Party to Something

GNN started 2020 in celebratory mode, with an open-door policy at mine and Sally's house, and as well as the usual massively-unhealthy snacks there was also the marginally-safer ones of crostini and tapenade, courtesy of Sally. There was also mackerel pate, a variety of cheeses, cloudy lemonade, and a bowl of salad that - as Martin noted nine hours later, slowly turned into a bowl of wilted leaves.

still lurking this morning

But before that could happen, Adam T and Celena were first to arrive, promptly joined by Martin, Sarah and Effie. After summing up the options, Effie left the adults to it and went to chill with Stan and Joe. Arthur joined her when he rocked up with Hannah (who came by bus), and then shortly after that Adam H arrived on two wheels. Then Joe walked in too.

But for a long time - literally, hours! - people talked. It almost reached the point where the blog would need to be renamed, but fortunately Andy Mosse arrived with his boy Finn, and brought Team 3 with him. After it sat glowing radioactively for long enough on the table, the collective curiosity of myself, Martin, the Adams and Joe couldn't be resisted any more and with Andy's help we cracked out a quick couple of plays.

The game takes the concept of see/hear/speak no evil and parcels out those communicative restrictions on three team-mates, one of whom must describe the structure they have to build (from tetris-type blocks) whilst not speaking. The second must communicate the message verbally to the third, who can't see anything. It can be played co-operatively or competitively, and our second game was the latter, with Andy, Joe and Adam H beating Martin, Adam T and myself. Maybe it was the combination of hosting, or too much cloudy lemonade, but I found it very stressful.

Later - I think it was later - Ian arrived, and as the daylight began to fail, so did Steve and Anja with Louie and Lennon. Whilst the older kids disappeared to the loft to watch Pixels, the younger crew stayed in the front room with more suitable viewing, as we were all charmed by Lennon distributing snacks, often directly into our mouths. By this point there were two rooms full of potential gamers. In the front room, Sally and I joined Adam, Hannah, Steve, Anja for what turned out to be a triumphant crack at Just One - not only scoring the maximum 13 but 2 bonus points as well. which is even more impressive considering the game probably took about an hour all told.

Meanwhile in the kitchen there was an epic game of Facecards playing out. It took even longer than Just One, so God knows what took place. Everyone seemed very happy with it though.

As the day faded away, so did the 'non-gamers' with various children and relieved parents making their way home so the regular GNNers could go full-nerd. Sally had nowhere to go, but seemed happy to stay. To be frank the order of events gets extremely hazy here, I think due to all the cheese I was eating, but I think this was when a huge game of 7 Wonders got played.

Andy Mosse had only played 7 Wonders Duel, but was otherwise new to things, and initially had Joe beside him as his trusty assistant. But then I stole Joe away to play two games of Blitzkrieg! which we won one apiece and celebrated in our joint mutual destruction. I think Martin won 7 Wonders, after which Adam and Celena departed... in the front room, Sally taught Steve and Anja Yokai. I'm not sure how they got on, but after the first game Sally was ashen-faced in the kitchen, muttering something about rules.

Somewhere around here Res Arcana got played.

I think it was while Adam, Katy - freshly arrived - Ian and I played Flamme Rouge. As we were setting it up, Chris walked in the door - passing Steve and Anja en famille on the way out - and happily sat down to join us. A while ago Flamme Rouge was a regular at the GNN tables, and it was nice to play it again even if the card system initially seems slightly counter-intuitive. I've personally found that the backs of all cards are the same colour a little bewildering, even if it's necessary to hide those exhaustion cards...

While we were pedalling through the Alps, a boisterous Medium was played out at the other end of the table, with much roaring of disbelief and approbation. I've no idea which team won, but they wrapped things up the same time as Adam H sailed over the line in Flamme Rouge.

I'm now exceedingly hazy on things but I think it was towards the end of these games that Andrew and Anna arrived to find a scene of game-related debauchery in full swing. Stan and Joe were so screened out they were taken for a walk by Sally, Andy and Finn departed, and a game of PUSH was initiated by Joe that Anna was shanghai-ed into, whilst at the other end of the table something else occurred. I'm not sure what. It may have just been wild consumption of cheese. EDIT: looking at photos I see we played Tiny Towns. This was after Adam and I tried to play Ecos: First Continent, only to have Martin rule it out by repeatedly barking "no!" even though he wasn't playing.

I think I blanked it out because of my awful building-site finale - Adam won this, followed by Chris and Ian.

However around mid-evening seat-changing occurred with Just One back on the table in the kitchen while Ian, Adam and Chris suffered the indignity of finding out a crucial rule I'd missed in Word Domination: the game of allegedly taking over the world but actually just spelling things.

It's a neat little system of claiming cards by using the letters on them, the catch being you need to claim them in subsequent turns, and may be bumped off in the meantime by other players. I'd not realised the board actually grows during play, however, and we hurriedly implemented the rule when I found it in round 5. Despite Chris' vocabulary and my alleged (by Adam) always-winning at word games, it was Adam's shrewd strategic brain and claimed another win.

In Just One, meanwhile, four people clued gatherer, leaving poor Katy to try and guess Hunter from Joe's clue Orion. There was a substantial bout of cheating here, none of which sadly helped.

Sally couldn't be persuaded to stay up for another game, and so we were reduced to eight - Joe, Martin, Katy, Adam, Anna, Andrew, Ian and myself - for what would turn out to be the last game of an epic session - Pairs. Although I was barely drinking, my cheese and sugar intake had reached gargantuan proportions and I don't know what happened here at all, although I do recall Martin serially going bust on his first card flip and Katy doing well. I think she won - I went to the toilet, and when I returned, it was all over.

And so was the night!

Although our incongruous - for GNN - start of prolonged chat was rather sweetly mirrored at the end, as we sat around the table almost like normal people before we realised the time was 11pm and Ian and I were starting to yawn.

I'm pretty sure I've missed out some games as well as plenty of high points. A big bundle of fun and lovely to have so many of us under one roof at the same time! Thanks to everyone for coming and look forward to seeing some/all of you very soon... Tuesday?