A series of unconnected events

Gamers gathered in Fishponds on a balmy April evening. Joe, Martin and I (Adam) arrived to find Steve and Anja engaged in emergency plumbing, so we introduced the kids to gambling with a quick game of Hot Streak. 

In Hot Streak players make two bets on which of four mascots will win each race or on a weird side bet (two mascots will be sprawled on the ground at the same time, one will fall off the track, etc). We got to see some of the cards to be used at the start of the game which seemed pretty good for Hurley (the hot dog). Then over each of three races we added one card of our own to spice up the race deck and the comedy began. 

In amongst the swerving and tumbling Hurley won every race, which left me confident as I'd backed him every time, but Joe's smart side-bets nudged him into second and Martin's risky play (you get extra reward for first place if you flip the betting slip to the "risky" side) galloped him to victory. 

Martin 62
Joe 59
Adam 57
Lennon 33
Louie 22

Steve and Anja (having defeated the toilet) arrived in time for a 7-player game of Just One. The game was a hive of cheating and treachery, notable for Louie and Lennon conspiring to put complimentary words into the mix. We only played 7 rounds, but somehow got a perfect score.

Anja took Lennon off to bed now and the rest of us turned to No Thanks. In spite of never knowing when it was his turn Steve put together a nice run and trounced us, not far from a positive score!

Steve -15
Adam -39
Louie -43
Martin -55
Joe -57

Anja returned and Louie reluctantly bade us goodnight as Whale Riders was set up. Molly the cat sulked on one end of the table (disappointed at the lack of real fish?) as the rest of us were distracted by Steve's choices of background music. Whale song gave way to Inuit throat singing and then on to whaling sea shanties - not really the vibe of the game at all. 

Joe was least distracted, managing to fulfill three contracts in one go and never really looking back. 

Joe 21
Adam 19 + more money
Martin 19
Steve 15
Anja 13

As we tried to decide on the next game Steve showed off his new glasses.

 

Bluffit was selected as a quickie which everyone had played before, but the rules seemed baffling to everyone, even Martin as he attempted to explain them. Everyone started with an identical hand from 1-10, then hidden bids and theft ensued as we competed for the previous hand's cards throughout the game.

Joe and Anja's bitter feud didn't work out for them. My strategy of only bluffing occasionally did.

Adam 65
Steve 50
Martin 49
Anja 42
Joe 35

We finished as ever with So Clover, notable for Anja's "Cruise" for Cocktail Demon and Joe's "78" for Attic Record. I was Portabelloed when Chameleon snuck into my "Camouflage" for Landscape Uniform and we only got 24/30. But we didn't mind because we'd all had a lovely evening.

Working 8 to 3

At one stage it looked like there were going to be eight of us last night, but we lost Andrew and Adam T to illness and Katy to a massage. "Don't get a massage on games night!" Martin lamented, as another gamer failed to materialise. But by the time we heard the latest breaking fallen-member news, we were already knee-deep in fun. Martin had been first to arrive, with a big enough window to beat me at Panda Panda: taking the first round on his second turn. We were mid-second-round when Ian and longtime absentee Andy Bate arrived: I suggested we abandon it, but Martin thought we could finish the round, and promptly won. 

We weren't sure how long before Adam H arrived, so bashed out a quick Wanted Wombats. Martin won with $20k - Andy and myself didn't have a dime at this point. 

Then Adam H arrived! At this point we were still assuming Katy was coming so chose a shortish game in Skull Queen, the risk-taking pirate trick-taker, which Andy realised after it was set up that he had at home. A quick refresher and we were away, with Martin leading the early running with his knack of capitalising on the double-move cards, no matter who played them. "You dirty bastard" I told him, and Andy sagely reflected that some things never change. 

It was a tightly-fought contest, with everyone close enough behind Martin after round two to give him pause. And indeed, I drew level with him in the third and final round to tie on 68 points. However to my right Ian's pirates all finished at the tip of his board, hauling him in a whopping 32 and with it, the pirate crown:

Ian 79
Martin and Sam 68 each
Adam 63
Andy B 50

By this time, we'd heard that Katy's escapades had put her into a soporific state and she understandably didn't want to walk a mile to trade insults with a bunch of middle-aged farts. So Andy introduced us to the only game he'd brought with him, in an impressive show of restraint: 6 Nimmt! Baron Oxx. 

As with 6 Nimmt, you're trying not to take cards because they are points and points are bad. As with 6 Nimmt, we choose a card to reveal simultaneously and place them in ascending order. But after that, things are very different. 

The cards all have big ox heads on them of varying colours, and when you place your card you now ignore the numbers at the top entirely and can place your card in any row where the last-placed card has an ox head that matches one on your card. If your ox heads are all blue, you need a blue ox head. If you've different colours, you may have a choice. 

If your ox head doesn't match any colour, it's like placing a lower-than-visible number in the ancestral game: you take a row of your choice. If you're forced to place the six card, you also take that row. But there's another danger too: the sixth ox head of a matching colour also pressgangs the row into your unwanted points haul. There's four rounds of four cards each, lots of disaster-impelled chagrin, and after that you discover that Adam only took a single card the entire game. 

Adam 2
Ian 32
Andy 33
Sam 34
Martn 60

Some things really do never change, do they? 

Andy had time for one more short game so we all piled into the front room and argued over what it should be, with Adam Martin and I debating the merits of Tsuro before I suggested we ask Andy if he liked it. "It's okay" he said diplomatically. We played No Thanks. 

It was kind of nuts, with Ian running out of money and forced to take the 27 just before Adam - who had the 26 and 28 - picked it up. Despite this, Ian put together a crazy run of something like ten cards and I harpooned my chance of second place by sending the 34 around when Andy was out of cash, leaving me with the 33 and 35, and this paragraph being maybe one of the nerdiest ever to grace the pages of GNN. But even if I'd kept it, I still wouldn't have caught Ian. We debated whether it might be seen as a co-op victory, as we'd expended more than a breath or too giving him 'advice'. But as it wasn't intended to be helpful, I think this is Ian's win. 

Ian 16
Martin 40
Adam 45
Sam 60
Andy 69

Andy now had to go so we were down to a four. Adam suggested Steam Power and the rest of us were amenable, so we set up and I explained most of the rules to Martin, even getting them largely correct. At Martin's request, Ian kicked off so he could see what the three of us got up to on our first turns. And Ian displayed the inherent dickery of Steam Power as he carved a path across the middle of the board, creating an east-west supply chain that all of us would at some point use, gifting him an ongoing income for the next hour. 

Adam took to the northwest, delighting at the points-rich white-cube cities there, and Martin and I nestled beneath him. Ian seemed to spend so much time building track I wondered if he was leaving his contracts too late, but he knew what he was doing. As the factories emptied and opportunities dried up, Ian's hoarding of the entire northeast and it's desirable red cubes led him to a narrow win:

Ian 47

Adam 46

Sam 43

Martin 42

All fuel to the fire of Joe's turn-order-favouritism suspicions, as the points finish matched the turn order. There is a thread on BGG about this, but I can't be bothered to read/summarise it, sorry. 

Next up was Llama Llama, as my flirty mentions of FlipToons went unheeded. This uses the same deck as Panda Panda but when Martin explained it to me I said it sounded like Panda Panda with a migraine. I think Andrew has explained it previously on here but I - admittedly now onto the whisky - found it initially bamboozling, and naively went for a a huge score I was *never going to pull off. But once you're through the door, the game has an easy rhythm to it and I went from 3pts in round one to 48 in round two. But none of us could catch Martin, even though at one stage he ended a round with the *impossible hand and couldn't score it. 

Martin 102

Adam 72

Sam 70

Ian 42

Adam now announced he really had to go, and cycled off into the night leaving the three of us. We poured some more whisky and now did play FlipToons, to a dramatic finale.

There's some nonsense theme about casting an animated show but basically each round you deal six cards in a 2x3 grid and then calculate their fame, before spending said fame to either/both recruit new actors from the market or dismiss your underperforming actors who are getting you precious little fame. The catch of course is that as your deck grows, your inconsequential am-dram dudes may come out and your high class stars remain trapped inside it: so it's a deck-builder, and, unless you want to spend multiple actions putting actors out of work, a luck-pusher at the same time. 

As soon as any player hits 30 fame, there's one final round where the most flipped fame wins. Martin looked in the box seat here for the vast duration of the game, and indeed hit 30 points before Ian or I got particularly close. But in the finale Ian's actors let him down and Martin and I tied, causing a play-off. Martin's elephant - big ego - undid him here as it flipped his biggest point-scorer face-down, and I pipped him by a point. 

Sam

Martin

Ian

It was time for So Clover and whisky. We started with a 4 on my clover, dropped to a 3 on Ian's and then back up to a 4 on Martin's, which looked the worst night of your life, or maybe the best if you could remove Gordon Ramsey. A tricky end and not helped by me drunkenly wondering whether owls are birds or not (apparently they are). What can I say, it had been a night. But So Clover is always fun, regardless how of zoologically deranged you are. 

Dolphins aren't fish though, I'm pretty sure of that. 

Space Merchants

As it was Ian's birthday, there was an impromptu games night last night at Adam's house as he, Katy and I joined with the birthday boy. My automated calendar insists his birthday is today, although Ian demurs and I guess we have to trust him (even though I clearly recall him struggling to remember how old he was a couple of years ago) but the debate of the night was What To Play: I'd brought along Black Forest but wasn't actually pushing for it as a four-player, as I suspected it would run rather long. I'd also brought Quantum, as it's one of Ian's favourites and - as we reminded ourselves throughout the evening - it was his birthday. "Is it space-themed?" Katy asked.
"Yes" said Ian. Katy wailed.

"We can pretend it's trading in the Meditterranean though" I said. 

"At night" Adam added. 

Katy seemed unconvinced but as it was Ian's birthday, she relented, and after a brief visit to the front room to witness Arthur's rather impressive Star Wars Lego diorama, we set up for a rare four-header.

Adam kicked things off in sedate fashion - moving a single ship on the board, and taking two Research. Unusually, Ian and I did the same: everyone clearly lining up their ducks for turn two. But Katy jumped into an embryonic lead with a cube down on her first turn: we were away. 

With a fairly expansive set-up everyone had some room to manoeuvre, but whilst Katy and I kept to ourselves, Ian found himself targeted by Adam fairly early on. Birthday reminders came through the galaxy PA but to no avail: with Adam's ships all low-numbered, fate was encouraging him to go aggressive and Ian was closest. Normally in Quantum there's a kind of compacted Eclipse-shaped curve of building your engine (Eclipse) or getting cubes down while you can (Quantum) before eventually everyone merges into a punch-up. 

But despite Ian's impressive rally to catch Katy and I (down to two cubes, with zero attacks) my command card of Resourceful (remove a ship for an extra action) was working wonders for me, as I used it to get a cube down three turns running and snag the victory. "That was actually not too bad!" Katy surmised, who took an extra turn after I'd won which we'll have to ignore - otherwise, chaos. 

Sam - no cubes

Katy and Ian - two cubes left

Adam - four cubes left

Arthur came in and when Adam told him that he'd lost, his son muttered "That was inevitable". He's never seen his dad play a Rosenberg, obviously... We moved on to Fishing; new to Ian and Adam. Basic trick-taking rules apply and the idea is that your 'catch' - won tricks - are all worth a point per card. The conceptual catch is that they're also your hand for the next round, and any shortfall is made by drawing from the 'Ocean deck' - which introduces more powerful cards. 

This was the closest game of Fishing I've seen - there was only 12 points between first and fourth going into the final round. Unfortunately my impressive penultimate-round haul gave me a hand of shite and I only won a single card (courtesy of a zero). Katy caused a stewards' enquiry when she was a card short, drew a trump from her stack to win the trick and then subsequently discovered a bland old red '1' on the floor after the game. Adam - who else - took 15 points and returned home most boastful fisher. 

Adam 85

Katy 82

Ian 80

Sam 77

Although Arthur was still up and we could hear him and Hannah giggling in the next room, Katy said it was getting late and she would go home unless Ian opened his birthday Toblerone, so he did. Ian had asked me to bring So Clover but, portentously signalling the mid-life fog he is headed towards, I'd forgotten. So we played No Thanks instead. I didn't take any photos at this point, but we re-established whose birthday it was, perhaps all secretly hoping that Ian would get a victory to take home. Unfortunately his Andrew-esque strategy of nabbing a lowish-card early on didn't pan out - although he did at least beat Adam out of third place. Katy was pleased to end the night on a high:

Katy 22

Sam 29

Ian 50

Adam 65

And we ended Ian's anniversary with a discussion on the deceptive nature of time: Ian's recollections of the last two decades' events all being "a couple of years ago"; my brain's default of up and coming band being the Arctic Monkeys, Adam's confession that he doesn't remember "anything". Katy said as she got older she found herself knowing and more and more people and it was wonderful. Adam replied sonorously that, at some point, that trend will begin to reverse. 

But before then there are more games to be played. We headed out into the now-misty Easton air with the promise of that soon... 

The Gary Lineker of Marrakech

I arrived at 8 o'clock and watched Martin, Andy, Katy and Ian play No Thanks. I watched enough to see Ian try to send a 6 card around twice. "I'm tired," he sighed. He still came in second, though. Katy was stiffed by a last minute 35.

Andy -37

Ian -43

Martin -54

Katy -85

Next we played The Crew: Mission Deep Sea. This was on playingcards.io and it was very nicely designed. "You can tell it's not one if mine, can't you?" Said Martin. But it wasn't just a rethemed version of the original Crew, he went on to assure us. The missions are more interesting too.

Having said that, though, our very first mission was "win the first trick" which was so basic that we just assumed we'd completed it and went straight onto mission two. 

We sailed on pretty serenely, with the only hitch when I misremembered the rules and dubbed myself captain despite not having the four of trumps. It was Ian who did, but I must have been louder in my assertion and drowned him out. Ian's mike was muffled for much of the evening, which at least gave him an appropriate subnautical feel.

Happily it didn't matter in this instance who was commander. In fact, if anything, we'd made it harder for ourselves.

We finished after mission five and Katy signed off, explaining that her internet was showing signs of imminent collapse. We began playing Cubirds. This set collecting game involves putting birds on wires that match other birds on the same wire in order to pick up the birds in-between the two matching birds. Once you have enough birds of a certain type in your hand you can fly away as a flock, keeping one or two cards as a means of scoring.

It was nice. Quite genteel, really.

Andy 1

Andrew 0

Ian 0

Martin 0

Finally, Ian said he was amenable to one more before he hit the sack, so we played Marrakech. And what a historical game it was. Andy started with a curious strategy of scattering his carpets far and wide. This paid dividends as later on he was able to join them together to make one huge carpet. One that I kept landing on. You see, Martin, in his attempt at getting points, kept steering Assam/Andy back to his carpet which was next to Andy’s carpet thus leaving Assam/me in an impossible situation. This has happened before, but not to such a devastating effect. I was knocked out of the game (player elimination? At GNN?!) and watched the rest of them have fun without me, eventually covering over my last piece of carpet ensuring I scored no points at all.

Andy 64

Ian 40

Martin 38

Andrew 0

I refused to give Andy any credit, though, insisting it was all Martin’s doing. This gave rise to the blog title and my claim that Andy was the Gary Lineker of Marrakech - tapping in from six yards after someone else had done all the hard work. I should have been more gracious in defeat, but if I’d been like that, I wouldn’t have a blog title.

At this point, Ian had to go to bed and I needed a lie down too. Next week is the one year anniversary of GNN going into lockdown. I don’t think anything is planned, though since that would clash with Katy’s birthday. Either way, see you all then.

Our autoplay has been updated

Tuesday games this week kicked off at 8 with six gamers in attendance, Katy, Martin, Sam, Ian, Andy and myself. Our first game was For Sale, and what an odd game it was. Sam picked up the 1 since"you know where you are with a one," and then he picked up an 8, which had an igloo on it. After all, he quipped, "you know where you are with an igloo… the north pole." He also got the 2, making him the most locationally certain player that For Sale has ever seen.

In the buying round, Martin made happy noises about how well everything was going. His confidence was entirely justified, and there was a three-way tie for third.

Martin 51
Ian 47
Sam 44 + cash
Katy 44 + less cash
Andy 44 + much less cash
Andrew 39

Then we split into two groups. Katy, Martin and Sam went off to play something whose name escapes me, but looked like this.

After that, I’m told they played Masked Men and it ended:

Katy 5
Martin 5
Sam -2

Meanwhile, Ian, Andy and I played Buttons. Ian got a rules explanation from Andy, even though it had been me that suggested it. Thanks Andy. I then went bust in round one, you know, just to show Ian what it looked like. 

Ian looked like he was going for two rows of six when I got lucky with a dice roll and was able to Opt Out in a winning position. The other two had to push their luck or admit defeat. Ian failed in his attempt but Andy was more fortunate. As we saw the result, I was remind of this game’s comedic lop-sided scoring system,

Andrew 108
Andy 108
Ian 8

After this Ian said he was in the mood for something light, and Andy suggested Sapiens. It may be light to him, but I found there were enough rules for them to blur together in a sticky mash.  There were lots of icons and something about food. The situation wasn’t helped by me having to quickly dash downstairs mid-game and open a tin of sardines for my girlfriend. 

Andy 31
Ian 24
Andrew 20

After this, Katy and Martin had joined our Google Hangout after Sam had left for the night and we ended with No Thanks, this time exploring the possibilities of the automatic pass system. This little option allows you to keep adding coins until a certain value is reached, and when it does this, it does it extremely quickly. This makes the player look very impatient and petulant. Martin also liked the message “your autoplay has been updated” that appears onscreen when you use it. As for the game, I was winning until the last card, which was 32 and Martin milked it for as much as he dared.

Martin 11
Andrew 24
Katy 25
Andy 39
Ian 49

And so that was it. Thanks everyone. See you next Tuesday.

Keys are good! Keys are good!

 I arrived online and found Martin, Andy and Ian patiently waiting for me, having completed a game of No Thanks. When I checked the result, I couldn’t stop myself from pointing out how shit those scores were.

Ian 63

Martin 64

Andy 76

Then the four of us decided on a new game: Abyss. Nothing to do with James Cameron externalising a failed marriage into a CGI-laden blockbuster. No, instead this is a get-stuff-to-get-stuff kind of game. The basic mechanism seems to be (to me at least) that the more choice you ask for, the greater the options for your opponents to pick up something out of the stuff you leave behind. Cards you don’t buy end up in a pile that someone can take for free, if you ask to see three “locations” (end of game bonuses which you can get when you have three keys, hence the blog title) and those other two you don’t chose will become available for everyone. That kind of thing.

Martin talked us through the rules, which was made a lot easier when Andy worked out how to allow Martin to make his cursor visible, and his tinkerbell-esque green cursor darting around brought back memories of playingcards.io.

Halfway through the game Katy arrived, commented on how quiet we were and then left. And it was. Ian opined that the game would be better in real life to general agreement. Not to say it wasn’t bad, but a little pedestrian. Part of the problem is having to click “pass” on something you obviously don’t want and the game does allow you to set up automatic passing for cards of a certain colour/value but none of us felt confident enough to do that.

In the end, Martin bought up the seventh lord and triggered the end game.

Martin 76

Andy 75

Andrew 65

Ian 63

After this pretty substantial experience, we ended with Marrakech, with the “dick” variant where you leave the meeple pointing in the direction you want your opponent to go. This worked badly for Ian who found that Andy was repeatedly able to set him up so that he had no chance of escape. I felt a bit bad because I seemed to let Andy get into those positions, but didn’t admit to that at the time. I’m admitting to it now, though. Sorry Ian.

Andy 68

Martin 52

Andrew 30

Ian 12

And then we were done. Thanks all, it was fun.

See you Next Tuesday

It was a night full of the sounds of distant fireworks from many locations and I walked to Joe's wondering if this is what a war zone sounded like.

Joining me at Joe's, apart from the host, were Katy, Ian, Sam, Martin and Adam T. We started with a little conversation where Martin reminded us of Katy's use of the c-word in his birthday card. She insisted that she wrote that he wasn't a c-word and, besides, she had been under a lot of pressure to write something witty. Martin suggested some kind of code like… C U Next Tuesday. On saying that, we realised that we had been saying See you next Tuesday to each other for nine years. What kind of subliminal messages have we been giving out?

Talking of subliminal messages, our first game was Decrypto with the Laser Disc expansion. Martin, Adam, Joe and Katy faced off against Ian, Sam and I.

In this version of the game, a card drawn from a deck will give a category (famous people, cities, etc) to which at least one of the clues must belong. And if you are able to make all three fit, then you get a laser disc. Collect two and you can use them to guess one of your opponents' words.

This new variant was warmly welcomed by Martin who, on his first round, got a laser disc by having all clues relate to a living celebrity. Then Joe also got a laser disc. By now they had two, but no idea of any of our words. Adam was told not to bother trying for a laser disc. "Don't try to be too flash," was Martin's (unintentional?) pun. But Adam is a proud gamer and if they could do it, so could he. And he did. And he supplied chocolate cake as well. Pity you don't get points for generosity in Decrypto.

On our side, we didn't bother trying to get all three and when we did, we got a miscommunication both times. As such the game finished on round five, delicately poised. We had two miscommunications and two interceptions. They had one of each. It was down to the laser discs. If we could guess a word and they couldn't, we would score an unlikely win.

We correctly got our confident guess (Jack Black plus sponge pudding plus recorder equals School) but then they worked out one of our words at the last minute (runny egg plus Venice plus cold equals Water) and they prevailed.

Katy, Joe, Martin, Adam: piece of cake.
Sam, Ian, Andrew: oh, crumbs.

Then we split into two groups. Martin, Joe, Adam and Sam played Die Crew. But that "die" is the German definite article, not the English exhortation that someone end their life. Ian, Katy and I were remarkably quick (by our standards) to choose Senators as our entertainment.

Oddly, the four-player group decamped to the card table while the three-player game had the whole kitchen table to itself. I heard Martin describe Die Crew as "a mission based co-operative trick-taking game" to which one wit replied "What? Another one?" I know little about it except for getting a yellow five to Joe became very important at one point.

After they played for a while, they were faced with a dilemma. When to stop? The game had another 40+ missions. Should they keep going and head for the moon or try something different? Joe was keen to play Sigma File and after some discussion, they did just that. The moon would have to wait.

Meanwhile, in Senators, it was a ding dong battle. I sped off into an early lead by cashing in a 7-8-9 combo and bought several senators. Then Katy made the running, building up an insurmountable lead mid game but then Ian used Consuls to take points from her and, in one move where he gained four senators, overhaul her. The third war had passed and Katy was desperately holding onto an office card before she cashed in, paying off two extortion attempts by selling a senator, putting her temporarily into last place.

But temporary became permanent when she turned over the next card to find the fourth war. No chance to cash in and she finished in last place.

Ian 16
Andrew 12
Katy 11

After this, I suggested No Thanks. Katy insisted she was terrible and I assured her she can't be worse than me. Ian kept quiet, perhaps not wanting to seem over confident. I started off by picking up the 33, hoping for lots more cards in the thirties that I could milk for coins, but none came out. Not one.

Katy 53
Ian 55
Andrew 101

By this time, Sigma File was ending, with Sam the winner (“I went heavy on Bruno,” he explained) but apart from that, I know very little.

Then they began a game of Cartographers, even going so far as to sharpen their pencils first.

We three never saw the end of that game. We played a game of Las Vegas during which Ian mostly texted and I took a call in round two, much to Katy’s disgust.

Andrew $410,000
Katy $260,000
Ian $240,000

After this, Ian had to go and, frankly, after last week’s midnight finish both Katy and I were keen to finish early. Cartographers was still in full swing so we decided to pack up and leave. We set off at a refreshingly early half past ten, looking forward to an early night.

Except, soon after Katy and I parted, I realised my phone was still at Joe’s. I turned around and ran back to Joe’s house and got there just as Adam was leaving. I soon found my phone and turned down their kind offer of another game, so tired and sweaty that I really needed an early night now. But I was there long enough to hear Sam refer to the game Startups as “Breadsticks” just because he was looking at some while he described it to Martin.

Sam texted me the scores later.

Cartographers:
Martin 100
Adam 95
Sam 84
Joe 73

Startups:
Sam 3
Joe 1
Martin 0

But I finally got home at the usual post-games night time. At least I had my phone. Now it’s all downhill to the games weekend! Woo hoo!

"Jedi" seems to be the hardest word

As England basked in a unusually warm winter, seven happy gamers congregated at Joe's house for the regular dose of cardboard-based entertainment. We were Joe, Andy, Adam, Sam, Martin, Ian and me.

We began as one big group with Just One, the word game where duplicate clues must be avoided. And we did pretty well at first in that regard, although some of our clues were a little obscure. Adam's clue for "Passion" was "Iniesta" while my clue for "Lamp" was "aldiss". With hindsight I suppose "tower" and "shipwreck" make a great definition for "lighthouse" but it took me a while. And it didn't even occur to me that Jedi would be a word at all, so I failed that particular word despite the obvious clues.

As the game went on, duplicates started appearing and well done to Andy for guessing "Mars" from the two remaining clues, "Attacks" and "Snickers".

We were "awesome" according to the scoring system.

Next we split into two and I faced the surprising situation that both games I suggested were chosen. Me, Adam and Andy went for Can't Stop, the dice game of pushing your luck (then again, aren't they all?) while the other four played Zendo, the game of questioning the Buddhist nature of things.

Zendo doesn't have a winner (expect maybe Martin this time, with Sam pretty sure he was last) and I know little about what happened but I think they had fun.

Can't Stop, meanwhile, was proving to be a very cagey game as they three of us proved time and time again that we could stop, actually. This cautious play lasted until the closing stages when Andy went on a rolling spree of mostly sevens and nines and then Adam, forced into relying on his unreliable luck with dice, had to really go for it to steal the eight column from Andy and take the win.

Adam 3
Andy 1
Andrew 1

During these two games we pretty much demolished three bags of crisps in about three minutes, including Martin's snack that looked like Wotsits but tasted different, causing a brief moment of confusion the first time you tried one.

We were pretty much completely out of sync so at some point we started playing Kingdomino and they played Byzanz. This was new to me and, if the brief snatches of conversation I heard are anything to go by, it revolves around trading in your merchants and "getting shit for one."

Ian 25 (plus 5)
Martin 25 (plus 3)
Joe 24
Sam 22

Kingdomino was fun, although I was often last to choose, meaning I didn't have to think too much. Just as well since my 7.5% cider had gone straight to my head.

Andy 37
Andrew 34
Adam 23

We then shot through a game of No Thanks, complete with the ubiquitous complaints about who shuffled these cards. It was yours truly and while I understand that the human mind is predisposed to find patterns that aren't there, I have to admit that there were more runs of numbers being revealed than was normal. I even shuffled the cards before putting them back so that the next game wouldn't have that problem.

Adam's single run of cards meant he strolled to a dominant win.

Adam 16
Andy 52
Andrew 90

The other half of the table played an Avenue-ish game called Railway Links. In this game dice are rolled and the players have to draw what they see on the dice.

Joe was quietly optimistic mid-game, based solely on the fact he wasn't cursing as much as the others were. Alas, the scores show his tranquillity did him no favours.

Sam 50
Martin 48
Ian 39
Joe 37

While this played out, we sped through a game of Qwixx which saw Adam's newfound love affair with dice continuing.

Adam 95
Andrew 60
Andy 44

And finally we were all together again. Ian took the opportunity to bow out and head home but the remainers had a rousing game of For Sale. I made no notes and, frankly, I remember little. I was drunk enough that, while I was writing down the scores, I asked what Ian got and had to be reminded that he'd already left. Cider followed by Soju. A potent combination.

Joe 53
Martin 47
Andy 46
Sam 40
Adam 40
Andrew 35

Thanks all. That's my last games night until late March as I'm off to Japan again. I'm genuinely sad to miss Katy's homecoming, but I'm sure I'll enjoy the blog posts.

Andrew's Perfect Evening

Saturday night, and what better thing to do than play some games.

That was the opinion of myself, Andrew and Ian, anyway, albeit I lost track of time and they arrived on the street to find myself and Stanley attempting (and failing) to fit roof bars to our car. Whilst that was resolved, they stepped inside and broke out a 'ten minute' game of The Mind, that came to a dramatic end over half an hour later.

Having put the kids to bed, I watched the drama play out from level five onwards, at which point they had four lives but no shurrikens. It made no matter - an absorbing display of synchronicity played out right up to level 12, with almost no hitches at all, at which point Andrew - possibly distracted by Genesis - said "synch at 23" - giving away his lowest card. He discarded it and drew a new one, but the spell was broken and their tango turned into a drunken stagger home from the ballroom.

Nonetheless - they got through level 12 with two lives remaining, and played out an astonishing six levels of the Dark Mind before finally succumbing.

and look how close they were!

Nothing could live up to that, could it? Well, we gave it a go with Quantum. This is a favourite of mine and Ian's in particular, but hasn't seen the light of day in a while. I got off to a flier but was quickly caught. Ian surged ahead, before my dominance strategy saw me catch up, while Andrew somehow drew level as well. With all of us poised with a single cube to place, this particular three-way race went Andrew's way in a dramatic denouement - Andrew named it his dream before it happened, as he moved a 5 ship five spaces and needed to reconfigure his 6 ship to a 3 with a free action - he rolled a three, and Ian and I could only applaud.

Next up was Andrew's choice - Heaven and Ale, that classic game of brewmasters and ingredients needing to be as far up the track as they can so the position of the brewmaster can change the position of the ingredients by a certain amount depending on how far the brewmaster is itself and the poorest-performing ingredient defines your score although so does the brewmaster.

We were all a little ring-rusty and had to check the rules once or twice, but the game's seeming thinkiness suddenly drops away on the final round, which arrived sooner than we thought, somehow. Ian had neglected his brewmaster, whereas mine was at dizzying heights, but Andrew's middle path proved to be the winning one:

Andrew 29
Sam 28
Ian 16

With 11 looming we bashed out a quick game of Love Letter, where I fell foul of picking up the King in every round but one, and Ian found himself ousted before he could catch the man of the moment:

Andrew 3
Ian 1
Sam 0

Before we ended with the most ludicrous game of No Thanks that has possibly ever been played. Andrew picked up a card in the thirties, whereas I found myself tempted by two cards that were never going to combine. Another high card plopped out and Andrew took it - another lowish one for me. With both of us so card-happy, Ian ran out of chips, and it only got worse for him from there. Andrew had a seemingly inexhaustable stack of chips. I had an inexhaustable sense of optimism, and kept picking up cards before Ian could. Andrew needed the 32 to combine his high cards into one relatively harmless run. Ian picked it up because he had no chips. I needed the 27 to stop my score running away into the high reaches of acceptibility. It never came. The scores ended looking like we played the game all wrong - because we did.

Andrew 55
Sam 71
Ian 164

That's one hundred and sixty-four!

Brilliant.

Five wins in a row for Andrew if we include The Mind, which he shares with Ian. And I think we should.

Ian's final card combo