Four Tribes. Five Days.

Five days in Dorset with four families - Joe's, mine (Sam), our friends Tom and Hannah (plus Theo and Esme) and Alison and Simon (plus Elliott). It's something of a tradition now, as this was the third year running we piled into a rambling 1930's house and indulged ourselves in fine wine, fine food and of course, games.

It's only really myself and Joe who are committed gamers, but Tom, Simon and most of the children are at least intrigued, and often keen. It was amazing to watch how young children will pick up a game very quickly, whereas some of the adults will start to glaze over, defeated, as soon as there is a third or fourth rule.

I'd brought along a few games and Joe a few more. We both had a new purchase with us - Istanbul for me, and Machi Koro for Joe. Both were big hits.

Image courtesy JackyTheRipper

Machi Koro is a game of dice and cards. Thematically each player is building a city, and they grow from their initial two cards (Bakery and Wheat Field)) by generating money to build more buildings (or other things, such as the curiously un-urban Forest), which beget more money, which beget more buildings and so on. The first player to build four specific landmark buildings - Radio Tower, Train Staion, etc - wins. Personally I didn't get on with it. A series of rubbish dice rolls and consistent strategic ineptitude on my part in three attempts all ended with me soundly beaten and somewhat frustrated. But I was the sole voice of dissent, as Joe, Tom, Simon and the kids played it serially over the five days to much appreciation. I think Tom usually won.

Istanbul won the Kennerspiel des Jahres, the award for the "Gamers Game" this year, apparently seeing off Concordia in doing so. I don't know if it's the better game, but it's certainly more accessible. It's slightly reminiscent of Five Tribes in layout and movement, but any similarities end there, as the game moves much faster and finishes much quicker. Each player is trying to be the first to get a number of gems - 6 in a two-player game, 5 with more. Everyone has a merchant they move around the variable set-up board, dropping off assistants to do tasks in worker-placement style. You can try and generate money and buy gems, or pay for them with resources. Getting certain in-game bonuses or extras will also get you a gem. Key to the game is movement - you can only do the action of a building if you're dropping off or picking up an assistant, so you can't go scattergun all over the place.   I played this as a two, three, and four player and enjoyed them all - admittedly I won them all, but Tom never played it.

 Image courtesy Kenneth Hiew

Cube Quest was also a big hit, particularly with the kids. Big Joe and I spent a good deal of our time searching for cubes behind or under furniture as the flicking velocity increased. It's a great leveller, Cube Quest. I won a few games - but I also lost to both Little Joe and Stanley, and Stanley defeated Tom (Tom!) with possibly the Flick of the Trip - a two-mat sniper-style hit on Tom's King.

Little Joe prepares for battle

Possibly the biggest hit, though, was a variation on many party games which Alison introduced: one by one the adults chose a book and read out the title, and blurb on the back. Then everyone wrote their own opening line to the book in question, and they were all (including the real one) read out. Points are awarded for a correct guess and for anyone who guesses your own faked effort. I won this game narrowly but it helped me massively that, being only fairly drunk in a room full of paralytic people - courtesy of some extremely strong margaritas - I had my wits reasonably about me. I have never seen Joe as drunk as during this game. I'm not sure I've seen anyone as drunk as Joe during this game. He fell off his chair three times, went outside for a mysterious 'walk', and fell asleep upstairs during the last round whilst the children - still up to witness events - regarded us all with appalled, yet justified, disdain. The game definitely benefited from our inebriation though, as well as an impressive collection of 1950's literature on the house's bookshelves - titles including The Swish of the Curtain, The Houses Inbetween, Destination Unknown - and best of all Gently Sahib, the story of a tiger killing someone in a sleepy England town and poor old Detective Gently assigned to investigate. Our own investigation of the novel itself featured a fleeting appearance of Sausages and Mash, the game of reading out sections of a book and turning any words beginning with S or M into 'sausages' or 'mash' - or variations thereof. No-one - or maybe everyone - is a winner with this venture.

Our rival to Simonen

Other games were played - Dominion, Fauna, Camel Up and X-wing (basic version). The latter three were curiously flat: Charlotte admitted Fauna had never lived up to its first play when there was hysteria over the Bushy-Tailed Gerd. Though we played to the end nobody requested it again. I had a disaster, finishing stony last and embarrassing myself by thinking Balearic music came from Central America. Music and geography - not my specialisms. I tended to focus on the map and not guess at length and weight that much. Personally I really struggle with weight once you get beyond a pound - I've realised I measure weight in terms of cheese.

Dominion, and Elliott's leg.

But Fauna was probably the success of the non-successes; Camel Up was okay but it lacks the immediacy of something like Cube Quest, and actually is a tiny bit fiddly rules-wise for something that plays in 20 minutes. X-Wing I really need to learn the proper rules to, as the base game - played by Elliott and I - is fairly dull. I'll bring it along to GNN and let Matt teach me! Trans Europa also saw the table at one point early on, and the eerily prescient event of Tom winning happened. I think apart from Fauna and Cube Quest he may have won every game he played.

Take It Easy got played a couple of times, with Joe beating me in a two player, and I'm not sure who won the group game. Probably Tom. Wizard also made the table, although I only witnessed a small part of the game which was Theo going for every single trick in two subsequent rounds. Tom won.

Simon won Dominion (Tom didn't play) in a tie-breaker with Elliott, who had a bit of a crazy week overall. On the second night he fell out of a tree and broke his leg in two places. He spent a night in hospital and then returned with his limb in a cast and recommenced gaming, albeit more statically before. As someone who can generate a few days' worth of complaint about a split nail, I take my hat off to his calm stoicism throughout the whole episode. He also - pre-break - beat myself and Theo at Raj, when I picked up two minus cards thanks to the boys tying on lower bids. A late surge when the boys were left with low-numbered cards was not enough to catch up. Oh Raj! Why dost thou forsake me so?

There were also several games of Top Trumps, both Stan's several-years-out-of-date European Football Stars deck (Tom beat Stan) and Joe's Transformers version. I now know that Optimus Prime travelled to Earth after thousands of years in search of the Allspark, only to find his nemesis Megatron awaiting him. Poor Optimus.

Vegas, and the crossword

We didn't spend the whole time at the table. There was walking and beaches and Lyme Regis and football and cycling and even mushroom foraging, leading to the discovery of the Shaggy Ink Cap, which is non-poisonous unless eaten with alcohol, or even (apparently) combined with potent aftershave. Simon already knew this, as he recounted the fact that Georgians tried to cure alcoholism by feeding the afflicted with the shaggy ink cap, and thus supplying them with non-fatal yet lingering hangover symptoms.

We didn't need mushrooms for that.

Shaggy

On the last night we played (Las) Vegas (Tom won) early in the evening, and Joe's plan for Lords of Vegas as the main event were stymied by lengthy meals and lengthier chat, including Joe himself coming up with the tagline for the relaunched Soda Stream: Force Air Through It! He did still try and push Lords of Vegas through, but at 10.40pm, my shying away from it dissuaded others. Sorry Joe. Instead they played Long Shot, the game of betting on plastic horses. In fact that's what he, Tom and Simon are playing now as I write. All that remains to be seen is who finishes second behind Tom. I'm going to bed.

Aisha

My first thought when I learned who was coming tonight was "We can play I'm the Boss!". This is not Sam's favourite game, but he wasn't in attendance tonight and there were six of us - the perfect number! 
It was only once we were all assembled; Andrew, Ian, Matt, Gonz, Martin and I, and I went to dig out the game, that I  remembered I'd loaned it to Sam on Sunday for set-dressing on Box Fresh, the board game sitcom he's currently shooting. Bah!

So we played Igloo Pop to warm up. This was new to Gonz and Matt, and it seems one's ears need time to attune - Ian had no such issues, presumably having used a Tibetan ear candle before his arrival in preparation.  

Ian 23
Joe/Martin 13
Andrew 12
Gonz 11
Matt 9

We then split in to two groups of three, and performed the obligatory 15 minute discussion about what to play, eventually arriving at Lords of Vegas and Manila, by way of Vikings anda brief flirtation with Mars, Red Planet. 

Andrew, Ian and Matt set up Manila, and Martin and I brought Gonz up to speed on Lords of Vegas. We had a custom dice-arena, poker chips and even proper Vegas-style dice for gambling; we were all set. 

Vegas as seen from the shores of Manila

Half an hour in, and I was absolutely dead in the Vegas dust. I often find with LoV, much like Settlers of Catan, one player is shut out early on, with no hope of catching up. Tonight this seemed to be my lot, as Gonz and Martin sped off up the scoreboard,and I languished at three points. It seemed to be a two-horse race, despite Martin's reassurance that the game has more swing than Sinatra at the Oasis. But two things happened that turned my game around. First Gonz reorganised a 6 point green casino on the strip, and after three re-rolls for conflicting bosses, I came out on top.

It was agony to watch, but the end-result was my first real showing on the board. And the second piece of luck was that my new shiny green casino paid out on the next three turns, or thereabouts. It was unbelievable, but I was suddenly back in the running. Coupled with this, Martin's game had stalled, after he painted several of his casinos a dodgy shade of pink, which resolutely failed to pay out. As soon as all the greens had come out, the game ended, which was frankly the perfect point of me, and after the strip paid out, we were tied for points, meaning money in hand was the tie-breaker. It was one of the highest scoring games I've played I think; and had I not wrestled control of that green casino, Gonz may have achieved the mythic insta-win of 70 points.

The amazing three-way tie.

Earlier in the game, when I had no chance of catching up, I'd counselled Gonz on the importance of holding onto some money at the end, as in my experience there was often a tie for points. That came back to bite me, as Gonz had a healthy stack of chips for the win, and I came second - I have never been happier to come second. It was an awesome, epic game, though had Lady Luck not shined on me in the second half it would have been an enervating 90 minutes that left me cursing the game. But that's Vegas, baby.

Meanwhile, Andrew had taught Ian and Matt Manila, and these were the scores - shaping up to be a good night for Ian:

Ian 122
Matt 97
Andrew 88

They moved on to TransEuropa, the sequel to TransFattyAcids, and these were the scores:

Andrew 2
Matt 7
Ian 8

The birth of the railways

Andrew, exhausted from his part in shooting Box Fresh, wandered off in to the night, and we remaining five had a quick game of Port Royal. Except we discovered that a five player game of Port Royal is not so quick. I think it took us about an hour. It was fun, as always, but my mind was still on Vegas; I was proudly standing in front of my huge 9 point emerald green casino, Danke Schoen by Wayne Newton ringing in my ears. When the music faded, Port Royal was over and Ian had his third comfortable win of the evening.

Ian 12
Martin 10
Gonz 9
Matt 8 (most money)
Joe 8

Everyone wandered off in to the night, and I settled down to consider a title for the blog. Yurt Cobain had come up in conversation last time we played Igloo Pop, in considering possible sequels to that game. It fits the bill particularly well I think, but if successful, the franchise could run and run: Tent Reznor? Marquee Mark? Caravan Morrison?

In the end I went for something a little more cryptic - there's a prize for the first person who can explain the relevance of word Aisha to the evening's proceedings.

Meanwhile, let's all raise a glass to a new name to top the form table: Ian's recent run of good form mean that he's the man of the moment right now.

						Points
Ian	1	3	1	2	1	8
Andrew	1	3	3	2	1	10
Martin	2	3	2	1	2	10
Sam	1	2	3	3	2	11
Gonz	3	1	4	1	3	12
Joe	5	2	2	3	1	13
Matt	4	2	2	5	2	15
Will	2	4	2	3	5	16
Anja	2	5	5	5	5	22
Steve	4	5	5	5	5	24

Elephant Memory

Friday night saw the three of us resume gaming competition following the holiday break. Carrying on with our new 'out of the hat' selection process, Jacquie adopting the role of glamorous assistant drew out Taj Mahal and Trans Europa. We only needed the briefest of rule reminders before playing and felt quite pleased that we didn't make any mistakes the whole time.

The time gap since the last play had been sufficient to prevent any of us remembering any solid strategy although I justified my statement of "quite loving elephants" to take the early goods tiles. James grabbed the plus 2 points special card which he used to great effect whereas Paul fell behind after losing out to some aggressive bidding from me. His time was to come however as the game has this lovely balancing mechanism that means staying in the bidding sees that you collect fewer cards therefore reducing your ability to compete later on.

And so it was, the daunting lead generated by James and myself was clawed back and passed by Paul and his massive fist of bidding cards. When it came to the final visit I was down to two cards. I put one down that would entitle me to place two palaces, nick a few special cards and be the first to take my new cards from the 5 on the table (You score special cards and the colour you have most of at the end) and hope that the guys would contest the resources and lay elephant cards. The planets must have been in alignment because my luck held out and thats what happened. The finest of margins are the difference between final scores in this game as I pipped Paul by 2 points.

And thats how it finished folks.

Chris - 59
Paul - 57
James - 49

We then hastily set up Trans Europa. The game pretends to be a quick light game but it always takes longer than you think. After we each won a round the scores were 7 for James and myself and 9 for Paul. That was how it ended as time ran out. James and I decided that we would rejoice in our shared victory.

Our table looks like so.
Chris-3
James-2
Paul-0.

Nexus Oops.

Hovering over the game bags (Yes thats right, game bags) the three Bracknellites (Honorary in Paul's case) were unable to make a decision or push forward a preference for the evenings main game. I floated the idea of three player Nexus with the hard sell of three being regarded as the optimum number by blogs and forums alike. Paul, unable to hide his skepticism, graciously accepted and we proceeded to unpack the mutli-various pieces that come with it.

Configured in its three player format the board looked instantly tight and set for conflict. Resources for exploration were randomly placed on the board and after the first few rounds Paul and I looked enviously over at James' industrial heartland churning out a whopping 14 Rubium per turn to our 9. I made early headway to the centre of the board hoping to poach some refineries, the games lifeblood, from James with Paul adopting the same ploy on his flank. Very quickly we began to see why this game is heralded for 3 players. The balance is perfect. In the game I played with four ended up with almost two separate battles on the same map. Downtime was noticeable and it was too slow paced. With three you always feel you are involved in the game even when it isn't your turn because there nearly always is a battle to be fought.

As the war raged on James' early advances had reaped a healthy collection of victory points and was ahead by 5. Then, he found himself fighting hefty battles on two fronts as exchanges between Paul and myself resulted in a stalemate defended weakly by disinterested troops. And anyway, since the winning margin was 12 points James had to be stopped at all costs! Even though we pushed him back and pinched his best refineries James had staged managed his final push to perfection. Breaking out from his home territories with a miner task force and parachuting into a poorly defended hex of mine he vanquished the troops and satisfied several secret mission cards to reach the required 12.

It was a close run thing. I was left wanting to know how the war would've ended even though the battle had been won. In fact James and I did play out one final conflict - Just for the fun of doing it! I was really impressed with how well this game played with 3 and look forward to the net bout.

James - 12
Chris - 7
Paul - 5

We then tried to squeeze in a game of Trans Europa. Everything was going swimmingly until James realised that he had two cards which were meant to be taken out. And we ran out of time. It was decided that this wouldn't contribute to the table. (Although for the record I was winning!)

Two men don't play Cube Quest shocker!

So Paul and I are two thirds of the way through Trans Europa when we started trading our favourite game board based funnies. Possibly initiated by a lame gag that I tried, I regaled / reminded my politely smiling opponent of the time we were all playing Civilisation at my shared flat in Uxbridge. Sam searching around for the right combination of resource cards was heard to exclaim, "Aargh, I'm two fucking short!". Ha! Paul then retold his tale where I was about to leave Sam's for a long late night drive home. On announcing I was quite tired Sam offered "Well you could just crash". Perfect!

Anyway, last night's events didn't offer up any similar gems but it did see three games played out. I was feeling decidedly dodgy due to a persistent neck pain that sometimes makes me quite giddy and sick. Paul proposed that we stick to shorter games and so Roll Through The Ages got a second run out in a week. It was Paul's turn to cop all the pestilence in a reversal of real life events! I was a wash with lovely goods and even had 56 on the stone track. Never seen that before.
Chris 1st
Paul 2nd

Then it was Trans Europa in which I was playing hard ball to Paul's gentleman Jim. In each round I was somehow managing to pip him by one track. The game took a little longer than the advertised box time.
Chris 1st
Paul 2nd

Then we unhoused little Agricola. I had taken the set to my dads for the weekend in the faint hope that we might rekindle our playing of games together. It lasted up until I said "and this little board is your farm". Father is not one to be seen playing with little wooden sheep and cows.

In this closely fought episode though I managed to pip Paul to the post by accumulating more points for things than he did. There was to be no rejoicing in shared victories today.

Chris 1st
Paul 2nd

(At work don't have the scores)

How not to play boardgames.

So I checked the blog and it was about a month ago that the Bracknell three last played Puerto Rico and seeing as we had all stated that we wanted to play it again soon before we forgot the rules that's what we did. However we did forget the rules and after about five turns we collectively began to scour the board looking for ways to generate money. It didn't make sense, it was impossible, something wasn't right. Yes, it turns out that if you don't put dubloons on the roles you don't use each turn, the game is pretty much unplayable.

So what to do. A few half bottomed suggestions later we were starting again. Only this time when we started didn't set the plantation stacks up right. Nor did we set aside 55 colonists. There was still about 40 left when Paul suddenly realised. A quick tot up showed that we had gone 8 over. We ended the game right then and totalled up the scores. Even starting again did little for my score...

James - 38
Paul - 36
Chris - 19

It left an unsatisfactory taste in the mouth, (Unlike the Finest mince pies I bought) so we played Trans Europa to make up for it. Twice.

Paul - 1
James - 6
Chris - 13

Chris - 1
Paul - 8
James - 12

It wasn't until everybody left that I realised we had been doing the scoring the wrong way round. Not that it makes a difference really but still, not a good night for the rules!

Bringing the Taj to Bracknell

image nicked off the net from somewhere

Last night Andrew, Paul and me (Sam) made the trip to Chris' house for a bit of extra-curricular gaming. Andrew and I warmed up in the car with a few word games so we arrived raring to break open Taj Mahal, as Chris had spent the afternoon swotting up and was keen to play.

But Chris had parenting duties to take care of first, so the three of us got a couple of games of Trans-Europa in while Chris' children stared through the kitchen door at us asking what on earth we were doing. As this is the same response we get from most adults we were well-drilled in justifying ourselves, but I'm not sure they were convinced.

Anyway, I - finally! - managed to win a game of Trans-Europa, taking the first game with some elán if I do say so myself:

Sam 1

Paul 12

Andrew 14

But then train-buff Paul called in his all his experience to bludgeon us - Andrew especially - into a pile of twisted iron and splintered sleepers:

Paul 4

Sam 11

Andrew 21

By now Chris had packed his children off into the dungeon of fluffiness and we were ready for the main event: Taj Mahal. I'd actually bought this game for Chris many moons ago, but only today did he pop open the cardboard bits. Deferred gratification allied to iron discipline, or indifferent waffiness? You decide.

As I hope we'll be playing this on a GNN night soon, here's a quick summary of the rules.

The game takes place over 12 rounds, each round represented by a region of India to be contested by the players. How? By playing colour-co-ordinated cards (there are four suits and each player is (usually) obliged to stick with the colour they first lay) and hopefully winning at least one of five categories - Elephants, Viziers, Monks, Generals, and Princesses - all of which are represented on the cards in various combinations. Win the Elephants and you get to pick up goods (more of which in a minute), win any other category and you get to place a Palace - placing a palace scores you a point, and making a chain of palaces through different regions during the course of the game will give you more points. Win more than one category - place more than one palace. Great. But remember you only get one point per region for palaces, so multiple palaces in the same region do not get you multiple points.

How do you win? By having the most of something at the point you withdraw from the bidding. Your used bidding cards go into the discard stack and you place a palace, scoring your point. You then replenish your hand by two cards from a display (or one if you're last to finish) and you're then done for that round. Watch the other players throw their cards down with abandon, possibly weakening their hand in the process!

Winning Viziers, Monks, Generals or Princesses will also mean you get a little character tile of the category in question. You only need to collect two identical tiles to trade them in (involuntarily) for a special card. The special cards can help you in different ways; extra elephants (always helpful) extra victory points (ditto) changing card-colour during card-play (normally forbidden) and an extra Grand Mogul.

Oh, the Grand Mogul. He's a category but unlike the others he doesn't give you a tile or win you a special card. What he does is allow you to place a palace in the region (and score for it as normal) but rather than being tied to available spaces you can place the palace on any space you like - even an occupied one. The benefit of the Grand Mogul is really the fact it can help you make chains of regions even after someone has tried to block you.

So the special cards are very helpful, and unlike normal cards you don't have to discard them after bidding. But you can - and will - get them pinched off you by someone else when they get the two tiles needed to qualify for it. So the special cards can move around a little bit between players.

Back to Elephants then. They look like the poorer brother of the Viziers etc but actually they tend to be the most hotly contested category of all. Partly because they appear on the cards more than any of the other characters, and partly because when you win the Elephants, if you remember, you pick up goods. These score a point each, but crucially, pick up matching goods from another region and you not only score for the goods you picked up, but the chains of goods you're making. Pick up a rice to add to the two rice you already had and that's 1pt for your new good, and 3pts for the chain you've made. In a game of relatively low scores, these can be pivotal.

So that's about it. A couple of things about bidding though - the general rule is you bid one card at a time (and have to follow your own choice of suit) and wait for the bid to come back to you before either adding to your bid or withdrawing. But there are several white cards which are jokers, and you're allowed to lay one of these in addition to your suited card. Having a couple of these in your hand can be very helpful, as you can be a bit bossy with them about what you want.

If you withdraw from the bidding without laying any cards at all, you pick up three cards instead of the standard two. (Last out and you only get one, remember).

Finally there are some little extra chits dotted about randomly that will give you an extra card, an extra good, or an extra couple of points when you lay a palace on them. And finally finally the cards in your hand count for something at the end of the game - 1pt per white card (special cards and jokers) and 1pt-per-card of the suit you have most of.

We really liked it. Andrew did think that it encouraged card-hoarding, but I'm not so sure. If you're not laying cards, you're not picking up points, so it's more about trying to maximise what you get from as few cards laid as possible. If you only have 2 or 3 cards in your hand you'll look weak; if you have quite a few you'll look strong, so there's a little element of bluff to the game as well.

Chris led the game for most of it only to be caught on the final straight as I stampeded into round 12 on the back of my yellow elephants:

Sam 44

Chris 42

Paul 36

Andrew 24

I hope if we play it tonight we can be a little more grown-up about the euphemistic possibilities the game offers. Paul stating that "I can't beat Andy's little man, so I withdraw" had the rest of us sniggering like schoolboys.

We still had time for one last round of Trans-Europa - with 4 players this time - and again Paul came to the fore, finishing just ahead of me as Chris and Andy were swatted off the board:

Paul 3

Sam 4

Andrew 13

Chris 17

So, like the song goes, Reiner's done it again. Thanks to Chris for hosting, I was almost hallucinatory on the drive home so not sure I can make it a regular thing, but it was good to have a change of scene - and a change of game too.

Bonjour Bristol

I go away for two weeks, and we have branches? At least it's not factions.
If this continues we'll be able to have a Eurovision style contest - 'Wilkommen, Bracknell - can we please have your scores for Ticket to Ride'?
But really, the more the merrier. If I'd had internet access out in France I'd have joined in. But I didn't, so I couldn't. I did manage to get some games played though.
I was only allowed a small-ish bag of games, so I took my box of card games, Stone Age, Thurn and Taxis, Pergamon, Dixit and Battle Line.

However, the Thurn and Taxis box also contained Settlers of Catan.
In the Pergamon box I'd managed to find space for Notre Dame and Aton, and secreted within the capacious Stone Age box were Alhambra and Lost Cities.
The Battle Line box also held Haggis, Row Boat and Citadels, and the Posion box is far too big for the game itself; much better with Tichu, For Sale, Mu, No Thanks and Coloretto in there for company.

And what did we play?

If it was up to Bea (9), we'd have played nothing but Dixit. It was in fact one of the game highlights of the holiday, playing Dixit in the garden with the girls and my parents-in-law.
I can't think of another game that could be played by six people aged 7 to 70, first-time and seasoned gamers alike, that would be such fun, and a proper game - it's a worthy Spiel Des Jahres winner, and a very unique game.

My father-in-law William is always up for a game, and I had high hopes for Aton, mine and Sam's current two-player favourite. We played once, but it didn't really grab him.
We played a few games of Battle Line, a great Reiner Knizia two-player card game of war in the ancient world - very thematic, even though you're basically making poker hands. But the one that William really took to was Lost Cities; RK again, and a game that really deserves its classic status - everyone I've introduced it to 'gets' it within a single round, and wants to master it. It may be less strategic than Battle Line, but easier to grasp, pick up and play.

Matilda's go-to game was Coloretto, and I played a few games with all the girls; despite the fact that their main strategy was fighting over who got to collect pink, I consistently lost . . .
In exchange for taking them swimming one gloomy afternoon, Matilda and Bea agreed to a game of Thurn and Taxis; Bea won, but they haven't asked to play again. Funny, I thought Matilda might find it an interesting step up from Trans Europa.
Again at Matilda's request, we played a game of Alhambra, and I was reminded of what a great game for three or four it is; and what a long one too, for kids.

And in the evenings, Charlotte and her mum were persuaded to join us menfolk. That's when I realised I'd brought too many games. I couldn't decide what to play; the first night we played Tichu, which didn't go down a storm. I should have learned to avoid card games after that, but the next night, despite showing them both Pergamon and Notre Dame, I ended up suggesting Mu. I found a good teaching method, but we started too late, and it was a giant flop.

Everything changed, however, after I sniffed out a games shop in La Rochelle . . .
I couldn't resist Martin Wallace's new game, A Few Acres of Snow; it's a two-player game based on the battle for control of Canada by the British and the French, which uses a Dominion-style card-drafting mechanic. No, Charlotte didn't play it; and by the time I'd got to grips with the rules, William had headed back to London.

But while I was there, I picked up Pickomino - the Reiner Knizia dice game some of us played at Stabcon with Hammy (he called it Heck Meck). It turns out that if you're allowed to play it yourself, rather than being told what you should do on each roll (Hammy's preferred method), it's really rather good fun. We played it with Charlotte's parents, and I played it with the girls. And finally, we all played it together; in fact we played it every day of the holiday after I bought it.

It's a good little push-your-luck dice game, the pieces are very tactile and lovely, and the worms give it that extra hook for the kids. There's an awful lot of luck, but that's perfect for what it is; and when the dice-gods smile on you, and hand you the single, solitary worm you so desperately need on your eighth dice, well, you smile right back at them. Would make a nice game to end a tuesday night . . .

So Dr Knizia does it again - I could have just packed Pickomino, probably.
Except the box is so small, I couldn't possibly have squeezed the other games in there. JB

Thursday Night News

The tapestry of the games calendar opened up another opportunity last night so come 8pm we found six of us sitting around Joe's kitchen table - regulars Adam, Joe, Andrew and Sam (me) along with one of the Monday Night Club, Steve. Making up the sextet was Joe's eldest daughter Matilda, making her gaming (and leaderboard) bow.

We kicked off with Trans-Europa. Everyone but Steve had played this before, and indeed Matilda had beaten her dad at it. If anyone thought this was indulgence on Joe's part they were soon relieved of that impression as Tilly won the first round, completing her routes before anyone else and leaving us - Andrew and I in particular - trailing in her dust. But come the second round Adam began to show dominance in what would be a winning campaign for him. Round three - won by me - pushed Tilly over the edge and the game finished with Adam in a comfortable first place:

1 Adam

2 Joe

3 Steve

4 Sam

5 Andrew

6 Matilda

Tilly wanted to stay and play 7 Wonders but bedtime intervened, so we were down to five as everyone set up their wonder and began the brain-drain of calculating which card to keep versus which cards to avoid passing on to one's neighbour and competitor. Joe had started collecting the green science cards early, and sitting to his right I found my hand filling up with science and I was forced to keep handing him the good stuff.

Come the end, however, Joe's focus on the sciences - despite scoring big - meant neglecting the rest of his game, and he slipped to fourth. One is tempted to mention the unwritten rule of 7 Wonders - diversification! - as his downfall, except that winning player Adam had no science cards at all. He'd pursued an aggressive route, taking army points off both Joe and Steve, and picked up points in every category BUT the sciences. Having followed a similar path I snuck into second:

Adam 57

Sam 52

Andrew 49

Joe 48

Steve 34

I'm not sure what happened to Steve, who's usually a good 7 Wonders player. He was on the other side of the table and my only interaction was heckling him for taking too long to choose his card...

As we debated our gaming options, Joe brought out a new card game called Mu and we gave it a trial run. It has a good reputation, but we found it a little unintuitive. It's a trick-taking game, and before each round there's a an auction to decide both Chief and Vice, both of whom decide a trump suit form the five available (the chief's trump trumps the vice's trump) and the Chief picks a partner and then has a predetermined target of 'pips' to win based on how many cards he or she used at the auction stage, while the vice and the other players try and stop him making that target. If the chief makes his target he gets a fabulous bonus to go with his pip score.

But wait. There isn't always a chief after the auction, trumps can be numbers not suits, and pips do not appear on every card. And if the chief doesn't make his target there is a penalty based on how many pips he failed by, according to a ranking system.

After our trial round (which Andrew, as Chief, and me as his partner, lost) the general feeling was that it was one to revisit with more time and fresher minds, so we rounded off the evening with a game of Poison.

To be honest I still don't really have a handle on the tactics of this game. The only thing I did differently last night was being more amenable to picking up one or two colour cards early in the game, thinking perhaps a few points was worth having more flexibility in how I played my hand. It might have been coincidence, but I managed to finish in second - first place was taken by Joe, who should have a hat with 'The Poison King" stitched on it. At the back end of the game Steve, who'd not played it before, manage to sneak ahead of Andrew by a solitary point on the final round.

Joe 19

Sam 21

Adam 24

Steve 36

Andrew 37

With a 1st/1st/3rd record on the night, Adam's grip on the leaderboard will give him cramp at this rate, but it was also a good night for Joe with a 1st/2nd/4th finish. The rest of us lagged behind a bit, with Andrew's 5th/3rd/5th not doing his points ratio much good at all. Still, early days. Maybe Adam will go on holiday for six months, or just get bored of winning and take up extreme sports instead...

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Adam	5	28.5	5.7
Joe	5	20.5	4.1
Sam	5	19.5	3.9
Andrew	5	14.5	2.9
Jonny	2	10	5
Steve	3	9.5	3.16
Matilda	1	1.5	1.5

Water, water, not exactly everywhere . . .

Earlier this week, I listened to the latest episode of Ryan Sturm and Geoff Engelstein's excellent Ludology podcast - about the 'why' of gaming. The current episode focusses on complexity, and introduced a concept I was unfamiliar with: cognitive load.

Cognitive load is the amount of rules and concepts games require you to hold in your head whilst playing. This is distinct from rules which, once learned, quickly become second nature, and you don't have to keep them at the forefront of your mind, and can focus instead on strategy and tactics.

Games which induce a heavy cognitive load will tend to appeal only to hardcore gamers, and be a big turn-off to casual players: Troyes would fall in to this category, I would say, along with Brass and De Vulgari Eloquentia. Games like this often require a player aid, a reference card to help manage the amount of stuff that the players need to assimilate. It doesn't mean they're bad games, but they require an investment of time and effort to learn.

And then there are games that, despite a simple ruleset (and thus a light cognitive load) nevertheless involve a mind-bending set of choices, as you attempt to wrap your brain around the future consequences of your current actions.

Santiago, which we got to play last night for the first time, is one of these.

We were five altogether, Sam hosting Adam, Andrew, Jonny and me.

Santiago is about irrigating crops, and bribing the canal overseer (one of the players) to send the water the way you want it to go — as it says on the box, 'the water flows where the money goes'.

It also says on the box '60 mins'. It took us two hours, not including ten minutes learning the rules at the beginning.

The rules themselves are simple, but the decisions that result from them are rather deep, and often agonising. Do you bid high for the crop tile, and leave yourself little money to bribe the canal guy?Do you bid low to become the canal guy, in the hopes of raising some cash? Do you offer up a big bribe to the canal guy, forcing him to take it rather than spend more of his own precious money sending it his way, only to find that someone else has made a lower offer that benefits the both of them?

It was everybody's first game, which probably accounts for the long play time. Sam, Adam and Jonny made an early alliance involving bananas, while I planted a small potato field, and Andrew, the first canal overseer, bided his time.

In the second round, Adam took an aggressive stance, shutting in my potato field, and Sam threw in his extra canal to keep his bananas moist, which meant easy pickings for the winners of the crop auction going in to round three.

No-one had a total grasp of what was gonig on, but Adam seemed increasingly relaxed (always a bad sign), and by the end, although no-one could quite tell how where they stood, we all sort of knew Adam had the win.

It's a game in which you can, if you're so inclined, crunch the numbers on your turn and have a pretty good idea of your optimal move. That doesn't come naturally to me, I prefer going with my instinct. Andrew was of a similar dispostion, and we came 4th and 5th respectively. Johnny was third, Sam second and Adam won comfortably, having pushed in to the hundreds. Tellingly, the scores were fairly evenly spaced, with 40 points between first and last place:

Adam 105

Sam 90

Jonny 84

Joe 74

Andrew 65

I liked it and would be happy to play again, though I don't think I'm very good at negotiation games. That said, there's a fair amount of transparency — unlike some games, it's relatively easy to figure out what represents a good offer in terms of return.

After that we played TransEuropa — the game lasted four rounds I think, each round someone falling short by four or five points. I think Trans Europa is a great way to round off a games night — I find it quite addicitve, despite the limited amount of strategy. there's a lot of luck, but it does seem to reward attention to your opponents placement. JB

Joe 1st

Jonny 2nd

Adam 3rd

Andrew 4th

Sam 5th

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Sam	26	106.5	4.1
Andrew	28	102	3.64
Joe	23	101	4.39
Adam	20	100.5	5.025
Quentin	9	40	4.44
Hannah	7	34.5	4.9
Chris	5	20.5	4.1
Steve	4	16	4
Jonny	5	16	3.2

Ersby reports: Just six points seperate fourth from first as we galavant to a grand finale. Despite a poor performance by me, I cling on to second spot.

Gladrags and travel bags

Tonight witnessed an old hand to board games return to the fold. Indeed, it was this man’s curiosity about board games that got both myself and Sam involved in the first place. So, by a happy coincidence of work locations, Chris was able to join us for an evening.

But Chris has been away from the scene for a while, so he was keen to be introduced to something new. Colosseum was chosen since Chris had heard good things about it. Joe and Sam talked him through the rules, and before you knew it, it was like a pop musical from the 1960s as we were all thinking “hey, why don’t we do the show right here?” and the game of ancient theatre began.

It started well, with everyone putting on a small show, but before long Sam had amassed a healthy spread of tiles thanks to being last in the first two rounds. Chris got the Best Gladiator award in round one and kept it for the rest of the game, giving him 24 points over the course of the five rounds. I played a cautious game, preferring to stage the same two small shows over and over while I prepared for my triumphant finale.

In round three, however, Sam made a shocking miscalculation. He said he would buy Caeser’s Triumphant March, but then admitted he didn’t have enough money for it. His long term plan was now public knowledge, and we all realised he had the resources to do it and no one else was close. We also noticed a huge pile of medals that he had amassed without anyone realising. From this moment on, it was a battle for second.

Joe’s show about revealed secrets was just beaten by Chris’ show. I can’t remember what it was, but it must’ve been fabulous. Something to do with gladiators, I expect. My show was nice, but it lay at the low end of the big shows, so my caution was not rewarded.

Sam 96
Chris 84
Joe 82
Andrew 69

After this, a swift game of Trans Europa was suggested. It plays like a fast moving Ticket to Ride. You have five cities across Europe to connect, but the trick is to use your opponents’ tracks too. If you fail, then you have to collect points based on the distance(s) from your incomplete destination(s). The game was quick and exciting, as everybody’s go effected your own strategy. Chris did well, picking up all five cities in the first two rounds, meaning the other three players got points for their tardiness. This was enough to get him first place, because in the third round Joe closed out the game with Sam nowhere near his target. His points suddenly shot up, exceeding the number needed to trigger the end the game.

1st Chris
2nd Joe
3rd Andrew
4th Sam

Chris makes a respectable appearance on the board: last in terms of points scored, but second regarding points ratio. And while my performance may have been below par, at least my dedication to the cause has been rewarded, because by simple brute force I have pushed past Adam into second place! I may have played eight games more than him, but that’s not the point! At least that makes up for him beating me on the online You Know The Score game after nine months of struggle by a measly ten points. Bah. (thankfully it's not leaderboard, though)

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Sam	21	92	4.38
Andrew	23	84	3.65
Adam	15	78	5.2
Joe	18	74	4.11
Hannah	7	34.5	4.9
Quentin	7	28.5	4.07
Steve	4	16	4
Chris	2	10	5