Happily Ever Rafter

 In the same way that Sirens drew sailors to their doom on rocky shores in past centuries, so the promise of board games drew us to Sam’s house. Not to our doom, but to jovial banter and salty nibbles.

I arrived at a little before 8 to find Sam, Ian, Martin, Adam H and Joe halfway through a game of The Gang, a cooperative version of Poker. It was the third hand and I noticed that Joe rearranged the cards in the flop in numerical order, like they were playing For Sale. Ian bet low, believing he only had Card High, and had to be told he had a Straight when he revealed his hand. He admitted he still didn’t understand poker and, indeed, at a rare poker night just this past weekend Ian was out first. I was dealt into the last two hands, but extra players only make it more difficult and we ended with two more failed attempts.

The gang's all here

2 successes, 3 failures.

Then we split into two groups of three, choosing games that would easily accommodate four since Katy was on her way.

Adam, Ian and Martin set up Cascadero. I didn’t follow it much, apart from someone saying it was Ian’s “first time with the farmers” which raised some smutty laughter.

Adam 39

Ian 37

Martin OUT (but scored 38)

Meanwhile, Sam, Joe, me and (latterly) Katy played Expiditions. I saw it only from a distance the other week and today was my first play. It involves placing arrows along one of three routes (red, blue or yellow) such that they arrive at secret locations that you have in your hand or are on display as one of the shared locations. It’s simple, but cunning. Use a ticket for an extra action, reach a blue square for another turn and reach a red square for a new ticket. And since this is a Eurogame, all routes begin in Essen, Germany.

Meanwhile, we’re all travelling to these distant locations. Sad to say, I hadn’t actually been to any of them. Not even Stonehenge, although I've seen it from a car window. Each location card has a little text to explain the site's charms. I was curious about Graham Land in the far south, due to its dull name (unless you happen to be called Graham, I suppose).

Sam seemed very adept at chaining blue squares and red stars together to propel himself around the world, ticking off his locations as he went. Joe pondered his next move in an Australian accent which I thought might be a possible tell. Katy surprised us all by asking “Where’s the Sahara?” when its card was drawn from the deck. Near the end, the winner was pretty clear. Joe took several attempts to count up his score and Katy seemed disappointed that she hadn’t enjoyed it as much this time.

Sam 15

Joe 9

Andrew 5

Katy 4

Katy demanded something fun this time, so we played Rafter 5, the game of dexterity and balance in a tiny box. As the planks slowly increase in number, our options become more and more absurd. 

Katy fumbled one of her turns but somehow managed to drop her chest onto the plank she’d just placed, so it was a valid move. I had less luck. I picked up one of the rafters deftly, causing murmurs of approval for my skill, but then I nudged a treasure chest with my plank and the whole thing collapsed.

Andrew lost

Then the groups shifted again. Joe, Martin and Katy played Seaside. You pull beach-themed tiles from a bag and make jokes about getting crabs. At the end of the first game, they just stacked up their tiles and I took a photo in lieu of a numerical result.

Joe on the right, Martin on the left, Katy hidden behind them both

The second game was even closer, and so they relied on numbers.

Joe 19

Katy 19

Martin 17

Then they played Sunrise Lane. I didn’t get the scores, but Martin won with Joe “squeaking second by a point.”

Then they played another game. This one had large cards and a pretty fabric play area thing. It was called Courtisans but I don’t know the scores, because I dashed out before they’d finished.

The reason for my sharp exit was a game of Empire’s End. This is a game of disaster avoidance using a No Thanks style mechanic of bidding to not pick up tiles. You begin with 11 parts of a gleaming civilization and will almost certainly be left with half of it in ashes and ruins. Try to protect the most valuable or take the disaster that will hopefully have enough resources on it to make it worthwhile.

It was fun but a little bit long. Including rules, it took about an hour and a half. As a four-player, with a couple of newbies, it was a little longer than I’d wanted. Ian went big on military but Adam hoarded wheat for two end of game bonuses along with, I think, another one or two bonuses that pushed him from last into a healthy first.

Shiny fire

Adam 179

Sam 153

Andrew 144

Ian 127

After I left, Martin, Ian and Sam played a three-player So Clover, getting a perfect 18 out of 18.

And after Ian left, Sam beat Martin 2-1 at Schipp & Weg

Thanks all. It was special!

One Disaster after Another

Just the four of us last night as GNN continues its sparsely-populated run. Adam T arrived early and after a brief catch-up and exchange of grief-stricken lamentations that our Root group has gone into a hiatus, we consoled ourselves by playing his recent acquisition, which is Knarr, the game of Viking crewing, sailing, and combo-ing. 

The rhythm of the game is nice and easy: you're either playing a card into your crew(s) and activating all the bonuses at the top, or you are cashing them in/sailing them to far-flung climes to grab destination cards for points/other bonuses. Helmets can be spent as wild cards and bracelets - I think they're bracelets - can activate the columns in your destination cards. 

It's the kind of game where it's easy to learn but also easy, I found, to discover while you're farting about in the late teens of the score track, Adam has combo-ed his way to an imminent win. My last turn salvaged a small degree of pride...

Adam 42ish

Sam 30ish

We still had a good half hour or so before the arrival of Adam H and Martin, so cracked out a play of Empire's End. This uses the bidding system of No Thanks but instead of trying to chain numbers, you're trying to protect your civilisation from decay: most rounds are simply a disaster that will befall someone and cause them to flip over part of their tableau, and in doing so, lose all the points for it. I forgot to take any pictures, so gripped was I by the drama and panic, but here's Joe and I playing it a few days ago.

When you concede and take the disaster, you do at least get all the stuff everyone bid not to take it, and you get to append your tableau with an innovation, which - while the location it sits under remains undisastered - offers some kind of mechanical consolation for the loss of your farm/road/army/town/city. 

Disaster!

Interspersed between the almost relentless downers are economy (get stuff) industry (fix stuff) and military (fight stuff) rounds, the latter containing an element of risk as we both fight the same threat, but whoever contributes the most gets an extra reward. In one of the industry rounds I spent big to fix my (most valuable) city, only to have the next disaster hit it, and I had no resources to palm it off on Adam. He took a convincing win, something 150 to 105. 

But it was now time for Cascadero!

Whilst I went off to corral two teenagers upstairs Martin explained the rules to newbie Adam H. Then off we went, with Adam T immediately pursuing a strategy of building a 'big snake' network, as the rest of us took a more geographically diverse approach. I built an early lead, but was (correctly) assuming it wouldn't last. But as our envoys multiplied across the board, I did make significant progress up the tracks - particularly blue, which wasn't even my colour. It was Martin's. "What the fuck are you doing on my track!" he said, once or twice. Maybe more. 

Adam H initially seemed slightly bamboozled, and we did offer mild assistance once or twice. Or maybe moderate assistance, when I pointed out to him he could claim the first-to-x-spaces reward. "I was about to do that!" Martin cried. Sorry Martin. 

Adam T was openly regretting his network strategy as he dawdled some way behind us on the score track, and found his plans to get the ten point all-links bonus held up by our chicanery. However as the game entered its final stages he did belatedly bound up beside the three of us, who were inching forward in increments now. When Martin pointed out Adam H only had a spinrkling envoys left, I realised that to reach the top of my track I needed to move away from orange cities in order to visit them again, and didn't have enough turns left. Martin thought he was in with a shout but made a shocking Sam-style error, shooting himself in the foot with drastic mistake. As a result, he didn't reach the top of his track either. And nor did Adam T.

Adam H 38

Martin 38 but DNF

Sam 36 but DNF

Adam T 34 but DNF

Disaster again!

Adam H professed himself to be pleased with a debut win and liked the game. It was, as Martin said, brutal with four - if you don't reach the top of your track early enough, it becomes nigh on impossible to do so later. But we all enjoyed ourselves - even Adam T, I think. 

Martin then waved Courtisans around, his UKBG EXPO purchase, and he seemed excited enough that we agreed to play it.  It was better than this picture makes it look. 

Each turn you've a hand of three courtisans and must choose, Biblios-style, one to keep, one to gift, and one to play to the middle of the table. When the deck is empty everyone will score their kept cards, and the cards in the middle determine whether you'll get points for them (more cards above the board) or lose (more cards below). Mix in some dickish shenanigans and you've a very Martin-style game: assassins kill someone at their location when they arrive, royals are worth two, spies are played face-down and knights (I think? they have a shield) can't be killed by assassins. 

Everyone has two secret objectives as well, such as making sure the green suit falls from grace - ie scores negative - or that you have less cards or the red suit than your neighbour. These were mine, anyway, and I succeeded at one of them. I think we all managed one, in fact, but Martin's tableau of dicks scored more than everyone else's:

Martin 10

Everyone else 8

Fun, and quite speedy too - we raced through a thick deck of cards in about 25 minutes. However with Adam T making going-home noises and Adam H yawning wearily - Cascadero does take it out of you - we quickly moved on to So Clover. This was my 200th play and we hoped to mark it with an entry in the record of legends or whatever it's called. I think we've done a few perfect rounds with my copy before, but I've never recorded them - it was nice that we hit a home run of 24/24 this evening, with some nice clues guiding us there: Landfill for Garbage/Forest and C for Moon/Letter.

Adam T left us on this llinguistical high, and as a trio we played Misfits. Martin dicked us all over with a horrible opening move of the gaping-maw-triangle, but on reflection Adam H did not help the situation by putting a bloody cylinder in it. Every time Martin's turn arrived it collapsed again, until he was practically hidden by a mound of misshapen wooden bits, while his opening piece remained there, stoically being a pain in the arse.

I fell foul of it too, more than once, as Adam deftly shed his trickier pieces to finally, and triumphantly, dump his last cube. No fantastical structures tonight, but a funny, slapstick, and disastrous experience. Keeping with the mechanics of dickery, we moved on to Little Tavern. The less said about this the better as my early lead after round one made me a serial target in round two. 

Martin recovered from being back in third to sneak by Adam for a win:

Martin 26

Adam 25

Sam 22

And then Adam was gone too, his bedtime calling him. Martin and I finished off as a pair with Schnipp & Weg, which I am really surprised has never featured in GNN before! 

This is a head-to-head flicking game (lazy susan courtesy of Joe B) where you each begin at the far end of a hourglass-shaped board and the goal is to flick all your opponent's pieces off it. If you succeed with one flick (without your own pieces falling off) you keep going, and if you win the round you lose a piece but shuffle forward a row towards the middle - first player to the middle wins. 

The canny thing about Schnipp & Weg is that whoever lost a round starts the next one, which is - as long as you don't get the yips - a huge advantage. And whoever is closer to the middle is, in one way, weaker, as they have less presence on the board. We did a best of three, which Martin won 2-1 after I rallied from a poor start. A night of consecutive losses for me, So Clover notwithstanding, but a very fun one all the same. See you next week!