Bee-curious

 It still feels like a rare treat to be able to leave my flat on a Tuesday evening and arrive at the games venue in barely five minutes. And so I was second to arrive at Joe's, pipped to first place by Sam. Ian, Katy and then Martin were next to join us, with Martin declaring his happiness at the Solid Six being in attendance.

We began with Team Trio, a new game to me but simple enough that I understood it by round two. Simply ask an opponent (or the other member of your team) what their highest or lowest card is. They have to reveal it, and then you continue to ask others, hoping to make a three of a kind. Any reliance on memorising what people have is ruined slightly by the occasional swapping of cards between team mates.

Martin & Sam won the first two tricks, followed by a brace for Katy & I. Joe and Ian got on the scoreboard but then Sam and Martin got a three of kind of sevens, which is an insta-win. But they were winning anyway.

Martin & Sam 3

Katy & Andrew 2

Ian & Joe 1

Then we split into two groups of three people. Martin, Joe and Katy played Big City: a sort of Sim City game from the 90s with its dour functional pieces contrasting with the exciting triple layered plastic inlay.

As they set up, Katy told us she'd almost seen a dead body: her neighbour hadn't been seen for a few days and she and someone else went into the house. Katy chose to investigate the bedroom while the other checked out the bathroom and that's where the neighbour was found.

And after that cheery note, they set forth into various civic planning adventures. A world in which Post Offices score double next to a street car or city hall and triple if it's next to both. A world where Martin can say “It's church time!” and no one thinks he's lost it. A world where Katy can have a park taken away from her by Joe and Martin and be livid about it for several minutes. She was already in last and without that, she never stood a chance

Martin 118

Joe 103

Katy 79

Meanwhile, Ian, Sam and I played Bees In Space, or Apiary, to give it its proper name. It's a new twist on space exploration, with a curious emphasis on making honey and wax as much as discovering new planets.

The mechanic is fairly typical worker placement except your workers’ value (1-4) influences what they can do. Level 4 bees are most powerful but they have to hibernate afterwards and be brought back by taking an action.

The board is rather fussy and I admit in the first couple of rounds I was a bit lost. Ian seemed to know what was going on as he devised a new dance that would make cheaper honey. Which I suppose is a priority for Space Bees. 

We approached the final round I became acutely aware that the score track went up to 100 but me, in the lead, had only scored 15. But the game is all about end of game scoring and any confidence I might have had from being in first quickly dissipated as Ian came from last into a slim first. It was all very close.

Ian 75

Sam 71

Andrew 70

Apiary was a longer game than Big City so while

we finished, the other three played Robo Tricks. After Big City, this was a game they could all enjoy.

Joe 7

Martin 2

Katy -5

Since Robo Tricks was a bit long, Sam, Ian and I played Stomp The Plank. Amazingly, for such a GNN favourite, this was my first game. We played twice. In the first, Ian repeated his trick of coming from last to first and in the second, my cautious chiseling tactic proved successful.

Now we were a sextet we joined together for a rousing game of So Clover. We seemed to finish quite quickly. So fast that we began deducing our first clover while Katy was still in the toilet. 

Katy's clover had a lovely reference to our recently departed (not dead) gamer friend Gareth. She used his name to clue the words “Beard/Patron.”

We did okay with 32 out of 36.

Since that seemed to be over too quickly, we set up for one more go. This time, though, the moans of impending defeat filled the room. But, in the face of adversity, we proved ourselves to be highly resourceful. 

Sam clued Mug/Dream with Grande and Joe clued Hardware/Smell with Cordite (his second word of the evening that we needed a definition for). Katy saved Martin's clover when she spotted that Bubble went with Invincibility, even though I pointed out that bubbles are pretty much the opposite of invincible. 

I was relieved when my four slightly dull clues were solved and full marks to Katy for cluing Television/Crow with carrion. “Carry on.” Get it?

We had a perfect score as we began Ian's clover. We obsessed over his reasoning for pluralising Circuses. It made us think that our first guess of Clown/ring must be wrong, since surely he'd only write Circus. In the end we chose clown/universe and we were correct! A perfect score! 

36 out of 36!!

So with the afterglow of achievement still warming my veins, I set off. Sam said he could be tempted by a quick fifteen minute game and later I received a photo from him with the comment “Incredibly rude game of medium!”

Thanks all. See you soon.

Gettin’ chilli with it

Joe's at 7.30 was this week's destination for the first weekly meeting since the big games weekend. Sam was already there when I arrived and Martin wasn't too far behind.

At least I think so. I'm writing this on Friday, a full three days late so, just like AI rendered hands, things might be a little out of place.

First we played Rome In A Day, a game in which you have to build areas of tiles with matching buildings to score points and you get these tiles and buildings from your neighbour who has taken their allocation of tiles for that round and split them in two.

Sam played while still in his fluorescent orange jacket and (unconnected, I'm sure) we kept forgetting which neighbour we were supposed to be taking from.

At the end of the game, Joe was counting up the scores and added up one column to the total 47 and said “urgh” in disgust, thinking it was his. But it was Adam's. 

Sam 57

Joe 49

Adam 47

Andrew 46

Martin 37

Sam's winning strategy was to simply take which ever set had the most tiles. Can it really be that simple? It was entertaining enough 

Katy was expected later so we began another quick game: Too Many Cooks. It's a game about German cuisine in that you have to collect cards to make soup (Pea, Mushroom or Onion) while avoiding chillies because they ruin everything, apparently. Unless you're making chilli soup, of course. You collect these ingredients by playing cards to the table until the value adds up to 10 or more, then that player collects all of them.

We played all of round one before we remembered the rule about one of the zeroes actually being worth 10. And I had trouble recognising some of the mushroom cards since they had illustrations of butter on them. But I was fine in the end, taking a win without really knowing how.

Andrew 23

Joe 22

Adam 19

Martin 11

Sam 10

Katy arrived and we split into two groups of three. Joe Adam and Katy played Robot Tricks and Martin and Sam introduced me to Havalandi.

In this game a hot air balloon glides around the edge of the triangular playing area and the active player can put down a landing site (cardboard counter) somewhere along the balloon's line of view. You score points for groups of three or more (on the same terrain) and also for flipping tiles as long as they are contiguous and cross the central path.

It was nice. Gently puzzly and a bit screwish. I forgot about the end of game scoring and, despite being quite competitive in the first half of the game, Martin and Sam (almost literally) drifted off, far above me.

Martin 104

Sam 94

Andrew 82

With that, both Sam and I got ready for an early night. I watched a little bit of Robot Tricks to see if the game was going to end. It didn't, but I did see Katy pick up an ace which, apparently, was bad.

Hopefully we'll get a result in the comments although it's pretty likely that everyone has forgotten.

Thanks all! It was special.