Rhino Knizia

Joe's studio, now fitted out with a full games collection and a heater under the table, began its life as a regular venue with eight gamers in attendance: Joe, Martin, Ian, Katy, Adam T, Sam, myself and the long-lost Matt, making a return to GNN for the first time in oooh ages.

I arrived shortly before seven, only to find the games had long since began. Ian, Adam, Sam and Joe had already played No Thanks and Pickomino. I was immediately dealt into a game of Botswana, a simple betting game where animals are shares and their final value is based on the number of the last card (0-5) played to that pile. In the first game, an early zero card had everyone picking up leopards since they were bound to score. Everyone except me.

Adam 16
Sam 13
Joe 12
Ian 11
Andrew 9

We played again and this time I ended with a far better range of animals. During the scoring, Sam appeared pleased with his improved score of 16 until everyone else announced their scores.

Andrew 22
Adam 18
Joe 18
Ian 17
Sam 16

After this, Martin, Matt and Katy arrived. We discussed our options. I had never played Babylonia, so that seemed likely to be chosen. Sam had brought Rurik: Dawn of Kiev. Martin seemed unimpressed, despite everyone always referring to it by its full name (instead of just calling it Rurik). Sam tried the soft sell on Katy by telling her she probably wouldn't like it but Matt might. But since she didn't want to play Babylonia, she was happy to join in.

Being so involved in my game, I couldn't tell you much about Rurik: Dawn of Kiev except that one of the figures looked like it was moonlighting from Scythe. Matt built a stronghold in the North and that seemed to help him on his way to a win.

Matt 21
Adam 14
Sam 14
Katy 13

In Babylonia, I quickly fell behind and stayed there. Any solace I might have got from having scored about the same as Joe was swept aside in the closing stages of the game when he clocked up some pretty major scores, almost edging an unlikely win.

Martin 167
Joe 161
Ian 151
Andrew 104

Martin would've scored more were it not for a patch of bad luck: he picked up a special tile that allowed him to trigger a certain bonus without having the regulation tiles. Little did he know that the rest of us just so happened to have the correct tiles and we all triggered them and removed them off the board for twenty points each. Finally, he admitted he may as well join in and got the final bonuses available for twenty points too.

Rurik: Dawn of Kiev was still mid game so we filled the time with a rousing game of Die Crew. It was Ian's first go so we eased him into with a nice training mission. One which we almost failed were it not for Joe (cruelly referred to as 'irrelevant' due to his lack of suitable cards) who worked out a method of success.

With this victory behind us, we carried on the space epic. This time we got hit by a couple of rocks from Saturn's rings and damaged the flux capacitor or something. We did it and before long the gamers at the other end of the table were trying to work out the best way to put Rurik: Dawn of Kiev back in its box, so we put space exploration on hold and waited until we were an octet once more.

We decided on Wavelength, the new darling of the GNN-o-sphere. We split into two teams: Katy, Martin, Matt and Ian against Joe, Adam, Sam and Andrew and we seemed to have cracked it. Katy had “good music/bad music” as her categories and she said “hip hop” (actually, she said “hippity hop”, which required clarification) which they got perfectly. I forgot we were on opposing teams, and I made a few useful interjections.

Then Adam had “Powerful/Powerless” and chose “the next leader of the Labour party”. Somehow, after some prevarication, we got it spot on again. This was followed by the first team almost guessing Matt’s “Harmless/Harmful” clue of Hunting Knife for three points. We’d been so successful that we were considering introducing the “Calze” rule from Perudo for those occasions when you think the other team is spot on. Odd, really, since we never allow that rule when playing Perudo.

It was close at first but slowly Katy’s team started to build up a lead. Martin’s response to “Person you could/couldn’t beat up” clue was “Stephen Hawking” giving them an easy four points. Then Ian had “Dog name/cat name” and said “Kitty”. Well, you can guess the score there.

Katy et al 16
Joe etc 11

A remarkable game, but once over people began to talk about leaving, despite it not even being eleven o’clock (but some people had started at six). Ian and Adam were set to leave and then a sudden offer of a lift from Sam for those of us heading north convinced Katy and myself to abandon the games for an easy ride home. Thanks for hosting and thanks to all for another splendid evening.

2020 Visions

In case anyone has missed us comparing notes, Martin and I have agreed to end 2020 with a net spend of zero on games: trades are allowed, and even purchases, as long as the money spent is raised by selling games.

Self-control is,  just perhaps, easier for Martin than I, but the handy thing about having no self-control up to this point is that I have several unplayed games to work through in the cupboard - a welcome distraction any time I see an alluring picture on Twitter.

That's why I finally played Gugong last week (Andrew and I were schooled by Adam and Katy) after it sat on a shelf for a year. (To be fair Andrew and I did get as far as setting it up one night but then Steve knocked on the door and we changed plans) But Adam and I enjoyed Gugong so much we played it again the very next night, and although I improved my score considerably... so did Adam.

Adam 53
Sam 35

I did at least have the satisfaction of beating him at Blitzkrieg! and Ankh'or afterwards. Blitzkrieg is a nifty chit-pull game where Axis and Allies fight over five theatres of war in WWII. Ankh'or is a set-collecting game where the sets can overlap. In each case however I'd had several previous plays to hone my skills. "This is what it's like playing Odin with you" I told Adam, when he frowned at my second victory.

On Friday, my last purchase of 2019 had arrived in the form of Rurik: Dawn of Kiev, and Ian and Adam rocked up to give it a whirl. On the board players fight for control of regions, tax regions, construct churches (flip opponents soldiers to your cause!) forts (defend better!) or markets (tax more!) in order to move up four point-scoring tracks: control of regions, buildings built, goods acquired and battles undertaken.

It's all surprisingly simple on the rules front, but implementation is something else: what the publisher calls auction programming. It does sound a bit of a stretch, admittedly, but I haven't encountered it before: players assign numbered workers to auction tracks that give you actions on the board (muster, move, attack, build, tax, or scheme: cards that give you extra actions) and higher-numbered workers will push lower-numbered workers down the track... But: lower numbered workers will activate first. This is a real puzzle and makes the auction almost as interactive as the board, as you can guess (or try to) opponent's plans and react accordingly. In fact there's a real sneakiness to proceedings that reminded me a little of Battle for Rokugan, albeit the mechanics are entirely different.

I was pleasantly surprised to win too: Adam and Ian probably gave me too much freedom in the north to build, and although I scored nothing for combat I was highest on two other tracks and it ended something like:

Sam 18
Adam 13
Ian 9

We finished the night with Push It - what can be said about this classic that hasn't already escaped our lips? Well, I could mention that I won.

Sam 11
Adam 10
Ian 9

And then, on Saturday, Wavelength arrived! This is has been long-anticipated; a party game co-designed by Wolfgang Warsch (The Mind) that I suspect we may play tomorrow night. Teams are trying to clue the location of a target on a spectrum between two extremes: the target's position is assigned randomly, and the spectrum changes with every turn: from simple concepts such as good/bad or hot/cold to more random things - there's even an advanced deck with things like Dictatorship/Democracy.

It seems like it could be a GNN favourite, and we put it through its paces yesterday when Sally and I played with some friends - all of us were enamoured of it. The spectrum categories can sometimes seem easy, sometimes hard, and it illuminates the differences in perceptions around the table. Both teams are involved in both rounds (the non-active team can win points off the potential inaccuracy of the active team's guess) and the whole thing is probably quicker than Just One. A winner!