Pic-takers with a fist

This Thursday Joe welcomed three of us initially; Ian, Martin and myself (Pete), with Katy to join after a Christmas party.

We started with Light Speed: Arena, a curious game where both the explanation and the app-driven scoring took longer than playing it.

I believe that took exactly one minute; every 10 seconds we all simultaneouslyish plonked our spaceships down on the table trying to point their lasers in sensible directions

Then Joe took a picture and we watched an app work through the timing sequence (lower power weapons fire first, high power ones that can punch through our partial shields go last).

There seemed to be quite a lot of friendly fire. I don't think we confirmed if it was disabled or not, but lots of things exploded.

Joe did some mining (shooting asteroids, seems realistic), Martin sneakily skimmed a shot just past an asteroid to hit somebody, Ian was the only person to keep his base intact, and I ... well, I'm not entirely sure what I did. Not enough, it seemed.

Martin 24

Ian and Joe something 16-20ish

Pete 8

I think it will go down as a mixed reception, from 'that was quite fun for a 1 minute game' to 'that was a discombobulating experience, possibly not a game at all', roughly in inverse proportion to final score!

There is definitely a lot you could analyse in weapon strength, timing etc, but there really isn't time! 

Perhaps this is what the offspring of Dice Pool Party and X-Wing would look like?

We then opted for Trickarus, a trick taker in which I explained we would fly upwards by winning tricks, aiming to be highest in the sky, but only after someone had triggered the end game by flying too high and melting their wingtips off in the sun. As you skip over any occupied spaces this can come upon you quite suddenly once everyone is high enough..

We also had to deal with cards flipping all played cards and our hand upside down (from 'day' to 'night') and changing the trump suit accordingly from sun to moon.. At this point we welcomed Katy, Martin demonstrated impressive recall by teaching it to Katy, and we were off!

Most of us... Martin did not win any of the first 16 or 17 tricks (not that he was counting). Katy was probably not actually counting, but was definitely amused by this announcement.

That said, the rest of us were still flapping around in a somewhat haphazard fashion, perhaps under the influence of the Rusty Nails Joe had generously proffered, and you can rise quite quickly when sequences of spaces are occupied.

Martin caught up to the extent that he soared past us and was first into the sun, meaning the game would end as soon as our current hands were played out.

I was hovering around the brink myself, having deliberately taken one trick to go up adjacent to it when I thought it was that or win the following and leapfrog someone else straight into it... I did have a zero and a lightning card so I thought I might be ok, but then things suddenly got very hot.

On the last turn a gap had opened up in the field so only Joe or Katy could win, with Katy finishing triumphant (see power pose at the bottom of the picture).

The progression seems a little odd so far - from a lot of seemingly inconsequential early rounds (which I guess at least help people learn in a first game), to suddenly reaching a point when it seems like every one of your cards could potentially land you in the sun depending on what others choose.

Fun though, and I do appreciate the way it fits the setting. After playing it with 5 twice I think I'm keenest to play with slightly fewer next and see how it changes. 

We then nearly played Condottiere, but Martin's plea that Joe needed to address a poor historic impression of it was trumped by Joe's preference for another trick-taker; Mü, at its perfect player count of 5. Rumours that Mü had made Sam ill are hopefully greatly exaggerated.

This is definitely thinkier, though mostly a more straightforward trick-taker.. However, that's preceded by a very intriguing first phase where you reveal a number of cards in your hand to both bid for the role of the 'Crown', and commit to the number of pips on cards that you and your partner will capture. It's ideally played 2 against 3, hence ideally needing 5 players.

The second place 'Shield' would lead the defence against them and choose a secondary trump from their revealed cards, after which the Crown chose both the primary trump and their partner.

So the bids were also auditioning for the partner role and a share in the points, or as Joe put it, waggling our bottoms at them. I think he must have had baboons on the brain.

I did this successfully in a first round of string bidding and benefitted from Martin winning nearly every trick, though not as much as him as the pips also give individual points.

The second round was much more balanced, and also showed that and the rounds feel very different depending on the trumps chosen, which can be number or suit.

The third round seemed like it might be slightly anticlimactic, with only quite low bids, and with the points on offer lower Martin was pretty secure in first place.

However low bids do create different challenges as less cards were revealed in the bidding phase. Martin, Katy and I managed to run Ian and Joe fairly close.

Martin was confirmed a clear winner. With hindsight, I could have done with being on a different team to him at some point in later rounds to have a chance of the significant differential needed, which is another thing to think about when bidding.. definitely keen to play again.

We brought it to a successful conclusion in good time for me to head off for my train, so Ian will lead on the following round of games.

--------------------------------------------

Thanks Pete! Just to run through the final scores of Mu:

Martin 214
Pete 185
Ian 97
Joe 96
Katy 78

After Pete's departure we played another trick-taking game, but a rather silly one at that: My Favourite things.

My strategy, such as it was, was to ask for the person next to me to rank things where I might have a chance of being able to ascertain what their highcard and what their heartbreak card would be. I asked Joe to rate his favourite Switch games, so I was fairly confident that Slay the Spire would be number 5 (the best) (ed: isn't number 1 the best? If not, I played it wrong). When it came to ask the Martin for his last I asked for Discworld characters, which proved less useful as there are a lot and they're all rather good.

Other topics being ranked included  favourite street food, venues, boardgames (I think this time it was specifically Wallace boardgames), beers, and rather weather, and trying to compare these disparate topics against each other proved to be amusing nonsense.

I have to admit after a couple of beers and the aforementioned Rusty Nail I didn't really pay attention to the final score in My Favourite Things. I appear to have scribbled down:

Katy 3
Joe 3
Martin 2
Ian 2

But I'm not entirely sure if that was the score or an arbitrary collection of numbers. 

After that it was time, of course, for So Clover. Which I also failed to make any notes about, which is terrible form by me, but I think we did reasonably well. We played a couple of games, and I think both times we scored mostly 6s with a single 4 creeping in both times?

It was a lot of fun regardless, that much I do recall. And really, isn't having a good time the most important thing?*

*some will say no; points are the main thing. But that feels less festive.

My favourite things and my favourite people

 I arrived at Sam’s late and walked into the kitchen, my eyes fixed on the table that was already hosting a four-player game between Sam, Ian, Andy B and Martin. So focused was I on the games that I didn’t notice Sam’s new fitted kitchen until Katy pointed it out when she arrived about fifteen minutes later.

The main reason I seemed unable to take in my surroundings was a game of Jumbo. Despite having played before, I certainly struggled to remember anything resembling a strategy. Andy B won as he put down four of a kind that couldn’t be beaten and then his last two cards was a pair.

Katy arrived during the game and my eyes were opened to the existence of new cupboards. Katy also tried to remember a game with stones that I owned that was really relaxing. I couldn’t think of what it might be except Fishy Pete or Go and Katy seemed sure it wasn’t either of those. The mystery continues.

But putting mis or half remembered games to one side,  our next game was Baranoxx which is like 6nimmt but different. In this game, it is the colour of a cow head that determines where a card can be placed. If there are six cards in a row or six cow heads of a particular colour, then you have to pick up. 

It feels a lot like 6nimmt in that you find your carefully considered plans torn to shreds by grim luck. Martin, however, found himself on the wrong end of some events and complained that it wasn’t as strategic as 6nimmt. I, having picked up only one row, disagreed. I won my first attempt whereas Andy got hit by a nasty case of Explainer’s Curse.

Andrew 8

Sam 13

Ian 33

Martin 36

Katy 37

Andy 50

Next up was another six-player. It seems like there was no mood to split into smaller groups this evening. The next game was Bluffit, a game in which everyone has a deck of cards valued 1-10 and they use those to pick up cards on display in the middle. Play a card from your hand face down and then take the card from the middle. Couldn’t be simpler. But someone may suspect that the card they’ve put face down in front of them and they can challenge. The two players secretly compare and whoever wins takes the card. But the hidden cards are never revealed. At the end of the round, though, the hidden cards are shuffled and revealed as the next round’s cards to obtain.

It was quite tense,as you’d expect. No one was really sure what was going on, but in a good way. Interestingly, while big value cards were the source of a lot of challenges, Andy B was quietly building up a stack of cards by always picking middle value cards.

Andy 56

Ian 53

Katy 49

Andrew 48

Sam 47

Martin 36

At this point Andy left us and so, as a quintet, it made sense to continue with some communal gaming.

Next up was My Favourite Things. A trick-taker in the loosest sense of the word, it mixes Fun Facts with whist to curious effect. Each player gets six blank cards (1-5 and a dud) and a topic from the person next to them. They then fill in those blank cards with their top five of that topic plus one example that they can’t abide. Then, those cards go back to the person who suggested the topic.

The twist is, you can’t see what value each card has. Only the person who wrote on the cards knows which is which. So you might choose trees as a topic and think your friend would definitely put Oak as the strongest, only to discover after you’ve played it that actually oaks are just sort of middling to fine.

How well do we know each other? It varied. Ian and I stuck with Martin’s stereotype and over two rounds we gave him “Boardgames” and “Physicists” as topics, leading him to insist that there’s more to him than that. I gave Sam “Everton players since 1990” and he gave me “friends from Maidstone” leaning heavily on our lengthy friendship.

Part of the fun, though, is seeing disparate entities facing off in a trick-taking arena. Want to see Marie Curie battle against the colour green and Stevenage Railway Station? Now’s your chance.

Also worth noting is the entirely unnecessary starter player token which was real metal and heavier than my phone.

Katy 3

Sam 3

Martin 2

Andrew 1

Ian 1

It was a lot of fun and very silly. But after that, I set off home. I rely on Sam’s late night messages to let me know what I missed, including the fact that Ian won two games of 13 Leaves before I arrived.

Afterwards they played Llama Llama in which either Sam or Martin won - recollection is cloudy at this point. Then the by no traditional night cap of So Clover was brought out for two games, resulting in 20/24 and a collapse of England at the Ashes proportions: 13/24.

Thanks all. Hope to see you soon.