From six nimmt to nein danke

After last week's hiatus, six of us returned for another week of virtually having fun. Initially Sam, Martin, Ian and Andy were present for an opening game of Skull. I had arrived too but needed to dash off and buy tin foil so couldn't participate.

Andy 2
Ian 1
Martin 1
Sam 1

Joe arrived and I sorted myself out, kitchen-wise. Then we played Railroad Ink, new on the geek, and it's a neat implementation of the roll and write original. I found it quite relaxing, although Andy couldn't see where a potential score for a particular move would be displayed. "I guess you just have to work it out yourself," replied Martin. How very old school.

Andrew 49

Martin 47
Andy 43
Sam 38
Ian 37
Joe 37

Then we played For Sale. Sam went aggressive right from the start, saying he wouldn’t do his usual timid strategy and finish in fourth. I said I was fine with fourth, and picked up the first free card I could. In a sense, we both got exactly what we wanted.

Joe 59
Martin 49
Ian 48
Andrew 45
Sam 41
Andy 28

Next up was 6nimmt. Now, I didn’t make many notes but I think at this point Joe sung a bass line and invited people to guess. Only Sam tried before Joe admitted it was the middle eight from “Boys of summer” by Don Henley.

6nimmt was as 6nimmt does. I was cruising in first until I hit a death spiral. “It was pretty close in the middle of the pack,” observed Martin from the safe distance of a convincing win.

Martin 40
Andy 25
Sam 24
Andrew 23
Ian 23
Joe -4

Sam bowed out and the five of us knocked out a quick game of No Thanks, which Martin won thanks to the final card which wasn't 29 like I wanted and it certainly wasn't 18 and 19 as Joe needed.

Martin 23
Andrew 27
Ian 32
Joe 42
Andy 44

Then Ian  left and as a foursome we played Conspiracy. This has a similar card drafting mechanism to Abyss, but is simpler. Put your cards in a pyramid shape, and score points for collecting things, putting things next to other similar things and getting locations. I had very little idea about what was going on.

Joe 54

Andy 53
Martin 48
Andrew 44

And with that, we were done for another evening. Thanks and see you next Tuesday.

Beta Testing

Thursday: after early-evening Timeline and The Mind (we crashed and burned on level 8) with the boys, Adam and Ian and I (Sam) regarded the alcove of joy deciding what to play. Adam suggested Caverna, which made Ian and I both nervous. Even his pointing to the box playtime (half an hour per player) didn't entirely convince us that this was 8.30 start-time fare. Plus of course we'd be fighting for second place from the get-go: far better to make Adam play a new game in the hope he wouldn't instantly master it and comprehensively beat us.

You can probably guess where this is going...

We settled on Beta Colony, the curiously-produced (looks very 1980s) puzzle in space. Round and round the central rondel we circled, choosing which pods to build where and when, as we collectively constructed the game's three colonies. We discovered that blue pods were water and pink pods were habitations. Adam asked why they had an apple on them. I said that's what they eat in space.

The game does offer a classic push/pull between points now or points later. Points now was the route Ian took, as he forewent the majority scoring in the colonies and focused on objectives at the end of the three cycles. He even (more than once!) sacrificed artefacts in order to use them as resources: this is like burning down the Acropolis to keep the chill off.

I started out trying to go big on colony majorities but kept getting distracted. Partly by Adam's ruthless efficiency, as he steered a clinical line between my route and Ian's: scoring enough points to keep him on Ian's tail, whilst also building a presence in one colony (the one I'd neglected) that bordered on over-population.

We all stood at various times: it was one of those games. Ian even put his foot on the chair like he was on the verge of dashing off on some great adventure.

I thought I had a devastating (or effective, at least) last couple of rounds planned out, when I'd get the statue that rewarded resources and then do some decent harbouring of said resources - but I hadn't realised we were actually on the final round already; and even a do-over suggested by Ian and Adam couldn't save my score. This is why they don't give astronauts Merlot:

Adam 86
Ian 71
Sam 64

The victor cycled off into the night whilst Ian and I nursed our wounds over a quick game of Railroad Ink. Turns out drunkenness isn't a route-planner thing either, as we both scored pretty low. I pipped Ian by the narrowest of margins!

Sam 41
Ian 40

A very nice night of puzzles. Thanks chaps!

Pyramid Schemer

Thursday. Andrew and Adam joined me (Sam) at the table for Teotihuacan, the collaborative/not-collaborative game of MesoAmerican pyramid-construction. This has shot into the BGG top 100 and having tried it out with Stan, I was curious to see how our resident Euro-ists would perceive it.

The game looks nuts. Adam almost turned around and went home but we quickly opened his beer and he sat down. But underneath the dressing is the classic mechanic of resource-gathering and exploitation. The board is effectively a giant rondel, and dice are your workers (you begin with three) that move around it. The nub is get stone/wood/gold to contribute to the building of the pyramid: a nice part of the game in that the thing actually gets constructed in the middle of the board. But, this coming from the designer of Tzolk'in, there's some intricate aspects in both how that happens, and some smaller wheels spinning around the outside of it.

For a start, your workers begin as lowly ones and twos, and only by using them to complete actions can you improve their knowledge (ie make them into threes/fours/fives) and improve their functionality. Secondly workers in a group - as Adam realised before Andrew and I did - work far more effectively than nomadic labourers. Thirdly, if you arrive at a crowded action space, you need to pay (in cocoa) for the privilege of using it, creating a vital chocolate-based economy on a board where empty spaces prove to be rare. Instead of taking an action, you can collect cocoa instead, but this has the feeling of watching your workers on an extended tea break, whilst your fellow barons of pyramidy industry are getting on with the business of moving massive bricks and making names for themselves.

As well as the basic premise of construction, there are some Temple tracks to shuffle yourself along, not to mention the Avenue of the Dead: this latter cul-de-sac can score you as many points as your contributions to the pyramid itself. Some actions ping you along the track as a kind of holy by-product, and dotted all over Mesopotamia are discovery tiles that act as a kind of Mayan can of Red Bull to your jaded workers.

When a worker die upgrades to a six, it 'ascends' - into heaven, I guess, as you've given it so much experience it's now dead - and not only does this reward you with another step along the Avenue of the Dead and a bonus of points/cocoa/other, it also moves the Eclipse marker.

...so the Eclipse marker is nothing to do with spaceships and all about time; which is always running out. After everyone has taken a turn, the sun moves toward the eclipse and when the twain meet, crazy shit happens like feeding workers and scoring points. This happens three times before the game finishes entirely, so ascending a worker (and pushing the sun along faster) is loaded with potential drama, as it can trigger the end of the round or indeed, the end of the game.

Aztec delicacy

This was exactly what happened to me, as I sat poised with my stone and wood to move two massive rocks onto the pyramid and score a shedload of points - not enough to catch Adam, but a shedload. Adam ascended a worker, and the sun met its eclipse, and my final turn went up in a puff of Euro-scheming. Andrew as last player could at least complete the round, and he made sure he was good for second...

Adam 171
Andrew 116
Sam 106

An absolute pasting at the hands of Hillmann! Is his secret the tiny index finger?

Despite the chaotic look and, at times, feel of the game, we were done in under two hours. There was still time to play Railroad Ink!

Adam 55
Sam 46
Andrew 42

Then we sent Adam home.

"Jedi" seems to be the hardest word

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

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

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

We were "awesome" according to the scoring system.

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

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

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

Adam 3
Andy 1
Andrew 1

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

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

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

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

Andy 37
Andrew 34
Adam 23

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

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

Adam 16
Andy 52
Andrew 90

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

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

Sam 50
Martin 48
Ian 39
Joe 37

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

Adam 95
Andrew 60
Andy 44

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

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

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