Baby Catan, Baby Ra

There were five of us last night; Pete, Jo, Martin and Sam and I (Joe) congregated in my kitchen for the regular GNN Tuesday amusements. Jo's game Molly House had won the American Tabletop Award for complex game earlier the very same day, and after congratulations on this amazing achievement, we set up Hot Streak, coincidentally the ATA's 2026 pick for casual game.

Hot Streak works best with 5 or 6, though for higher numbers there's a variant we're keen to try, which dispenses with the betting cards, and sounds like a lot of fun for a lot of people. 

Last night's game was the usual hilarious mix of volte face's and stumblebums, and only Pete seemed to have a true bookie's eye for what was coming down the pike. It's impressive how varied the three races can be, the order the cards come out in having a huge effect, naturally enough. Raucous fun, and our life outcomes were equally daft, as recorded by Sam with cryptic economy against the scores:

Pete 69 jumps house

Jo 52 zoo koala

Sam 37 toupee

Martin 25 book

Joe 24 nickels

We moved on to a game that the words 'raucous fun' don't have much to do with, although Martin's early entreaty to Sam to come on his bananas did cause some amusement. Santiago used to be our go-to for five players, many many moons ago. 

It last saw play at GNN in 2019, and I'm surprised to see that prior to that I'd won it in September 2013, as my recollection is of being terrible at its particular mix of bribery and potato planting. Digging a little deeper into the archive, I find the game earlier in 2013 in which I scored a paltry 29 points - it's funny how the losses stay with you. 29 was a particularly ignominious score, as you start the game with 10 money, and receive 27 during the game, so I'd have done better to sit on my hands the whole game.

Last night I won again, much to my surprise - I like to think that my early game of not being completely horrible lead to some karmic fortune at the end, but who knows. It's an OG gem, and we should probably play it more often, even though my next game will be another sub 37-er, you can be sure. This time the scores were admirably close, with 13 separating first from last:

Joe 70

Jo 65

Martin 64

Sam 59

Pete 57

Sam clearly found it as tense as I did; "Let's play coops for the rest of the night" he said afterwards, and then left.

The remaining four of us opted for Catan - On The Road, the new 15 minute card game version of Catan. We were all keen to try it, and we all felt similarly afterwards - it was fine. Just, fine. I don't know what we were expecting, it does exactly what it sets out to do; but I couldn't help wondering if it wouldn't seem completely incoherent to someone who hadn't played the original game. Martin was the first to 7 points and thus the winner.

We moved onto another (sort of) pocket version of an esteemed classic, Swat! This Knizia game was described by Martin as 'real time Ra' and you can see the lineage, though the gameplay and mozzy-swatting theme are very different. One player deals cards face up in a stack, as the others hover, ready to swat the mat as soon as the offer gets tempting enough. It took us a few rounds to get the measure of when to 'buzz in' (they should have called it that), but it's a clever and very silly at the same time, and I'm going to say if not raucous then at least rumbunctious fun.

Jo 71 

Joe 58

Martin 47

Pete 31

Earlier when Pete checked the train times they had all disappeared; but luckily they'd appeared again by now, so he left to get the last Montpelier to Temple Meads and beyond. Jo, Martin and I opted for a final So Clover. I sadly forgot to take a picture of our first effort, but maybe that's ok because we didn't do brilliantly. We went again, doing marginally better - not quite as well as the 26 I announced, Martin pointing out that 6, 6 and 4 add up to 16, the brainiac. I did get a picture of our second efforts.

   With that we were done and dusted, having had more than enough rauc for one night. 

Safe Potatoes

This week, the familiar five of Joe, Sam, Martin, Ian and me rocked up around Joe's kitchen table for our regular dose of quality entertainment and pretentious crisps.

First up was Gold Fever, the game of randomly pulling things from your hessian bag. Gold is good, gravel is bad. It was my first go and I was told the few rules while we were playing.

It was nice. Sam's bag seemed to be moulting and, as the early leader, perhaps because it was full of other people's gravel. Joe won it when a ruby came out of someone's bag, signifying an undignified rush to be the first to pull out a nugget of gold. You could say he literally pulled it out of the bag at the last minute.

Joe 4
Sam 3
Martin 3
Ian 2 or 3
Andrew 2

After this light fare, we dug out Santiago. An old game but one that is perfect for five. It's a game that mixes bidding with bribery, and tile placement with hopes of some short term co-operation from the very bribeable Canal Master. He decides where the irrigation channel goes and whose fields get watered.

Santiago's remarkably bland board

It's a game, like many others, that prompts the kind of sentences that could be misconstrued by anyone listening in, and not just the phrase currently adorning the heading of this particular blog post. "No damp patches," sighed Ian, looking at a board where all the irrigation channels were surrounded. "If there'd been a banana out there, things would have been very different," mused Martin as he looked over the crops on offer. Such is the arcane language used by the finest gamers. Or desperate luck-junkies. However you care to look at us.

Martin, much like last week, had a final turn where it felt like he'd either win or lose by his own hand. He made the right choice, but it was closer than anyone suspected.

Martin 98
Sam 97
Ian 69
Joe 64
Andrew 43

The third game of the evening was good old Decrypto. Sam and Martin buddied up into their usual duo, while Ian, Joe and I faced them from across the table.

Sam and Martin started in fine style, putting forward six clues in the first two rounds that bordered on raunchy. "Red, hole, hot" was followed by "Tits, arse, nuts." They were definitely thematic but also good clues. "Tits", especially, baffled us, becoming a real weight around our necks.

Joe initially used a "military grade" torch to try and indicate which word he thought went with which clue, but it needed five or six clicks to turn off while it cycled through its various lighting options. "It's still on!" we had to tell him, once he'd put it down. Before long he gave up on it as being impractical.

Both teams worked out at least one word early on (we got squirrel from Red and Nuts, they got pencil from Scribe and Lead) but any kind of certainty alluded us. Indeed, after some "high brow" clues from Sam, I was convinced we didn't have any of them right. In the end, they got two interceptions to our one and it was over in round seven.

Martin and Sam, Spies Like Us
Ian, Andrew and Joe, Spies dislike us.

Despite Decrypto's length, there was still enough time for one more game: Tag City. I managed a remarkable achievement by filling in a coloured area in only three moves. But that was the end of my dominance. While I was mucking about with the low scoring yellows, everyone else had made a claim for the larger and more rewarding areas which they proceeded to complete long before I could challenge for them.

Perhaps five players is too many for this game, since it's impossible to keep track of what people want and how to avoid giving it to them. As such, it's a bit of a luckfest. Right?

Joe 36
Ian 29
Martin 23
Andrew 8
Sam 7

And once that was done, we could no longer ignore the distant call of our beds. Mine even had a hot water bottle in it I'd put there before I'd gone out.

Thanks to all for another fun evening.

If Bruckheimer played Santiago

Tonight saw an attendance at the regular weekly meet that would put Roll For The Soul to shame! The two newcomers from the Thursday meet arrived, Gonz and Martin. Along with Joe, Sam, myself, Quentin, Adam and Hannah, that made a healthy eight players.

At first we all played Incan Gold since that’s a game that works well with some many people. Although we were frustrated when turning over high cards, only to have to share all that treasure with plenty of other players. It was all about getting out while the getting was good. Sam played it cool at first, nipping out of the first two temples early on, and picking up what hadn’t been shared out. But Adam faced down fickle fate and stayed in a temple until he had it all to himself, including two relics.

Adam 43
Sam 40
Joe 27
Andrew 19
Martin 18
Quentin 15
Hannah 14
Gonz 12

After this we split up, with three playing Agricola (Adam, Gonz and Quentin) and five of us choosing Santiago (me, Joe, Martin, Hannah and Sam). We even had to go into different rooms, there were so many of us.

Santiago may be visually bland but with five it’s at its best. There always someone who suffers and that’s what games are all about! And that’s how it was from the beginning. The canal overseer may have been the guy who got the worst tile in the bidding round but, more often than not, there were few bribes on the table to fill his or her pockets in recompense. It was harsh. Sometimes the bribes were so low it was more like an insult. Like a Hollywood version of Santiago where mean-looking guys in dramatic lighting slap down single notes and yell “This is what I think of your stinking irrigation system!”

Martin played a tough game, but he was stymied when his field of choice didn’t come out when he needed it. Plus, he was the only one not to use their emergency canal. But Joe played it cool. Neither tortoise nor hare, he diversified, picking up scores for every crop. Santiago as it should be played.

Joe 73
Martin 63
Hannah 59
Andrew 57
Sam 55

During this game I often popped in next door, partly to admire Gonz’s laminated cards and partly because they still had crisps on the table. It seemed close halfway through, but Gonz ran away with it at the end with his extra family members. Adam ended in last, muttering something about having forgotten how to play.

Gonz 44
Quentin 36
Adam 27

While they finished off Agricola, Sam set off home and us four had a quick game of Timeline. The game of historical fun! It was short and sweet, and I do know enough about history that I feel at least fairly confident when I play this. I knew that the diving suit was invented in the 1600s, for example. Meanwhile, Joe’s last card was The Formation Of The Earth, which obviously came before everything.

1= Joe
1= Andrew
2. Martin
3. Hannah

After this, we wended our weary way back home. The end of the season draws near. Not completely near, though. There are a few days left, which leaves the Division in a precarious position...

I’m top in Points and on the Medals Table, which is nice, and the gap is big enough that I hope I’m not in danger of being overtaken. Currently Joe is second by a knife edge. But the Points Ratio also delicately poised. Adam leads at the moment, but will the Thursday meet at Steve and Anja's be leaderboard? Will he risk it, since James from Bracknell is hot on his heels? Did the Berkshire bunch get together for a three-player evening? Is there one more twist to this season? We await news from both camps...

On the form table, it’s a hard introduction for Gonz, with that eighth place in Incan Gold weighing him down. But hats off to Joe who timed his run of form to perfection, as he glides into first place.

						Points
Joe	1	1	3	1	3	9
Adam	3	1	1	3	2	10
Andrew	1	4	4	3	1	13
Sam	5	2	3	2	2	14
Steve	2	3	3	3	4	15
Anja	3	2	5	1	5	16
Hannah	3	3	7	2	1	16
Martin	2	2	5	5	5	19
Quentin	2	6	3	3	5	19
Miles	2	3	5	5	5	20
Jonny	1	5	5	5	5	21
Lizzy	2	5	5	5	5	22
Gonz	1	8	5	5	5	24

A great season (if it is over. There may be more.) and hopefully we’ll see plenty of you next week for the start of another exciting new season! No break for us hardy gamers. Those cubes aren’t going to push themselves.

All the way to Santiago

Tuesday night rolled around again like a collection of cardboard looming over the horizon, and Joe, Andrew and I (Sam) joined Steve and Anja at their house for pleasures of the abstract. With Anja's bump also looming over the horizon, there was much anticipation of a future GNN recruit before he was even out in the open. But he'll probably rebel (and play Warhammer instead).

We began with a very abstract game indeed - Scripts and Scribes (the dice game, apparently there's a non-dice version) a companion piece to perennial GNN stalwart Biblios. As explained in unnecessary detail in a previous comment by me last week, players are trying to get the most of five different resources, and the play proceeds through dice-rolling and passing the dice around the table until they're all used up. Joe was unconvinced, stating that "it's not Biblios" while Anja liked it for the same reason. What a rich tapestry us gamers weave! In any event my wheedling into favour with the abbot did me well, as did a sudden discovery of three green books near game end:

Sam 62
Steve 39
Andrew 39
Anja 38
Joe 33

Cubes!

Now what? After surprisingly little debate we conclusively went for the oft-unplayed Santiago, a game of irrigation and bribery. Players are trying to raise crops but to do so they need the water to come their way, and that's where the canal overseer/master/captain - I've forgotten the correct term - comes in, and the canal overlord is the player who bid the least that round (and hence picks up the crappiest field to place). How well the players are doing is evident on the board if you care to add it all up, but there's so much going on that we never got around to it until the end. As it was my last round role of canal despot proved enough to squeak a narrow win:

Sam 42
Anja 41
Andrew 40
Steve 37
Joe 29

More cubes!

Though neither game felt particularly long we realised 11 o'clock was fast approaching, and the expectant parents elected to call it a night.

						Points
Sam	1	1	1	1	3	7
Steve	4	2	1	1	2	10
Andrew	3	3	2	2	1	11
Hannah	4	1	1	2	3	11
Anja	2	3	4	2	1	12
Adam	2	2	3	2	4	13
Will	1	1	2	5	5	14
Joe	5	4	3	3	2	17
Jon	3	5	1	5	5	19
Quentin	1	5	5	5	5	21

Because no car goes like a cargo goes

This week Paul made the long trek up the M4 (and other roads too) in order to join us, with his own creation Cargo! In his hands.

Five of us began the evening- me, Paul, Sam, Joe and Adam. We ooohed and ahhed as we unboxed Paul’s game, marvelling at the containers, the cards and the credits. Then Paul talked us through the rules, and we were off on a non-leaderboard adventure with heavy goods vehicles! We quickly decided that having plenty of lorries was a good idea, but then we got stung by road tax! Oh no! Also, different value cards were good, if you wanted to avoid the fate of Adam, who had two routes needing similar scores and could complete neither of them.

Andrew 45
Paul 44
Sam 40
Joe 19
Adam 15

At this point Sam gave in to his persistent illness and so Paul and I took him home, leaving Adam and Joe to play the game of Fit The Game Back In The Box. Once Paul and I returned, we perused Joe’s games cupboard and decided on Skulls and Roses and then Santiago as being new for Paul, and also easy to teach.

Skulls and Roses is like a simple version of Perudo, without all the clattering. We bet on whether we have skulls or roses on the underside of our beer mats. It’s a game of bluffing, which I’m very bad at. Paul, though, with his steely glare and poker face did very well, winning the requisite two rounds. Joe and Adam managed to win one each, while I was played for a fool, and didn’t win any at all.

1. Paul
2= Joe
2= Adam
3. Andrew

Santiago got another outing, again without the presence of Sam. We will play it one day when he’s here, honest. I tried to be as mean as possible when I was the Canal Overseer, and Adam seemed to go through the whole game with almost no money at all. Until the last round when I bribed him a lot to save one of my fields and lose one of his.

I bemoaned my fate of twice taking potato tiles, only for them to lose its only man or go arid that same go: “These potatoes have been a curse to me. You could say they’ve been a blight.” Oh, I’m hilarious. In the end, Adam took first place comfortably.

Adam 77
Andrew 67
Paul 58
Joe 54

Not much movement on the form table, except Anja edging upwards and Paul taking his place among us.

						Points
Steve	1	1	2	2	1	7
Adam	1	2	3	2	4	12
Anja	2	2	5	2	2	13
Sam	3	2	3	3	2	13
Hannah	3	5	1	1	3	13
Andrew	2	3	5	3	1	14
Joe	4	2	4	1	5	16
Quentin	1	3	5	5	5	19
Jonny	2	2	5	5	5	19
Paul	3	1	5	5	5	19
Sally	3	5	5	5	5	23

Don't judge a game by (the donkey on) its cover

This week, Sam was too ill to host, and so five eager gamers arrived at Joe's abode for the evening's battle. Joe, Adam and I dabbled with a little non-leaderboard Rattle Snakes. This time Joe's magnet placement skills deserted him and Adam won both times. But that was just the warm up. With Steve and Anja yet to arrive, we chose Pickominos to start us off properly.

Joe began well and soon had a pile of tiles in front of him. I found my luck was a bit erratic and often had to put my tiles back with each unsuccessful round. Adam did okay for most of the time. But near the end, we found ourselves locked into a pattern of picking up a tile and then putting back a tile. The game looked to be never-ending and with Anja and Steve at the door, we called an end to it.

Joe 8
Adam 1
Andrew 0

The five of us discussed the options and went for Santiago, the game of field planting and then irrigation (rather than the other way round, which is what most sensible farmers would do). Steve wasn't convinced by it's incredibly dull board and the cheap tourist cocktail-style palm trees. However, we persevered, and after some rule explaining and trying to guess why Cybil the dog was whining, we began.

Don't be fooled by the shallow focus - this looks cheap

Bidding, negotiation, bribing. All in a day's work as a farmer in Santiago. I'm not very good at any of those things, so I soon felt I was lagging. But not doing so badly that I gave up hope. After all, I had most of the leeks/sweetcorn/whatever they were. Joe went into chillis, Adam invested in potatoes and Anja had gone bananas (a ha ha). But no one noticed the quiet farmer in the corner. The sensible one who never won bidding wars and who quietly ploughed his own field. Which just so happened to be next to other people's fields of the same kind.

Yes, I mean Steve. He won with a wide range of second places across the board, causing surprise to sweep across the table. A cunning victory and one that very much went under the radar.

Steve 113
Anja 109
Adam 96
Joe 82
Andrew 75

And we ended, tired but happy, and wondering how we managed to make a one-hour game last so long. Our thoughts returned to the design of the game as we were packing away, and we commended it for at least having a donkey on the front of the box.

Our resident expert Joe said that, talking about donkeys on the lids of board games, had we seen Roads & Boats? He'd first seen this game being played at Stabcon, and the artwork was of a style that he thought they were playing a home-made version.

I was especially tickled by the text design, where they'd obviously noticed that the two words in the title shared three of their five letters, and decided to really go for it. But we noted that meant it could equally be called Rods and Bats. Or Broads? Or Brad's Oats? Boas and Stoats?

We left Chez Joe, chuckling away at board game design but still not entirely sure why Cybil the dog had been whining. She calmed down after a while, so it can't have been important.

In terms of the form table, Steve takes his place at the top of the form table for the first time, I believe. And, despite being ill, Sam climbs to second. Anja also rises to a career-best fourth.

						Points
Steve	1	1	2	2	1	7
Sam	2	3	3	2	2	12
Adam	3	2	4	2	1	12
Anja	2	2	5	2	2	13
Hannah	3	5	1	1	3	13
Andrew	5	3	1	1	3	13
Joe	4	1	5	4	2	16
Quentin	1	3	5	5	5	19
Jonny	2	2	5	5	5	19
Sally	3	5	5	5	5	23

Photos taken with unashamed abandon from Board Game Geek.

Water, water, not exactly everywhere . . .

Earlier this week, I listened to the latest episode of Ryan Sturm and Geoff Engelstein's excellent Ludology podcast - about the 'why' of gaming. The current episode focusses on complexity, and introduced a concept I was unfamiliar with: cognitive load.

Cognitive load is the amount of rules and concepts games require you to hold in your head whilst playing. This is distinct from rules which, once learned, quickly become second nature, and you don't have to keep them at the forefront of your mind, and can focus instead on strategy and tactics.

Games which induce a heavy cognitive load will tend to appeal only to hardcore gamers, and be a big turn-off to casual players: Troyes would fall in to this category, I would say, along with Brass and De Vulgari Eloquentia. Games like this often require a player aid, a reference card to help manage the amount of stuff that the players need to assimilate. It doesn't mean they're bad games, but they require an investment of time and effort to learn.

And then there are games that, despite a simple ruleset (and thus a light cognitive load) nevertheless involve a mind-bending set of choices, as you attempt to wrap your brain around the future consequences of your current actions.

Santiago, which we got to play last night for the first time, is one of these.

We were five altogether, Sam hosting Adam, Andrew, Jonny and me.

Santiago is about irrigating crops, and bribing the canal overseer (one of the players) to send the water the way you want it to go — as it says on the box, 'the water flows where the money goes'.

It also says on the box '60 mins'. It took us two hours, not including ten minutes learning the rules at the beginning.

The rules themselves are simple, but the decisions that result from them are rather deep, and often agonising. Do you bid high for the crop tile, and leave yourself little money to bribe the canal guy?Do you bid low to become the canal guy, in the hopes of raising some cash? Do you offer up a big bribe to the canal guy, forcing him to take it rather than spend more of his own precious money sending it his way, only to find that someone else has made a lower offer that benefits the both of them?

It was everybody's first game, which probably accounts for the long play time. Sam, Adam and Jonny made an early alliance involving bananas, while I planted a small potato field, and Andrew, the first canal overseer, bided his time.

In the second round, Adam took an aggressive stance, shutting in my potato field, and Sam threw in his extra canal to keep his bananas moist, which meant easy pickings for the winners of the crop auction going in to round three.

No-one had a total grasp of what was gonig on, but Adam seemed increasingly relaxed (always a bad sign), and by the end, although no-one could quite tell how where they stood, we all sort of knew Adam had the win.

It's a game in which you can, if you're so inclined, crunch the numbers on your turn and have a pretty good idea of your optimal move. That doesn't come naturally to me, I prefer going with my instinct. Andrew was of a similar dispostion, and we came 4th and 5th respectively. Johnny was third, Sam second and Adam won comfortably, having pushed in to the hundreds. Tellingly, the scores were fairly evenly spaced, with 40 points between first and last place:

Adam 105

Sam 90

Jonny 84

Joe 74

Andrew 65

I liked it and would be happy to play again, though I don't think I'm very good at negotiation games. That said, there's a fair amount of transparency — unlike some games, it's relatively easy to figure out what represents a good offer in terms of return.

After that we played TransEuropa — the game lasted four rounds I think, each round someone falling short by four or five points. I think Trans Europa is a great way to round off a games night — I find it quite addicitve, despite the limited amount of strategy. there's a lot of luck, but it does seem to reward attention to your opponents placement. JB

Joe 1st

Jonny 2nd

Adam 3rd

Andrew 4th

Sam 5th

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Sam	26	106.5	4.1
Andrew	28	102	3.64
Joe	23	101	4.39
Adam	20	100.5	5.025
Quentin	9	40	4.44
Hannah	7	34.5	4.9
Chris	5	20.5	4.1
Steve	4	16	4
Jonny	5	16	3.2

Ersby reports: Just six points seperate fourth from first as we galavant to a grand finale. Despite a poor performance by me, I cling on to second spot.