Mille Fury

With a multitude of people unable to make Tuesday games for various reasons, including being elsewhere in the country or watching the football, it was a relatively small attendance. With Anja and Steve volunteering to host, Martin and I (Ian) headed up the short distance up the Bristol-Bath Railway path - there was a moment where it looked like we might have a fifth attendee as Adam cycled past, but he was on his way to watch the aforementioned football. Still, 4 is a fine number for games.

When we arrived though, Anja was settling Lennon to bed, and Louis, having recently turned into an actual teenager, was too busy with email admin relating to his VR headset to play stuffy old boardgames, so we were temporarily a three. Martin, Steve and I played Jungo first – classic Jungo rules, not the Hachi Train variant. Fate smiled on me as I had some very lucky cards and after picking up some played cards was able to play 7 ones in a single turn. My luck meant I reached the winning condition of 2 fairly swiftly.

Ian – 2

Martin – 0

Steve – 0

We then played an edition of Timeline – I can’t recall the exact theme, but it just seemed to be “events”, but again fate smiled on me as one of my cards was “The Extinction of Dinosaurs” which seemed such an outlier compared to anything else it felt like cheating. Steve and I both got rid of our cards in the same round. We decided to guess at the remaining card “First Superhero” in a homebrew tiebreaker, whoever guessed the closest would win. I guessed 1936, only slightly earlier than the actual year of 1938.

Ian – no cards left

Steve – no cards left

Martin – 1 card left (I think)

Having settled Lennon Anja was finally free to play games. If it had been Christmas, Anja’s red-and-white arm cast (following a nasty fall down the stairs) would have been very festive, but alas we’re in May. After some brief gaming debate we settled on an old favourite, Mille Fiori.

It was a strange game in some ways, lasting maybe a tad longer than expected but full of twists, and the Townspeople areas relatively untouched for most of the game. Martin had an early lead, but after a slow start I was the first to reach 100 points. Martin scored big in one round and rocketed back ahead. Anja played a steady game throughout though and was able to pull into a comfortable lead when her early placements started allowed to start scoring bonuses. 

There was a lot of swearing with numerous utterances of “bollocks” and Steve, seemingly stuck languishing at the back, could only say “fuck you all” after finding the spaces he wanted to play in repeatedly blocked.

Anja’s consistent approach proved victorious, and Steve regained a lot of ground towards the end for a close finish.

Anja – 205

Martin – 188
Ian – 188
Steve – 178

Next up was Catan – On the Road. This card-based twist on Catan has seen a few plays recently, and it’s good fun. At one point during his trade Steve asked, “Does anyone have a sheep?”, and when Anja offered the said sheep Steve responded, contemplatively “So, you’re offering a sheep?” as if the offer wasn’t the exact request resource. It amused me, anyway.

It became very clear that Martin was going to win on his next turn, unless we could stop him. We tried, and Steve agonized over his final choice but couldn’t catch up to Martin, who ended the game as expected.

Martin – 7
Steve – 6
Ian – 5
Anja – 3

Steve retired at this point, leaving Anja, Martin and I to play a final game of Misfits. I do wonder if playing an arm in a cast would hinder Anja slightly, and a couple of tower collapses on her go seemed to suggest this could be case, but I also experienced a collapse leaving Martin to dispose of his pieces with relative ease. As usual, Misfits gave rise to wonderfully pleasant constructions best represented with pictures.

And with that Martin and I headed back to Greenbank, another lovely games night. Thanks all.

Bread

Anja and Steve were our hosts last night and Joe was kind enough to give me (Sam) and Martin a lift over.  Adam cycled from Easton and Louie greeted us on arrival. The first thing I noticed - after complaining that the lounge lighting didn't suit gaming - was Steve's lack of a front tooth, which prompted a fairly sorry tale of infections and operations, which Louie helpfully concluded "Then they yanked it out of his face". Steve nodded and maybe started thinking about pirates. With Anja upstairs settling Lennon, we kicked things off with the Allegedly Greatest Card Game Of All Time, Flip 7. 

I began a stolidly willing-to-stick journey towards 200 points whilst Steve regularly busted, and so did Martin despite being seemingly dealt a Second Chance card (or two) in every round. He unfortunately also drew several Flip 3 cards when he was the only player left in, forced to play them on himself. Joe pulled off an actual Flip 7: seven cards of different values, which instantly ends the round and gives him 15 bonus points. He was excited for a minute but I was a bit slow with the camera. 

This mini-spectacular was enough to push him past both Louie and Adam and over the finish line!

Joe 207
Louie 198
Adam 190
Sam 124
Steve 94
Martin 35

Steve was so upset he broke a chair. Around now the host's bread-making machine started some plaintive beeping that continued for a while as Steve wondered what it wanted, like a robot pet. I made a joke about it being needy that got mistaken for a pun about it being kneady, and we played Timeline.

As youngest player Louie kicked things off as Martin and I both pronounced ourselves happy with our cards - we just had one each we weren't sure about. Unfortunately we both got them wrong, and then their replacements wrong, and meantime Louie was bashing down the reliable combo of Emergence of the Dinosaurs and Extinction of the Dinosaurs. His young brain full of not only facts but retention, he wrapped up a joint win with Joe in pretty short order - Steve was second with one card left as Martin and I rejoiced in our shared misery.

We split into two groups. Louie was allowed one short game so he crewed up with Joe and Martin for Callisto, Knizia's iteration of Blokus, whilst the rest of us - now joined by bread-machine placater Anja, set about dicking each other over in the theme-devoid world of Inori. 

Callisto follows Blokus' rhythm up to a point - keep placing your pieces whilst you still can - but here they must be orthogonally adjacent, and you have up to three towers (two at the start) to build from. Leftover pieces score you points, and points are bad. 

In Inori, meanwhile, we are offering up sacrifices to <someone or other> and trying to be the most sacrificial, I guess. Mechanically it's a worker-placement game (the offerings) and you get rewards of various coloured tokens, and ways to score them: via one of the worker spots on a card, and/or if a card is fully populated at the end of the round, meaning there are temporary and reluctant alliances in order to score. I was too busy being screwed over to take pictures, but here's one from earlier:

On the left is the Sacred Tree, which also has worker offering spots for the juicy goodies there. Critical here is that the person in each spot gets to choose the colour assigned to it, which in turn will determine the worth of your tokens - if you have the most or second-most - at the end of the game. In the above example, blue and red tokens are valuable, and purple worthless. 

Adam cottoned on to things pretty quickly, but it was Steve who rattled away up the track with some tactical scoring. I suffered a little Explainer's Curse and we all came a cropper of the fact I forget when Anja joined to make it four-player we should have had one less offering each! Sorry all.

While the theme is about as tangible as yesterday's fart, the opportunities for dickishness could be felt and heard in our yelps of indignation. Callisto finished with a victory for Joe, Louie went to bed and as we hit our final round Joe and Martin played Marabunta, Knizia's roll-and-write knife-fight. I took no pictures again! Sorry. 

Inori wrapped up with a tragedy for Steve as he realised he'd blocked himself out of his own big move, and asked us why we didn't point it out to him. "I didn't notice!" I said.
"I didn't notice" Anja said.
"I didn't notice" Adam smiled evilly. 

I made a decent fist of some endgame scoring but Steve, who had specialised in the least valuable tokens, picked up just two points as Anja and Adam hurtled off down the track, eventually sharing a tightly-fought win!

Anja and Adam: 68 each

Sam 55

Steve 34

The bread machine began beeping again as Adam left for home and I got to see the frankly marvellous transformation of our hosts's front room. 

Then the three of us cracked through a quick round of Callisto: Anja and Steve got all their pieces down and I scored a disappointing 7 points. 

Joe beat Martin 12-10 at Marabunta, and announced he'd won everything he'd played so far. The five of us came together for a post-10pm bash at Bomb Busters. We got off to an underwhelming start as both Steve and I made imperfect guesses, losing two lives before we'd even completed round one. 

But we rallied, and never lost another thanks to our collective bomb-busting skills. But it wore Steve out, and after mulling over sawing off his leg to complete his Modern Pirate look, he actually went to bed. Is that a first for GNN? I know children have done it before. Anja stayed up with us to play So Clover, a game notable for its propensity to make everyone complain just by looking at some words. 

We all had our doubts that our combos were clue-able, with Martin and I in particular castigating our fate. But in fairness we did quite well! Our first three clovers were all maximum sixers, and on Martin's we just had a mini-stumble and picked up 4 points instead. 

Joe reviewed the latter part of the evening and decided that Bomb Busters and So Clover also counted as wins for him, giving him six <somewhat dubious> 'victories in a row. I think we perhaps refer this to Andrew, as Holder of the Spreadsheet, and see what he says. But either way, it was time to go home, before the bread maker started beeping again. 

Old Friends

T'was the games night before Christmas...  an intimate affair, with various regulars absent for a variety of reasons, including flying to the US, landmark family birthdays and gigs. And so just Adam H, Ian and I (Joe) convened at Steve and Anja's at 7.45pm for a night of classic GNN frolics.

While Anja did a bit of  last-minute adulting elsewhere, the rest of us plus Louie played Timeline. It was fun to revisit this old friend (a theme that would recur this evening), and we mostly got things right, until Louie and Adam finished the round with no cards each, forcing a chronological head to head. They both failed this, which meant they had to do it again, and Adam thought he was a shoo-in with the invention of GPS. His swagger turned to dismay as he discovered that it was invented before the launch of the first Space Shuttle (though with hindsight that seems reasonable) and Louie rejoiced in his unshared victory. 

Louie WIN!

Everyone else LOSE!

Anja arrived on the scene at this point, and we debated the merits of a 6 player versus two 3-ers. The 6-ers on offer didn't satisfy Louie's criteria for a 'proper' game - I've never heard the word 'Kites' uttered with such deep disdain - and thus we split into two 3s. Ian, Steve and Anja set up Mille Fiori at one end, whilst Adam, Louie and I reacquainted ourselves with another old friend, Dominion.

We played the 'Big Money' variant, and it didn't disappoint - Louie utilised several Adventurers to explore his deck for coins, whilst Adam used several Laboratories (pronounced 'Bloboratories' for reasons forgotten) to chain some big moves. I set to Mining, and it worked quite well in conjunction with my Throneroom; we launched into the points-harvesting phase of the game with all in contention.

It was close, but Adam took the win with 33 points. I had 30, and Louie 29.

Mille Fiori was drawing to a close, and Ian seemed to have discovered an overlooked rule - that the offer gets restocked at the end of the round not only with players' discards but also one card per player from the deck. I'm not sure I've played that way before, but I could be wrong. Martin will tell us in the comments.

The final scores were Ian winning with 198, Anja a close second with 192, and Steve elbowing various delicate glass objets onto the workshop floor with 162.

Whilst they finished up and Louie retired, Adam and I debated what next for us five. Adam, as noted by Ian, attempted a bit of Derren Brown-style subliminal influencing by asking me aloud what game we should 'railroad' the others into playing.

Perhaps it worked. I'd brought 20th Anniversary Ticket to Ride Europe, and as we got the bits out to admire its sumptuous stylings, positive noises from the other end of the table suggested it might fit the bill. So while the others packed MF away, we tried to understand the implications of the various route tickets, which can be combined for all sorts of variants. In the end we used all the base and 1912 tickets, plus Big Cities. Lots of tickets.

Steve made the excellent suggestion of using the Team Asia card holders; being able to see your destinations all at once really helps, it turns out! We started off all clustered around Paris, for some reason; apart from Steve, who built Roma to Brindisi on his very first go. And then ignored this little branch line for much of the game. Adam adammed, meaning top-decked like a mofo, and Ian followed suit. As did Anja. Ok ok, I did too a bit - what can you do?

The board gradually spidered out from Paris - it was feisty and tense (though I felt relatively un-messed-with), and there were various agonised noises coming from Steve, who seemed to feel unfit for the role of early 20th Century rail magnate.

Here's a distinctly unsophisticated time-lapse of the game...

Eventually Adam blew the final whistle, and on my final turn I gambled on a six link tunnel from Budapest to Kyiv, which paid off. Steve, Ian and Adam had nothing to do on their last turns, and all weighed up the option of taking more tickets, but balked. We turned over the top three to see if they should have taken the plunge, and there was a collective sigh of relief - except from Anja, who it turned out could have made all three!

Anja did take the longest route bonus, however; and then we started the final scoring from Steve, who was in last place. In the final tally, Adam held on to his crown as master of TTR in style, with over 30 point separating him from me in second place.

Adam 160

Joe 129

Anja 120

Ian 111

Steve 73

The final board state in all it's sumptuosity

It was quarter to midnight, shockingly, so we hastily packed away and tootled off (so hastily I forgot my jumper). Thanks S&A - it was a lovely final games night before Christmas, and great to play some old favourites.

Chippencon!

Friday

With Paul J the quiet instigator of the idea, the old London branch of GNN coalesced this weekend at Chris's house in Chippenham: as well as the host, Paul J and myself there was Paul H for the duration, Stuart on Friday night and then Andrew on Saturday. 

But all this was ahead of us as I arrived at midday on Friday and after catching up with Jacquie and the kids, Chris and I shot off to collect Paul J from the station. Then after a second-wave newsbeat, we started gaming! We kicked things off with Babylonia, new to both Paul and Chris but a relatively easy teach. 

We played slightly too open, having the full board instead of the slightly condensed one for three, but that made it an easier learning game:

Sam 149

Chris 147

Paul 99

And now familiar with it, both were enthusiastic for another crack.

My long and arduous master-and-apprentice defeats at the hands of Martin stood me in good stead once more:

Sam 123

Paul 99

Chris 96

Lovely to find two more converts! We moved on to Sushi Go, the game of card-drafting Japanese foodstuffs. Owing to a misunderstanding over chopsticks, I ruled myself out of contention after round one, but it's not exactly a grind.

Paul 72

Chris 59

Sam 46

 Paul began a four-game winning run here, following his Sushi Go triumph with victories in Alhambra:

Kingdomino...

And Kingdom Builder.

Chris was appalled to finish third in every instance, voicing aloud his regret at the very idea of Chippencon. Things didn't improve immediately for him when Paul H arrived, as we kicked off with Tournament Raj and despite a huge last-round haul, he still finished last. Paul J and I slugged it out for first place, but he shrugged me off to claim a fifth victory in a row!

Paul J 60

Sam 51

Paul 45

Chris 33

With tea consumed - thank you Chris and Jacquie - and Stuart freshly arrived, we fancied something a bit feistier now, and so I talked them through the rules of Hansa Teutonica. 

Despite my encouragements to get sabotaging. everyone was very polite at the start and the first couple of rounds were slightly after-you-sir. But soon enough we were getting in each other's way and the cussing ramped up slightly. The initial sense of being hobbled by two actions fell away as we proliferated across the board and engines kicked into gear. 

After an hour of cross-postal interference, Stuart leapt from an innocuous fourth place into joint first with Chris, and I couldn't quite catch them. We checked the rules for a tie-breaker and Chris' fewer actions-per-turn won him the game!

Chris 38 wins tiebreaker 

Stuart 38

Sam 37

Paul H 29

Paul J 25

Now into the meat of the evening, we debated our five-player options. Paul J was understandably reluctant to learn another set of rules at this point, so we alighted on Istanbul, needing a mostly-fringe-area refreshment on rules. I forgot to take any photos at this point, but suffice to say Paul H was now warmed-up and moved through the gears to wrap up a relatively straightforward win, grabbing his fifth gem with the rest of us at least two turns away from doing likewise:

Paul H five gems!!!!

Sam  4 gems 31 cash 

Paul J 4 gems 6 cash

Stuart 4 gems 1 cash 

Chris 3 gems 13 cash 

The hour was getting late so with the request for something 'silly' I suggested Block Party.

Although this meant another set of rules, the fact they only take about 45 seconds to explain meant we were off and running quickly. And Chris made a banana. 

"I tried to bend it" he cried, but it mattered not: Stuart identified it. I guessed Paul H's spider and he saw the fire engine in my creation. We all ran the highs and lows of emotions - my milk bottle was alleged to be a snowman, a mountain, and an igloo - but ultimately the last game of the night saw Chris triumph:

Chris 11

Sam 10

Paul and Paul 8

Stuart 7

Saturday

I surfaced at around 8.15 to an extremely muggy day. We threw opens doors and windows to try and get some air into the house. Chester enjoyed having all these access points to the house. 

As well as the visiting articles to investigate. 

After breakfast, Jacquie liked the idea of trying out Block Party, so we did. Despite some creative performance anxiety, her debut creation was this beautiful pineapple:

However despite a frankly shambolic attempt at a door (in dubious colour choices of grey and pink) Chris triumphed again. I lost track of where Jacquie, Paul J and I finished.

Apart from that intense Block Party workout it was a fairly lazy morning. Paul H returned at 11am and while Chris prepped the chilli for later, he talked Paul J and I through the workings of Imhotep.

I think I played this about eight years ago, and I found it's piece-of-string machinations just as opaque this time, as players choose whether to add cubes to boats, or sail a full-enough boat to one of several possible destinations. It's fun, but I am really awful at judging anything being a good decision, and my focus on building a massive Burial Chamber didn't match up to the canny shenanigans of the Pauls, with Paul J claiming a debut victory!

Paul J 49

Paul H 41

Sam 39

Then with Chris back at the table, we returned to Babylonia. 

This was a corker, as leads between the Pauls and Chris ebbed and flowed whilst I languished back on a measly five points, hoping to draw enough farmers to use my ziggurat power. They didn't arrive and I had to focus my efforts building a central network that Chris spotted was going to haul me in some juicy points when they started paying out. I agreed, but I didn't think I'd close the now huge gap between Paul J (at this point) on something like 110 while I was back in the 30's somewhere. But as it turned out, it was damn close!

Chris 138

Sam 136

Paul J 130

Paul H 107

A baptism of fire for Paul H, then, but the next game - after our classic Lunch of Beige - was one he knew intimately: Eclipse! 

This was Chris's second-edition version, with some minor rules modifications (and one less round) and some faction asymmetry, but largely the same narrative: early rounds are developing tech and kitting out ships, building towards a massive bunfight at the end. Except here the bunfight never really materialised: Paul H and I established an alliance, and Chris and Paul J did the same.  Chris considered attacking Paul H, but decided against it because it looked like a death wish.

My dreams of peaceful expansion were undone by poor planning and ill fortune and I spent a few rounds only doing two actions and then passing early. The others expanded more successfully and built monstrously-violent death machines of the cosmos in a sort of cardboard cold war.

Then at the death Chris attacked the central hex and quickly reenforced his dominance there. He tried to take some hexes off me but didn't roll what he needed and we all eyed him warily. Oddly, his aggression went unrewarded in the sense of point-scoring, with Paul H's 'In Bed With the Ancients' faction grabbing victory:

Paul H 33

Paul J and Sam 32 each

Chris 30

Though it was certainly not a damp squib, I didn't enjoy Eclipse as much as I used to. It's a long haul to get to the more-exciting finale (caveat: my adjacency to that was more my fault than the games') and at times it feels a bit like a slightly protracted drum-roll. There's a lot to consider as well, and if it's a more elegant construction than Xia's everything-by-dice, it doesn't feel as stupidly fun. 

Speaking of dice, though, next up - after the very delicious chilli, and a quick sortie to the shops - was Las Vegas. It's not a game that supplies quite the epic narrative Eclipse does, but it was a nice pallet-cleanser:

Sam $510k

Paul J $470

Chris $380

Paul H $280

We knew Andrew was imminent, but just had enough time for another four-hander in the little-seen (by me at least) Timeline! I couldn't help but notice a seam of dark comedy in the images, with a number of characters looking vaguely psychotic.

Paul H won this. I discovered the refrigerator was invented much earlier than I'd anticipated, but now with crushing inevitability the exact year escapes me.

Paul H wins

Sam and Paul J 1 card

Chris 2 cards 

Andrew arrived just as we finished and after the briefest of catch-ups the discussion of what to play as a five began. Dominant Species? A bit long. Twilight Imperium? Very long. Istanbul? A bit short. We settled on Lords of Waterdeep. With no Martin or Ian present I elected to play green, so the colour/game combo made it feel a bit like 2010, as Prince used to sing.

Early on it was fairly even - I shot off on the scoretrack to 32 but had a bunch of skulls that made my actual score a current 14. Paul H pulled ahead and played some dastardly intrigue that balanced out revealing his Lord with the fact we couldn't target him all game. That was a bummer. Meanwhile I pulled ahead again, and Chris targeted me with one of those bastard mandatory quests that I'm definitely not still sore about. Andrew mostly chuckled at the names of the quests.

Incredible scenes at the end as Paul H pulled so far ahead it was almost embarrassing. My late game recovery wasn't enough to catch a resurgent Chris, and a briefly-dominant Paul J found Andrew had enough to sneak past him in the final count.

Paul H 166

Chris 148

Sam 144

Andrew 134

Paul J 131

After twelve hours of gaming I suddenly got hit by an ocular migraine, and had to play my final game (Incan Gold) with my eyes largely closed and Chris communicating events to me ("Zombie Lady!"). Paul J and Chris lacked our frugal conservatism and, falling behind, risked life and limb - and ultimately lost life and limbs - in wild attempts to recover.

In the end, however, it was Paul H who took yet another win!

PH 34

Andrew 32

Sam 26

Chris 20

PJ 0

And at this point, with my vision no better, I had to take myself to a dark room. It was a bit of a underwhelming way to end Chippencon and I was gutted to miss Chris and Andrew take on the Pauls in Decrypto! The Pauls won, though what the words and dramas were maybe we'll learn in the comments.

Thanks to Chris Jacquie and kids for putting up with us all, and everyone attending for making it fun.  

Beta Testing

Thursday: after early-evening Timeline and The Mind (we crashed and burned on level 8) with the boys, Adam and Ian and I (Sam) regarded the alcove of joy deciding what to play. Adam suggested Caverna, which made Ian and I both nervous. Even his pointing to the box playtime (half an hour per player) didn't entirely convince us that this was 8.30 start-time fare. Plus of course we'd be fighting for second place from the get-go: far better to make Adam play a new game in the hope he wouldn't instantly master it and comprehensively beat us.

You can probably guess where this is going...

We settled on Beta Colony, the curiously-produced (looks very 1980s) puzzle in space. Round and round the central rondel we circled, choosing which pods to build where and when, as we collectively constructed the game's three colonies. We discovered that blue pods were water and pink pods were habitations. Adam asked why they had an apple on them. I said that's what they eat in space.

The game does offer a classic push/pull between points now or points later. Points now was the route Ian took, as he forewent the majority scoring in the colonies and focused on objectives at the end of the three cycles. He even (more than once!) sacrificed artefacts in order to use them as resources: this is like burning down the Acropolis to keep the chill off.

I started out trying to go big on colony majorities but kept getting distracted. Partly by Adam's ruthless efficiency, as he steered a clinical line between my route and Ian's: scoring enough points to keep him on Ian's tail, whilst also building a presence in one colony (the one I'd neglected) that bordered on over-population.

We all stood at various times: it was one of those games. Ian even put his foot on the chair like he was on the verge of dashing off on some great adventure.

I thought I had a devastating (or effective, at least) last couple of rounds planned out, when I'd get the statue that rewarded resources and then do some decent harbouring of said resources - but I hadn't realised we were actually on the final round already; and even a do-over suggested by Ian and Adam couldn't save my score. This is why they don't give astronauts Merlot:

Adam 86
Ian 71
Sam 64

The victor cycled off into the night whilst Ian and I nursed our wounds over a quick game of Railroad Ink. Turns out drunkenness isn't a route-planner thing either, as we both scored pretty low. I pipped Ian by the narrowest of margins!

Sam 41
Ian 40

A very nice night of puzzles. Thanks chaps!