This game's got Seoul

 Joe’s place is barely a hop skip and a jump from mine, yet I still manage to misjudge how long it’ll take me to walk there and thus I was the last of tonight’s quartet to arrive.

Joe, Martin, Adam H and I started with Collect. It’s a simple game in which you collect animal cards.  The winning conditions depend on which animals you have in front of you, so there’s a certain amount of dick moves as a particular animal allows you to remove or swap cards in another player’s tableau thus ruining anyone’s chances of a win.

We played as two teams of two, although the players score individually: the first player to win a crown means that team wins. In rounds 1, 2 and 3 the winner gets half a crown and in the fourth round, the winner gets a whole crown.

We played while we made a start on Martin’s Thai Sweet Chili crisps, bought for his daughter but he found out they were the wrong Thai Sweet Chili and now he was stuck with two multi-packs of the wrong crisps.

The game was fun if a little lightweight. Martin won round one and then I won the next two, meaning our team won the game.

Martin & I - Surfin’ Safari

Joe & Adam - Strange Taxidermy

Next up was President Maker, a little table-top general election in South Korea. This time Adam started as the ruling Progressive Party against Martin (independent), Joe (Centrist) and myself (conservative).

Satire

I went for the extra candidate which did so well with Sam last time. It cost me two votes though and in the final count, came out three times so only a net gain of one vote for me.

The general election was much closer this time on paper, although as it played out Adam sped off into a huge lead with Martin’s meeples seemingly reluctant to emerge from the cloth bag in the final count. Martin did stage a late rally, but couldn’t close the gap.

Adam

Martin

Andrew

Joe

Next up we played Fives, the game that famously insulted us by putting a pivotal rule at the end of the rule book with the word “obviously” attached to it, effectively calling us morons for ever thinking otherwise.

Halfway through the game, a piece of Joe’s table fell off with a loud clunk, with very little concern from Joe. “What was that?” asked Martin. “Er… nothing,” Joe replied.

I admit I have no idea how to approach this game. In the four rounds that we play, I go bust three times and I only stay solvent in round four by sheer luck. I keep finding myself in a position where I have to win a trick in order to lead and dispose of a high card, but if I win a trick I’ll go bust.

The silver suit - hard to decipher 

Adam 17

Joe 14

Martin 10

Andrew 4

I left at this point, with the remaining three already setting up the next game. Thanks all for another special evening. See you all soon.

Winning Streak

 As I walked through Bristol, I was enjoying the blue skies and fresh breeze, feeling like summer was finally here. As if to confirm this, Adam H rode past me on his bike, waving at me in a t-shirt and reflective sunglasses looking for all the world like he's headed to the beach. But he wasn’t. He was heading to Sam's house for this week's gaming interlude. 

When I arrived I also met Sam, Laura, Ian and Joe, with Pete joining us soon after I sat down. We played Hot Streak - a Magical Athlete type of game with a retractable track that extends from the game box across the table. But while Magical Athlete has a cast of dozens, Hot Streak consists of four runners who have a distinct lack of super powers. As such, it should be easier to predict the winner, right? Runners move according to cards drawn from a deck that everyone has seen, but then has had a card added to it from each player and then, as the race progresses, cards are removed from the deck. This means, whatever information we all had at the start, gets more and more inaccurate.

Joe was assiduous in his preparation for the game, supplying a music soundtrack to enhance the excitement of the game. One of the tunes was “Yakety Sax” which we observed, despite its fame, wasn’t the kind of tune you’d put on to listen to at home.

Ian was the best at predicting the results by quite a margin. Pete, though, in many ways played the perfect game: finishing with exactly the same amount of money that he started with.

In an example of Flavour Text gone mad, each possible result has its own i-ching-style life prediction. I didn’t note them down except that they all seemed quite long except mine which was a single sentence.

Ian 68

Adam 57

Laura 46

Andrew 39

Joe 34

Sam 14

Pete 10

Now we split into two groups. Ian, Adam, Sam and I go for the 3-D co-op puzzle that is La Boca while Laura, Joe and Pete went for Pandemic: Rising Tide. The rules explanation for this game were pretty lengthy, continuing long into our game of La Boca.

La Boca is a cleverly designed game. Like Hot Streak, the box itself is intrinsic to the game itself acting as a stage on which the two players build a wall according to two different (but compatible) designs. 

We all collaborated with each other in a random order and we soon discovered that the easiest level was far too easy, instead playing with the slightly harder designs and the, in our final turns, the hardest of all. 

I did very well, maybe I got lucky with card choices. The fastest time for a round to be completed was just 14 seconds.

Andrew 50

Adam 35

Ian 34

Sam 33

No idea what was happening in the Netherlands, but at our end of the table we played Survive The Island. In this game we have to rescue our meeples from a steadily vanishing island and increasing numbers of sea monsters. We also have to avoid each other, as the game allows plenty of dickish strategies to send opponents into the sea or even bounce them onto tiles containing monsters.

After a quick start, I was very slow to get my meeples off the island. Eventually I decided to stop waiting for another raft and swim for safety. Might have worked too, but then the third volcano on the island erupted and the game ended.

Adam 21

Ian 17

Sam 16

Andrew 7

And so I was done. But the rest continued long into the night as Sam will explain….

*                        *                        *

After Andrew left they were still frantically putting fingers in dykes in Rising Tide, so Adam went to the front room and returned with a small selection of games for Ian and I to choose from. One of them was Steam Power, but at 9.45 we both felt - not realising how far away the end of the evening was - that it was a little late to start route-building. Instead, with Laura's encouragement from the sidelines/Holland, we set up Tipperary. All of us were pretty rusty on the rules but it's dead simple. Especially if you're Adam. 

In brief, Tipperary is a polyomino game with multiple overlapping ways to score. Finding ways to combine them is where it's at, and whilst myself and Ian sprawled our farms erratically over the table, Adam's homestead was much more rigorous in its structure and discipline. 

Whilst he was never in the running for 'largest flock' Adam shrugged off this minor oversight with a bagatelle of other point-scoring shenanigans. 

Adam 98
Sam 78
Ian 60

Despite our Dutch dammers insisting the game was nearly over, I suspected that we might have time to squeeze in a quick luck-pusher in Lure, the game of catching fish. But suddenly Rising Tide was over, and despite the fact it took considerably longer than the advertised 45 minutes (Pete and I anticipated an hour, so we were only 50% out) everyone seemed happy - especially as they won. The Netherlands was saved!

Pete, Laura and Joe - Amsterdam!
Pandemic - Rotterdam

doesn't really make sense, sorry

Surprisingly, nobody was making moves to go home, so we split into teams - Ian/Laura/Pete v Joe/Adam/Sam - and played Triangulation. 

We got off to a solid start when Adam and Joe figured out Red Bull from drinking/caffeine/races and then intercepted Ian's cocaine/horror/Maine as Stephen King. His 80's cocaine habit was new to us - Ian said that apparently he doesn't remember writing Cujo - but we were off to a flyer. 

Adam's first reveal was towel and Pete instantly suggested - correctly - The HItchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Laura revealed Joey and we guessed Friends. But her second clue gave away that it was Australia, and then Joe's wood/Helena/Mars for Tim Burton wrapped up a win for our team. We did Pete's clues anyway and Ian and Laura correctly guessed Subway from High Street/Underpass/foot. 

Adam now left for home leaving five of us to finish the night with the traditional So Clover. We opened with a 6 - I was rather pleased with my white lie for elastic/fable - but ran into problems with Pete's clue of Wogan, which seemed to loosely connect with lots of things. Surprisingly the answer was radio/stud, which Pete appeared to be tinged with regret about. Laura's clue of Mr. Y Bear for light/magician was another baffler, prompting thoughts of Yogi Bear and Logie Baird before Laura revealed it was intended as 'mystery bear'. Beyond that, she volunteered no further information, happy to cackle gleefully into her beer. I think we finished with Joe's, which was another 6: spicy for demon/noodle was nice. 

It was now shockingly 11.30pm though which for us five clarity bears meant bedtime. A cracking Tuesday night, thanks all!

Mille Fury

With a multitude of people unable to make Tuesday games for various reasons, including being elsewhere in the country or watching the football, it was a relatively small attendance. With Anja and Steve volunteering to host, Martin and I (Ian) headed up the short distance up the Bristol-Bath Railway path - there was a moment where it looked like we might have a fifth attendee as Adam cycled past, but he was on his way to watch the aforementioned football. Still, 4 is a fine number for games.

When we arrived though, Anja was settling Lennon to bed, and Louis, having recently turned into an actual teenager, was too busy with email admin relating to his VR headset to play stuffy old boardgames, so we were temporarily a three. Martin, Steve and I played Jungo first – classic Jungo rules, not the Hachi Train variant. Fate smiled on me as I had some very lucky cards and after picking up some played cards was able to play 7 ones in a single turn. My luck meant I reached the winning condition of 2 fairly swiftly.

Ian – 2

Martin – 0

Steve – 0

We then played an edition of Timeline – I can’t recall the exact theme, but it just seemed to be “events”, but again fate smiled on me as one of my cards was “The Extinction of Dinosaurs” which seemed such an outlier compared to anything else it felt like cheating. Steve and I both got rid of our cards in the same round. We decided to guess at the remaining card “First Superhero” in a homebrew tiebreaker, whoever guessed the closest would win. I guessed 1936, only slightly earlier than the actual year of 1938.

Ian – no cards left

Steve – no cards left

Martin – 1 card left (I think)

Having settled Lennon Anja was finally free to play games. If it had been Christmas, Anja’s red-and-white arm cast (following a nasty fall down the stairs) would have been very festive, but alas we’re in May. After some brief gaming debate we settled on an old favourite, Mille Fiori.

It was a strange game in some ways, lasting maybe a tad longer than expected but full of twists, and the Townspeople areas relatively untouched for most of the game. Martin had an early lead, but after a slow start I was the first to reach 100 points. Martin scored big in one round and rocketed back ahead. Anja played a steady game throughout though and was able to pull into a comfortable lead when her early placements started allowed to start scoring bonuses. 

There was a lot of swearing with numerous utterances of “bollocks” and Steve, seemingly stuck languishing at the back, could only say “fuck you all” after finding the spaces he wanted to play in repeatedly blocked.

Anja’s consistent approach proved victorious, and Steve regained a lot of ground towards the end for a close finish.

Anja – 205

Martin – 188
Ian – 188
Steve – 178

Next up was Catan – On the Road. This card-based twist on Catan has seen a few plays recently, and it’s good fun. At one point during his trade Steve asked, “Does anyone have a sheep?”, and when Anja offered the said sheep Steve responded, contemplatively “So, you’re offering a sheep?” as if the offer wasn’t the exact request resource. It amused me, anyway.

It became very clear that Martin was going to win on his next turn, unless we could stop him. We tried, and Steve agonized over his final choice but couldn’t catch up to Martin, who ended the game as expected.

Martin – 7
Steve – 6
Ian – 5
Anja – 3

Steve retired at this point, leaving Anja, Martin and I to play a final game of Misfits. I do wonder if playing an arm in a cast would hinder Anja slightly, and a couple of tower collapses on her go seemed to suggest this could be case, but I also experienced a collapse leaving Martin to dispose of his pieces with relative ease. As usual, Misfits gave rise to wonderfully pleasant constructions best represented with pictures.

And with that Martin and I headed back to Greenbank, another lovely games night. Thanks all.

The Night of Obscure References

I arrived at Sam's only a little late but still late enough for Sam to beat Joe at a game of Aspen and for the two of them to start a game of Cross Clues with Ian, Katy and Martin. I got there just in time to be given the last free card.

We clued each other adequately enough, with Martin having to explain an absurdly optimistic clue referencing Kim Joy who is a celebrity chef who’s made a board game. General blank looks all round.

20 out of 25

Then we set up Triangulation, a team game based around giving clues to certain things: pop culture, places, people etc. You have to give three clues but the opposing team gets to guess first, using two of those clues. Pete was expected to join us soon but, since it was a team game, he could just join in once he arrived. And when he did, he made quite the entrance, dropping his metal water bottle loudly onto the floor.

Not to be outdone in the attention-seeking game, Sam then went outside, across his floorboard-free decking, balancing on joists several feet above the ground, just to pick up a couple of cans of gin and tonic.

Sam wondered aloud what kind of thing might be allowed - does the moon count as a proper noun? My favourite clue was Ian’s “Washington” “Compass” “Flight” which should have made us think of West Wing, but didn’t. Seemed so obvious after the reveal.

Then we split into two. Martin and I were early recruits for President Maker, but seemed to have enormous trouble getting extra candidates as everyone hedged their bets, waiting to see what else was on offer.

In the end, Dewan was the other game, with Ian, Katy and Joe. Sam, Pete, Martin and I chose President Maker, but Sam had to do Explaining duties on Dewan.

Once Ian, Joe and Katy were happy to continue, Martin talked us through the intricacies of the Korean electoral system as represented by five bits of cardboard and some cubes. In this game players can “rally” which means they can increase their popularity in an area, especially if no one else goes there.

Then you can play a card which allows you to move cubes, with the proviso that you may collect bombs - too many of those will damage your popularity with the voters.

Finally, all these cubes translate into tiles that go into a black cloth bag. And, once for each area, we draw tiles to see who gets the most votes. It was Sam by a country mile, and he couldn’t help but laugh as he pulled out yellow tile after yellow tile, somehow avoiding all of the many purple tiles in the bag. 

As we began the fifth and final area, Sam’s lead was so great that Martin observed his only way of winning was if all his tiles came out, and none of Sam’s. But Sam then drew two of his own and any sense of excitement was done. Except for Sam, who kept getting votes and very nearly broke the scoreboard.

1st Sam (Progressive)

2nd Andrew (Centrist)

3rd Pete (Independent)

4th Martin (Conservative)

Dewan finished without me paying it much attention, except for Joe’s disdain for the dividers in the game’s box as he tried to put it away.

Joe 43

Katy 40

Ian 16

Katy left and the six of us played Triangulation again. I can’t honestly say we were any better than the first time.

We saw some painfully obscure references where no one got the answer despite seeing all three clues (Pete’s “rise” “Of” “Pandemic” was a cryptic allusion to Cthulu, and my “Calvin” “Chuck” “Eighty Eight” did not lead anyone to Back To The Future although Ian mentioned it in passing while they deliberated) but equally we experienced some almost telepathic correct guesses after one word. Martin was aghast when “Material” lead almost everyone to agree on Madonna.

Pete, Sam, Andrew win

Ian, Joe, Martin don’t

Then Joe gave me a lift home. Only 10:10pm. Days of near-midnight finishes seem so long ago…

But the evening continued, as Sam reports.

 *                *                *

After Andrew left we had time for a couple more games. 

First up was Catan: On The Road, which dumps the original's spatial element whilst keeping the resources, trading, and first-to-x-win condition, which in this case is 7 points. We'd all played before but that didn't stop me getting confused about the harvest phase. Ian briefly flirted with winning, but then Martin stole his big road and I took the biggest army. Then Martin built a metropolis and won. Something like that, anyway. Martin and I have conferred today and found our memories somewhat erratic. 

Then it was time for the green plastic. We did very well, rolling 4 sixes straight out the gate in pretty short order. There were some nice clues in there, with Martins tip for waiter/garbage being perhaps the most lateral. We were so pleased, and Martin had so much beer left, that we played again. The second game was so bad nobody took any pictures, but here is the first:

And with that, the GNN Tuesday closed up shop for another week. Until then!

Crossover Crops

 This week's Tuesday night games was preceded by a sort of musical chairs of hosts and attendees popping up and dropping out; and just as four of us (Martin, Jo, Ian and me (Joe)) prepared to depart for the genteel climes of Anja and Steve's, Steve called to say their hosting was off due to an emergency. Given that they've hosted their way through several urgent plumbing situations recently, we were concerned that it must be something very serious; a small nuclear reactor meltdown, perhaps, or the discovery of a portal to Hell? Actually Anja had fallen on the stairs and hurt her arm - we hope you're on the mend Anja. 

The four of us abandoned the car and decamped to the Greenbank pub, and while awaiting the arrival of Pete, we played Llama Llama; from the designer of Panda Panda, played with the same deck make up, and just as agonising. I didn't record the scores. Martin won. 

Pete arrived in time to mention he'd played it when it was called Dog Poker. And Panda Panda was Cat Poker. We neatly segued into one of Jo's prototypes, Untrustwordy, which they pitched to us as poker but with words.  After the first round, I was lowest on the score track, having struggled to assimilate the relatively few rules of the game, and I suggested we play again, so I could regain some dignity. I did so badly in the second round (falling for Jo's bait that they were holding an X) that I dropped off the bottom of the scoreboard! Meanwhile Martin did so well he shot off the top. It's an interesting design, and Jo's planning to pitch it at the Games Expo this year, so fingers crossed we'll play it again in published form.

Though I'd brought Mü, we felt it might be a little late in th evening to be enjoying it's head-scratchy delights, and Martin had brought Reif für die Insel, which at least also has an umlaut. It translates, we think, to 'ripe for the island' which sounds like it might mean something slightly dubious to German ears, and involves an awful lot of bananas. Pete pointed out that this week, bananas were the crossover crop, as they appear in Santiago, which we played last week. As do potatoes, which feature in Maya, which we played the week before. The problem, we discovered, is that bananas are a bit of a crossover crop cul-de-sac, as they appear in loads of games but mostly on their own. 

I didn't take any pictures, but that's really no bad thing, as this game has about as much table presence as half a packet of banana flavour Chewits. It's an auction game, one of Reiner Knitzia's dodecorilogy (at the very least) of auction games. And it's quite neat, but fairly one note. Having played it a couple of times I can say I prefer something like High Society, which it reminds me of slightly. But it's fine. It's no Santiago!

Jo 89

Martin 75

Pete 67

Joe 63

Ian 59

After that we played Hot Streak - which has tons of table presence - but I still didn't take any pictures. Silly me. It was a fun game - in one race Dangler and Gobbler responded to the start whistle by turning around and running off the end of the board together. Very funny, and I pipped Jo to the win. Or do none of us win, we just enjoy a different life outcome. 

Joe 62

Jo 60

Pete 55

Ian 35

Martin 24

Before disappearing into the night, we gave it some So Clover. Of course we did. Martin saw my clue of toothed, and spotted tiger. "As in saber-toothed tiger!". I waited for him to spot Saber on another card, which he did eventually. What a gift. We scored 26, which is exactly the score I thought we got last week with three players, so clearly I was just thinking ahead.

With that we wandered into the night - it's fun to play in a pub every once in a while, and The Greenbank is very well-appointed in that regard; we were accompanied by lovely live music all evening too. Let's do it again some time! 

Baby Catan, Baby Ra

There were five of us last night; Pete, Jo, Martin and Sam and I (Joe) congregated in my kitchen for the regular GNN Tuesday amusements. Jo's game Molly House had won the American Tabletop Award for complex game earlier the very same day, and after congratulations on this amazing achievement, we set up Hot Streak, coincidentally the ATA's 2026 pick for casual game.

Hot Streak works best with 5 or 6, though for higher numbers there's a variant we're keen to try, which dispenses with the betting cards, and sounds like a lot of fun for a lot of people. 

Last night's game was the usual hilarious mix of volte face's and stumblebums, and only Pete seemed to have a true bookie's eye for what was coming down the pike. It's impressive how varied the three races can be, the order the cards come out in having a huge effect, naturally enough. Raucous fun, and our life outcomes were equally daft, as recorded by Sam with cryptic economy against the scores:

Pete 69 jumps house

Jo 52 zoo koala

Sam 37 toupee

Martin 25 book

Joe 24 nickels

We moved on to a game that the words 'raucous fun' don't have much to do with, although Martin's early entreaty to Sam to come on his bananas did cause some amusement. Santiago used to be our go-to for five players, many many moons ago. 

It last saw play at GNN in 2019, and I'm surprised to see that prior to that I'd won it in September 2013, as my recollection is of being terrible at its particular mix of bribery and potato planting. Digging a little deeper into the archive, I find the game earlier in 2013 in which I scored a paltry 29 points - it's funny how the losses stay with you. 29 was a particularly ignominious score, as you start the game with 10 money, and receive 27 during the game, so I'd have done better to sit on my hands the whole game.

Last night I won again, much to my surprise - I like to think that my early game of not being completely horrible lead to some karmic fortune at the end, but who knows. It's an OG gem, and we should probably play it more often, even though my next game will be another sub 37-er, you can be sure. This time the scores were admirably close, with 13 separating first from last:

Joe 70

Jo 65

Martin 64

Sam 59

Pete 57

Sam clearly found it as tense as I did; "Let's play coops for the rest of the night" he said afterwards, and then left.

The remaining four of us opted for Catan - On The Road, the new 15 minute card game version of Catan. We were all keen to try it, and we all felt similarly afterwards - it was fine. Just, fine. I don't know what we were expecting, it does exactly what it sets out to do; but I couldn't help wondering if it wouldn't seem completely incoherent to someone who hadn't played the original game. Martin was the first to 7 points and thus the winner.

We moved onto another (sort of) pocket version of an esteemed classic, Swat! This Knizia game was described by Martin as 'real time Ra' and you can see the lineage, though the gameplay and mozzy-swatting theme are very different. One player deals cards face up in a stack, as the others hover, ready to swat the mat as soon as the offer gets tempting enough. It took us a few rounds to get the measure of when to 'buzz in' (they should have called it that), but it's a clever and very silly at the same time, and I'm going to say if not raucous then at least rumbunctious fun.

Jo 71 

Joe 58

Martin 47

Pete 31

Earlier when Pete checked the train times they had all disappeared; but luckily they'd appeared again by now, so he left to get the last Montpelier to Temple Meads and beyond. Jo, Martin and I opted for a final So Clover. I sadly forgot to take a picture of our first effort, but maybe that's ok because we didn't do brilliantly. We went again, doing marginally better - not quite as well as the 26 I announced, Martin pointing out that 6, 6 and 4 add up to 16, the brainiac. I did get a picture of our second efforts.

   With that we were done and dusted, having had more than enough rauc for one night. 

A series of unconnected events

Gamers gathered in Fishponds on a balmy April evening. Joe, Martin and I (Adam) arrived to find Steve and Anja engaged in emergency plumbing, so we introduced the kids to gambling with a quick game of Hot Streak. 

In Hot Streak players make two bets on which of four mascots will win each race or on a weird side bet (two mascots will be sprawled on the ground at the same time, one will fall off the track, etc). We got to see some of the cards to be used at the start of the game which seemed pretty good for Hurley (the hot dog). Then over each of three races we added one card of our own to spice up the race deck and the comedy began. 

In amongst the swerving and tumbling Hurley won every race, which left me confident as I'd backed him every time, but Joe's smart side-bets nudged him into second and Martin's risky play (you get extra reward for first place if you flip the betting slip to the "risky" side) galloped him to victory. 

Martin 62
Joe 59
Adam 57
Lennon 33
Louie 22

Steve and Anja (having defeated the toilet) arrived in time for a 7-player game of Just One. The game was a hive of cheating and treachery, notable for Louie and Lennon conspiring to put complimentary words into the mix. We only played 7 rounds, but somehow got a perfect score.

Anja took Lennon off to bed now and the rest of us turned to No Thanks. In spite of never knowing when it was his turn Steve put together a nice run and trounced us, not far from a positive score!

Steve -15
Adam -39
Louie -43
Martin -55
Joe -57

Anja returned and Louie reluctantly bade us goodnight as Whale Riders was set up. Molly the cat sulked on one end of the table (disappointed at the lack of real fish?) as the rest of us were distracted by Steve's choices of background music. Whale song gave way to Inuit throat singing and then on to whaling sea shanties - not really the vibe of the game at all. 

Joe was least distracted, managing to fulfill three contracts in one go and never really looking back. 

Joe 21
Adam 19 + more money
Martin 19
Steve 15
Anja 13

As we tried to decide on the next game Steve showed off his new glasses.

 

Bluffit was selected as a quickie which everyone had played before, but the rules seemed baffling to everyone, even Martin as he attempted to explain them. Everyone started with an identical hand from 1-10, then hidden bids and theft ensued as we competed for the previous hand's cards throughout the game.

Joe and Anja's bitter feud didn't work out for them. My strategy of only bluffing occasionally did.

Adam 65
Steve 50
Martin 49
Anja 42
Joe 35

We finished as ever with So Clover, notable for Anja's "Cruise" for Cocktail Demon and Joe's "78" for Attic Record. I was Portabelloed when Chameleon snuck into my "Camouflage" for Landscape Uniform and we only got 24/30. But we didn't mind because we'd all had a lovely evening.