Beginner’s Luck vs. Explainer’s Curse

This week, Joe was the host and we began as a tentative six: five present and one expected imminently. Joe and friend of the family Dan, Sam, Martin and me, with Adam sure to arrive at any second. There was some idle chit-chat as if the presence of a newcomer was enough to put us off our natural inclinations to skip past the small talk and get down to the nitty-gritty.

With Adam surely about to appear at the door step, we decided that Team Play would be a good six player option to take us up to the time when Katy and then Ian were due to arrive. Dutifully, Joe talked Dan through the rules and he was almost finished when there was a knock at the door. It was Adam. And Katy. Too many players for Team Play and Joe put it away with a sigh.

Now we were seven. Katy was angling for a game of Lords Of Vegas, all they (Joe, Katy and Dan) had to do was wait for Ian to get here and they. Adam, Sam, Martin and I played Sol, the recent debutante. Martin looked through the rules as we set up (but he didn't seem keen on reading the short stories that go with it) and clarified a couple more rules.

In the game, Martin and I are both energy rich thanks to our very popular gates. Sam begins hurling his ships into the sun very early on, making him the man to beat. Was he banking on the sun collapsing quickly? He was to be disappointed as card after card was revealed without a red sign indicating the sun is becoming more unstable.

Adam finally got together enough cubes to complete his plan, but then the sun let out a solar flare and his stock of 13 energy cubes was suddenly depleted by half. How we laughed at his discomfort. Then we allowed him a do-over (since other players had been already given the same opportunity) in which he didn't take the optional bonus cube he was entitled to and therefore his 12 energy cubes were safe.

As the game progressed it looked like the sun wasn't going to collapse at all. I hurled four ships in one turn into the dying star and still it didn't end the game. The final red card was actually the final card in the deck. Luckily no one was in a position to catch me, although Adam was able to grab joint second with the last turn of the game.

Andrew 27
Adam 24
Martin 24
Sam 20

The other three played smaller shorter games. First was Kingdomino, a new game to Dan but one he seemed to take to rather well.

Dan 54
Joe 40
Katy 38

After this, they played the only Taiwanese game that Joe owns, apparently. namely, Castle Crush. Again it was new to Dan again, again, he came out victor. He modestly tried to pass off his second win in a row as beginner's luck while Joe tried to tell him about Explainer's Curse and how it is a real thing.

Dan 24
Katy 21
Joe 15

Ian arrived during Castle Crush and was informed swiftly that he would be playing Lords of Vegas as soon as they were done. Something he had no problem with.

The table was heaving with the joys of modern boardgaming and for a while, you could barely see the tabletop for cardboard.

After Sol, Adam, Martin, Sam and I got stuck into Senators the craze that's turning into a tradition. In this game of political bribery in Rome, Martin set off into an early lead while Adam and I fell back. But Adam and I both had a card that would let you steal points from the leading player. With this in mind, I cashed in as soon as I could and Sam and Adam joined me. Suddenly, Martin fell from first to joint last.

He tried to claw his way back but was beset by misfortune. In a blind bid for a senator, he bid seven talents and Sam bid eight, which is exactly how this game should be played. Then I got a stroke of luck in a round where each player has the option of buying a senator for a steadily decreasing value. I passed with the price at nine. Martin prevaricated over eight but then passed. Adam passed on seven and Sam passed on six. I didn't expect to get another chance and I snapped it up for five! Good job, too, because the fourth war came soon after.

Andrew 9
Sam 8
Martin 7
Adam 7

In Lords of Vegas, Dan's beginner's luck seemed to be holding. His first three plots where all in the same block. Katy was delighted, meanwhile, to have a casino on the strip at almost the very start of the game and then spent most of the game chanting "Strip! Strip! Strip!" whenever a new card was revealed.

But for us lot, Senators was followed up by the lighter fare of Spy Tricks. The four greatest minds of GNN clashed over this simple trick taker and deduction game and, seemingly, cancelled and each other out. In the first round, none of us got a single guess right. Astonishing.

In the second round, I guessed the right rank and Sam got the correct suit, but our attempts at finding the right card were hopeless. Any signs of improvement, though, were mere illusion as we bumbled through the last round with only me guessing something right: the suit. And that's how I managed to win a game of Spy Tricks with a score that would normally see you in distant last.

Zero correct

Andrew 7
Sam 2
Martin 0
Adam 0

Adam went home at this point and Lords of Vegas hadn't finished so we cracked out a couple of confused rounds of Sticheln (chosen after Martin checked the remaining cards in Lords of Vegas to get an idea of how much time they had left to play). Despite Martin scoring no points at all in round one, his second round stole the game.

Martin 16
Andrew 14
Sam 12

Lords of Vegas continued with Dan's six tile casino flipping to Ian in an unlikely re-organisation. It didn’t last and, if Ian’s claim to be “floundering” is anything to go by, it was the final bit of luck to go Ian’s way.

Bottom left, Ian has stolen Dan's casino

Katy, though, was in such a good position that she was able to leave the table between her turns and have a conversation with Joe’s wife. That’s confidence for you. And then, later on, she ran out of dice: a first for her. All of this added up to an impressive win, despite the Strip barely paying out at all.

Katy 54
Joe 40
Dan 26
Ian 23

Now we were seven again and, despite it creeping towards eleven o’clock, we had one more game inside us. Pairs. Joe described it to Dan as being like Blackjack in that we were aiming for 21 points. But then he had to admit that, apart from that, it was nothing like Blackjack at all.

I was Mr Cautious and, for once, it paid off. I was the only one to score in every round. Ian sneered at my and Katy’s timidness seconds before he went bust, and similarly Martin cursed himself by saying “I’ve got to go big,” before being dealt a pair.

Andrew 22
Ian 16
Sam 16
Katy 15
Joe 13
Dan 7
Martin 2

And so we were done.Thanks to Joe and a hat-tip to Dan. See you all next week.

Silent Witness

Well, almost silent. There was quite a lot of whispering.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Tonight we began as an eight piece band of gamers: Sam (the host), Joe and Stanley (his sons), Martin, Ian, Matt, Joe and me. We began with Bring Your Own Book, the fun game of appropriate sentence finding. The game suggests a topic (an email signature) and you have to find a witty example in your book (Ian had Fermat's Last Theorem and his email signature was pi to the thousandth digit). Martin had high hopes for his choice of book (Pests, Diseases and Disorders of Garden Plants), but somehow it never quite worked. Until, that is, it was passed to Ian at which point it became a hotbed of witty replies. Kudos to Matt for his Name For A Fantasy City. His choice of "Furthermore" was so good I can't believe it hasn't been used before.

Ian 3 points
Everyone else got one, I think.

Then Joe the younger went to bed and we split into two groups. Sam, Stanley, Joe and Martin played Witness in which you have to whisper clues to each other in a game that rewards memory and clear diction. I was too concerned with my game of Cosmic Run, so all I gleaned was sentences like "half a beetle" before they counted up their final score which was seven. Pretty good, according to Martin.

On Cosmic Run, the three of us were busy proving that a one in six chance was effectively impossible, as one hopeful roll after another ended in disappointment. I got lots of aliens and a fair view of those mining chits to take a comfortable win.

Andrew 49
Matt 36
Ian 33

While we were deep in Cosmic Run, Witness had ended, Stanley had gone upstairs, and the three of them had started on Menara. It's a tower building game where you have to obey the commands on cards that are split into piles of easy, medium and difficult. Their first attempt was over so quickly that they tried again. "Feels more positive already," said Sam at what I thought to be a very early stage, but he was right. They got to the fourth or fifth level when it collapsed. Joe said as they packed away, "it's one of those games where you either win or it's really disappointing."

Now we shuffled our places around the table and began fresh games in new groups. Joe, Martin and I played Mini Rails. This game was new to me, but Martin thought I'd played it before so I only got a rules refresher type introduction before we began. Although that was fine because there's not much to it in terms of rules. Quite a lot in terms of strategy, though, with Martin taking long enough on his turn for me to get up and sort out my drinks for the rest of the evening. At the end, Martin had to juggle some numbers as his final move would either help him and me or him and Joe. In the end he was annoyed that he'd miscalculated when it ended

Joe 11 (wins on tiebreaker)
Martin 11
Andrew 9

If he'd played it differently, he would have had fewer points but won, with me in second. He cursed his unMartinlike mathematical error for some minutes. Joe looked delighted.

Sam, Ian and Matt played The Quest For El Dorado, with it also ending on a tie breaker. Ian just pipped it, though. Matt ended up in a distant last with lots of money but no machetes.

Ian
Sam
Matt

By now, we had begun a game of Sticheln, the trick taking game that is anything but fast and furious. How we agonised over its counter intuitive strategy. As Martin so wisely noted, it is a game where "difficult things happen."

Martin 25
Joe 20
Andrew 13

On the other half of the table, they had knocked off a quick game of Gold Rush which Ian won. The general consensus was that it wasn't as good with just three.

Then they played the devilish but delightful Avene. During this game, after an evening of victories, Ian returned to form and uttered those immortal words "that's me fucked, then". The moment when he does so will, it seems, now be referred to as "Ian o'clock".

Sam 63
Ian 24
Matt 20

Then, after a brief cameo from The Table Is Lava, we all joined together for a game of Just One. In this game we all give one word clues to a word-guesser with the proviso that any duplicate clues are eliminated. We started well, and Martin got the first right despite Joe giving a clue to the wrong word. Before long we were in the zone, avoiding duplicate clues round after round. In the final round, I was the guesser. We were on the cusp of getting "awesome" on the score track, but two clues were eliminated and I had Dre, Drake and Grandmaster to guess from. It was 50-50 and I chose Hip-hop as the word. But it was Rap and that mistake meant our score dropped from "Awesome" to a clearly sarcastic "Wow. Not bad."

And then we were done. Thanks all for another evening of sparkling entertainment. I hope to meet you all the next time the clock strikes Ian o'clock.

Bitte, Lemon

This Tuesday was a mild November evening, and Anja and Steve hosted for the first time in a while. Ten gamers were present in total: the two hosts and Chris, Ian, Matt, Martin, Katy, Joe, Adam (making a welcome reappearance) and me.

We split into three groups. On the coffee table sat myself, Anja and Martin, ready to be introduced to Pax Pamir, an exciting recreation of the political upheaval in Afghanistan in the nineteenth century. On one half of the dining table, Ian, Joe, Katy and Matt were introduced to The Last Spike – something to do with railroads. At the far end of the table Chris was delighted to discover that Steve owned a game of Keyflower, and explained the rules to Adam and Steve. Soon the room was humming to the sound of three simultaneous rules explanations.

The first game to finish was The Last Spike: the shortest and simplest of the new games. In fact Joe said he’d been hoping to finish before Pax Pamir had even begun.

Ian 150
Katy 125
Joe 99
Matt 93

On our table, Martin explained the rules to us. The game is set during the time when British, Russian and Afghan forces were battling for control of Afghanistan and aim of the game is to be the one who is most loyal to the strongest army when a Topple card is played.

We were going along quite nicely, Anja and Martin practised their counter-espionage skills on me, and I assassinated one of Martin’s cards to try and gain favour with the Afghan forces. But then, just as Martin was cursing my move for ruining his chances of a win, he realised he could do it anyway. And so he did. After only about maybe forty minutes of play, our epic came to an abrupt halt. It was over so quickly, that I forgot to take a photo of it.

Anja said it was a bit of an anti-climax and Martin later admitted he wished he hadn’t won the game. At least, not so soon. There’s only winners and losers in Afghanistan so, although I was also loyal to the winning Afghan forces, while Anja was cosying up to the invading Russians and British, I can’t claim second place. Joint second, though.

1. Martin
2= Andrew
2= Anja

When we’d finished, Joe, Matt, Katy and Ian were having a rip-roaring game of Can’t Stop. In this game, you roll die and move meeples along a track until (a) you decide to stop or (b) you can’t move and you go back to where you started. Get your meeple to the end of the track and it’s yours to keep. The winner is one who has claimed most tracks. Something like that, anyway.

Joe 3
Ian 2
Katy 1
Matt 0

At the far end of the table, Chris, Adam and Steve were deep in thought over Keyflower. We on the coffee table, though, began another game. This time: Sticheln, the trick taking card game that changes every time you try to pronounce it. It’s like trumps, except that not following suit turns your card into a trump card. And there are ‘0’ value cards, which never win and, most importantly, each player nominates a suit whose cards count as negative points when scoring.

Anja had trouble with the rule about not having to follow suit since it’s so different from the norm. Martin was doing okay, but misjudged the very last hand of the last round. He still had a red seven which would be minus seven points if he won it. He was confident that he wouldn’t since I was going first, so imagine his annoyance when Anja changed the trump suit to red. He got stung as he won the trick with his suddenly very strong trump card.

Andrew 28
Martin 21
Anja 16

By now, Can’t Sop was over, Sticheln was done and finally the scores for Keyflower were being totted up. Adam was absent by now, having left in the final stages (having left instructions with Katy as to what to do) because of family business.

Steve 48
Adam 42
Chris 34

Finally we ended with Pairs, as you probably guessed from the blog title. Nine of us, clustered around a table, getting all excited about the prospect of blueberries.

Matt started badly, being killed of by two peaches, and his luck didn’t improve. Anja, too, faced down Lady Luck and came off the worse for it.

Chris could’ve won, but didn’t realise we were playing until 21 points (the last game he played lasted until 33). Joe, in a moment of melancholy reflection, asked that when we’re all playing Pairs in an old folk’s home that, if he should die before us, that we deal him in anyway and decide amongst ourselves whether Joe would stick or twist. That’s one way to gain immortality, I suppose.

On a lighter note, a mention of the catchphrase “That’s Numberwang!” gained approval, but for some reason gained an increasingly German accent, ending up as “Das ist nummerwang!” while people who could speak the language gave our their scores in German.

In the final round, Martin and I were first and second. Just before Martin was dealt a card, the deck needed replenshing, so Martin shuffled and handed the cards to me, the dealer. I didn’t want Martin’s shuffling to decide his fate so I cut the deck and dealt him the next card.

He was out.

Such drama! And I won, with Joe making a late charge into second.

Andrew 26
Joe 22
Martin 17
Steve 17
Chris 16
Katy 15
Ian 12
Anja 0
Matt 0

On the Division I'm first on points ratio for perhaps the first time ever. Well, that's me done for the season. See you in January!

Clueless Whisper

With Andrew, Matt and Katy late withdrawals, and Joe also absent, a mere four of us - Ian, Andy, Martin and myself (Sam) converged on Hannah and Adam's house for our now seven-year tradition. I think it's seven years for GNN anyway; I seem to recall pre-blog we were playing at Lower Cheltenham Place fortnightly, alternating with poker nights...?

Anyway with Martin and Sarah expecting and Joe's eldest now babysitting for myself and Sally it seems a time to reflect. Or maybe that's the Castles of Burgundy talking... more of that in a moment.

lateral

We began with a little light Codenames. I say it's light, but of course if you're the spymaster it's anything but. Apparently I kept talking Ian out of choosing Martin's words, but he was a model of poker-faced-blankness throughout, and probably gave the best clue of the night in "chopsticks" for Beijing and piano (I still contest the idea that 'Singapore' is a great clue for Beijing though). Either way, we sailed reasonably serenely to victory as spymaster Andy - a model of poker-faced-indifference - couldn't quite keep pace:

Martin, Ian and Sam: best spies
Andy, Hannah and Adam: second-best spies

Adam and Hannah fancied a turn at being spymasters so we changed teams slightly. Adam, Martin and Ian got off to a strong start and surged to a healthy lead. We needed to correctly identify our last two cards in one shot to nab the win - and we did it!

Hannah, Andy and Sam: best spies
Adam, Ian and Martin: second best spies

We'd expended an hour on Codenames so we briskly moved on to the meat of the evening. On a whim I'd brought Castles of Burgundy along and to my surprise both Andy and Adam jumped at the chance to play it. The others plumped for Ra, and when I looked over after ten or so minutes I thought they must have ploughed through the first epoch as they had so many tiles, but apparently it was just Ra - who was reluctant to show himself. I lost track of what they were doing eventually, but Martin took a convincing victory:

Martin 56
Hannah 42
Ian 35

A whole load of disaster

By the time they'd ended we had probably just reached the second round of Castles. It took a while to set up and then Adam needed a refresher, during which time I discovered I'd been playing a rule wrong. I'm going to take all my wrong rules and post them as variants on BGG.

For Adam it had been a while, whereas Andy had been playing regularly on his phone. His strategy was to ignore boats entirely, whilst I spent the early game picking them up to ensure I'd complete them first and would always be first player - with first dibs on everything. I also tried to fill as many small areas as I could for the bonuses. Halfway through the game I was a good 25 points clear of the others, but they both surged back to leave me in third.

France

Andy continued to surge throughout the rest of the game, and Adam at one point completed some massive building area and scored about 40 points for one tile. In the end my end-game bonuses saved me from ignominy, as Andy took a very convincing victory:

Andy 238
Sam 211
Adam 201

It was two hours since we'd started playing and even Martin had got bored of pointing out how long we were taking. It's true to say they played a few more games than we did - Sticheln finished as an utter trouncing for Martin:

Martin 35
Hannah 0
Ian -2

colour me pointless

But Hannah got her revenge in Love Letter:

Hannah: 3 cubes
Martin/Ian: 1 cube each

With 11o'clock looming there was just time for Pairs, much loved (by myself and Martin) and loathed (by Andy and Adam). I think Ian did like it, but might not after tonight. His capacity for going bust brought to mind his early days with 6Nimmt, although with Pairs it really is the luck of the draw. Martin kept finishing second, so much so that after four rounds he was poised to win on 20 points. I was on 19points and needed to finish ahead of him... with my cards showing 15 and Martin's 14 I could have stuck and hoped he went bust, but where was the fun in that?

I went bust.

Martin 24
Sam 19
Andy 15
Adam 9
Hannah 9
Ian 9

A great night for Martin on the leaderboard, with one Tuesday to go before the end of the season!

The very definition of “Railroaded”

There will be no GNN this Tuesday, but three lucky tearaways managed to squeeze in one more evening of games before the month ends. It was me, Sam and Martin at Sam’s house. I arrived a little late, since I’d been held up on Gloucester Road because I had to nip into a pub to use their toilet, and was appalled at having to queue. What have men become? You get in, you get out, you don’t wash your hands and you certainly don’t chat. Those are the rules.

Anyway, when I got to Sam’s, he and Martin were just finishing off a game of The Little Prince (Martin won, by a narrow margin). We discussed what to play. Martin had brought Palaces of Carrara, hoping to teach it to Sam, but I suggested Railways of the World. I was keen to see Martin’s high-bond strategy in action.

Turns out it was a highly effective. He happily took out more bonds to pay off his early debts, having not shipped anything for the first round or two and I thought "this can't possibly work." But soon I found myself following Martin down the high-bond route, not to emulate his tactics, but because I’d painted myself into a corner around Mexico City and couldn’t get out. Sam kept his bonds low.

Before long, Martin’s bond strategy pushed him into the lead and into profit. He got a delivery bonus and a three-link bonus all in one go, and shortly afterwards, he got the bonus four deliveries of four different colours.

Early in the game, but Martin already

has the upper hand.

If that weren’t enough, at one point Sam considered building a route which would’ve damaged Martin’s otherwise unstoppable march forward. He even laid the tiles on the board to see how they looked. Then he reconsidered, built somewhere else and Martin build there as soon as he could.

After that, it was just a case of Martin finishing the game as quickly as he could. And I, stuck in third, kind of hoped he would. Sam urbanised to try and squeeze out one more round from the game, but it was futile. At the end I felt like I’d asked to see Martin’s strategy in the same way a boxing enthusiast might ask Mike Tyson to punch him in the face. Sure, it was an education, but I kind of regretted it afterwards.

Martin 78
Sam 57
Andrew 32

After this it was still early. We suggested Biblios because Sam was still smarting after his recent third place and I was just keen to play a game where I felt like I had a chance until the closing stages. Martin said he loved the game, and even reminded us of the values of the cards in the pack and then told us Bibliards (my new name for people who play Biblios) that the auction pack needs to be shuffled. We checked the rules: it does! To be honest, I prefer our way, since not shuffling removes a bit of randomness and adds an element of memorising to the game. Not that we ever do remember what cards we put down, but it’s nice to know the option is there.

We taught Martin the rule of Extreme Biblios: say “Eat Shit” whenever a “one gold” card is offered to an opponent. He seemed to get the hang of it. Sam, though, is not distracted by new rules about shuffling. At the final scoring, he swooped in on the last two dice to take the win from Martin.

Sam 8
Martin 5
Andrew 2

Finally we went for Sticheln to finish off the evening. After three beers and a whiskey, I couldn’t remember any strategy and for a brief moment, I though we were playing Pala, the game of colour-mixing trick-taking. We played three rounds, and in two of those rounds, two people chose the same “pain” colour. Martin said it made a real difference to his strategy. I just nodded.

Sam 32
Martin 30
Andrew 10

Martin remains atop the form table, with Sam heading upwards with real intent.

						Points
Martin	2	2	1	2	2	9
Gonz	1	2	6	1	2	12
Sam	1	1	2	5	4	13
Steve	1	3	3	1	5	13
Adam	3	1	2	4	3	13
Joe	6	1	5	1	2	15
Andrew	3	3	3	4	3	16
Anja	3	2	4	5	5	19
Hannah	5	2	3	5	5	20
Will	3	2	5	5	5	20
Matt	5	5	5	5	5	25

As for the Division (since it is still, technically, the end of January, I thought I could squeeze in an update) Martin steals top spot in terms of Points, but loses Medal Table to Sam. James leaps up four places after his recent two-win evening.

Duff and Chuff

This week, seven gamers gathered together under rainy skies to forget about the struggles of life in favour of some entirely self-inflicted struggles of our own.

Adam and Hannah hosted, with Sam, me, Gonz, Martin and Joe in attendance. At first, while Adam and Hannah ate their supper, Sam and Martin began with a quick game of The Hive.

At first, Martin corrected Sam on a rule: that when placing a piece, it must be next to one of your own tiles. Some minutes later, another look at the rules clarified this: you cannot place a piece that touches an opponents piece. They started again. Then they saw the rule that you cannot move a piece until your fourth piece has been placed. The game was abandoned in despair. Still, it’s almost as if Sam has a new game! I wonder what it’s like.

We split into two groups. I had texted Joe earlier to ask him to bring Hab & Gut, and when it was suggested, I was pleased to see it get a favourable reaction. Adam, Gonz and Martin chose Kingdom Builder, and set off into the other room, while the rest of us got ready for a little Hab & Gut.

Hannah had never played before, so Joe explained the rules. We wheeled and dealed in the six commodities which, at the end of the first round of fluctuating prices, were almost in a line across the board just a few spaces further on from where they’d started.

Into the second round, and people started getting cagey about when to donate to the church. Whenever someone decided to donate, the other players would tut annoyed at having to play our dues. In the final count, Hannah donated the most, and I donated the third largest amount, allowing me to avoid the wrath of the church.

Andrew £625
Sam £550
Hannah £420
Joe OUT!

In the next room, they’d played one game of Kingdom Builder and had started on another game.

So we filled in the time with a round of Biblios. Much like Hab & Gut, a glut of church cards sent several dice values soaring, and while I did my best to bring them back down again, I wasn’t at all confident of my chances, having only really enough to secure the red dice with its lowly “2”.

As we totted up the scores, we saw how well Joe had played the game: he’d kept pushing up the value of the orange die so that no one else went for it. He picked it up with a score of just three. On the other hand, he did mistime his spending, which meant he was able to bid 13 gold on the last useless card. I got a stroke of luck when I picked up greens to go with my reds, giving me a winning score.

Andrew 5
Hannah 4 (wins on browns)
Sam 4 (wins on blues)
Joe 4

The Kingdom Builder people were strangely coy about sharing the results but the positions were:

Game one: Gonz, Adam, Martin
Game two: Martin, Gonz, Adam.

I think that’s right. I'm still waiting to get the results.

By now we were all together again, and Joe suggested a seven-player game of Take It Easy: the game where you really don’t take it easy at all. He had procured a second set, which meant that up to eight could play! Newbies had the rules explained to them, and we were off!

Take It Easy: the reaction of Martin (top right) indicates

that the tile he needs has not been drawn from the bag.

Being so simple and yet so agonising, it was probably more fun to listen to the agonised wails or curious squeaks of your opponents than it was to play the game. Suffice to say, a lot of those noises game from Gonz who sounded like he was slowly deflating as the game wore on. The rest of us took turns to display bullish confidence and angst-ridden despair. After three rounds, the final scores were

1. Sam 485
2= Joe 457
2= Martin 457
3. Adam 445
4. Andrew 432
5. Hannah 411
6. Gonz 326

What a great game! Sam, Gonz and I went off early, but the remaining four were discussing what to play next, so there’s still more to come for this report. (EDIT: Joe has updated us in the comments below)

With the scores from the last game of the evening in, the form table looks like...

						Points
Martin	1	2	1	3	2	9
Andrew	4	1	1	2	1	9
Sam	1	3	2	2	4	12
Adam	2	3	3	2	3	13
Joe	3	2	4	4	1	14
Steve	3	3	1	5	5	17
Gonz	6	1	2	5	5	19
Hannah	5	2	3	5	5	20
Anja	2	4	5	5	5	21

Martin leaps to the top on the best-most-recent-score rule.

And the blog title came from Sam’s description of his board during a round of Take It Easy. Something like that anyway. I can’t remember that either. I really need to start taking notes...

Soul Through The Ages

I arrived late at the fortnightly Roll For The Soul games meet, and I found four gamers (Hannah, Martin, Adam and Ryan) knee-deep in a game of Carcassone, and Joe watching while he ate. It was Adam’s homegrown version, where the fimo farmers tower over their fields and cities like a B-movie version of Carcassone. Except that the usual B-movie trope of the woman falling over at important moments and needing to be rescued by the hero did not take place. In fact, Hannah won, with the others not winning.

While they finished their game, Joe and I played Roll Through The Ages. Joe was a bit rusty on the rules but not on strategy as he went for the quick win, filling himself up with cheap developments, while I got more cities nice and early and went for more exclusive developments. Joe’s spoiler tactic won, and he got to five developments, ending the game, when I had only got three.

I got a beer from the counter, and I guess I must be a regular now since the owner handed me my order before I’d even said anything.

Hannah left and more people arrived, and we decided to split into two groups. The friendly, mixed-gender group playing a game on a recognisable map with trains that passers-by can instantly understand. And the other, less friendly group of three old men in the corner, playing a game with cubes and tiles and no clear objective unless you’ve already played it twice.

Adam cleverly sold Ticket To Ride to the newcomers by describing as being like Inter-Railing. That seemed to swing it, but one of them was intrigued by Tinners’ Trail, amazed that there was a board game set in Cornwall.

I didn’t take many pictures today, so instead here’s one I took earlier:

Happy Adam

Joe, Martin and I decided to give The Palaces of Carrara another go. This game has tantalised us with its sense of almost understanding it, but not quite. Maybe next go it’ll click. Not since Biblios has a game hidden its winning strategy so effectively.

Except that maybe Martin has cracked it. He won the first game, although it was close between himself and Joe. Martin’s strategy was to end the game soon as possible and rely on after-game bonuses, even though he’d barely scored a point during the game itself. Joe got second and I was third.

During this game, a drunken man wobbled over to us, pointed out of the window at a passing bus and stammered “Look! A train! In London!” After a few seconds, he changed London to Bristol, but was still shocked at seeing a train in the street. And then the cafe owner gave him some food in a brown paper bag, and that distracted him long enough for him to forget that he’d been talking to us at all and he wobbled away again.

Then we begun on a second attempt at Palaces... and found it was a closer affair. Possibly because Martin misread one of the end-game criteria (which change every game) and far from being about to finish he was, in fact, in a terrible position.

Despite that, he still grabbed a couple of powerful upgrade tiles and shot himself off around the scoretrack. As for me and Joe, our tussle for second relied on one decision: whether or not Joe would build a new building, or score what he already had. If he built, he risked a cheap building being drawn from the pile which I’d be able to build and end the game immediately leaving him without a chance to score.

He chose to build. A cheap building came out, and his fate was sealed. Martin hit triple figures, I got seventy-something and Joe lay in a distant third in the 30s, cursing his luck.

On the other table, Ticket To Ride ended. Adam didn’t win, despite his usual tactic of hoarding masses of cards in his huge spade-like hands. I can’t remember who did win, but they got 114 points. More or less the only number I remember from that evening.

But before they finished, we were able to squeeze in a quick game of Sticheln. This cunning trick-taking game is beautifully designed, even if it did take us a couple of attempts at getting the dealing right. Joe won, despite picking up the highest number of bad cards. I got no cards at all and came in second.

And then it was time to wend our ways away, into Bristol’s darkened, drunk-lined streets. See you in two weeks!

Chips with everything!

It was the third Roll for the Soul evening, and after the hoards that attended last time, this week we were somewhat fewer in number. Five, at most, with only four playing at once. At first, there were two: Adam and Joe, playing Zooloretto. I watched for a bit and discussed with the cafe owner the fact that board gamers don’t ask for a glass with their bottle of beer, for want of precious table space. The game itself is baffling, and Adam won as I recall. But Joe’s chips were the real winner. Very nice, they were.

Then Hannah arrived and we bagsied a bigger table (not the sticky one in the corner, though) and played Tsuro of the Seas sans dragons. I won, thanks to Adam and Hannah passing the chance to finish me off to each other until I was able to place a tile that sent them both off the board together. Joe came in second once the space in his corner ran out.

We were perhaps a little put out by the fact that, outside, a family were playing an interesting board game, which involved using a length of elastic to twang small wooden pucks through a gap in a centre partition, while your opponent tries to do the same. I wish we'd popped out to ask what it was, because I can't find it on the internet. Alas, our geek pride wouldn't allow it.

Then we played a new game. Sticheln. The simple game of trumps, except you want to avoid tricks with a certain suit, and the first card in a round is never trumps. If it sounds peculiar, then it should. But I think we got the hang of it fairly quickly.

Hannah misunderstood the rules and went through the first round trying to not pick up tricks at all, but she has an excuse. We were all distracted by a big bowl of chips being delivered to our table for free since the chef had made them by mistake.

After round one, Katy arrived, and watched us play a second round of Sticheln while she ate roast veg in a wrap or something. With chips! By now, though, we’d all had our fill so she did not have to put up with us diving in like starving seagulls.

As far as the scores went, Joe scored most (9) in round one and Adam scored most (10) in round two, with everyone else getting negative points. I enjoyed it. It’s got a flavour of 6nimmt, but without taking up so much space and also it has the added aspect of sometimes wanting to pick up cards.

Afterwards, we pondered about what the five of us could play. Then Katy said she had to dash off in a bit, so we pondered about what the four of us could play. Then Hannah said she should probably go soon, too, so the three of us decided to play Trains! The Japanese train game that is just Dominion with a board and cubes and stuff.

The idea is to use your hand of five cards (which gets recycled into your own personal deck a la Dominion) to connect and upgrade stations around Japanese cities. I chose the Osaka side of the board, since I’ve been there twice and I was able to say “I’ve been there” whenever certain stations were mentioned.

It was very Dominion-ish. I’m not convinced the board made a huge difference, but it has been a long time since I played Dominion. Adam said he was enjoying it even before he won (beating Joe by two or three points, I was miles behind). Maybe it needs a little more time for it to grow on me.

Otherwise, a nice evening and, hopefully with a little more publicity, we can get right back to an attendance in double figures next time.