What will a zen do if a shin can sen?

I arrived at after eight at Mel’s to find eight gamers already squeezed into one room. I had already missed a game of Just One which ended with 7 right out of 7. "We bossed it," Martin informed me.

Meanwhile, as I arrived, Joe, Ben and Gareth had already started a game of Zendo and the rest were waiting for me before deciding on their next choice. In the event, Sam, Katy and Mel played Shinkansen which is, I guess, about building trains across Japan while Martin, Ian and I played Sheepy Time.

Our game was an odd one. The first two rounds were over quickly as the nightmare tore around the track like a demon possessed. Martin and I were able to pick up points while Ian languished in third. Then I provoked the ire of my opponents by using a dream tile’s special power to push both of them on to the same square as the nightmare, waking them up and taking all the points in that round for myself. 

In round four, both Martin and I pass our pillows but daren't stop for fear of losing to the other. Then the nightmare suddenly shifted and ended the round before we could do anything. 

In round five, I got past my pillow and, seeing the nightmare in the second half of the track, I finished. Then Martin also passed his pillow, went further than I did and finished too. This left Ian, who'd had no luck all game with a mountain to climb. And climb it he did. An astonishing feat of brinkmanship sent him round twice, maybe three times more, and he sped past his pillow by miles and clocked up an improbable win.

Ian 7 spaces past his pillow

Martin 3

Andrew 1

The group playing Zendo ("the facial hair table", according my notes) finished with each of them winning a simple rules round and then Ben suggested attempting a medium rules round, prompting an anguished wail of tortured indecision from Gareth. Ben won the medium rules round and I think Gareth enjoyed it. "Our brains are fried," summarised Joe.

Ben 2

Joe 1

Gareth 1

And Shinkansen ended shortly afterwards.

Sam 82

Katy 76

Mel 51

Then Mel made Katy a cherry coke float which I thought was the most 1950s thing I'd seen in years. 

We rearranged ourselves into two new groups. Sam, Ian, Mel, Ben, Katy and Gareth played Texas Showdown while Joe, Martin and myself sat around the garden table and played The Crew Mission Deep Sea. We veered from hopeless incompetence to supreme capability, failing the first two attempts and then sailing past two rounds without even using the communication option. We ended on mission 21 which was a bit of an anti climax as we completed it in just three tricks.

Clearly impossible

I was too engrossed in our deep sea missions to follow much of Texas Showdown except for Katy musing "I'm sure I used to be good at this game."

Mel 3

Ben 6

Katy 9

Sam 10

Ian 10

Gareth 12

And with that, we were done. At least, most of us. Martin was keen for one more so perhaps him and the hosts continued into the wee small hours. Sorry that the blog is so self centred and that I arrived so late. I drove to Easton on total auto pilot and found myself on Stapleton Road thinking "oh shit".

Big thanks to Mel and Ben for hosting. Hope to see you all soon.

Two-Headed Beasts

On Friday Chris and I (Sam) met for some gentle two player-games whilst Ashton and Stan zoomed around the house on hoverboards, making beeping noises and throwing a bouncy ball at each other.

"Does that bother you?" I asked Chris. 

"To be honest, I hadn't noticed" he said. 

Chris hadn't noticed partly because after introducing him to the magic of Cross Clues, we'd gone for the not-usually-2-player space battle of Eclipse. 

Eclipse is engineered to push players towards each other geographically and aggressively. With 3 or more there are extra layers of tactical thinking and nuance to play. With two, it's much simpler, although the goals are still the same - you score points for territories, developed tech, and prowess (or even lack of prowess!) in battle. Chris and I started either side of the galaxy's centre, but had very different experiences. My exploration found lowly, unoccupied worlds, waiting for pink habitation. As a result I built an economy swiftly, whereas Chris found himself beset by The Ancients, hostile forces bent on - not unreasonably - hanging on to the last vestiges of their civilisations. 

Mid-game I felt comfortable - I was taking more actions than Chris and calmly spreading tendrils across the galaxy. But Chris used what little flex he had to arm his ships to a degree I think it's fair to call 'fucking nuts' and when the endgame arrived, the classic battle-for-the-centre wasn't enticing me in.

We had similar numbers, but Chris's firepower dwarfed mine. Instead of contesting such a long-odds battle, I branched off to explore - but made a catastrophic error: throwing two ships into the centre 'for fun' - they had such a slim chance of success, it was basically to have another punch-up. But although Chris had no actions left, he could still react: and swiftly moved into the perilously ill-defended hex I'd left behind. There was no return!

Chris 36

Sam 31

We moved back to terra-ferma for a crack at Rajas of the Ganges, where I attempted a small measure of revenge. For those unfamiliar, the terrifying-looking board disguises a really simple worker-placement game, where workers combine with dice.

Each player's goal is to build their Raja's palace - on a separate board - by paying for tiles to place there. The USP with Rajas is that tiles score in two different ways (cash and fame) and these currencies are tracked around the board: but going in different directions. Your goal is to get the two markers to pass each other. 

The last time I'd played Andrew had totally schooled me, so I copied his fame-heavy strategy as Chris built numerous markets and coined in the cash. The catch with the market route is that for every space the fame marker moves, the money marker needs to move twice for equivalence. I thought I might have run out of steam as Chris, in the last round, suddenly sprang up the track at terrifying velocity - but I held on for the win. 

Sam - Raja

Chris - Raja not

There was just time for another blast at Cross Clues...

Before we called it a night. But what a night it was - Chris' mad cat Daisy decided to start mewing at 3am outside my door and opening the door seemed to upset her even more. Chris found a bed for me away from the noise, but I was now neurotically wide-awake and remained so until around 5. I wouldn't have mentioned it all, except for the fact on Saturday night I had a date with Martin, Joe and Katy for...

DOPPELKOPF

Martin had been playing this partnership trick-taker online a lot and wanted to try it in the room, so the three of us signed up to experience it's unique charms. As trick-takers go, it's quite long (2 hours!) and also - even for a game genre that positively bubbles with unusual twists - kinda bonkers. The game can be played with a standard deck (or decks plural, actually) of cards, but thank God Martin had the bespoke deck: without it, we would have definitely struggled!

Although each round - usually - sees players establish temporary partnerships, the game is won and lost individually. The lowest card is a nine, and a ten is higher than a king, so the suits run from ace down:

Ace - Ten - King - Queen - Jack - Nine. 

But forget suits for a moment because over half the deck are actually trumps, and for the trump suit you - usually - ignore the standard suit on the card entirely. There are also two of every card, with - should duplicates be played in the same round - the earlier breaking ties. Most of the cards are also worth points (point values between 2 and 11, thankfully also printed on the cards) and the partnership that claims the most points wins the round. 

But when (all) the cards are first dealt, players don't actually know who they'll partner with initially. The Re partnership is determined by the players holding the two Queens of Spades Clubs (the 19 trumps) and the Kontra whoever isn't. If one player is dealt both queens, they can announce they need a 'marriage' and the first non-queen player to win a trick is the Re partner. Unless someone decides to play... solo!

The three jacks, ten of diamonds and king of diamonds are all actually trumps (gold circle)

Point values appear halfway down the cards. The non-gold values under the spades, hearts 

and clubs are their trump value in case they become trumps. I think. 

A full game of Doppelkopf takes 16 rounds, but every player must at least once play a round solo. When this happens, they choose from a smorgasboard of solo parameters: same rules as partnership, but swap out one 'trump' suit for a 'non-trump' suit? No trumps at all? Only queens are trump, or only jacks? The solo rules sometimes make things simpler, but the swapping of suits - in a game where some suited cards are trumps (and therefore not the standard suit on them) and some matching suited cards aren't, sent all of us tumbling into a pit of continuous confusion!

Apart from that, the basic rules of Doppelkopf came into focus reasonably quickly. But wait! There are numerous additional flourishes - pages of them on wikipedia, apparently - and we mixed in a few. A standard round is worth a point, but possibly more if it's a big win, and more still if the winners (or indeed losers) announce it ahead of time. Winning a hand of tens and aces is a doppelkopf: bonus point! Winning the (trump) ace of diamonds (the Fox!) from an opponent is worth an additional point. Winning the Jack of Spades - Charlie Miller - in the final round is an additional point. These various points, when the planets align, can accrue spectacularly: Martin and I both got seven points for a single round at one stage, as the Kontras looked on at the disaster playing out forlornly. 

Joe sank to minus 13 points at one stage, whereas as Katy and I lingered around the zero mark, Martin surged ahead to a dozen or so points. He assured us all that the points could easily swing back the other way - nobody believed him, though. Until they did. 

I have to confess I made a couple of left-field moves that came off more by luck than judgement, dumping a valuable club in order to be free of clubs and finding it went to my - then unknown - partner. Often in Doppelkopf though momentum seems to swing with earlier trick-winners falling away. This is no more pronounced than in the solo rounds, where Joe, Martin and I all failed to win, but Katy pulled it off with some aplomb. With 11 o'clock looming we took the decision to cap the game at 12 rounds instead of 16 - perhaps prompted by my yawning, although I was enjoying the game - and Martin and Joe were forced to play the last two rounds as their solos. Both were disasters, which helped push both myself and Katy past Martin into first and second. Joe, who seemed to be regularly harpooned by fate, was still stuck on minus 13 points. But as Martin pointed out, since the halfway point his haul of zero was considerably better than Martin's own, as he was belatedly hit by explainer's curse. 

Sam 9/ Katy 3/ Martin 1/ Joe -13

We finished off with the current nightcap de rigeur of Cross Clues, then called it a night. Thanks to Daisy, I could barely remember the last hour of the evening, but at least I slept ten hours. I'd like to play Doppelkopf again as well - it was kinda nuts, but sort of alluringly so...

From Deep Sea to Deep Sleep (and back again)

I (Sam) broke my recent lazy habit of Voi-ing to Joe's house and actually got on a bike again, arriving ruddy-faced from the cold to find Laura already there and Martin, presumably, en route. Along with Joe that was it! A surprisingly player-lite games night of just four. We began by plunging into the watery depths to play Crash Octopus. 

the sea, the sea

This is a fairly silly dexterity game where players each have a boat, and are trying to collect treasure by flicking it into said boat (you can also spend a turn moving your boat instead). In your way is the furious octopus - and the other players. Whenever someone 'finds' treasure, they stack it on their boat and then the octopus might attack: all players take a turn dropping a die off the octopus' head and sending it hurtling, if you can, into the other boats. If it knocks stuff off, that's just too bad! 

If the die didn't hit a ship you move the octopus instead: blank-side up is a tentacle, pink-side up is the head. The constantly shifting octo-parts mean your ship can go from comparative safety to immediate danger, as the head looms up beside you. But you can always try and move it with your own 'attack' by bouncing the die away from your boat...

Laura hides behind a tentacle

I wouldn't argue it's the most elegant design ever, but it was 20 minutes of chaotic fun, and supplied the surprise of the night when Joe's octopus attack saw the die spin around Martin's boat: without actually touching it at all, it nudged Martin's treasures into the sea!

The aftermath of the attack

Joe and I took the laurels here with three matching treasures each. I think Laura had one and Martin none. Next up was Sheepy Time, where one swapped one nightmare pursuer for another. 

nodding off

This was new to Martin and Laura, but is in essence a luck-pushing game of trying to get the most sleep: every time your sheep manages to complete a circuit of the course and jump the fence, you - potentially - score five points, but face the dilemma of 'waking up' 'calling it a night' -ie dropping out of the round and banking your score- or keeping going and risk getting nothing if the Nightmare completes a full circuit before you do. Appended to that are various powers around the edge of the board you can access by spending 'zees'.

final round tension

Additionally, each round sees your target of 'winks' - what you need to win - drop to more immediately-achievable levels depending on your level of success. Last time I played fairly conservatively and did really badly. This time I can vouch that ignoring zees and focusing entirely on movement is also a moribund strategy. In the final round I dropped out to propel myself from last place to a potential second, only to discover - as Joe won - that according to the rules there is no such thing as second. 

"You're a nothing" Martin clarified. It was karma for my making chicken noises at Joe, I guess. 

I didn't make note of the scores, but it was along the lines of

Joe something

Everyone else: nothings

Martin and Laura were keen to introduce Joe to Quirky Circuits, the game of navigating automated vacuum cleaners around tables and bees over anthills. Like The Mind, players play co-operatively but without knowing which movement cards they've played until all are revealed. The goal in each round is to navigate a thing (vacuum collects dust, bee picks up and delivers pollen) until it's tasks are complete. As well as the above catch, there's also the fact you have a hand of just four cards and - in some rounds - must play one, or even two of them, before the others. Everyone's also on limited time, as rounds are powered by a battery that's slowly running out...

the cat does nothing

We hoovered the lounge easily though, introducing Joe to the basic concepts, before stepping outside and taking control of the bee. Now our task was a little more difficult, as the teenage bee was still getting used to the concept of braking: if you went fast, it would drift another square. 

move one, move one, rotate 180º, move north (must be played first!)

On the other hand, cards that rotated the bee north could be very helpful. It was a close-run thing in our final game (of four) as the ants nearly carried off the pollen and the battery was in the red, but we completed the task with seconds to spare! On that note of triumph, Laura departed and the three of us settled on The Crew: Mission Deep Sea. 

Joe's task

We were hit with some devilishly difficult tasks, but managed to navigate them pretty well on the whole. I think we failed once, allowed me a do-over once, but broadly speaking sailed through a few rounds with comparative ease. 

Another mission

As the clock ticked past eleven we wrapped things up on a quiet, but satisfying GNN night. Hope to see a few more faces next week!

Terraforming the Kitchen Table

On Friday just gone, the plan was for Andrew and I (Saxons) to face off against Steve and Ian (Danes) in the great 878 Vikings rematch - we enjoyed our last sally so much - but covid complications harpooned Steve's involvement, and try as I might my black market boardgamer connections came up with nothing in terms of a Replacement Steve. Come 8pm, we were a trio, and forewent dice-chucking in the distant past in favour of terraforming in the distant future - rather than the 3+ hour epic of Terraforming Mars, it was the more recent card-based version: the snappily-titled Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition. 

Mars, floating in dots

Mars begins unterraformed, and everyone's goal is to be Best Terraformer as we collaborate, but also compete, to push up the ambient temperature, oxygen levels, and establish oceans and life for human habitat and probable inevitable destruction. 

The basics are simple: five phases are available in each round and each player selects - secretly - one to activate. All players do all active phases, but if you chose it you get a little benefit into the bargain. I can summarise them neatly here:

1 Play green cards

2 Play blue or red cards

3 Activate previously-played blue cards

4 Run production on green cards to get stuff

5 Get more cards into your hand

Admittedly, this isn't how the game itself terms them, but it's the easiest way to learn. The nub of it is neat, simple, but glommed onto the basic terms and icons is a veritable smorgasboard of secondary icons and currencies that may or may not come into relevance, depending on what card you play. It was this stuff that smiled on me as I began with a hand of 'Earth' cards that seemed to synergise well, picked up more Earth cards, and also began ramping up my Titanium cards as well. Everything seemed to gel, and I took a convincing victory over the debutants (I'd previously played solo)

After shaking my victorious fist in their faces though, we all agreed that the absence of any meaningful player interaction and the enormous splurge of cards across the table didn't send TM:AE vaulting into the GNN Hall of Favourites: the engine building was fun, but the theme seemed like an irrelevance and the fact all players do all phases simultaneously was a bit of a death knell: it's necessary, as otherwise the game is going to be rather long, but the sum result was all of us mumbling to ourselves at the same times for an hour and 45 minutes. Maybe for two it'd be fun, if players took turns and actually paid attention to each other?

Anyway, after the damp squib of space Andrew took his leave, and Ian and I realised we still had more games in us. We bashed through Kingdomino, I retained the title of Mr Biblios, and then we wrapped up with a couple of cracks at two-player Cross Clues, which is pretty tricky if you hit a pair of dud combos: without others to take up the slack, the sweary mumblings brought Ares Expedition back to mind - but these pauses were never long, and somehow Ian kept making sense of the appallingly random shite I was clueing him. A fun way to end an evening that had felt just a little too exploratory for our liking!

Tout toot

I arrived at 8.05, after several aborted attempts at parallel parking in a hurry and eventually leaving my car with its rear wheels on double yellow lines, keen to get to Sam's for this week's games night.

I walked in to witness the curious situation of seven gamers around a table making toot toot noises. On closer inspection I saw they were passing little trains to each other, carrying little coloured cubes. The game was called Rail Pass and I had no idea what was going on so I just poured myself a drink and waited for them to finish. Luckily, it didn't take long. It seems that there's a timer involved and a strict five minute limit to do whatever it was that they were trying to do.

And they did! They all looked pleased with themselves and a little bit tired as well. All that tooting, I suppose.

Martin, Joe, Ian, Katy & Laura (a team) Sam and Gareth: smashed it.

Next we split into two groups. Brian Boru continues to fascinate, despite the twenty minute rules explanation. Martin felt he could probably get that down to fifteen, while Laura expressed surprise that her experience of the rules explanation hadn't actually lasted forty-five minutes. Joe, Gareth, Katy and Martin chose this game.

At my end of the table was The Game of 49, as requested by Laura. It was my first game but there are very few rules so we were up and running before too long. It's very simple. Probably invented by someone who had been playing noughts and crosses one day and suddenly wished there was more gambling involved.

It was fun in a cruel kind of way. Ian played strategically, passing whenever it looked like some kind of bidding war was about to break out. Therefore he was always cash rich and as the three of us ran out of money, he was able to buy three tiles for the minimum bid, unopposed. When a winning tile was revealed neither Sam, Laura nor me had enough money to outbid him.

Ian: wins

Brian Boru was still underway with Joe married twice and Katy giving all the high cards to Gareth, much to Martin's dismay. So we considered what we could play and it was while I was looking for Texas Showdown that I noticed Wibbell, the tiny word game compendium. I remember enjoying a game called Phrasell so I suggested this instead. In this game one player is a judge and they draw one card from the deck. Then they come up with a topic based on the two letters on that card. Then two more cards are drawn and everyone else has to invent a four word sentence using those four letters based on that theme.

Everyone had a moment of genius. Laura was poetic on “Iberian”: Easterly winds yowl in. I went crude on “Sad”: A wasted inky condom. I liked Sam’s neat encapsulation of “Nick Frost”: Portly oddball eats cornettos. Biggest laugh perhaps went for Ian’s topical response to “Kings and Queens”: His Majesty’s a nonce. In the end, I was a surprise (to me, at least) winner.

Andrew 16

Laura 12

Ian 11

Sam 10

And Brian Boru was winding up too.

Martin 40

Joe 38

Gareth 35

Katy 24

Martin was pleased to remain unbeaten, while Katy decided she didn’t like it anymore.

Laura and Gareth left at this point and so the six of us played Full Throttle. This simple game on betting on a race you can only marginally influence is fun in its own way. In this race, orange barely moved for the first two-thirds, then leapt into action only to be stymied by a road block up ahead when all they could draw were orange one cards. 

Black looked like a contender after almost completing a lap in on turn, but it was mostly green blue or yellow who were battling for first and blue won. And so did Martin.

Martin 21

Andrew 18

Ian 16

Katy 16

Joe 12

Sam 11

Sam pointed out that, after winning his first game of Full Throttle by miles, he’s come last every time since then. I get the feeling we’re going to keep playing until that jinx is broken. Fine by me, though. It might be random, but it’s fun random.

And then I left, while the rest saw out the evening with a couple of games of Cross Clues. Thanks all. See you next week.

The Wife of Brian

As I approached Joe’s house at 8.00, I heard a voice calling my name. It was Katy, cycling along, just arriving for the second time that evening, having just gone to search for a cable she’d left behind at Adam’s house. Another eight o’clock arrival was Steve. The three of us joined Martin, Sam, Ian, Laura and Joe who’d played one game: Fly. Martin hated it and Ian won. This brought up the issue of Joe’s perfect five – he’d been on the brink of winning his fifth game in a row since the middle of December and appeared to have lost his chance. But because the game is meant for four players, max, and they played it as a quintet, it was declared void. Joe had one more shot at immortality.

The eight of us split into two groups. Joe, Martin, Laura and Sam chose Brian Boru, the ancient Celtic game of area control and flirting. Steve, Ian, Katy and I chose (after some deliberation and Katy’s observation that we were the worst people at deciding what to plat) Whale Riders. This was my first game, despite it being a regular at GNN for some months now. I got a rules explanation from Ian and Katy and was soon foraging for treasures in the waves like an expert. Sort of. I soon spent all my money and had to spend one action completing a single contract just for the cash. Katy kept picking up whatever was free and was still able to complete a couple of contracts. I dawdled at the back, picking up leftovers while Steve was first to dash home, sparking debate about which end of the row of pearls he should buy from. Katy said it was obvious – the cheap end – but Steve was unhappy about making the better tiles cheaper for other people. Doesn’t matter, said Katy definitively. Argument done.

Katy 16 + cash

Steve 16

Andrew 15

Ian 13

Brian Boru was still in its early stages, so the four of us played Team Play. Steve got a rules explanation from his team mate Ian. I was paired up with Katy who shocked me by putting discarded cards straight at the bottom of the draw pile instead of making a discard pile. As for the game, Ian and Steve started strong, but then Katy and I drew level before S&I hit eight tricks and triggered the end of the game.

Steve and Ian 25

Katy and Andrew 25

We looked for a tie breaker and I said it might be fewest completed cards wins. This would have given Katy and me the win, but no matter how often Katy read the rules, she couldn’t find it.

With Brian still midgame, we played Spicy. I was all excited when I played my last card and Steve didn’t challenge me, but that was because he was putting down his own last card. Katy challenged and was wrong, handing Steve three points on top of the ten point bonus for clearing your hand. Three points that she came to regret. If she’d just let him put the card down, she would’ve won! Fine margins, and all that.

Steve 23

Katy 22

Andrew 15

Ian 0

Brian Boru finally came to a close with everyone married and Laura sighing as the final round began. Nothing to do with the game but it was, she explained, after her bedtime. It ended with a win for Martin and the end of the road for Joe's perfect five.

Martin 36

San 31

Joe 29

Laura 21

After this we split up again. Laura set off home and Joe, Ian and Martin played Ra and Katy, Steve, Sam and I played Full Throttle. This is a very basic betting game in which a player lays out seven cards from a deck and moves the motor bikes on the circuit accordingly. Then, they take a card from the deck that corresponds to the colour they think will win. Or at least top three. It's like a very pared down Downforce. Despite the simple game mechanic, Steve always overthought his choice of cards, weighing up what was available with what was already in his hand.

It was kind of boring at first. Yellow sped off into an early lead. Then orange caught up. But as the race continued and we reached the end of the penultimate lap, the pack had become much more tightly packed. "Almost as if it were all random," I pondered out loud. In the end blue became a surprise winner. A surprise to everyone except Katy who had four blue cards in her hand.

Katy 26

Steve 18

Andrew 16

Sam 9

Ra, meanwhile, ended on a knife edge with the final tiles to be played being 10, 11, 12 and 13 and everyone on equal pharoahs. At the end Martin pushed his luck. As the last player he wanted to load up the auction track before the final Ra tile came out. He daren’t go too far but in the end his margin of win was greater than he’d expected.

Martin 56

Joe 48

Ian 30

At this point I left, despite Sam trying to persuade me with the promise of So Clover. But I was a little tired so I passed and bade them all farewell. Sam later texted me that they scored 29 points. He also told me they finished Art Robbery.

Joe 23

Sam 21

Katy 14

Martin 9

Ian BUST

Thanks for another special evening. See you all soon.