City of Games!

This weekend is the City of Games convention here in Bristol which Stan and I attended, ostensibly to promote gamesnightguru, but in the main, it transpired, to play games ourselves.

I spent Friday night exploring Quebec, which is an interesting tactical game where every decision affects another decision. The theme is about the building of the city over four centuries, but the interesting decisions are slightly compromised by fiddly iconography and a fairly messy board. All the same, I'd be interested to try it with other human beings.

On Saturday Stan and I arrived the Futures Inn for City of Games about midday and, having nervously dropped some leaflets on a couple of tables, set about playing our first game - Raiders of the North Sea. This is twist on worker placement where having placed a worker, you also remove one from the board and activate that as well. There are also a hierarchy of viking types which come into play too. I was looking strong mid-game, but needless to say, Stan overhauled me.

We blasted through some games of Crokinole and Klask - a crazed two-player mash-up of hockey and magnets...

and then sat down with Wibbell designer Bez for a quick game of Grabbell, followed by another quick game of a prototype called Kitty Cataclysm. I'm not sure how much one should share about prototypes online but suffice to say it was a very Bez-ish fun, fast-moving filler. With puns.

I was eager to try out Quadropolis and Stan indulged me. The look of the game has never really appealed to me - pastelly tiles with comic-style drawings - but always seeing it in the shops made me think it'd be good to get it on the Guru website, at least. It's a fast-moving game too, where over four turns in four rounds you grab tiles from a central board and use them to build on your own. How the tiles interact and activate scores points, not massively unlike some other games, but the catch here is your four architects dictate both what you can have, and where they can go.

I enjoyed well enough - more than Stanley in fact - but although the puzzle element is fun, the look and slightly abstracted-Machi-Koro feel of it all didn't blow our minds. Maybe playing it knowing the scoring system would have helped though, but by the time I reached end-game scoring in the rule-book we were both reaching glazing point.

A few more games of Crokinole and Klask and we called it a day at the City of Games... although as it was a Saturday night, there were more games to be had at home. Andrew now takes up the baton of narrator...

At eight o’clock, Sam, me, Chris and Katy converged on Sam’s kitchen for a weekend dose of games. At first, it was the three boys, with Katy expected in fifteen minutes. For a few seconds we considered having a “conversation” until she arrived. And then, once the laughter had died down, we played Wibbel.

The game veered from unnecessarily long words to short, sharp terms of abuse as we swiftly sped through the deck. Luckily we were done and dusted by the time Katy got here so she didn’t have to see our reliance of body-parts vocabulary to get us across the finish line.

Sam 19

Chris 18

Andrew 11

After this, the four of us stared at the wall of games in Sam’s living room, eventually choosing Queendomino. This reworked version of Kingdomino comes with a few extra choices which, apparently, means it needs a much bigger box.

The core of the game is the same: make a 5x5 grid of tiles, trying to score for contiguous landscapes. Yes, I said contiguous. In Queendomino, you also get to build towers and end-of-game-scoring tiles or do a bit of taxing too, using the teeny tiny knights.

It was okay. A nice diversion. At the end I jokingly said “I reckon I’ve won that,” and it turned out I had.

After that we chose Rajas of the Ganges. While Sam set it up, Katy and I stood outside for a bit, enjoying the night air and being appalled by the student neighbours who played that “Dancin’ in the Moonlight”* song by Toploader twice in a row. Shocking behaviour.

As for the Rajas of the Ganges, I found that my previous game when I played as blue had completely rewired my brain. Or maybe it was the night air. Either way, I kept moving Katy’s blue pieces instead of my own red ones.

My initial feelings of sympathy towards Katy and Chris for going up against two old hands were quickly replaced by a sinking feeling as my dice-rich approach got very few points on the board early on. Chris got his markets going early on and sped off up the river, with the rest of us close behind. Katy went for fame points in a big way, getting her fame point marker halfway along the third side of the scoretrack. Sam went for money and by the end, his money marker was almost on the home straight. 

It was an unconventional game, which is good since it shows there are still avenues to be explored here. I actually finished the river, which was a first for me. I kind of regretted doing it so soon, since that now meant I had one less option. It felt very different with four players. In a good way.

Katy won!

Chris second, but only just

Sam third, but only just

Andrew fourth, by miles

After that, we ended with Push It. I sent the jack off the table early on (caught by Katy before it hit the floor) putting me into negative points, and I never recovered. 

Sam 7

Chris 6

Katy 6

Andrew 0

Chris and I reached for our coats with indecent haste after this, leaving a bemused Katy plaintively suggesting Hit Z Road to a reply of arms through sleeves and scarves round necks.

A lovely evening. Thanks all. Cheers!

* I don’t actually know if the song title drops the “g” off the end of “dancing” but it’s so bad, that I expect it does.

*

It wasn't quite the end of the evening for me (Sam) though, as the rowdy neighbours were only getting louder and after the abortive texting I went around and hammered on the door like the proverbial suburban Meldrew, telling them it was nearly midnight and they had to bloody well pipe down. ...I'm not sure that's exactly how the conversation went, but certainly my many previous polite texts had used up my patience. They gave up singing some kind of demented barbershop chorus as a result, and went out. 

As a result of the booze and the games and the slightly gritted-teeth exchange, I was a bit fuzzy on Sunday morning when Stan and I made our way into town by bike. We began with breakfast and then decided, with similar reasoning to Quadropolis for me, and more enthusiasm from Stan, to try out Dice Forge.

This was actually rather fun: a simple dice-roller where your round by round choice is to upgrade your dice, or 'perform heroic quests' - buy cards. Cards can be helpful in-game and/or bring you victory points. We ended up playing three times during the day, and enjoyed them all; with the caveat of slightly fiddly pack-away and the potential for luck to undo your whole game: both Stan and I had times where all our upgraded dice were still rolling the un-upgraded sides, which was a bit frustrating. But the game is so brief it wasn't too upsetting. 

We bashed out another few games with Bez as well - another prototype that crossed Wibbell with Dobble to good effect, albeit I'm terrible at those games and Bez' mate Jake wiped the floor with us. 

After lunch we tried out Kitchen Rush, a real-time co-operative game of running a restaurant. In each of four rounds you place workers to carry out tasks, with the catch being each worker is a timer, and the task is not complete until 30 seconds are up. You can plan as much as you like, but once the round begins you have exactly four minutes - to bring in customers, take orders, prep food and cook it and add spice and buy more food and even wash the dishes. At the end of each round all your workers must be paid as well. 

It was... interesting. I can imagine it being fun at the right time - maybe after everyone's just had their third coffee. There was genuine stress in trying to manage everything and several times we - or I - got recipes wrong. We did win, but only by cheating both inadvertently and slightly-on-purpose. That was the easy version! Quite a mad one and despite the unique feel I'm not sure anyone at GNN would be keen on playing it more than once - it's like playing 8 overlapping games of FUSE. 

After playing EXIT last week (thanks Martin!) Stan was keen to try another Unlock escapade, so we blasted through the Haunted House adventure, where you have to rescue some lost kids.  If you can call me feeling increasingly tired and exasperated 'blasting'. The final puzzle we had to completely give up on. Oh well, it was probably bloody students again*

We hung around for a while hoping to win a basket of games, but didn't get our number come up in the raffle. I was hoping having the very first ticket might be rewarded, but there are no early bird rewards in probability. After some Looping Chewie, another game of Crokinole, and our third and final visit to the Dice Forge, we called it a weekend.

A very fun weekend too. It seemed like City of Games was a big success too, which is a credit to Frank West who not only organised the whole shebang but supplied his not-inconsiderable games library for people to use. Some of it was on the floor at the end! But then, so was I...

* swore about 25 years I would never say this except ironically