He's so shell-fish

 I arrived at a little after 8 to find Ian, Joe and Martin sitting around a table of Polynesia, all set up and with Joe having already received a rules explanation, we were ready to dive in.

This game's special scoring criteria for today made masks and archipelagos very valuable and so it was no surprise to see Ian and Martin make a bee-line for the half of the board with the richest pickings. I, using the logic that you do well at games by not doing what other people are doing, set off for the less congested areas. Joe, not sure what he was doing, did a bit of both.

It was a quiet game, with a lot of pondering going on. I did ask, since it was us four, why we weren't playing Time Of Crisis only to be told it was still in the studio. But our thinking time was so long that it may as well have been ToC.

I found that I was frequently stranded, waiting for other players to land on my island so I could get a ride with them. This was usually Martin and I usually took him in a direction that he didn't want to go. Joe, meanwhile, found that most of his meeples ended up on the same island, which was swiftly dubbed "party island". Very sociable but no good for scoring points. Ian and Martin, who both played on Saturday, clearly has a better idea about what was going on.

In the end the game was getting perilously close to the full nine rounds, so in round seven we agreed that the next round would be the last, whatever the volcano did. Which was fair enough, since the tiles had all been taken and there was little else to do.

Martin 19

Ian 17

Andrew 13

Joe 11

There was a fair bit of ambivalence from Joe afterwards, who seemed to find it too opaque and it didn’t interest him enough to keep looking.

Next, we played Take The A Chord, which still baffled us. Joe explained the rules to Martin who must have done some research already since he filled in a few gaps in Joe's explanation along the way. As usual, playing a card was often accompanied by humming a note that may or may not have had some relationship to the note on the card.

I initially found myself frustrated because whenever I was about to win a trick, someone started improvising! Just like real jazz, that became quite annoying after a while. Nevertheless, I seemed to mostly have the right cards at the right time and scored highly on each round.

Andrew 125
Ian 95
Martin 60
Joe 40

After this, feeling somewhat tired and unwilling to play much beyond half past ten, I bowed out, leaving them to consider their three player options. Ra was mentioned, but I was out the door by the time a decision was made. Sorry to leave so soon, but thanks for the evening!

A Doggy Dog World

 Late again for games, I was about to knock on Joe’s front door when I heard laughter coming from nearby. Checking my surroundings, I noticed that the set of stone steps leading down to a little below-pavement quadrant was no longer blocked and that the quadrant now hosted some welcoming doors that lead  inside. I followed the sound of happiness into Joe’s new open-plan kitchen/lounge area. An impressive new gaming arena with a surprising lack of games which were still in Joe’s studio.

But we had enough games to be getting on with. When I arrived, Sam, Joe and Katy had already played Spicy, which Joe had won, with Sam in second. I also soon learn that we are to be welcoming a couple of newcomers from Sam’s work, Dan and Mikey.

Before they arrived, we played a game of Take The A Chord, since to leave it any longer meant we’d have to learn the game from scratch. We pretty much had to do so, anyway, as the finer details of key changes and improvising eluded us at first. Eventually we got into it, and I won by getting three tricks in each round. Mr Consistency, they call me. 

Andrew 90

Sam 75

Katy 65

Joe 30

Then Mikey arrived and, after introductions, we all played Troika. Joe tried to play mean (“It’s a doggy dog world,” he said, unless I heard wrong) while Katy insisted you had to think for yourself. Joe won this argument, but only after a tie-breaker.

Joe 3

Katy 2

Sam 1

Andrew 0

Mikey -1

Then while we waiting for Dan to arrive we grilled Mikey on his board gaming knowledge. I hope we didn’t seem too interrogatorial, but he acquitted himself well as he name checked a few GNN favourites. 

When Dan arrived the six of us split into teams for Team Play. It’s a pretty rule-light game so Dan and Mikey were up to speed before too long. In fact, Mikey was able to complete a task in his first turn and then so did Dan. As the game wore on, me and Dan were in a comfortable lead and I thought Mikey and Katy were in second with four-task lightweights Joe and Sam in last place. 

But we were in first because, after starting with some high-scoring tasks, I decided to dash to eight tasks by getting a few two-pointers out of the way. When we counted up, my hunch was right, but it was much closer than I’d imagined as Sam and Joe ended with only five tricks but each one was a peach.

Dan and Andrew 26

Joe and Sam 25

Katy and Mikey 19

And with that Katy and I dashed off home, leaving the others to… chat I suppose. Thanks all. See you next Tuesday!

Games in the key of life

If late is the new on-time then I'd be as punctual as a Japanese train. Unfortunately, it's not and so when I finally arrived well after 8, i found Sam (host), Joe and Katy deep in a game of New York Zoo. 

It's from Uwe Rosenberg and it involves filling a grid of squares with various shaped areas which you can fill with animals. It caused a lot of anguish as players bemoaned their non-breeding stock, imagining the animals either looking at each other from afar or just wanking. Joe was first to fill his area which gave him an instawin.

Joe first

Sam and Katy joint last

Next the four of us played Take The A Chord, a Japanese trick taking game which has a vague theme of playing Jazz music. All of it seemed confusing and opaque, such as who won the trick, who started an improvisation, who got the spotlight and what happens if we change keys. Even working out who started the next round in the event of a tie for least points in the previous round required us to read the rules slowly at least twice.

Meanwhile, Katy's request to have jazz on the stereo was largely left unfulfilled as the playlist kept veering off into other genres. Mind you, we filled in by humming the note we’d just played in a perfectly tone-deaf manner. I think I had fun playing it but that was mostly due to the company, not the game. I'm not sure it's the kind of thing you understand first time. Just like real jazz, then.

Katy 80

Sam 60

Joe 45

Andrew 20

Then we tried Rumble Nation as a four player. It’s pretty feisty, at least it was for Katy who snatched Joe’s phone from his hand as he was searching for Sri Lankan restaurants so that he could concentrate on taking his move, and then she criticised me for folding up a crisp packet really loudly. Nevertheless, her dedication was rewarded by a comfortable win.Maybe we should all play like that.

Katy 39

Sam 28

Andrew 20

Joe 19

By now it was after 10.00, which is usually finishing up time online, but not here. Instead we leapt feet first into our best Victorian story-telling pants with a rousing game of The Secret Adventures of the Old Hellfire Club. It’s a very basic trick-taker dressed up with a lot of nonsense about storytelling.

This evening’s nonsense was based around our attempts to find the Elephant’s Graveyard and we made a fairly good start, getting on a ship with a foul-mouthed Karl Marx and sailing past the Cape of Good Hope, but then I was arrested and we all went to Newgate Prison. Joe won, but let’s be honest it’s the kind of game that doesn’t need winners. 

Joe 15

Katy 14

Sam 12

Andrew 6

So, congrats to Joe and Katy for winning everything. See you all next week.