Hourglass Vigour

 Tuesday at 7.40 and Joe answered his front door and let me in. As I entered his kitchen I saw that he, Ian, Martin and Sam had set up to play Gang of Dice, which is like high score in that you have to roll dice and you score according to certain criteria, such as “bust if you roll three odds” or “all the same value.” The trick is that you get to chose how many dice to roll. So, if “three of a kind” will bust you, then you can choose to roll only two dice with absolute confidence. Of course, your maximum score will only be twelve while other more luck-pushy players will roll more dice.

If you lose a round, you lose those dice to the winner and you have to buy them back. Your final score is money plus remaining dice. Sam started well, despite never being quite sure what score everyone had. Ian kept rolling well and then seeing Joe roll even better. Martin did astonishingly badly, and ended so far behind everyone that I’m obliged to use the old vidiprinter method of spelling out the score in brackets in case anyone thinks there’s been a mistake.

Joe 68

Sam 56

Ian 29

Martin 9 (nine)

“I can’t believe Knizia’s found something else to do with dice,” exclaimed Martin who enjoyed it, despite his display of misfortune.

Then we set up for a quick game of Kites while we waited for Gareth to arrive. In this game there are six egg timers and five cards in your hand. All you do is play a card from you hand that will allow you to flip an egg timer or two. We just had to make our way through the deck of cards while making sure that no egg timer runs out, and they all run at different speeds. It was a neat game, building to a climax of nervous timer-flipping. Gareth knocked on the door midgame, sparking a second of panic as we debated whether one of us dared answer the door in the face of six impatient hourglasses. Joe made the dash and Sam took his go for him until he got back.

But right at the end, only a few cards from victory, Joe didn’t have an orange card and the final grain of sand trickled through the neck and into the lower ampule.

Then we were a sextet so we split into two. People with three-letter names played Thunder Road while people with six-letter names set up a game of San Francisco. I didn’t follow Thunder Road much, except for noting Sam’s exclamation of “Holy shit, Ian.” In the final reckoning, Ian didn’t make it to the end of the game and Sam was immobilised, so Joe won.

As for sunny San Fran, Martin went for skyscrapers and I loved workers and cable cars. Gareth held out for a particular foundation, always making sure he was able to pick up at a moment’s notice, but it never came out. The pivotal moment was when Martin picked up some cards just to stop Gareth from getting them, even though they didn’t help him. That certainly stopped Gareth but did it also allow me to sneak past Martin?

Andrew 12

Martin 11

Gareth 9.5

Then we played Spot while Thunder Road ended. Gareth built up a huge pile of bones that gave him extra rolls of dice. In fact he had so many that when I discarded a bone, I put it in his pile since I thought it was the supply. However, he wasted 11 of those 12 bones trying to get a one so he could instantly win the game. With one bone left, he stopped, unwilling to go bust. But the next turn, he picked up loads more bones and then easily rolled a one the next chance he got.

Gareth 6

Martin 3

Andrew 3

Then we were all together so we rearranged our seats and began again. Gareth, Sam and I played Mille Fiori at speed while Ian, Joe and Martin played Ra. Martin seemed distraught for most of the game, convinced that Joe was going to slaughter them all. It was close but Joe won again.

Joe 50

Martin 47

Ian 30

Me, Sam and Gareth banged out a speedy game of Milli Fiori. Sam sped into an early lead, hitting 69 points after round 2 while Gareth and I languished in the 20s. But before long we had caught him up. My final move strung together three “take another turn” options for enough points to get me into second.

Gareth 197

Andrew 192

Sam 183

Then we banged out a quick Not That Movie: five rounds, but only one perfect. 32 points, I think. No idea if that’s good or not.

With that, I left them to their final game: So Clover. And what a game it was. Ian’s clover had, I’m told, so many interchangeable words that it only scored one point!

Thanks all. See you next week.

The Suiting Floatcases of Smalmsbury

It promised to be a bumper nine of us at one point, but unfortunately we lost Anja to fatigue. With Katy arriving a bit later - distracted by the Tour de France - just after 7.30 there were seven of us raring to go: Adam T, Ian, Laura, Joe, Martin, Gareth and myself (Sam). We kicked off with That's Not a Hat. 

Each player gets a card with an image on it to start from a deck of distinct images. Then someone takes a new card from the deck, flips their first one over, and passes it to a neighbour (the back of the card instructs which way to pass). When they do, they say aloud the image that's on the card. The receiver then flips their own card over and passes that one, doing the same thing. And so ultimately all the cards are face-down and everyone's trying to remember what their own card is as well as keep track of what the card that's currently travelling around the table is.

If you doubt the accuracy of what the card you've been passed was described as, you can challenge and flip the card over. The loser keeps the revealed card and we go again. First to three lost challenges is the loser, which in our case was... Laura, I think? She seemed to enjoy it despite that. Fun!

We still had some pre-Katy time so busted out Not that Movie, which regaled us with dubiously-monikered cinema such as Pulp in the Hole. In our first round everyone chose the same movie except me. My crestfallen shame was to be diluted though as first Adam, then Ian, fell foul of the same fate.

I think we only got the perfect score once, aided in no small part by the reviews seeming to very much suggest a particular movie:

Then, with Katy imminent, we decided she'd be fine with playing Mille Fiori so Joe Ian and Laura began setting it up. The rest of us tried our hands at Martin's new fave, Hooky. Has Andrew explained this before? I think he has, but with two newbies in Adam and I Martin ran through the simple rules.

Simple rules, but a brow-furrowing experience as everyone tries to figure out what letters everyone else has in order to then figure out what the three 'missing' letters are. We lapsed into long pauses whilst at the other end of the table, the pace was brisker and the mood more buoyant. Katy looks like she's hating here, but I think that's just the curse of my camera.

Hooky ended after an intense hour with all of us throwing up our hands in various degrees of confusion and disgust. It transpired that Martin's workings-out had been thrown by Gareth assuming 'smarm' was spelled 'smalm' due no doubt to his psychological preoccupation with Malmsbury. "It's the only word we didn't spell aloud" Gareth lamented, which was oddly true. I have to say though, smalm made no difference to me. I was chucking stones in the dark at this point, which proved good enough to claim second:

Martin 35

Sam 24

Gareth 23

Adam 8

I enjoyed trying it out, but for my tastes (not to mention brain) it's a bit more like work than fun. It's a curious theme, too, for such a brain-exercising puzzle. 

Mille Fiori ended now too, and Katy definitely enjoyed it:

Katy 213

Ian 204

Joe 190

Laura 152

And we split groups again, with Joe, Martin, Katy and Adam playing Inside Job, new to Katy. 

The rest of us Quantum. A learning experience for Gareth, but his ability to absorb rules and Quantum's exceptions largely being printed on cards meant we were off and running inside ten minutes. 

Laura took an early lead and found herself targeted. I found myself with multiple '3' ships and used them to go around being a pain in the arse for everyone, getting my dominance up to 6 and drawing level. But on the other side of the board both Ian and Gareth did likewise. 

Gareth found a great card combo of deploying for free and removing a ship to gain an extra action. As the game rapidly escalated, I got a belated ass-kicking myself and Ian snuck in ahead of Laura, who was poised to get a cube down. As Ian was primed to win on his next turn - if left unmolested - Gareth snuck in ahead of all of us for a debut victory!

Laura now left us, bound for bed. At the other end of the table, they were still playing Inside Job, but promised us they were on the verge of finishing. We had a couple plays of Win Lose or Banana while we waited, with both Gareth (winner) and Ian (winner) successfully identifying the banana (me) on each occasion. I just have a trusting face. 

I think it was around this time that, a propos Inside Job's intel, someone spoonerised their way to 'suiting floatcases'. It may have been Gareth again? 

Either way, Inside Job's third play ended with:

Katy insider loses
Martin insider wins
Martin insider wins again

Joe was forlorn. "Everyone always suspects me" he said, which I found surprising, as I feel Joe's face is of the largely trustworthy kind (like mine). Adam left to drive home and we remainders gathered into a single group for So Clover. The grumbling was pronounced with this one, especially from Martin despite sitting down last and finishing first. And we did struggle with this opening clover, as there seemed to be not so much too few possibilities as too many. A 3 to begin.

After that however we picked up speed with a fairly rapid bunch of sixes, with Katy spotting that Capital Garbage went well with my clue of 'bankers'. There were some excellent clues from everyone and even a mid-game googling after Martin threw us with a word we were unfamiliar with (sward).

We stumbled slightly at the end but still pulled off a more-than-decent 31/36 to finish the night with a flourish.

Because he saw the salad dressing

 Joe answered to door at Sam’s place at 7.47 and let me in. At the kitchen table he, Sam, Katy, Adam H and Ian were all playing Zombie Kidz Evolution. Ian rolled a die and it was blank, which was good, but then Katy rolled a red side and that was bad and the game ended. Then they spent about five minutes opening envelopes and sticking stickers because the game had been played often enough that a new zombie card and rule had been unlocked.

Then we were six. Should we split into two? Adam was keen on six-player Railways of the World, while Ian mentioned Heat. But we chose Decrypto since it hadn’t been seen in literally years (since 2022, according to the blog). Joe, Ian and Katy teamed up against Sam, Adam H and me. Round one and two were clear, but it all started going wobbly on round three. 

Katy’s clue was intercepted by us (more by luck than judgement: we were pondering our options when we noticed that we could just make the same guess as last round, so we did. And we were right) and then Joe and Ian got it wrong! But then Sam and I misunderstood Adam’s clue.

In round four, Katy, Joe and Ian intercepted my clue. It was getting harder to think of a reference for “Cyclops” which had appeared in every round. Telescope, Forehead, Hades and Blinks were clues to date and then it came up again in round five. Sam clued all cinematic references: Speilberg for ET, Scorsese for Money and Harryhausen for Cyclops, which was better than any film reference that I could come up with: I’d been trying to remember who’d played the one-eyed giant in Krull since we’d started. But anyway, Sam’s clues were intercepted, and the game was done.

Joe, Katy, Ian: superspies

Adam, Sam, Andrew: superfluous

Then we split into two groups. Adam, Ian and Sam went off to conquer Planet Unknown while Katy, Joe and I played Luxury Ra. With these two games, there wasn’t a huge amount of table space left so it’s lucky we’d already eaten all the crisps.

This was my first time playing this copy of Ra and I was rightfully impressed by the tactile experience although my tactics didn’t improve. At least it was close, with Joe’s grip on the game continuing. All thanks to his sudden switch in round two to collecting pharaohs despite telling us earlier that he really wasn’t interested in them.

Joe 43

Katy 41

Andrew 36

Remarkably, Planet Unknown ended at the same time and they totted up the scores as Sam told us that he loved the solo version so much that he’d played it fifteen times.

Sam 44

Ian 43

Adam 40

Then it was all back together for a game of So Clover. Any dreams of 36 out of 36 were dashed early on. We cleared Sam’s clover fine but then stumbled on Katy’s clue for fire which I think was “lighter” and “traditional.” Then an unlucky mix up saw us fail with Ian’s even though I was pretty confident we were right.

I was so convinced we were right I took a photo

I’m relieved that my clover scored the maximum 6 points as they pretty quickly realised I’d misread “envelop” as “envelope.” But I feel genuine regret that we didn’t get Adam’s clever clue of “seawee’d” which is a punchline to the joke “Why did the sea blush?” and we guessed accordingly. Unfortunately he’d wanted to do “why did the tomato blush?” but he couldn’t remember it.

I think we got 29 out of 36. Sounds about right.

Then Katy, Adam and I went home. On the way back, Sam sent me this gem from their game of Not That Movie...

And Katy found a wall with a few odds and ends that she had to peruse.

Thanks all. See you soon.

Lazy Susans in Spaaaace!

 I knocked on Joe’s front door at 8pm and while I waited, Sam sent me the results of the game they’d just finished which meant I was able to congratulate Joe on his victory at Oh My Brain as he opened the door.

Downstairs sat Sam, Martin and Adams T and H. Since there were six of use we began with Challengers. Sam wasn’t hugely keen and so he was given the seat where he didn’t need to move for each match. I started well, but a victory in round one is barely a victory at all when you consider the rich pickings later in the game. I didn’t win again, consistently losing as my bench overflowed. I slimmed down my deck in round five and then consistently lost due to running out of cards.

Martin decided to go big on pyrotechnicians who then never came out at the right time so their super power never triggered and Adam T used UFOs to draw extra cards and had two overpowered Stable Boys. These were the winning tactics, it turned out, as they both qualified for the final.

Martin 37

Adam T 37

Joe 30

Adam H 17

Sam 8

Andrew 3

Martin and Adam T faced off in the grand final while the rest of us packed away the rest of the game in a faint display of disinterest. Sorry about that but at least we didn’t start putting chairs up on the tables. In the end Martin won when he played a Villain and caused Adam T’s bench to fill up.

Then we split into two groups. Sam, Joe and Adam H chose Planet Unknown, whose huge box put me off slightly as I imagined a Feast For Odin style epic. By contrast Martin, Adam T and I went for the tiny-boxed Impulse. In between these two space-themed games sat a bowl of snacks that, if I recall right, Joe described as being “over-flavoured” and he wasn’t wrong. They were a shade of red that, if you saw it on a plant, you’d assume it was poisonous. And when we ate them, we went through a journey of saltiness, spiciness, overwhelming aftertaste and finally an almost automatic desire for just one more.

The reason for Planet Unknown’s large box was revealed when they set up – in the middle of the play area was a large circular receptacle for all of the pieces that the player would need to tessellate across their planet’s surface. And this rotated! Finally, a game that comes with its own lazy Susan.

I know nothing about the game, nor if you can turn the lazy susan as you wish or if there are rules guiding its use, but they seemed to have fun.

Adam 67

Joe 58

Sam 51

As for Impulse, it was very pacifist with no battles at all, even if Martin and I sabotaged each other. Not that we were picking on each other deliberately. It’s just that Adam T was always out of reach, sitting in his corner mining and trading for points.  Most of my points came from trading too. And then Martin went from 12 points to the game-winning target of 20 in a single turn and the game ended.

Martin 20

Andrew 9 (? I think)

Adam T 8 (ish)

Since Planet Unknown was still being explored we played Kingdoms, a very simple Knizia game that is as mean and cunning as you’d expect. Place tiles with values on the board and then put your castles next to them to score an entire row and column. But beware negative numbers, dragons that scare off positive numbers, mountains that split rows and columns in two and goldsmiths that double your score, for better or worse. Adam sighed that he wasn’t doing enough to hurt Martin, and he was right. I had a good round three to make myself look like a contender for a while.

Martin 183

Andrew 176

Adam T 169

After Planet Unknown had finished they played Art Robbery. Don’t know what happened except for the result

Adam H won!

Joe 2nd

Sam: most points but least alibis.

At this point everyone was together again but not for long as it was half past ten and I had to dash. Even the sight of Not That Movie could tempt me. I’ve no idea what happened but according to the late night messae from Sam, they didn’t do very well: just a score of 24.

Then the Adams left and Sam, Joe and Martin played So Clover twice: 16 out of 18 and 13 out of 18.

Thanks all. See you next Tuesday.

Fist ‘n’ Chips

 After it became clear there’d be no host and few attendees, this week’s Tuesday was moved to Friday. I arrived at Sam’s house and Katy answered the door, telling me I could help her “being alone,” which made no sense until I found out she was watching Ian, Joe, Martin and Sam playing L.A.M.A. Dice. 

While walking to Sam’s, I’d already been sent a pic and scores from the evening’s first game: The Number.

Joe 109

Ian 89

Sam 68

L.A.M.A. Dice ended with Sam blowing on a perilously balanced die that helped him do something (no idea what the rules are) and end the game. A game that, according to Joe, “could literally go on forever.”

Martin 9

Ian 21

Sam 23

Joe 24

I think that points are bad, but not entirely sure.

Then the six of us sat down for a nail-biting game of Heat, the racing game vaguely set in the 1970s where the tents reminded Joe of Filofaxes, Ian was distracted by the crowds of people that resembled disturbing AI-created blobs and the clouds made Sam think someone had spilt salt on the board. But enough about the artwork, what about the race?

Joe had a nightmare start, and soon fell behind after playing three stress cards for a totally random move and then drawing 1-1-1. I was the clear leader at the end of lap one, cleverly slipstreaming round a slow corner past Martin and onto a straight but I was soon caught up and was soon back in last with Joe overheating his engine dangerously to push himself into first!

Near end of lap one: me and Martin (green, obv) battle for first with Joe a distant last.

But the winner was decided at that same corner when Martin gambled on a boost which would probably leave him stuck in fourth over overheated but instead sent him into first, past that tricky slow corner and onto the straight. He crossed the finishing line while we all tip-toed around the hairpin bend.

Same corner, but lap two. Katy leads me and Ian while Sam, in 5th, is about to overheat

and Joe is back in sixth again. Martin is about to unleash his winning move.

1st Martin

2nd Ian (+1 turn)

3rd Katy (+1 turn)

4th Andrew (+1 turn)

5th Joe (+ 2 turns)

6th Sam (+2 turns)

While Martin commented on his stroke of luck, Sam showed Katy and Joe the crazy extra rules that could be added to the base game, including weather.

Then we set up Auf Teufel Komm Raus! The luck pushing game of avoiding the devil while taking coals from his cauldron. We remarked on how nice the poker chips were, but we just wish there were more of them. They’re also quite large and Katy sometimes struggled to keep her bids totally secret (hence the blog title, in case you were wondering).

She was upset with me on the very first turn when I pulled out enough coals that Martin’s big gamble paid off: she wanted me to continue until I went bust, just to spite Martin. But then when she was in the same position later, she didn’t make herself go bust, so I call shenanigans!

I was confused by people’s habit of raising their bets the more we went on, noting that taking coals at random doesn’t get easier the more you do it. Meanwhile, I like Joe’s method of nonchalantly pulling coals casually one after the other although I noticed whenever he paused, for whatever reason, he pulled a devil. Not that he cared, as he finished a round exactly on the winning total while Martin was left ruing his mid-game bet of 300 when he tried for his second audaciously lucky win of the evening.

Joe 1600

Sam 1420

Martin 1370

Andrew 1030

Katy 840

Ian 640

Since it was Friday, we ploughed on towards 11pm with Not That Movie, where imaginary films get annoying reviews and we have to put them all together. 

Katy’s promise of making the first film that we guess perfectly was made real today as we all chose Time Of The Condor as a sequel spy story that wasn’t for kids. But I think we all wish that instead she would make Parallel Brothers, a sports movie starring puppets.

27 points, which I think Joe said was “Blockbuster”

Finally we finished with good old So Clover. There was no slow excitement at the chance of another perfect score after we messed by Ian’s and Martin’s clovers. We got the rest right, and Katy declared that she’s getting the hang of it. We struggled with Joe’s clue of “Crib” at the end. We got it right, but using the wrong reasoning, which is fine in So Clover. And in life, now I come to think about it.

So we left at about half past eleven. Thanks for hosting Sam. Sorry for being so loud that you had to close the doors in the house, but it was a lot of fun. And Tuesday is only a few days away...

Enjoy your temporary wetness

I rolled up to Laura's front door at eight and rang the doorbell. Then I texted Joe but he couldn't work out how to open the front door from the inside, and finally I went down the overgrown footpath to the gate at the end of Laura's back garden where I was let in and I startled a cat.

I sat down to discover that the other gamers there (Joe, Martin, Gareth, Katy and Laura) had already played The Numbers and Laura had won again. Katy didn’t seem impressed by the game.

We played Challengers. This game of deck-building is like a football manager game inasmuch as you put together a team as best you can and then watch the game unfurl. In round one there was a bit of controversy when it was discovered Gareth had beaten Laura with a B card when only A cards are in play. But a few minutes later we found out Laura also had a B card, so it was okay after all.

Joe started as a clear leader, going through the first six rounds unbeaten. He looked like he was definitely going through to the final. And Gareth, with his trophies and fans looked like he’d be the other finalist. But then Martin won the last three rounds (after losing each of the previous three by a single point) including a win against Joe and when we added up our points, the tally was

Joe 29

Martin27

Gareth 20

Katy 18

Laura 14

Andrew 12

The nail-biting final

So Martin and Joe faced off for the final and, thanks to Martin’s ability to keep his bench clear for more cards, he was able to win! What a comeback story. And his winning strategy? “I had lots of animals and a stable boy and then I got loads of vacuum cleaners.”

Then we stayed as a group of six for a co-operative game of Not That Movie. It’s a simple game of groupthink. First, two columns of cards are laid so. These have the names of real films, except they’re flipped so that once they’re laid out they make titles of new films.

I think a photo can explain it better than I can.

Then, once we have eight new film titles to look at, two “reviews” are drawn from a deck, one bad, one good, and we all had to secretly chose which of the titles these reviews refer to.

It proved tricky, even on those occasions when it seemed obvious. In one round the reviews referred to “ultraviolence” and “too complicated” so I thought The Dark List seemed like the only candidate, but Laura and Gareth disagreed. And why Katy didn’t think that The Silence Of The Dog wasn’t an introspective three-hour movie all shot in the same room, I’ve no idea. Mind you, I think everybody had “The Lady In The Shell” as the perfect film for those two reviews except that Laura’s other half was listening in and when she heard the reviews she said “Well, it’s obviously The Lady In The Shell” and there were scenes not dissimilar to LaLa Land getting the wrong Oscar as we had to replace it with a different film.

There was a scoring system and I think our rating was “good”. Laura didn’t seem to rate it, wondering where the cooperation was and Martin didn’t see the point of keeping score.

Then we split into two groups. Laura, Martin and Joe played Ra: The Pharaoh's Edition and Katy, Gareth and I played Azul. Despite not being a fan of Ra, Katy admitted she’d be happy to play that version. Halfway through that game, Joe must have won some floods at Martin’s expense because I distinctly heard Martin say “enjoy your temporary wetness” and not in a good way.

Joe 63

Martin 39

Laura 16

We gave ourselves a rules refresher on Azul, which seems amazing considering how often we used to play it. It was quite a nice game, with little attempt at ruining each others game although Katy did declare that “I’ve cock blocked myself on the bottom”

Andrew 59

Katy 49

Gareth 36

Now it was 10.30 but this would be my last chance to stay up late for weeks so I stayed for a six-player game of So Clover. Martin was first and his clues were pretty straightforward, even if “multigenerational” (for full/heritage) didn’t quite fit on the clover. Katy, too, had some simple definitions (snail/room = “shell”) and I started to have a sinking feeling. Laura went a little bit surreal with “octopus” as her clue for plastic/medusa but we still got it. Three down, three to go.

Gareth clued nicely, with human/rooster = cock. Then Joe’s caused a bit of difficulty. I was sure “gameboy” was the clue for vacation/console but that didn't fit with the rest of the clover. In the end we tried bucket/console out of desperation and it was right! He explained that it meant it in the sense of Bargain Bucket, since it’s the cheapest console.

Finally there was me, with my dissatisfyingly vague clues. “Silver”? “Yellow”? I didn’t have much hope. But then they got chalk=limb/marker and after that paper/beer=mats. Then it was just a case of which words fitted the last two clues best and they got it right! Pandemonium! Delirium! A chance to immortalize ourselves in the book of perfect results!

We were so excited I tried to take a group selfie

Or two..

And then five of us crammed into Joe’s car for a journey around Bristol as he gave lifts home for everyone! Thanks for hosting Laura. See you all next week.