Euro Currencies

Last night's GNN meet-up unusually had no Martin at it, as he was away in the US. There was also the rare and welcome sight of Steve, giving the room a slight 2013 kind of vibe. But before he, Adam H and Joe all turned up, at 7.30 there was just Katy, Ian and myself (Sam). And after comparing our weeks - they'd both been to gigs; Katy had crowdsurfed - we played Zombie Kidz Evolution. 

This is a couldn't-be-simpler co-op game of trying to padlock all four school gates before you are overrun by zombies. On your turn, you roll a die and a zombie (probably) arrives in the school. You can move one spot (or stay where you are) and eliminate one or two zombies in the room you stop in. Padlocking the gates is an automatic action, but the catch is there must be two of you present to do it, and if a room ever gathers more than two zombies you can do nothing about it. If you're asked to add more zombies and you've run out, you lose! Which was exactly what happened to us on our first attempt - each game takes about 5-10 minutes - before triumphantly applying padlocks on our second try. 

The game has legacy aspects too: win or lose, after X amount of games there are envelopes to be opened that will change it fractionally. Katy however was more excited by the stickers that get applied to the back of the rulebook, heralding victory or defeat. 

A freshly-shorn Joe arrived. He too had had an interesting week, removing his beard for the sole purpose of a fancy-dress party. One has to admire his commitment to character. With Adam and Steve not here yet, I thought we could bash through a quick play of Coral, as I (erroneously (obviously)) thought I remembered the rules.

This is another speedy game, but rather less co-operative. Each player wants to have the most visible coral (-the colours) from a bird's eye perspective at the end of the game (height being only a tie-breaker). On a turn you can either add a block adjacent to your coral piece, or move your piece: it can travel as far as it likes along the colour it currently occupies (ignoring height differences) or you can remove it entirely, to be returned on your next go. This option is a kind of hedge-betting; holding back your pieces to see what develops. But it can bite you on the bum if nobody else is doing it, as when someone runs out of blocks turns continue, but if you still have blocks after placing one you discard another. I'm not sure who won; it was either me or Joe, but Joe knocked the tower over at the finale and then Katy dove in and scattered the remains across the table - in delight or fury, I'm not sure.

By this time Adam and Steve had arrived and Adam was pointing out we were playing something wrong. I forget what now - there was a flurry of snack bowls on the table and I think I was tripping on sugar and salt. 

We split into groups of three, delighting in our opportunities to play euros without Martin making desultory comments from the sidelines. And indeed, he may have to hold back a gag reflex as he sees we covered the table in big, detailed  and chaotically garish boards. Ian talked Steve and Adam through Terra Nova, as I explained Rajas of the Ganges to Joe and Katy. 

Despite some minor options-overwhelm, Joe seemed to begin strongly, scrutinising the board, asking for one or two rules clarifications and discovering we'd been playing something (erroneously (obviously)) incorrectly about activating markets. I deflected blame by saying someone else taught me it. Joe was going the market route, pretty much ignoring the glorious buildings, whilst Katy and I did the opposite. Katy's early-game progress stalled, though, and she bemoaned her lack of dice, seemingly spending them the moment they arrived. 

In Terra Nova, things were marginally less boisterous, and Adam noted that it sounded like we were having more fun. 

"I'm not" Katy clarified. 

Perhaps she was dreaming of better times; being carried aloft by a crowd. 

Joe meanwhile continued to scrutinise, but his early momentum was lost as well - Rajas is a game of surges and lulls, I think - and as we entered the final stages, Katy's love of buildings surged her past Joe. I triggered the end of the game as we all built like deranged constructionists.

Katy's markers passed each other as well, but not quite enough to catch me. Joe's markers halted within touching distance of each other, making him slightly sad, even though he said he liked the game. But I managed to successfully navigate my way past explainer's curse to claim a win, albeit aided by a familiarity my opponents weren't equipped with. 

Ian wasn't so lucky. However it happened, the winner was the most-likely when they sat down to play it:

Adam 74

Steve 68

Ian 50

We'd squeezed out a quick game of Zombie Kidz while they wrapped up (and won! more stickers) but now Katy went home, perhaps with her interview in mind, and most of us agreed that So Clover was the next logical step. I'm not sure if Steve agreed or not: he said he wanted something fun. We were all immediately stumped by our words, except Joe, who finished in no time at all and started a side-game of competitive number-drawing. I was a bit slower, and less accomplished.

I didn't get a picture of Joe's as at the time I was trying to make sense of my words. 

Steve's Hare for March/Jelly was nice and I was impressed the group got Young/Berry from my clue of Virile. We overcame our collective pessimism to score a faintly remarkable 28/30. Excellent work! But now Adam and Steve left us as well, and the remaining trio played a vintage GNN game in the form of Love Letter.

I warned Joe as we established our 3-3-0 lead over Ian that he has form for coming back from the dead, and even reminded Ian when he complained about zero points that he'd recovered from worse. And so it was! I tried ejecting Joe with a Baron and got my just desserts, then Ian won two rounds in a row with a spy to claim victory! 

I didn't take many pictures, sorry. But a very fun night, thanks all. 

Two-Headed Beasts

On Friday Chris and I (Sam) met for some gentle two player-games whilst Ashton and Stan zoomed around the house on hoverboards, making beeping noises and throwing a bouncy ball at each other.

"Does that bother you?" I asked Chris. 

"To be honest, I hadn't noticed" he said. 

Chris hadn't noticed partly because after introducing him to the magic of Cross Clues, we'd gone for the not-usually-2-player space battle of Eclipse. 

Eclipse is engineered to push players towards each other geographically and aggressively. With 3 or more there are extra layers of tactical thinking and nuance to play. With two, it's much simpler, although the goals are still the same - you score points for territories, developed tech, and prowess (or even lack of prowess!) in battle. Chris and I started either side of the galaxy's centre, but had very different experiences. My exploration found lowly, unoccupied worlds, waiting for pink habitation. As a result I built an economy swiftly, whereas Chris found himself beset by The Ancients, hostile forces bent on - not unreasonably - hanging on to the last vestiges of their civilisations. 

Mid-game I felt comfortable - I was taking more actions than Chris and calmly spreading tendrils across the galaxy. But Chris used what little flex he had to arm his ships to a degree I think it's fair to call 'fucking nuts' and when the endgame arrived, the classic battle-for-the-centre wasn't enticing me in.

We had similar numbers, but Chris's firepower dwarfed mine. Instead of contesting such a long-odds battle, I branched off to explore - but made a catastrophic error: throwing two ships into the centre 'for fun' - they had such a slim chance of success, it was basically to have another punch-up. But although Chris had no actions left, he could still react: and swiftly moved into the perilously ill-defended hex I'd left behind. There was no return!

Chris 36

Sam 31

We moved back to terra-ferma for a crack at Rajas of the Ganges, where I attempted a small measure of revenge. For those unfamiliar, the terrifying-looking board disguises a really simple worker-placement game, where workers combine with dice.

Each player's goal is to build their Raja's palace - on a separate board - by paying for tiles to place there. The USP with Rajas is that tiles score in two different ways (cash and fame) and these currencies are tracked around the board: but going in different directions. Your goal is to get the two markers to pass each other. 

The last time I'd played Andrew had totally schooled me, so I copied his fame-heavy strategy as Chris built numerous markets and coined in the cash. The catch with the market route is that for every space the fame marker moves, the money marker needs to move twice for equivalence. I thought I might have run out of steam as Chris, in the last round, suddenly sprang up the track at terrifying velocity - but I held on for the win. 

Sam - Raja

Chris - Raja not

There was just time for another blast at Cross Clues...

Before we called it a night. But what a night it was - Chris' mad cat Daisy decided to start mewing at 3am outside my door and opening the door seemed to upset her even more. Chris found a bed for me away from the noise, but I was now neurotically wide-awake and remained so until around 5. I wouldn't have mentioned it all, except for the fact on Saturday night I had a date with Martin, Joe and Katy for...

DOPPELKOPF

Martin had been playing this partnership trick-taker online a lot and wanted to try it in the room, so the three of us signed up to experience it's unique charms. As trick-takers go, it's quite long (2 hours!) and also - even for a game genre that positively bubbles with unusual twists - kinda bonkers. The game can be played with a standard deck (or decks plural, actually) of cards, but thank God Martin had the bespoke deck: without it, we would have definitely struggled!

Although each round - usually - sees players establish temporary partnerships, the game is won and lost individually. The lowest card is a nine, and a ten is higher than a king, so the suits run from ace down:

Ace - Ten - King - Queen - Jack - Nine. 

But forget suits for a moment because over half the deck are actually trumps, and for the trump suit you - usually - ignore the standard suit on the card entirely. There are also two of every card, with - should duplicates be played in the same round - the earlier breaking ties. Most of the cards are also worth points (point values between 2 and 11, thankfully also printed on the cards) and the partnership that claims the most points wins the round. 

But when (all) the cards are first dealt, players don't actually know who they'll partner with initially. The Re partnership is determined by the players holding the two Queens of Spades Clubs (the 19 trumps) and the Kontra whoever isn't. If one player is dealt both queens, they can announce they need a 'marriage' and the first non-queen player to win a trick is the Re partner. Unless someone decides to play... solo!

The three jacks, ten of diamonds and king of diamonds are all actually trumps (gold circle)

Point values appear halfway down the cards. The non-gold values under the spades, hearts 

and clubs are their trump value in case they become trumps. I think. 

A full game of Doppelkopf takes 16 rounds, but every player must at least once play a round solo. When this happens, they choose from a smorgasboard of solo parameters: same rules as partnership, but swap out one 'trump' suit for a 'non-trump' suit? No trumps at all? Only queens are trump, or only jacks? The solo rules sometimes make things simpler, but the swapping of suits - in a game where some suited cards are trumps (and therefore not the standard suit on them) and some matching suited cards aren't, sent all of us tumbling into a pit of continuous confusion!

Apart from that, the basic rules of Doppelkopf came into focus reasonably quickly. But wait! There are numerous additional flourishes - pages of them on wikipedia, apparently - and we mixed in a few. A standard round is worth a point, but possibly more if it's a big win, and more still if the winners (or indeed losers) announce it ahead of time. Winning a hand of tens and aces is a doppelkopf: bonus point! Winning the (trump) ace of diamonds (the Fox!) from an opponent is worth an additional point. Winning the Jack of Spades - Charlie Miller - in the final round is an additional point. These various points, when the planets align, can accrue spectacularly: Martin and I both got seven points for a single round at one stage, as the Kontras looked on at the disaster playing out forlornly. 

Joe sank to minus 13 points at one stage, whereas as Katy and I lingered around the zero mark, Martin surged ahead to a dozen or so points. He assured us all that the points could easily swing back the other way - nobody believed him, though. Until they did. 

I have to confess I made a couple of left-field moves that came off more by luck than judgement, dumping a valuable club in order to be free of clubs and finding it went to my - then unknown - partner. Often in Doppelkopf though momentum seems to swing with earlier trick-winners falling away. This is no more pronounced than in the solo rounds, where Joe, Martin and I all failed to win, but Katy pulled it off with some aplomb. With 11 o'clock looming we took the decision to cap the game at 12 rounds instead of 16 - perhaps prompted by my yawning, although I was enjoying the game - and Martin and Joe were forced to play the last two rounds as their solos. Both were disasters, which helped push both myself and Katy past Martin into first and second. Joe, who seemed to be regularly harpooned by fate, was still stuck on minus 13 points. But as Martin pointed out, since the halfway point his haul of zero was considerably better than Martin's own, as he was belatedly hit by explainer's curse. 

Sam 9/ Katy 3/ Martin 1/ Joe -13

We finished off with the current nightcap de rigeur of Cross Clues, then called it a night. Thanks to Daisy, I could barely remember the last hour of the evening, but at least I slept ten hours. I'd like to play Doppelkopf again as well - it was kinda nuts, but sort of alluringly so...

Felonious Monk

On Saturday night Andrew and I converged at my table for some gentle pre-Christmas fare. With Sally busy baking in the kitchen, we repaired to the table in the front room, however, and what with the Christmas tree and the speakers that don't cut out, it made for a nice festive surrounds.

Possibly we sabotaged the genteel appearance by eating crisps like demented seagulls, but you can't have everything.

We began with a four-player game of Facecards with the boys. Stan and Joe's faces were now mixed into the cards too (the game comes with blanks) and Stan successfully identified himself as a Squirrel. Joe turned up as a bird. The bird seemed to always know what my pair was, but rarely guessed them; content to point them out to other people. The Squirrel ran away with it:

Stanley 14
Andrew 10
Joe 7
Sam 7

As the boys retired to bed, Andrew chose our two-player starter, Rajas of the Ganges. For the uninitiated, this involves using workers and dice to build palaces and markets. The former bring you fame, the latter money, and both fame and money have markers moving in opposite directions around the outside of the board - your aim is to make them meet, and ideally, hurtle past each other at speed.

We chose very distinct paths - Andrew eschewing markets and me building a solitary palace the whole game. At various times it seemed like we'd both made mistakes - Andrew was spending actions picking up a single die, whilst I went from having heaps to none at all. My markets were churning out cash, but Andrew's seemingly unproductive turns would suddenly coalesce into huge leaps along the fame track. And as my dice ran out again, Andrew built two palaces to end the game:

Andrew: Raja!
Sam: Not Raja.

my markers (yellow) stare balefully at each other; 

Andrew's (on the far side) have passed

Our Euro glands pumping endorphins now, we went straight from Rajas to Heaven and Ale. With two players there's only three rounds to play, so the sense of time-running-out loomed up at us at the start of the second round. Like Rajas, there was a sense of maniacal racing. Unlike Rajas, getting ahead on the track wasn't necessarily the right thing to do. I kept taking things Andrew wanted - inadvertently, mostly - but struggled to make ends meet whilst Andrew set sail for the final round in a cash-rich position. However Andrew's genial allowance of me having a do-over (I scored the wrong monk, only realising on my next turn) may have been the difference between winning and losing:

Sam - 34
Andrew - 22

The last game of the night was NMBR9. Maybe it's not knocked Take It Easy off the top spot of the Cries Of Despair table, but it's still a wonderful game. It looked like I'd perhaps put all my eggs in a doomed basket...

really need that 1

But fortunately for me the 1 came out, and my literal platform proved to be a figurative one as well...

Sam 92
Andrew 71

A most delightful evening.

The Magnificent Seven (hour game)

If a games weekend is a rare treat then two in the space of a week must be the height of decadence. But there we were, Sam and I, just six days since we returned from the last one, back in a car full of board games heading for the countryside. This weekend centred around the fast-aging quartet of gamers who used to gather and play when they lived in London. We'd booked the same cottage that we had two years ago, near Wool in Dorset. And our first impressions were that it hadn't changed at all (except the outside had been painted).

2016

2018

We had, though. After a brief spell of greetings and unpacking, we sat down for our first game, only to all get up again and get our spectacles.

This game was Decrypto. How strange it was to play this in daylight and sober. It was the Coffee Drinkers (me and Sam) against the Tea Drinkers (Paul and Chris) and they got two interceptions for a quick win. “Lucky we’re good at guessing random numbers,” remarked Paul.

The next game was Auztralia, Martin Wallace's genre bending game, part Steam, part Hit Z Road. Sam quickly got stuck in a corner and had to repeatedly recycle his cubes in an unproductive way. I built up a network of farms and railways, hoping my defences would hold firm.

Paul, as ever with a new game, was in an experimental mood. When he picked a card that allowed two enemy tiles to be revealed, he actioned it immediately. I thought it was a bit too early in the game but the tiles he chose to flip over weren't near me, so I didn't caution him against it.

I wish I had since one of them was a shoggoth and in this particular game those buggers just wouldn't sit still. The first made mincemeat of Chris's farms, a second one piled into Sam's and a third had a pop at me. Finally the first one, bored with Chris, turned its attention to neighbouring Paul and worked its way through that network until he was at Paul's port. If he lost that, we were doomed. The shoggoth moved next turn. It had 6 hit points and Paul whittled it down to one left when it struck the fatal blow. Paul's port was destroyed and the game was done. A resounding win for Cthulu.

Cthulu 64
Sam 10
Andrew 8
Paul 6
Chris 1

Chris didn't seem too keen on a game where he scored just one point in ninety minutes.

Chris then made food while Paul, Sam and I played Take It Easy. Another late-night game brought several hours forwards. We all used “Memories of Maidstone” (where we studied) as our theme when calling tiles. How nice to revisit moments like “Me and Mike on the sofa in the Rising Sun” or “Dave Pearce playing guitar during a power cut.”

Sam 460
Andrew 406
Paul 337

After this was risotto from Chris, which was a huge success.

By now it was almost seven, so we got out a nice fun evening game: Lords of Vegas. It was Paul’s first game, but he took to it very quickly, with his $15m bets and he came up with old folksy sayings like “I don’t want to leave all my fish in a barrel.” Chris played a very focused game, in that almost all his property was in one block of the city. Sam had two unassailable casinos of four and five which neatly propelled him up the scoretrack. He was in such a strong position that a mid-game wobble (when a re-organisation of a three-tile casino went all wrong) couldn’t stop his march to the top.

Sam 54
Andrew 36
Chris 26
Paul 23

Then we played Face Cards, the game that allows you to say things like “No, that Rockhopper Penguin is not Abraham Lincoln,” without seeming mad.

Andrew 11
Sam 9
Chris 8
Paul 4

Next we had a break, sat back and worked our way through a WHSmith’s box of trivia questions we’d found in the cabin, before following that up with a game of Sausage and Mash.

But as for real games, our next one was Texas Showdown. I did have Beef Jerky in my bag, but I’d forgotten my promise to bring it out if we play a Western-themed game.

Paul 5
Sam 8
Chris 13
Andrew 19

And after this was Letter Tycoon, with occasional forays into obscenity. I mean, it was eleven in the evening. Chris, the Scrabble player, won.

Chris 43
Sam 40
Paul 31
Andrew 27

By now there was no stopping us. Raj hit the table and Chris nabbed another win, holding off my late surge.

Chris 64
Andrew 61
Sam 37
Paul 27

Finally, Decrypto came back to the table. Now it was The Barchester Chronicles (Sam & Chris) against The Tess Of The D’Urbervilles (me & Paul). The Barchester Chronicles won, although Chris did use a couple of punning clues (ie, “A book” pointed to the word “red”). Also, Paul’s stomach was extremely vocal for much of the game.

Finally, it was time for bed.

Saturday dawned, I was up first and I spent some time reading the Quick Start rule book to Twilight Imperium, the giant box of game that had been staring at us since we got here. As people emerged, we turned our attention to the crossword.

During this time, Chris and I banged out a quick Biblios, which I won thanks to remembering the final card in the auction deck was a “move two dice up” card.

Andrew 9
Chris 7

Next we continued our theme of playing games-usually-only- played-when-drunk by playing The Mind! We didn’t do well, only getting to Round Five. Paul lost us a life when he was distracted by Chris’ story about buying a record by Tiffany from Woolworth's.

After this was the first big game of the day: Keyflower. It has been a while since I last played (three and a half years!) so I needed a rule refresher. I wish I could remember my strategy but, apart from making sure I upgraded my upgrading ability first, I don’t remember much.

Andrew 53
Paul 49
Chris 48
Sam 41

Then we went outside for a walk. As far as I can tell, exactly the same walk as last time we were here.

Having returned, we settled down for a game of Spheres Of Influence the Risk-y game of global domination. I got stuck on the sides of the board, with Canada and Japan not making great partners. Sam cut a swathe across Russia to China and then down into India. Paul set up camp, Risk style, in Australasia and then pottered about in South Africa and Malaysia. Chris took South and Mid America and the US as well as North Africa.

Tension mounted in the final round as an enormous flotilla of Sam’s ships left India, headed for the Mediterranean to do mischeive with Chris’ troops that had recently set up camp in Europe. But, shock, they turned their attention to North Africa, while Sam’s ex-Soviet troops try to unsettle the EU. It was the right thing to do, and it nabbed him an extra capital city for the win.

Sam 2 spheres, 3 cities
Paul 2 spheres, 2 cities
Andrew 2 spheres, 2 cities
Chris 1 sphere, 2 cities

Paul wasn’t keen, pointing out that he’d made no real progress in the final three rounds of the game.

After this, with a request from Paul to avoid dice-dependant combat games, we chose Kingdom Builder. Sam sat down with his laptop to do some work while the three of us battled it out.

Paul 54
Chris 53
Andrew 38

Now it was my turn to cook, and people rested and tried the crossword again. After my pizzas, we set up a game of Rajas of the Ganges, reassuring Paul that these were good dice.

Sam went big on cash while Paul went big on fame. Chris and I didn’t really do either although whenever any of us rolled two ones, we always put them on the chest area of the dice statue as sort of dice nipples. I’m pretty sure Chris started that.

It couldn’t have been closer in the final reckoning, with Sam and Paul ending with their two tokens barely past each other, and Paul winning on a tie-breaker.

Paul
Sam
Andrew
Chris

Then we played the Book Game, in which a book is chosen from the bookshelf by one player, and the blurb on the back is read out aloud. All the other players have to come up with a potential opening line, and all these are read out together by the Book-Chooser. The idea is to spot the correct opening line, and you get points for people guessing yours.

Our source for The Book Game

Sam fooled me completely with an opening line for a book based around youth in the 1970s, which he put down as “Pip, pip, pip.” I thought no one would reference the sound of an old public telephone except a paid writer, so I chose it, forgetting that Sam is a paid writer.

Paul threw us all with his first choice of book, whose opening line referenced sweating “down to her sensible cotton underwear.”

It ended with another dead heat between Paul and Sam.

Paul 7
Sam 7
Andrew 6
Chris 4

During this we discussed how David Bowie’s taste in games might have changed as he approached death, going from big, epic games to trick-takers. And talking of short games, we ended with Fuji Flush, the seemingly random card game that I am somehow good at.

Andrew 0
Paul 1
Sam 2
Chris 2

Once more to bed.

With the sound of distant quad bikes, we slowly stirred on Sunday morning until we were all up by nine. At first, we didn’t mention games at all. Were we all ignoring the elephant in the room? The elephant in question being the large game box containing Twilight Imperium.

Chris gave us every opportunity to reject it, but I was curious and, besides, this would be the only opportunity for us to actually play it. We agreed, with the proviso of a 6pm cut-off point. We set it up, somewhat surprised that Chris had added a little whiteboard to the package. I wondered just how complicated this was going to be. After a rules explanation, we set off into the universe at 11.45am.

There were, inevitably, some issues with the rules. I think the term “production value” of a planet caused some confusion and what happens to it when the planet is exhausted. Sam was first to score a point, and it was still only round one!

Apart from Paul’s mad dash to the centre, it was quite a genteel game. When trading tokens, we actually swapped them instead of simply moving them from one part of our player board to another. And we broke for lunch during round two, with Paul providing sliced malt loaf.

Paul upgraded his cannons in round three, and seemed very keen to use them on anything that came close. With his control of the central planet of Mercatol Rex, he found himself in a lead at the end of round three: Paul 4, Sam 2, Chris 2, Andrew 1.

View from the window as round four begins

Chris and Sam got into some “friendly” invasions as they realised they needed each others’ planets to score points before Chris started to worry about Sam’s close proximity to his home planet, and had a pop at him anyway. Chris won that space battle, but couldn’t land troops to retake the any territory.

As we began round five, it was clear that this would be the final act of the game. Paul and Sam engage in a decidedly un-epic space battle with no hits on either side until Paul announced his retreat, and then he started getting some hits like someone walking away from an argument they weren’t going to win while still shouting insults.

At the end of the round, Sam tried to attack Paul in Mercator Rex as a fitting finale to the game. Sam was wiped out by Paul’s not inconsiderable amount of ships and cannons on that previously peaceful planet. A fun spectacle to end the game, at least.

View from the window as round five ends

Sam 8
Chris 7
Paul 7
Andrew 7

I enjoyed it. It was pretty intense, and it certainly didn’t feel like seven hours. Each player is always involved and I certainly never had to wait 17 minutes for something to do like I did on Spheres Of Influence (yes, I timed it).

Paul and I went out in the dark to take out some recycling at the end of the dirt road that lead to the cottage and when we’d come back, Chris was still packing away the game! An epic in every sense.

After Sam’s salmon supper, we played Calimala. Chris won this game while achieving either (a) a piece of brilliant misdirection from him or (b) a massive lack of visual comprehension by us. Troyes was the publicly-known end of scoring card, but everyone had forgotten about it. In he final scoring, Chris won it with only one cube in there. None of us had even registered it. It was worse for me, since I had a trading house already built there and could’ve shipped to Troyes at any time! Afterwards, Chris told us he didn’t want to ship any more there in case that alerted us to how important it was. Marvellous play.

Chris 35
Sam 29
Andrew 27
Paul 24

And what better way to end a weekend in an isolated cabin than a game about zombies? Hit Z Road hit z table (see what I did there?) and we all diced with death. Sam went big on survivors, having seven at one point. Paul used his many resources to get out of a tight scrape while I bid high to get first choice of the paths to safety, naming my four meeples Andrew, Paul, Chris and Sam to make it more interesting.

The four of us, in meeple form

Chris, by now looking a bit like a zombie himself, never bid for starting player and relied on luck to get him through. And he got it. His second to last battle was his three survivors against six zombies, followed by another six zombies. He got past the first with six ranged shots and then took out two of the next bunch at long range. He then managed to kill off the final four, but not before they’d finished another of his survivors. In the next round, his luck held out (beating four zombies in a defiant last stand) and he made it to the end, alive but clearly ready for bed.

Sensible Paul picked up all the bonuses for resources, and ran out a clear winner.

Paul 13
Chris 10
Sam 8
Andrew 7

And so we were done for the day. And for the weekend. Back to reality tomorrow and I remarked that this must be how Superman feels when he changes back into Clark Kent. No more amazing battles or incredible stories.

At least, not until next time.

Games in their natural habitat

It was a dark and stormy night.

So began Snoopy's famous fictional novel and, by chance, so began this year's GNN games weekend for myself, Sam, Stanley and Ian. We left Bristol in a faint drizzle and the further we got from our homes, the angrier the skies became until it was a relentless, pounding rain when we arrived at the cabin.

We found Adam, Joe, Anja and Jon playing Azul. They paused long enough to welcome us in and show us our rooms: Ian and I shared a room swiftly dubbed The Infirmary due to the medical equipment in the corner.

But back at the game, Adam was ruling the roost. In one round, he'd made a choice so that both Joe and Anja had to pick up tiles that scored negative points and when they tried to retaliate by overloading the middle with far too many of a colour he wanted, he simply picked something else and let Jon end up with seven yellow tiles and nowhere to put them. Jon scored -5 for that round.

Adam 101
Anja 63
Joe 61
Jon 51

There had already been a game before this, Endeavour, which had ended something like...

Jon 72
Joe 66
Adam 65
Anja 59

But now it we were all together, with just one late arrival expected from Swindon. Once we'd settled in we started new games on the long and accommodating dining table(s) we started gaming, while Joe made supper.

Sam, Jon, Steve and Anja went for Luxor, a set-collecting game whose mechanic is that, in your hand of five cards, you can only use the ones at either side with new cards being added into the middle. It ended...

Sam 74
Steve 71
Joe 68
Anja 62

Maybe Anja was put off by her attempts to use the quaint, money-eating payphone in the room.

Ian, Adam and I went for an old favourite, Tinners' Trail. With no rules refreshing to hold us down, we were mining the tin out of Cornwall with no problems (apart from forgetting the bit at the end of  round one when you buy points. You know, the whole point of the game). Ian went for a round of no mining in round two while he built up his infrastructure and I did the same in round three because I'd run out of options. Adam scored consistently through the game and squeaked a win.

Adam 134
Ian 131
Andrew 96

Around this point, Steve arrived from the inky black storm outside, looking a little bedraggled.

With food still a little way off, there was a reshuffling of groups. Ian, Adam, Anja and I started a game of Deep Sea Adventure, complete with the rare sight of Ian doing a rules explanation.

The excitement of this game was supplemented by the occasional token flying in from the neighbouring game of Flipships. Stanley, Jon, Steve and Sam had joined forces to save the world. And, thanks mostly to Stanley, they succeeded.

We had little idea of this impending alien invasion and preferred to dive for treasure. Adam was always first to pick up treasure, much to everyone's annoyance as he used more than his fair share of oxygen. In round three I ignored treasure on the way down, hoping to get something nice on the way back, but succeeded in only landing on empty spaces.

Ian 27
Adam 24
Anja 13
Andrew 4

Next up was the lovely food made by Joe. Everyone won. Stanley got changed out of his school stuff, only to find that the only pair of trousers he'd brought with him were his mum's.

At this point, we decided on a big group game: Word Slam.

What manner of thought processes lead Ian to instantly guess "Undertaker" when presented with the clue "job"? Well, whatever it was, he was right.

The last, hardest, clue was "lactose intolerant" and it was up to Jon and me to communicate it. We briefly considered choosing another, but then thought about the glory if we succeeded. Eventually, we did, but not until our team mates had guessed almost every other nutritionally-linked condition. Jon's team was successful in that round, but we'd won the game overall.

My clues for Lactose Intolerant

Sam, Steve, Joe, Ian, Andrew 4
Stanley, Sam, Adam, Jon, Anja 3

Then we split into two groups. Anja, Jon, Joe and Ian began a late night game of Lords Of Vegas. Adam, Steve and I played a short game of NMBR9 while we waited for Sam to get Stanley into bed.

It was Steve's first game and Adam's first in a while. For the first few moves, they seemed to be in perfect sync, but this example of the hive-mind couldn't beat my clean efficiency. No explainer's curse here!

Andrew 86
Adam 58
Steve 55

Then Sam joined us for a second attempt, and he snuck a win, despite being initially disappointed with his low score.

Sam 72
Andrew 71
Adam 64
Steve 59

Next, perhaps jealous of our neighbours' extravagant wheeler-dealing, we got out Vegas to add to the already copious amounts of dice on the table.

I like Vegas, it has just enough control to make you feel like you're making intelligent choices at the start but by the end of a round, you're blowing on dice and wishing for numbers like a hopeless gambler. I even tried to convince people that higher numbers are harder to roll - that's why they're worth more.

Sam 550,000
Steve 360,000
Adam 340,000
Andrew 210,000

Adam went to bed and Sam, Steve and I defied sleep deprivation for a final game of The Mind.
We packed up a set off to bed with Lords Of Vegas still on the table. It had been an odd game, with the Strip paying out twice before anyone had built on it. But eventually it settled down to the familiar pattern of take overs and cruel fate. Anja remodelled her two-tile casino with double sixes to take over Joe's five-tile casino leaving Joe with the unenviable task of winning a $26m re-organisation.

He succeeded and managed to hang on to the seven-tile casino for the rest of the game, but it wasn't as good as Ian's chain of smaller casinos along the strip that helped him to victory.

Joe seemed pretty happy when the last Strip card came out...

Ian 36
Anja 32
Jon 32
Joe 29


With the time now at midnight, the first day of the weekend came to an end.

The next morning, Stanley and I were up at seven, followed by Sam, Ian and Joe. Apparently, Joe, Adam and Jon were all up at four due to their hot room. Joe tried to persuade them to play a game, but they wouldn't bite.

I played Sam at Patchwork and neither of us did brilliantly.

Sam 6
Andrew -6

Then Jon introduced Joe to Tao Long, a game of two dragons chasing each others' tails. It seemed to be progressing well until Jon knocked his cup of coffee across it. It was a shocking sight to see Tao Long's rather nice board and pieces swimming in milky coffee. I couldn't even bring myself to photograph it but, in the spirit of those clickbait adverts promising heartbreaking photos taken just before tragedy struck, here's a picture of the game with the offending cup in a precarious position.

Tao Long was abandoned while the pieces were left out to dry. Instead they played a game of Circle The Wagons.

Jon 30
Joe 26

Meanwhile, we'd been playing Timeline: General Interest, with its range of noteworthy events. On the cards, that is. Not during the game. Still, a fun diversion.

Sam 0 cards left
Andrew 2 cards left
Stanley 3 cards left
Ian 3 cards left

Then there was some thunder and lightning to enliven proceedings while Joe beat me at Circle The Wagons, 30-25. I really liked it, and it became the go-to game for a quick two player fix during the weekend.

Adam awoke and some people went to and then returned from nearby shops with a Guardian crossword and some beer for Ian, who had already ploughed through his collection last night. Then Adam beat Joe at Circle The Wagons, 28-26.

Now there were enough fully-awake gamers to begin the first big game of the day. It was Martin Wallace’s Auztralia, a game that cleverly mixes a Steam/Railways Of The World mechanism with a zombie apocalypse scenario. The four of us: Sam, Ian, Joe and me, had arrived in Australia to start a new life after mass destruction across the world, only to find that the same creatures live here too.

Thanks to picking up some cards whose special abilities worked together well, I quickly decided on my strategy of just spamming any enemies with my Airship. “You have your gold, I’ve got my bloodlust,” I declared, ignoring a life of mining in favour of war.

Ian made us all laugh by attacking a kangaroo, and then Joe made us momentarily feel bad about our hobby when he said “You can open the curtains now the sun has gone in.”

In the closing stages it was Sam who awoke Cthulu (“What a foolish move,” he remarked) and then watched it trample over his farms, probably costing him the win. Instead it went for the far more peaceful Joe.

Joe 32
Sam 31
Andrew31
Ian 29
Cthulu 18

While this was all going on, Adam played Stanley at Patchwork. I don’t remember the scores exactly (33-17?) but do remember feeling a little bit put out at how well they’d done compared to me and Sam earlier.

Another thing that happened around about now was a game of Flamme Rogue with Anja, Steve, Adam and Jon. My notes inform me that Jon was delayed because he had his finger stuck in a colander, but I don’t remember this myself. I’m sure it’s true, though.

That race ended…

Adam
Anja
Steve
Jon

And they immediately set up to play again, this time swapping in Stanley for Anja and adding a few different types of track, such as cobblestones. And Steve sang in French. I remember looking at the final corner and think Jon had it all sewn up, but it wasn’t to be.

Stanley
Steve
Jon
Adam

In Australia, our travails had ended so Sam began to make lunch. So Anja joined me, Joe and Ian for a game of Kribbeln featuring Das Exclusive, the dice arena so exclusive you can’t even find it on the internet.

During this game we sorely missed Martin and his mathematical mind. On a round where a player mustn’t roll two of a colour, Joe rolled four dice of four colours and two dice of one colour (ie, pink, yellow, black, blue, green, green). We were stumped as to what to roll next to maximise his chances of a win. Rolling the last green seemed obvious, but was only a one in six chance.

The dice amazed us, as dice often do, with Anja getting a last minute successful 4th Kribbeln with the last roll of her dice scoring 33 (five sixes and a three). It would’ve been a miracle, except it only got her into third.

Ian 21
Andrew 20
Anja 18
Joe 17

Then we had lunch and spent some time concentrating on the crossword.

Back on the games, I taught Rajas of the Ganges to Anja and Steve, while Adam played Sam at Akropiri. Meanwhile, at the hardcore end of the table, Ian, Joe and Jon revisited that old classic Lost Valley.

Akropiri ended Adam 30 Sam 33. I wrote it in that order but I didn’t note down whether or not points were good or bad, so I’m not sure who won. They followed this with some Cube Quest: Adam beat Sam, Adam beat Stanley, then Sam beat Stanley.

Lost Valley began slowly as they all learnt or re-learnt the rules. But after a while, they were knocking back the whiskey and waving to each other across rivers with their rat-fur gloves as if they were born in 1880s America.

Jon 36
Joe 33
Ian 22

In Rajas of the Ganges, once I’d gone through the rules governing the myriad ways to score, it all seemed to be running smoothly. Steve did his best Derren Brown tricks on us by repeatedly saying he was “spending” money, while pushing his token up the money track. Very clever.

Anja
Andrew
Steve

Towards the end, they both felt they had some idea of how to win, and were keen to play again and convinced Adam to give it a go. That game ended:

Steve
Adam
Anja

And Stanley, Jon, Ian and I played Clank! In this game, Jon went for money, I got cards that allowed me to draw new cards, Ian went deepest and Stanley hung around the market. I played fast and loose with my hit points, and got out just before a dragon attack that would’ve killed me. Although I wasn’t anywhere near first, I did enjoy my close run with fate.

Stanley 101
Ian 90
Andrew 82
Jon 65

While this was all happening, Joe beat Sam at Crokinole, 2 games to love (I just think Crokinole is a game where you say “love”, not “nil” or “zero”) and then they played Circle The Wagons:

Joe 34
Sam 32

At this point, Steve and Anja were still making food, so the rest of us teamed up to play Decrypto. This tense and nervous affair was disrupted mid-game by a lengthy pause while people searched for a tin-opener and Sam made gin & tonics. In the end, Jon opened the tin with a massive knife.

By round five, both teams were a mis-step away from failure. I went for long clues and took advantage of me quietly pointing out to team-mate Joe that a song on the radio prominently included one of our key words. Thus I was able to use “The song we just heard” as a clue and the other team were bamboozled! The song in question was “The Revolution will not be televised,” by Gil Scott-Heron and “Revolution” was the key word.

Other key events were Stanley getting all his clues through correctly, including one (“Axis”) which had us baffled. It referred to “satellite”. Meanwhile, on our team Ian’s clue of “Join” seemed initially to refer to “wedding” but then Joe cottoned onto the idea it could mean “Join the revolution” and that Ian was being very clever in giving out a clue to distract the opposition. Except, he wasn’t being clever. We still won, though.

Joe, Andrew, Ian, a tap on the wire
Stanley, Sam, Jon, Adam, birds on a wire

After some delicious food, it was the turn of the big boys to hit the table. With Stanley off in bed, two dirty great leviathans came out to play: Root and Railways Of The World: Europe. Sam patiently talked three newbies (Jon, Anja, Steve) through the dense asymmetric rules of Root while Adam, Joe, Ian and I wrestled with the familiar challenge of RotW.

In our game, I went bond-heavy early on in order to build a little points-machine in Spain and Portugal. This propelled me from last into first by the mid-game and, as usual, my closing strategy was mostly concerned with ending the game as quickly as possible. Ian fell back into a distant last place before coming back into contention and then drifting back again at the end. Adam got his Paris-Instanbul link, despite our efforts to stop him.

Adam 67
Andrew 65
Joe 52
Ian 44

Soon after RotW:E ended, Root was coming to an end. Once again, just like Flamme Rogue, Jon saw a lead right at the end suddenly disappear as Anja managed to hit 30 points and instantly win the game.

Anja 30
Jon 28
Sam 26
Steve 21

Now it was 11.45, so we chatted, tidied up a bit and generally decided to play Midnight Party at midnight to see if it would, as Joe claimed, summon Hugo. Actually, we were five minutes late to start the game, but never mind. Sam was most ghost-phobic, leaping into rooms at the slightest sign of ectoplasm. Joe sniffs the little plastic ghost and tells us that Hugo is very smelly inside.

Sam -9
Adam -10
Jon -16
Andrew -18
Ian -19
Steve -22
Anja -31
Joe -34

Then, just to round off the evening, we played the Walking Dead-themed 6nimmt. Anja and Steve bowed out at this point, leaving the remaining six to defend the log cabin against the undead.

Ian 18
Adam 27
Sam 28
Joe 43
Andrew 45
Jon 63

We didn’t hit the game-ending 66-point mark, but at 1.05am we decided that the fun had gone on a little too long and we all retired to bed.

Sunday morning, I was up at six and watched as Stanley, Ian, Steve and Joe emerged in that order over the next two hours. Steve complained that he’d cut his finger while flushing the toilet. I played Joe at a couple of games of Circle The Wagons, with Joe winning both 45-29 and 42-38.

Jon corralled some players into a game of Mystic Vale. Stanley and Steve were willing volunteers, and Ian was roped in because he was already sitting there. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said as a new game was laid out before him. The scores were…

Stanley 35
Ian 33
Steve 24
Jon 15

… I think.

I lose to Adam at Circle The Wagons, 45-32 and then he, me and Anja try Azul. We used Adam’s variant of changing the direction of order of play (from clockwise to anti-clockwise) but it made little difference. I lead from early on, hogging the first-player token for the entire game.

Andrew85
Adam 57
Anja 52

Then we went for a walk! After days of wind and rain, we had some sun and our resident nature expert, Jon, took us out to somewhere that was hosting some wild beavers! But, being nocturnal animals, he warned us the chances of us seeing them were effectively nil. But it was nice to get out of the house, even if Adam needed some persuading to leave the football behind. Jon gave us a little talk about the beavers and pointed out signs of their activity. Sam, Stanley and Adam went back first while the rest of us took a detour into an abandoned and overgrown walled garden. It was nice. Very green.

A man alone with his thoughts... Oh, no, wait. That's Adam.

Something about beavers.

Outside

But once we were back at the cabin, the games recommenced. Ian, Stanley, Joe and others (not sure who) played Zendo, but just for fun! No scores or anything!

Sam and I introduced Anja and Steve to Calimala and watched them take us to the cleaners.

Anja 37
Steve 36
Sam 29
Andrew 21

Then Jon kindly served us all some soup and we finished off the last of Anja & Steve’s toffee pudding for afters. For me, there was perhaps time for one last game. I did have the option of one more evening, since I had no work the next day but I found my energy reserves at a low so I took the lift back with Sam this afternoon.

The final game for me was Skull King, a game notable for Sam winning a trick he didn’t want with a Blue 1 card against four escapes. Well done him.

Jon 280
Ian 250
Stanley 240
Sam 190
Andrew 160

And with that, I was done. There was a game of manoeuvre going on between Joe and Adam while we packed up and left, but I’ll leave Joe to pick up the rest of the narrative. Over to you, Joe...

Manoeuvre starts with the French Defence opening...

No sooner had the dust of everyone else leaving settled than Jon, Adam and my thoughts turned to what games we would play. Actually before that, Adam and I finished playing Manoeuvre while Jon watched and tried to evaluate whether he'd enjoy it.

We were both down to four units each, and with cards dwindling for both of us, I decided to wait no more and went in for the kill. Adam, for the second time that game, played a withdraw card, and I was forced into a claustrophobic position, flanked on three sides. Adam moved in to close the square, and attacked, scoring enough to decide whether to make me take a hit or retreat. Of course he chose the latter, and since I couldn't retreat I was undone.

I didn't take any photos of the last evening, but here are a few from the previous days

Manoeuvre is always a pleasure, and nice that it ended decisively, rather than dragging on til nightfall. We three then discussed the gaming parameters for the evening - we felt a slot before supper and another after would allow us to tackle a couple of bigger games. We all assembled some candidates on the table, which is when we discovered that Sam had left Auztralia behind (we later found a few more).
Adam and Jon were willing to try Welcome to Centerville as the slightly lighter pre-dinner game - which I was pleased about. However, as with other sessions, it slightly outstayed its welcome and felt too luck-based for the commitment involved.

I don't remember the scores but I won by a big margin, which is a bit unseemly when teaching the game, and is the first time I've won at the game I think. I appreciated both of them giving it a go, and promised to go with whatever game they two decided on for the post-dinner amusement. To my relief (Power Grid was mentioned), they decided that since Auztralia had received such positive vibes when played on Saturday, they'd both like to try it. I was only too happy to have another go, and so while Adam turned his attention to creating a lovely lasagne, I re-read the rules and Jon and I set it up.

The board set-up is quite elaborate, so as to seed the hexes with a random but controlled distribution of resources and sleeping old ones. Once we'd done it, however, it didn't look very even - most of the resources were at one end of the map, with a wall of old ones blocking access to most of the other port spaces.

In any case, Jon and I turned our attention to a game of Bananagrams, and then another with Adam, and then we had lasagne. Followed by mince pies and clotted cream. We then begin our quest to the dark red continent of Oz. But Jon still felt the board looked lop-sided, so we ran the set-up again. Hmmm, it was better but not much better. Adam put on the soundtrack to 28 Days Later. I told him to turn it off. We placed our ports and began.

Our first forays were odd - we began to tool up and head in to the interior to bag some tentacled points, but every Old One we flipped turned out to be a kangaroo. I was hoping we'd meet a roo, since it was an amusing moment when the first one appeared in the previous game. But after the fifth in succession in this game, the joke had worn thin.

Jon, as starting player, placed his port last, and felt he'd missed out on the easy pickings of resources. I felt he'd find the lack of competition for farming made up for that; but there was another problem. Although the Old Ones don't wake up until halfway through the game, I hadn't fully explained what happens when they do, because I'd forgotten. They begin waking up from the lowest numbered hexes - which were all next to Jon's farms.

Just as we let that revelation sink in, the Old Ones began waking up and rampaging through Jon's sheep and corn. I tried to atone by sending an armoured car to help, but it got destroyed. A ravenous Mi-go was heading straight for his port. I checked the rules - if your port is destroyed the game ends immediately. Oh dear. Jon fended off the attack by the skin of his teeth, but more monsters had awoken and were heading his way.

He came up with a great defence, taking a personality card which meant that when an Old One landed on your port it suffered an immediate two damage. All he had to do was soften them up as they approached, and they'd explode on arrival. It worked, and was quite satisfying.

Meanwhile Adam was finding his encounters with the Old One's went rather better (although they laid waste to almost all our combined farms eventually). Much to Jon's chagrin, Adam's firepower hit home with far more frequency, and he was raking in the VPs.

At the end, we were all a little non-plussed. It hadn't been the fun frolic I'd experienced on Saturday - our hopes of settling the newly discovered continent and living lives of happy farming and squid-bashing were in tatters. But that felt fairly thematic, at least. In the final reckoning, Adam raced away with the win at 40 points, with me on 19 and Jon on 14. He was faintly appalled. Then Adam added up the Old One's score, and they beat both Jon and I, with 30 points. We packed away in near silence.

In the fresh light of today, I still enjoyed it, and would like to play again - but we all agreed it would have been great to finish Novocon with a real banger. What that might have been I don't know - probably something we all knew and loved, ideally.

On Monday morning, we ruminated over the chronology of previous Novo, Octo and Septo-cons. It would be great to see a definitive timeline, perhaps when I have a mo I'll try to collate one. In the meantime it was a hugely enjoyable festival of great food, plentiful snacks, drink and games, and great company to boot. Thanks to all who participated, and let's ensure it all happens again, 12 months from now.