Łódź you believe it?

Sam was host today for seven gamers (including himself). After a couple of late cancellations, we were Sam, Martin, Joe, Ian, Katy, Chris and myself.

Some arrived early, allowing Sam’s boys Stanley and Joe a couple of games before bedtime. We began with In A Bind or, as Martin described it, Twister in a chair.

Each player (me, Katy, Stanley, Martin, Ian and Sam) is given a card and has to adopt a pose that satisfies the instructions on that card. As the cards mount up, so the physical contortions get ever more absurd.

Helpful Sam

Sam was out first, and this allowed him to help the rest of us who were now unable to pick up the cards ourselves, thus prolonging the game until Katy complained about it hurting, yet refusing to give up. She was appalled, having come a very undignified first, when it was suggested that this game wasn’t leaderboard. So appalled, indeed, that I relented and wrote the standings down on the back of a bus ticket.

Martin struggles while Ian is more sedate

1. Katy
2. Ian
3. Stanley
4. Martin
5. Andrew
6. Sam

Next up was a quick game of pairs to 21. Perhaps because he had half an eye on the clock and a keen sense of parental duties, Sam scored in all four rounds, winning three of them, for a swift win.

Sam 25
Ian 17
Andrew 12
Martin 12
Katy 10
Stanley 6
Joe 3

So while Sam put the boys to bed, we decided on a quick game to play until he was back and Joe and Chris arrived. We chose Mord Im Arosa, the game of hearing accuracy. Was it possible for Katy and Martin to be quiet long enough to hear the cubes tumbling down the tower?

They almost didn’t need to as the moment the first victim was found, with four of my clues right next to it, I knew my game was up. All I could do was try to clear my name as best I could. I managed to last long enough that Joe turned up and got to watch a decent amount of the game. He seemed intrigued. But it was a hopeless task.

Katy 3
Martin 12
Ian 18
Andrew 25

Katy was distraught when she was told it was difficult to get hold of, since she seemed to have her heart set on a copy of her own. Martin amazed everyone by telling us it this would be his 700th game rated on Board Game Geek (and by an amazing coincidence, this is the 700th post on GNN).

After this, Chris arrived saying the traffic was shocking, and we sat down to some serious gaming. Joe had brought Magnates, the fun game based around the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the 17th century.

It’s territory control, as you bid for two types of cards to help you score points, gain advantages, and place estates on the map, and finally do battle against encroaching armies with whatever cards you have left. I enjoyed it, finding it similar to Chocolatl, but it didn’t find favour with Sam and towards the end, he decided to go Dirk (“Dirking his responsibilities,” perhaps?) rather than face reading more text on another selection of cards.

Joe 34
Andrew 28
Sam 24
Ian 22

At the other end of the table it was Katy’s day to be introduced to two GNN favourites: Biblios and 7 Wonders. We were disappointed, however, to discover that it was not Extreme Biblios. Despite Martin’s use of the “Eat Shit” rule whenever offering up a One Gold card, they shuffled the auction pack (robbing the game of any skill) and then used money as a tie-breaker! How unoriginal!

Katy still seemed to like it, though.

Katy 9
Chris 7
Martin 4

And then...

Katy 7
Martin 5
Chris 4

Then she was introduced to 7 Wonders. Katy had already played 7 Wonders Duel at Novocon, so she wasn’t completely new to the concepts. It seemed at one point, though, that the game would end in a fight as Katy picked up two minus points in round three while Chris and Martin picked up five each for military. She did not seem happy about it.

The game ended in her favour, though, thanks to beating Martin on a money tie-breaker (see, Martin? Money tie-breaker’s are rubbish.) Katy scored well across all categories and was the only one to build her wonder. Chris went for blue buildings and, interestingly, yellow buildings. And Martin went for science and guilds, leaving his wonder completely unbuilt.

Katy 47 + cash
Martin 47
Chris 41

Then we were all as one once more. We chose Codenames as our night’s finale. First it was Sam, Katy and Joe against Martin, Chris, Ian and me. Sam and Martin were the spymasters. Our team got lucky as Joe and Katy were often quite convinced by their different interpretations of Sam’s clues. The clue “rich” made Joe think of “Boom” and Katy think of “chocolate”.

Our team had a smoother path, although Martin risked ire with “mouse-click”. It helped us win the game, although Katy checked the rules and say that hyphenated words aren’t allowed.

Another game was tried, this time with Joe as spymaster to Katy, Sam and Ian and on the other team Chris as spymaster to Martin and I. We shot into a 5-1 lead, only for them to pull it back to 6-6. It was tense, but slow and Martin found time to play Wir Sind Das Wolk! on his phone during the downtime. But on our last turn, Martin and I were pretty sure of two of the three we had to get and Chris set us up with a simple clue for the other one. We were done, bang, bang, bang.

On the division, Katy’s run of form (eight wins in the last ten games) means she surely has the medal table sown up, and the Points title is probably hers, too. Adam holds onto Points Ratio.

Viva Lords Vegas!

Unable to make it over to Easton for tuesday games, I decided to form a splinter group. I cheekily pinched Tim, who'd already made clear his intention to be there, and enlisted Will, who has somehow dropped off the email list repeatedly (we sorted this out last night and hopefully he'll become a regular face again). Harriet, Tim's partner and a keen gamer in her own right, made up the fourth, and when they all arrived I had laid out a few possibilities on the table.

One of these was The Magnates, the hilarious game about the 17th Century Polish/Lithuanian Commonwealth! Okay it's probably not hilarious, but it does look rather fine - it's a reimplementation  of Martin Wallace's God's Playground, which I think I remember hearing he designed as a challenge after being told it was impossible to create a game out of the history of Poland. The Magnates looks like a fairly light, historically themed area control game, with potential for co-ersion and threatening behaviour in a tidy 60-90 mins - we should play soon. It's pretty too.

On arrival, however, Will had said he was looking for a recommendation for a game to play with his family over christmas - and we both agreed that the Polish/Lithuanian Commonwealth might not be the most approachable theme. I had also brought out Lords of Vegas, and it seemed that might fit the bill nicely. Plus, LORDS OF VEGAS!

We were under the gun slightly trying to squeeze the full game into an hour and half before Hat had to go and pick their youngest two up from the Old Vic, so the rules explanation was fairly rudimentary and carried on as we got playing. It was a fairly chaotic game - Charlotte arrived home half way through and she and Hat began to chat about other, less important stuff - but Tim, Will and I pushed on gamely.

It was a game characterised by a lack of silver casinos - no one seemed bothered to build them for the first half, so there were a few rounds where very little money poured into people's pockets. By the time Hat had to leave we hadn't finished, but we felt able to play her last few rounds for her, and she was lagging behind fairly substantially on account of having actual conversations.

In the end it was a very close run thing - Although Will and I were up in the tens before Tim was even off the mark score-wise, by the end we were neck and neck and neck. On Tim's last turn he chose to reorganise several casinos on the strip and handed me three sixes, which made me the new boss of at least one going concern on the strip. I was next, and flipped the Game Over card. The strip paid out and we were all three tied for the win on a fairly low 23 points.

Since we all seemed to be rolling in cash by that point, we had to add up the payout, and I thought I would sneak the win on account of Tim's generous re-orgs - but as it turned out dark horse Will had $60 million plus, I had $56m and Tim something like $35m. As Tim pointed out, had he not blown his dough on ill-fated reorganisations he would have won on cash, though it's possible Will would have pipped us both to the next points level since the re-orgs had wrestled a casino from him to me. 

They all enjoyed it, and I happily agreed to pilot a game for Will and family when they buy their copy.  Can you imagine me turning down a game of LoV? I thought not.

Will 23 ($65m)

Joe 23 ($56m)

Tim 23 ($35m)