Cat on the Table

We - Joe, Martin and myself - arrived at Steve and Anja's a little late, but just in time to catch up with Pete at the front door. He wasn't sure if he was in the right place, an affliction that also seemed to clasp hold of Joe as he'd initially driven past the house and turned right, headed for who knows where. Eventually Louie let as all in and we were treated to the sight of Steve in marigolds.

Then Adam arrived. He went into the kitchen and then arrived again, causing speculation about how many times he might continue to show up. "Imagine if Adam T was here" Ian ruminated, pondering how many Adams we might end up with. Steve finished disposing of the dead bodies and joined us at the table, where Martin flourished his new card game, Llama Llama, and I flourished - sort of, the box is bigger - my new edition of Magical Athlete. With little ado we split into two groups: myself, Louie, Adam and Steve racing the aforementioned athletes and everyone else Llama-ing. I unfortunately missed the explanation because we were preoccupied with magic. 

Louie's first racer was the Skipper, who is always next to go if someone - including themselves - rolls a 1. And boy, did we roll a lot of 1's. Adam - to Louie's right - had about 3 turns the entire race, but did pretty well anyway thanks to his Suckerfish grabbing the backsides of other racers. We flipped the board for race 2, where the previously-simple track now has setbacks and booster spots. Adam took the win here, leaving Steve's Big Baby for dust. Then Louie won race 3 thanks to a surprisingly fast Zeppelin and we were set for a grand finale. Grand for most, anyway. Anja arrived in time to watch me roll four 4's in a row, each time landing on the go back 4 space. My special ability was copying a previous winner - I copied the skipper, but everyone decided that rolling 1s was now passé. Adam won the race...

...and the game!

Adam 12

Steve and Louie 10 each

Sam 7

Llama Llama had finished too. I had remembered to bring a notebook for a change and happily scrawled everything down. But I forgot to bring my notebook to the studio this morning, so who knows what it all says. Pretty sure Martin won, though. We had a quick reshuffle with Ian joining myself, Adam and Steve for Monkey Palace. Joe bravely took on teaching Silos (previously Municipium) to Martin, Pete and Anja. Louie went to bed. 

Adam schooled us at Monkey Palace. He shrugged off being last in turn order and developed an engine that saw him generating several arches early on. And he seemed more capable than any of us at spotting where they might go - I think we all accepted his advice at one stage or another. It seemed genuinely helpful, too, but our contributions to the palace rarely matched Adam's, who would launch each turn with an impressively pre-fabricated element that seamlessly slotted into place. 

On the other side of the table, Silos sounded as dickish as advertised. Judging by the expletives being directed his way, Martin seemed to be doing well. Joe called him a bastard and at one point Anja lamented "Why me?" - although it transpired she was his closest competitor in the end. Maybe that was why. Monkey Tennis Palace wrapped up with no-one too surprised at the victor:

Adam 5million

Steve and Sam 30 each

Ian 26

My very last turn hauled me in 12 points, thankfully. Torture and rage was continuing in Silos at this point, so we bashed out a quick play of Vegas Strip. 

Despite appearances, this is not a Vegas-esque boisterous dice-chucker, but more a canny table-reading situation, with temporary alliances in each round and some insider knowledge on (one of) which casinos are rigged - winner takes all - and which (one of) casinos are secure, in which case everyone but the winner gets their investments. Ian had played it at the weekend and found it somewhat inscrutable, but was game for another go. Adam and Steve both found the vague greys closer to charcoal though, and one round took us half an hour. As the entire game (three rounds) is only meant to be 40 minutes, we packed up at this point. Ian won this, as his and Adam's teamwork eclipsed mine and Steve's: their scores were in the 40s and ours considerably less, and Steve's promise of showing me 'How clever I am' was, as yet, unfulfilled. 

We also stopped because Silos finished now too, with Martin earning the victory-triggering fifth medal, Anja poised on 4, Joe with a couple (I think - see notebook tragedy above) and Pete entirely bereft of medals. The jury seemed to be out on the game, with Martin alleging that the new theme (aliens instead of Romans) and the new aesthetics (bonkers instead of beige) were both wrong steps for him. 

Anja had to temporarily corral Lennon bedwards, so whilst we were polishing off Vegas Strip, the remaining Silos trio played TowerBrix, where they collaborate on a construction with each player having a rule the tower must obey in order to succeed. They seemed to succeed until Joe revealed his second card at which point he was barraged with insults. "Joe fucked it up" Martin clarified to me. 

Vegas Strip was now mercifully back in its box and we now had an open table waiting to be covered with what my autocorrect likes to call Maples. Adam left - just the once - and Martin pointed out that TowerBrix plays six, so we all doffed our metaphorical hardhats and got stuck in. Steve and Martin however found that they could not agree on the construction at all, and kept moving something only for the other to cry "No!" in indignation. Rarely, they would come to terms on something, only for someone else to say "That doesn't work for me". Thank God actual architects don't work this way. 

Around now two more people joined us at the table. Anja was happy to watch the unfolding bickering, whereas Molly felt it had all gotten a bit out of hand and we just needed to chill the hell out. 

At one point we pretty much gave up our chances of success, before someone - I forget who, possibly Pete - built again from the ground up and we stumbled into something we all agreed on. Hurray! 

But with time ticking away, Joe had '15 minutes' to play one last game. We spent the first five of them making the same joke about a number of games that we couldn't play in this time - a quick Wallenstein? etc - before finally settling on Flip 7. Steve announced - I'm not sure if it was because of the game - that he was now going to bed, so our hosts were now effectively Anja and Molly. 

I don't think Pete had played before, but he was treated to a succession of unlikely bustings, notably on a pair of threes, as others - at first Ian and Anja - sped off into three figures. Martin heroically began busting too and went from in contention to in dudgeon remarkably fast. I had a mid-game surge and collapsed, and  in the penultimate round Joe flipped seven to make Anja - now poised on 197 - conceivably catchable. But it didn't happen - he busted in the ultimate round and Anja won convincingly, something like 227 points. Nobody else broke the 200 and Pete and Martin were back in the 70's (points, not years). 

That was that. Molly barely moved as we packed up and said our goodbyes... until next time. 

Lucky (thirty) sevens

I walked into Joe’s place on a relatively mild day between peaks of British summer and found myself walking into a game of Cross Clues with Joe, Sam, Katy, Adam T, Ian and Adam H. Before long it became clear that everyone were on very different frequencies when it came to giving clues. One misunderstanding followed another. “Club” for “weird/foot” was missed and my one contribution was also hopelessly wide of the mark as I thought “Solstice” would go with “mean/night” since mean can also mean “average.” Katy tried to dissuade us that the Solstice wasn’t the average night but too late. 

We didn’t even count up the score, that’s how badly we did.

 

With Martin on his way, we decided to give Cross Clues another go. This time we did better but still not amazing. Hats off to Adam T for his clue “diarrhoea” for “brown/lightning.” Classy. His clue “bite” for “angry/horse” sparked off a discussion about what angry horses are best known for: biting or kicking. But that’s all horse feathers. We did well enough to count up the score this time. 

22 out of 25

With Martin still en route, we broke out Flip 7 and took out the freeze cards. In fact, it was quite dick-move-free. Whenever someone got a “Flip Three” card, they almost always used it on themselves. And, in fact, it almost always worked. Especially if you were Ian who seemed to be blessed with a surfeit of bonus point cards.

Katy only scored in four rounds but on three of them, she clocked up 37 points. She also found herself concerned when Adam H shuffled the deck of cards just as she was about to draw another card. Convinced that the deck was now stacked against her, she asked the dealer (Adam T) to cut the deck before handing her a card. He did so. She went bust all the same.

Adam H managed to flip seven cards in one round and he’d run Ian a close second throughout until the last round. Ian decided to stick first and Adam just pushed his luck long enough for him to squeak a close win.

Adam H 209

Ian 203

Katy 144

Joe 128

Adam T 105

Andrew 95

Sam 0

By now Martin was here and we split into two groups at two separate tables. Sam, Martin, Adam T and Ian set off for the Shires in The Fellowship Of The Ring. I think I heard mention of starting on Chapter 10. Impressive but I've no idea how far through the game that is.

Katy, Adam H, Joe and myself indulged in the luxury of Ra - Pharaoh edition, with its chunky tiles and metal money. Katy got a brief overview of the rules, just to refresh her memory and then we began. 

Round one saw a lot of disasters and floods pulled from the bag. Adam and Katy were the last two players and they let tiles fill up and clear themselves out twice, due to the grim nature of what was on offer. 

Round two ended in a similar fashion,  with Katy the last active player insisting that it was more fun to play with yourself. 

By round three,  the Nile had pretty much dried up and I was regretting buying quite so many pharaohs. Also, I had very few buildings unlike Adam who had so many that Joe had to explain about stacking the same buildings on top of each other, you know, like they did in Ancient Egypt. 

At the end, Katy was delighted by her score and I was pleasantly surprised by mine. Joe said he usually did better than his and Adam admitted that he didn't really like Ra.

Katy 43

Andrew 41

Joe 33

Adam H 32

And so, I gathered up my belongings and set off at a sensibly early hour, leaving the rest of the evening in safe gaming hands.

Over to you, Sam.

*             *             *

In Tolkien-world things started out well, as I recall - not that I recall that much now. But I believe we cleared chapter 10 and Adam T read out the narrative intro for the next chapter. I don't remember that either, but it was either 11 or 12 where we ran into trouble, as it's a 'long' one: meaning there are multiple characters to complete and two of them were rather tricky: Boromir needed to win the last trick but couldn't be trusted with the ring, and someone else needed something crazy like a card of each rank. We - or Adam - pulled the latter off, but went wrong somewhere else and needed the Vest of Mithril or something to save us. But then we went wrong again anyway. Fellowships are work.

After Andrew left Martin tempted Adam T and and Katy into a game of Greed. I don't know what the mechanics are, but the name does a pretty good job on the theme.

...whilst Ian, Adam H and I showed Joe the ropes - ho ho - to Monkey Palace. For a reason that I missed, the rules weren't in the box and so we did a little hazarding around the finer points. The basic ones are easy: build a monkey palace, build your engine, get bananas. The result on the table was as impressive as ever.

Not sure if our slightly fudged rules favoured me, but I picked up a win as debutant Joe found himself up against three experienced simians. 

Sam 42

Adam 38

Ian 36

Joe 29

I don't know what happened in Greed, other than Martin was greediest:

Martin 160

Adam and Katy 155 each

Katy and the Adams now left for home, leaving just four of us to clover out the evening, which we attempted twice. Our first effort was a very solid 22/24, with only my clover muddying the waters.

We went again, which as everyone knows is always a terrible mistake. And so it proved here, with a shabby 18/24 thanks to a couple of dodgy red herrings and maybe some heat/game fatigue creeping in. Did like (Joe's?) essential for friend/oil though. 

These late scores just in…

 I may have been only a few minutes late but even before I reached Joe's, I had a text informing me of the first result of the evening. 

Rainbow

Sam 32

Martin 32

Joe 38

Ian 44

I'm guessing, based solely on Martin's position on the list, that low scores are good. 

I arrived in time to derail a game of For Sale, and the seven of us split into two groups. 

Katy was gaslit into believing she'd enjoyed Bomb Busters the last time she'd played it. And so she, Joe, Sam and Martin set up to bust some bombs. 

Meanwhile, I joined Ian and Adam H in a game of Monkey Palace. It's a nice puzzle game in which you build an increasingly Escher-esque construct of arches and pillars all, apparently, just for one monkey. 

It's quite lovely and thinky with a bit of an engine building aspect in that the cards you pick up as a reward for simian architecture give slightly different supplies of building supplies for as long as they're visible on your player mat.

As we totted up the scores, we were surprised at how close it had been… until i asked about 3 bonus cards next to Adam's drink. 

Adam 36… no, wait, 48

Ian 42

Andrew 36

As for the busting of bombs, I played them scant attention until the mission failed. Joe guessed one of Sam's numbers and got it wrong. “Why did I think it was safe?” he asked himself. A terrible moment of self reflection for any bomb disposalist. 

And now Steve arrived. Monkey Palace was still in full swing, so they became a quintet. They played Reif für die Insel (Ripe for the Island).

This is all about bananas. Ripe, brown bananas in particular. They scored points, I think, while yellow and green ones got you nothing. The only other thing I know about this game is that two parrots are bad. This happened towards the end of the game and prompted all manner of anguish. 

In an echo of the scoring for Monkey Palace, this game also had a late addendum when Martin texted me saying he'd forgotten a rule and could I add 5 points to his tally. Didn’t change the standings in this case, though.

Martin 71 (not 66)

Katy 65

Steve 60

Sam 54

Joe 43

During this, we had finished Monkey Palace and started on Cities, a new worker placement city building game. Ian went big on water, I made a big park and put almost nothing in it while Adam pursued point scoring bonuses. Turns out that was the winning strategy. Go figure. 

Adam 78

Ian 65

Andrew 63

Before we finished Cities, the other half of the table played a quick game of Mlem. This has long been an achilles heel for Sam but he agrees. At first, his luck apparently remained stubbornly bad as he and Steve blew up.

But later he amazed everyone, maye even himself, by getting two cats into deep space. In fact, deep space became pretty full with each player reaching this final frontier.

Joe 42

Martin 35

Sa 32

Steve 31

Katy 30

Next, we all reshuffled. Martin, Joe, Katy and me played the game that Ludo always wanted to be: Agent Avenue. Sam, Ian, Steve and Adam set off on the epic journey that is Fellowship of the Ring. Sam read out the extensive flavour text to give a little context to the co-op trick taker. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t follow that game at all. I was too involved in an epic game (as epic as you can be in 20 minutes) of Agent Avenue. The gameplay is simple - one team plays two cards, one up and one down - but the knots we tied ourselves into trying to guess our opponents details was anything but. 

For most of the game, though, Joe and I were sitting pretty just a few steps behind our rivals. The game ended in dramatic style. We were one space behind Martin and Katy’s spy and we chose their face up card. When the face down card was revealed it actually sent their spy backwards to defeat. We were shocked that Katy had played a card that would inevitably have lead to a loss. But when she showed the rest of her hand they all would have done the same. It was a fait accompli. Typical espionage - you never find out until it’s too late.

Joe and Andrew - win

Martin and Katy - don’t

Then I pull on my coat and set out into the world. Someone else must have left too, since when I receive messages about the final games of the evening, there was glad news of a 36 out of 36 in So Clover.

Finally, Joe, Sam and Martin played Sunrise Lane with Martin winning and Joe in second.

Thanks for the evening everyone. See you next week.

Punnet of the Apes

Louie was our genial host last night, welcoming a bunch of old-ish farts with offers of drinks and glasses. Was this the handing of the GNN baton to future generations? Will the blog still be going in 100 years, written by Louie's children? Quite possibly. Last Tuesday's monkey-dominated evening still fresh in some of our minds, Ian and Martin had brought their simian-themed games with them again - and while they didn't dominate, they both made an appearance. But we kicked off with Rainbow. 

We quickly discovered that Rainbow isn't great with six. But at least it only takes ten minutes. 

Ian 30
Martin and Sam 27 each
Joe and Louie 26 each
Adam 23

Anja was still upstairs so we busted out, with a jaded sigh from Martin, the greatest card game in the world. "I'll try not to finish with zero this time" he said. He ended second-last, as Adam took Martin's traditional role of perennially busting. Joe and Ian were rewarded for their bravado, and though nobody hit the official 200 point finish line, Ian secured a win as we wrapped up when Anja materialised. 

We split into two anthropomorphic groups: Ian and Adam talked Louie through the joys of building a Monkey Palace, whilst Martin introduced Joe and Anja to Ape Town. 

Ape Town was as tense as Charlton Heston's jaw muscles, as we tried to grab juicy instant points and control of neighbourhoods. In comparison, the building of the palace beside us seemed pleasant and almost collaborative. 

I nudged myself into a chunky lead courtesy of some lemur action, then stagnated for a bit as everyone caught me up and I ran out of cash. But lemurs came to my aid once more as the board filled up, the neighbourhoods closed out, and the finale loomed. 

While we approached it, Monkey Palace wrapped up with a win for Adam. Explainer's curse?

Adam 38

Louie 29

Ian 24

Louie, threatened with the fart apocalypse after several bowls of chilli peanuts had been consumed, exited for bed, and Ian and Adam went at it in Misfits. They constructed some kind of mad thing, that kept collapsing. Looking at it you can see why. 

 

Meantime Ape Town was a close-run thing. Joe and Martin had strong finishes but I just about held on. 

Sam 76

Martin and Joe 70 each

Anja 56

Ian and Adam abandoned their Misfits game here, seemingly convinced it would never end. Apparently Joe managed to knock it over as well, despite not playing, but I didn't witness this as I was having a wee. We split into two groups: the Misfits duo teaming up with Martin to play Rebirth whilst Joe and I introduced Anja to rainbow while we waited for Steve to arrive home. 

Anja picked up a debut win in Rainbow:

Anja 46

Sam 44

Joe 41

While Joe reminisced about the show Rainbow, which prompted both some dubious impressions and the theme tune staying in my head for the rest of the night. Meantime Steve returned, and after a brief catch-up we played Sunrise Lane. 

I've serially finished last in Sunrise Lane, I think, every time I've played it, and I confidently announced I could keep this streak going. Something about the dovetailing of situational cards v situational opportunities seems to escape me. Steve was confounded by the hard-to-determine colour scheme on the board, and the fact the player pieces contain two different iterations of 'shit-brown'. Subsequently we referred to Steve - well, his colour - as babyshit. Oh, what larks. Rebirth continued, with Martin haranguing Adam at reasonable volume. 

The game finished with the Creeping Custard victorious, despite being unable to play his beloved yellow - Rebirth had a kind of jaundiced brown instead. Not sure who played that. 

Adam 181

Martin 168

Ian 163

They bashed out another Rainbow while they waited for us to finish, and Martin exacted some small measure of revenge:

Martin 37

Adam 35

Ian 28

And in Sunrise Lane, for whatever planetary reason things finally gelled for me, probably not hindered by the fact the game was new to Steve and Anja, and Joe had of course been the doomed Explainer. 

Sam 91

Joe 83

Babyshit 81

Anja 69

Adam could not be convinced to stay, and rode off home while the remaining six of us played So Clover. It was near-perfect, but my clover let us down with some interchangeable words. 

And after a brief tour of the house renovation updates (lovely parquet flooring! game table plans!!) we left our hosts, tumbled into the car and weaved off home. Thanks all, it was opposably-thumbed. 

Monkey Night

A relatively sparse GNN kicked off when Martin and Ian arrived at my house. While we waited for our fourth member to join us we played Rainbow, a card game that sort of flips Fishing on its head. The cards are numbered 1-6 and you're playing singles or sets to claim cards from the middle of the table as points - but the catch is that whatever you bid will become the points for the next round.

It's a clever game, but  not entirely devoid of luck - dealt a bunch of fives and sixes, I won the first play fairly easily. 

Sam 38
Martin 35
Ian 26

But it only takes ten minutes, so we went again. This time things everyone upped their game a little, which the scores reflect:

Martin 56
Sam 46
Ian 42

Laura had arrived at the finale, and so what was to become the unofficial Monkey Night kicked off: three games with simian flavour, although that's where the similarities ended. We began with one of Martin's: Ape Town, a Knizia tile-layer where we're a kind of monkey mafia, trying to get the most points from a combination of momentary opportunities and longer-term area control.

The track around the edge of the board shows what tiles are available to you: you can take the next one available, or pay money to hop past it to the next one, and so on. Monkeys and Bananas simply score via adjacency. Orangutans and Lemurs score when the neighbourhood they are in is complete: Orangutans for the monkeys in that neighbourhood, Lemurs for the monkeys in adjacent neighbourhoods - as long as they outnumber the Lemurs in it. 

I think we all began with the anticipation that perhaps Orangutans were where the juice was, as they effectively boss the neighbourhoods. But as play continued it transpired that the Lemurs could, at the right moments, haul in huge points. Ian and I sailed off ahead of Laura and Martin, and they didn't catch us. Martin's enforced investment in the empty areas didn't work out, as they filled up with worthless bananas. 

Sam 89
Ian 77
Laura 70
Martin 66

The presentation is a bit bananas too, but it was a fun game. Next up was Monkey Palace!

This is a Lego-based task of building aforementioned palace in order to generate monkey points and cash them in for cards, which represent both end-game points and Lego income for the future. Every turn you must build from the ground up, and the amount of monkey points depends on how many arches you build (1mp per arch) and whether the decoration you place on top is the highest of its' type (+1mp). It's simple mechanically, but quite challenging spatially, especially when the structure grows a size befitting of its name. 

An unusual beast. I snuck a narrow win here.

Sam 26

Martin 24

Ian 15

Laura 14

Though it was getting on a little, Laura felt she couldn't go home without completing the monkey triplet and so Martin explained the rules - thankfully simple - to Reif fur die Insel, yet another Knizia! This is a bidding game where you collect bananas over three rounds. Brown bananas score at the end of the current round, yellow only at the end of round two, and green only at the end of round three: the entire game is thematically a ripening process. 

Four bananas (bunches, to be precise) are drawn randomly from a bag, and then we bid on them with these cards, and keep going until everyone is bidding on a separate banana bunch. Then we put whatever we got onto our boards:

As you can see, space is limited (the round ends when the boards are full) so having too many green bananas early on restricts your involvement in subsequent rounds. But on the other hand, they do tend to be high-scoring. Inevitably, as this is Knizia, there are also rotten bananas and parrots that eat bananas, and someone has to take that shit. 

Your bid cards are gone for good - except for the zero, which always comes back to you. Any cards you still have after round three are worth points! Ian and I held onto our tens, but it was Martin who came away the victor, by a banana-peel margin.

Martin 75

Sam 74

Ian 67

Laura 61

At this point Laura left, uncoaxed by So Clover, but Ian still had beer to finish and Martin requested a whisky as we broke out the traditional closer. Despite the also-traditional mumblings of dismay, we turned in a perfect score. 

"Let's go again" I said, even though we all knew that the second play of So Clover always leads to catastrophe. I said we needed to break the curse, so we summoned what wherewithal we had left after an evening of simian shenanigans. It was another triumph, and the curse was broken.

All that remained was the downing of whiskies, the shucking of coats and grabbing of things. This was slightly held up by Charlie, who was so reluctant to get off Martin's bag that he travelled halfway across the kitchen floor. "He's not one for hints" I admitted. 

And that was that.