The One Thousand Story Building

Games, eh? Remember when they used to be popular? Four of us do. Me, Sam, Ian and Chris arrived at Sam’s for our weekly fix of board games. Where was everyone else? Some had gigs, others had babies and maybe the rest had just seen the weather forecast. Whatever the reason, it was a sparse night.

And so Sam invited his two sons down to help get the evening off to a lively start. Chris hadn’t arrived yet, so the five of us sat down for a typically boisterous game of Midnight Party. No chance of waking the kids here: they were making the most noise!

Strangely, despite Ian starting with both his pieces next to Stanley’s, he was caught first in round one, while Stanley scored minus points to claim an early lead. However, luck never lasts long and it was Sam’s clever (if dull) strategy of popping in and out of the same rooms that kept him safest for most of the game.

Sam 10
Joe 28
Andrew 29
Stanley 37
Ian 56

After this, the boys were sent to bed while we played Igloo Pop. We dove straight in, without any practice, so I guessing, especially at the start. Guessing quite well, even if I do say so myself.

Andrew 13
Ian 7
Sam 6

By now Chris was here and we decided on giving The Tales of the Arabian Knights another airing. This game has recently got into Sam’s good books by enticing an increasingly apathetic son back into board games.

It was new to Chris, so there was a little explanation of the rules. But it’s mostly a game that you can pick up as you go along. The four of us set off and, like before, Sam’s early game was beset by bad luck. He was sold into slavery before the game even begun and before long he was wounded, ensorcelled and sex-changed.

My game could best be described as “an eventful holiday”. I got in trouble with the local police, and sort of dawdled around Northern Europe, ending up pious and outlawed. Ian started off with an apparent plan to be evil when he abducted a destitute sage. However, the story took a happy turn when Ian taught the sage so well that he mastered a skill.

Chris spent most of the game being envious, and trying to steal any treasure he happened to come across. The moral to this story is that greed and selfishness, if nothing else, get you what you want. Chris ended the game the richest.

Chris 21
Andrew 18
Ian 17
Sam 16

We decided to end the game at nine thirty rather than let it continue to its ending, since it was getting late. We filled the last hour or so with lots of fun and jollity.

We began with Spyfall. Katy’s classic “What’s the atmosphere like?” question was almost replaced by “What’s it smell like?” but we are too canny to keep returning to one question. We were probing, yet cagey. Insightful, yet vague to the point of confusion. We played four rounds. I was the spy twice and guessed the location both times. Ian was spy and got caught. Chris was spy and guessed the location wrong, although he was close: he said Space Station and it was the Polar Station.

Next we played Raj. A lovely card game where you usually end up wishing you didn’t know the people you were playing against as the rules seem to encourage a sort of telepathic cock-blocking whenever you see a tile you want.

The rule of drawn cards cancelling each other out meant that Ian picked up a 7 tile when Sam, Chris and I all played 15s. And Sam got an 8 tile when Chris and Ian played 15s, Sam played a 2 and I played a 1.

Despite this, I did well. I paid attention to when the 15s had been played and I won the first and third rounds to give myself a less-fraught-than-usual win.

Andrew 76
Sam 63
Ian 32
Chris 19

Then Sam suggested Team Push It, perhaps forgetting that there were only four of us this week. Instead we played individual Push It. Sam and I started well, with Chris not scoring at all. Then Ian cancelled out his lone point by sending the jack off the table.

Then Chris started scoring points. One after the other. He stormed past Sam and was hot on my heels. At this point, I was mocked for a bit of gamesmanship. In one round, I had the last go, and my lone puck was already the nearest to the jack. Rather than risk ruining that just for an extra point, I weakly flicked my second puck harmlessly away, prompting cat-calls and boos from Sam and Chris. Ian said it was a good move, though.

Andrew 7
Chris 6
Sam 3
Ian 2

With that, Ian and I called it a night. Sam and Chris tried out Cartography: a two-player game that Sam had got for Chris on his birthday. I watched for a bit, and left them to explore it’s Go-like depths.

I set off into a misty drizzle that turned into an icy downpour. Thank goodness I had decent waterproofs on.

On the Division, with Martin unlikely to attend with his new baby to attend to, it’s all about the chasing pack. Unfortunately Ian did an excellent impersonation of Arsenal this evening, losing vital opportunities to reduce the gap at the top. Meanwhile, my twelve point haul sees me jump from sixth to third.

Do Fields Yield?

Saturday night, and at 7.30 Sally announced she was going to bed! I was tired, but not that tired, so I invited Ian and Andrew over for a bit of impromptu gaming.

I've still got quite a pile of unplayed games but I didn't want to subject Ian and Andrew to more new rules, especially when I have a habit of getting them wrong anyway. So with Andrew's acquiescence we set up Caverna, with Ian hopefully (and fatefully) amenably en route.

Haven't played Caverna? It's rather like Agricola, except the tension of feeding your family is somewhat eased by the fact they can eat almost anything. If they're hungry enough they'll eat rubies. Haven't played Agricola? It's a simple worker-placement game where you're expanding your farm (in Caverna, you have a cavern too) and the most industriously diverse player tends to win. The difference in Caverna is the option to send your guys off adventuring, where an investment in ore (to arm them) basically gives you multiple returns.

In the past I've expanded my farm early to get animals rutting and fields growing - probably a hangover from my Agricola days. Each time I've witnessed those who expand their cavern early and get to their fields later have won. So when Andrew began planting pumpkins and putting up fences I took to cavern-building instead.

However, 2/3rds of the way through the game, with Ian and I both adventuring and Andrew by and large ignoring it, Andrew looked to have the game sewn up. Both Ian and I assumed we were duking it out for second.

Andrew's busy farm. Mine and Ian's were comparatively bereft at this stage.

But it turned out that the farming-early option is still to claim a win at GNN, as I raced past Andrew in the final scoring (I don't remember what it was). It must be possible, but the benefit of caverning (if that's a word) early on means the comparatively more straightforward chopping down fields can be done quickly as the game closes out - there's only two spaces to hollow out your mountain and three to make fields.

With Caverna eventually packed away (we remarked it must be the only game that could justify a bigger box rather than a smaller one) we embarked on a series of smaller Saturday-night style games.

I won No Thanks and a very swingy Heck Meck where we all took turns leading. I was pleased as punch to win Timeline getting all six cards down first time. I've never done that before and never will again. My secret - if you can call it a secret - was slapping the cards down with a confidence in my history knowledge that was entirely unjustified.

We finished with Love Letter, which obviously Ian won. I didn't pick up a single cube, and consoled myself by eating a large slice of lemon tart.

Diamonds, gems and cold, hard cash

Tuesday games night at Joe’s was a packed affair. Nine of us (Joe, Sam, Martin, Andy, Katy, Ben, Ian and me) were in attendance.

We pooh poohed the idea of a big collective game to start with, and split neatly into two groups: Sam, Martin, Matt and Andy went off to play Diamonds: a trick-taking card game that Martin bought. The remaining five chose Lords of Vegas, with its new Up expansion, which allowed a casino to be raised up at a cost of $15 million per square, which meant it scored more points and protected itself from potential take-overs. Also, it allowed up to six players, which is a blessing, since the four spaces in a regular game tend to be over-subscribed.

Nine people in one kitchen needed two tables to hold both games. At one point, Joe had to get things for his family that they needed from the now-inaccessible other side of the kitchen.

Diamonds flew by without me following it. It ended:

Sam 37
Martin 34
Matt 32
Andy 25

In Vegas, it was quickly looking like Ben’s night. As it should be since, after all, he had bought a copy of the game so he could practise. I reminded everyone of this, and Ben had to keep insisting that he’d only played once.

The dice rolls went his way, too. When Ben took over a single tile casino belonging to Katy, she rerolled there dice to try and get it back. At first she turned a 5-2 loss into another 5-2 loss, and then on her next go, she rolled again and got a 5-1 loss. She stopped trying after that.

I got lucky too with the plots I drew from the deck. After a bit of sprawling, I soon found myself with the rare opportunity of getting a seven-tile casino, with only one opposing die to threaten me. And threaten me he did. In a glorious last-ditch attempt Ian reorganised my casino, hoping his one die would score higher than any of my six. It didn’t, but we all admired his optimism.

Joe never really got going. His early hopes of a large casino evaporated as the plots in between went to Ben and Katy. Ian’s winning run finally ended and the scores were:

Ben 29 plus $69m
Andrew 29 plus $28m
Katy 20
Ian 18
Joe 16

While we were finishing off our wheeling and dealing, the Diamonds crew had a game of Steel Driver. This new (to us) Martin Wallace game had its debut on GNN only a couple of days ago. Martin was not a newcomer to the game, but after five years, how much of its strategy would he remember?

Well, enough. He won a close match, and the scores made it look like a tense game, but Andy pointed out that they didn’t know how close they were while they were actually playing.

Martin $1,940
Sam $1,850
Matt $1,840
Andy $1,810

Finally, we all joined together to play Dead Man’s Chest. This is a new game of bluffing, not dissimilar to Perudo. Except there are only two dice. One player shakes a box with the dice in, looks at them, calls out a number, and then passes them on to the next player. If the new player thinks the dice show a value less than the number called (ie, a 2 and a 62 would become sixty-two: highest number always becomes the ten) then they can challenge. Whoever is wrong loses a gem. Doubles are higher than any non-doubles, except for 21, which is highest of all.

If he or she doesn’t think its less, they can simply raise the bet and pass on the box without looking. Or they can shake the box, look at the dice, say a new number (which must still be higher than the last) and pass it on. Or they can shake, look and then if they don’t like it they can shake again and pass it on without looking and say a number. Effectively, a blind bid.

However, it only plays eight. Joe said he was happy to act as referee, and he explained the rules to us. But then we realised we each had a different section of the rules on the back of our card detailing the different possible dice results. So we read out the rules to ourselves! Joe stood in the corner and watched the game unfold and he admitted he felt a bit like a games pervert, just standing in the shadows, silently watching.

Talking of shadows, Joe’s explanation of the rules seemed to have a lovely chiaroscuro feel to it, complete with a range of pensive expressions from onlookers.

The final standing were (from last to first)

8. Ben (out by Ian who blind bid 62, and it was indeed 62)
7. Sam (out by Martin who blind bid 61 and it was 63)
6. Katy (Ian bid 33. She bid 44 and passed it to Matt. Matt challenged.)
5. Ian (out by Martin who blind bid 44. Ian challenged. It was 55!)
4.Andrew (out by Andy who bid 66, and it was 21)
3. Martin (out by Andy who bid 55 and it was 66)
2. Andy (out by Matt, challenging a bid of 62)
1. Matt wins! With two gems remaining!

What an end to an evening.

On the Division, little changes, except for Martin’s lead getting ever longer.

Sunday drivers

Sunday. With a recent flurry of new games arrivals courtesy of the maths trade I (Sam) was keen to try out one of them, and as Steel Driver only had 3 pages of rules that felt like the right choice. I was marginally pushy enough to overcome Ian's mild reticence. Andrew is always willing to try a Martin Wallace game and Chris arrived late, so had no say. We set up.

The game sees you the players as brokers in the railway track-laying industry across the USA in olden times. Over five rounds you bid for control of train companies (there are six) and then, assuming you win, you both receive a share in that company and choose where to build the track using the value of your bid to pay for it. Where you build gets you different cash rewards, and as the ultimate winner is the richest player this is a fairly key part of the game. But - everyone who has shares in a company will get the cash rewards each round - and after the final round there's a kind of reverse-Railways effect where all the cities suddenly get populated with goods cubes. Players who have the most shares in a given train company can take a cube their track is connected to - the catch being that several cities have more than one train company attached to them, so you may be beaten to the punch. Cubes score in sets, so different colours are good and lots of the same colour offers a fairly paltry return.

It was interesting. Myself, Andrew and Ian all found ourselves unable to resist controlling the same company over and over, having invested in it early. Chris went for a more broad spread of companies and in another game that might have proved a winning strategy. What helped me in my ultimate victory wasn't the five green shares, but the fact that I had a wide range of goods cubes to cash in; having been the only player to start building track on the west coast I'd had licence to spread in three directions. The other train companies started in the east, and ultimately got under each other's feet in the eventual goods-cube-bunfight.

Thematically speaking it's perhaps less Wallace-y than Tinners' Trail or Railways, but I enjoyed it.

We then played Push It which I also won, albeit by default when Chris and I were both poised to win and somebody sent my disc spiralling into the jack. The game was also notable for a couple of other things - I broke the rules by rolling a disc between some others (fortunately this wasn't contested as it then rolled much too far to be relevant) and Ian's decision to go fairly aggressive, barrelling into everyone else with arms metaphorically flailing. Not successful, but quite amusing.

After that, Ian and Andrew retired and Chris and I bashed out a two-player Biblios. It was brutal for Chris - in the end the whole game hinged on the alphabet, and fortunately I was lexiconically younger:

Sam 9
Chris 5

Steel Driver gets a thumbs up from me. I'd be interested to hear the other's thoughts.

Traveling Tales

This Thursday evening, the near-mythological figure of Paul visited for an evening and so, he, Chris, Sam and I congregated in Chris’ kitchen dining area for some cardboard-based entertainment.

We began with a little bit of Codenames to break the ice. The last time Chris, Sam and I played this, Chris’ wife was the fourth player and she and I comfortably beat Sam and Chris thanks to their unerring attraction to the Assassin card.

This time Chris and Sam teamed up again to see if they could beak their run of bad form. But it was not to be. Despite Paul being new to the game, he and I kept our clues simple. Chris and Sam made few mistakes, but enough to give us the edge in both rounds. Their run of bad form continues.

Next we got out the new craze in the GNN world, Marco Polo. It was new to Paul but, as we discovered more rules we hadn’t noticed before, it was still pretty new to the rest of us too.

Sam’s character came with two extra trading posts and an extra bonus for getting them down, too. However, with no money or camels to help with the cost of traveling, Sam found it difficult to get going.

Chris was Marco Polo, so got an extra dice and a steady supply of new contracts. Paul’s character was able to teleport from oasis to oasis. Mine had two different travelers, which was nice.

Andrew 62
Chris 50
Paul
Sam 28

Chris seemed happy with his second place, and I was possibly happier with my win. Paul enjoyed it too. Only Sam seemed disappointed, saying that his character was more of a curse. Chris agreed, having had the same role before. Perhaps it's something for the more advanced player, since Andy had it too, and he didn't do so badly. Still didn't win, though.

We followed this with good old 7 Wonders. We've played it so often that I forget that Paul doesn't play it very often, and needed a slight rule refresher of the icons on the cards before we got going.

But when we got going, going got we did. Or something. It was a fascinating game. We each had our specialties: me, science; Paul, military; Sam, blue buildings; Chris went for the unorthodox choice of lots of yellow buildings.

My sciences won the day, by a comfortable margin. But I almost didn't chose sciences when the chance came up in round one to build one for free, because we'd been talking earlier about how you have to challenge someone when they start collecting sciences. I ended up with 48 points just from that category alone.

But they didn't. I guess they always had a card that suited their plans better than ruining mine.

Andrew 67
Paul 57
Sam 50
Chris 41

We ended with 6nimmt. This game never ceases to amaze with its evil twists and turns. With only four players, there were occasions when we could relax since we knew no one could pick up cards, but there were also occasions when there was no escape from a heavy forfeit.

Notable events were: Paul and Chris both getting zero points in the same round, Sam going from first to last in a single round, and then Paul doing the same in the final round.

Chris 44
Sam 64
Andrew 69
Paul 70

And with that, we set off home. Except we didn't, since Chris was putting us all up for the night. That meant we could all spend the next morning actually talking to each other for a change. Nice, but it'll never catch on.

Get the puck out of here

Tonight, after an absence so long that I started to think they’d gone off board games, Adam and Hannah hosted for an evening’s gaming goodness. Including the hosts, we were eight in total. The visitors were Martin, Ben, Katy, Ian, Andy and myself.

Amazing snacks courtesy of Ben

We split into two groups. Martin, Adam, Ian and I fancied a bit of Kingdom Builder and so we decamped into the front room. Andy, Katy, Hannah and Ben stayed in the kitchen and played The Castles of Mad King Ludwig.

Kingdom Builder is a great but cruel game. A series of fields and desert cards meant that I was stuck in a tiny portion of the board, which was no good when one of the scoring criteria rewarded placing houses in all four quarters. However, I can’t completely blame the cards. Ian got four flower cards in a row, yet he still scored more than twice as much as me.

It was all about Adam versus Martin, and poor old Martin howled with agony (or looked a bit miffed) when his counter on the score track fell just two points short of Adam.

Martin surrounds Adam's wagon, rendering it useless

Adam 58
Martin 56
Ian 44
Andrew 20

We set up another game with new boards and new goals. It was very, with one large body of water that curled across all four boards. I got more tiles this time, and had more options. Adam, however, found it difficult to get going. This was made even harder when Ian and I managed to block him from making his preferred final move. We didn’t mean to, but it was satisfying to find out that we had.

Martin 78
Andrew 58
Ian 52
Adam 46

In the other room, they were heading towards the end of Castles... but, as Martin reminded us, the final scoring can go on for ages, so he suggested we play the original Biblios: Scripts and Scribes. And if there were any doubt that we were going retro, it came in its own VHS cassette box.

The game was essentially the same as Biblios, but with quite different designs which took some getting used to.

There was a bit of saying “Eat shit” when putting down a one gold card, but there’s no such thing as Extreme Scripts and Scribes. Especially when Martin shuffled the Auction deck before the second phase of the game. It’s not cricket, I tell you.

During the game, everyone became more and more convinced that Ian was going to win. Martin spent all of his money way before the auction deck was finished, leaving him with limited options. But Adam won again, picking up two dice. He even grabbed the most valuable die (with a value of 5) from Ian by a tiny margin. Had Ian got that die, he would’ve won.

Adam 8
Martin 4
Andrew 3
Ian 0

Finally, Mad Ludwig came to a close. I noticed with interest that they were playing the proper version of the rules where doorways can only match with doorways, with no option to brick over them with walls as Sam and I would play it (which is more like what a real mad king would do, too, I think).

An early version of Hannah's sensible castle

Katy 96
Andy 92
Hannah 89
Ben 67

After this, since we were all together with two copies of Push It we had a big old game of Team Push It to finish the evening. And what a game it was. Martin & I leapt into an early lead, picking up two points, but then didn’t score again. Andy & Adam collapsed to a woeful –3 points while Hannah & Katy and Ben & Ian tussled on three points, just two points from a win.

Then something miraculous occurred. Adam & Andy scored enough to get them back to positive numbers. Then they got to two points, level with Martin & I. In the next round it looked as if their steady rise up the rankings was finished, since their red pucks were safely distant from the jack. But Martin’s last puck was sent into the fray, and hit the jack which then slid to a spot pretty much equidistant between the three reds. What a victory.

Andy & Adam 5
Hannah & Katy 3
Ian & Ben 3
Martin & Andrew 2

And let’s look at that rags-to-riches story in the form of a graph.

And a quick mention to Ian's amazing shot which went from one corner of the table to the opposite one, and ended like this:

After this, we set off home at a sensible half past ten. Thanks Adam and Hannah for hosting. It was lovely to see you and the guinea pigs again.

Below Zero

Tuesday at Joe’s. Six gamers sat around his kitchen table: Joe, Andy, Martin, Katy, Matt and myself.

With six at the table, with Sam absent, there was talk of giving I’m The Boss an airing. But first, we decided to bring back an old favourite: Midnight Party. Strictly speaking, this game is banned for being too rowdy, but Joe figured it’d be okay at the start of an evening.

It was almost too sedate, in fact, with Hugo hardly moving at all. This lead to a bit of a bottleneck near the top of the stairs.

But, despite all this tension, round one was quite peaceful with only three guests being eaten. Hugo woke up a bit in the next two rounds, but not enough to outwit Katy who managed to clock up a non-negative score in this most unforgiving of games.

Katy 0
Joe –19
Martin –22
Matt –23
Andrew –28
Andy –44

Then we played team Push It, despite Andy’s protestations that he was terrible at it. Katy assured him that she was bad at it too. Perhaps she didn’t expect Andy to go for the puck so aggressively. Perhaps it was a strategy to get the puck nearer to Katy, making it an easier target. Or perhaps he didn’t know his own strength. Unfortunately it lead to a couple of occasions when the puck went clean off the table for –2 points.

Matt and Martin made the early running, and after six rounds it was 4, 0, 0. Then Joe and I clawed back into contention and after round eleven the scores were 4, 4, -1. Then, a few rounds after that, a mis-flick from Andy meant that Joe and I scored two points in one round to steal the win! Poor old Katy got that negative score that she’d worked so hard to avoid.

Joe and Andrew 7
Matt and Martin 6
Katy and Andy –1

Once again, I’m The Boss was discussed, along with a chance to play Winner’s Cirlce. But Martin steered us towards his new card game Mai Star (舞星 – Mai meaning “dancing”). The aim of the game is to be the best Geisha. The theme of the game did not sit well with Katy, especially after last week’s pure capitalism of Marracash.

Nevertheless, the game was simple enough. You have to discard cards in your hand to win the round. You can use a card as an advertisement (in which case it is replaced) which increases your reputation. And you can use a card as a guest (if you have enough reputation to attract him) which you don’t replace. Almost every guests allows you to do an action against another player, such as forcing them to lose a guest or advertisement, or pick up some cards.

It was fun. Nothing amazing, but each geisha in the game (there are six) has their own back story so, you know, they’re more than just cards in a game.

Martin 26
Andrew 19
Katy 15
Joe 8
Andy 8
Matt 7

Andy had started Mai Star strongly, but then scored minus points in rounds two and three. Put this together with his performance of the evening, and six sevenths of his game time so far had been spent scoring below zero.

Luckily, there would be no minus points in our final game: Winner’s Circle. I was too tired for the high tension wheeler dealing of I’m The Boss, and so the high tension betting and fixing of Winner’s Circle was chosen instead.

Katy noted that she wasn’t keen on horse racing either, but even she couldn’t resist the attraction of hand painted model horses. This attraction didn't last long as she failed to back a winner in the first two rounds and should’ve lost money for backing the last place, but there’s no negative points in this game so she stayed on zero.

No such trouble for Andy who finally showed what he was capable of, with one successful bet after another. I kept trying to appeal to everyone’s sense of romanticism by betting on the horse that starts last but no one joined me. Except Katy did, in round one, but my bet on that horse was a bluff, so the horse never stood a chance. Sorry, Katy.

Matt started by always choosing the option that would benefit his own horses but at some point during the game he switched to hindering his opponents. Joe, meanwhile, admitted to not understanding some of the finer details of the game.

But I loved it, and Joe’s wooden money made it that little bit more special.

Andy 2150
Matt 1200
Martin 1150
Andrew 1100
Joe 700
Katy 500

And so we left another games night, weary but satisfied.

On the Division, Katy edges up one spot, but otherwise it's all about Martin as he tries to win as much as possible before the baby arrives.