Bridge of Sighs

Anja and Steve's was the venue last night, as the rain returned to Bristol once more and I picked up Ian and Martin en route. We arrived to find Anja and Louie and also Ross, who I briefly thought was a newbie only to discover he was there to plumb, as our hosts had been without water for two days already. Fortunately, Ross was to prove successful at plumbing in short order - I was getting nervous about the possibility of bathroom trips being eliminated - though he chose not to join us for the evening's entertainment, but instead go home. By this time, we'd already failed twice at YUBIBO.

It's very much a game that requires a certain type of investment. As Pete pointed out, it's as much about endurance as dexterity, as keeping your hand in a certain position for x amount of time whilst various sticks lean on it isn't a Tuesday night staple. But it was fun. 

By now Steve and Lennon had returned from rugby and Anja set about household duties as Steve joined us for a crack at Link City. We began well with Ian as mayor, getting everything right. Then our successes were rather more mixed around the table, until final mayor Joe got 4 out of 4 to right some wrongs and transform our fortunes from workaday into a high score: 40 points and officially Wow City. 

Martin remained a little indifferent to the game, but I really like it. Although I also like his suggestion that the mayor choose the locations as well. Let's try that next time. 

We now split into groups with Joe leading Ian and Martin off to Sunrise Lane, and Pete talking Anja and I through the rules of 1am Jailbreak, the somewhat niche-themed card-shedder where we are funnelling escaped prisoners through a tunnel. 

Pete found Anja and I a slightly befuddled audience, as we both failed to understand what are fairly simple rules, I think because they are a little unexpected: there are no rounds, you simply keep playing on and on until all your prisoners (ie cards in your hand) have escaped. Also unexpected: Steve, who turned up as we were about to start, but then left again, unable to make it to freedom. 

You can play sets or runs, the only caveat being it must be the same amount of cards or one more or one less as whatever amount the previous player laid. And you can also make a run for it by adding a card to the previous player's cards in order to both hike up the possibility of a big set/run - and of course, ridding yourself of a card in the process. In what I like to think are my Eastwood-in-Alcatraz qualities, I proved best at breaking out of prison in the night. Points are bad:

Sam 0

Pete 6

Anja 17

Sunrise Lane was a slightly closer thing. In fact a much closer thing, for Martin and Ian at least, although Joe wasn't a million miles away.

Martin 101

Ian 100

Joe 88

We were still escaping the penitentiary at this point, so they began playing Martin's trick-taker that is also - I was later told - a melder of Rummikub-type proportions: Doctor Science. Ian said he struggled with it, but seemed to pick up speed as they went. Unable to synchronise groups, we finished 1am Jailbreak and debated what to play next. Steve had now joined us for the duration as well, so we wanted something good for four but not too long. When I suggested Old London Bridge, to my surprise about 2/3rds of the whole room spontaneously intoned "Old London Bridge" in a deep, singsong voice. I was both alarmed and intrigued, so we jettisoned all other ideas and Steve set it up. 

I think Andrew has previously explained the rules so I won't regurgitate them here, but I really enjoyed this. Thematically it's entirely nonsensical - everyone builds their own bridge and bids for buildings - but it's speedy and interactive and different strategic approaches are available. Anja began her bridge with a bucolic park, and focused early energies on the chapel track, which determines the very common tie-breakers. All of us - except Pete I think, who was less wasteful - pushed previously-built buildings into the Thames to replace them with others, and Steve was most effective on the pink track, the name of which now escapes me. 

Anja pulled a fast one on Steve in the final round, giving the post its title. But it was Pete - the only player to complete their bridge - who was to triumph, as his sprint up the chapel track, highest-bidding cards and collection of cash saw him dwarf our efforts. 

Pete 50

Sam 42

Steve 35

Anja 26

They finished a crazy Ra around now as well. When I looked over in the first round, there was a solitary Ra tile out on Joe's bespoke mat, and yet Martin had a collection of tiles in front of him that suggested the entire game was nearly over. Fifteen of them!

I also heard Joe bemoaning his filthy luck, as various Disaster tiles emerged, turning his potential haul into a bag of Egyptian dog turds before his very eyes. Ian grabbed a snap of this horrifying ordeal for posterity.

Joe's anguish not pictured

Neither he nor Ian could catch Martin after that spectacular first round. 

Martin 48

Ian 29

Joe 28

And that was it for the night - it was already 11pm somehow so the social commuters made their way back to their cars and home again. Thanks all, it was constructive. 

No balls on balls

There were six of us at my (Sam's) house last night, and we played a medley of new and (somewhat) old, with chief purchase culprits Martin, Joe and myself all introducing new titles. I sinned first, as Martin was first to arrive and I proposed we play Link City whilst we were waiting, as the others could chip in as they joined us. 

This is a co-operative venture not a million miles from So Clover, but rather than looking for word connections on a leaf, we're building a city from tiles. One player takes a turn being the mayor, who secretly assigns the three new tiles to the three locations chosen by the deputy mayor (ie player on the mayor's left), which are represented by the road cones. Then all the non-mayor players try to figure out what the mayor would have chosen. Public toilets next to the train station or the park? Consulate next to the bank? As the others arrived - Joe, Katy, Ian and Adam H - everyone took a turn. 

But despite triggering the bonus cone with our all-answers-correct early on, we serially failed to agree on the best-laid town plans. Correct guesses are placed where 'planned' whereas wrongly-guessed tiles still get placed, but in non-scoring locations: those with no orthogonal adjacency. In theory you can rescue the situation with subsequent turns, but we never looked in danger of doing so. After Adam pronounced the town population 'idiots' - we got all his wrong - Link City ended with us on 14 points, 6 below the cut-off for 'funky town' and well into the zone of disdain. 

We flirted with the idea of splitting into threes but then Joe coquettishly showed us YUBIBO, a co-op game that played six, and we felt why not, especially when we saw the sticks and balls in the box. 

In this game, each player has a colour and on your turn you flip a card which tells you which other player you're going to combine with to hold a stick - and using which finger. Players can only use one hand for the stick work, and the game swiftly escalates from curious to madcap. 

It's a tricky game to get action snaps of, but fortunately Little Joe (-now taller than me) was on hand to help out in the paparazzi department.

The goal is to get all the sticks airborne at the same time, a task to which we did not seem suited, collapsing at first six and then eight (I think) before we pivoted to the 'balls' version of the game, where instead of adding a stick, you can place a ball into the structure. Balls can't touch fingers or other balls!

Unfortunately we discovered this morning that each pair of sticks can only support a maximum of one ball, so our triumph evaporated overnight. Meantime though there were other triumphs to be claimed: Martin began teaching Joe and Katy his new game, the trick-taker Dr Science, and I ran through the rules of TwinStar Valley with Ian and Adam. 

Both took about an hour, but other than some audible scorn at the other end of the table I missed the empirical parameters of Dr Science as I was focused on the grave ramifications of fruit delivery in fictional future Norway. 

As with Railways of the World, we're building a shared network where players can use each other's routes at a cost. Unlike Railways, the destinations themselves - the markets - are also owned, but each one specialises in two kinds of fruit: deliver that kind there and you pay the owner a coin for each one. Deliver anything else and it costs you nothing, but the fruit must be sold instantly, rather than kept back for a later transaction - prices are constantly fluctuating depending on what is sold. 

The actions you take are on a separate board, bringing a slightly puzzly euro-flavour to it all, as players can and do get in each other's way on this board. We found it interesting and pretty fast-moving, with the caveat that as newbies we seemed to hit clutch points where someone was forced to grow (add fruit to the board) only for the next in line to instantly deliver it. Maybe it's all about those early routes. 

Ian 46
Sam 34
Adam 29

Martin had already won Dr Science:

Martin 30

Joe 27

Katy 24

And they were now playing Fives, so we started more town planning with Tower Up. 

I decided fairly early that I wasn't going to focus on bonuses but instead try and get lots of visible roofs. Then I noticed Adam was in contention for bonuses and had more roofs than me. Meantime Ian put his energies into the bonuses, and ended up with a whopping 19 points for them. It was enough for another victory:

Ian 53
Adam 49
Sam 45

Fives had now finished too. Once more, I missed everything at the end of the table, lacking Andrew's multi-tasking skills on this front. But I did make a note of the scores.

Joe 14

Katy 6

Martin 5

As Tower Up was concluding they played a couple of rounds of Jungo, with Martin and Joe taking one apiece as Katy called them names. She now said she would go home unless we played So Clover, so we did, twice. In the first attempt, we overcame our bafflement at one of Joe's clues (akubra) to gather a decent 31/36

Then in the second, we made an incremental improvement, scoring 32/36 instead. I liked Joe's bar for chocolate/weather, and Katy's initiative to invent a word (automusic) for violin/robot.

We now lost Adam and Katy to fatigue, sadly, but the remaining four felt with the hour not yet 10.30 there was time for another something or other. We settled on Take Time, another co-op, this time about playing a bunch of numbered cards around a sort of clock - largely face-down - and trying to make sure their values ascend around each segment. 

New to Ian, but it's not heavy on rules so we brought him in on Chapter 2 and kicked things off with a convincing win. The next clock - there are several - was rather more tricky, and took us several attempts. Then with clock number three we made surprisingly short work of it, ending the night with a collective victory. The rain from earlier was now thankfully gone, and shortly so too were the gamers. Fun night. 

... of course

 Downstairs at Joe's place could be the name of an exclusive speakeasy in prohibition era Chicago but is, in fact, the location to which eight ardent gamers gathered. I arrived at the same time as Martin and remarked on Joe’s new dining table to which he replied it wasn’t that new at all. We put it down to the fact I hadn’t been to his house for a while, but then more people arrived and commented on Joe’s new table. He tried to explain this Mandela Effect by saying maybe there’d previously been a table cloth on it, or perhaps the new curtains were contributing to the sense of newness in the room. Either way, the mystery of Joe’s “new” table remains unsolved.

Anyway,we began with six of us (Martin , Adam H, Sam, Joe, Ian and myself) playing Continuous Pairs. Adam changed seats just after the game began, causing a little confusion in the dealing and Sam misremembered the rules for when to deal people in, but nevertheless we muddled through..

Adam played an amazing game, having a run of five consecutive values. I tried to get a photo of it but Sam had folded and he decided to take the lowest card in the run just before the photo was taken. 

Martin lost and Joe declared himself winner until someone pointed out that I had fewer points at which point Joe reverted to the official rules of there being no winner.

We played again, Katy arrived, and Sam lost.

Now we split into two groups. Martin, Adam and Katy played Gazebo, despite Katy’s reservations about the amount of plastic. Joe, Sam, Ian and I played “Fives” a trick taking game where the sum total of the winning cards in your tricks can’t exceed 25. What makes the game unique (and, some might say, unintuitive) is the fact that every card can be a purple 5, allowing you to get rid of some unwanted high value cards in your hand. 

We spent some time trying to understand when it is permissible to play a purple 5 and then we began the game. Then, after round one, Joe looked at the rules book again and noticed something in tiny writing, explaining that players can’t play more than one purple 5 cards in a trick “of course.” And it was the “of course” thing that really bothered us, as we tried to work out what part of the game set-up would suggest that particular rule. “I’m being gaslit by a rule book,” complained Joe.

So we started again and Ian impressed us all by finishing the final round with exactly 25 points in front of him, getting him a 3-point bonus.

Ian 13

Andrew 10

Sam 9

Joe 8

Gazebo had finished 

Martin - no gazebos left

Katy 4

Adam 6

And they went on to play Soda Jerk with Katy apparently unaware that this was a real thing and not just a phrase made up for a board game.

Adam 23

Katy -2 

Martin -45

Around this time Andy M arrives and he joins Martin, Ian and Katy for a game of Jungo which Martin wins, exclaiming “Soda Jerk is erased!”

Then there was a reshuffle in personnel and I was introduced to the joys of Big Wave, along with Martin, Katy and Sam. This trick-taker is “a very mental game” according to Martin although he only said this halfway through. It’s a trick taker where you have to not follow suit to any card that’s been played before in a trick. 

There are a bunch of rules that tweak the typical trick-taking procedures for those who don’t win a trick. I usually “caught a wave” allowing me to boost a future card by 2 or more points. Martin often took a point and nominated the next person to begin a hand, and invariably chose Katy. It didn’t seem to help.

Sam 58

Andrew 46

Katy 43

Martin 38

Then I left. I think Katy left too, since I later heard from Sam that he and Martin played So Clover twice, scoring 10 and then 9. Sheepy time ended with a victory for Ian with Adam in second and Joe and Andy “nowhere”.

Thanks all, it was special.

Nutritious Scarecrow

Anja and Steve were our hosts last night, and Joe was on driving duty: picking me up a little after 7 and then Ian and Martin en route. Joe insisted he knew where he was going and he mostly did, only losing the thread at the final corner, questioning "Where am I?" in a way that suggested maybe he was reflecting on bigger things than the geography of Barton Fields. But moments later we were relieved of any further existential concerns and in the house, where Arthur and Louie formed semi-adjacent participants for the first game of the night: Perfect Mismatch. 

This is a weird party game where playing co-operatively (there's also a competitive variant) one player is trying to successfully clue the others to one of six possible words on a card. The catch is that the clueing is bizarrely restrained to a series of spectrums - sort of - where the extremes are completely unrelated attributes. Is a scarecrow more unbreakable than it is nutritious? Is a career more legal than it is daytime? Ian, Joe and Martin all took turns clueing as Anja joined us for the finale. We had mixed success, succeeding with maximum points only once but avoiding the ignominy of placing the right guess in the worst place. 

Steve was briefly glimpsed but still focused on settling Lennon, so whilst Louie and Arthur began building a den we split into groups of three and four. Adam wanted a Cascadero rematch and so Ian, Martin and I joined him for that. At the other end of the table, Joe talked Anja and Pete through Sunrise Lane, and the mini-Kniziathon was underway. 

Cascadero had a cagey start - nobody wanted to be the first to offer up points to someone else, so the envoys were largely eyeing the towns from a safe distance. Then when things kicked into gear it transpired we were talking different strategic approaches. Adam was harvesting seals as much as he could, working towards not only that three-point bonus but a late-game salvo that would catapult him up the track. Ian and I were probably more tactically-minded, trying to nab opportunities as they arose. Martin didn't pick up a single seal all game, but we naively let him generate a lot of farming income, and he built a huge early lead. 

Sunrise Lane ended around the same moment as Lennon's bedtime, with Joe taking the win:

Joe 108
Anja 94
Pete 90

And with bedtime also, which Steve appeared. As we were still mulling, occasionally to excess, in Cascadero, they began playing Indigo, a game I've never played but thought it looked a bit like Tsuro. "It's Knizia does Tsuro" Steve confirmed later. 

Or in this case, Anja does Tsuro:

Anja 10
Steve 8
Pete 7
Joe 3

In Cascadero we were now coming to a grand finale - grand for Martin anyway. I briefly caught him only for our resident Kniziaphile to surge away once more, reaching the top of his track just in time before the game ended as we ran out of envoys. Adam's seal-powered surge was impressive, but there was no victory this time. 

Martin 47

Sam 41

Adam 36

Ian 28

Adam and Arthur now said goodbye and made their way home. Louie delayed for as long as possible but the Dalton-Dale hammer came down and he was packed off to bed. The Indigo quartet played Indigo again! 

As Ian and I went from taking a pasting by Martin in one game to taking a pasting by Martin in another: this time, Gazebo. We tried a new board, with 'raised patios', the specifics of which are interesting when you play but too boring to list here. 

As with Cascadero, Martin had a strongish lead mid-game, we caught him near the end before he surged again. I had an outside chance of pipping him to the post with my last turn, if by some wild chance he had no blue on his dominoes. But he did, and instead of a triumphant victory I shunted myself from second to third. Fucking gazebos. 

Martin all gazebos erected!

Ian - two gazebos still in their packaging

Sam - three gazebos thrown across the lawn in a tantrum

At the other end of the table, Indigo had already finished:

Joe 10

Pete 8

Anja and Steve 7 each

And they were blowing each other up in Light Speed: Arena.

Joe won this by Griffithesque margins, with Steve baffled by what just happened. 

Joe - 25

Anja and Pete - 15 each

Steve 12

"It's a silly game, but I like it" said Joe, reholstering his space blaster. I tend to agree, even if you spend longer scoring than you do playing. 

Now what? We shuffled seats with Martin Joe and Pete teaching Anja Gang of Dice and Ian, Steve and I playing Misfits. Here are the three hand positions of the former, illustrated by Anja (whut) Martin (er) and Joe (hah).  

There was to be much drama in both games. At our end of the table both Steve and I made it to our last piece more than once, only to have things collapse on us. Ian at one stage seemed to have All The Pieces, and we confected something so top-heavy that the Gang paused their Dice to watch in wonder. 

Meantime in Gang of Dice Anja found herself on the receiving end of fate's indifferent attitude to plucky against-the-odds dice-rolling, almost entirely bereft of dice halfway through the game. But though I missed the finer details, she staged an incredible recovery - just not quite enough to catch Joe. 

Joe 48

Anja 46

Pete 39

Martin 29

Misfits finished at the same time, after an epic of wild swings and roundabouts. In the end it was Steve who took the win, after Ian and I both knocked things over one too many times. 

There was loose talk of getting Perfect Mismatch out again, but was no time for an all-person closer with the hour now gone eleven. After a brief consultation about Steve's facial hair/lack of, it was time to go home. Thanks all. 

Just F(Inis)hed

Here's a belated report of the January shenanigans back on the 4th from Pete!

I arrived to Steve and Anja's on the final Sunday before returning to work, still pretending it was full the Christmas holiday, to find a stack of games on the table for potential selection.

With a whole afternoon before us (there is some foreshadowing here) we (Adam, Anja, Steve & I) selected Inis. We took a little while on the rules, as Adam hadn't played before and the rest of us not for a while, and then started drafting our action cards.

Steve & I both chose to further delay getting into the action by passing our first turns, which Adam professed to be baffled by (pick your guess as to the endgame conclusion now).

The first part of the game seemed to mainly consist of Anja stocking one side of the board with citadels and repeatedly filling them with orange clans. Meanwhile Steve or Adam built some sanctuaries and Adam also held quite a few festivals. I'm not really entirely sure what I was doing. I recall feeling peturbed that I had to keep passing good action cards to Steve, but I don't recall achieving much with the ones I decided were better to keep 😂.

With time advancing we decided we had better pause to arrange dinner - which turned out to feature a succession of challenges including the initially chosen fish-and-chip shop being shut, and the backup choice requiring cash only, requiring various forays. Those of us in the house cleared Inis off the dining table to make way for for a very nice dinner.

After eating we then played Just One to include everyone - so now Lennon, Louie, Laura and Arthur to bring us up to eight.  We got a couple wrong early on but recovered to a fairly convincing win. I don't think I've played it with that many before and we seemed to eliminate less words by duplicating clues than I expected. In fact, I mainly remember it being useful that Adam and I had doubled up on 'diplomacy' as a clue for 'panda', as it turned out this would not have been a helpful clue..

Next Steve, Adam, Louie and I selected Tsuro. Adam and Louie stayed clear of trouble to start with while Steve and I went down one side. The timing worked well for me and I sent Steve off the board before nearly flying straight off of one corner. Fortunately I was able to turn round but then found myself heading for Adam. Meanwhile Louie had achieved a diagonal across to the far corner. Adam and I crashed straight into each other with Louie finishing the winner.

We then performed some successful tectonic shifting to bring Inis back to the table, and resumed with Anja's hoards of orange clustered around the capital and to one side.

The game did reach a climax in fairly classic Inis fashion. I reluctantly vacated the hills and managed to seize the capital, and together with a deed I briefly met one of the winning conditions by ruling over 5 clans. However I didn't hold it long enough to even take a pretender token as Anja and Steve both contested it.

It looked like Anja or Steve could potentially win, before we all realised that Adam had timed his plotting to perfection, making his bid for leadership just as everyone else had largely exhausted their action cards.

An excellent debut win, though long-term stability of ruling various quarrelsome clans in a hotly contested capital has to be questioned.. And where is the food going to come from, with hardly anyone left in the countryside?

We then finished with a fairly successful round of So Clover! - 6 on Anja's, and then 4 on everyone else's. I think my favourite was (Steve's?) escalator for ladder /luxury.

Another very fun afternoon, but then back to work - hence finishing the blog taking a while!

Four gazebos in one day

 “You're early,” said Sam as he opened his front door. Technically, I was late but I had been too pessimistic in my ETA and had arrived a full six minutes before I said I would.

Inside, Martin, Ian, Adam H and Joe were just starting a game of Pairs. Continuous Pairs to be exact. Ian ended the game as he collected more than 15 points and Adam, who’d been doing very well, was disappointed that there was no winner, only one loser.

Since there were six of us, we split into two groups of three. At the far end of the table, Sam, Ian and Martin played Gazebo. This was a “new” Knizia game - a reskin of Qin, but I guess someone decided that it was less like a territorial battle for China and was more like making the biggest gardens.

The game requires that people put down tiles, trying to make areas of the same colour into which they can place gazebos. A single gazebo is in danger of being overtaken from neighbouring gazebos with a larger area, but a double gazebo is safe. The idea of the game is to be the first to get rid of your gazebos. 

They played twice:

Sam 0 gazebos left

Ian 4

Martin 5

And then 

Martin 0

Sam 4

Ian 5

Meanwhile, Joe, Adam and I played Ponzi Scheme. This game involves picking up money with impossible terms of repayment. I was bemused by the player aid, with its grey text on a grey background, but the game is simple enough that I didn’t need it. 

Adam was cautious throughout,  whereas I was the first to pick up a big card in round 3. Adam also excelled at trading, and he soon had a column of yellow buildings in front of him. Buildings are how you score points in this game but I was mostly selling them for money to pay off my debts. 

This explains the gulf in scores - the game suddenly ended when Joe admitted that he'd miscalculated a transaction and now couldn’t afford to service his debts. 

Adam 24

Andrew 4

Joe 0

At this point,  we rearranged our seats and games. Sam brought out some chocolates: only slightly sqaushed and discoloured with age. We still ate them. 

Meanwhile, regarding games: Sam, Adam and Ian played Cascadero while Martin introduced Joe and I to Gazebo.

Cascadero ended with a win to Sam, "and after all that complaining," he admitted.

I start badly, focusing on blocking Martin and Joe without having a plan of my own. Despite a good move in round three that removed two enemy gazebos (not a term you get to use very often in everyday life) and placed three of my own. But it was too little too late and Martin marched to a win. 

Martin 0

Joe 5

Andrew 10

We set up again. I was determined to erase the ignominy of the worst score of the day, a played super cautious. As indeed did Joe and Martin. We were so focused on not opening opportunities for our opponents that a third of the board lay untouched for most of the game. 

It ended with Martin stealing a territory from Joe, allowing him to place his last gazebo. 

Martin 0

Joe 2

Andrew 3

By now, Adam had left. Sam and Ian played Toy Battle and Sam won. They'd set up to play again but I left before any victor could be decided. 

Sam informed me late of two games of So Clover with scores of 22 and then 21 out of 24. Oh, and before I'd arrived, Martin had beaten Sam at Bombastic and then they'd all played a 1-round game of Jungo that Sam won.

Thanks all, another special evening.