Hottest Games Night on record

If Tuesday games nights are the moral boosting night out to help us past the first half of the week, then surely Thursdays are an act of impatience - a demanding that the weekend starts now. And as Ian, Sam and I began at six o'clock this evening with a glass of red wine, we reminded ourselves that we all had work the next day.

Sam's family were away and so he'd arranged an early start with the promise of a chip supper. After a brief text discussion, Scythe was chosen as our opening attraction and it was all set up ready for us to begin when we arrived.

It's been a while since this puzzley strategy game had been seen and there were a few rules to be refreshed but otherwise it was smooth sailing. Sam had a special ability that allowed him to go straight to the factory hex in the middle and he used it frequently. I was first to fight, trying to stop Sam from encroaching on the third of the board that I considered rightfully mine.

We paused at 7 while Ian and I went for chips and Sam phoned his family. Sam and Ian wanted small cod and chips but my order of large chips and a pickled egg seemed to confuse the chippy who slowly repeated "large chips and pickled egg," then turned to Ian to confirm his order of small cod and chips twice before ending on an unsure "... and large chips with a pickled egg." I started to think I had said something wrong but I stuck to my guns and we got there in the end. Before long we were sitting outside on Sam's decking, eating our meals.

Once back inside, Ian planted flags everywhere and quickly got his workers out. He had plenty of territory but few stars. I had little territory but more stars while Sam had both. He needed one last star to end the game and decided to attack me to get it. I managed to survive one onslaught but in doing so, I used up most of my power so it was a formality for him to beat me in battle next turn and finish the game.

Sam 84
Ian 56
Andrew 42

As if that weren't enough fiestiness, our next game was Quantum. My initial roll of 1, 3, 5 was almost perfect for a map of sevens, eights and nines with no ten planets. But Sam got off to a flier, with his Curious ability allowing him one extra action as long as it was a move. I added a fourth ship to my fleet which, because I was Arrogant, gave me an extra action. Despite all of this and Ian's heroics in trying to take down Sam in battle, Sam was able to put down his last cube first.

Sam 0 cubes left
Andrew 1
Ian 2

Another win for Sam. What could stop him? We chose Knit Wit as our next (and, as it turned out, final) game of the evening.

We played twice. In the first round, I cottoned on to the jolly wheeze that a lot of the adjectives could apply to seas, and so my replies were mostly bodies of water. According to me, the Dead Sea is Whimsical and the Irish Sea is Friendly. But I ended up with "a poo in the sea," such was my desire to keep the theme going. Maybe I shouldn't have been so restrictive. But I still won.

Andrew 21
Sam 20
Ian 17

In round two, a bit of earlier banter about "my granddad's cock" came back to haunt us when Sam and I both used it for Secret and Hard. Then Sam clashed again, this time with Ian as they both put Everest for Hard. He still won, though.

Sam 17
Ian 16
Andrew 14

At this point, Ian's bus was looming and rather than wait for the next, he called it a night. Suddenly faced with the prospect of an early night, I took it. We finished up at an all too sensible 9.50pm. But we had done a lot and, besides, the second hottest day on record is enough to take the wind out of anyone's sails. But thanks for hosting, Sam. And for attending, Ian.

Magenta Devine Reflected in the Back of a Spoon

Despite his monthly Time of Crisis battle looming, Andrew was good enough to join me Friday night and bash out some two-player games on the spotty tablecloth of destiny.

First out of the blocks was Transatlantic. This is the game Mac Gerdts designed using his card system in Concordia but replacing the generic Mediterranean Trading theme with a marginally more specific Age of Steam vibe, as you manufacture steam ships from 1870 onwards (including the Titanic!) until the game ends with the arrival of the combustion engine ship (or something) around 1915.

Just like Concordia, you have a hand of cards to play and each played card is out of your reach until you play the specific card (the Director, in this case) that returns all previously-played cards to you. The cards are used to purchase ships, load them with coal, transport their freight (for cash and points!) and invest in various companies - these investments will define how much you score for your ships when they get too old to be competitive any more, and are bumped from the seas like yesterday's iron-riveted dreams...

We both preferred it to Concordia, because despite the underwhelming appearance - Concordia's ugly sibling, one might say - it plays faster and despite lots of interactive possibilities with ship-bumping and trade-house-building, doesn't stall with Concordia's potential for analysis paralysis. Not for two anyway. Andrew surged into a lead despite doing very little trade, instead focusing on building ships as often as possible and cashing in on his aged fleet when the opportunity arose. But as the game entered its final stages, he found his ships coalless and I sailed past him for a narrow-ish win:

Sam about 170
Andrew about 150

Next up was Wordsy, the rapid fire word game of thinking of words. Andrew again began the stronger as I snatched up the timer, thinking of the word fastest, only to have him outscore me and claim a bonus for doing so. But I came back into contention near the end and just about snatched a win.

goes too fast for photos

Then I introduced Andrew to the two-player delights of Kami. We tried this as a 2v2 a couple of weeks back and were underwhelmed, but the two player version is more engaging. Each player has eight cards and it's a race to be rid of them, scoring the points of your last-played card. Each turn has a defensive play - negating the attack of your opponent by playing a matching card - and an attacking one. With two players the sixteen spare cards become 'mercenaries' - at your disposal to use as defence or attack - the caveat being, of course, that doing so isn't making your hand any smaller.
Andrew took this one:

Andrew: Lord of the Spirit World
Sam: not

Before at Andrew's suggestion we broke out Knit Wit, which has no been played for many a moon. You create a venn diagram of overlapping loops, each representing a word. Inside the loops are spools - maybe in one loop, maybe in two or more.

Then you write a definition for each spool: for instance, a spool might be Electrical, Bitter and Curved or Narrow and Funny. I wasn't sure it would really work with two players, but it was hilarious. We played twice. I can't remember who won - I think it was me but only by dint of being faster. Andrew's definitions were funnier.

Sam: Knit?
Andrew: Wit

We'd drunk our fill of wine, delighted in padron peppers and stuffed our faces with cheap crisps, so it was time to say goodnight. Shortly after Andrew left though Sally arrived home, so we had a quick game of Wordsy too. A fine Friday night.

Five out of Ten

Sunday night, and I (Sam) found myself facing off across the table against Andrew and Ian. We'd chosen Five Tribes, the game Ian suggests almost out of habit, and I was struggling. Mitigating factors were attempting to get the music working and two rapscallion children calling for the odd sortie upstairs. But mainly, the problem was Five Tribes.

In some ways it's so good - the moving and dropping off of workers takes that Mancala thing and does something more interesting with it than going in circles. The different coloured workers do different things which is neat. Taking ownership of a tile you empty is neat. But when you add the fact the tiles themselves have an action, and you can buy resources to sell or sacrifice elders for Djinns that add more rules to the game (a lá Alien Frontiers) it starts getting complicated - which I don't mind, except you can't plan your turn until it arrives, as the board is constantly changing complexion, and it feels like there are quite a few more tribes than you'd like. As the others seemed to pull off one shrewd move after another, I struggled with both the game itself and my plan - I didn't have one, until I decided to try and collect a shitload of resources to stay competitive.

The game closed out with Andrew winning reasonably handsomely, and me sneaking past Ian into second:

Andrew 137
Sam 121
Ian 118

Nice to play it again, but I think we might be done with Five Tribes. At least, I am!

We needed something comparatively light, so I taught Ian and Andrew the hit of my holiday in Wales - O Zoo le Mio, the game that crosses Carcassonne with blind-bidding. We all enjoyed this - it plays in less than half and hour but packs a lot into that time.

1 Sam
2 Ian
3 Andrew

With our gaming juices flowing again, we played a game designed for six-year-olds: Outfoxed. This pie thief-identification game can be tweaked to entertain grown-ups by simply speeding up the rate the fox runs back to his or her den, as your time to solve the mystery runs out.

We had no room for failure left when Andrew mooted that the culprit was in fact Gertrude: she had no top hat or umbrella, which is in the world of Outfoxed tantamount to smashing your bloodied/pastried hands on the desk and screaming "I did it!" There were still other foxes it could have been though. was it right to single out Gertrude like this?

It was.

Gertrude stole the pie!

Next up was Codinca, which Andrew and I had found reasonably entertaining as a two-player. You're shuffling tiles around trying to form patterns, and the first to complete all their (four) patterns wins. However, like Bullfrog (as Ian noted) before it, what was a sweet and canny two-player is transformed into a cognitive evisceration with three. At least, it was for us, with Five Tribes still fresh in our minds. We abandoned it after we realised our plaintive yelps were outweighing any snickers of delight.

Instead we played Knit Wit, flying from one end of the gaming spectrum to the other. Although I suppose their is some head-scratching in Knit Wit, it's of the creatively thoughtful variety. Andrew's silent, creepy and found inside was a slug in a flowerpot. Ian conjured up at least one apocalyptic vision involving people falling into crevasses. As far as I can recall the whole game only saw one call of Knit Wit, when Andrew and I contested something of Ian's. But what it was now escapes me.

Sam 45
Andrew 43
Ian 26

There was just time for one more game - Push It. We dived straight in without a single warm-up flick, and it proved to be a mistake, particularly for Ian. Whilst Andrew surged off into a healthy lead we lagged behind, with Ian unable to score at all for several rounds. More than once our discs limped feebly puck-wards only to fall despairingly short of anything that could be considered a threat. Despite Andrew's mid-game slump where Ian and I both feigned competitiveness, he walked away with the win:

Andrew 11
Sam 5
Ian 4

Emboldened and refreshed by the classic game of flicking bits of wood, we decided on one more game to really finish - Biblios. Or Extreme Biblios, as Andrew and I, lacking any sophistication worth the name, like to call it. In Extreme Biblios gold isn't a tie-breaker at the end, you don't shuffle the cards after the gift phase, and during the gift phase if you hand out a single gold tile you get to say "eat shit". There wasn't a lot of the brown stuff around though, and despite hopeful enquiries as to whether anyone ate their own it was a game with a dearth of frustration, though - as always with Biblios - there was plenty of tension and second-guessing. I'm not proud of our scatalogical humour, but at least I can say I'm Mr Biblios:

Sam 8
Andrew 5
Ian 4

Too Cool For Spool

And apologies to any GNNers present tonight who were expecting the blog title “Collectively Martin” which is how Katy described us when we all turned on her midway through Lords Of Waterdeep in an attempt to stop her victory. And the funny thing was, she was miles behind the leader at the time.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This weeks games were held at Sam’s and with just five in attendance (Katy and the collective martins: Sam, Ian, Matt and myself). Before Matt had even arrived, the rest of us were leaning towards Lords Of Waterdeep as the evening’s entertainment.

We began with some hesitancy over whether or not to include an expansion, but when we discovered the expansion quests were mixed in with the regular quests, the problem was solved for us. We added Skullport to the south of Waterdeep and explained how the skulls changed the game.

Matt sped into an early lead, completing a 40-point quest and then, just as we were catching up, another 40-pointer. Before long, he was way off around the score track, with the rest of us forming a tight little cluster in his wake.

If you look, you can see Matt's green counter in the distance

The game was notable for Katy feeling picked upon, Ian’s battle for starting player, Sam feeling disconsolate, me feeling like I never got going and Matt’s meteoric rise. Despite this, everyone except Katy had a big handful of skulls (minus points at the end) and everyone except Katy suspected she had the Building-bonus lord, so with an entire half of the board full of her shops, she was in line for a 30-point bonus at the end.

As such, we tried to block her as best we could, but it was to no avail. She was able to remove more skulls from Skullport from the game, meaning our already large deficits would grow even larger. Meanwhile, Sam’s last go must have broken some kind of record for most retakes, as he tried to squeeze out one final quest from the available options. He couldn’t, and just satisfied himself with getting a load of money for points.

Katy 114
Matt 108
Ian 92
Andrew 92
Sam 70

At this time it was around ten o’clock, so we chose Knitwit as a quick game before, perhaps, we ended with Push It.

Knitwit, though, is longer than you think. Especially if you have to explain the rules. Katy spent most of the time during her tutorial frowning in bemusement. But after one practice round, she seemed up to speed.

The point about Knitwit is its subjectivity which might be a nice change after the strict rules of a Eurogame, but also allow perfectly good definitions to be disallowed. I’m referring to Katy and Matt who were so STUPID to think that the Elephant’s Graveyard (clues: mythical and sad) was A REAL PLACE! When of course, it isn’t. Ian abstained, so their objection was carried, despite its clear injustice.

This is important because the scores after the three rounds that we agreed on was a four-way tie with Sam, Katy, Ian and me on 29. If “Elephant’s Graveyard” had been accepted...

We played one more round as a tie-breaker and Katy stole a win.

Katy 44
Sam 42
Ian 41
Andrew 40
Matt 34

But, despite the Elephant’s Graveyard travesty I won’t give myself a post-hoc victory on the leaderboard, even though I deserve it. Instead I will spend most of next week mocking Ian, Katy and Matt for their ignorance about mythical places, and implying that they must therefore also think astrology is real and that unicorns can cure cancer.

Apart from that digression from common knowledge, though, the game was an palpable hit. Smart, quick and wise. We quickly decided to give bonus points for funny answers, and it was a lot of fun. There were a few answers that were refused: Katy’s reply to “Famous” and “Abundant” was Rolling Stones. Because they’re famous, and there’s a lot of them during avalanches. There was also some in depth discussion about the difference between “mushy” and “soft”.

But after four rounds of Knitwit, we were approaching eleven and so we called it a night and Push It would have to wait another week.

On the leaderboard, Katy maintains top spot.

House Rules!

My mum said she couldn't face watching or talking about Brexit last night, so instead we played games.

We started with Dice Heist at around 7pm. Only a few of us have played it at GNN, but it's a fun game of luck-pushing where you're stealing stuff from art museums. My mum betrayed her oft-denied competitive streak by claiming a card after not announcing a targeted raid, then said it was my fault for "talking". Really mum! It's this kind of behaviour that will give the UK a bad name.

Stanley: won by loads
Sam: somewhere in the middle
Mum: lost by loads

The boys headed off to bed and we broke out the Scrabble. Mum and I have been playing this for years, and - thanks in no small part to fighting it out online with Chris - I think I win more often than not. But there are several house rules to be taken into account: changing the root meaning of a word is +5pts, blanks can be claimed back from the board by placing the tile of the letter they represent in their place, and points can be awarded for 'style' - an enigmatic quality at the best of times.

Last night we also introduced the final rack rule - you can play any combo of letters you like, as long as you can justify it with a fictional definition inside ten seconds. I managed to get out an acronym-based slang for ejector seats (airc) and the noise old men make getting out of a chair (hn). Mum gave a definition that was so long, I now can't remember what the word was.

And I won, but that was only because my mum found a 7-letter word for me. Another family convention is the freedom to insist on viewing your opponents'  tiles and being told where to put them.

Sam 364
Mum 334

With Sally now back from her class, I insisted we play Knit Wit. We really must play this at GNN, it's great. Throw out a few loops with words (sometimes phrases) attached to them, place spools in the loops: you create a venn diagram where spools are caught in one or more loops. Then you have to write a word or series of words that defines the spool - so, for instance, my word for Historical, Purple and Small was Prince.

Before we got to the answers the ladies were underwhelmed to say the least. I think this was the exchange pretty much verbatim:

"Who invented this? It looks like an old man, who still lives with his mum"
"Yeah, and his cat has just died."

But when we got to the answer-giving stage they got into it a lot more. I was very impressed with Sally's answer for Out in the Open, Secret and Stinky: a stash of blue cheese in a hedge. My mum struggled with the pace of it - there's a racing element and it's possible you run out of time - but enjoyed the silliness, which the game actively encourages. It doesn't encourage smuttiness, but I blame the wine.

We played again; I'd won the first game by a point but Sally took the honours in the second.

It was around 11pm now so we bashed out a couple of games of Pairs. "I like this!" my mum exclaimed. Then she kept going bust, often on her second card. "I just want to win!" she said. Then she did win - a round - and immediately lost all interest: "I've done it now! I don't care about the rest"

So Sally and I fought it out and won a game each. And with that, we went to bed.

Threes

Earlier this week, to celebrate the confirmation of a bit of work (us self-employed types know how to live) I wandered into Area 51 and, 20 minutes later, wandered out with Kremlin under my arm - a feisty, screw-heavy game of political manoeuvring that, having brought home, I realised with it's multiple chits and health-score charts, was probably not going to be my cup of tea. A read of the rave reviews of Mombasa later, and I exchanged games.

The next night I watched a play through of Mombasa and realised that, despite it's high rating on BGG, it looked rather too Feldy even for me. So today I took that back and exchanged it - this time for two (one new, one second-hand) games that Andrew and I played tonight. I also rented a game that the ship refused to sell...

Here's how the games rated with us.

sniffy chieftain

Pueblo was a Kramer and Kiesling creation from the early 90s that was possibly inspired by Tetris. The players are constructed a 'pueblo' for tenancy and the chieftain strides around the complex making sure you're not making your own colours (rather than his preferred neutral colour of beige) stand out too much. Despite the potentially high AP factor it played reasonably quickly - I did well during the building, but at the end of the game the chieftain makes a final inspection, and at that point I came spectacularly undone:

Andrew - won convincingly
Sam - lost convincingly

Next up was Billabong, the rental. This is like a less-boring Chinese Checkers - or a less random Camel Up - as players race their kangaroos around an oasis, trying to be the first to get all their kangaroos 'home'. Kangaroos can move one space at a time, but they can also jump. The catch - or the advantage - here is that they can jump over another kangaroo for as many spaces as they are behind it - thus (as long as there is space on the board) a kangaroo three, four or six spaces behind yours can jump three, four, or six spaces in front of it. And as you can jump backwards, diagonally, and multiple-y, it was deceptively thinky too.

go let it out

Sam - won by about two kangaroos
Andrew - lost

The final newbie was Knitwit, Matt Leacock(Mr Pandemic)'s attempt at a Codenames-style word association - without clues this time. Players add a loop to an expanding board with a word attached, and after that, a spool - each spool ends up with at least one (or two, or three) word to define it. Players then write a definition of each spool: for instance, my living, slow and moving word was Sloth. My electrical word was Dishwasher. And so on. But speed also plays a part, and Andrew defined all the words way before I did:

Andrew 12
Sam 9

words

We both really liked it, but thought it'd be better with more players.

There was just time to bash through that snappy game of Russian Railroads (I won) and several games of Cube Quest (Andrew won most of them, although I beat him once by trying to flick his grunt off and careering down the table into his King...) before calling it a night.