Stoned Sage

It felt a bit odd at Joe's this week with Andrew missing for the first time ever. We tried to carry on as normal, but it somehow wasn't quite right.

With only four players (Joe, Sam, Hannah and I) there was a myriad of choice but new favourite Stone Age was selected. There was some debate on the history of the game with Joe claiming he'd had it first, which might explain why his smelly cup is so much riper than Sams. Speaking of which, it can only be that cup that masked the smell of the small mound of horse manure dragged in by the eerily (technologically-enforced) silent Sybil. Some kind of dirty protest Joe?

Having given away the secrets of his success after last week's game Sam embarked on a new tack tonight, getting hut multipliers early he went all out for huts. Hannah heeded Sam's advice and hoarded cards while making sure she had a good stock of raw materials at all times. She also got to eight family members early on, allowing her to gather lots of resources. Joe went for field multipliers and (funnily enough) fields, along with a few cultured icons while I stockpiled wood, expanded my family and also followed Sam's blueprint by taking every card or axe I could get my hands on.

Mention must be made of the luxurious use of two dice-rolling arenas, one for each side of the table. Apparently Joe also has a third, just in case.

There was a bit of controversy over dawdling meeples, who (tenuous attempt to make the title fit the piece) might have been experimenting with early herbal cigarettes! With much polite coughing and "let me help you get your tribesmen back" to be heard from all sides of the board the game stumbled on, wondering if there was any chocolate.

In the end Sam's hut multipliers (6 x 8) scored him a massive 48 points, but had he neglected other cards in getting hold of the huts? Joe's field multipliers looked good, but were they good enough? Hannah had seven cultural icons and lots of people multipliers in her wad of cards, while I'd stuck even closer to the Morrison Manual, having axe, field and people multipliers along with four cultish icons. The final scores were:

Sam 130

Joe 131

Hannah 160

Adam 183

We then played a non-leaderboard game of Tichu, a trick-taking card game, with aspects of poker and bridge, but a completely different style. I can't satisfactorily describe it due to not really understanding what was going on...

Essentially you try to get rid of your cards first, by playing runs, pairs, trios, singles, phoenixs, dragons, bombs and dogs. If you think you'll be first out you say "Tichu" before you start, and then gain big points if you're right or lose them if you're wrong. The secret seemed to be to play combinations that no-one else could follow.

The upshot after the agreed four rounds of play was that Sam and Hannah staged a massive comeback to draw with Joe and I on 205 points each. I have a feeling that Sam had started to get the hang of it, so Joe and I were probably lucky he was also desperate to get to bed.

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Adam	17	87	5.11
Sam	18	74	4.11
Andrew	18	57.5	3.19
Joe	13	51	3.92
Hannah	8	35.5	4.44
Jonny	7	28	4
Steve	6	21.5	3.58
Quentin	4	17.5	4.38
Paul	2	6.5	3.25
Chris	2	5.5	2.75
Sally	1	3.5	3.5
Matilda	1	1.5	1.5

Bulletins from Bracknell #2

Chris has been busy in Bracknell again, sowing the seeds of evolution:

Like trains (or is it buses?) that appear to arrive all at once the Bracknell branch of GNN found themselves with little time in their busy schedules to squeeze in a game or three. My opponent on this occasion was a friend called James, who I'm slowly drawing into the sticky web of gaming. Last week I introduced him to Carcassonne and Dominion but this week current favourite Ticket to Ride was given a run out.

James had read the rules previous to my arrival - a fact missed by me as I started to explain them and couldn't understand why he seemed to know everything already - so we were straight into it. James showed no signs of being a novice as he claimed large trails across the west coast and kept nicely ahead of me as I pottered around the central regions making little criss cross patterns. As the game drew to a close James had forged too much of a lead and had taken the longest route bonus and ran out a comfortable winner.

In the second game of TTR though it was neck a neck right up to the point where James took a gamble on two new routes close to the end of the game, only to realise he didn't have enough trains to complete them. This time through luck rather than judgement I won the game.

Our final game was Carcassonne. With the lead changing hands several times throughout it came down to the final count of who had the most farmers. I squeezed James out with a narrow 5-to-4 farmers and collected the massive farms bonus. James noticed post match that he had a chance to score farms all on his own but had chosen to challenge for the bigger area with me. Had he not done this he would have won.

I left him with Aton to look at, and hopefully next time we will see if that lives up to expectations.

Bonjour Bristol

I go away for two weeks, and we have branches? At least it's not factions.
If this continues we'll be able to have a Eurovision style contest - 'Wilkommen, Bracknell - can we please have your scores for Ticket to Ride'?
But really, the more the merrier. If I'd had internet access out in France I'd have joined in. But I didn't, so I couldn't. I did manage to get some games played though.
I was only allowed a small-ish bag of games, so I took my box of card games, Stone Age, Thurn and Taxis, Pergamon, Dixit and Battle Line.

However, the Thurn and Taxis box also contained Settlers of Catan.
In the Pergamon box I'd managed to find space for Notre Dame and Aton, and secreted within the capacious Stone Age box were Alhambra and Lost Cities.
The Battle Line box also held Haggis, Row Boat and Citadels, and the Posion box is far too big for the game itself; much better with Tichu, For Sale, Mu, No Thanks and Coloretto in there for company.

And what did we play?

If it was up to Bea (9), we'd have played nothing but Dixit. It was in fact one of the game highlights of the holiday, playing Dixit in the garden with the girls and my parents-in-law.
I can't think of another game that could be played by six people aged 7 to 70, first-time and seasoned gamers alike, that would be such fun, and a proper game - it's a worthy Spiel Des Jahres winner, and a very unique game.

My father-in-law William is always up for a game, and I had high hopes for Aton, mine and Sam's current two-player favourite. We played once, but it didn't really grab him.
We played a few games of Battle Line, a great Reiner Knizia two-player card game of war in the ancient world - very thematic, even though you're basically making poker hands. But the one that William really took to was Lost Cities; RK again, and a game that really deserves its classic status - everyone I've introduced it to 'gets' it within a single round, and wants to master it. It may be less strategic than Battle Line, but easier to grasp, pick up and play.

Matilda's go-to game was Coloretto, and I played a few games with all the girls; despite the fact that their main strategy was fighting over who got to collect pink, I consistently lost . . .
In exchange for taking them swimming one gloomy afternoon, Matilda and Bea agreed to a game of Thurn and Taxis; Bea won, but they haven't asked to play again. Funny, I thought Matilda might find it an interesting step up from Trans Europa.
Again at Matilda's request, we played a game of Alhambra, and I was reminded of what a great game for three or four it is; and what a long one too, for kids.

And in the evenings, Charlotte and her mum were persuaded to join us menfolk. That's when I realised I'd brought too many games. I couldn't decide what to play; the first night we played Tichu, which didn't go down a storm. I should have learned to avoid card games after that, but the next night, despite showing them both Pergamon and Notre Dame, I ended up suggesting Mu. I found a good teaching method, but we started too late, and it was a giant flop.

Everything changed, however, after I sniffed out a games shop in La Rochelle . . .
I couldn't resist Martin Wallace's new game, A Few Acres of Snow; it's a two-player game based on the battle for control of Canada by the British and the French, which uses a Dominion-style card-drafting mechanic. No, Charlotte didn't play it; and by the time I'd got to grips with the rules, William had headed back to London.

But while I was there, I picked up Pickomino - the Reiner Knizia dice game some of us played at Stabcon with Hammy (he called it Heck Meck). It turns out that if you're allowed to play it yourself, rather than being told what you should do on each roll (Hammy's preferred method), it's really rather good fun. We played it with Charlotte's parents, and I played it with the girls. And finally, we all played it together; in fact we played it every day of the holiday after I bought it.

It's a good little push-your-luck dice game, the pieces are very tactile and lovely, and the worms give it that extra hook for the kids. There's an awful lot of luck, but that's perfect for what it is; and when the dice-gods smile on you, and hand you the single, solitary worm you so desperately need on your eighth dice, well, you smile right back at them. Would make a nice game to end a tuesday night . . .

So Dr Knizia does it again - I could have just packed Pickomino, probably.
Except the box is so small, I couldn't possibly have squeezed the other games in there. JB

A Tale of Two Ages

After a double whammy of Ticket to Ride on Tuesday (albeit in two different towns) there was an 'official' (ie leaderboard) games night tonight comprised of myself (Sam), Adam, Hannah and Andrew.

Unusual for us these days to only have four players but it does open up the options and after a bit of discussion - the four of us plus the ghost of 'Michael' - we broke Stone Age out of the box, with which everyone but Hannah was familiar. And despite Joe's absence we managed to explain it reasonably well and got cracking fairly quickly.

Adam began and immediately embarked on a campaign of field-building that served him well throughout the game. I started collecting cards - and axes when I could - and as Hannah diversified Andrew chose his well-trodden path of huts and hut-multipliers - reassuring Hannah as he sped off along the scoring track that it meant nothing. And he was right - but it was a close-run thing. After Adam had turned his Ticket to Ride trick of sitting apparently fallow only to burst along the score track like some kind of demented steam train/neanderthal, it looked like he wouldn't be caught. Sat back in fourth place on the track at the end, I was feeling a little forlorn about my chances to be honest - but I'd underestimated my own hand and a combination of axes and axe multipliers - plus a wedge of other cards - bumped me into first, with newbie Hannah squeezing out Andrew by a mere three points:

Sam 177

Adam 153

Hannah 140

Andrew 137

Interesting fact : I only took a sixth follower on the final round, so effectively played the whole game with the initial 5 followers.

I was almost too surprised to be pleased, but any thoughts of leaderboard glory were nipped in the bud when I foolishly went to the loo and let the others decide what to play next. Tragically they opted for my bête noir, Trans-America. I'm about as good at this as Stephen Hawking is at darts, and my fourth place was inevitable. Hannah took the glory after a tight third round was won by Andrew, although Adam beat him into second place after Andrew suffered a hefty penalty from round one.

I didn't write down the scores I'm afraid, only the positions:

Hannah (3?)

Adam (6?)

Andrew (10?)

Sam (15?)

Nice to get a couple of games played - next week at Joes?

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Adam	16	81.5	5.09
Sam	17	71.5	4.21
Andrew	18	57.5	3.19
Joe	12	47.5	3.96
Hannah	7	31	4.43
Jonny	7	28	4
Steve	6	21.5	3.58
Quentin	4	17.5	4.38
Paul	2	6.5	3.25
Chris	2	5.5	2.75
Sally	1	3.5	3.5
Matilda	1	1.5	1.5

GNN Greenbank Group Grunts

In a synchronicity of earth-shattering proportions at exactly the same moment that the Bracknell Branch sat down to play the original Ticket to Ride, on the other side of the country the Greenbank Group were sitting down to play Ticket to Ride Europe.

At the table were Hannah and Adam (me) and eager newcomer Yo(lande). Having described all of our dozen or so games carefully to Yo she chose the one that Hannah had wanted to play from the start, Ticket to Ride Europe.

After a speedy rules explanation we launched straight into it. Yo took the one route I was worried about with her first move and for me it became an attritional game. Hannah sped into the lead with both six-carriage routes but had a fragmented route while a meandering line meant I had the longest route, but many short sections. Yo completed her routes early and looked well placed but when she took more route cards only one of them was helpful.

When Hannah finished the game both Yo and I had handfuls of cards just about to be played for big points but had to scramble to complete our routes instead. Final scoring was tense as Yo and I closed the gap on the leader, but to no avail, final scores were:

Hannah 122
Adam 116
Yo 96

(I think)

So all that's left is to see if we scared Yo off for good...