Frightful Fingers

 We were a motley crew of five last night, with a few regulars otherwise engaged in family birthdays and visits to the Peak District, etc. 

Jo, Adam H, Martin and Ian joined me (Joe) at mine, and after a modicum of pleasantries we launched into Furchtlos, or Fearless, Friedemann Friese's latest card game.

It's a TWAST (trick-taker with a spooky theme - we're all ghosts), in which you don't want to stray too far into the forest in either direction (positive or negative points). Except that even if you end up in the mansion in the middle (by taking no tricks), you score 15 points. And points are bad. So I guess the ghosts really want to hang out just outside the house. I think that's all the rules...

You play a round per player, and we were playing at the full 5p. It felt, to me, a little long for a game where you have seemingly not much agency, but admittedly I did nearly twice as badly as everyone else, and noted a couple of times where I played a card and immediately realised what a bad idea it was. Interesting, and I'd happily play again but 3 or 4 player might be the sweet spot.

Jo 33

Ad 33

Martin 36

Ian 42

Joe 66

We'd begun Fearless thinking we were waiting for Andrew to join us, but he texted to say he wasn't going to make it, so we decided to stick with 5 player options. Jo produced a VHS case containing Wendybuxxx - the very nearly finished version of their newest game design, and offered to talk us through the rules. In the game we were all influencers competing in a reality TV show, and using our necro-currency to influence our popularity (apologies to Jo if I've just made all that up). The rules aren't complicated, but I'm not sure I could explain them here, and the game completely flummoxed me (I think I was still sitting in the mansion with a sheet over my head). By the end we'd all found it intriguing, and Jo assured us that it makes more sense the second time you play; I'd be up for a return visit.

I didn't make a note of the scores, but I think Martin won, and I disappeared backwards off the score track after a disastrous third round.

We moved on to Yubibo, the palette-cleansing, RSI inducing game of sticks and balls. We did slightly better than on past attempts, but still failed with half the balls still to wedge. At the moment things fell apart, Martin was complaining that his hand was rising up to the ceiling without his input - it does feel there's a sort of Ouija board aspect to the group dynamics.

We cast about for more 5 player fun, and decided on Prey Another Day. Martin's had this for ages, but I seem to recall it hasn't got much traction on Tuesday nights. I p[icked up a copy just before Christmas and have enjoyed it with family and friends quite a bit. Here I continued my losing streak, getting eaten in both the opening rounds. My luck took an upturn after that, but not enough to outscore Jo or Martin (one of whom won, I now can't quite remember).

With the hour gone 10pm, our thoughts turned to So Clover, and we managed a score of 25 out of 30. Notable were Jo's clue of Thatcher for Genius Roofer (we briefly considered Mark as a possibility), and Ian's Fingers for Glove Noodle - we got a bit sidetracked wondering whether Mummy Fingers were a thing there. 

After that Adam bid us adieu, and we four played again - not really faring much better. I can't remember much about the second round and didn't take a pic, but I struggled with a clue for Cheese/Swing, settling on Party. Unfortunately, the gang felt Cheese Field was more partyish under the circumstances (circumstances which were fair enough, me having not noticed how well Leaf went with Salad). I'm not sure So Clover really benefits from this sort of narrative re-telling, so I'll stop now.

A fine evening, and my last for a week or two - happy gaming!

Great Balls of Squidge

I arrived at Laura and Lucy's house to find Lucy and Ryker upstairs creating a huge den from magnetic boards. Down the the kitchen, Laura, Maddie, Martin, Sarah and Effie were competing in the first game of the first GNN festive get-togethers: 5 Alive, which is a card game of shedding without taking the collective total over 21. Everyone begins with five lives and a life is lost when you bust (I think). 

Martin and Laura were joint winners with 2 lives left, and Maddie and Effie had one apiece when Sarah bit the dust and lost her last one. Christmas games were officially underway and next up was one of Martin's newbies, Hold Your Ground! Here we are trying to be last-ones standing as the ground literally explodes in camera-defying ways beneath your feet. 

As this only plays up to four, Effie and Maddie teamed up and so did Martin and Sarah. Laura and I both flew solo: each turn you play two cards from a hand of four that define number of your people to move and how far they can go, after which there's a die roll to determine whether the explody-stick will move (one space; your choice) or explode the tile it currently resides beneath, ejecting the plastic people from the game: and if anyone is cut off from the central helipad tile, they are automatically lost as well. The helipad is semi-safe in that it cannot explode - but as each tile has a max limit of six, a seventh entering will push someone off. The die may also trigger a round of area-control too, where dominant factions kick off the outnumbered. It's all pretty arbitrary-feeling, but fun. Especially the explosions. 

Effie was merciless when the opportunity to screw over her parents came - the apple falls not far from the tree, Martin - and having been in a strong position they were forced out of the helipad; and out of the game. Then the girls were ejected and it came down to a straight fight between Laura and I: she just needed to roll an explosion to win: and did!  A triumph, but at what cost? Look at the desolation. 

We moved on to HIT, the lesser-seen (recently) Knizia card-flipper. Sarah and Adam shared a win in game one, then Lucy joined us for game two, which I won. Nice to revisit this one. 

After all the subversion and theft though we needed something healing and went with Cross Clues. It was a triumph: 25/25 with zero cheating. 

There's only so much healing we can take though, so we reverted to type with Prey Another Day. Sarah made short work of us here, correctly reading the table and devouring opponents to take a victory in two short rounds. I struggled into second.

We moved on to Wandering Towers. I got off to a good start with two potions filled and one wizard home within a couple of turns, but after that stagnated a bit as everyone lost track of where their wizards might be in the vast apartment complex we managed to build.

There were shenanigans. Twice I was close to ending it only to be harpooned by the architecture moving around me. Martin plaintively cried "Where the fuck am I" at least twice. Sarah shared his existential despair. Eventually I claimed a win, with Adam second and Martin beating Laura to third on the tiebreaker. We all agreed the game is bonkers and whilst Laura took herself off on pizza duty, the four of us played something much more sensible: Agent Avenue. Adam and I dug a little hole for ourselves early on - getting two daredevils whilst Martin and Sarah claimed two Codebreakers meant we had to be extremely careful about taking any face-down cards. We briefly threatened to catch them on the track, but ended up daredevilled or codebroken (I now don't recall which) into defeat. Fun though! 

Next up was Stomp the Plank, the game of pirate elephants hating on each other. There wasn't a huge amount of busting and in fact my red elephant did no plank-walking at all. That lack of adventurousness was enough to bring me a solid win. 

Then, after a wonderful foodie interlude of pizza and salads, the entire house gathered together for Midnight Party!

Martin and I had disastrous first rounds as we both encouraged Hugo out and had him subsequently eat us. The Laura-Ryker team began well by picking up +3 points, but massive kudos to Maddie who pooh-poohed open doors in favour of running around the board to the plus-three rooms. It didn't get her the win, but she looked like an action hero compared the rest of us scrambling in a sweaty-palmed panic. Mid-game Sarah and Effie had to leave, and as Katy was arriving at the same time she took over control of their team.

Laura + Ryker -14
Martin -23
Sam -27
Maddie -28
Sarah + Effie / Katy -29
Adam -32

Ryker and Maddie were fully invested now and played Block Party with us. Really lovely to have them at the table as we continuously discovered our 'obvious' creations just looked like a bunch of cubes to everyone else.

Adam surged into an early lead here, and Ryker had a handicap of only actually starting in round two. Adam built a wonderful slice of watermelon and I successfully had my orange cube identified as 'an orange' by Maddie. I knew Martin's blocks were meant to be a slide but I wasted my steal on Katy's swirl-of-colours construct, which was "obviously" a donut. Meanwhile Katy insisted Martin's slide looked 'more like Chewbacca'. You be the judge:

Everyone had a little late-game rally and for me it was enough to catch Adam and share the win. Unfortunately that was Adam's last involvement for the day as he had to head off home, so he missed out on the hilarity of what was next: Misfits. We began as a quintet: Katy, Laura, Maddie, Martin and myself. But after Ryker won Pizza Party at the end of the table he joined my team and supplied both advice and some next-level heckling, trilling "Boooooring!" if he felt the placement wasn't ambitious enough. Around here was also Ryker's amazing 'Squidge my balls' routine, which gave all the supposed adults an even harder challenge than Misfits: keeping a straight face. Or trying to.

Somewhere in all this craziness - there were multiple collapses - Katy picked up a win despite her last two pieces being cylinders. There was time for one last game before kids' bedtime and so everyone was dealt into UNO - which today I discover in fifteen years of the blog, has never been tagged here before. Ryker and I stayed as a team, Maddie and Lucy paired up, and Katy, Laura and Martin all went it alone. 

I think it's been about fifteen years since I've played it at least, but if it doesn't scream hall-of-fame it is at least a fast-moving bit of silly good fun. Despite our best efforts to harpoon them, Maddie and Lucy took the win here and the kids were shuffled off to bed as we debated what to play next, settling eventually on Rebirth. 

During our cathedral-centric rebuilding of post-apocalyptic Scotland, the children reappeared and there was a bout of snacks and swinging. Ryker was at the table when I told Martin I hated him, which I had to quickly clarify was only in the context of the game. Laura admonished me for setting a terrible example, and I realised it really was. 

Katy broke out a colossal box of Maltesers and Laura added a bowl of Celebrations. On the board it looked a two-horse race between Katy and her proliferating energy farms and Martin and his spawny card draws: the first two missions he'd picked up rewarded his initial placements. That's my excuse anyway. I tried to balance the needs of farms and missions and castles and just ended up a kind of bland fourth place. Katy looked poised to sneak the win from her arch enemy, but she'd only picked up 4 missions - and only completed three of them. 

Martin 124

Katy 119

Laura 117

Sam 111

While Laura did some further bedtime shenanigans Martin set up his other Christmas present: Bomb Busters! This is a co-op undertaking with the theme of FUSE - we're defusing bombs - and a similar shared-information system to Hanabi.

Each round we successfully 'cut wires' by matching a numbered wire from our (hidden) hand of them with one from another player. At the start we can all share information about a single wire, but because wires are laid out numerically left-to-right, you can also transmit limited info about the tiles around it as well. There's four of each number (on the first mission, the numbers are only 1-6) and if two of a number are already revealed and you have the remaining pair in your own hand, you're allowed to pair 'with yourself' and reveal them. 

After the very easy first mission, the game makes things a bit harder with extra numbers (1-8) and now coloured wires as well (see 3.1 in pic above) that need to be 'cut' in  similar fashion. It gets trickier fast, and if you're not a naturally logical puzzle-solver (ie me) it can start to feel like the only thing you can grok is the fact you know nothing. But it's more intuitive than Wordy or Message From the Stars, and I enjoyed it. Each mission ramps up the difficulty, and gives you more to navigate. To help, you also get single-use tool cards that can get you out of a pickle - I used these more than anyone!

We succeeded our first three missions but lost our last life on Mission 4. Not a bad return for four slightly inebriated cadets, I'd say, even if our alcohol-infused body parts were now scattered around the academy. It's a bit Quirky Circuits too, in the mission-focused escalation - I look forward to playing this again. Laura and I were fading a bit now though - possibly the wire-cutting tension; maybe the post-chocolate sugar-crash - and we elected to make the last game the final one of the night, so it was of course So Clover. Katy got a bastard of a red herring tile, but we managed to call it out and ended the evening on a masterful 24/24! What a great way to sign off 2024. Thank you Laura, Lucy, and all for a cracking session...

Happy new year all. Here's to some great games in 2025 - starting on Saturday!

Hello' Ian

This week's games night fell on Halloween, so when I arrived at Adam and Hannah's door I was greeted with a bucket of sweets to choose from, even though my costume was old man in coat. Inside, Arthur's impressive Adam-made costume loomed over us from the corner, as returnee children compared sugar hauls.

Someone else in costume was Gareth, although this was not in person but as he appeared on a card in his friend's freshly-minted game, Utopia. 

There was some loose talk of playing it, but as it's reasonably heavy - time travel and butterfly effects with added megalomania - in the end we decided it needed it's own specialist slot, so maybe that'll happen in the coming week. Instead we kicked off with Cross Clues. Hannah was putting Arthur to bed, so as well as Adam, Gareth and I also present were Katy, Adam T, and the happy late addition of Ian, who made it over despite feeling not at a hundred percent.

Cross Clues was something of a triumph, with numerous nimble minds to compare clues - and also eliminate possibilities they happened to hold in their hand. The only misfire was Liz Truss, whom we pinned as Prime Minister/Cheese instead of Prime Minister/Lightening, due to her brevity of office. But 24/25 is a pretty good show. Then with very little debate, we splintered into two groups. Whilst Adam H, Ian and Katy set up the long-absent Castles of Mad King Ludwig - last seen over six years ago! - the rest of us adjourned to the front room to set sail in Maldivia. 

Despite not being present, this play was Katy's Revenge, as Martin was buffeted through a veritable storm of events, swamped by fog, blocked-in and stolen from on several occasions. "This is why Katy hated it!" he realised, as we took more of his fish. He did have plenty to take, however. 

In the end it was Gareth's final turn that clinched him victory, cannily delivering to two islands by virtue of mooring up in a corner of the board. This catapulted him past me as Martin and Adam were left at sea:

Gareth 13

Sam 10

Martin 8

Adam 7

In the other room, foundations were still being laid in the three titular castles...

...so we broke out Noli, the tinpot crackpot maelstrom of bids and rolls as we all sought to build the highest tower. 

Noli's rules are pretty simple - bid for four actions - but the constant collateral damage inflicted by the winners, and the fact that unsuccessful bids must also be paid, makes the game feel rather fire-fighty. We all got hit by poverty and found whenever someone built a boat, someone else destroyed it. I ignored the influence track entirely, reasoning that it at least gave me one less thing to fret about, but that meant I lost ties on bids and ties in the endgame.

A fact which turned out to be irrelevant, however, as Martin raced up the track to trigger the finale and at that point he had the highest tower anyway. 

Martin 5

Sam 4

Adam 1

Gareth 0

Adam wasn't a fan. I still rather like Noli, even though it does feel like a slow-motion car crash and being down to one boat and frantically rolling uncooperative dice can feel like having your face rubbed in it. Meantime, in the kitchen, Ludwig's architects were playing a slightly more cerebral affair, and things were beginning to take shape.

We busted out Stomp the Plank, now with its previously-defective box replaced. For the uninitiated, it's last elephant standing that wins and each turn the active player flips cards, choosing whether to stick or twist on a bunch of vaguely pirate-themed suits. If you get a duplicate, you're forced to walk up the plank. If you restrain yourself and quit while you're ahead, all other elephants add these wooden discs (Barrels? Crokinole boards?) to the ends of their planks. In a game of numerous early bustings, Martin was first to go:

And, as we continued to bust at around, I would hazard, 80% of our turns, Gareth's plank collapsed, and the impact of it hitting the table caused mine to cave in as well! So this was Adam's Revenge. Stomp the Plank being so rapid, we had time for another quick game in Prey Another Day, Martin's latest filler favourite. 

I won this game by mostly doing unexpected and possibly unwise things that Martin couldn't predict. They made sense to me at the time, although now I can't recall any of them. Probably for the best.

Sam: 5 points

Everyone else: 2 points.

Then I made a terrible faux pas of referring to Adam's gerbils as rats. "Rats?" he said, as though I'd just asked him if his wedding cake was made of shit. 

They are very sweet, even if getting them to stay still for a picture is tricky. 

Adam, still reeling slightly from Noli, left us as Castles came to a dramatic end with cards to be scored and podium places up for grabs. Ian raced ahead of Adam, but then Katy announced she had "All the rooms!" and raced past both of them. 

Katy 142

Ian 133

Adam 122

Ian debated staying or not momentarily, but elected to leave us as a five, and we tried Martin's new purchase of memory game Trio. 

not pictured: Adam's disdain

Each player has a hand of six cards, with six more face down in the middle, and the cards are three each of numbers 1-12. Your goal is to collect two trios (ie matching numbers) that can make the number seven, either by adding them together or subtracting one from the other. Do that, and you win! Or, if you're lucky/clever/eidetic enough to get the trio of sevens themselves, that's a win too. 

cards must be arranged high-to-low in hand

Each turn you can reveal up to three cards, either by flipping them from the middle, asking an opponent to reveal their highest or lowest card, or taking the highest/lowest from your own hand, with the goal obviously being to reveal three of a matching number. As soon as a non-matching number appears, your turn is over: cards are returned to hands and any flipped from the middle go face-down again. So it's a question of trying to remember what card is where, and guesstimating, at times, that if Gareth no longer has the three in his hand his lowest card might be the five I need. 

Adam declared he hated the game from very early on, an opinion that was reinforced by Martin winning it. But we tried again, and Adam won, perhaps somewhat pacifying him. Then we played once more and he announced that no, he definitely hated it. I wasn't sure either - I like how it looks and it's undoubtedly a clever thing, but trying to remember 14 different cards and their locations was hurting my head. Gareth finished the last game of the night with a suitable flourish, however, when he revealed the trio that wins by itself!

Next week is his final games night before he departs for the stars. Hope to see you all there, if not before.

Just 11

Steve, Anja and Louie were our hosts last night, and joining them around the table were Ian, Gareth, Adam H, Martin and myself (Sam). Adam T was hopeful of coming but couldn't make it in the end, thankfully not down to me giving him the wrong address. While Anja was completing a job application/getting Lennon settled, we kicked off with Just One. 

And although Martin did some mild cheating, we started pretty well, hitting the marks consistently until too many duplicate clues left Gareth with an uphill task to identify Google, with only the clues Browser and Lens. Perhaps sensing his despair, Molly came to offer comfort. 

But Molly stuck to the rules giving no clues - my photo almost gave it away - and we lost a point. Then somewhere down the line we lost another, leaving us with 11/13, fatefully correlating with the correct address I hadn't sent Adam to. With Anja imminent, we split into two groups playing two short games: whilst Louie, Steve and I played Order Overload: Cafe, Martin introduced the others to Prey Another Day. 

Order Overload: Cafe is all about memory: each round, a bunch of orders are read out and then the order cards are dealt out to the players. Then the co-operative goal is to go around the table and call out the orders you don't have in your hand, and - assuming the orders exist - they get discarded. This continues until any one player is out of cards, meaning the level is complete! On Level 1 this is dead easy, the starting player just needs to remember one of the other orders. But every level the orders multiply, meaning by the time we reach level 6 there are no less than eighteen orders, including the bizarre Iced Coffee with No Ice. 

Another catch is that  if you call a non-existent order - which we all managed to do - you can't call orders any more in that round but can only answer them. Despite Louie's impressive recall, we stalled at level 6. Steve's face was a picture of agony, and he ruminated that he didn't have any truck with fun. 

At the other end of the table there was a similar boisterousness but more at each other and less at our failing brains. Ian won the first game with 6 points, (Martin 4, Gareth and Adam 2 each) then Adam took the second game, which Anja also played in:

Adam 5

Gareth 4

Ian, Martin, Anja 3 each

Not having Andrew's impressive table-wide vision or note-taking habit, I confess I was none the wiser to Prey Another Day at this point, other than Adam insisting it was a game of skill, in a tone that suggested perhaps it wasn't. Who knows? He did win. 

Louie now made his reluctant way to bed - along the floor - and we briefly flirted with Quantum + Noli (3 and 4) before settling on Hansa Teutonica and Aristocracy (4 and 3). 

I was excited to get Hansa played again and pleased for Gareth who had tentatively mooted it more than once in recent weeks. However my pleasure for Gareth was to slowly evaporate, as he took route-building advantage of us repeatedly, by getting in our Teutonic shit. Admittedly he wasn't alone, as this sabotage soon became a table-wide affair. I was so wrapped up in it I forgot to take any pictures of Aristocracy, sorry. That ended before we knew it:

Martin 71

Ian 66

Adam 58 

And also before we knew it, Ian and Adam were out the door - the evening had flown by. Hansa Teutonica, despite always making you feel like you want to do more than you can and each decision a minor agony, also sped by. I pushed Anja over the finish line before anyone could take any more turns, but although it kept me in third ahead of Steve, it wasn't enough to stop Gareth's impressive haul of networking points:

Gareth 42

Anja 35

Sam 25

Steve 21

Clearly Gareth has some kind Martin/Babylonia type knack for HT, and needs to be policed. 

The remainder of us fancied 'one more' game, so Martin brought out Prey Another Day again.

He talked us through the rules, which are like Citadels role-calling mechanic crossed with a competitive version of The Mind. Everyone has a set of (the same) cards and secretly chooses one, before all are called and revealed, starting with the Bear (1) and working up through the numbers - but down through seniority - to the lowly Mouse (5). If more than one person selected the same animal, nothing happens. But if you're the only person to select, say, the Wolf, you can announce which animal you're hunting, and eliminate any players who chose that animal. 

So players are eliminated - or not - until either there's only one player left (2 points!) or every left standing has played three cards, in which case the player with the highest collective value of their animal trio wins: ie, at this point the apex predator Bear is a damn sight less useful. 

Steve had a shocking game, thrice eliminated through hunting and scoring nothing. "That was fun" he said, in the manner of a man leaving the waterboard room.

Gareth 6

Anja 4

Martin 2

Sam 1

Steve 0 

"I could have had an extra 20 minutes sleep" he added, staring accusingly at the table. Nonetheless, he agreed to a rematch. This time it was Martin's turn to be serially dicked over, although he managed to avoid a zero. It came down to Anja and I poised for a win, but it was Anja who pounced:

Anja 6

Gareth and Sam 5

Steve 4 

Martin 2

And with that another marvellous Tuesday came to a close. Thanks all!