori. Sam sped into an early lead, hitting 69 points after round 2 while Gareth and I languished in the 20s. But before long we had caught him up. My final move strung together three “take another turn” options for enough points to get me into second.

Gareth 197

Andrew 192

Sam 183

Then we banged out a quick Not That Movie: five rounds, but only one perfect. 32 points, I think. No idea if that’s good or not.

With that, I left them to their final game: So Clover. And what a game it was. Ian’s clover had, I’m told, so many interchangeable words that it only scored one point!

Thanks all. See you next week.