Gameathon

Thursday night saw my (Chris) old board gaming world in Bracknell and beyond meet my new one in Chippenham. A long over due visit from Paul coincided with my semi regular Thursday games session here in my relocated home. Paul was here early this time so an afternoon of games beaconed after we got the perfunctory nuisance of lunch out of the way.

First up saw Jacquie join us in a couple of games of Heck Meck. This recent purchase of mine has seen a lot of activity in the household since I tentatively asked my understanding wife to indulge me in a game. Subsequently, it seems, I now never win a game and that vein continued for the two matches we managed before she had to rush off and collect the kids.

Jacquie 11
Paul 7
Chris 0

Jacquie 12
Chris 7
Paul 6

With the kitchen table to ourselves I then convinced Paul to take me on at 5 Tribes. Sam off loaded this to me a little while ago but I hadn't got to play it yet. As documented before in these fair pages its a simple enough game to learn but quite a brain burner to play. I didn't think too much about my strategy and picked up what ever looked good whereas Paul collected goods cards. Toward the end of the game I was nervously eying his colossal stack knowing how much they could score. Unfortunately due to a misunderstanding of how the multipliers worked he had collected a fair few of the same card and thus negated his advantage.

Chris 245
Paul 169

Then Paul was whisked away for Lego duties with the kids whilst dinner was being prepared and even though the general melee of kids bedtime then ensued we still manufactured enough time to play Nations the Dice Game. Again, possibly, a new title to Paul but this didn't hold him back squeezing in a very neat final round by scoring heavily on famine and war where I narrowly missed out.

Paul 27
Chris 23

Shortly after this was packed away my gaming buddies from Chippenham (Paul H and Stuart) arrived for an evening of laying cards, pushing cubes, making bids and pretending to be a medieval sheriff. After some introductions and quick laugh about there being two Pauls, we got down to it.

The general consensus was many quicker games rather than one big one. A kinda schedule was drawn up with Pairs getting its first airing for the collective. I'm not sure if the rules we play are actually the right ones but it doesn't seem to matter because the objective is met. A quick, light, fun jaunt to get the gaming muscles warmed up. In this bout Paul H calculated his winning position very well by sticking when he was assured of enough points.

Paul H 21
Stuart 16
Chris 16
Paul J 15

Next to the table was King of Tokyo. The remarkable part of Paul H's win in this game was the lack  of visits to Tokyo he made. This many have been instigated by the 5 damage whacking he got from me in his first foray to the bright lighted city. However, three strong rounds in a row which saw him collect 13 points was enough to see him slip in to first place with Paul J narrowly missing out on his turn.

Paul H 20
Paul J 19
Chris 12
Stuart 10

The bits had barely been stuffed back in to their box when 7 Wonders was being decanted and arranged. The first game of the night where nobody needed a rules refresher. Well nearly. This game still causes a memory black spot for Paul J even though he's been playing it on and off for 6 years!

Didn't prove to be much of a hinderance though as he squeaked past me and wrapped up first place. The game was notable for the lack of any cloth which I discovered late into the second era. This threw the proverbial spanner into the machinery of my careful devised plans and meant I couldn't build my last wonder. Shame.

Paul J 46
Chris 45
Paul H 42
Stuart 33

See...No cloth.

Then it was Kingdom Builders turn to be hastily arranged on the table. Stuart absorbed the quick rules explanation like a boss and was playing within 5 minutes. It was here that I managed to catch a bit of luck. My long and winding civilisation finally meeting up to make one large settlement area to take advantage of the citizen scoring card and score big

Chris 62
Paul H 50
Stuart 40
Paul J 37

By now the beers had been sampled to an appropriate level to bring out Sheriff of Nottingham. Nobody really stood out as a particularly good liar but with Paul J, the eventual winner, it was possible that his nursing of a single bottle of ale may have aided his decision making processes. Who knows?

Paul J 205
Stuart 153
Chris 138
Paul H 105

With the late hour approaching there was just enough time for a 13 point game of Push It. Paul J's 'technique' of blasting the pucks to the four corners of the table may need some work as his final score of minus 3 bares testament to a bit of jack abuse.

Chris 13
Paul H
Stuart 7
Paul J -3

And at that we called it a night. I'm not sure we could have squeezed any more games into the evening. What a corker.

The Moth at the Window

Saturday! With Sally away on an extended trip to London, I sent out the word to gamers that the table would be free. Flying the flag for GNN were the trusty extra-curricular stalwarts Andrew, Ian and Chris.

With Chris yet to arrive, and both boys theoretically involved, we began with Stanley's choice of Sheriff of Nottingham. This game is all about bluffing, double-bluffing and triple-bluffing. Everyone takes a turn being the Sheriff and everyone else hands him a bag of goods they want to bring within the city walls: they can tell the truth or fib, and it's the Sheriff's job to work out what they're up to. Stanley proved to be rather adept at the casual smuggle of contraband, Andrew found himself serialising paying punishment payments, but Ian sailed rather serenely to a commanding win:

Ian 177
Stanley 129
Sam 123
Andrew 64

Joe hadn't been very interested in the comings and goings of Nottingham trade, and had tried a variety of distraction techniques before finally retiring, post Sheriff, to bed. With Chris now here he, Ian and Andrew bashed out a game of Love Letter whilst I read stories upstairs. I'm not sure what happened, but having completed the game we tried Chris' new purchase of Nations: The Dice Game.

This is a dice-management game with custom dice where you can go a variety of ways in terms of strategy. I couldn't remember what it reminded me of until just now, when I recalled Tiny Epic Galaxies. Except although I think TEG is an ok game I preferred Nations. Not a classic maybe, but a solid game we can bash out in under an hour that balances tactics and luck quite nicely.

Sam 29
Ian 23
Chris 21
Andrew 20

Next up was Istanbul. This game needs no introduction, especially to us as we've played it before. It looked like Ian was leading the charge but, in contrast to my experiences with Tales of the Arabian Nights, my repeat visits to the Great Mosque brought reward:

Sam 5 gems
Ian 4 most cash
Andrew 4 next most cash
Chris 4 least cash

At this point I also managed to win Pretense, the game with the largest gap between sounds-shit and is-actually-fun. I doubt the game has a huge amount of replayability, but the concept is that whilst playing other games, everyone is also trying to fulfil their games-related moments on their hidden cards - if you do so, flip the card over. First to flip all their cards wins.*

*The official rules are slightly more convoluted but I like the simplicity of our house version

At some point during Istanbul the blog title surfaced with Andrew excusing a fart with the comment "It's just a moth at the window". This sent me into hysterics, that kept returning throughout the remainder of the evening whenever I remembered it.

With everyone now willing we began playing one of the old classics: Tsuro. This path-making game is so simple it's almost not a game. Except it is a game, and I won it:

Sam
Andrew
Ian
Chris

At this point I was wondering why I can't bring this type of form to Tuesdays, but hubris was waiting just around the corner in the form of Bandu: I managed to accrue five coins and had plenty of passes in the bank, but like Joe (Berger) and myself before me, I couldn't resist the urge to build, and my construction didn't have the foundations to withstand my ambition and optimism. While Ian built a kind of dainty Barbican, Chris held on for the win with what Andrew dismissed as a low-rise block of flats:

Sam and Chris AE

My impossible structure and Ian in the distance AE

I managed to put an egg cup above an egg! What larks! AE

Chris
Andrew
Ian
Sam

With the evening closing out we just had time to play Push It. Andrew and I established a big lead but Ian came back into it, the Chris threatened to, before fate smiled on me with some deflections and I grabbed a fortuitous win:

Sam's winning move

Sam 7
Ian 6
Andrew 5
Chris 3

With 11 o'clock looming we called it a night. Lots of fun, thanks chaps.

Cheese!

The Jewel in the Piles

On Thursday Ian and I (Sam) got together to bash out a few games; the main event being Quantum. We set up the board with the Void tacked on to one side and set at it.

The narrative in Quantum is pretty well established; race to place as many cubes as you can before the fighting starts. We were neck and neck for a while and then came to a kind of Mexican stand-off: Ian was Dangerous, which meant he could choose to blow both himself and his attacker up when attacked. He also had the ability to construct Quantum cubes from non-orbital positions, so I had a fight on my hands. But having got my dominance up to five with only one cube to place, I found Ian's dangerousness to the fore: I kept attacking as he kept threatening to place a cube; he kept blowing us both up. Something had to give: Ian took a calculated risk on a fight and it worked out in my favour:

Sam: all cubes down
Ian: one cube left

After that we bashed our way through Ra (Ian surged into a healthy lead but his luck gave out in the third age, giving me a 28-26 win) Biblios (I'm Mr Biblios) Love Letter (Ian always wins Love Letter) and Iglu Pop. I can't remember who won that one now.

THEN: Friday Andrew arrived and while Chris made his way down the M4 we played a couple of games of Push It; which is basically tabletop boule: you flick rather than throw. Andrew proved master at it:

Andrew 11
Sam 10

then

Andrew 11
Sam 4

With Chris now safely ensconced at the table we set up a recent addition to the cupboard: Queen's Necklace. The theme of the game is that you're jewellers crafting trinkets for the court. The mechanics are intriguing: each turn you have ten money to spend on a tableau of cards (emeralds, rubies, diamonds and amber) and as cards are passed over they become cheaper. Three times in the game the Merchant pops up and there's a sale (or scoring round). Players choose which gems to sell to the court, but: you only sell a gem successfully if you have a majority in it, and values can vary wildly due to both the fashions of the court and the rarity of the gems themselves.

Worthless rubies!

Mixed in with the gems are some character cards too; these are bought in the same manner and do a variety of things, like make stuff cheaper, give selling bonuses or steal cards from each other et cetera. I liked the game as a whole, but my phobia of text on cards meant I felt there was maybe too many of these. Unless you play the game really frequently it leads to constant rule-referencing.

Overall though much fun, and a complete pasting for myself and Andrew from Chris:

Chris 19
Andrew 13
Sam 9

We moved swiftly on to a three-player Push-It. More fun than a two-player and notable this time for Andrew getting both his discs closest to the jack and picking up a valuable two points. It couldn't have ended tighter:

Andrew 11
Chris 10
Sam 10

So far I was serially last, but that was about to change with a brutal game of Hamsterolle, played - I can't remember how this started - in the style of mafiosi at a poker night. I do love the idea of gangsters game of choice being a wooden hamster wheel with bits in.

Sam - all out
Chris - 3 pieces left
Andrew - 3 pieces left

We followed quick game of Sheriff of Nottingham; the game of bluff, double-bluff and triple-bluff. Everyone takes turns being the sheriff, and the others try and sneak contraband past him - or give the impression they are, when they actually aren't. If he opens your pouch and you're telling the truth, he pays the penalty. If you were fibbing, you do.

Thanks to my mostly-honest play and circumspect sheriffing, I pipped Andrew to the post. Chris had loads of apples, but it wasn't enough:

Sam 154
Andrew 147
Chris 101

With all of us now merry with weekend joie de vivre, we forsook Celestia in favour of Bandu, the game of No Thanks with added Jenga. As ever, the seemingly-a-filler turned into a tense game of screw-you, as we passed each other geometrically-damning pieces and flied in the face of cantilevering. Chris seemed to be in a strong position, but just as Martin was hit by subsidence on Tuesday, everything suddenly gave way as Chris tried to add a piece on top. I managed to outlast Andrew to nab the win.

My city in the sky

Andrew's lair in the suburbs

Finally with midnight not so far away, we played Biblios! I was handed a strategy by fate when I picked up blues and browns early, and attempted to add reds but decided against this when Chris changed from picking them up to passing in the auction phase. Handily, I knew the very last card of the game would be a church card, and I had enough gold to nab it for my two dice:

Sam 7 (Mr Biblios)
Andrew 5 (wins on tie-breaker)
Chris 5

And with that a very jolly Friday came to a close. Cheers guys! Maybe see some of you on January 2nd at my place for Saturday gaming?

*

By the way today is Stanley's birthday. Chris gave us the best possible present by cleaning up Finn's sick while we were opening gifts upstairs. Thanks mate.

The Sheriff of Not-my-hand

With seven days of gaming in the past three weeks, I admit I was feeling a little gamed out . But curiosity about Chris’ new house persuaded me to indulge in an eighth as he offered to host a rip-roaring late-nighter with the old London crew. While Paul made his own way there, Sam and I drove up, and once again we found ourselves on a dark, rainy motorway, looking for games.

After a brief tour of Chris’ new home the four of us sat down for some games. We began with Pairs. With only a few players, choosing to stick is more tactical since there are fewer points to win per round. Sam kept us amused with his exciting descriptions of our demise (”Crushed by blueberries!” “Graped out!”) and Chris cursed himself by saying how exciting it was just before dealing himself a pair and crashing out of the round. I missed my chance to win, since I felt I needed to stay in as long as Paul did but I went bust. Paul romped home.

First game, and one bag of crisps already demolished

Paul 23
Andrew 20
Sam 17
Chris 10

Then we chose Sheriff of Nottingham, a game of bluff and a little bit of set collecting. Each player takes it in turn to be the sheriff, and the other players put cards depicting goods that they want to take to market in a pouch and hand it over to the sheriff. They then tell the sheriff what’s inside (“three apples” or “two chickens”) but you don’t have to tell the truth. The only thing you must be honest about is the number of cards.

I forgot to take a picture of the game itself,

but here's the player mat.

This means you can hopefully slip by some contraband in the shape of crossbows or silk or (gasp) rye bread. The sheriff can chose to either look inside your pouch or let you past unchecked. If the sheriff catches you with them, then they are confiscated. If the sheriff opens your pouch but you were telling the truth, they have to pay a penalty. Finally, a player can bribe the sheriff to leave their pouch unopened or to open someone else's.

Chris had played before, but it was new to the rest of us. It was fun, even if I was never sure if I was paying the right amount to bribe. I enjoyed accusing people of being bare-faced liars. Sam went for mostly contraband, which gets lots of points per card, but no bonus points at the end for most of a particular good. Chris had bonus points coming out of his ears and won comfortably.

Chris 167
Andrew 130
Paul 125
Sam 115

Next up was Quantum. This was our sort of Eclipse substitute, since it was far too late to start that. I took an early lead, while Paul went big on research, getting a card that boosted his research and then going for cards in a big way. At one point he picked up a card “Scrappy” to which Sam asked “What’s ‘Scrappy’ do?” How we laughed at Sam’s inadvertent reference to children’s TV.

Brilliant, cruel and intelligent. That's Paul.

Sam took the lead mid-game, and stayed there, with Paul missing a chance to screw Sam with a Relocation card. Oh well. It was a new game to him. Chris was distracted by having to clean up bits of worms and grubs that his cats kept bringing in.

Sam closed the game swiftly, boosting his dominance by sacrificing his research and he got his last cube down long before any of us had a chance to challenge him.

Sam 0 cubes left
Andrew 2
Paul 2
Chris 3

There then followed a few rousing rounds of Kakerlaken Poker. More bluffing and lying as we try to pass off insect to each other, and the first to three of the same loses. Paul was told the rules and lost so quickly that we called the first game a test run. Then Sam went out early in the next round, trying to get rid of a scorpion from his hand when he already had two showing in front of him. The rest of us had two cards.

Then there was a slightly longer round, that ended with me going out on stinkbugs thanks to Chris. Paul and Sam had three cards showing (so they sort of won) and Chris had four.

Then we played 6nimmt. Oh, 6nimmt, will you ever be kind to us? As everyone dashed to get rid of their highest cards, so the rows quickly filled up. Cue groans of pessimism all round. And after all that, Sam and I rejoiced in our joint victory.

Andrew 39
Sam 39
Chris 50
Paul 79

After that Sam went to the toilet and came back with a big smile and a copy of Perudo. Chris’ new house really is a marvel. And so am I at Perudo, it seems.

In the first game, Sam went out playing a round without looking at his die. He explained that he had had four beers by now. Apart from that, highlight of game one was went Chris and I faced off with two dice each. He said “one three” I said “one four”. He then said “one five” and I said “one six.” At that point we both realised what dice we had: 3 and 5 for Chris and 4 and 6 for me. I won that round.

1. Andrew
2. Chris
3. Sam
4. Paul

Then we had one more go for old times’ sake. This time it was me and Sam as last men standing, with four dice each, but I then went on to win the next four rounds to end the game quickly.

1. Andrew
2. Sam
3. Paul
4. Chris

And then to bed.