Junior Band

What briefly threatened to be a three surged to a six and the first few to arrive - Martin, Katy and Adam T, along with myself - elected to begin the evening with Rankster, reasoning that the others could join us on arrival. Pele was one of the first out of the box - it's getting to be a habit - as Adam was requested to rate his newsreading capacity compared to that of Queen Elizabeth II (great elocution) and Little Red Riding Hood (may not even know the word news). While the rest of us were pondering his rankings Adam H arrived, having initially gone to Joe's house by mistake. "I was too lazy to read the whole thread" he said, rationalising that as Joe was last to reply, we'd be at his house. 

We did okay at Rankster, although Martin was furious with us for proposing a Medusa would be good at pulling faces at a three-year-old. "She'd turn them to stone!" he wailed. Then after Joe arrived and we learned from Adam that the reason John F Kennedy didn't duck was because he wears a corset, the table split into threes. Adam T joined Martin and Joe for a crack at Faraway...

While Adam, Katy and I began our animal assembly duties in Caldera Park, where the goal is to group animals of a type together, and then multiply their number by how many waterholes they connect to for points. The catch is that some tiles contain more than one type of animal, and there are placement restrictions that may force you to put animals where they won't score at all. In fact, they may be killed off by weather. 

Over five rounds players take turns announcing which animal - assuming it's still available - goes on which terrain, and their fellow players must follow suit if they can. But if they can't, their opportunities expand rather than contract - if Katy says 'put a wolf in the forest' and you currently have no wolves, you can put anything you like in the forest. And if all your forest is already covered, you can put a wolf anywhere. If you have neither wolves nor forest available, the world is your oyster. 

In each round a weather tile is added, but these are unpredictable and may wipe out neighbouring animal tiles if you are unlucky. At the end of the game, you tot up your animal score but also accrue points for covering parts of your board (all forest, all river, all waterfalls etc). Katy said she really enjoyed the game right up until the end, when she discovered she'd lost. 

Adam 161

Sam 153

Katy 146

But she still loved the scorepad, even if she wasn't keen on what it had to say. Meantime Faraway, with its curious dynamic of laying out a tableau of cards before scoring them backwards (point-scoring relies on certain symbols being exposed when the card itself is flipped) had been played not once but twice! In the first game there was some mild symmetry to scoring:

Martin 90

Joe 80

Adam T 70

And in the second, Adam took his distant card-flipped revenge:

Adam 74

Joe 65

Martin 64

It was time to do a bit of seat-swapping and so Katy and Adam T switched sides so she, Joe and Martin could play Robo-Trick and I could confuse the Adams by saying 'Adam's turn!' for the next 60 minutes. 

I still haven't played Robo-Trick so I can't explain it but I recall Joe teaching me the rules and it sounded nuts. I think it was nuts, and there was a lot of minus points scored and some chagrin from Katy. Meantime, Adam H's position at the table was identical to when he played Caldera Park, only someone had removed his glasses. 

World Wonders rules are pretty straightforward but the spatial element had Adam T in knots at times and he frowned at his progress as we filled our boards with roads, buildings, and the aforementioned wonders like deistic architects intent on wiping out every last blade of grass. Meantime Martin won Robo Trick:

And to my surprise they began to play Tipperary, even though Martin said "There is literally NO interaction" in his scathingly-dismissive mode. Katy and Martin had both played before but they needed to run through the rules and so spent almost as much time learning them as playing the game itself. 

I missed the drama/lack-of though, as I was spending the last two rounds of World Wonders frustrated at my lack of options. The shitty pyramids had come out which rarely fit anywhere and I couldn't build the other two wonders either, so was literally throwing away gold to pass. Maybe another wonder or two would have made a difference, but we'll never know:

Adam H 33

Adam T/Sam 30 each

And, brief as it is, Tipperary finished too, and as they added up the sheep Adam T wondered if they might nod off halfway through counting. Joe and Martin tied on 94 points each with Katy back on 84. Martin gave a brief recap on the lack of interaction, Adam T headed home and after some further post-Tipperary scathing dismissery, the five of us played Little Tavern.

Perhaps the antidote to Tetris-Ireland's solitaire tile-placement, in Little Tavern we are regularly palming off customers we don't want to each other's tables, and when all tables are full customers will tip according to current table state (or tavern state, which means the real table). Witches like having witches around the place. Elves - or racists, as we referred to them - like having elves at the same table. Dwarves like a mix, Goblins are all called Billy-something and only tip if their leader (Billy-Billy) is present, and so on. Mix in some shenanigans in the form of optional events and this tavern is a fairly dastardly place. 

There are only six events and in both rounds we used them all up. I had an appalling start which may have been explainers curse but was quite likely surrounded-by-dicks. Katy and Adam were in a strong position and found themselves targeted in round two, but it was Katy and Martin who snaffled the shared-win courtesy of some hot elf on elf action:

Martin/Katy 26 each

Sam 25

Adam H 24

Joe 20

Now Adam H took his leave too as the rest of us took our leaves for So Clover. Probably the less said about our first attempt the better, as after a cracking opening (6 points for Martin's tile) we followed it with three pitiful threes, and despite the late hour Katy insisted we play again. This time it wasn't a perfect score either, but 20/24 was a considerable improvement, especially since mine and Katy's red herring card both fit perfectly with two of our clues, Katy's in particular (seen below) reminiscent of Martin's 'portobello' moment.

It was now past 11 though and time to call it a night. Thanks all!

Oregon and on and on

 After a long queue at a late night pharmacy and google maps vague awareness of Easton’s backroads, I arrived at Steve and Anja’s house at almost half past eight. Around the table were Adam H, Louie, Anja, Martin (one team) and Katy, Ian, Sam (the other team, which at this point, now included me).

The game, Rankster, was already halfway through when I joined in and everyone was trying to guess who Ian thought would give the best wedding speech out of John Lennon, LeBron James, Julius Caesar. Ian chose Lennon, by the way. Caesar would be too dramatic and LeBron would contain too many bouncing balls. 

Steve arrived and he was put on the same team as Anja. Her selection of famous people included Hamlet and Steve immediately put this particular Prince of Denmark in last position because he knew that Anja hated Hamlet. To prove it, he told us about a time he took her to see Hamlet – a highly regarded production directed by Jonathan Miller – and afterwards her verdict was “If I’d wanted to see a man dithering about for three and a half hours, I’d have stayed at home.” A brutal judgement on both Shakespeare and Steve. (Plus, Steve was wrong. Anja put Hamlet second.)

Adam, Louie, Anja, Martin 7

Andrew, Katy, Ian, Sam 6

Then we split into three groups. Louie was allowed to stay up long enough to join Ian and Sam in Robot Quest Arena. They were at the far end of the room, and I know nothing about the game except that it is now Louie’s favourite.

Louie 28

Ian 21

Sam 17

Martin, Steve and Anja played London Bridge. At least, they tried to but a determinedly not-sleepy Lennon kept creeping in. Eventually, Anja had to abandon London Bridge so she could get him back to sleep, so Martin and Steve played it as a two-hander. This, apparently, made it quite speedy. And that’s all I know about this game too.

Martin 56

Steve 46

The reason for my general ignorance about the state of the other games was because Adam, Katy and I were playing Oregon. It was my suggestion, even though I had only the vaguest memory of the rules. “It’s like noughts and crosses,” I assured a skeptical Katy.

Long story short: it’s nothing like noughts and crosses, but frequent references to the rules by me and Adam guided us through the early stages. 

Despite the interruptions from Lennon using us as a shield to hide from his parents, and from me trying to find my phone (during this search Katy found Anja’s credit card), the game was fun. Coal mining was inevitably accompanied by a burst of “Workin’ in a Coal Mine” by Lee Dorsey. I don’t really remember but Adam must have sung it most often. Katy also did her fair share of mining, generously removing all of the 1 tiles from the pile!

Adam 80

Katy 67

Andrew 59

While we populated Oregon, Robot Quest Arena ended and Louie went to bed. Sam, Ian and Anja played Misfits and Sam won. 

Then they played Bag Of Chips. I think it’s mostly to do with condiments and fried food, but my notes tell me that, halfway through, Anja said “Do you see my point about Hamlet?” Don't know why.

Alas, I didn’t see how it ended. After an evening of sitting on a sofa that kept threatening to make me fall asleep, I gave up on the evening and set off home and so did poorly Adam. But that wasn’t the end for the rest of them. Goodness me, no. Thanks to Sam for the timely updates.

After Ian won Bag of Chips and then they played Just One. Sam discovered that his name upside-down is “Wes”

And he also sent a photo of the remaining clues from one round so I was able to guess.

I got it right (and so did Ian) but they didn’t do too well overall, with a score of “average.”

Thanks to Anja and Steve for hosting. Hope to see you all next week!

Rhino Knizia

 I knocked on Laura's front door on a wintry evening, pleased to not have to negotiate the summertime entrance: the grassy side passage which, today, was pitch dark and featured plenty of scaffolding.

She let me in and I found Martin, Ian, Sam, Joe, Adam T and, apparently, Laura's young daughter Maddie all playing Skyjo. Then Laura took her seat and I realised that she and Maddie were a team. 

Skyjo seems simple enough. You want as few points as possible as you pick up and discard from the 4x3 grid of (initially face down) cards in front of you. But a column of three of a kind will vanish, making your chances of winning all the better.

Towards the end of the game, Adam discovered that cards that were still face down did not count as zero but would score whatever their hidden value was. He had five left and suddenly he looked in a very precarious position.

But he needn't have worried. Martin triggered the end of the game by having no more face down cards. But this game has a mean sting in the tail: anyone who ends the game but doesn't have fewest points will have their score doubled. And this is what happened to Martin. Adam discovered that his face down cards were all pretty benign. Laura and Maddie, on the other hand, had played a perfect game!

Laura & Maddie 0

Adam 15

Sam 18

Ian 21

Joe 29

Martin 46

Maddie was allowed to stay up for long enough to watch us set up the next game. What a treat! Martin suggested Zoo Vadis because it could play all seven. It's a negotiation game by Reiner Knizia where players move their meeples from area to area by convincing the other players to vote for them. If they do agree, they get one coin from the bank and whatever the negotiator promised. 

It's an oddly themed game. Apparently it was once about senators in Ancient Rome but then had a retheme whereby we are animals in a zoo. A zoo designed to look like a bit like ancient Rome.

Adam began by promising to be absolutely terrible at this game and then proceeded to be very adept at getting a good deal from Joe. Martin sent one of his meeples up a solitary track but that meant it wouldn't have to negotiate and therefore wouldn't make any money. This explains his shockingly low score.

Adam 28

Joe 18

Andrew 17

Laura 17

Ian 16

Sam 14

Martin 5

Then we split into two groups. Ian, Adam, Laura and Joe did some old school gaming with Zombie Dice while Martin, Sam and I played Big Top.

This auction game has you bidding on cards and if you bid a number showing on the card in question, that number is covered by a coin, making the card even more valuable.

Sam had a huge lead mid game. I ran out of money and Martin had few completed cards until later on. In the final tally, Sam's lead vanished as Martin had collected several big scoring end of game bonuses, pushing his score from a mere 15 up to...

Martin 71

Sam 58

Andrew 46

Zombie dice ended

Adam 15

Laura 5

Joe 5

Ian 3 (but almost 11)

They'd also played The Crew Deep Sea Adventure while we finished off big top. No idea how that went. But soon we were all finished and ready to mix things up.

Misfits was mentioned, but I didn't think I could cope so I joined Martin and Joe in a game of Accuse. It's a sort of cross between Coup and Cluedo. Coupdo, if you will.

It's a small game. So small that Martin had accidentally packed it away inside the box for Big Top, and that's already quite small itself. But there was some nice deducing inside that small pack. 

Joe was first to accuse but got the wrong suspect. After the first accusations, the other players have to (secretly) decide how many cards they need to reveal before they can make an accusation. I said one and Martin said none so he went first and was successful!

Ian won Misfits. It produced some typically crazy structures but Ian's winning move was simply to put a cube on top of two blocks z after Sam had a catastrophic collapse on his turn.

Adam left at this point and the rest of us played Team Rankster. This game of deciding who out of three random historical/fictional characters would be best in certain situations was new to me but very easy to learn. 

Interesting to note that Laura wouldn't want Da Vinci to design her house because it'd be too crazy, choosing instead Jon Snow. From Game of Thrones, not the newsreader.

Martin, Laura and Andrew 3

Sam, Ian and Joe 1

After this, even though So Clover was on the table, I had to leave. It was difficult to resist, especially with Sam saying “I'm taking the lid off!” as I put my coat on, but I was strong.

I later got the score (27 out of 30) and a photo from Sam with the note: “Martin, at one stage: All I can see is cabbage”

Thanks for hosting Laura and hope to see everyone again soon!

A turnip for the books

Two o'clock on a drizzling afternoon between Christmas and New Year is not usually an occasion to celebrate but this Saturday saw the annual GNN Christmas do and I was there right at the start. Katy was the only other gamer at Sam's table and, after a brief chat, we began the day's gaming with Misfits. This is basically Bandu but we all share a single tower and we're all trying to make it impossible for other players to place pieces without collapsing.

Katy initially thought it was co-operative but Sam assured her to be dastardly. So she left it almost impossible for him to add anything, prompting him to say “That's dick dastardly.” Katy won the first round, having never picked up a single piece. 

Joe arrived and we began again and Katy began with a very mean upright circle. It didn't last long but soon our tower had one section, a narrow but usually flat-topped part of the tower, where we kept building up and it falling down. No one went for too long without picking up more pieces and Sam soon said that it was the longest game he'd seen “by about 150%.”

Katy won again after I thought I'd stopped her from placing her last piece with a clever use of an upright circle. But her cube perched happily on top.

Then we played Word On The Street, a sort of tug of war with letters. A card suggests a topic and you have to think of a word that fits. Then spell that word while dragging certain letters of the alphabet towards you if you use them. Drag them far enough and they're yours. First to have eight letters wins.

All of this must be done within the time set by a very strict hourglass, which made it all very stressful. Katy left the spelling to Joe, lacking confidence in her own abilities. She also demonstrated a strange habit of answering "crucifix!" to a number of questions.

Sam & Andrew 9

Joe & Katy 7

During this, Laura arrived with pizza and then Steve and Anja turned up with crisps and children. After some rearranging and making sure the children were happy with videogames, we split into two groups. 

Sam, Steve and I played Apiary, the thinly themed game of bee-based science fiction. Laura, Anja, Katy and Joe played Quest for Eldorado. The table hummed to the sound of simultaneous rules explanations. Just as things were beginning, Martin arrived. We'd known he was coming but somehow we expected to be further into our games than this. “If I'd known, I wouldn't have been in such a hurry to get here,” he said.

Despite his insistence that he was fine to relax and watch, Laura decided she could happily sit out Eldorado and join him in a two player game, so they took over the sofa, grabbed a stool as a table and played Romi Rami, a variant on rummy.

Eldorado was new to Anja but it was Katy who found it hard going, spending ages stuck behind “a wall of nonsense.” Joe won and Anja came second.

Apiary was slow moving. Steve found parts of it baffling but it didn't seem to hurt his strategy. I, for some reason, focused on the favour track (“That's one up the Queen's favour!”) and ignored the end of game scoring. A hopeless idea. Even if I'd maxed out the favour track, I still would've been last.

Steve 81

Sam 71

Andrew 46

In the time it took us to finish Apiary, two other games were completed.

Hitster was a Timeline-style game with QR codes on cards, read by an app that would then play a pop tune, anywhere from the 50s until today. Put the card in the correct place (once you've tried to identify it). Since I wasn't playing, I found it easy to guess the songs but me and Steve agreed that, should we actually play it, we'd find it impossible. Katy had trouble with song titles, having to sing Dancing in the Dark by Springsteen right up until the chorus until she was able to guess its name.

Joe won, and Laura must've come last based on her (good natured) refusal to ever play it again. At this point Joe had to leave, because he had friends visiting from London who, apparently, would think it strange if he wasn't there to greet them.

Adam and Hannah arrived (with Arthur, who swiftly disappeared in the front room). They all played Cross Clues, and scored 22 out of 25. Anja had the highlight of the game by cluing Red and Light with “district.”

Finally, with Apiary finished and back in its box, everyone was available again. The next game we played was Food, which is a resource management game concerning the pizzas that Laura brought from Lidl and Adam and Katy walking through the rain for chips, mushy peas and curry sauce. Just like Agricola, we had to also feed the children but unlike Agricola they weren't able to eat wood.

During the meal, we did the annual GNN quiz. With Sam as the quiz master we split into teams according to where we sat around the table. 

This lead to a slight imbalance in terms of regular attendees, with Martin, Adam, Laura and Katy on one side and Steve, Anja, Hannah (“I think I was at the start of one games night this year”) and me on the other side.

But we did okay. Steve got up to get a beer just as Sam asked a question that he would've known, which was irritating but equally he did help me get the answer to What was Joe's clue for Nail/Young in So Clover.

In the end, we did okay, but I think that if I'd just answered Joe every time, I would've scored 6.

Katy etc. 14/25

Andrew etc. 10/25

So, having been reminded that Joe kissed Kylie Minogue and finding out how much Katy loves Fields Of Arle (she had to stop playing it when she began dreaming about it) we began gaming again.

In a tussle for players, Martin lost Katy’s commitment to Big Top when Sam and Laura started to set up Raccoon Tycoon, leading to some falsetto claims/denials of betrayal between the two of them.

Adam, Steve and Anja set up Cascadia at the sensible end of the table, while Martin and I returned to the games cupboard to choose a game for us and Hannah. We plumped for Spots and we were just setting up when Laura got a call from home, asking for help with getting the kids to bed. She had to go, leaving Raccoon Tycoon not yet started. 

With this new development, Martin gallantly did not insist that's exactly what Katy deserved but instead we joined together for a five player game of Texas Showdown. We played with the New Rule, in which playing the highest card in a winning suit means that suit is cancelled and can't win, unless all the other suits are cancelled too. It makes the game much more uncertain as playing a suit that you're sure no one else has may still win the trick if everyone else plays a suit that is subsequently cancelled.

It was great fun. Sam's first round was appalling and maths genius Martin helpfully pointed out that he was already halfway to the losing score of twelve. But then he turned it around and by round three he was still last but level with me and Hannah and only three behind leader Katy. But he picked up four tricks in round four while Katy went clear for a comfortable win.

Katy 5

Martin 9

Hannah 11

Andrew 11

Sam 12

Cascadia had been bubbling along with occasional phrases drifting across the table. “Anja, always with the fish,” said Steve, sounding like a disappointed Jewish grandfather at Passover. “I've got no elk,” Anja realised late on while Adam wondered if it was “too late to get into bears.”

It looked like being a tie for first place, until Adam mentioned that pine cones also score points, a rule that newbie Steve hadn’t been told about.

Adam 94

Steve 92

Anja 87

Then there was a period of general kerfuffle while Adam & Hannah and Anja & Steve made arrangements to leave, taking their clans with them. Laura, meanwhile, returned from parenting duties. Despite it being 8 o'clock, I only had one game left in me, so we chose So Clover.

We played twice and during the first game, Martin got so agitated by our logic when doing his clover that we began to worry that he was genuinely annoyed.

“Look at all the words,” he hissed, unable to stay silent any longer. Sam said that was cheating but Martin insisted that he was merely telling us the rules. But thanks to this rules refresher, we noticed that Medusa went better with his clue of Snakeskin than whatever we had at the time.

24 out of 30

In the second attempt, we started well and Katy, Sam and Martin all created perfect-scoring clovers. Then Laura turned over her clover and we were intrigued to see that “Joe Berger” was one of her clues.

Our sense of intrigue changed to bemusement as nothing seemed to fit. Soon we saw Paintbrush which seemed good, but what to pair it with? Putting Foot/Envelop with her clue of “sock” seemed right but that gave us Turnip/Paintbrush for “Joe Berger” which seemed unnecessarily rude.

In the end we settled on Old/Paintbrush even though it didn't quite fit with the other clues. 

“I like old paintbrush,” Martin insisted.

“I like him too,” said Sam, “but…” 

In the end we went with it, but it was wrong. This left us with only one option: Old/Turnip. It was correct. We were baffled and unfortunately Laura was laughing too much to explain what she meant. 

We then thought about phoning Joe to tell him about this before he read the blog - a conversation that quickly digressed into a discussion about how posh his visiting friends might be. If Joe's ears were burning at this point, no one would've been surprised.

My final (and relatively boring) clover was solved, giving us a final score of 28 out of 30. Not quite a perfect score, but a game worth remembering for its own reasons.

But on that note I went out into the persistent rain. What a Christmas do. Thanks all. 

I'll hand over to Sam for coverage of the final stages...

*            *            *

After Andrew left we found ourselves an incongruously tiny four and debated what to play. We kicked off with Big Top, Martin's new auction game. This is quite bonkers but basically you score points by getting cards and everyone takes turn auctioning them. You can buy your own cards but, as Martin pointed out, it's not a great habit to get into. The cards themselves then need to be 'filled' by covering the numbers with coins, and you do that by bidding that number on subsequent cards (whether you win them or not). It's crazy. 

Being a little drunk possibly helped me. I think Laura was the most sober of us and subsequently the most confused. But we were all confused. I won this one with 71 points, with the others back in the 50s and 40s.

What next? Katy introduced her strawberry gin so that helped us decide, jettisoning Misfits in favour of Hitster. This was my first experience of it and we tried the co-op version, playing tracks and trying to align them in chronological order (much like Timeline) before revealing our triumphs/errors. It didn't take that long to make the five mistakes we needed to end the game, but it was enough time for Laura to display impressive audio prowess, correctly placing a track she didn't even know just going on the production style. 

I drunkenly demanded we followed that with Rankster, and the others allowed me my little fit of pique. With this little ditty, players are trying to match their rankings (one active player, then everyone else, Wavelength-style) of three historical characters in a given situation. EG Who'd make the best drummer in your rock band? Martin favoured Henry VIII over George Washington, and we agreed. We also agreed that Pele would eat more donuts than the Queen. 

This was incredibly funny even though Martin and I both managed to interpret King David as King Herod, which explained our slightly inebriated/jet-lagged mirth. We wrapped up Rankster scoring (I think) 5 out of 8. I drunkenly demanded more games but was this time ignored as three tired gamers went out into the abysmal weather to end a dramatic day in a dramatic way. A lot of fun, thanks everyone!