New gamer passing through

This week, six of us pitched up around Sam's kitchen table for yet another bout of gaming goodness. Sam, Martin, Ian, Katy and I were joined by Katy's friend Reevesie. He was lucky enough to be in town on a Tuesday evening and so Katy brought him along.

Our first game was Just One or, as it soon to be called, Find The Working Pen. We started well, with Pig being the opening word and "shit" being Katy's opening clue. We rattled off the correct guesses until one clue, Vacation, stymied us. We later discovered that four of us were considering "Lampoon" and Sam even wrote it down before changing his mind. In the end, none of us wrote it and Ian couldn't get the word from our sadly generic hints.

I stretched the rules a bit. When faced with "Fitzgerald" my mind went blank. I couldn't think of anything to do with that name so I wrote "nope" indicating that I'd bowed out of this round. Luckily that's how Reevesie interpreted it and he didn't spend ages agonising over how "Ella" and "Gadsby" relate to "nope". Lastly, Katy requested that we should go low-brow in her clues. Alas, her word was "Gothic" and she ended up with "Poe,'" "Shelley," and "Cathedral. " Sorry, Katy.

We got nine correct, but didn't bother checking our rank on the patronising score sheet.

Then we split into two groups. Martin and Katy introduced Reevesie to the joys of Azul. Sam, Ian and I chose Letter Tycoon. A choice that I was all in favour of until Sam leapt into an early lead by playing three seven letter words in his first three rounds. Amazing to watch but also quite galling. He had the decency to apologise after the third. Ian kept in the running with a patent that allowed him to play two words in one turn. I made a revival with the longest word of the game (Ablution) but it wasn't enough. It was a dead heat between Sam and Ian, with Sam winning on a tie breaker.

Sam 53 (34 in patents)
Ian 53 (32)
Andrew 47

Down the other end of the table, Azul ended with Martin remarking that if he'd known Reevesie would be such a threat, he might have been meaner sooner.

Reevesie 93
Martin 76
Katy 60

After this was a pause as we debated our next game while eating crisps standing up. Next, Ian, Katy and Sam played Menara, the fun game of tower building according to an ever shifting set of criteria.

Martin, Reevesie and I went for the hot craze of the year, Senators. After a rules walkthrough from Martin, Reevesie was transported back in time to ancient Rome. We connived and cajoled, extorted and auctioned. I got an early lead thanks to a cheap senator in the game's first war and then I cashed in a set of cards (30 talents, very nice) and bought two more.

There was a lovely moment of synchronicity during our respective games. Martin, annoyed at Reevesie's strategy, muttered "You son of a..." and then Sam accidentally finished his sentence while reacting to the reveal of a new card by saying "Shit."

Reevesie came back into it and drew level with me while Martin seemed to be languishing. Albeit languishing with some very high value cards in front of him. There was a decent amount of extortion and Martin refused to let any go. Then, on the eve of the third war, he cashed in two sets for a handsome 44 talents and he bought three senators, bounding over us and into first place . Would we have a chance to catch him? Nope, the fourth war came out next and victory was assured.

Martin 9
Reevesie 7
Andrew 7

Sadly, I was unable to exploit the fact that I was the only one not distracted by checking their phone every minute to see if Liverpool had beaten Barcelona.

While we were finishing off, Sam, Ian and Katy successfully completed their tower. They admired it for a second or two before trying to build higher, using cards as impromptu floors. It didn't last long.

Then they played a one-round game of Kariba, another new flavour of the season.

Sam 19
Ian 18
Katy 12

At this point Ian left and the five of us launched into a game of Raj. "Do I hate this game?" asked Katy, her memory of certain board games addled by a year abroad. I couldn't believe anyone would hate Raj and I assured her that she didn't. I was wrong.

Raj served up its usual range of crazy injustices. Katy cruelly picked up a -5 tile despite playing a fifteen (10, 10, 13, 13, 15) and when something similar happened to me, she insisted that I write it down too. So here it is: I got the -5 with 11, 11, 11, 11, 14. An amazing and wonderful sight... for four of us, at least. Sam got lucky in the last round (or is it skill?) getting a nine tile with 15, 15, 6, 6, 4. This helped him leap from fourth to first in the final round while I fell from first to third.

Sam 41
Martin 37
Andrew 30
Reevesie 23
Katy 7

And now Katy and Reevesie left. This meant that there was one more game left for the remaining trio. We chose The Mind. Round one and two were tough. I think the first card to be played in round one was 68, and then we lost a life in round two.

But then we got into a groove. By round six we still had two lives and, despite round nine throwing an abundance of cards in the nineties at us, we got to the Dark Mind with two lives intact. We didn't last long, however, since we were dead by the end of round two but even so we'd defied luck enough times to make it feel like an achievement.

And then we were done. Thanks to Sam for hosting, and thanks to all for attending, especially Reevesie. Hope to see you again sometime. We're here every Tuesday!

You try to be evil, and look what happens

This week's post title comes courtesy of Adam, who remarked on Ian's inadvertent niceness during the highly-combative trains-and-shares game that is Mini Rails. We were all trying to be evil, but evil's by-products were sometimes running off in unwelcome directions.

Oven, with Adam 

But I'm getting ahead of myself, because before Mini Rails arrived, some other games were seen. We assembled around Steve and Anja's table, joined occasionally by bag-fetishist cat Molly and, somewhat incongruously watched by an oven in front of the bookshelves. As well as the hosts there was me (Sam), Adam, Ian and Martin, and after some preliminary chat we played a six-player game of Just One, the co-operative challenge of word-guessing and clue-giving. I was first to guess and appalled Martin (maybe everyone, but Martin put it into words) by not getting the word 'Large' from the clues Massive, Little, Big, Elephantine, and Hadron. I'd forgotten the Hadron Collider is actually the Large Hadron Collider. To be honest, having used the word 'Elephant' as my example when explaining the game, I kept looking at 'Elephantine' in some confusion, wondering if it was some meta clue.

We shrugged off my error and steamed on to a victory the game grudgingly declared as reasonable, with Anja the other incorrect guesser. I can't remember what the word (or guess) was now, but fun was had.

Then we split into two threes, with Martin coaxing Steve and Anja into playing his latest Knizian purchase, Prosperity, and Ian, Adam and I playing Letter Tycoon.

Letter Tycoon has light rules but does require some thinking time, so I didn't really perceive what was happening in Prosperity. It looked like a score-track, some communal tiles, some communal tile claiming and individual tile appropriation/arrangement in ways that made them help each other. Possibly. I did hear Steve complaining that he wasn't being prosperous, though.

On our wordy side of the table we were trying to make long words and buy patents on letters, which would pay us whenever our opponents used the letters in question. Some patents (on the lesser-travelled letters) also gave special powers: Adam scored double, for instance, when his word began and ended with vowels. We also discovered a new rule (© me) that you can only buy the patents for the letters in the word just played, which made a lot of sense, albeit it did make the game marginally slower. Ian got lots of cheap patents that didn't pay out a great deal. Adam saved up for the E. My combo of T, R and S paid dividends, literally:

Sam 46
Adam 41
Ian 27

In Prosperity there was still much hypnotic staring at the table in process, with raucous laughter and high-velocity swearing (©Martin) notably absent, and the end not yet in sight. So we decided to give Mini Rails a go, albeit BGG warned us it was a better game with 4 or 5 players rather than three...

Over six rounds every player takes two company discs and activates two actions: build track (for one of six companies); or take a share. Whatever share you take has a value of zero at first, no matter what the current value of the company. And the company value changes when track is built: building onto a hex with white pips increases the value; red pips make it drop, and shares can drop well below zero. Everyone wants the companies they've invested in to take the most fruitful route to the centre of the board (five white pips!) only to have Adam or Ian (or me) veer their track off in shitty directions.

To that very simple premise though there is a considerable catch - at the end of each round, one company disc will be left over, and this company has 'paid its taxes'. At the end of the game all companies who have 'paid their taxes' can ignore any shares in the negative values. And any companies who haven't, ignore shares that would have paid out (but still take the hit on negative value shares). So it's quite possible to invest heavily in a company only to have it never pay taxes and subsequently turn to Madoff Investement Securities in your hands. And as Adam noted, it's also quite possible to set out nefarious and end up accidentally benevolent as well...

Second round in process. Yellow paid taxes in round one.

There's quite a bit of head-scratching as every action you take has considerable ramifications -temporary alliances are forged, and then broken, in an ongoing game of track-based regicide. I won, but I can't really claim to have done so with wit or cunning. We were all faintly bamboozled, but also bewitched. An intriguing game!

Sam 10
Ian 9
Adam 3

Prosperity was still prospering - in terms of time, anyway - so the three of us bashed through a quick three-player Just One, using the variant of being able to pitch in two clues each. It makes the game too easy, really, but it was quite fun finding ways to combine your clues together.

My clues for 'lake'

Then, just like for the UK in the near future, Prosperity ended!

Martin 38
Anja 21
Steve 13

Nobody seemed electrified, though they all said it was interesting. Maybe the comments will illuminate us.

Steve, who'd been managing a dicky tummy as well as those clever Knizian cogs, instantly retired to bed. Anja stayed up for one more game - another blast of Just One, where our attempts to achieve the perfect 13 were undone on our very first word. I can't remember what it was now. We were all impressed by Martin getting 'pebble' from this though:

Martin hazarded you'd use a pebble to judge the depth of water (listening to the sound it makes) although Echo clue-giver Anja was actually referencing 'Echo Beach' by Martha and the Muffins. She said she was assuming someone else would write 'beach' as a clue, although considering Martin's clue-giving was, wherever possible, based on niche indie bands, I thought if he'd got that, he might well have ended up guessing 'muffin'. But he didn't.

We ended with another average score, according the rulebook's palpable disdain, but everyone enjoyed Just One - it serves as a good evening starter and ender. Which brings us to the end of this particular one, with thanks to our gracious hosts and big digital high-fives all around.  Until next time...

Yellow River Blues

This week's games night occurred in a whirl of domestic activity as Sam's son, Stanley, was preparing for a camping trip the next day. As such we (Sam, Martin, Ian, me and Sam's other son, Joe) played a game of Fuji Flush, sharing the table with piles of carefully chosen clothes and a check list.

The game itself was unaffected. We started with the traditional "all play twos" opening, which was followed by the just as traditional spoiling move, as Sam swept them all aside with a nine. We got our revenge, though, as we proceeded to play four threes, to beat his nine.

In the end, it was between me and Joe, both on one card. I was lucky enough to piggy-back onto a couple of sixes for a win. I commented that Fuji Flush was one of the few games I am actually good at, and since Martin asked to see the division, here it is.

A bit closer than I had imagined, but in terms of wins, I'm in a clear lead. Hooray!

Then the four grown ups played another short game in anticipation of two more gamers. We chose Knister, the dicey Take It Easy. Last time, the dice kept almost exclusively to values between five and nine. This time we had twos and twelves, with proper agonized groaning over where to put things.

Sam's son, Joe, had been a spectator for most of the game until the last roll of the dice. Sam handed them to his son and asked for a six. Joe rolled them and it was a six! Good for me, but pretty much life-changing for Sam, as that one roll netted him twenty or so points.

Sam 73
Martin 50
Andrew 42
Ian 24

During this game, Andy and newcomer Laura arrived. With Joe otherwise occupied with getting ready for bed and finding his brother's hat, the six of us sat down for the next game.

We chose Texas Showdown, and after a rules explanation for the debutants, we were off. Laura found herself perhaps thrown by the idea of not winning tricks and by the time she'd got used to it, she found herself on the wrong end of five tricks in round one.

Suffering a similar fate in round two was Martin, who was dealt a hand with the highest cards in five of the eight suits. I, on the other hand, went through round one and two without picking up a single trick. Meanwhile, Ian went clear in round three. Andy hit a bad patch in round three to ruin his chances, and Sam was quietly efficient throughout.

Andrew 2
Sam 5
Ian 6
Andy 7
Laura 10
Martin 10

At this point, we split into two groups. Sam and Laura were going to play Azul while Martin and I favoured Yellow And Yangtze, the new Knizia, not even released yet. Ian and Andy both claimed to be fine with either choice but when Y&Y was described as a game similar to Tigris And Euphrates, a game Andy doesn't care for at all, Ian graciously chose the heavier option.

Since Martin's pre-release copy didn't come with its own bag for drawing tiles, he had to use the one from the copy of Azul Martin had brought with him. With a genuine Azul draw bag on the table as well, we had to make sure we didn't pick up the wrong one.

Since I was concentrating on Y&Y, I didn't really follow Azul, apart from noting Sam's apology mid-game for "congregating the blues".

Andy 79
Sam 50
Laura 36

Then they played Heck Meck/Pickomino as a light game to end Laura's evening.

I noticed Sam's remarkable pile of tiles had been whittled away by the end of the game, but not enough for either of his opponents to stop him from winning.

Sam 12
Andy 7
Laura 2

After Laura had left, Sam and Andy filled the time until the end of Yellow And Yangtze with two games. The first was Letter Tycoon. Sam cautiously asked Andy if he liked word games and got the reply that it depends what they're like. Judging by the scores, Andy liked it enough to push Sam to the end.

Sam 54
Andy 53

Then they set up a game of Santorini which, I believe (but I may be wrong), that Sam won.

As for us, Martin had talked us through the rules and even started the game so us two could see what an opening move looked like.

It is, mostly, Tigris And Euphrates on a hexagonal grid as opposed to squares, but I found my limited experience no advantage over the total newbie Ian. He complained he had no idea what he was doing at a time when he owned two pagodas to my none. And shortly after, he stumbled upon the tactic of placing tiles to force wars between the three of us, just to change things around a bit.

Martin seemed to struggle with trying to not think about it like Tigris And Euphrates. But I think the basic similarities helped him more than hindered him.

It was close in the end. Martin said he was about to make a move to swing things decisively in his favour when warmaker Ian messed things up.

Martin 14
Ian 13
Andrew 9

Finally we all got together for a game of Voodoo Prince. Initially, we said we'd only play three rounds but halfway through we all decided to play the full five.

In round one, Sam went out second from last with a flurry of trump cards, leaving Andy with just one point for that round.

In round two, we were all on two tricks at one point. The final two players in were Ian and Martin. Ian played a 13 purple and a relieved Martin out down a 14 purple to win the that all important third trick.

However, in the next round, Martin crashed out early when we let him win a trick with a seven card, netting him two tricks for the price of one. At the end of that round Sam had a commanding lead, which may be why he was out first in round four.

In round five, Sam, me and Martin had a chance of winning but Sam smartly cashed out late enough to consolidate his lead.

Sam 41
Andrew 40
Martin 38
Ian 28
Andy 22

And so, on the same evening when we'd assured the newcomer that we almost never stay up until half past eleven, we ended bang on 11.30. But it was all worth it. Thanks to everyone. It was a pleasure.

Cuba Libra Social Club

On a cold and decidedly un-Cuban evening, four of us congregated at Sam’s to address the minor issue of the Cuban Revolution. Joe was Castro, and even came equipped with cigar. I was the Syndicate, and I came bearing the less-thematically appropriate Thai Chili crisps. Stuart represented the government while Sam was another revolutionary faction, the Directorate.

Since it was new to Joe and I, there was a rules explanation at the start and frequent accessing the rule book in the first hour or so. Not knowing how to approach this, I decided to consolidate in the North-west. This lead to me being stuck in the north-west for the early part of the game. Joe moved up quickly from the south and Sam took over or neutralised central provinces. Stuart’s government was getting a bit of a beating.

With all this insurgency and counter-insurgency, I was surprised to see an event card called “US Speaking Tour,” since I imagined a rather genteel trip across America’s university circuit.

The game progressed with Stuart sweeping and assaulting in the cities. “Shit, Joe,” said Sam, “we need to make ourselves scarce.” “Scarce? I just put all my pieces on the board.”

Stuart was now in a winning position and was hoping that the second propaganda card would come out soon. By now, Matanzas had become the hub of all activity with Joe infiltrating and, later, weakening the police presence there while my limited guerrilla forces were mostly spent there, trying to keep it out of revolutionary hands.

After about an hour and a half, we broke for a cigar break. Smoking is bad, unless it suits the theme of the board game you’re playing (is what those health warnings should really say.)

This was followed up by cheese and biscuits with pickles. And soon after this, Stuart assaulted Joe in Santiago.

A propaganda card is turned over, but Stuart is no longer in a winning position. Sam could manage it this turn, but Stuart stops him. Joe and Sam swap red wines.

After this, my notes get a bit sparse. I move out of Matanzas, giving it to Joe, but weakening Sam in Santa Clara. There’s another propaganda card. No one wins, but I now have seven casinos and twenty-seven resources.

Joe seems to be running out of steam. He points at some islands along the coast and asks if they are nice places to live, clearly with an early retirement in mind. Taking drastic action, we slim down the deck by seven cards, effectively turning our Full Game into a Short Game. As we did, we see that the fourth and final propaganda card was the second to last card in the deck. It would’ve been an epic.

Amazingly, after that and a little reshuffling, the propaganda card is revealed next! I build a casino and get lots of resources to claim a win. How nice for me.

And so, with that over we all felt we had enough time for a final little fun game: Letter Tycoon. This is a game of making words to earn money so you can buy letters (only from the word you just made, though) which then earn you money when other players use them in their words.

The starting player token was, for some reason, a zeppelin. This reminded Joe of a dream where he’d cut off his penis with a Stanley knife.

My cards strangely replicating Joe's dream

That memorable image aside, the game was a clever word game, with the usual Scrabble-style agonising about having the wrong hand of letters. When the game ended, Joe revealed his hand containing about four ‘E’s. So that’s where they all went.

Sam 38
Joe 36
Andrew 34
Stuart 33

And with that, we were done. Thanks for hosting, Sam, and thanks to all for another great evening.