Swapping Secret Santa for Secret Hitler

Big T was first to arrive at my house for Christmas games yesterday, as we kicked off a few hours earlier than usual at 1pm. Joe was hot on his heels so after a brief catch-up and coffee, we reasoned that it would be silly not to start playing games, so we did. Joe brandished Take Time at us and we jumped in.

This is a fun little Mind-esque game of playing numbered cards around a clock face, with the not-insignificant caveat that each segment, going clockwise, must be of the same or higher value than the one previous. Add in a couple of extra wrinkles and that's pretty much it: but with no communication allowed after you've seen your cards, success proved occasionally elusive. Did we succeed on that final round? I don't actually remember now, but either way, Katy arrived and we shifted gears into sentient vegetable heroism with Potato Man. 

There was just time for a one-round game (won by me) before, as if summoned into being by Adam - compare above and below images - Pete turned up. 

We played another single-round game (won by Big T) and then Adam H and Laura arrived, so we split into teams and broke out Phantom Ink. Joe and I were the clues, with Joe's team at a slight numerical disadvantage (Joe, Pete, Big T) as I clued to Laura, Katy and Adam H. 

Our first word was Pancake, and despite my spelling confusion, our team's question of Who would dislike it was very helpful as I started <mis>spelling CELI(AC). When asked for a nickname I clued CRE(PE) and from there it was a straightforward victory. We went again with the Adams now clueing for the same teams, and midway through the game Chris arrived to bolster the numbers, joining with the short-staffed Pete/Joe/Big T gang. Unfortunately we lost our most coherent decoder shortly after, as Laura had to go off and escape from a room in Cabot Circus, and Katy and I spent most of our time looking at each other in confusion as Adam regarded us with a mix of long-suffering sympathy and crestfallen disappointment. We did figure out Snow, but our shot in the dark simply negated any opposition doubts and they guessed, correctly, the answer was Snowball. 

We realised with a large afternoon stretching before us we could now play some big ol' chunkers. Big T proffered The Barracks Emperors and Joe Chris and Katy leapt in to join him. I played the Christmas sympathy card to get River of Gold on the table and Andy Mosse arrived to find himself dealt in to it, charitably sitting down to an immediate rules-teach. 

In River of Gold, we're sailing up and down (well, repeatedly down, thanks to Rokugan's curious looping geography) the river and establishing trade routes. Despite the madness of the board, River of Gold has a certain simplicity to it: there are only three actions to choose from: move your boat, build a building or deliver to a customer. The goal is to move yourself up the six influence tracks to the east of the river, and the main difficulty we found with the game is remembering to roll the die at the end of your turn instead of the beginning. 

Andy took the laurels here, with Pete second and then myself and Adam lagging a short way behind. 

At the other end of the table, the Barracks were echoing to the sound of a lot of profanity, with Katy summoning her insult of choice for Chris as he did something or other she objected to. There seemed to be a lot of objecting, in fact - the game is a trick-taker of sorts but with a board where cards are laid and prizes - using the word loosely - to be surrounded and claimed. This chicanery continued as River of Gold finished and we began playing Poison. 

This was also new to Andy, but he took to it with his standard zen vibes and nearly followed his River of Gold triumph with a second win, but I just pipped him. 

Sam 13

Andy 14

Adam H 22

Pete 34

Around now the Barracks Emperors concluded as well, and Katy celebrated her debut victory by going off for chips, abetted by Joe and Adam. When they returned, Andrew was with them as well, like the fourth wise man, proffering a festive bottle of ketchup. We paused for dinner. 

After that, Joe suggested Secret Hitler and we split into liberals and fascists. Katy wanted to know if, should she be dealt into the fascists team, she could sabotage it. Joe admitted there was no rule against it, but it could get confusing. And in fairness the game was confusing enough with Joe and I not spotting that each other were fascists and me being convinced Chris was, even though he hadn't opened his eyes. I knew Katy wasn't because she seemed to be enjoying herself.  

I'm still not 100% clear on how the game works, but I did grasp that we all take turns being the president, and the president nominates a chancellor, and then there's a vote and then the president gets some cards and passes two to the chancellor to choose one of, and after this either a liberal or fascist law gets passed. There's enough fog over proceedings that nobody can be totally sure who is who, and Andy found himself shot dead simply for having the temerity to chat in chambers. Then Katy shot Big T who was Hitler and so the liberals won - perhaps for the best in these popularist times, and certainly for Katy's disposition. 

Laura was returning imminently so we split into three groups, with the Fellowship trick-taker, Babylonia and Mille Fiori spread across the table. But now I will hand the reins to our default note-taker and blogger, Andrew.

*

I was walking towards Sam’s house when I was caught up by Joe, Katy and Adam T. I was astonished as the coincidence of all of us arriving at the same time but this was soon explained when I saw the bags full of portions of fish and chips. I had got here just as people were breaking for food.

I had just eaten, so I watched while the gaming table vanished beneath unwrapped papers and various deep fried comestibles. The chat revolved around games, trying to think which games would work with non gamers. Joe told us about a game where you’re given a word and have to guess if it’s a Tolkein character or an antidepressant.

After the food was finished and the table cleared, Secret Hitler was brought to the table. As Sam has already said, it’s a social deduction game, it was capable of allowing all of us to play. In this game, the liberals have to detect the fascists - as determined by drawing an envelope with your secret identity within. And if that weren't enough, one lucky (?) player gets to be Hitler.

I'll be honest, I didn’t really get it. I was a fascist and, as such, I knew that my partners were Joe and Sam but it later transpired that Sam didn't know about Joe, since they were sitting next to each other and couldn’t see each others’ secret signal at the start of the game . Additionally,  Chris kept passing fascist policies. Maybe he was also a fascist and I hadn't noticed, I thought, or maybe he's passing fascist policies because they give the player a little special action. But then Chris, using a special action, assassinated the liberal Andy M, so then I was quite convinced he was a fascist and I’d missed it. Sam voted against himself as President. “I changed my mind,” he explained. I was bemused.

In the end, Katy was the one who identified Adam T as Hitler and killed him, and the game ended with the liberals victorious. It was quite sedate, apparently. Previous (non GNN) games have been quite rambunctious, we were told. Maybe it was the chips, but it was all very low key. I had no idea what was going on at all.

Next, several people adjourned to the front room to choose a game, and Pete came back with a £10 note in his hand, making us all wonder what was going on in there. We hear from Laura that she’s on her way and so we devise a system in which we set up three games and she can join any of them once she arrives.

The choices in this devillishly complex method was Fellowship of the Ring (Adam T, Chris and myself), Babylonia (Sam, Adam H and Pete) and Mille Fiori (Hoe, Katy and Andy M). Although once Laura had arrived, both Fellowship and Babylonia had begun so she joined Mille Fiori. She seemed happy enough.

In Fellowship, the three of us took on Chapter 16 - a tricky hand for a trio containing two relative newbies. But we persevered at Adam’s behest (he wanted to complete all 18 Chapters before the end of the year) and, after three attempts we nailed it! I was quietly smug and keen to try Chapter 17, but Adam checked the game and discovered the next bit was Chapter 16a and looked like quite a long endeavour.

Since Babylonia had finished at the same time as us we decided to leave 16a to another day.

Sam 163

Adam H 156

Pete 127

I remember remarking that Sam’s position on the board didn’t look like a winning one - a couple of small disparate areas, until Pete pointed out all the cities Sam had taken with his strategy.

Mille Fiori was still in full flow, and I heard Joe take a turn that went on for so long that he apologised halfway through.

The six of us played Fuji Flush and I was quietly confident, since this game is - for some reason - my strongest game. Back when we had a Division charting our results, I had a win rate of 50% which is odd for a luck-based game that usually plays five or more. I didn’t say anything, in case I made a target for my back. Plenty of dick points on display and poor old Pete seemed to have a hand made up entirely of 2s and 3s. And I won again, adding my final card - a 7 - to an already existing chain of 7s.

Next up, the six of us bided our time with 6nimmt. Adam T was hesitant to play, but didn’t have the energy or inclination to veto it. And a good thing too, as he ended up a comfortable winner.

Adam T 12

Pete 23

Adam H 24

Sam 32

Andrew 39

Chris 41

And talking of comfortable winners, here are the results from Mille Fiori.

Joe 239

Katy 217

Andy M 167

Laura 154

Joe, Andy M and Adam T left at this point and the six of us played Ito, using the chevrons from Fun Facts as a handy way of keeping track of everyone’s numbers. The categories were vague enough for some details to be clarified. Is a “popular villain” one who is generally beloved by the public, or just very well known? Good job we did check, because we got that one 100% right.

Another curio that this game threw up was when Sam’s reply to “Things that give you goosebumps” was “thinking about goosebumps”. This is about as close to breaking the fourth wall that real life can get but then Sam explained that when he started to think about what might give him goosebumps, that itself gave him goosebumps. Perfectly valid, I suppose.

Things that give you goosbumps - the lower reaches of the scale

After that, I had enough in me for one last game. We split into two groups. I played Katy and Adam at Biblios, and it went pretty much as you might expect. Halfway through I got that sinking feeling that I wasn’t very strong in anything, but it was far too late to do anything about it. And I was right. Amazingly, though, no one finished the game with any orange cards at all, meaning that die was discarded, unscored.

Katy 5 (plus brown die)

Adam 5

Andrew 0

The other end of the table played Soda Jerk which I'm afraid I was completely oblivious to.

Whiskey and soda jerk, anyone?

With that, I was done. Many thanks to everyone for another exciting year. I’ll hand back to Sam for the final part of the blogging.

*

After Andrew left we were down to a quartet - or at least I thought we were. We set up for Misfits and and then saw Pete was quietly watching us, as though not wanting to interrupt. He'd decided to get a later train home and so we redistributed the pieces and set about it. I criticised Katy for going gong-ho saboteur on her very first turn, but the structure survived, long enough to grow big enough that when it collapsed on Pete and later Laura, they were handed enough wooden pieces to start a small fire. 

Chris then drove Pete off to the station and we were left as a trio. And what better way to end the evening than three cracks at So Clover. We kicked off with a 13/18, did about the same in the second game and then finished off with a triumphant 18 in the finale, by which point Katy was sure we had played four times but Laura and I demurred. 

Now a whisky or two to the good, there was even some post-game chat comparing dysfunctional families and putting the world to theoretical rights. Midnight was not tremendously far away by this point, and after a full shift of gaming, it was time to say goodnight. Thanks all for coming, it was epic!

The Happy Filcher

Games night arrived again, and so did the gamers. Adam T was first to materialise and chatted with Sally whilst I freshened up and bought beer and Quavers. Then Martin, Joe, Adam H and Ian all came through the door and we got cracking, kicking things off with a six-player Phantom Ink. 

Adam T and I teamed with Joe (our happy medium) and Adam H and Ian were ethereally clued-to by Martin. The secret word, unbeknownst to us, was Helicopter. We asked Joe would would happen if you buried it for a year, and he replied with SYC, which we figured to be sycamore. But Ian and Adam H figured it too, and Adam T's eureka moment prompted them to guess, knowing already that the study of whatever the word was began with AER. They jumped in ahead of us and guessed correctly, ending the game after about five minutes!

We split into threes with Martin, Adam T and Joe all keen to wrestle with Carl Chudyk's cards-with-a-billion-uses battle of Aegean Sea. I introduced Ian and Adam to World Wonders, with its delightful wooden bits. 

In World Wonders, we're buying buildings each round - and occasionally, wonders as well - and trying to surround them on our board; surrounded building being worth points. Connecting to natural resources is also points, and so is the lowest-value resource on your player board, in a mildly Knizian twist. We found that the flexible towers were at a premium, and unsurprisingly Adam regularly bought what I wanted from market. Ian began fretting that he was going to be last, despite the alluring cluster of wonders he'd built on his board.

I'm not sure what was happening in Aegean Sea, except for the general vibe of chaotic overwhelm, with Martin exclaiming "This is mental!" several times. I am vaguely aware that each player has an 'island' upon/under which they can play cards that Do Things. Like Innovation, how the cards combine in a given game can vary the experience massively, and there's more than one possible endgame I believe. At one point Adam announced he'd won, before Martin explained to him that he hadn't.

We wrapped up World Wonders to find to nobody's shock that Adam had won:

Adam 36

Sam 33

Ian 32

And began playing Misfits, which I didn't realise Adam hadn't played yet. He kicked things off by placing a column in the middle of the table, and I thought this wouldn't last long. But it did.

After about 6 minutes though we were running out of options, and someone was going to take the fall. That someone turned out to be me when I rejected the idea of placing my last cube and tried to shed a column, with catastrophic results, The entire thing fell, including the base, and Ian started a new tower from scratch:

Which despite our best efforts at sabotaging him, Adam won in short order. And, after Martin accused Joe of being a filcher and he turned to beam radiantly at me, unfortunately too briefly for me to get a photo, Aegean Sea finished at the same time!

Joe 13

Martin 10

Adam 6

Who knows what occurred, or if it'll ever make the table again. Everyone seemed happy to experience it though. New groups assembled with with Joe leading the Adams off to play Robo Trick and Martin cajoling Ian and I to play Armadora, possibly the ugliest game I have ever seen, with some artwork that is so generic it's almost not, and an everything-dipped-in-honey glossy finish. This photo sadly fails to capture the dazzling sheen whenever any light caught the surface.

But the game itself is dickish fun. There is a shared board with a bunch of gold scattered around it. On our turn we can either place one of our tiles somewhere on the board, or place two 'palisades' (wooden bits) that divide the board into smaller territories, with the caveat that no territory can be smaller than four squares. 

Although our tiles have varying number values (most are ones, but there are 2's, 3's and a 4) and they are placed face-down, the palisades are what really make the game spicy, as we all try to cordon each other's tiles off from the juicy gold. When there's nothing left to place all is revealed and the player/s with the highest tile value in each region claim the gold. I'd ducked out of a couple of battles in one part of the board, and it turned out well for me, as Martin snagged two big areas from Ian:

Sam 19

Martin 18

Ian 3

Meantime Robo-Trick was still going and unfortunately I cannot illuminate what was happening, as I've never played it and was distracted by Armadora. But we had a couple of cracks at Accuse! in the meantime...

The first one I ended too soon by taking a bit of a wild guess, holding two characters in my hand making me somewhat overoptimistic. There wasn't enough info for either Ian or Martin to subsequently figure out the murder, but we played again and this time Martin ended things, but found his accusations unfounded. I was next to go and took my first win of a game I am pretty shite at. 

Robo Trick finished as well with the happy filcher taking another win!

Joe 2

Adam H 0

Adam T -7

And with a bit of a drive ahead of him, Adam T bade his farewells and left the five of us to play MLEM, the bonkers luck-pushing cats-in-space area-control and moons game. 

Ian set off for the various moons (moon bonus) as Martin and I raced for the planets (planet bonus) and Joe's previous strategy of going for Deep Space at every opportunity was tweaked to just doing so now and again. Adam played shrewdly, as one might expect, but found now and again that shrewdness and dice do not make good bedfellows. After a lot of dice-chucking and several rocket explosions, I chickened out of the active mission just in time - ka-boom - and ended the game by placing my last cat. 

Sam 32

Joe 24

Adam 20

Ian 15

Martin 10

And that was that! Thanks all, it was golden.

Lexicon of Laughs

 Joe was this week’s host and I arrived at his place at 7.30 with Katy following shortly afterwards and Joe and Sam were already there, idly kicking around a game of League of the Lexicon. Adam T arrived soon after too. The game is like Trivial Pursuit but without the board and all the questions are about words. Maybe there are rules involved, but we just rolled a dice and tried to answer a question like “what’s the literal meaning of umbrella.”

Then Martin and Adam H came in, with Steve somewhere outside looking for a parking space. He’d get here after another ten minutes.

We kicked off the evening with Phantom Ink, the supernatural game of communing with the dead (in this case, Katy and Sam) and trying to deduce a word using obscure questions and unfinished answers. We split into teams. Katy was with Martin, Adam T and Steve while Sam was with Adam H, Joe and me.

We  asked questions like “What would happen if you ate it” and Sam wrote down “D” and said the letter outloud, as per the rules, but I think he said “D” with such finality that we were able to guess he was going to write “die” (which is was). The word in question was Mountain (which would certainly kill you if you ate it) which Adam H, Joe and I got on our second guess. The other team were leaning towards “Tent” - something to do with there being a tent in the film Brokeback Mountain.

Then we split into two groups of eight.

Adam T, Martin, Katy and Sam played Maskmen. As they went into the penultimate round, there was a possibility of everyone ending on 2 points, but instead the tie was between three people and Katy was left grasping at straws by asking if tied scores maybe cancelled each other out.

Adam T 3 (wins with most +2 tokens)

Martin 3

Sam 3

Katy -1

Then they played Accuse! which Adam T won and then Misfits with it’s by now gravity defying constructions astonishing everyone. And Adam T won that game as well.

During these three games, Adam H, Joe, Steve and myself had been playing Pass Pass, a trick-taking game that encourages loose informal alliances because players who came first and second in a hand get to pick up cards. Cards are points (and so are diamonds on those cards) but most importantly, if a player picks up at least one of each colour then that is a Pass Pass, and three Pass Passes means you instantly win.

Steve was distracted by phone calls from his son and also kept playing his cards on top of previously played cards, as if he were playing snap, and we had to keep separating them.

Joe was closest to getting his third pass pass but just fell short.

Andrew 34

Steve 32

Joe 28

Adam H 19

At the end of Pass Pass we watched the end of Misfits ...

... and then we all reorganised into new groups. Sam, Adam T, Joe and Steve played Robot Quest Arena while Adam H, Martin and I chose Havalandia. But first we squeezed in a game of Trio with Katy before she went off home for an early night. 

We played as teams and Adam H and I won. I forgot to take a photo until it was over…

Once Katy had gone, we three played Havalandia. I had the rare pleasure of blocking Martin so he couldn’t make his super high scoring launch, but honestly, it turned out that Martin was the least of my troubles. Mid-game, Martin said we should never let him have a corner to himself, and so it turned out to be.

Adam H 105

Andrew 83
Martin 81

RQA sounded like fun. Joe bought some advanced AI but then later he simply attacked Sam with a hammer. Adam T must have had a lot of power-ups because he apologised that his turns took twice as long as everyone else.

Sam 24

Adam T 20

Joe 19

Steve 18

Then Adams T and H and Steve left. Because I had the day off work tomorrow, I was able to stay until the end.

We tried Stinker. Always fun and offensive, but somehow not as much fun with fewer players.

Sam 3

Martin 2

Joe 1

Andrew 1

Finally we played So Clover twice. We scored 22/24, just falling short of perfection due to Joe’s clever clue being too clever. He wrote Gazpacho, which we struggled with. It was not helped with “diet” and “tomato” both being on cards but we should have been looking for “revenge”. Because, as Joe later explained, they are both best served cold.

In the second game we got a perfect score. Again, Joe’s was last to be served and he had another classic clue: he wrote “asswipe” for tail/soap. Poetic.

See you all next week.

Plank's Volatile

Games! As August comes to a close some absentees returned: Joe and Martin from Wales, Adam H from Easton. Also joining us were a celebratory Gareth and a reliably neutral Ian. Your host (Sam) (me) made up a sextet, with Laura sadly having to bow out late. 

We kicked off with Phantom Ink, new to me but very simple - in terms of rules, at least. Adam, Ian and Martin faced off against Joe, Gareth and I, with Ian and Joe the 'spirits' whose job it is to give clues, letter by letter (see Andrew's post for clarity on rules) and Gareth and I both froze in the headlights of an H not followed by an O (I, at least, was expecting Horror). It took just two clues for Martin and Adam to make a successful guess, identifying Diamond as the word!

We went again with Martin and I as the spirits this time. The word was puzzle and I was concerned I'd given far too much away when asked what kind of book, tv show or movie would it feature in. I started writing Krypton Factor and got as far as KRY. But one forgets that it's only obvious when you know the word, and when I was asked what varieties it comes in I only had to write J before Joe cried Silencio! He and Gareth got it on the next guess. 

We moved on to what turned out to be the night's main course, Martin's new acquisition Show Manager. This deceptively prosaic title, with horrific illustrations and exceedingly dubious puns, was notable at first for how badly it seemed to be made. "By bad people" Gareth ruminated at one point. But swiftly the fun began to emerge. 

On your turn you either take an actor - those four cards at the top in the pic above, each with a price to hire them - or put on a show. But the value of the show you put on depends on the actors in it: some are excellent in one role but can't do anything else. Some are decent at a few roles. And some can do anything you like but be shit at it. 

Gemma Smile here can perform admirably in Moonlight and Queenie, but will just be making up numbers if she treads the boards anywhere else. And additionally each actor has a specific role in each play: it's no good having two or three actors who are all excellent playing Big Daddy in Lipstick: when you put your show on, you can only have one actor for each role. 

Performed plays are put on at New York, Paris, London, Berlin and/or Stockholm. The collective value of your actors decides the order they go in, and that order awards points at the end of the game. If all your actors enjoy being in your play, there's a bonus to be had, but that's pretty much it, except to say if you're short of cash you can take money from a previously performed play, devaluing it in the process, as represented by the lower number in the above pic: Gareth took $5k out of his own rats. 

There's a bunch of luck, but also some strategy in when to 'wipe' the available actors in favour of a fresh tranche, and how much to devalue your own shows. And when there's some strategy to be had...

Adam 49

Ian 45

Martin 38

Sam 34

Gareth 30

Joe 26 (edited!)

Longer than we all expected, but good fun, as we all embraced the opportunity to be slightly showy about our shows. We moved swiftly on to Fun Facts, the Wavelength-esque game of perceptions. The first question wasn't quite as Wavelengthy as some though - how many keys are on your keyring - and not bothering to check, I lazily deprived us of points. I don't think I had Charlie on my lap either - that happened a bit later. 

After the drudgery of keys though, we were subjected to more engaging questions, like What's the maximum amount you would you pay your favourite band to play in your house? (Adam: zero) And how satisfied are you with your day (Gareth had to change his score after remembering a good lunch). We were also asked what height we'd like to be, and - all staying within the realms of the everyday - stayed pretty much as we were. Only shortarses Adam and I wouldn't have minded a bit more elevation.

What year would you travel to for a single day was instructive: Adam headed off to the year 40,000 whilst almost everyone else headed to the past, for mostly romantic yearnings. I went to the year of my birth just to find out what the hell was going on. Overall we did decently but not amazingly, scraping about 32 points I think. Afterwards Adam and Joe shucked on coats and left us, but we tempted Ian into a game or three by waving whisky under his nose. That game was Stomp the Plank. 

Gareth's dejection here was down the fact - we later realised - that the engineering of his plank's magnet had gone somewhat awry, meaning it was predisposed to collapsing far sooner than anyone else's, so I don't know how official these results are. But either way we played three times and Martin won every time, despite myself and Ian taking him to the proverbial wire once or twice...

Dumb fun and a nice one to end the evening on. Apologies to Gareth for the inadvertent sabotage; hope to see you all next week.