The Follies of Berger

Just a couple of days ago, tonight looked like being a bumper crop of gamers at Sam’s. But yesterday, Quentin bowed out and then today Gonz got a puncture and so he couldn’t make it either. But seven is still a healthy turn out. Along with Sam and myself, Steve, Anja, Martin, Adam and Joe were present. Sam's kids offered a heart-warming message for us all:

At first, Joe told us of his most recent find in the Charity shops of Bristol: The Sigma File. This 1970s game of espionage is set on a by-now inaccurate map of the world (East Germany? Yugoslavia? Bombay?) and involves moving around plastic men in search of a suitcase containing the notorious Sigma File. He then has to get back to his base. It sounds intriguing, and was a definite possibility for a while, but it does need four players, and we just didn’t divide up right.

Sam, Martin, Steve and Anja went into one room to play Sutter’s Mill, since the rules were still fresh in Sam’s mind. In the kitchen, me, Joe and Adam played Steam, another new arrival on the doorstep of GNN Towers.

Joe explained the rules to Adam, and before you knew it, we were off. Joe started fretting very early, as Adam and I built up our cash reserves while Joe’s bank balance hovered around the zero mark. Something inside him must’ve snapped, since he played a very combative game. He insisted he didn’t mean to, but he tried to block tracks built by both me and Adam.

It was a long, arduous game. Any description of it as being “Railways of the World Lite” is hopelessly wrong. In such a small space, some kind of conflict is inevitable, which leads to a lot of AP as potential moves are worked out way in advance.

We heard the sound of laughter from next door, and when I went in, it looked like quite a different game to the two-player version. Far more crowded. There was practically a bar room brawl in Odd Fellow’s Hall!

Our game, meanwhile, put us through the wringer. Options became more and more limited, and by the end, there were no cubes left to ship. I suspect that we played one round too many, but it could be that three RotW experts like us are able to get the most out of our resources. In the end, I edged ahead of Joe thanks to my position on the money track. Adam ended with a healthy lead.

Adam 79
Andrew 68
Joe 65

The folks from the creek across the plains (ie, in the front room) also ended around the same time as us. They didn’t, though, finish at the same time as each other. Since part of the game is to get your guys out of town before the gold runs out, Martin did so quicker than his opponents, so he came in to watch us play for a bit.

Once all four had ended, the scores were

Martin 68
Anja 66
Steve 45
Sam 18

That’s not a typo. Sam got hit by Explainer’s Curse as hard as it’s ever hit anyone. Sam could only say “I played my cards badly” by means of explanation. Steve and Anja gave me a lift back, and they mentioned how impressed they were by Martin’s ability to pick up the gist of the game. Although Steve did point out that Martin read the rules. That probably helped. Anja must just be good at picking up gold and running away with it. Steve said he was baffled by the whole experience.

But although me, Steve and Anja had left, the other four fought on with a bracing game of Love Letter. I got a text telling me the scores:

Joe 3
Martin 2
Sam 2
Adam 0

In the text, Sam suggested that Martin knocking him out of the last round may be a tie-breaker, but is that in the rules? It goes down as joint second for now.

A very enjoyable, if somewhat exhausting, evening. I head the form table, which is nice.

						Points
Andrew	2	1	1	1	5	10
Sam	2	4	2	2	2	12
Joe	1	3	3	3	3	13
Adam	3	1	2	2	5	13
Steve	3	3	1	5	5	17
Martin	2	1	5	5	5	18
Anja	2	4	5	5	5	21

Mined over matter

The Gods smiled down on two weary gamers, as the planets aligned and the clouds parted and other things happened in the sky and Sam and I were able to fit two games evenings into two real evenings. And there’s the official GNN tomorrow! We are living the high life !

One Sunday we played a new game, The Hive. No photos from this day since my phone was across the room, plugged into the speakers, pretending to be a juke box. The Hive is a simple strategy game (or maybe it’s very complicated and I just haven’t twigged it yet) whereby the aim is to place and move your hexagonal pieces so that they surround your opponents queen bee.

The trick is to trap her long before that happens, since a piece cannot move if it breaks the hive. It’s intriguing, but it needs more table time. I’m sure there’s more to learn. The end is usually an anti-climax, since it can be clear who’s won several moves before it’s happened, without anything you can do about it.

Sam won three times, and then he won at 7 Wonders, with Dirk pushing me into third place! Is there anything more humiliating than coming third in a two-player game?

But that’s enough about Sunday. Again today, the two of us met up for more games! And again, there was a new game on the table. Sutter’s Mill has been sitting in Sam’s games cupboard almost longer than the Gold Rush lasted. Now was it’s chance to shine. Would it be 24 carat, or fool’s gold? I didn’t care, since my character had a cool hat and a shifty look. Good start.

Since it was our first play, any thought of strategy was secondary to working out what did what. The rules weren’t great, with large chunks repeated throughout. But the game is clear enough, once you’ve worked out what “conducting business” means. It means getting gold according to how buildings you have. You get buildings by combining men and cards in order to have the most influence in them.

And that’s how Sam played it: he owned buildings, even if they weren’t actually useful at the time, in order to get gold for buildings. I owned buildings which got bonuses for mining gold at a particular stage in the game.

Then, after mining for gold, the trick is to get your meeples and cards out of town as much as possible. Preferably leaving a low-valued card and one lonely meeple in town once the vein of gold has been exhausted and the game ends. Anything left in town counts against you. Gold and cards you managed to save from town get you points. We counted up, and despite the rules assuring us that ties were rare, it couldn’t have been closer.

Andrew 116
Sam 115

Sam had more gold, but I got all my cards out in time. An interesting game. Perhaps better with three, which would make it harder to keep track of what your opponent is up to.

After this, I requested Samurai, which doesn’t get enough love here in GNN. This time we played strictly according to the rules, which made the game drier with far fewer opportunities to parachute in plenty of troops at once (not that Edo-period Japan had invented the parachute. Or perhaps they had, but they certainly hadn’t invented the aeroplane, making parachutes somewhat redundant).

So we patiently built up our forces, and a lot of pieces were taken off the board as many battles ended in a draw, but Sam was a clear winner.

And so we finished the game and the evening. And there’s more to come tomorrow!