Double Ore / Nothing

Last night we broke out the game that "started it all" - Settlers of Catan. Back in the mists of time this was, at one point, the only game I ever played - having been introduced to it by Chris. I introduced it to Joe many years later, and the rest of Joe's downstairs alcove is history.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The evening began much earlier, with just Andrew and myself facing off over herb gardens in Herbaceous, the game that crosses Biblios with Cottage Garden. The rules are very simple - on your turn, you may pot (moving herbs from gardens into pots) and then you must plant: flipping over two herb cards, putting one in your private garden and one in the community garden.

Everyone has four pots they are trying to fill (all the same/all different/pairs/three of any type, including the special herbs) and when you pot, you can take the cards from your own and/or the community garden - so there's a bit of push your luck: hoping nobody will grab what you'd like for yourself, and hoping you don't pot a herb only to flip over cards that would have helped you. Also, if you pot special herbs 1, 2 and 3, you get a biscuit.

No, I don't know either - but it's worth five points.

Sam 61
Andrew 54

And with Ben and Ian still en route, we played again:

Andrew 56
Sam 54

Then Ben arrived, and we played as a three. He took to it pretty well:

Ben 55
Sam 49
Andrew 37

Ian also turned up during the game, so it was time to think about what to play as a four. Panamax had been floated (by me) but also vetoed (by me) as I wasn't sure I was familiar enough with the game to facilitate a four-hander. After some rumination, we settled on Black Orchestra, the game of co-operative assassination attempts. Ben and Ian took on Wehrmacht roles, I was part of the Abwehr, and Andrew was a civilian.

1939

The game began with a air of mild menace, but nothing too dramatic had happened when everything suddenly went terribly wrong. With three of us at Extreme Suspicion (- if the Gestapo raid, you are arrested) Andrew took efforts to lower his own suspicion score to medium. Then Ian, on the subsequent turn, decided to conspire: it went badly wrong, and Andrew (in the same location) saw his suspicion go back to Extreme in an instant. It was the equivalent of handing Andrew a fizzing cartoon bomb, and then running out the door.

Then the Gestapo turned up! All of us but Ben were arrested, and when Ben came to spring us from jail, he was arrested too. Game over, and Ian couldn't apologise enough.

1945

Or not enough for Andrew, anyway, who kept mentioning his error during our next game: Quantum.

Ben was new to this as well, so Andrew and Ian talked him through the rules while I had a call with the absent family. When I returned, we were ready to go, and as it often the case in Quantum, we all got a cube down within our first two turns. After that, it turned dark. Ian and Ben both homed in on my ships and I was blown off the board. Whilst that melee was taking place, Andrew was making hay elsewhere, establishing a cube lead and getting four ships on the board, clustered together.

Dick moves began in earnest. Ian somehow ended up with 3 value three ships, which for whatever reason he decided not to change, but instead embark on a galaxy-wide marathon relay of moving and warping, to get one ship miles from the others. Ben pulled off the move of the game with a two-cube-placement, getting one down via his ships then another through dominance.

I played a sneaky game which was sort of dictated to me by the cards - I could construct from corners, deploy anywhere on the board, and best of all, I was Resourceful: if I removed a ship from the board, I got an additional action. This meant it was hard for the others to predict what I would do, and I nabbed the win:

Sam 0 cubes
Andrew/Ben 2 cubes left
Ian 3 cubes left

We returned Quantum to its box, and as it was only just gone nine, decided to introduce Ian to Settlers! The rules explanation took about 90 seconds, and we were off.

It was nice to revisit from a nostalgic point of view, but I must say we felt the age of the game now. So many turns were an exercise in rolling dice, not getting anything, then passing them on (the blog post title comes from what Andrew / and I picked up every time a six was rolled.)

Gotta love Ian's optimism!

I spent much of the early part of the game either cursing the dice for not rolling 8's, or cursing the others for putting the robber on my 8. As with Quantum, Andrew's blue pieces looked to be in a strong position: as Ben grabbed the largest army and Ian and I fought over the longest road, he spread himself over the island and picked up the odd development card - at one point he was on nine points and just needed a Chapel or University to win. But he got a soldier instead, and I - to my literal surprise, as I thought I'd reached nine points myself - snuck the win from under him:

Sam 10
Andrew 9
Ben 7
Ian 4

Ben called it a night, and - unable to find Push It in the cupboard (despite the recent purge!) - we finished off with Love Letter. It was a slightly chaotic Love Letter, with all of us making basic errors. But Andrew saw off belated challenges from Ian and I to claim the win:

Andrew 3
Ian 2
Sam 1

Herbs, Nazis, Spaceships and Renaissance Romance. A lovely way to start the weekend.

Novocon 2015

Friday

As the starlings gather in fields to set of across the continents on their yearly migration, so it is that the GNN faithful gather together on email exchanges, eager to swap city concrete for the feeling of fresh country grass under our feet. Or at least visible through the window.

Sam, Stanley and I set off from Bristol heading south-west to Devon which, apparently, sat under a giant black storm cloud. Day swiftly turned to night as rain fell. The journey was arduous, but not complicated and after a couple of hours, we had arrived in Croyde!

Adam, Hannah, Arthur and Katy were there to meet us with freshly cooked lasagna. And as we ate, Steve, Anja and Luther arrived, followed by Jon. Finally, we were all together so the games could commence!

The first game was Steve’s egg game, in which he had to balance eggs on a shelf in the fridge door, unaware that it would give way any second. It did, with Steve unable to catch them all. In the blink of an eye we went from eighteen eggs down to three. There then came the tricky matter of how to pick up albumen from a kitchen floor. Mopping it up with a sponge? Scooping it up with a spatula? Steve worked hard to clean it up.

The second game was Steve’s beer game, in which he had to pour a drink from his new Old Speckled Hen mini-keg without it suddenly spurting drink everywhere. He lost. More cleaning up.

Steve's beer. Fresh from the mini-keg!

Finally, while Arthur and Luther were being put to bed, we played a real game. You know, one that comes in a box with rules. We chose Forbidden Desert, a nice co-op game to ease everyone into the weekend. Jon, Stanley, Katy, Sam, Adam and myself all tried to find the pieces of the ancient flying machine in the shifting sands of the aforementioned desert. But we couldn’t. We were able to stave off thirst, only to die, buried under piles of sand.

Next, Adam beat Steve at Hive, and Anja joined the group on the Big Table where they broke out Celestia. Sam took out the special action cards, apart from the jet pac and spy-glass, I think. They sped through two games of high drama.

Jon 55
Katy 38
Sam 36
Stanley 30
Anja 29

Then...

Anja 52
Jon 43
Stanley 39
Sam 36
Steve 33

During the second game, Adam beat Katy at Hey, That’s My Fish, 59-38. Then, Adam took over Arthur-duties and Hannah and I did battle in 7 Wonders Duel. I explained the rules to her, and spent most of the game balefully believing she had beaten me easy. But then I picked up a number of guilds in round three to come out an easy winner, 76-51.

By now there was talk of trying something a little more substantial. Anja, Steve and I played Snowdonia. For a change, we tried the Blaenau Ffestiniog variant. This involves the players choosing which end they start from, with the events alternating between ends.

It only added frustration, as best-laid plans were scuppered by the game triggering an event to dig/build/lay tracks in exactly the place we wanted. I was unable to build any station buildings at all. However, we kept our spirits up in these arduous times by singing the hits of Bernard Cribbins. Yes, all three of them.

Steve 72
Anja 52
Andrew 25

While all this fraught contemplation was going on, the other half of the room indulged in light-hearted party games. First, they played Deep Sea Adventure, featuring Katy’s plaintive wail of “but I was being so careful!”

Jon 29
Adam 14
Hannah 13
Katy 0

This was followed by Spyfall, the game of using questions to try and deduce which player is the spy who doesn’t know the secret location. Who won? I’ve no idea, but it ended with Jon coming into the kitchen complaining that he’s always the spy.

This was followed by 6 nimmt.

Katy 23
Adam 26
Sam 27
Hannah 44
Jon 66

Finally for them, after Hannah and Adam retired, they played Raj.

Sam 59
Jon 54
Katy 25

Saturday

The very epicentre of the games weekend, and a whole day of games for all concerned. However, it was a slow start with people arising at different times, such that the thought of gaming was put to one side in preference for getting children to eat breakfast or trying to work out why the wi-fi/playstation2/TV/electric hob/wall socket doesn’t work.

In an attempt at getting us away from all this useless technology, we decided to walk to the nearby beach. Although the forecast was grim, the sun was out and myself, Sam, Stanley, Hannah, Arthur , Jon and Katy all set out defiantly into the buffeting wind.

The only game we played was pooh sticks between Jon, Katy and Stanley, which Jon won with his large chunk of branch beating Katy and Stanley’s twigs. Although we also played the running up and down the sand dunes game, which I was quite bad at and needed Jon to give me a helping hand.

As we were heading home we met Anja, Steve and Luther going the other way. After a brief chat and our friendly advice about which way they should go, we parted ways. We looked back and were impressed that they too were successfully attempting to scale the same huge dune that we had climbed.

We then paused at a local shop to buy pasties (English Breakfast Pasty was a big hit with me) before heading back.

Back at the house, there was still some time before lunch and so - at 11.45 - we began the first game of the day: Celestia!

Katy 52
Stanley 37
Andrew 37
Sam 36
Hannah 28
Jon 20

And this was followed by the serene delights of Takenoko. Hannah was the last to complete any actual cards, and was complaining how badly she was doing. Then she completed three high scoring cards in one turn and the game changed in her favour. Jon cursed his luck at only ever picking up green tiles (ironically, the colour that I wanted but never got). Katy was amazed at how badly she did at a game that she usually won. They seemed to find it a uniquely stressful game.

Hannah 38
Andrew 26
Jon 21
Katy 14

After Sam’s lunch of stuffed peppers, there was a kickabout in the garden for the more energetic of us, while others preferred to watch languidly from the sofa.

But soon we were back to the board games, and Hannah, Katy and Anja played Fauna while us guys hung out in the kitchen and played the slightly more boyish game of Cube Quest. We tried to complete a full league contain six players: Stanley, Adam, Andrew, Steve, Jon and Sam. We didn’t really get close but at the end the mini league looked like:

Sam 2 wins out of 2
Andrew 2 wins out of 3
Adam 2 wins out of 3
Steve 2 wins out of 3
Jon 1 wins out of 3
Stanley 0 wins out of 4

As grown men, should we be ashamed at how seriously we took our games against Stanley? Perhaps.

Cube Quest. A serious business.

Notable victories were Adam’s win over me, in which he picked out my king from a crowd of cubes. Also when Jon beat Stanley, his winning flick was so strong, the king flew off the table and hit Sam in the face.

Meanwhile, Fauna ended

Hannah 130
Katy 85
Anja 72

Hannah put down her comfortable win due to the fact that three animals came up that she already knew about, and she seemed somehow disappointed that she didn’t win by guessing. Surely rewarding knowledge is the whole point of the game.

Then I taught Adam how to play 7 Wonders Duel, and I didn’t patronise him by going easy on him just because it was his first go. I won 83-53. Meanwhile, Katy did not enjoy her introduction to Chocolatl, giving Dirk control of her game halfway through.

Sam 56
Steve 43
Hannah 43
Anja 33
Katy/Dirk 13

Then Steve and Anja broke away to prepare food, while Katy, Sam, Jon, Adam and me played a rousing game of Mystery at the Abbey. Adam found it hard going and, at two hours, it did last longer than I expected. Jon got a free revelation (ie, didn’t lose you points at the end of the game) and seemingly used it to confuse us, saying the murderer was a Franciscan, when it turned out to be a Templar. I successfully got the murderer, so I was happy at least. I don’t think Adam was impressed by how low-scoring a game it was for so much effort.

Andrew 2
Katy 2
Adam 2
Sam 0
Jon 0

Finally, I tried to teach Matcha to Adam, but the rule book text was too small and my brain couldn’t cope, and food was imminent. I apologised and gave up.

After a hearty feast of frittata, salad and something else I can’t recall, six of us played Midnight Party while the toddlers were being put to bed since this would be our last chance this evening to shout and scream.

Stanley 22
Katy 25
Steve 25
Andrew 27
Sam 34
Jon 44

Then Adam beat me twice on Hive, using the same tactic twice. Grr. Meanwhile, Jon introduced Hannah, Katy and Steve to Waggle Dance, another game of considerable length and low scores:

Jon 5 honey
Hannah 4 plus 5 nectar
Katy 4 plus 3
Steve 3

And Adam, Anja, Sam and me played a couple of games of No Thanks in which those who gambled on the high cards were richly rewarded for their bravery.

Sam 11 (with a run from 35-29)
Anja 15
Andrew 19
Adam 43

And then...

Anja 5 (with a run from 32-26)
Sam 19
Andrew 20
Adam 28

By now it was just past nine o’clock and anyone who wanted to play a long game needed to make a decision and convince others soon. Jon persuaded Adam and I to play Power grid with the promise of robots. Steve and Anja felt their chances of playing Wallenstein slipping away, as they agreed to an evening of short, fun games which would give Hannah the chance to bow out early if needed.

They played Celestia, the hit of the weekend.

Sam 51
Katy 43
Steve 34
Hannah 25
Anja 22

Then Bandu:

1. Steve
2. Anja
3. Hannah
4. Katy
5. Sam

And then, after a few retirements, Anja and Sam played a couple of games of Matcha, winning one game each.

On Power Grid, meanwhile, Adam played like a pro, quickly moving to trap Jon and me into a corner of the map. The robot, meanwhile, was actually a cardboard cut-out made up of several pieces with rules that the robot always obeys when it’s his turn. You can put this robot together from a wide selection, meaning it will almost never play the same way twice.

Anyway, there were a couple of hairy moments when the robot was in second place. The honour of the whole human race was at stake here. In the end, Adamn had such a good start that he could barely lose, even though Jon said Adam had made a big mistake in one of the closing rounds and might have ruined his chances. I hadn’t noticed anything.

Adam 17 cities
Jon 15
Andrew 14
Robot 13

And, with the time at midnight, the day was finally over. Phew.

Sunday

And, as we all know, after Saturday came Sunday. Known for its sleepy slow awakenings and quiet gentle breakfasts. Unless you’re us, in which case it involves a massive space epic. I mean Eclipse, of course, and because Sam, Stanley and I were scheduled to head home mid-afternoon, we pushed for a meaty epic before lunch. Railways of the World was mooted until a thirst for new rules and sci-fi adventures won the debate and Eclipse was set up.

Sam talked us (Jon, Stanley, Adam and myself) through the rules, with Adam referring to the rules throughout, much to everyone’s dismay. Indeed, he found a couple of rule clarifications which would have helped his military plans if he’d known about them. This, at least, counts as mitigating circumstances regarding his final placing.

We played a truncated game, since (lunch) time was pressing. When round six ended, we finished with the scores at:

Jon 25
Stanley 22
Andrew 19
Sam 18
Adam 17

After this, while I made pizzas Steve and Anja played two games of Matcha, winning one each while Jon, Adam, Katy, Stanley and Sam played football. This was followed by a swift one-round blast of Raj for some of the mud-crusted footballers.

Stanley 20
Adam 12
Sam 8

Then at around three o'clock, Sam, Stanley and I set off back to Bristol, leaving the rest to play the “Five adults with child care duties decide what to play next” game.

Adam emailed me with scores and a little description of the final games of the weekend. Adam's home made Settlers of Catan finally got an airing. He reports...

Settlers:
Katie 10
Hannah 7
Adam 6
Jon 5

Katie got a strong position picking on the turn and ended up getting 5 wheat everytime 9 was rolled. Hannah was Close behind while John and I grumbled and stumbled in soundly beaten. Don't let the scores fool you into thinking it was close...

Waggle dance
Anja 5 honey, fewest dice
Steve 5 honey, next fewest dice
Katie 5 honey, more nectar
Hannah 5 honey, dead weight

7wonders duel:
Katy 74
Hannah 68

Wallenstein:
Anja 62
Adam 52
Steve 47

Steve was unceremoniously squashed between Anja and I. Meanwhile she and I danced around cagily loading more and more troops into Sachsen until Anja finally struck in the second last round, taking one territory and reducing another to one cube. That victory proved decisive as I collapsed to farmer revolts in the second winter and we were definitely finished by midnight...

- - - - - -

Thanks Adam. All that remains is the division. Well done, Drs Katy and Anja. Looks like Anja was right to insist on that game of Wallenstein after all.

 And, since we played quite a lot of two player games, I made a division for those games too.

Thanks, everyone. A lovely weekend and nice to get some epics onto the table. It'll be a long time until we have a table large enough to host five-player Eclipse.

Settler's Tums

There's been a slight drop-off in organised gaming in the last few weeks - probably due to Easter hols and all that jazz - but I have managed a fair amount of extra-curricular fun. Martin and I have had a spate of lunchtime Manoeuvre-ing; so glad to revisit this game, it's one of my all-time favourite two-player short 'war-games'. And this last weekend we Bergers went off to walk a bit of the South Downs Way from Eastbourne to Lewes, with our friends Henry and Rachel and their three girls.

Conscious of needing to pack lightly, but wanting to have games on hand should they be needed, I distilled a few games into a small box;

Manoeuvre, including all the terrain and the four best armies; Sticheln for up to 6; Race for the Galaxy inc. Alien Artifacts expansion; and Verrater. Another small box held Vegas, Incan Gold and Werewolves. In the event, Sticheln and Werewolves were the only games that didn't get played.

Henry and I managed a few late night games of Manoeuvre, all nail-biters, and trotted out Race at every available opportunity. My training from Martin gave me the edge in the latter, though Henry trounced me four-nil at Splendor back at their house after the weekend. We also managed one-and-a-half three player games of Verrater; I was really pleased to finally get to grips with this, and it proved a nigh-perfect portable big (ish) game experience. I expect four players is the sweet spot, and had we had more time I think we could have persuaded Charlotte to play, but even with three it was really interesting.

Like it's sibling Meuterer, the fun hinges on whether anyone has picked the traitor card in a Citadels-style character draw, and what that will entail for the ensuing showdown. It seemed obvious to me that one should always take the traitor if it's available, and I did win but it was close, and a couple of times what felt like a sure-fire win as the traitor disintegrated. I can see real potential for mind-games, convincing your opponents that you're the traitor, getting them to pile their precious supply cards in, and then revealing that you weren't at all and winning anyway. Could be a bit too vicious if played like that, but in any case very interesting.

We got back to Bristol on Tuesday, and last night (Wed) a couple of friends were coming round for food. They've played the odd game with us before, Pickomino, and I think Skull and Roses; last night  felt like the perfect opportunity to try something a little more involved. But what? I found myself weighing up the options during the day; perhaps Splendor? If I wanted to demonstrate how sleek and refined a game could be, maybe. But it's not that 'fun'. Lords of Vegas? That can drag a little, and you can get hosed if you're new to it.

You know that feeling, that there's the perfect game somewhere in your collection to introduce new gamers to, if only you could remember what it is? I went through a mental list of all the games I've recently acquired, that at some point or other I've been desperate to get to the table. None of them were right, but there was something at the back of my mind, I knew - a little voice saying "I'm the game you're looking for!". And then it hit me - and the answer was so obvious it was laughable - Settlers of Catan!

The venerable, the grand-daddy of eurogaming, the game we wouldn't dream of playing on a tuesday night; but it remains the perfect game to introduce new players to the hobby, as far as I'm concerned. So much of the fun is off the board, cajoling your opponents into trading with you, and if they won't, stealing it anyway. There is something unique and mysterious about the way it appeals to non-gamers. Oh and it's the only game Charlotte likes! It was the perfect choice.

I won, which is a rare thing for me, and it took nearly three hours. But it was super fun.
Ah, Settlers.

Welsh Rare Bits

For the first week of the Easter holidays, Charlotte, the girls and I went to Wales with old friends Rachel and Henry and their three daughters. Both R and H are keen gamers, and Charlotte will happily play a game in the evening, so while I was sure that Henry and I would find lots to get stuck into between days on the beach, long walks and cooking, I was interested to see which games would be hits and misses for the four of us.

We took a bevvy of two-player games, including Hansa, Manoeuvre, Commands and Colours: Ancients, and the big daddy, Twilight Struggle. The first game Henry and I broke out on arriving at the cottage near Pembroke was Manoeuvre. It's a game of Napoleonic-era battles, players assuming control of one of eight available armies, ranging from French, English, Ottoman all the way to the United States. Each army has eight units to go on the board, typically 6 infantry and 2 cavalry units, and a dedicated deck of small cards with which to battle and issue orders. The gameplay is simple; discard and draw cards, move one unit, attack with one unit.

A total rout by the French. Marvellous.

The typical attack by a single unit is very unlikely to eliminate its target, merely flip it to its weaker side, and next turn your opponent may well be able to restore it. So you really need to try and plan attacks so that you can add cards from your hand to strengthen the attack, possibly bringing in more units, leaders etc. The game plays in about 40 minutes once you know what you're doing, and is great fun. We tried out a few of the different arrmies - and each has it's innate strengths and weaknesses.

D6s, D8s and cartoon beer. Mmmm . . .

In the evenings, Charlotte and Rachel joined us. For the first couple of nights, the main event was a few rounds of Pickomino, which works brilliantly as a casual game with four - the perfect combination of push-your-luck, nicking each others tiles and not quite knowing who's winning until the final tally. It also allows for a lot of chatting in-between goes, which is certainly a plus as far as Charlotte is concerned.

Grubby dice. Unacceptable.

The first big game we all tried was Manila, which I got in the Euro Maths Trade the week before we went away. Though some of the mechanics (auction, worker-placement, a smattering of share-manipulation) are very familiar, it's nicely different from lots of the other games we play, definitely has its own niche, and plays in under an hour. It's essentially a game where you're playing the odds and betting on which boats will make it ashore and which will end up in the shipyard. It didn't quite catch fire for the four of us - though I can imagine it going down well with the GNN-ers.

We also played London, which is a favourite of Rachel and Henry's - it doesn't quite do it for me, and had a suspicion that it wouldn't be Charlotte's kind of game either, which turned out to be right. It's a game you really need to play a few times to get your head around and develop a strategy - there's simply no way a new player can hope to keep up, which can be dispiriting enough to put you off for good. I had played a couple of times with R & H before, and with Sam, enough to have a grasp of what to do, though that still put me in a distant third place. I can't quite put my finger on why it doesn't grab me; it's something to do with the complexity of the way city-size/boroughs/poverty/money formulae interact - it remains just a little too opaque for me to be enjoyable, though I can imagine getting into it as a 2 player over a few successive nights and finding it satisfying. I think it lacks the elusive 'fun' factor for me.

Another of our 2-player daytime staples was Hansa - a very stripped down Euro about trading in the Hanseatic League (not to be confused with recent GNN newbie Hansa Teutonica). In a way, it's similar to London in that the various components are symbiotically linked: money allows movement and buying of goods; goods allow placement of markets; markets allow conversion of goods into VPs, and get you more money. It's all wrapped up in a very pretty, refined package, and plays in about 20/30 mins. It can be played with four, but loses a lot of the strategy, I've heard.

Hansa by firelight.

As well as London, Henry had brought Ora et Labora with him, the latest big game by Uwe Rosenberg. Having bought it during last half-term, he and Rachel had not got round to playing it, despite a couple of attempts - on opening the box I could see why. If the number and variety of resources and playing boards weren't terrifying enough, the combined rulebooks, covering set-up, general rules, specifics and a multi-page glossary of buildings are positively fearsome. We decided not to attempt this with the women, at least not without a thorough playthrough between the two of us, and so we tackled it on a grey afternoon.
As it turns out, there was little to fear, and lots to enjoy. The rulebooks, if taken in the correct order, have you set up and playing within 20 minutes, and we found we could happily ignore at least half of them.
It is very much in the vein of Agricola, with players building up their monastery in either Ireland or France, felling forests, clearing peat bogs, brewing beer/making wine and gradually amassing victory points. It is apparently closer to Le Havre than Agricola, though graphically it definitely takes its cue from the earlier Rosenberg game. It took us a couple of hours to play, and at the end I was a little bit underwhelmed - it's very wide-open compared to Agricola, and consequently felt a bit flabby. In Agricola, you're operating at the bleeding-edge of subsistence, and every action counts. The world of O & L feels altogether more of a cornucopia, and whilst there are clearly strategic paths aplenty to amassing VPs in bulk, the fact that they are floating around from the very beginning and relatively easy to come by makes it feel less focussed. However, though we didn't manage to get it to the table again during the week, something about it has stayed with me; building your little cloister into a vast, all-encompassing monastery; brewing fine beer and distilling barrels of Irish Whisky, all wrapped-up in the cosy, inviting Agricola-esque hues. I want another go, and if any GNNers have their eye on a new game, I'll happily play it (not buying any more games, see?)

On wednesday evening, the four of us got to Lords of Vegas. I had my concerns, especially since the 'gambling' aspects of Manila had been a bit of a damp squib, and I couldn't remember quite how straightforward the mechanics of LoV were. As it turned out, it was a perfect fit - tense, exciting reversals-of-fortune, enthusiastic dice-rolling and a close finish with Rachel (I think) eeking a win against Henry. Henry particularly took to the risk-reward spirit of it, at one point betting $25 million on a single roll in Rachel's casino in a bid to scupper her plans. He lost.

Lords of Vegas: busy board, busy tablecloth.

We played again on thursday night, and it was even better, and closer, me edging in to first place on the final strip pay-out by virtue of my newly-acquired four tile casino. It was more coherent than when we played it at GNN, and I think we should give it another go. There are subtle strategies for staying in the game in the face of what seems like a runaway leader, which may have eluded us on the two outings we've given it.
On Friday night, we played Catan for old times sake, and R & H cleaned up, Rachel eventually squeaking the win from Henry, Charlotte and I languishing 3rd and fourth.

Ah, the familiar coastline of Catan. With an off-shore stockpile of cities.

Back on the two-player front, Henry and I had dabbled in a bit of Commands and Colours: Ancients, which felt a wee bit fiddly compared with the ultra-streamlined Manoeuvre, though with a more epic, majestic sweep, and probably a bit more depth. We'd also played a few games of Igloo Pop with the older daughters, and they played a few games of Alhambra and Mr Jack amongst themselves. We also played 6 player Shadow Hunters, though that was a bit unsatisfying - four of the six players won . . .

And in amongst it all, Henry and I found time to take on not one, not two, but three games of Twilight Struggle. We got to it a couple of days in to the holiday; Henry had hankering for a game since their last visit to us in September 2011, when I had just received it in a Maths Trade (we took one look at the rules back then and put it away). Since then I've only played it twice, so we were both eager to explore its intricacies.

In actual fact, we found it to be nowhere near as daunting as its reputation might suggest, especially since, on advice gleaned from Ryan Sturm's most recent How to Play, we all but ignored realignment rolls, further streamlining the learning curve. It is an awesome game, and we found that the game lasted longer, getting to later rounds without an outright winner, the more familiar we got with the cards and strategies. That said, Russia won all three games, though Henry, determined to break the Soviet stranglehold, put up a valiant fight in the last game (and enjoyed getting to prod me in the chest as he played the Kitchen Debates). And it's not stupidly long - all three of our games lasted between two and a half and three hours; though none lasted beyond turn six - an epic struggle that went the full ten rounds could last four, even five hours. In that sense it bucks the general trend, in that the better both players know the game, the longer it will take.

All in all an awesome week of gaming, perfectly intertwined with a very lovely week away, thanks to Henry and Rachel and their delightful girls. Roll on the new season of GNN, my loins are girded!
JB

Do You Want To Play a Game?

Having missed out on the last THREE get-togethers, I thought I'd post up what little gaming I've managed to get done outside the GNN fold. Since last monday's impromptu game of Alhambra at mine, I've only managed to play one game. One third of a game, truth be told. But it was Twilight Struggle.

I had my mate Pascal staying on sunday and monday nights. He plays a lot of chess, and as a result is fairly skeptical about my obsession with 'modern games'. That is to say, he totally gets the obsession bit; the cardboard sniffing, the rules ingesting, the meeple fondling — him having had a long-standing thing about new pens — but he still needs convincing that they're actually worth playing.

I've slowly begun to win him over. Earlier in the year, he and his girlfriend Helen stayed and we introduced them to Settlers. I say 'we'; you all know about Charlotte's galeforce indifference to gaming — but she does like a bit of Settlers, and a bit of Alhambra too, in a casual, after-dinner sort of way. She draws the line at Stone Age.

Settlers went down well, as I thought it would. And more recently, Pascal and I have managed a game of Dominion, which he grasped quickly and enjoyed. A couple of traditional gateway games; one a tried and true classic, the other a very clever mechanic, together designed to illicit that face they do on cornflake adverts after taking the first mouthful — the pleasantly surprised 'I had no idea boardgames could be this much fun — I'm going to have to re-design my entire life so that it revolves around them' kind of face.

So this visit, I cast about for the obvious 'next step'. Alhambra? Stone Age? A five-hour card-driven chit-based war game about the Cold War?

Pasc doesn't need patronising — if he's going to get in to something, he wants to get as much of what it has to offer from the word go, really. Added to which, we have a shared love of espionage thrillers, steely movies like Le Samurai, The Ipcress Files, and much more recently Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; films that don't hide behind special-effects and chrome, but evoke a cool, dark world of international intrigue.

That all said, I hadn't played Twilight Struggle, which was, of course, the main reason behind my deciding it was the one we needed to play this time. And I wanted to show him that games could be grown-up; that they're not all trolls and zombies, or resource-management. Or zombie management.

Sunday night, I mentioned it, and showed him the box. On monday during the day, he brought the subject up a couple of times, but it wasn't until about 9.30 on monday evening, after sausages, cider and red wine, that we actually got the board out. 'Right, just tell me which are the snakes and which are the ladders', he wisecracked.

Despite being someone who actively dislikes learning rules, he absorbed them patiently, and by 10pm we were embarking on the first round. By midnight, we were finishing the second round, and I suggested we might pack it in. It had been a hugely steep learning curve, and while I was sure I'd want to try again sometime, I was suffering the effects of a vastly heavy cognitive load. And the Drambuie was out, too.

But Pasc, quite rightly really, wanted to push on — we'd only just got to grips with the rules, after all.

In the end we got to the end of round four, the first of the mid-war rounds. And his instinct to keep going was spot on, because the game really did click. Those last two rounds were much more aggressive, vying for influence in all seven regions of the board, and hatching longer term plans. I can see how deep it could get, once you know the cards, and the likelihood of scoring rounds in each stage of the game - pushing operations in South America to force your opponent to take his eye off the ball in the Middle East(to anyone who knows the game I'm going to sound like a total noob, I appreciate).

I think Pasc enjoyed it — I know he enjoyed having a tour of the upper-echelons of the hobby.

It would take a long, rainy sunday in the black mountains to really make the most of a game like Twilight Struggle. But for someone who confessed earlier in the evening to having fond memories of Cluedo, he certainly stepped up to the plate. And I have him to thank for finally getting TS to the table.

Oh and he won. As Russia. Well he didn't really win, because we only played four rounds, right?

And I was reading the rules for both of us. And it was beginners luck. Look let's just say he was in the lead when we abandoned the game.

JB