Games in the key of life

If late is the new on-time then I'd be as punctual as a Japanese train. Unfortunately, it's not and so when I finally arrived well after 8, i found Sam (host), Joe and Katy deep in a game of New York Zoo. 

It's from Uwe Rosenberg and it involves filling a grid of squares with various shaped areas which you can fill with animals. It caused a lot of anguish as players bemoaned their non-breeding stock, imagining the animals either looking at each other from afar or just wanking. Joe was first to fill his area which gave him an instawin.

Joe first

Sam and Katy joint last

Next the four of us played Take The A Chord, a Japanese trick taking game which has a vague theme of playing Jazz music. All of it seemed confusing and opaque, such as who won the trick, who started an improvisation, who got the spotlight and what happens if we change keys. Even working out who started the next round in the event of a tie for least points in the previous round required us to read the rules slowly at least twice.

Meanwhile, Katy's request to have jazz on the stereo was largely left unfulfilled as the playlist kept veering off into other genres. Mind you, we filled in by humming the note we’d just played in a perfectly tone-deaf manner. I think I had fun playing it but that was mostly due to the company, not the game. I'm not sure it's the kind of thing you understand first time. Just like real jazz, then.

Katy 80

Sam 60

Joe 45

Andrew 20

Then we tried Rumble Nation as a four player. It’s pretty feisty, at least it was for Katy who snatched Joe’s phone from his hand as he was searching for Sri Lankan restaurants so that he could concentrate on taking his move, and then she criticised me for folding up a crisp packet really loudly. Nevertheless, her dedication was rewarded by a comfortable win.Maybe we should all play like that.

Katy 39

Sam 28

Andrew 20

Joe 19

By now it was after 10.00, which is usually finishing up time online, but not here. Instead we leapt feet first into our best Victorian story-telling pants with a rousing game of The Secret Adventures of the Old Hellfire Club. It’s a very basic trick-taker dressed up with a lot of nonsense about storytelling.

This evening’s nonsense was based around our attempts to find the Elephant’s Graveyard and we made a fairly good start, getting on a ship with a foul-mouthed Karl Marx and sailing past the Cape of Good Hope, but then I was arrested and we all went to Newgate Prison. Joe won, but let’s be honest it’s the kind of game that doesn’t need winners. 

Joe 15

Katy 14

Sam 12

Andrew 6

So, congrats to Joe and Katy for winning everything. See you all next week.

Don't let the sun tile go down on me

Today, Joe's new (unfinished) games room held three gamers: Joe, Sam and I. This new room is right next to the front door and so is much more amenable to gamers entering and leaving surreptiously. Now Joe's house just needs a peephole in the front door and a secret knock and the speakeasy will be complete!

I got to Joe's at about 7.45 and Sam let me in while Joe was downstairs finishing supper. He came up after a while drinking champagne. "What's the occasion?" I asked. "It's my 25th wedding anniversary," said Joe, airily. Surprised, Sam and I asked if we should go, so he could celebrate it, but Joe reassured us that they'd only just remembered yesterday.

And what better way to celebrate marital bliss than a game of Luzon Rails, the Philippines based game of stocks and railway building.

Only Sam had played it before, coming last against the two Adams, and he explained the rules which were pretty clear and straightforward. We did the usual vague dalliance with cheap double entendres (extending my pink, get cracking on the brown track) and we were slightly distracted by the cries of delight from elsewhere in the house when England scored. Simply put, it was standard eurogaming fare.

Sam 94

Andrew 79

Joe 55

Joe said he wished he was better at train based share games while Sam admitted he had little Idea what he did right.

Next up was an old favourite: Ra. Only this time it was a super deluxe version with large shiny tiles, a huge cloth bag to hold them all and Joe’s very own green baize playing area. It took a while for me and Sam to remember the rules, especially Sam who said he hadn’t played in years.

Round one was notable for lots of disaster tiles threatening to ruin civilizations and monuments. At the end of round two, Joe pushed his luck and failed as the Ra track filled up. “It wasn’t worth that much,” he rationalised. The round three ended with me bailing out early and Sam and Joe still unfinished when that last Ra tile was pulled from the bag. This turned out to be very lucky indeed. For me, that is

Andrew 37

Joe 36

Sam 35

Then we played Fae, which involves tiny pastel-coloured wizards who like to congregate, moving from one area to the neighbouring one until they are in an area with no one in any adjacent area. Once they’re sure they’re alone, they perform a ritual and score points. It’s an abstract puzzle game and pleasant enough.

Joe 59

Sam 55

Andrew 54

Thanks for the evening, gentlemen, and sorry for the late posting. See everyone in a few days.

Wonderful rumbles

This week saw a rare sojourn to Katy's house, squeezing in a table-testing six players (Katy, Joe, Sam, Adam H, Adam T, and myself). Katy had worked out who was sitting where based on ease of getting up for the toilet and amount of discomfort her husband might feel in squeezing past them. Adam, apparently, would cause the least. We were also surprised to learn that it was Sam's first visit to Katy's place. "Welcome," she said, half an hour after he'd arrived.

But as for the games, I arrived at 8, at the same time as Adam H and found people in the dining area, chatting. Apparently they hadn't played anything. Amazing. But with a full attendance, we soon leapt into a rousing game of Team Play. I was matched up with Adam H, which is always a bit of a mixed blessing. A greater chance that you'll win, but only if he wins as well. Adam T teamed up Sam and finally Joe and Katy were the third team.

I started slow and was last to finish a trick, while Sam whipped off two tricks in one turn for an early lead. Katy got stuck with a target of Three pairs, all even or all odd and she wasn't encouraged when Joe admitted he hadn't been paying attention to what she'd been picking up for the past few rounds.

But Adam and I turned it around and triggered the game end with our eighth trick and had already scored enough to win.

Andrew and Adam H 25

Sam and Adam T 24

Katy and Joe 19

Next we split into two groups. Adam, Adam and Joe played It's A Wonderful Life, which is nothing to do with the classic film starring James Stewart. It's set in a"non specific near future," according to rules explainer Adam T. And it seemed a bit 7Wonders-ish, judging from what little I understood of it.

Sam, Katy and I played Rumble Nation. This, according to Sam, consists of rolling dice, placing cubes accordingly and then resolving fights. "It's like a three act game with the middle act taken out," Sam added.

Players are not completely at the mercy of luck, and there is a little strategy involved in that a victory in one area has a knock-on effect in the neighboring provinces. I used this to good effect when my initial win set off further victories across the board like toppling dominoes.

Andrew 42

Sam 34

Katy 32

Midway through this, Rob came down and pottered about a bit, before making sure we were playing two different games, so confusing was our banter.

When Rumble Nation ended, It's A Wonderful Life was still midway through so we played Hit Z Road. It's a fun game of zombie apocalypse mayhem that always seems to go on too long. 

My band of survivors was wiped out in the penultimate round which at least allowed me to go to the toilet. Katy died in the final round, killed by the last zombie, while Sam made it to the coast with load's of resources and fourteen points. An impressive performance.

Sam, Gulf Coast Highway

Katy and Andrew, Road To Hell

It’s A Wonderful Life had ended before Hit Z Road, and they patiently waited for us to finish. Except that Adam T left, and I went soon after. The Wonderful Life scores were…

Adam T 61

Adam H 57

Joe 29

I later learnt by text that Sam and Katy won Durian and then Sam won Push It. Thanks all, and special thanks to Rob for putting up with six gamers blocking the way into the back garden. See you all soon.

Twitch Gaming

This week, four gamers congregated in Easton where Adam hosted in a house that I barely recognised from last time. Kitchen, stairs, sofa, it all seemed so new. Katy and Joe weren’t so new, I’d seen them only a couple of weeks before, but still a welcome sight.

We began with Marrakech, a favourite on BGA, but my first time playing with real materials. But since we’re accustomed to BGA setting everything up for us, we had to read the rule book (like a bunch of Luddites) to make sure we were doing things correctly.

We played the nice version, where a player can turn Assam before rolling and moving. Joe built a huge 12-tile carpet in the centre of the board which we then circled around cautiously, never daring to set foot on it. It didn’t pay out until the very end of the game (maybe twice) but it looked impressive.

Adam 50

Joe 46

Andrew 38

Katy 33

Then we had to put the thing away! And Marrakech The Real Board Game is a bit tricky with all these fuzzy-felt rectangles refusing to go back into the white paper band they came from.

After this was a new game, Wingspan. It is, as it says on the box, an engine building game: a get stuff to get stuff kind of thing. Albeit a game with lovely illustrations and pastel coloured eggs that look good enough to eat.

In the game you get food (from dice that are rolled using a pretty but unnecessary dice tower. Then use the food to build birds (we didn't bother with accurate terminology), use the birds to get eggs and then score points. These birds can also be activated for extra actions, as described with lots of text on cards. The cards also tell you the wingspan of each bird. This has no purpose during the game but it is a tie-breaker at the end. Is this the only board game named after a tie-breaker?

Once underway, the rules are pretty straightforward and it was all quite familiar. There was end of round scoring and hidden end of game bonuses. There was a moment when Katy challenged a move I'd made except I'd been copying Adam so instead of trying to undo the game untill then, Katy and Joe got an egg to even out our advantage. Of course, a computer would never let us make that move in the first place.

I was also chastised for asking Adam about his half-carpeted stairs when it was his turn, threatening to make an already slow game even slower.

And that was its main failing. It was a little too sedate with only limited interaction. Joe was frustrated by Katy picking up the only worm (or snake, as I insisted) from the dice tower but then he realised that the game allows you to exchange any two food for one anyway.

It ended at about eleven o'clock, which surprised us all. Still, it was very mellow.

Andrew 83
Joe 78
Adam 77
Katy 75

Adam blamed his third place on a bird that gave away seeds whenever he activated it. Generosity was never Adam’s style. Apart from when it comes to hosting, of course! Thanks, Adam and thanks Joe and Katy too. See you all/some soon.

Lucky Luxor

 

With the country facing two different routes of either ending the lockdown or going into a second wave of the virus (possibly both at the same time), our potential host Sam erred on the side of caution and so GNN moved back online for another week. I'll be honest, having sampled the joys of real life games, it felt like a real step backwards. But even so, three of us pitched up on Discord for an evening's entertainment.

Me, Ian and Andy arrived and waited for Sam until a text told us he couldn't make it. We fired up Lucky Numbers as a starter. It's a simple blend of draw tile, use or discard tile, until your four by four grid is full. I got lucky with a decent spread of opening numbers, unlike Ian who began with 10, 11, 13 among his tiles.

Andrew 16

Andy 15

Ian 11

After that we played Luxor, which has been seen a couple of times in GNN in cardboard format and was now available in a pixelated version. I got a quick run through of the rules, but it’s pretty straightforward once you understand the card drafting method of only picking from either side of your hand, and replenishing in the middle.

It was fun and enjoyable. It was my first go (and Ian’s too, I think) so we both played pretty similar games, picking up jewelry as we went like we were playing Incan Gold. Andy sent one adventurer off ahead on his own into the central room and then later on he got his second man into the centre to end the game before Ian or I could do it instead.

Andy 63

Andrew 44

Ian 43

Then I had to head off and Ian and Andy finished off with Can’t Stop.

Ian 4

Andy 1

Thanks for the evening. Who knows what kind of world we’ll be in next week?

Active Pile On

 Just like that, we're back in the room. After what seems like at least a decade, the Olde London mob of GNN assembled at Chris' house last night - along with the host there was Paul and myself (Sam) with Andrew coming later. There was a slight hesitancy as one might expect, particularly as I had brought the boys along. Suddenly we were all in a situation we weren't used to - a crowd. 

Luckily Chris' house is enormous and the children scampered off to do God knows what after we'd all hugged and kissed and eaten pizza. 

Chris and Paul had already been gaming with Ashton, trying out Paul's charity shop find of the day before, Space Lines. I think they played twice and Ashton won both times. But now with three of us, we had the luxury of starting an epic six-hour gaming session, and we did so with Project L. 

The rules have already been explained but suffice to say that Chris won it convincingly, and then Paul won our second game convincingly (I was third both times), and if there's a gigantic void of theme and the merest smidgen of Hey I Wanted That interaction, it's also enormously satisfying just putting all these bits into place. Especially when you do one of those delicious Master Actions and pull off a zinger of a move. Or you can just build a tetronomic totem like Chris did. 

We then played 7 Wonders. Without the computer to move cards around for you and tell you what everything does, it wasn't quite the super-breezy ten minutes the online implementation is, but it was still pretty speedy and nice to be in the room. Paul suggested we could slide the tablecloth back and forth if we wanted to relive the BGA version, but we ended up focusing our energies on the game in the end, and I picked up a rare win.

Then Andrew arrived! We were now pushing the legal limits and feeling marginally bandity about it all, and felt like something silly, plumping for Cubitos, with it's seemingly simple dice-rolling system that still tied us all in knots - me especially, as I'd explained the rules wrong previously, had a correction from Joe, reread the rules, but still got confused, and ended with the worse case of rules sweats I've had in a while as I fretted over draw piles, active piles, discard piles and roll piles. I mean, that's at least one pile too many isn't it? 

Basically you roll shitloads of dice though: it's a deckbuilder in cube form. We all played cautiously except Paul, who kept going bust and was miles behind the rest of us, only to suddenly spring forward like a geometric hunting dog. As before, the sedate opening changes and before you know it everyone suddenly speeds up - my previous experiences and the fact I got a Rollosaurus meant I was first over the line.

Sam wins.

Others: DNF

Chris was keen to try out The Secret Adventures of the Old Hellfire Club and I was certainly amenable, although it meant a brief rules-read, we were off!

This is a Very Silly game. Mechanically-speaking, all you're doing is playing cards of suits on your turn and hoping nobody plays a lower card of the same suit - pushing your luck or banking them after a minimum of two. You get coins for high cards and coins for having the most of a suit at the end. But heaped on top of this basic-math, risk-reward thing is the story you're telling. Players are drunken patrons of the titular Victorian-age club and are retelling the great adventure they undertook to (for example, as we did) save the world from a scourge of invading aliens. The cards represent story elements, such as Person, Place, Weapon, Insult, Motive, and as you play the cards you integrate them into your retelling. But the higher cards are more fabulously boastful, exaggerating things, and the lower ones rather more run of the mill. At one point I recalled how we set our man o' war with all hands against the invaders, only for Paul to play a lower card, reminding me it was actually an Amazonian blowpipe. In that instance, my turn's over and Paul banks his card instead, and the turn moves on. 

I can imagine sitting next to us as we played this could be very irritating if you were, say, reading a book, or engaged in everyday conversation. Particularly with Chris and I releasing long-dormant acting aspirations, but I found it enormous fun and probably the highlight of the evening. It's perhaps the most group-dependent game I've ever encountered but there were some golden moments in it, like when we encountered Karl Marx outside Whitechapel and charged the aliens with art fraud. Discovering Andrew  was a Fart-catcher (5 Insult) will always stay with me. 

Although as he pointed out, isn't Disillusionment with Life (8 Peril) more of an everyday occurrence than an 8?

Andrew had time for one more game and it was High Society. This is still my (second) favourite Knizia, a miniature work of genius. Everyone was in with a shout right up until the end - except for Chris, who wasn't. My skin was saved though when Andrew took the last card...

Sam 15

Paul/Andrew 13 each

Chris - BUST

We tried to tempt Andrew to stay by setting up Raj, but he was resolute and returned to whence he had came (the A350) while Chris took us to the fackin' cleaners in Raj world: with no Martin to bid high against me on the mid-range stuff, I kept overpaying for everything and my last-round recovery wasn't enough to catch him. 

Chris 64

Sam 54

Paul 20

The witching hour was approaching so we blasted through Mountain Goats: a dice-chucking, point-collecting, goat-removing evening-ender!

....but it didn't actually end the evening because Paul was eager to play Project L again, so we did! This time I fared a bit better. You gotta take those Master Actions!

Marvellous stuff, well worth the trip while the place is open!

Smug Too Soon

Another Tuesday, and yet rather than gathered around screens, six of the GNN brethren came together at my (Sam's) house for the still-slightly-surreal act of gaming face to face, around a shared table, touching wooden pieces, testing our wits and numeracy and - in this case - fondling Adam Hillmann's nuts. Thanks Adam. 

Also present was Adam T, Katy, myself and a slightly bewildered-looking Martin, appearing as though stumbling in from the mountains halfway through a Beckett play. It was kind of strange, but not so strange that we couldn't squeeze in a quick (new) game before Joe rocked up - as he rocked up, in fact, but he charitably let us continue - which was Whale Riders: The card game. 

This was a slightly Fuji Flush-esque undertaking of collecting cards in sets, and whenever a set was claimed (four 4's, six 6's and so on) by the collective owners, any other active sets imploded. There were a couple of other wrinkles, but it was very simple, and only took ten minutes to bash through:

Martin 42

Katy 35

Sam 31

Adam T 25

Adam H 16

Then with Joe present and happily amenable, we moved directly to another new game: Scape Goat, in which everyone is told (by the game) who the scape goat is, but it's lying to someone and nobody knows who. The air is thick with paranoia and the sound of pistachio shells cracking already, then Joe began talking about Steve Coogan's balls, which feature in a film he'd recently watched. We spent a good few minutes integrated the relevant testicles into the ongoing game, then I walked outside and realised the neighbour's doors were wide open. When I came back inside I decided I should warn everyone about the possible audience before the current goat impersonations really took hold. 

Scape Goat is simple on the rules, but trickier on working out what you should actually do. Definitely working out the scape goat isn't you is a good idea, but I failed miserably in game one, panicking and running to the cops when I suspected I was about to be framed. 

As it turned out, I wasn't:

Adam T (the scapegoat) wins!

Then we played again and Adam H worked out he was the scape goat before we could frame him. He - correctly - ran to the cops as well, and saved himself. 

Adam H (the scape goat) wins!

We then played Whale Riders: Not the card game, which comes with a board and little wooden whales.

 

It bore very little relation to the card game, with the only cards being contracts to fulfill as we - riding whales, naturally - swim around grabbing what we could to do so, in most Knizian fashion; all decisions tantalising and options designed to recede from sight like the tide going out before a tsunami. 

The big wave in this case was Adam H, who halfway through the game completed fifteen thousand contracts and scored a million pearls. That's what it felt like anyway, although it was much closer than we realised. 

Adam 18

Joe / Adam T 16 each

Sam 15

Martin 13

Katy 10

We split into two groups, with Joe, Katy and Martin playing new game #4 Renature, and myself and the Adams breaking out new game #5, Luzon Rails. I didn't pick up much of what was happening in Renature apart from some talk about neutral bushes and Katy's early-game confidence giving way to late-game doubt.

I was experiencing a similar narrative arc in Luzon Rails, in part because with both Adams assuring me I was winning, I let my iron grip on the isle of Luzon loosen like a railroad builder who got lucky with a first swing of the hammer and then spent the rest of the day admiring a single sleeper. 

As we build track we also control companies by owning shares in them. At the end of each round every company pays dividends so you're all trying to push their dividend value up by building track to prosperous places on the board. But companies can only build track with monies paid from auctioning shares, and there is the considerable rub, because you win the game by having the most personal cash. I shoulda bid for that last yellow share...

Adam H 109

Adam T 103

Sam 99

With Renature still puzzling the other end of the table, Adam T took his leave and vanished into the night. I tempted Adam H to stay by flinging all the luscious pieces of Project L (not a new game; we played it last week) onto the table. 

It's very easy to pick up and play, but you still want to win, right? And I thought I'd triumphed, but I may have been just a bit innumerate by this point.

Adam 22

Sam 17

As we packed that away, Katy reminded me that we should never invite Adam for this very reason. Renature concluded with Katy saying "I might have been smug too soon".

 Going by the scores, she was right.

Martin 78

Katy 72

Joe 50-something

The jury seemed to be out - but enjoying the debate, with all of them surprised how thinky it was for an alleged 'family' game, but perhaps impressed all the same. "It was long" Katy pointed out. Martin said he wouldn't even attempt it with four. Joe looked slightly rueful, whether at his performance or the purchase itself, he'll have to explain. I tried to get them to stay longer, but with 11 o'clock now past, it was time to wrap up another delightful evening. Lovely to be back!