As it was Ian's birthday, there was an impromptu games night last night at Adam's house as he, Katy and I joined with the birthday boy. My automated calendar insists his birthday is today, although Ian demurs and I guess we have to trust him (even though I clearly recall him struggling to remember how old he was a couple of years ago) but the debate of the night was What To Play: I'd brought along Black Forest but wasn't actually pushing for it as a four-player, as I suspected it would run rather long. I'd also brought Quantum, as it's one of Ian's favourites and - as we reminded ourselves throughout the evening - it was his birthday. "Is it space-themed?" Katy asked. "Yes" said Ian. Katy wailed.
"We can pretend it's trading in the Meditterranean though" I said.
"At night" Adam added.
Katy seemed unconvinced but as it was Ian's birthday, she relented, and after a brief visit to the front room to witness Arthur's rather impressive Star Wars Lego diorama, we set up for a rare four-header.
Adam kicked things off in sedate fashion - moving a single ship on the board, and taking two Research. Unusually, Ian and I did the same: everyone clearly lining up their ducks for turn two. But Katy jumped into an embryonic lead with a cube down on her first turn: we were away.
With a fairly expansive set-up everyone had some room to manoeuvre, but whilst Katy and I kept to ourselves, Ian found himself targeted by Adam fairly early on. Birthday reminders came through the galaxy PA but to no avail: with Adam's ships all low-numbered, fate was encouraging him to go aggressive and Ian was closest. Normally in Quantum there's a kind of compacted Eclipse-shaped curve of building your engine (Eclipse) or getting cubes down while you can (Quantum) before eventually everyone merges into a punch-up.
But despite Ian's impressive rally to catch Katy and I (down to two cubes, with zero attacks) my command card of Resourceful (remove a ship for an extra action) was working wonders for me, as I used it to get a cube down three turns running and snag the victory. "That was actually not too bad!" Katy surmised, who took an extra turn after I'd won which we'll have to ignore - otherwise, chaos.
Sam - no cubes
Katy and Ian - two cubes left
Adam - four cubes left
Arthur came in and when Adam told him that he'd lost, his son muttered "That was inevitable". He's never seen his dad play a Rosenberg, obviously... We moved on to Fishing; new to Ian and Adam. Basic trick-taking rules apply and the idea is that your 'catch' - won tricks - are all worth a point per card. The conceptual catch is that they're also your hand for the next round, and any shortfall is made by drawing from the 'Ocean deck' - which introduces more powerful cards.
This was the closest game of Fishing I've seen - there was only 12 points between first and fourth going into the final round. Unfortunately my impressive penultimate-round haul gave me a hand of shite and I only won a single card (courtesy of a zero). Katy caused a stewards' enquiry when she was a card short, drew a trump from her stack to win the trick and then subsequently discovered a bland old red '1' on the floor after the game. Adam - who else - took 15 points and returned home most boastful fisher.
Adam 85
Katy 82
Ian 80
Sam 77
Although Arthur was still up and we could hear him and Hannah giggling in the next room, Katy said it was getting late and she would go home unless Ian opened his birthday Toblerone, so he did. Ian had asked me to bring So Clover but, portentously signalling the mid-life fog he is headed towards, I'd forgotten. So we played No Thanks instead. I didn't take any photos at this point, but we re-established whose birthday it was, perhaps all secretly hoping that Ian would get a victory to take home. Unfortunately his Andrew-esque strategy of nabbing a lowish-card early on didn't pan out - although he did at least beat Adam out of third place. Katy was pleased to end the night on a high:
Katy 22
Sam 29
Ian 50
Adam 65
And we ended Ian's anniversary with a discussion on the deceptive nature of time: Ian's recollections of the last two decades' events all being "a couple of years ago"; my brain's default of up and coming band being the Arctic Monkeys, Adam's confession that he doesn't remember "anything". Katy said as she got older she found herself knowing and more and more people and it was wonderful. Adam replied sonorously that, at some point, that trend will begin to reverse.
But before then there are more games to be played. We headed out into the now-misty Easton air with the promise of that soon...
Our hosts were Anja and Steve last night - or at least, they were eventually. As Joe, Andy M, Martin and myself arrived we found Louie had taken on the duties himself, and was entertaining Ian in the lounge with some small assistance from Molly. Steve was in the other room, power-tooling his way through some fireplace renovations, and Anja was upstairs getting Lennon to bed. Under Louie's capable supervision however, we cracked on with the games. While Martin set up Hold Your Ground for everyone else, Joe and I played Kribbeln.
Hold Your Ground was new to everyone except Martin, but the rules are pretty straightforward and before long they were all dicking each other over. Meantime I beat Joe in a narrow and fairly jammy finale to Kribbeln, recovering a 6-10 deficit going into the final round. As the others were still knee-deep in Hold Your Ground - we could hear Ian's laments - Joe and I set up Tiger and Dragon and Anja appeared just in time to join us.
I really enjoyed revisiting this game, even though the best strategies escape me. Joe won twice: in the first game, it only took him a single round as he went out with the '1' tile as defence: that's ten points and an insta-win. Anja and I resolved to be more canny as we reset, but our best efforts were no match for Joe, who won again in two rounds. Maybe next time it'll take him three.
Joe: Tiger!
Anja and Sam: Gazelles
We finished around the same time as Hold Your Ground, as Ian found himself jettisoned into the stratosphere.
Louie followed him out, leaving just Andy and Martin, and Martin admitted fate favoured him in the face-off.
Martin: Held his ground
Others: Ground to pieces
We did some mild seat rejigging, as Louie retired to bed. I was up for Foundations of Metropolis but had my head turned by Bomb Busters, which was set up for myself, Andy, Joe and Martin. With Adam H a late cancellation, Steve, Anja and Ian plumped for Mille Fiori.
Joe and Andy were new to Bomb Busters but we took a risk, skipping the training missions and diving in where we'd left off on previous plays with Katy and Laura. We started poorly when Andy took a slightly lassez-faire approach to existence and boomed us into atoms, and had to reset. However, this was a forgivable error for a cadet: it soon transpired the biggest risk in Bomb Busters is having me on the team: I kept costing us lives, and in the second mission completely forgot there were wires to cut of colours other than blue.
Meantime the glassblowing was hotting up, as Steve cursed Ian's name for depriving him of points. "This is exactly what happened last time!" he cried plaintively. Little did he know there was worse to come - much worse. For a start, Anja wrapped up a fairly comfortable win:
Anja 166
Ian 155
Steve 127
Then, as we saw out our fourth mission in Bomb Busters - (a great game, but not a relaxing one) failing twice; succeeding twice - they collectively failed at flying Kites, which was so rapid I didn't even get a picture. We gathered together again as a seven to crank out a tournament of Champions, which was reason enough for Martin to mildly berate us again about PlathversusKermitgate, now fully established as a GNN meme.
The first round had some bankers: Hagrid is far more likely to scratch his butt in public than Claudia Winkelman, and Bagpuss seemed more of a toenail biter than Hermione. In fact the most notable moment in these early stages was Andy confessing he read the latter's name to his children as Herm-y-own. Consternation set in in round two however, with the Titchmarsh-Paxman face-off: backing the wrong horse here set you back several furlongs. Steve was maybe distracted by his reminisces of meeting Mickey Dolenz, an anecdote he wanted to indulge further but found himself barraged with get-on-with-it Steve input from across the table. In a bit of competitive celeb-bathing, I recalled the Fonz slapping me on the back at the BAFTAs, although I had to admit he wasn't in character and it was only because I moved a chair out of his way.
Martin 30
Joe 24
Anja, Ian, Sam 22 each
Steve 19
Ian now also retired, maybe saving a bit of energy for his birthday (today) and we were left as a crestfallen six as we realised nobody had a copy of So Clover. Instead, we played the self-proclaimed 'Greatest Card Game of All Time', Flip 7, which is basically Pairs with a few special cards thrown in. "What promoted this?" Steve asked of the claim.
"I think Christmas was coming" said Joe.
But it wasn't for Steve, who took Ian's mantle of serial-buster-supreme (see: Novocon) and ran with it. I blew up in the first round and the early running was made by Anja. Steve exploded so often that his verbal contributions settled on various iterations of the post title, as he scorned the idea that the game was even competent.
Martin caught Anja up, and found himself the target of several freezes. Then Anja caught Martin again with a spectacular turn: emboldened by a Second Chance card, she twisted her way to a huge haul of nearly a seventy or so points. But it wasn't enough to stop Martin, who took the plunge and got the card he needed to hit the 200 point winning mark!
Late as usual, I rocked up at Sam's place at 7.45. Most of tonight's attendees were perusing thr games collection while I got my coat off. Martin asked me if I liked the sound of a tile laying game about Jazz. An easy sell. I replied in the affirmative and booked my place on today's big thinky game, Bebop.
There were eight of us tonight. Sam, Martin, Katy, Pete, Ian, Andy M and myself. Katy expressed concern that she may have to reign in her usual aggressive style in the face of two relative newcomers but when she found out she was playing a game against three old familiars, she was happy that she could be a dick again.
I was joined by Martin, Pete and former semi regular Andy M, who I hadn't seen in years but in finest Games Night tradition, we just nodded and said hello.
The other game, chosen by Sam, Katy and Ian with Adam H in mind, who was on his way. He phoned once he was at the door, apparently unable to be heard by us in the kitchen. Once at the table, he got a rules explanation from Sam while Pete guided us through Bebop.
Any idea that this may be about Jazz was quickly quashed - it’s about a Jazz Festival and the idea of the game is to put our “fans” (the dice) next to the stage hosting their favourite instrument (drums, piano or trumper). First you put your seat down and on top of that, you put a die. The idea is to chain colours together in such a way that you have the majority of one instrument on your seats.
The game had a pretty simple mechanic, either place a seat or a fan and five of the seats had special abilities. But the strategy seemed to elude us. “What do I want?” cried Martin midway through the game. Even Pete, who’d only played once before - against himself - couldn’t offer any pointers.
Meanwhile, in Instanbul, Sam worked early on his wagon while Ian got the first jewel. There had been talk at the start of the game about Katy breaking the game last time she played. I remember hearing about this but tonight she stayed firmly in the middle of the pack. Right up until the end.
Ian 5
Adam 4 plus cash
Katy 4
Sam 4
After Istanbul they set up a game of misfits. Our jazz fest was showing no sign of ending.
Whatever plan Katy had once had about being a dick seemed to have dissipated by now as she began with a disc placed flat on the table. Sam, far less amicable, put a cylinder on top of the disk, lying on it's side.
After that, it was your usual recreation of 1970s public sculpture with exhortation to us not to bang the table. Not much chance of that, as we had entered the thinky standing up period of the game.
Adam won Misfits
After this, they played Gold Fever. Adam seemed to play the first part of the game while studying the rule book. They played twice, with wins for Katy and Adam. At the end of the game, Sam seemed to find a number of stones in the lining of his bag.
Finally our Jazz Festival came to a close. We had, by now, long since passed the playing time suggested on the box. We were heading towards the final scoring with still not any solid idea about how well our strategies do.
Andy M 98
Martin 97
Pete 87
Ander 71
Andy said he was happy with his win since he liked jazz. I don’t know what to make of Bebop! It was quite long and I never really got a grip of any possible tactics. I was tired, it was approaching 10 by now and I decided to bail out early.
Without me, the evening tore through more games@ Tower Up, Wavelength and two offerings of So Clover.
Some beautiful clues in there. Vampire/Pigeon for Bat is perhaps my favourite. Also, Sam played Agent Avenue four times, losing to Martin 2-1 and then playing against Pete later on. What a night.
It was a winter of content as, not so long after Novocon, and just a few days after Laura's games day, a second festive get-together arrived. This time we were at Anja and Steve's: Joe drove myself and Katy over and we arrived just as they were finishing the first game of the session, with Steve coming a cropper in That's Not a Hat. Martin, Sarah and Effie were present and somewhere in the house Louie and Arthur were navigating pixel world. There was some chat and drinks prep and invasively-shaped breadsticks, and then Sarah and Effie made their way home and then remaining adults played Joe's recent acquisition, Awkward Family Photos.
It's a party game where one player draws a card and chooses which demented photo they want the other players to provide a quote for. The quotes themselves are on cards, and drawn from movies, meaning there is fun to be had in the juxtaposition of lines we often know and strange people we don't, as well as the weirdness of the images themselves. I should have written some of these down but I didn't - anyway, the active player chooses which quote they thinks works best/is funniest/stupidest and the player who provided the quote gets the picture as a point. Katy cleaned up here, snagging three pics. The rest of us had one or none, but the highlight was no doubt Steve's enthusiastic embracing of reading the lines.
We split into two groups, with Joe Katy and Hannah joining Martin in the perilous lands of Hold Your Ground and myself, Adam, Anja and Steve playing MLEM.
Anja was concerned that her conservative approach was boring initially, but she warmed to the theme as serial explosions sent the rest of us into the ether whilst she watched from the warmth of a planet made of yarn. I missed all the fun of Hold Your Ground as I was too busy heckling her - to no avail. Steve and I tried to finish with a flourish making it into Deep Space, but only blew up again.
Anja 27
Adam 25
Sam 21
Steve 15
Hold Your Ground had finished just before us, with Joe the victor on his debut play. There was some child-wrangling at this point, followed by some soup wrangling, and while we waited for the latter Joe introduced us to his game of counting from 1 to 20. It's always anyone's turn to say the next number, but if two or more people speak at the same time, you have to restart from one. We were all entertained by this - except Katy, who pronounced she couldn't stand it and left the room - but the furthest we got was 17 - unless you accept Joe and Martin's two-player version where they simply took turns. Steve, Martin and I also played a few rounds of Illusion at this point as well - but then the soup was ready! There was also home-made bread and cheese and a discussion about cheese between Louie, Arthur, Joe and I in the kitchen. But I forgot to take photos. When are you back, Andrew?
After this lovely dinner Steve took some of us on a tour of the bouncy front room and we discussed such construction undertakings as joists and chasing. Then there was an amazing cake, the name of which I now forget but it's a bit like panottoni, and you - or Steve - can slice it into the shape of a Christmas tree.
We broke into two groups again, with Joe, Adam and Katy playing Thurn and Taxis and the rest of us Mille Fiori. Louie was initially slated to build the German postal system as well, but the arrival of snow outside meant he was lost to the salad days of youth and cold hands.
Meantime shit was getting slightly less real on the table. Anja's third or fourth turn was an early epic, as she triggered a bunch of bonus turns and catapulted herself into what looked like, to the uninitiated, an insurmountable lead. But we are all sadly initiated at this point, and Martin caught her up later on in the game as Steve and I took turns to make mournful little sounds with our mouths. With apologies, I missed the drama of Thurn and Taxis as a result, but my modest late-game surge in Mille Fiori was almost as pitiful as what came before it.
Martin 238
Anja 210
Sam 177
Steve 171
While they entered the final furlong in Thurn and Taxis, there was a lot of bodily movement around the house and I think at this point Steve showed me the upstairs, which I'd never seen before. It's huge! Then Martin and I played Hit! with Arthur and Louie. All of us regularly busted, but then endgame favoured Arthur and I somewhat.
Sam 84
Arthur 72
Martin 68
Louie 4
Thurn and Taxis wrapped up now, with Adam taking a convincing win:
Adam 24
Katy 16
Joe 10
And after some table shenanigans, I set up my Christmas gift Let's Go! To Japan with Adam and Joe, whilst the other end of the table played Agent Avenue. I had now completely abandoned my journalistic responsibilities, but fortunately Steve was on the case...
And here's some Let's Go! To Japanning from earlier times.
In this game we are planning our wonderful trip(s) to Japan by arranging three activities per day over six days - presuming, in my case, my travelling self has more energy than I do. When our final activity/card is placed, we then go on our trips, and each experience increases the holistic and cultural value of it by pushing the component aspects of the vacation (food, temples, unique experiences etc) up the track. If, at the end of the day, we have received enough of said aspect, then we can also score the Highlight of the Day as well.
That's pretty much the game, save for a couple of wrinkles of your mood increasing (or not) overall, and the fact that your entire trip is based in Tokyo and Kyoto: any time you travel 'between' these cities, you must take the train. This was where Joe's planning fell down - he spent a lot of time whizzing between cities and without the tickets for it, he got hit with minus points. But for the activities themselves, Joe was having a grand old time, keeping costs low and enjoying a kind of thrift-store version of Japan. It was enough to win, though I inevitably made no note of the scores I think it was
Joe 115
Sam 111
Adam 109
But we all had a great trip. Katy's first play of Agent Avenue was less successful, as she and Anja came a cropper at the hands of Martin and Steve. But now it was getting on a bit - Louie had gone to bed, Hannah and Arthur had returned from the snow only to vanish again, and whenever the door opened I complained like an old man about the arctic wind that blew in. In other words, it was time for So Clover. I won't lie, I was smugly thinking about the fact I had a long record of sixes up until tonight when my clover - the first - blew up in my face: we scored three because apparently nobody sees Memory/Sky as poetically as I do (I wrote Dreamland: there were better matches).
I was also responsible for harpooning Anja's clover when I said "This now looks insane" about the card placements and we started again only to subsequently discover they'd been in the right place. Katy's cake was a great clue for Fairy/Hole and Martin's deoxygenated for Summit/Heart was clever. Overall 35 from a possible 42 (using two sets of the game) wasn't too shabby.
A fun way to end the evening, as always. Thanks to everyone, especially our hosts, and see you before too long I hope!
I arrived at Laura and Lucy's house to find Lucy and Ryker upstairs creating a huge den from magnetic boards. Down the the kitchen, Laura, Maddie, Martin, Sarah and Effie were competing in the first game of the first GNN festive get-togethers: 5 Alive, which is a card game of shedding without taking the collective total over 21. Everyone begins with five lives and a life is lost when you bust (I think).
Martin and Laura were joint winners with 2 lives left, and Maddie and Effie had one apiece when Sarah bit the dust and lost her last one. Christmas games were officially underway and next up was one of Martin's newbies, Hold Your Ground! Here we are trying to be last-ones standing as the ground literally explodes in camera-defying ways beneath your feet.
As this only plays up to four, Effie and Maddie teamed up and so did Martin and Sarah. Laura and I both flew solo: each turn you play two cards from a hand of four that define number of your people to move and how far they can go, after which there's a die roll to determine whether the explody-stick will move (one space; your choice) or explode the tile it currently resides beneath, ejecting the plastic people from the game: and if anyone is cut off from the central helipad tile, they are automatically lost as well. The helipad is semi-safe in that it cannot explode - but as each tile has a max limit of six, a seventh entering will push someone off. The die may also trigger a round of area-control too, where dominant factions kick off the outnumbered. It's all pretty arbitrary-feeling, but fun. Especially the explosions.
Effie was merciless when the opportunity to screw over her parents came - the apple falls not far from the tree, Martin - and having been in a strong position they were forced out of the helipad; and out of the game. Then the girls were ejected and it came down to a straight fight between Laura and I: she just needed to roll an explosion to win: and did! A triumph, but at what cost? Look at the desolation.
We moved on to HIT, the lesser-seen (recently) Knizia card-flipper. Sarah and Adam shared a win in game one, then Lucy joined us for game two, which I won. Nice to revisit this one.
After all the subversion and theft though we needed something healing and went with Cross Clues. It was a triumph: 25/25 with zero cheating.
There's only so much healing we can take though, so we reverted to type with Prey Another Day. Sarah made short work of us here, correctly reading the table and devouring opponents to take a victory in two short rounds. I struggled into second.
We moved on to Wandering Towers. I got off to a good start with two potions filled and one wizard home within a couple of turns, but after that stagnated a bit as everyone lost track of where their wizards might be in the vast apartment complex we managed to build.
There were shenanigans. Twice I was close to ending it only to be harpooned by the architecture moving around me. Martin plaintively cried "Where the fuck am I" at least twice. Sarah shared his existential despair. Eventually I claimed a win, with Adam second and Martin beating Laura to third on the tiebreaker. We all agreed the game is bonkers and whilst Laura took herself off on pizza duty, the four of us played something much more sensible: Agent Avenue. Adam and I dug a little hole for ourselves early on - getting two daredevils whilst Martin and Sarah claimed two Codebreakers meant we had to be extremely careful about taking any face-down cards. We briefly threatened to catch them on the track, but ended up daredevilled or codebroken (I now don't recall which) into defeat. Fun though!
Next up was Stomp the Plank, the game of pirate elephants hating on each other. There wasn't a huge amount of busting and in fact my red elephant did no plank-walking at all. That lack of adventurousness was enough to bring me a solid win.
Then, after a wonderful foodie interlude of pizza and salads, the entire house gathered together for Midnight Party!
Martin and I had disastrous first rounds as we both encouraged Hugo out and had him subsequently eat us. The Laura-Ryker team began well by picking up +3 points, but massive kudos to Maddie who pooh-poohed open doors in favour of running around the board to the plus-three rooms. It didn't get her the win, but she looked like an action hero compared the rest of us scrambling in a sweaty-palmed panic. Mid-game Sarah and Effie had to leave, and as Katy was arriving at the same time she took over control of their team.
Laura + Ryker -14 Martin -23 Sam -27 Maddie -28 Sarah + Effie / Katy -29 Adam -32
Ryker and Maddie were fully invested now and played Block Party with us. Really lovely to have them at the table as we continuously discovered our 'obvious' creations just looked like a bunch of cubes to everyone else.
Adam surged into an early lead here, and Ryker had a handicap of only actually starting in round two. Adam built a wonderful slice of watermelon and I successfully had my orange cube identified as 'an orange' by Maddie. I knew Martin's blocks were meant to be a slide but I wasted my steal on Katy's swirl-of-colours construct, which was "obviously" a donut. Meanwhile Katy insisted Martin's slide looked 'more like Chewbacca'. You be the judge:
Everyone had a little late-game rally and for me it was enough to catch Adam and share the win. Unfortunately that was Adam's last involvement for the day as he had to head off home, so he missed out on the hilarity of what was next: Misfits. We began as a quintet: Katy, Laura, Maddie, Martin and myself. But after Ryker won Pizza Party at the end of the table he joined my team and supplied both advice and some next-level heckling, trilling "Boooooring!" if he felt the placement wasn't ambitious enough. Around here was also Ryker's amazing 'Squidge my balls' routine, which gave all the supposed adults an even harder challenge than Misfits: keeping a straight face. Or trying to.
Somewhere in all this craziness - there were multiple collapses - Katy picked up a win despite her last two pieces being cylinders. There was time for one last game before kids' bedtime and so everyone was dealt into UNO - which today I discover in fifteen years of the blog, has never been tagged here before. Ryker and I stayed as a team, Maddie and Lucy paired up, and Katy, Laura and Martin all went it alone.
I think it's been about fifteen years since I've played it at least, but if it doesn't scream hall-of-fame it is at least a fast-moving bit of silly good fun. Despite our best efforts to harpoon them, Maddie and Lucy took the win here and the kids were shuffled off to bed as we debated what to play next, settling eventually on Rebirth.
During our cathedral-centric rebuilding of post-apocalyptic Scotland, the children reappeared and there was a bout of snacks and swinging. Ryker was at the table when I told Martin I hated him, which I had to quickly clarify was only in the context of the game. Laura admonished me for setting a terrible example, and I realised it really was.
Katy broke out a colossal box of Maltesers and Laura added a bowl of Celebrations. On the board it looked a two-horse race between Katy and her proliferating energy farms and Martin and his spawny card draws: the first two missions he'd picked up rewarded his initial placements. That's my excuse anyway. I tried to balance the needs of farms and missions and castles and just ended up a kind of bland fourth place. Katy looked poised to sneak the win from her arch enemy, but she'd only picked up 4 missions - and only completed three of them.
Martin 124
Katy 119
Laura 117
Sam 111
While Laura did some further bedtime shenanigans Martin set up his other Christmas present: Bomb Busters! This is a co-op undertaking with the theme of FUSE - we're defusing bombs - and a similar shared-information system to Hanabi.
Each round we successfully 'cut wires' by matching a numbered wire from our (hidden) hand of them with one from another player. At the start we can all share information about a single wire, but because wires are laid out numerically left-to-right, you can also transmit limited info about the tiles around it as well. There's four of each number (on the first mission, the numbers are only 1-6) and if two of a number are already revealed and you have the remaining pair in your own hand, you're allowed to pair 'with yourself' and reveal them.
After the very easy first mission, the game makes things a bit harder with extra numbers (1-8) and now coloured wires as well (see 3.1 in pic above) that need to be 'cut' in similar fashion. It gets trickier fast, and if you're not a naturally logical puzzle-solver (ie me) it can start to feel like the only thing you can grok is the fact you know nothing. But it's more intuitive than Wordy or Message From the Stars, and I enjoyed it. Each mission ramps up the difficulty, and gives you more to navigate. To help, you also get single-use tool cards that can get you out of a pickle - I used these more than anyone!
We succeeded our first three missions but lost our last life on Mission 4. Not a bad return for four slightly inebriated cadets, I'd say, even if our alcohol-infused body parts were now scattered around the academy. It's a bit Quirky Circuits too, in the mission-focused escalation - I look forward to playing this again. Laura and I were fading a bit now though - possibly the wire-cutting tension; maybe the post-chocolate sugar-crash - and we elected to make the last game the final one of the night, so it was of course So Clover. Katy got a bastard of a red herring tile, but we managed to call it out and ended the evening on a masterful 24/24! What a great way to sign off 2024. Thank you Laura, Lucy, and all for a cracking session...
Happy new year all. Here's to some great games in 2025 - starting on Saturday!
