I love sky

This week’s GNN was a peculiar affair, with people promising their attendance at staggered stages throughout the evening.

And so it was that three of us began with Age of War, pleased in our choice because it can be abandoned halfway if any arrives without any real loss. This game of dice-rolling is as cruel as it is generous. Since the game involves rolling sets of archers/daimoes/swords/cavalry to collect sets of cards, we were all a little preoccupied with the card that was basically a set of one (and so couldn’t be stolen) but eventually, we saw sense and tried to get other, easier cards.

Sam 11
Ian 9
Andrew 5

Then Matt arrived!

With a returneee, Hollie, expected soon, we embarked on a short co-operative game to fill the time. We chose Outfoxed as a clever means of testing our sleuthing skills. Sam explained most of the rules, insisting that by the time the game got round to him, he’d know what was going on. This did not take into account Sam and I’s poor luck with the dice. All Matt got to see was Ian successfully getting a clue that the culprit didn’t have an umbrella.

After some more poor throws, we got a sort of groove on and picked up more clues and eliminated more suspects. But in the end, we had to chose someone we could see as our suspect. We chose Daisy, but it turned out to be Gertrude! That evil wench!

Then, with Hollie still absent, we chose 7 Wonders as a nice deep-but-short game. Usually there are only three of us playing so the game just falls out of the box with all the cards arranged for a three-player game. But today there were four, which mean a certain amount of confused card-shuffling as we searched for the four-player cards to include in the game.

Mostly, this went smoothly until the third round when, after two deals, the cards didn’tdeal out evenly. So we tried once more and it still didn’t. But then everyone announced how many guilds they had, and we had one too many, so Ian (who had eight cards) had to discard his guild. Harsh but fair, that’s us.

However, the game ran swiftly, so that Hollie (who arrived mid-game, in time to see our round 3 debacle) didn’t have to wait long.

Ian went for military and blue buildings in a big way. I went for my lovely 20-point Pyramids of Giza and a bit of everything else. Matt got most out of guilds and, like Sam, dabbled in sciences. Sam scored most for money. Ian won: War plus ostentatious public buildings equals win in any era of history.

Ian 60
Andrew 52
Matt 49
Sam 39

So now there were five of us, with the promise of a sixth (Joe) in the offing. So we played No Thanks, which we thought was about the right time for Joe to get from his house to Sam’s.

Before the game, I was mocked for my strategy of picking up low cards, but this time I avoided it to good result. Although I didn’t have much choice: there weren’t many low cards at all. Instead I played it slow and steady, with only two card piles in front of me by the end of the game and so I came away a winner.

Andrew 18
Matt 24
Ian 25
Hollie 28
Sam 40

After this, Joe arrived and we split into two groups of three. At one end of the table, Joe, Sam and Matt played Isle of Skye, and at the other end me, Ian and Hollie chose Raj.

It was an even game, with only a few of those hilarious occasions of two people cancelling each other out. Hollie won the final round by some distance, going from last to first as she did.

Hollie 51
Andrew 44
Ian 43

Isle of Skye was still unfinished, so we broke out Pickomino (making sure that Hollie was told it was by Reiner Knizia – a name she'll come to recognise if she becomes a regular). We all began well but then the early glut of worms dried up. At least, it did for me.

Hollie 11
Ian 9
Andrew 4

Finally, Isle of Skye ended. Joe said it was “neat”. I'm not sure what it's like, but I took notes of some dialogue from the game: “Ah, bollocks, really?” “Fuck you!” and “Oh God, that's so annoying.” Sounds like fun, certainly.

Joe 83
Matt 71
Sam 63

Then we were all together as a six. Hollie fought off sleep for a game of Dead Man's Chest. Matt was Chief Executioner here, as he had a hand in knocking out Sam, then Joe, then Hollie and finally me. But Ian was made of sterner stuff as he successfully challenged Matt's bid, giving him the win.

1. Ian
2. Matt
3. Andrew
4. Hollie
5. Joe
6. Sam

And with that, we were done. Another week of history fulfilled.

Five out of Ten

Sunday night, and I (Sam) found myself facing off across the table against Andrew and Ian. We'd chosen Five Tribes, the game Ian suggests almost out of habit, and I was struggling. Mitigating factors were attempting to get the music working and two rapscallion children calling for the odd sortie upstairs. But mainly, the problem was Five Tribes.

In some ways it's so good - the moving and dropping off of workers takes that Mancala thing and does something more interesting with it than going in circles. The different coloured workers do different things which is neat. Taking ownership of a tile you empty is neat. But when you add the fact the tiles themselves have an action, and you can buy resources to sell or sacrifice elders for Djinns that add more rules to the game (a lá Alien Frontiers) it starts getting complicated - which I don't mind, except you can't plan your turn until it arrives, as the board is constantly changing complexion, and it feels like there are quite a few more tribes than you'd like. As the others seemed to pull off one shrewd move after another, I struggled with both the game itself and my plan - I didn't have one, until I decided to try and collect a shitload of resources to stay competitive.

The game closed out with Andrew winning reasonably handsomely, and me sneaking past Ian into second:

Andrew 137
Sam 121
Ian 118

Nice to play it again, but I think we might be done with Five Tribes. At least, I am!

We needed something comparatively light, so I taught Ian and Andrew the hit of my holiday in Wales - O Zoo le Mio, the game that crosses Carcassonne with blind-bidding. We all enjoyed this - it plays in less than half and hour but packs a lot into that time.

1 Sam
2 Ian
3 Andrew

With our gaming juices flowing again, we played a game designed for six-year-olds: Outfoxed. This pie thief-identification game can be tweaked to entertain grown-ups by simply speeding up the rate the fox runs back to his or her den, as your time to solve the mystery runs out.

We had no room for failure left when Andrew mooted that the culprit was in fact Gertrude: she had no top hat or umbrella, which is in the world of Outfoxed tantamount to smashing your bloodied/pastried hands on the desk and screaming "I did it!" There were still other foxes it could have been though. was it right to single out Gertrude like this?

It was.

Gertrude stole the pie!

Next up was Codinca, which Andrew and I had found reasonably entertaining as a two-player. You're shuffling tiles around trying to form patterns, and the first to complete all their (four) patterns wins. However, like Bullfrog (as Ian noted) before it, what was a sweet and canny two-player is transformed into a cognitive evisceration with three. At least, it was for us, with Five Tribes still fresh in our minds. We abandoned it after we realised our plaintive yelps were outweighing any snickers of delight.

Instead we played Knit Wit, flying from one end of the gaming spectrum to the other. Although I suppose their is some head-scratching in Knit Wit, it's of the creatively thoughtful variety. Andrew's silent, creepy and found inside was a slug in a flowerpot. Ian conjured up at least one apocalyptic vision involving people falling into crevasses. As far as I can recall the whole game only saw one call of Knit Wit, when Andrew and I contested something of Ian's. But what it was now escapes me.

Sam 45
Andrew 43
Ian 26

There was just time for one more game - Push It. We dived straight in without a single warm-up flick, and it proved to be a mistake, particularly for Ian. Whilst Andrew surged off into a healthy lead we lagged behind, with Ian unable to score at all for several rounds. More than once our discs limped feebly puck-wards only to fall despairingly short of anything that could be considered a threat. Despite Andrew's mid-game slump where Ian and I both feigned competitiveness, he walked away with the win:

Andrew 11
Sam 5
Ian 4

Emboldened and refreshed by the classic game of flicking bits of wood, we decided on one more game to really finish - Biblios. Or Extreme Biblios, as Andrew and I, lacking any sophistication worth the name, like to call it. In Extreme Biblios gold isn't a tie-breaker at the end, you don't shuffle the cards after the gift phase, and during the gift phase if you hand out a single gold tile you get to say "eat shit". There wasn't a lot of the brown stuff around though, and despite hopeful enquiries as to whether anyone ate their own it was a game with a dearth of frustration, though - as always with Biblios - there was plenty of tension and second-guessing. I'm not proud of our scatalogical humour, but at least I can say I'm Mr Biblios:

Sam 8
Andrew 5
Ian 4

Ultra Mare

Monday, and I (Sam) spent the day in Newport Asda whilst waiting for my passport to be renewed. Four hours in an Asda cafe was pushing it, but there was a heatwave outside and it was Newport. I was thinking I'd gen up on Copper Country, but the wifi at the Asda Newport cafe doesn't let you watch videos, it seems, so I was forced to focus on the depressing reality of... reality.

Come the evening, I didn't have time to gen up on Copper Country, because of a combination of lengthy rules and rapscallion children prevented it. Instead when Ian and Andrew arrived, we played another game that's sat in a cupboard for a few months unplayed: Oltre Mare. This game is Euro-y in many ways: it's a map of the Mediterranean; you're stocking up ships, and delivering goods.  The best trader wins.

to be honest, it's a card game really

But in other ways it's quite atypical of a Euro: the only cube to be pushed is along the score track, and you couldn't truly describe it as dry: trading with each other is pivotal, and the game has a delicate balance of managing your hand: the goods you want to deliver versus how many cards you're allowed in your hand, versus how many cards you can play on the next turn. Often you find yourself with a well-stocked hand but a hand limit of 4, and you're literally giving cards away to avoid punishment - for if you have too much stuff on your ship, the pirates come and get you.

Wheat

We all liked it. The first half of the game was quite slow, as we got up to speed, but after the interim scoring the second half of the game took about twenty minutes: a combination of familiarity and the big guns coming out. I didn't note the scores down, but Ian pipped me to a win by a single point (something like 64 to 63) with Andrew back around 59. A close thing.

A close thing, but a long first play, coming in around 1hr 40mins, so Andrew suggested lighter fare in the form of Pickonimo. The first round gave a portent of what was to come when all three of us went bust. Then I surged into a healthy lead, only to be pegged back by Andrew. Andrew surged into a healthier lead... but this time, he was not to be caught. Poor Ian was never in the running, going serially bust:

Andrew 9
Sam 6
Ian 1

Then we played Outfoxed. This is a kids game that is intriguing enough to merit a look by grown-ups; it's a co-operative where the players are working out which fox stole the pie. It's gonna be one of sixteen foxes, and on each turn you either look for clues or suspects, slowly revealing the sixteen foxes and eliminating them from your enquiries via the clues. The chance element is dice: if you don't roll what you set out to roll, the fox moves back towards his or her den, and it they make it home before you figure out the culprit, the players lose!

one we played earlier

It's rather fun. The fox was only halfway home, though, when we figured out who stole the pie: it was Maggie!

Then we ended with Push It, which I managed to clinch at the last from Ian:

Sam 11
Ian 10
Andrew 7