Berger’s Last Go

Games! Tuesdays! Joe’s!

This week, we numbered six: the host (Joe), Sam, Ben, Ian, Andy and me. Joe, Ian and myself were first to arrive and swiftly grabbed a one-round (and, surely, non-leaderboard) game of Tumblin’ Dice. This game got its debut recently at our NSPCC event (sadly unblogged, but Sam and I were too tired) and was a big hit.

For some reason, this game reminds me of the hang-gliding Monkey Target mini game in Super Monkey Ball. In Tumblin’ Dice, you flick a dice off a slightly raised platform and send it down the board, hopefully picking up multipliers as it does. Much like SMB’s flying, bouncing ball that you hope ends on a multiplier.

Super Monkey Ball: Monkey Target

Not during the game, alas.  We're not that good.

It’s a huge success and endless fun. A dexterity game that even Andy likes. Is there any higher praise?

Anyway, like I said, it was only one round before other people arrived, but I’d like the record to show that I got twenty points with one die, and ended as the winner.

Andrew 25
Joe 13
Ian 10

When all six of us were present, we played Team Play. Again, non-leaderboard, but who’s counting? The teams were me and Ian, Joe & Andy and Sam and Ben. I’ll be honest, I thought Ian and I had it sewn up. We were first to eight missions and nabbed a ninth mission card in the final round. Sam and Ben were nowhere to be seen when both got stuck, unable to complete their missions, but I hadn’t reckoned on Joe and Andy’s canny reliance on big scoring missions. The final count was:

Joe and Andy 30
Andrew and Ian 28
Ben and Sam 23

The game did, at least, give us our blog title. When I triggered the game end with my eighth mission, Joe dolefully sighed “This is my last go,” sounding as if after this, he’d stop playing games completely. This prompted Sam to liken it to a Beckett play, which lead to the blog title.

After this we split into two groups of three. Sam, Joe and Ben played The Road To Canterbury. This game, recently blogged about, is all about selling fake pardons (as if there was such a thing as real pardons) to Pilgrims on the way to Canterbury.

Ian, Andy and I played Port Royal with a few extensions thrown in. Ian needed a rule refresher and, as with Russian Railroads, new rules are no barrier to Ian. Despite Andy leading for most of the game, Ian cashed in his relics at the last minute to take the win.

Ian 12
Andy 9
Andrew 7

At this point, those on the road to Canterbury were still somewhere near Maidstone, so we got out Kodama. I find this game of tree growth quite relaxing and I sort of wafted through it quite happily.

Perhaps this sense of detachment was helped by Joe generously pouring me a shot of some Italian spirit which, apparently, contained myrrh. And, judging by the aftertaste, also quite a lot of aluminium.

Then Road to Canterbury ended, with the scores at:

Joe 86
Ben 65
Sam 51

And they started to play Can’t Stop, which I admit, I found rather distracting. Especially when Joe did crazy things like going bust when he rolled four ones, or deciding to do the entire six lane in one go and almost made it before he went bust with two sixes and two fours.

Kodama ended as

This photo is actually from the NSPCC evening.

Andrew 147
Andy 128
Ian 122

And Can’t Stop finished

Sam 3
Joe 2
Ben 0

Now we were all together again we ended with For Sale. Joe is now duty bound to pick up the one card since he said that it was a viable strategy.

During this game, Ian told us how he’d drawn a sad face on his toaster, and now making toast made him really depressed. Not depressed enough to give up on winning, though.

Ian 51
Ben 47
Andrew 47
Joe 43
Andy 42
Sam 38

And with that, we were done! And it all seemed so painless.

Dad on Arrival

This Tuesday we congregated at Sam’s. Apart from myself and the host, there were Ian, Andy, Joe and – making his first full appearance since becoming a father – Martin.

At the very beginning, Andy was still to arrive and Joe was too busy eating his roast chicken supper from a Tupperware container so the four of us were cajoled into the first game of the evening by an eager Martin.

It was Librium, a balancing game (which is why we had to play it before Andy got here) and it was apparently an impulse buy when Martin was in Cardiff earlier. It involves balancing interlocking credit cards on a tripod (“A tripod!” exclaimed Martin in awe). Winner is the last person who hasn’t caused a minor collapse.

1. Ian
2. Sam
3. Martin
4. Andrew

After this, with Andy present and Joe with both hands free, we played Diamonsters. It’s a very simple trick-taking game with two ways to win a round (and collect a jewel): Win cards that have a total of five or more diamonds on them, or win three of the same monster. We played until someone had two jewels.

The cards only number from 1 to 5, and since draws cancel out, there were plenty of occasions were people’s plans interfered with each other. It all seemed a bit random to me, but Ian appeared to have a better idea about what to do.

Ian 2 jewels
Sam 1 jewel
Andy, Joe, Martin, Andrew no jewels at all

As we were getting ready to play Diamonsters, Sam was occupied elsewhere when Sally came back. She popped in to say hello, saw Diamonsters and asked Joe if it was his new game. Joe was stumped for a reply. He didn’t know if Diamonsters was a surreptitious new purchase and if he said “No,” he might have landed Sam in hot water. But if it wasn’t and he said “Yes” then he would have been lying. And that’s not nice. In the end, he explained his hesitation and Sally laughed, impressed that Joe would consider taking a hit for the team.

Finally, before we split into two groups for the night’s main features, we all played Birds of a Feather. It’s become a favourite for a quick yet agonising game. And, for some reason, I keep forgetting to photograph it.

It was Sam’s and Martin’s first game, so Joe dealt out a dummy round to demonstrate. In this random example, Joe seemed to have played a terrible move, and Joe swiftly pointed that out in case anyone thought that he thought that playing the same card twice was a sensible thing to do.

Once we got going, the newbies seem to take to it fairly quickly. Andy, though, complained about his hand right at the start and his prediction was spot on.

Ian 35 (three locations completed!)
Martin 30
Sam 30
Andrew 29
Joe 26
Andy 20

Now we split into two groups and two new games were set up. At the far end, Sam, Ian and Martin played Origin. Nearer me (obviously) the rest of us played Cyclades.

Cyclades was a proper old-fashioned eurogame, and as Joe explained the rules it occurred to me that this was the most rule-heavy game I’d learnt in a while. The main mechanic of the game is the bidding. In a three-player game, we can bid on three gods. If someone bids higher then you have to change your bid to another god. I’ve seen this game mechanic before (can’t remember where) and it does rely on someone else really wanting to bid on a God that you don’t want so if you get bumped off your first bid, you will be bumped off your second bid and allowed to go back to your first. The bidding ends when each god has a bid on it.

Then these bids are paid, the actions carried out on the map and that’s more or less it. Apart from the mythological creatures who you can buy and use their powers to aid you.

It’s quite confrontational. Andy quickly replaced one of Joe’s ships with one of his own thanks to the mythical Sirens. And then thanks to Chimera, was able to use a card from the discard pile which, at that time, only contained Sirens, so Andy used Chimera, and then Sirens and replaced one of my ships with one of his.

But Joe had the final say, using Pegasus to transport an army across the map to attack my island with a metropolis on it. He won the battle and therefore got a second metropolis, ensuring the win. We ended the game there and then but we should have continued to the end of the round to see if Joe could hold on to that second metropolis.

I wasn’t bothered, though. I liked it, but it seemed to lack a certain something. Andy said that the bidding didn’t really work and perhaps it would’ve made more sense to be able to bid further up the track you’re already on instead of having to move to a different god. A quick look on the Geek confirmed that it was considered best with 4-5 players.

1. Joe, two metropolises
2. Andy, lots of armies
3. Andrew, not much left on the board

On the other half of the table, they had long finished Origin:

Martin 75
Ian 64
Sam 42

... and started a game of Ra. In this game, Martin was given free reign on the bidding track at the end with two bidding tiles in hand. Despite lots of monuments in play, Sam and Ian couldn’t close the gap.

Martin 62
Sam 39
Ian 29

After this, we dashed off two games of For Sale. Joe picked up the 1 card for free, insisting it was a solid card since you know what you’re going to get.

Martin 55
Sam 47
Andy 45
Ian 45
Andrew 35
Joe 35

And then, in the second game Martin fell foul of some big bids in the second half of the game as he played high cards and got poor returns.

Andy 54
Sam 46
Andrew 44
Ian 43
Joe 42
Martin 38

Martin slightly ruefully said he shouldn’t have played that last game, since otherwise it was a sterling performance with no sign of the drop in form that effected Sam and Adam after their babies. He, Ian and Andy all set off together.

But me, Sam and Joe stayed for one last game: Kodama. This is a simple card game where you build a tree, getting points for chaining together certain features (stars, caterpillars, mushrooms, etc) and also for fulfilling certain criteria for bonus points.

It was a pleasant and calming way to end the evening. I sped into a late win with my last round bonus card getting me thirty points.

Andrew 135
Sam 120
Joe 113

And with that, the evening was finally done and the GNN whiskey bought by Katy on my birthday was also finally finished off. Thanks, Katy!

On the Division, Ian rises to the top in points while Ben and Katy hold on to points ratio and the medal table respectively.