Bridge or Tram! Bridge or Tram!

I arrived this week at apparently the perfect time, just as they were about to decide which game I'd want to play but now I was there, I could do it myself. How convenient. My choice was clear. Bridge or Tram. Adam (H), for whatever reason, encouraged everyone to chant “Bridge or Tram” in an attempt at unsettling me. And it did. Especially after it went on for too long. Luckily Katy was more helpful and pointed out that “Bridge” involved playing against Adam, Martin and Katy whereas “Tram” was the less dickish group of Sam, Ian and Laura. I chose Tram.

But before I get too far into the details, a quick recap of the games played before I arrived. The group got 20 out of 25 in Cross Clues and then they played Fuji Flush.

Laura 0 cards left

Martin 1

Adam, Ian, Katy 2 each

Sam 3

So, “Tram” was Lisbon Tram 28 in which you pick up passengers and put them down at point scoring destinations, using cards to move around/get fares etc. It comes with its own bell which you can ring at certain moments in the game. Ian, Laura and I started out as total newbies, picking up passengers as our cards allowed but Sam - who’d played it before - swiftly went after the bonuses: extra move, bigger tram, etc. He’d got two before he’d even thought about slowing down enough to pick up any passengers.

Sam also triggered the end of the game just as Laura and I had one last drop-off set up. How frustrating. In a fun way.

Sam 12

Ian 11

Andrew 10

Laura 9

“Bridge” was Bridges of Shangri-la which looked totally baffling and was something about students migrating and blowing up bridges.

Adam 21

Martin 19

Katy 18

Then the three of them played In White and Black to fill the time until Lisbon Tram 28 had finished. Adam looked unconvinced throughout and it ended

Martin 14

Adam -2

Katy -8

Then there was a shuffling of chairs. Martin, Laura and Sam recommenced their Quirky Circuits odyssey while Ian, Adam, Katy and I struggled to chose a game (Flamme Rouge? Downforce? Tinners’ Trail?) before choosing The Quest For Eldorado since it was the right length and Ian felt semi-confident about explaining the rules. Luckily Adam soon found an English version on-line, so we didn’t have to squint at the German or the icons and make an educated guess about their meaning.

Adam went straight for the big cards, buying up the most powerful ones and hanging around volcanoes. I did the opposite: carried along by a series of fortuitous hands, I zipped through the first three zones with barely a moment’s pause. My luck continued as I passed through the “discard three cards” tile with three cards that I was totally fine about losing. By then I had only seven cards in my deck, so the few bought cards I had were popping up regularly. Katy had the opposite effect. She’d barely discarded anything and had a monster deck that frequently left her stranded. She wasted two turns moving sideways along one rank, trying to find a way through.

Ian was in second for most of the game and helped me by blocking off the quickest way through while he waited for the right hand before he could proceed. Adam, impatient to put his speed machine into action, could only wait. In the final hex, I was two spaces from victory and had a nail biting wait to see if the others could get to Eldorado one turn before me. Luckily Adam fell short and Ian’s astonishing collection of “pick up more cards” cards meant he had almost his entire deck in his hand at the end but couldn’t close the deal. I won, and with all those barrier things in front of me, I won the tie-breaker.

Ian, red, and Katy, blue, make Adam's life difficult.

Andrew, first to Eldorado

Adam, also arrived but lost tie-breaker

Ian, nearly there

Katy, some way back

Quirky Circuits was a pretty vocal affair. Sam began by saying he felt that “In ten minutes time, Martin will be angry with me” but then a few minutes later he had his arms aloft, declaring “I’m in the right!”

One of the circuits seemed to provoke a remarkable response, with Martin saying “I did not expect that to happen” while Laura, satisfied, simply said “smashed it.” It all ended with fistbumps and Laura being referred to as “Maestro”.

I think they completed three circuits, but not sure since once El Dorado was packed away, I was out of the door and heading home. A later text from Sam told me that they (minus Laura) had played Texas Showdown.

Martin 0+2+2

Ian 2+1+2

Adam 5+1+1

Katy 2+1+5

Sam 3+7+2

Thanks all. See you next Tuesday. No, wait… See you at the games weekend! Excitement!

The Snacks Etiquette

New Player, new host: Mel and Ben were entertaining last night as GNN made its' way to Easton. Despite some absences, we still began the evening a seven, including Ian, Katy, Gareth, Martin and myself - and kicked things off with the lesser-spotted Just One. Katy was first to guess her word (pipe) and despite some duplicate clues and a rubbish clue (mine) overcame her doubts and got us off to a good start. We then proceeded to obliterate the Just One challenge, and the longer our good form improved the more pressure was on to not fail, a tension broken only by Martin tipping Ian's beer all over him. 

Katy's turn arrived again and once more she was the victim of duplication. However Martin and I felt with the clues bollock and naked, she might get stark. It wasn't to be, but a sterling effort from all concerned. 

We broke into two groups, with Martin Ian and Ben playing Whale Riders and the rest of us the Ticket to Ride-esque and delightfully named Lisbon Tram 28. We were unsurprisingly in Lisbon, driving trams. Instead of Ticket to Ride's secret objectives, however, the goals are all open and it's a race to complete them. Turns are simple: take two actions from moving, picking up passengers, dropping off passengers, or (occasionally, at certain spots in the city) upgrading your tram. 

As well as the problem of other players delivering to the tourist destinations before you do, there's also the fact the trams can (and will) shunt each other out of the way, leading to occasional cries of indignance or despair. You do get a free card when shunted (and when you shunt) but that's sometimes a hollow reward when your tramming plans are in tatters. Despite the simple rules we all had our moments. Katy professed confusion, Mel forgot to pick up cards, Gareth shuffled his cards into the deck. They finished Whale Riders:

kitchen towel expansion

Martin 27 / Ian 20 / Ben 16

...And we were still going. I thought it might be half an hour to go. Katy whispered "A bit longer" so they began playing Hit Z Road, despite protestations. Meantime our trundling trams were suddenly ramping up the pressure, and we rattled through the destinations at high velocity. 

Tram 28 has a neat little twist on scoring. As well as the points on the card when you deliver passengers, you also build a tableau out of your claimed destination cards, which have little half-tickets down the sides. If you create a 'whole' ticket in doing so, you score an extra point. I managed four of these, which (I think) was more than anyone, but it wasn't enough to beat Katy:

Katy 12 / Sam 10 / Mel 9 / Gareth 8

The other end of the table were still fighting off zombie attacks:

So we broke out Medium, the game of one of the games of word connections. Gareth and I got off to a flier when we connected these words on a second guess:

Initially Gareth said camping and I said healthy (I think) before we both landed on 'outdoors' (I think) and nabbed some points. After that, Medium fell apart, as we perpetually managed to all dance around the lines of communication without quite matching them up. Various people played their psychic links, mostly to catastrophic failure. 

But there were exceptions: Mel and Katy, despite the peer pressure and scorn of the table (particularly after Katy connected chips and bottle with the word mustard) managed to pick up points, and I think Gareth and Katy did too. I floundered. 

Katy and Mel: 13 each / Gareth 6 / Sam 5

Hit Z Road had finished by now too, with only Martin making it safely to the west coast. Ben survived a six zombie attack only to subsequently expire in sight of the ocean. Ian was first to die. 

Gareth had an early start, so now departed. With an empty table before us, we split again into groups of three. While Martin taught Trick-Taking in Black and White to Katy and Ian, Mel, Ben and I played the roll-and-write of Dizzle. 

It's a roll-and-write so there's no onerous rules confusion here: a chunk of dice are rolled and players draft them to their sheets: when all dice are placed (or everyone has passed) the squares are crossed off. You score for completing rows and columns, covering gems and linking jigsaw pieces. If you cross off a bomb it's -2pts for everyone else, and the bomb square becomes non-navigable for them. 

Catch number one is the dice must match the pip value on the sheet. Catch number two is you must place dice orthogonally adjacent to previously-placed dice, and if you can't legally do so, you can either drop out of the round or reroll the undrafted dice. But if you reroll and still don't get a die you can place, you have to return a die from your sheet to the pool - a wrinkle with teeth that bit all of us on the arse at one stage or another. We played twice, me winning the first game and Mel the second. 

Meanwhile Trick-Taking in Black and White was raising much mirth. 

The cards are numbered from 1 to 30-something, with numbers in both black and white on both cards and ascending one way (eg black) while descending the other (eg white). I think I'm right in saying the player who leads announces which colour they're leading. Beyond that I didn't catch enough of what was going on, but it seemed to go down well. Martin won yet again!

Martin 10 / Katy -5 / Ian -8

Then there was just enough to time to wrap things up with a blast through Cross Clues, and blast through we did, swaggering our way to 23 out of 25. 

nearly there

An excellent night. Ian's trousers were even dry by the time we left. The evening's opening conversation about games night snacks etiquette was also answered by the time we were done: it's eat too much and then ask someone to take the bowl away.