The Old, the New, the Extravurm

Saturday night. While the boys watched Strictly in the other room, the responsible adults munched through a big plate of chilli before setting up the newcomer in the house: Ulm. Ian was intrigued enough to try it again, and Andrew was agreeable.

 it's a church!

As we found on Tuesday, the game plays fairly quickly. As we also found on Tuesday, I'm rather bad at it. Everything happens around the cathedral - draw an action tile from the bag, slide it into the grid and take the three actions you're left with. I decided early on to try and build a hand of cards, and pretty much stuck to that. But the others found that placing seals in the city seemed to be more productive, and Ian sealed the deal using the same city quarter Andy had earlier in the week - scoring points for every quarter of the city he had seals in. Allied to the fact he scored points for placing a seal there in the first place, it was a killer move.

Ian 54
Andrew 48
Sam 44

After that we broke out an old favourite: Tinner's Trail! Andrew set off into an early lead as he capitalised on high copper prices in round one. I set about turning the lizard green, while Ian played a game of few mines. We all snuck a cheap mine at some point, and at the end it couldn't have been closer:

Sam 101
Andrew 100
Ian 92

Industry

I suggested Heckmeck, as I wanted to try out the expansion, Extravurm. It's not a game that really needed an expansion, but I'd been intrigued by it and as it turned out, it was rather fun. Taking two '1's gets you a bratworm, there are two new low-value tiles of 11 and 13, and there are several specialists you can pick up: the canning worm functions as a worm if you don't role any, the weasel gives you a free re-roll, the sitting hen protects your tiles, and there's a golden extra die to claim as well.

The game was one of the longer Heckmecks I've played, but that was mainly due to all of us stealing the 24 off each other. Ian took the honours again, making great use of his weasel.

Ian 13
Sam 10
Andrew 5

Time for another old favourite: 7 Wonders. The evening was starting to get a little blurry at this point so the strategies and tactics are now slightly beyond me, but I recall both Andrew and Ian insisting they'd lost. They hadn't:

Andrew 48
Ian 46
Sam 43

Four games down, three to go. In a flurry of late-night Saturdayness we bashed through three more staples of the GNN diet: Andrew took the spoils on Extreme Biblios after beating me out of the reds on a mere whim of alphabetisation:

Andrew 5
Ian 4
Sam 3

Living it large

Then he made it three wins in a row as he trounced us at Love Letter 3-1-1; before finally finishing with No Thanks. Here Ian and I had an unusual shared victory, with 27 points each to Andrew's 56.  With the hour of 11 now past, we wrapped up a very satisfying weekend's gaming.

Can't Stop Shan't Stop

This week's GNN meet happened at Joe's cosy home. The six of us gathered around Joe's green felt table were Joe, Sam, Ian, Katy, Andy and me. Vague plans were suggested that we all play together, but instead we split into two groups.

Joe, Katy and I chose the Japanese themed card game Honshu. Meanwhile Sam, Andy and Ian broke open Ulm, described by Sam as a typical Euro game of gaining prestige in medieval Europe. It even came with it's own cathedral.

Honshu was substantially less ambitious fare. It's a trick taking, set collecting, city building game. Despite the three-pronged attack on our gaming senses it's quite a simple game. Each card has a number and a piece of the city on it. There are twelve rounds and in each round, every player plays a card face up. The highest card wins and that player may take whichever card they liked the look of and add that to their city with the proviso that it must overlap (or underlap) with another card.

There is a hint of other games in there. A bit of Between Two Cities. A smidgen of Isle Of Skye. But overall was quite a gentle laid back game, apart from the last minute panic from Katy when she realized she wasn't doing very well. This panic, as it turned out, should have been scheduled earlier:

Joe 61
Andrew 55
Katy 49

It was nothing to do with Japan, though.

On the other half of the table, Ulm was proving to be a bit of a steep hill to climb. In the early stages, I saw Ian shaking his head while laughing to himself and at one point it almost seemed like the game might be abandoned. Sam asked that it be given ten more minutes and apparently in that time it showed enough of its charms to convince people to last until the end.

Watching them play, I must admit it was one of those moments when I had a glimpse of what we must look like to non-gamers. The board was baffling, with a grid of 3x3 counters that shuffled around seemingly at random. There were boats and shields and icons and that cathedral which seemed to make Ian particularly angry, as he considered it to be, frankly, unnecessary and unhelpful.

But we had finished Honshu and we're pondering another game. Someone mentioned Botswana, but I didn't fancy it. It did, however, remind me of 10 Days In Africa so I asked Joe to dig it out. It was new to Katy, so she listened to the rules explanation with the same expression you might have if you were listening to a salesman you suspect is trying to steal your money. She had become increasingly concerned with her lack of form, and she didn't think this was the game to put things right.

And so it was. It's a game that doesn't encourage a great deal of banter so Joe and I tried to pep up our descriptions of winning journeys by building a narrative round them in the vocal style of Cary Grant. "I woke up in Morocco with no idea how I got there. All I knew is, I had to be in Somalia in ten days."

We played twice, with the second game happening at Katy's request, once she understood the rules.

Andrew 10
Joe 9
Katy 7

And then...

Joe 10
Katy 6 (wins on fewer transport tie breaker)
Andrew 6

Finally, Ulm finished with the scores at

Andy 53
Ian 45
Sam 37

Since we were all together again, there was a little talk of a six player. But instead we reorganized into new groups of three. I was lucky enough to have another of my suggestions brought to the table, and Sam, Joe and I played Can't Stop. Andy, Ian and Katy got busy with Port Royal.

Can't Stop was a cautious affair, with all of us keen to get counters on the board rather than push our luck. But as I took a 2-1-1 lead, with one row just one space away from completion. When it came to Joe's turn, he decided he had to go for it and, amazingly, he did. He finished two more rows to snatch the win.

Joe 3
Andrew 2
Sam 1

Since Port Royal was still ongoing, we brought out Land Unter. This trick taking game where it's usually better to not take a trick, had Sam baffled. We played through a single round while Port Royal ended.

Ian 12
Katy 11
Andy 5

At this point Ian and Andy left and we ended our fledgling game of Land Unter and began afresh with Katy on board. Katy won this game, which cheered her up considerably (or was it the ginger wine) now that her run of bad form was over and that there was one game that she could rely on to get her a win when she needed one.

Katy 10
Andrew 8
Sam 7
Joe 3

After this, we set off home. The division, with only two meetings left until the end of the season, looks like this.