Let them eat Cake

It was a winter of content as, not so long after Novocon, and just a few days after Laura's games day, a second festive get-together arrived. This time we were at Anja and Steve's: Joe drove myself and Katy over and we arrived just as they were finishing the first game of the session, with Steve coming a cropper in That's Not a Hat. Martin, Sarah and Effie were present and somewhere in the house Louie and Arthur were navigating pixel world. There was some chat and drinks prep and invasively-shaped breadsticks, and then Sarah and Effie made their way home and then remaining adults played Joe's recent acquisition, Awkward Family Photos. 

It's a party game where one player draws a card and chooses which demented photo they want the other players to provide a quote for. The quotes themselves are on cards, and drawn from movies, meaning there is fun to be had in the juxtaposition of lines we often know and strange people we don't, as well as the weirdness of the images themselves. I should have written some of these down but I didn't - anyway, the active player chooses which quote they thinks works best/is funniest/stupidest and the player who provided the quote gets the picture as a point. Katy cleaned up here, snagging three pics. The rest of us had one or none, but the highlight was no doubt Steve's enthusiastic embracing of reading the lines. 

We split into two groups, with Joe Katy and Hannah joining Martin in the perilous lands of Hold Your Ground and myself, Adam, Anja and Steve playing MLEM. 

Anja was concerned that her conservative approach was boring initially, but she warmed to the theme as serial explosions sent the rest of us into the ether whilst she watched from the warmth of a planet made of yarn. I missed all the fun of Hold Your Ground as I was too busy heckling her - to no avail. Steve and I tried to finish with a flourish making it into Deep Space, but only blew up again. 

Anja 27

Adam 25

Sam 21

Steve 15

Hold Your Ground had finished just before us, with Joe the victor on his debut play. There was some child-wrangling at this point, followed by some soup wrangling, and while we waited for the latter Joe introduced us to his game of counting from 1 to 20. It's always anyone's turn to say the next number, but if two or more people speak at the same time, you have to restart from one. We were all entertained by this - except Katy, who pronounced she couldn't stand it and left the room - but the furthest we got was 17 - unless you accept Joe and Martin's two-player version where they simply took turns. Steve, Martin and I also played a few rounds of Illusion at this point as well - but then the soup was ready! There was also home-made bread and cheese and a discussion about cheese between Louie, Arthur, Joe and I in the kitchen. But I forgot to take photos. When are you back, Andrew? 

After this lovely dinner Steve took some of us on a tour of the bouncy front room and we discussed such construction undertakings as joists and chasing. Then there was an amazing cake, the name of which I now forget but it's a bit like panottoni, and you - or Steve - can slice it into the shape of a Christmas tree. 

We broke into two groups again, with Joe, Adam and Katy playing Thurn and Taxis and the rest of us Mille Fiori. Louie was initially slated to build the German postal system as well, but the arrival of snow outside meant he was lost to the salad days of youth and cold hands. 

Meantime shit was getting slightly less real on the table. Anja's third or fourth turn was an early epic, as she triggered a bunch of bonus turns and catapulted herself into what looked like, to the uninitiated, an insurmountable lead. But we are all sadly initiated at this point, and Martin caught her up later on in the game as Steve and I took turns to make mournful little sounds with our mouths. With apologies, I missed the drama of Thurn and Taxis as a result, but my modest late-game surge in Mille Fiori was almost as pitiful as what came before it. 

Martin 238

Anja 210 

Sam 177

Steve 171

While they entered the final furlong in Thurn and Taxis, there was a lot of bodily movement around the house and I think at this point Steve showed me the upstairs, which I'd never seen before. It's huge! Then Martin and I played Hit! with Arthur and Louie. All of us regularly busted, but then endgame favoured Arthur and I somewhat.

Sam 84

Arthur 72

Martin 68

Louie 4

Thurn and Taxis wrapped up now, with Adam taking a convincing win:

Adam 24

Katy 16

Joe 10

And after some table shenanigans, I set up my Christmas gift Let's Go! To Japan with Adam and Joe, whilst the other end of the table played Agent Avenue. I had now completely abandoned my journalistic responsibilities, but fortunately Steve was on the case...

And here's some Let's Go! To Japanning from earlier times.

In this game we are planning our wonderful trip(s) to Japan by arranging three activities per day over six days - presuming, in my case, my travelling self has more energy than I do. When our final activity/card is placed, we then go on our trips, and each experience increases the holistic and cultural value of it by pushing the component aspects of the vacation (food, temples, unique experiences etc) up the track. If, at the end of the day, we have received enough of said aspect, then we can also score the Highlight of the Day as well. 

That's pretty much the game, save for a couple of wrinkles of your mood increasing (or not) overall, and the fact that your entire trip is based in Tokyo and Kyoto: any time you travel 'between' these cities, you must take the train. This was where Joe's planning fell down - he spent a lot of time whizzing between cities and without the tickets for it, he got hit with minus points. But for the activities themselves, Joe was having a grand old time, keeping costs low and enjoying a kind of thrift-store version of Japan. It was enough to win, though I inevitably made no note of the scores I think it was

Joe 115

Sam 111

Adam 109

But we all had a great trip. Katy's first play of Agent Avenue was less successful, as she and Anja came a cropper at the hands of Martin and Steve. But now it was getting on a bit - Louie had gone to bed, Hannah and Arthur had returned from the snow only to vanish again, and whenever the door opened I complained like an old man about the arctic wind that blew in. In other words, it was time for So Clover. I won't lie, I was smugly thinking about the fact I had a long record of sixes up until tonight when my clover - the first - blew up in my face: we scored three because apparently nobody sees Memory/Sky as poetically as I do (I wrote Dreamland: there were better matches). 

I was also responsible for harpooning Anja's clover when I said "This now looks insane" about the card placements and we started again only to subsequently discover they'd been in the right place. Katy's cake was a great clue for Fairy/Hole and Martin's deoxygenated for Summit/Heart was clever. Overall 35 from a possible 42 (using two sets of the game) wasn't too shabby. 

A fun way to end the evening, as always. Thanks to everyone, especially our hosts, and see you before too long I hope!

Suit up!

I arrived at little early at Joe's and after catching up with he and Charlotte and getting mauled by Sybil, we had a couple of games of Focus. This is a co-op challenge of guessing each other's secret image from a grid of said images - the catch being that you clue your own using others: here, my image was the telescope and Joe's, confusingly, was the glasses.

If you are unfortunate enough to use your partner's word as a clue, you both lose. Otherwise when you're both satisfied you know what the word is, there's a countdown and you both put your fingers on it, Codenames-style. Joe guessed my image correctly twice, but I was wrong each time, lacking the focus required. However Martin and the Final Gareth turned up at this point and following them through the door were Laura and Katy and finally Adam H. Knowing this was Gareth's last GNN before leaving Bristol for Seattle and possibly beyond, he was presented with his present!

We debated what to play before settling on That's Not a Hat, even though Adam hated it. Then Katy remembered she hated it too and Laura confessed she wasn't a fan either. But it was too late for all that!

There was much confusion, chagrin and bamboozlement as various people were confident of what cards were until it was their turn. At one point there were about three Schrödinger's ducks and two Feynham newspapers in various states of reality, and it felt like everyone was bullshitting to the point that if anyone was bold enough to challenge, they'd be inflicting pain on the passer. But this theory proved wrong when Joe challenged Gareth on a duck, and by some insane coincidence, it was a duck!

Joe lost, with three busts at this point, with most people on one or two. I had none at all, but I don't think there's a winner in quantum gaming. We split into two groups now with Joe bringing another French purchase out, called Pass Pass. They were appalled that I took a picture before they started. 

At the other end of the table, the fun of Strike was held up by the fun of trying to get all the components for Gareth's present back into the box. Here we have a particle physicist and moonbase engineer on the case:

With that done, we blasted through a couple of plays of Strike, won by Gareth and Martin.

Then we played Harvest. I forgot to take photos of this, which was a shame because I won. Maybe neglecting blog duties helped me focus. Meanwhile at the other end of the table, Pass Pass from what I could glean seemed an alluring mix of engagement and bemusement.  

We played Sea Salt & Paper. I got off to a good start, chiselling an early lead, but we abandoned the game with Gareth apparently in the lead when Pass Pass finished. Then Gareth realised he'd inadvertently cheated so his win came with a big asterisk. 

Katy won Pass Pass, how I have no idea. Joe implied it needed an asterisk too as it was a learning game, but Katy's face disagreed. Having been wrapped up in numerous Martin-sized games with Martin and Gareth, I missed anything about Pass Pass other than there is some trick-taking. Now there were various games proposed, with nobody really biting at Hansa Teutonica despite mine and Gareth's hopeful cherubic expressions. I suggested Pioneer Rails to Martin and his face literally started twitching. But Joe was interested. After some more shenanigans and box-waving, Katy agreed to try Maldivia again with Martin, Laura, and Gareth.

And Joe, Adam and I went pioneer-railing across the nascent US.

Not so much a roll-and-write as a flip-deal-choose-and-write, in each round of Pioneer Rails you are doing two things: building railroads across the map, and constructing a poker hand. 

Poker hands are pretty straightforward; the map less so. Only the rank of the card you choose matters for poker, and only the suit is relevant on the map, where hearts/diamonds/spades/clubs are the four railways you're building. Beyond that, the choices tempt you in lots of different ways: gold and banks combine, so do cities and railyards, you can compartmentalise herds of cattle for points or circle around forts for escalating hauls. Along with the inevitable first-to-do-it bonuses, there's a fair amount to chew over, and we were a bit more thinky than the boisterous Maldvia.

Katy decided she liked the game this time, and winning may have helped. Martin, chief cajoler in it getting played at all, was rewarded with last place. It was close though:

Katy 9

Gareth 8

Laura 7

Martin 6

While we wrapped up they played Strike again: Katy winning twice and Martin once. Over in Texas or wherever it was close between Joe and I as we wrapped up our fourth and final round, with me inching ahead of him. But it was only close between us because Adam was miles ahead:

Adam 137

Sam 94

Joe 86

"That's my kind of game" he beamed, as Joe looked nonplussed. It is at the heavier end of an x-and-write game, but I rather like it regardless. There's room for some dickery in the poker hands, an option I neglected when I could have taken some points off Adam... 

Laura said goodbye and set off for home, leaving us as a six. We plumped for Trios, playing in partnerships. In this version there are no shared cards, but when any team claims a trio, other teammates can (must, in fact) swap cards. This is helpful for the team in question as they share increasingly more information about what they hold. But it's a nightmare for other teams as you can't be sure that y person's lowest card then is still their lowest card now.

Martin and Adam claimed the first win, with what looked like an advantage to my eyes as they both held a seven at the start. Swapping sevens, they knew they just needed to locate the third and once the other cards were out of the way, claim the win. Having said that, saying it's easier than doing it. Katy demanded a trio of Trio, however, and she and I won the second and third game with Gareth and Joe holding the wooden spoon. They did master the simultaneous sliding of cards down the table though. 

Then we played So Clover! Katy said she was going to be really sexist with her clues and not to put them on the blog, so I won't. We did pretty well - especially considering the amount of agonising going on pre-reveals. Gareth managed to navigate the combo of Silent Beef with the clue of veal - Katy was disgusted by everything - and Martin overcame his pessimism with some decent clues. 

My clover was a bit problematic as my clues seemed to go much better with the wrong words, but kudos to everyone for getting them on a second go. Our stumbling block was Adam's clover, which had Martin repeating the words 'Jelly belly' for about ten minutes as he couldn't believe we weren't all familiar with the insult. By the time we actually made any guesses, Adam was completely distracted by something on his phone. But we did it, and it was a rock-solid score of 32/36 all told. 

A momentous evening ended with lots of hugs and best wishes for our beardy friend on his new adventure. We'll miss you Gareth!

We're all the 99%

At 7.45 there were seven of us clustered around Steve and Anja's table: along with Steve and Louie, Joe and I were first to arrive, then Ian, Adam and Martin made it a septet. Lennon made a brief appearance too, but mainly to collect a squidgy toy for bed. At Joe's suggestion, we set up 7 Wonders Architects, one of a clutch of new games in his bag. 

This is like an even-speedier 7 Wonders, or at least it would be with less players. Everyone's cardboard wonder starts scaffold-side up, and as soon as you've the resources to build it it's mandatory to do so, discarding the cards and flipping it over, starting from the bottom and working up - as Louie pointed out, you can't build from the top down in real life either. 

Ian's Big Dude, with pedestals flipped

Flipped wonder sections score points and - as with the original game - may also trigger bonuses. So far, so similar. But rather than drafting cards simultaneously, players take turns taking one card from the decks placed between players face-up, or - as I kept forgetting - from a shared face-down central deck, representing a mini-gamble. Wonder resource needs are fairly flexible: it's usually x number of matching or non-matching resources and what they actually are is immaterial. I think someone built a pedestal out of glass at one point. 

Science cards are cashed in for science tokens (one-off rewards/end-game scoring) and military cards compete with neighbours whenever war is triggered, which is less predictable than the end of a round. In fact, there are no rounds, and the game chugs along at a fairly rapid pace until someone - Adam, in this case - completes their wonder:

Adam 35

Louie 34

Ian 30

Sam and Joe 28 each

Steve 26

Martin 24

It was a bit long with seven of us, but the reaction was mostly positive. "I enjoyed it" I said. 

"I'll enjoy writing about it" Martin muttered. With Anja now joining us and Louie wanting one quick game before he was exiled to his bedroom, we set up That's Not a Hat.

The chalice of palpable disdain passed from Martin to Adam as confusion reigned supreme - the game's actual aim, rather than an inadvertent by-product. Ian and Anja confessed to having no idea what cards they had, and Ian's speculative skateboard proved his undoing. 

Ian loses (three penalty points)

Adam, Joe, Steve, Martin and Sam all win (no penalty points)

Louie left us and we split into groups. It was now Martin's turn to break out a new game in Hot Lead, for which he was joined by Joe and Ian. 

Anja was keen to try Hansa Teutonica and I needed no encouragement. Steve looked slightly askance at the busy board but signed up, and soon established a classic confused-Steve-scores-loads-of-points strategy. I missed what happened in Hot Lead, other than it finished before before I'd concluded teaching Hansa Teutonica, as Martin crowed happily. Joe win twice and Ian once before they moved on to Gang of Dice. 

Ian's view

We'd kicked off in Hansa Teutonica by now, and Steve's early trading post in Guttingen (I think?) started hoovering him up points. We kept remarking on it, but didn't actually do anything about it, each of us busy concocting our own little schemes. 

But you know in a game where one concocts their own little schemes, Adam will probably concoct more efficiently than anyone else, and so it proved in a tense - for some - conclusion. Steve triggered the end of the game by hitting 20 points, with the rest of us some way behind. Anja had no network to speak of, as our scheming around Guttingen kept her on a miserly two actions for half the game. I had some end-game points to score, but not enough to catch the breakaway leaders: Adam and Steve tied on points, and were only separated by the second tie-breaker!

Adam 48 and most valuable network
Steve 48
Sam 35
Anja 15

Brutal stuff. At the other end of the table Ian was wrapping up a win in Spots, of which I missed all the drama as we were hypnotised by Adam's scoretrack action in HT. Joe and Martin finished with three dogs each. We made a big group again for another new game out of Joe's magical bag: Fun Facts. 

This a slightly Wavelength-esque co-operative where in each round we are asked a hypothetical question such as How much would you need to be paid to work for a year at a research station in Antarctica or a factual question like How long have you been doing your favourite hobby. Everyone writes their answer - always expressed as a number - on the back of their own plastic chevron and then we go around the table adding ours to the column, placing it where we think it's correct relative to everyone else's. Once that's done, the starting player has the option of moving their own chevron before they are revealed, starting at the bottom. Collectively the hope is we're in ascending order, but of course the game throws up surprises. 

We score points for each chevron that keeps to the 'order' we're trying to establish. Above we are discovering everyone's liking for celebrating their own birthday. Ian (35) is perhaps unsurprisingly at the bottom. Joe (orange) and Anja (red) are the numbers slightly out of kilter. 

I loved this game, even if some of the questions skew it rather heavily away from joyful innocence and into unabashed smut. How comfortable are you around nudity? Do you enjoy time with old people? By the time the relatively innocuous query about favourite hobbies arrived, everyone was basically talking about wanking and how much Steve likes reading on the toilet (99%) which he not unreasonably argued was a percentage of the time he enjoyed reading, imagining one would assume that if he's not enjoying it, he'll stop. 

We didn't do brilliantly but it was a fascinating insight into everyone's psyche, sending Ian and Adam home with possible big thoughts. Steve was starting to yawn but we coaxed another game out of him that turned into four games - the rapid and tense Kites. Our first attempt was the most successful as we weren't that far off emptying the deck. But every time we said one more time, we seemed to get worse.

So much so we had to eventually accept that we are just shit at flying kites, and better at judging each other's peccadillos. After decades of our favourite hobby (exceptions: Ian (video games), Adam (football), Anja (listening to music)), at least there's something to show for it. 

The Suiting Floatcases of Smalmsbury

It promised to be a bumper nine of us at one point, but unfortunately we lost Anja to fatigue. With Katy arriving a bit later - distracted by the Tour de France - just after 7.30 there were seven of us raring to go: Adam T, Ian, Laura, Joe, Martin, Gareth and myself (Sam). We kicked off with That's Not a Hat. 

Each player gets a card with an image on it to start from a deck of distinct images. Then someone takes a new card from the deck, flips their first one over, and passes it to a neighbour (the back of the card instructs which way to pass). When they do, they say aloud the image that's on the card. The receiver then flips their own card over and passes that one, doing the same thing. And so ultimately all the cards are face-down and everyone's trying to remember what their own card is as well as keep track of what the card that's currently travelling around the table is.

If you doubt the accuracy of what the card you've been passed was described as, you can challenge and flip the card over. The loser keeps the revealed card and we go again. First to three lost challenges is the loser, which in our case was... Laura, I think? She seemed to enjoy it despite that. Fun!

We still had some pre-Katy time so busted out Not that Movie, which regaled us with dubiously-monikered cinema such as Pulp in the Hole. In our first round everyone chose the same movie except me. My crestfallen shame was to be diluted though as first Adam, then Ian, fell foul of the same fate.

I think we only got the perfect score once, aided in no small part by the reviews seeming to very much suggest a particular movie:

Then, with Katy imminent, we decided she'd be fine with playing Mille Fiori so Joe Ian and Laura began setting it up. The rest of us tried our hands at Martin's new fave, Hooky. Has Andrew explained this before? I think he has, but with two newbies in Adam and I Martin ran through the simple rules.

Simple rules, but a brow-furrowing experience as everyone tries to figure out what letters everyone else has in order to then figure out what the three 'missing' letters are. We lapsed into long pauses whilst at the other end of the table, the pace was brisker and the mood more buoyant. Katy looks like she's hating here, but I think that's just the curse of my camera.

Hooky ended after an intense hour with all of us throwing up our hands in various degrees of confusion and disgust. It transpired that Martin's workings-out had been thrown by Gareth assuming 'smarm' was spelled 'smalm' due no doubt to his psychological preoccupation with Malmsbury. "It's the only word we didn't spell aloud" Gareth lamented, which was oddly true. I have to say though, smalm made no difference to me. I was chucking stones in the dark at this point, which proved good enough to claim second:

Martin 35

Sam 24

Gareth 23

Adam 8

I enjoyed trying it out, but for my tastes (not to mention brain) it's a bit more like work than fun. It's a curious theme, too, for such a brain-exercising puzzle. 

Mille Fiori ended now too, and Katy definitely enjoyed it:

Katy 213

Ian 204

Joe 190

Laura 152

And we split groups again, with Joe, Martin, Katy and Adam playing Inside Job, new to Katy. 

The rest of us Quantum. A learning experience for Gareth, but his ability to absorb rules and Quantum's exceptions largely being printed on cards meant we were off and running inside ten minutes. 

Laura took an early lead and found herself targeted. I found myself with multiple '3' ships and used them to go around being a pain in the arse for everyone, getting my dominance up to 6 and drawing level. But on the other side of the board both Ian and Gareth did likewise. 

Gareth found a great card combo of deploying for free and removing a ship to gain an extra action. As the game rapidly escalated, I got a belated ass-kicking myself and Ian snuck in ahead of Laura, who was poised to get a cube down. As Ian was primed to win on his next turn - if left unmolested - Gareth snuck in ahead of all of us for a debut victory!

Laura now left us, bound for bed. At the other end of the table, they were still playing Inside Job, but promised us they were on the verge of finishing. We had a couple plays of Win Lose or Banana while we waited, with both Gareth (winner) and Ian (winner) successfully identifying the banana (me) on each occasion. I just have a trusting face. 

I think it was around this time that, a propos Inside Job's intel, someone spoonerised their way to 'suiting floatcases'. It may have been Gareth again? 

Either way, Inside Job's third play ended with:

Katy insider loses
Martin insider wins
Martin insider wins again

Joe was forlorn. "Everyone always suspects me" he said, which I found surprising, as I feel Joe's face is of the largely trustworthy kind (like mine). Adam left to drive home and we remainders gathered into a single group for So Clover. The grumbling was pronounced with this one, especially from Martin despite sitting down last and finishing first. And we did struggle with this opening clover, as there seemed to be not so much too few possibilities as too many. A 3 to begin.

After that however we picked up speed with a fairly rapid bunch of sixes, with Katy spotting that Capital Garbage went well with my clue of 'bankers'. There were some excellent clues from everyone and even a mid-game googling after Martin threw us with a word we were unfamiliar with (sward).

We stumbled slightly at the end but still pulled off a more-than-decent 31/36 to finish the night with a flourish.