Rainy Day Games

On a wet Sunday there wasn't much to do in the house. Having exhausted a few appealing options (Lego, books, squabbling) the three boys in the house decided to break out the games.

The final front room

First to the table was Galaxy Trucker. Aside from the timer the boys are now at the stage where they can play this - Stanley completely independently; Joe given some assistance at the build stage. As a result of this assistance Joe always finished his ship-building first, which was to serve him well in a decidedly peaceful universe. I talk them through the cards and while the finer details are still hazy the gist of it - grab cargo, avoid attacks, arrive in first if possible - is pretty much there. However Stan's admirable independence in building his own ship meant he always travelled at the back; and the way the cards came out favoured the front runner. We played all three rounds and Stan and I were soundly beaten by Joe, despite him spending much of round three reviewing proceedings from a static piggy-back position (my back):

Joe 88
Sam 63
Stanley 60

Next up was String Railways. This was a bit of an impulse by after a first-play impression - I thinnk it's not been out of the box much since. Not enough for me to be fully cognizant of the rules anyway - we did a sort of basic version which Stanley won by a significant margin:

Stanley 32
Joe 23
Sam 20

It's impossible to get a serious photo. Impossible.

Finally with the boys really getting into the gaming spirit we brought out Portobello Market. This s a bit of a halfway house game - it looks like a full-on game but time-wise could be thought of as a filler, as it can be over in well under an hour. I realised my explaining skills were not confined to Tuesday nights - as I did my usual mistake of explaining the turn order without giving the theme - when Stan said "But what am I actually trying to do?"

Stan and I drew the first game (66 each? Can't remember) then we drew the second game 82 each with Joe - assisted, but enthusiastic - 1 point behind us.

See?

Just like a Tuesday night though, all good things must come to an end. So we went upstairs and read a bit more of The Hobbit. It's really violent! I felt like complaining to someone. But who?

Hammer of the Peckhamites

Whilst a number of the other GNNers were cavorting down south on friday, my family and I headed east to London, to stay with our friends Henry and Rachel and their three girls in Peckham.
After catching up and eating and getting drunk no-one was in the mood to learn rules, so we opted for our four-player favourite, Lords of Vegas.

I sped in to the lead on account of my brown casinos paying out multiple times, but then found myself floundering as the others caught up and overtook me. It was a tense, taut game, and it ended as it so often does, with the feeling that one player had it sown up, but that a couple of extra rounds could have changed the landscape considerably. As it was Henry was the clear victor, and I think I was third or fourth.

On saturday, Henry was keen to sample the various new games I'd brought along, and we played three games of Battle for Hill 218 followed by Traders of Carthage. Hill 218 is a brilliantly clever and unique WW2 card game where you try and creep round the titular hill (titular hill?) to infiltrate your opponent's base whilst they do the same to you. There's no bluffing, just alternate playing of different types of troops, and Henry took to it in an instant, winning the first game. I can't remember who won after that, but then we tried out Traders, last played by Andrew and me at Stabcon in Jan. I like it a lot, though it feels slightly odd going from two-player direct confrontation to the more oblique passive-aggressive euro tactics, and as soon as we finished we broke out Hammer of the Scots.

This seminal block war game from Columbia Games sees Edward Longshanks attempting to quash the Scottish rebellion fronted by William Wallace - I was the english, Henry the scots.
We both needed a rules refresher, and it is brilliantly simple for a war game, though there were a fair few visits to the rule book throughout.
Despite a strong opening couple of rounds, by round four Wallace was dead, and Henry, unable to crown a scottish king or send in the french knights, was on the back foot. I had learned an important tactic since our first game last year, that the English infantry and knights raised each turn need to be brought up and used to soften the scots, since they return to England each winter. This realisation formed the backbone of my strategy, and the game was over within six or seven rounds, unlike the last game which went the distance. It is a real classic, this one, and I can't wait to play again.

Playing in the kitchen whilst overseeing cheese toasties for ten! Truly heroic.

It's all but over for the Scots now . . .

After a brief sojourn into the freezing rain, we set up Commands and Colours: Ancients. Henry and I played this once in Wales last year, but after that stuck to old favourite Manoeuvre. Having re-discovered its charms recently I was keen to have another go.
We played Tacinus River, the same scenario Adam and I played a fortnight or so ago, and this time it was a decided victory for me, winning both games 6-4 and 6-3. I think Henry enjoyed it, and suggested  he'd like to play a different scenario next time.
Matilda had been itching to play Coup all weekend, and so we then played four four-player games back to back - this is a real favourite with my girls, and Henry's eldest two really enjoyed it. Can't remember exactly who won, but I think it was a different person each time.

My sister and her partner joined us for a fabulous dinner, but despite Henry's best efforts, were too exhausted to play a game, so that was it for Saturday.

Sunday was fairly busy, but my two eldest had been introduced to Pandemic by Henry and Rachel's girls, and I think they played four times over the weekend. I'm thrilled about this, since I've been thinking it would be a good one to play with them myself, but selling the theme would be an uphill struggle. Now they know they like it I expect we will get to play soon!

Around lunch time, Henry and I managed to find time to play 7 player Incan Gold with the girls, followed by four games of The Resistance. The latter was a real hit - all four games went to the resistance, which I felt bucked the trend, though I might be wrong.

Henry and I then played a best of three return to Hill 218, and then, whilst dinner was cooking, tried out String Railways. Despite it's uniqueness this hasn't seen a lot of play, and this was only my second game. In the two player game each person takes two colours, the best single colour wins. It was fun, but the best bit remains the emergent 'artwork' you end up with . . .

I love the way you can discern each player's strategy from
the final 'board'.

A grand weekend, and lovely that our kids went off and played by themselves too, racking up the afore-mentioned Pandemic, plus Shadows in the Woods, Coup and (I think) Zombies, alongside the games they played with us. JB

Bright Lights, String Theory

Last night Sally and I entertained Katie and Mark, gamers in every sense bar the enormous collection, card-sniffing habit etc. On a recommendation from Joe we'd bought Mark Vegas for his belated birthday present, so after a hefty helping of cheese we cracked it open and dived straight in.

It's a very simple game of allotting your dice to different casinos and collecting cash when they pay out (when everyone is out of dice). The numbers on your dice are irrelevant; it's about how many dice you have in each casino... the catch being that if more than one player has the same amount of dice in the same casino, they are all rendered null and void.

the fun never stops

In the end it Katie "the chiseller" Daniels who took first place, with some canny die-play that picked up a lot of $60 and $50k cards while the rest of us fought over the odd $90k:

Katie $480k
Mark $430k
Sam  $390k
Sally $340k

With the night still young and lactose surging through our veins, I took the plunge and broke out String Railway. Like Vegas it's very simple, but the friendly feel of round one was clouded by growing analysis paralysis over subsequent rounds as the 'board' became more and more crowded. We didn't help ourselves by playing one more round than the game recommends for four, but anyway... I was barricaded in by the river and spent the first four rounds fretting, but my final play into the mountains finally got me a decent score and I leapfrogged Katie into third place...

the fun stops

Mark 25
Sally 24
Sam  22
Katie 20

The tactical challenge exhausted everyone, but I managed to convince Mark into a game of Monza to finish off - it's a very simple racing game, a little like Ave Caesar but with almost zero strategy. Basically you can move your racing car according to the colours on the dice you roll, so though it says ages 5-99 on the box, I somehow can't picture Wallace sitting at home exclaiming "Hey! Who fancies a game of Monza?" We won one race each, then in the decider Mark found himself stuck on the second corner, rolling a series of useless dice as I skidded to an unlikely victory.

Monza!

We decided to start a little KMSS leaderboard and see who was doing best between the four of us, so here it is, based on our games from last night (ignoring Monza), and previous games nights in August and April. As you can see, Mark is the man to beat, heading the form table by some distance.

KMSS						Points
Mark		1	2	1	1	5
Katie		4	1	3	2	10
Sally		2	4	1	4	11
Sam		3	3	2	3	11

I do feel a bit ropey today though. Too much cheese.

Railways designed in crayon and string

Tonight is a special night, as the Gravediggaz featuring Tricky once sang. And if they'd sung it today, they would've been right because it was Tuesday. In other words: Games Night!

Joe hosted, and Sam and I were early arrivals. Adam arrived just after the three of us had started playing High Society and, knowing Adam's aversion to Reiner Knizia's counter-intuitive game of chance, we stopped.

Instead we chose String Railway, in honour of my impending departure for a fortnight in Japan (since the designer is Japanese). This game involves a board made up entirely of lengths of string, draped carefully over strategically-placed point-scoring stations. Anja turned up just in time to hear the rules and so the five of us jumped right in.

Since it was a first for all of us, there was a certain amount of hesitancy in our play. Some cards were explained as they appeared and strategies often needed to be adjusted as players were reminded of rules. In the end, Joe suffered from the old Instructor's Curse, whereby the person explaining the rules ends up in last.

1. Sam 34
2. Adam 27
3= Andrew 24
3= Anja 24
4. Joe 22

Steve arrived during the game, and ate chips while we finished off. So, with six of us, there was the usual stalemate over what to play next. Sam's new purchase, League of Six, was put on the table and taken off about three times before it was decided that he, me, Steve and Anja would play it. Joe and Adam chose Eurorails, a shiny-surfaced game where players drew their train tracks onto a map in crayon. Luckily, we were able to fit both games on to Joe's kitchen table.

League of Six is, ostensibly, about tax collecting. Each player uses a certain number of guards for the priviledge of taxing a particular city. Each city will give a combination of goods (used for getting points and bonus cards) guards (used for choosing a city), horses (used for player order) and more bonus cards (used at the end of the game for scoring).

It's an interesting game, which relies a lot on understanding what goods your neighbours are going for, because it's possible to force them to use those goods to your benefit. As such, going last is a real disadvantage.

Steve went last a lot. At the end of the game, he and Sam had put a lot of faith in the bonus cards to get them up the score track. In the end, those bonus cards weren't as powerful as we'd thought and they didn't not change the order that we finished in, but they did make it all a lot closer.

Anja 74
Andrew 67
Sam 66
Steve 62

By now Joe and Adam could see no end to their Eurorailing and so, like suddenly homesick students in the middle of an unremarkable European town, they decided to cut their losses and call it a day. They counted up the value of the cards in their hand and the amount they had in their reserve.

Joe 208
Adam 161

Sam left at this point, but Anja wasn't to be stopped. She suggested another quick game, and so No Thanks was brought to the table. This game of bluffing and bidding is always a winner. Steve tried to distract us by dropping his tokens into his lap, in a seedy attempt at getting us to focus on his groin and forget our strategy. Apart from that, the two games played out in the same way that No Thanks usually does.

Anja 16
Adam 36
Steve 38
Andrew 40
Joe 55


Adam 31
Andrew 34
Steve 43
Joe 48
Anja 50

I head to foreign shores with Adam having deposed me from first. And then Sam deposed me from second, too, just for good measure.

						Points
Adam	1	2	2	2	3	10
Sam	3	1	1	5	1	11
Andrew	2	4	2	3	1	12
Anja	5	1	1	3	2	12
Joe	4	5	1	4	3	17
Steve	3	3	4	4	4	18