Great Balls of Squidge

I arrived at Laura and Lucy's house to find Lucy and Ryker upstairs creating a huge den from magnetic boards. Down the the kitchen, Laura, Maddie, Martin, Sarah and Effie were competing in the first game of the first GNN festive get-togethers: 5 Alive, which is a card game of shedding without taking the collective total over 21. Everyone begins with five lives and a life is lost when you bust (I think). 

Martin and Laura were joint winners with 2 lives left, and Maddie and Effie had one apiece when Sarah bit the dust and lost her last one. Christmas games were officially underway and next up was one of Martin's newbies, Hold Your Ground! Here we are trying to be last-ones standing as the ground literally explodes in camera-defying ways beneath your feet. 

As this only plays up to four, Effie and Maddie teamed up and so did Martin and Sarah. Laura and I both flew solo: each turn you play two cards from a hand of four that define number of your people to move and how far they can go, after which there's a die roll to determine whether the explody-stick will move (one space; your choice) or explode the tile it currently resides beneath, ejecting the plastic people from the game: and if anyone is cut off from the central helipad tile, they are automatically lost as well. The helipad is semi-safe in that it cannot explode - but as each tile has a max limit of six, a seventh entering will push someone off. The die may also trigger a round of area-control too, where dominant factions kick off the outnumbered. It's all pretty arbitrary-feeling, but fun. Especially the explosions. 

Effie was merciless when the opportunity to screw over her parents came - the apple falls not far from the tree, Martin - and having been in a strong position they were forced out of the helipad; and out of the game. Then the girls were ejected and it came down to a straight fight between Laura and I: she just needed to roll an explosion to win: and did!  A triumph, but at what cost? Look at the desolation. 

We moved on to HIT, the lesser-seen (recently) Knizia card-flipper. Sarah and Adam shared a win in game one, then Lucy joined us for game two, which I won. Nice to revisit this one. 

After all the subversion and theft though we needed something healing and went with Cross Clues. It was a triumph: 25/25 with zero cheating. 

There's only so much healing we can take though, so we reverted to type with Prey Another Day. Sarah made short work of us here, correctly reading the table and devouring opponents to take a victory in two short rounds. I struggled into second.

We moved on to Wandering Towers. I got off to a good start with two potions filled and one wizard home within a couple of turns, but after that stagnated a bit as everyone lost track of where their wizards might be in the vast apartment complex we managed to build.

There were shenanigans. Twice I was close to ending it only to be harpooned by the architecture moving around me. Martin plaintively cried "Where the fuck am I" at least twice. Sarah shared his existential despair. Eventually I claimed a win, with Adam second and Martin beating Laura to third on the tiebreaker. We all agreed the game is bonkers and whilst Laura took herself off on pizza duty, the four of us played something much more sensible: Agent Avenue. Adam and I dug a little hole for ourselves early on - getting two daredevils whilst Martin and Sarah claimed two Codebreakers meant we had to be extremely careful about taking any face-down cards. We briefly threatened to catch them on the track, but ended up daredevilled or codebroken (I now don't recall which) into defeat. Fun though! 

Next up was Stomp the Plank, the game of pirate elephants hating on each other. There wasn't a huge amount of busting and in fact my red elephant did no plank-walking at all. That lack of adventurousness was enough to bring me a solid win. 

Then, after a wonderful foodie interlude of pizza and salads, the entire house gathered together for Midnight Party!

Martin and I had disastrous first rounds as we both encouraged Hugo out and had him subsequently eat us. The Laura-Ryker team began well by picking up +3 points, but massive kudos to Maddie who pooh-poohed open doors in favour of running around the board to the plus-three rooms. It didn't get her the win, but she looked like an action hero compared the rest of us scrambling in a sweaty-palmed panic. Mid-game Sarah and Effie had to leave, and as Katy was arriving at the same time she took over control of their team.

Laura + Ryker -14
Martin -23
Sam -27
Maddie -28
Sarah + Effie / Katy -29
Adam -32

Ryker and Maddie were fully invested now and played Block Party with us. Really lovely to have them at the table as we continuously discovered our 'obvious' creations just looked like a bunch of cubes to everyone else.

Adam surged into an early lead here, and Ryker had a handicap of only actually starting in round two. Adam built a wonderful slice of watermelon and I successfully had my orange cube identified as 'an orange' by Maddie. I knew Martin's blocks were meant to be a slide but I wasted my steal on Katy's swirl-of-colours construct, which was "obviously" a donut. Meanwhile Katy insisted Martin's slide looked 'more like Chewbacca'. You be the judge:

Everyone had a little late-game rally and for me it was enough to catch Adam and share the win. Unfortunately that was Adam's last involvement for the day as he had to head off home, so he missed out on the hilarity of what was next: Misfits. We began as a quintet: Katy, Laura, Maddie, Martin and myself. But after Ryker won Pizza Party at the end of the table he joined my team and supplied both advice and some next-level heckling, trilling "Boooooring!" if he felt the placement wasn't ambitious enough. Around here was also Ryker's amazing 'Squidge my balls' routine, which gave all the supposed adults an even harder challenge than Misfits: keeping a straight face. Or trying to.

Somewhere in all this craziness - there were multiple collapses - Katy picked up a win despite her last two pieces being cylinders. There was time for one last game before kids' bedtime and so everyone was dealt into UNO - which today I discover in fifteen years of the blog, has never been tagged here before. Ryker and I stayed as a team, Maddie and Lucy paired up, and Katy, Laura and Martin all went it alone. 

I think it's been about fifteen years since I've played it at least, but if it doesn't scream hall-of-fame it is at least a fast-moving bit of silly good fun. Despite our best efforts to harpoon them, Maddie and Lucy took the win here and the kids were shuffled off to bed as we debated what to play next, settling eventually on Rebirth. 

During our cathedral-centric rebuilding of post-apocalyptic Scotland, the children reappeared and there was a bout of snacks and swinging. Ryker was at the table when I told Martin I hated him, which I had to quickly clarify was only in the context of the game. Laura admonished me for setting a terrible example, and I realised it really was. 

Katy broke out a colossal box of Maltesers and Laura added a bowl of Celebrations. On the board it looked a two-horse race between Katy and her proliferating energy farms and Martin and his spawny card draws: the first two missions he'd picked up rewarded his initial placements. That's my excuse anyway. I tried to balance the needs of farms and missions and castles and just ended up a kind of bland fourth place. Katy looked poised to sneak the win from her arch enemy, but she'd only picked up 4 missions - and only completed three of them. 

Martin 124

Katy 119

Laura 117

Sam 111

While Laura did some further bedtime shenanigans Martin set up his other Christmas present: Bomb Busters! This is a co-op undertaking with the theme of FUSE - we're defusing bombs - and a similar shared-information system to Hanabi.

Each round we successfully 'cut wires' by matching a numbered wire from our (hidden) hand of them with one from another player. At the start we can all share information about a single wire, but because wires are laid out numerically left-to-right, you can also transmit limited info about the tiles around it as well. There's four of each number (on the first mission, the numbers are only 1-6) and if two of a number are already revealed and you have the remaining pair in your own hand, you're allowed to pair 'with yourself' and reveal them. 

After the very easy first mission, the game makes things a bit harder with extra numbers (1-8) and now coloured wires as well (see 3.1 in pic above) that need to be 'cut' in  similar fashion. It gets trickier fast, and if you're not a naturally logical puzzle-solver (ie me) it can start to feel like the only thing you can grok is the fact you know nothing. But it's more intuitive than Wordy or Message From the Stars, and I enjoyed it. Each mission ramps up the difficulty, and gives you more to navigate. To help, you also get single-use tool cards that can get you out of a pickle - I used these more than anyone!

We succeeded our first three missions but lost our last life on Mission 4. Not a bad return for four slightly inebriated cadets, I'd say, even if our alcohol-infused body parts were now scattered around the academy. It's a bit Quirky Circuits too, in the mission-focused escalation - I look forward to playing this again. Laura and I were fading a bit now though - possibly the wire-cutting tension; maybe the post-chocolate sugar-crash - and we elected to make the last game the final one of the night, so it was of course So Clover. Katy got a bastard of a red herring tile, but we managed to call it out and ended the evening on a masterful 24/24! What a great way to sign off 2024. Thank you Laura, Lucy, and all for a cracking session...

Happy new year all. Here's to some great games in 2025 - starting on Saturday!

Hot Cathedral Action

Walking along Joe's road, with the cardboard recycling bags neatly hanging up on railings, I arrived at his door and spent about thirty seconds trying to find the doorbell under the large Christmas wreath on his front door. 

After I went in I found I was the last expected attendee. Apart from me and Joe, there was Ian, Katy, Sam, Adam T and Martin. We began with Panda Royale,  the fun new dice game that Martin didn't seem keen on at all. 

Joe taught Katy and Martin the rules, getting couple of sums wrong as he did, and we were off. Our dice clattered loudly against Joe’s table as we progressed through the rounds. Martin didn't seem happy with our lassez faire attitude to some particular rules. Katy got confused by the different phases of each round, forgetting which order things happened in and got a little spiky when Martin cajoled her.

As for the game,  Adam when big on reds which didn't work out for him at first but soon hit the jackpot. Joe went for those big green dice and he had four in front of Katy did too, asking for a green D20, “and that's the first time I've said that,” she said. 

I kept getting very low yellow scores and so I always chose my dice last. As such, at one point I had one of each colour,  which is exactly what you don't want. 

The smart money went big on blues and trading dice. Ian did this and strode to a handsome win.

Ian 463

Joe 429

Sam 424

Katy 422

Adam 420

Martin 414

Andrew 387

It's only now when I type the scores out that I realise that we finished in order of name length. Martin still wasn't keen on it by the end, though.

Then Katy got out her bottle of ginger wine, causing a little flurry of cocktails as Sam made a whisky mac and Joe made a Rusty Nail (ginger wine and drambuie). Joe offered ice around. “It's frozen water,” he told us, helpfully. 

We split into two groups. Joe, Martin and Ian chose Rebirth. I questioned the use of zeppelins as score markers and was told this was set in the future which surprised me because, from a distance, it all looks a bit medieval. 

Sam's amazing customization work

Katy, Sam, Adam and myself played Rebel Princess, the trick-taker that poo-poohs the patriarchal society in which we live. Or something.

Katy took to it immediately, scoring an impressive zero points in rounds one and two. The rules regarding passing cards were a bit much, I felt. One round insisted we passed after every hand. But then in the final round,  we discovered that winning a trick (usually the last thing you want) in a particular suit actually reduces your score (which you definitely do want).

One strange thing - perhaps my brain was confused by all this passing anti-clockwise because when it was my turn to deal, I dealt anticlockwise too. Katy found it disturbing to watch. I blame the coriolis effect or something.

Sam played brilliantly in that final round, gathering a healthy crop of that suit, reducing his score enough to trigger a tie breaker. Which Katy jokingly suggested might be “most rounds with zero points”. Sam checked the rules and it turns out she was right. 

Katy 12 (wins on tie-breaker)

Sam 12

Andrew 16

Adam 24

On Rebirth, it ended with Ian strolling to another win thanks to some helpful bonus cards. 

Ian 209

Martin 187

Joe 169

We ended at the same time and after a little reshuffle later and I’m sat between Sam and Ian for another game of Rebirth. My first and, at this late hour of 9.15, I almost vetoed it but I was swayed by Ian’s happiness to play it twice. So I listened to Sam’s rules explanation with even more intent than usual, wanting to reduce any further questioning. I was distracted by the pieces, though, which smelled faintly of sawdust and I was transported back to the woodworking class at school.

As for the game, it was a typical Knizia of balancing gains for yourself with sub-optimal moves which, nevertheless, stop you opponents. Chain together tiles and surround castles for points. I wrote down “hot cathedral action” in my notebook but sadly forgot to note the context.

Andrew 167

Ian 166

Sam 154

At the other end of the table, Katy, Joe, Adam and Martin played a game of Fishing that I pretty much ignored and then left before it had finished but Sam sent me the scores later.

Martin 86

Joe 85

Adam 77

Katy 75

Without me, Ian and Sam played Agent Avenue twice with Sam winning both times.

Then they ended with two So Clovers. In Sam’s message to me, he tells me that Katy thinks taking speed is festive.

Looking at the clovers, I note that someone wrote “Speed” for “sea/fast”. A reference to Speed 2 perhaps?

28/36 or 38/36 if you include “festive” points, apparently.

Then Adam left and they went again for

27/30

Thanks all. Have a great festive season!

Rebel without a corset

With Winter tapping on Autumn's shoulder, I walked as briskly as I could manage to Sam's kitchen. There I found Joe already seated,  putting away a game called Panda Royale. As Adam T, Adam H and Ian arrived, it never left the table top, hovering within easy reach. And so, when we had all settled down with drinks in front of us, it was chosen for its second time around tonight. 

It's a cleverly designed dice-rolling/drafting game where we all start with a  lowly yellow 6D die and, round by round, we pick up more coloured dice. Each colour has bonus. Purple dice instantly double their score, blue dice double only if you have a glittery blue dice too. Clear dice can be swapped for another player's die (usually blue glittery ones).

I chose red dice as my path to victory. These scored Value of dice x number of dice. There's a chance win big but, also, the lower half of the numbers all count as negative which is a risk. And so it was that once I rolled all minus points and saw my score turn sharply backwards. 

Adam H specialised in blues and the thieving clear dice. Sam did so too, but he usually got his clear dice from Adam when his glittery blue dice were stolen.

The rules were sparse so we devised our own method of deciding who was starting player, which we promptly forgot. 

In the end, Ian’s horde of Purples and Adam T's collection of blues got them a joint win. Was there a tie-breaker, we wondered. Maybe the roll of one last die? But then Sam said that there wasn't one. We were a little disappointed that the game designers had suddenly abandoned the dice-rolling mechanism at such an important juncture. 

Ian 451

Adam T 451

Adam H 446

Sam 376

Joe 314

Andrew 303

And the scores of the first game, before I arrived, were equally close.

Joe 481

Sam 480

Adam H, at this point, told us about a beer left at his house last week. Some sort of rose raspberry concoction. We assumed it was one of Martin's. Adam brought it back and offered it to anyone who was interested. It was put in Sam's fridge where, I believe, it is still there as I write.

Next up we chose Rebel Princess, a feminist trick-taking card game which is hard to find in the UK because (a) of its Spanish origins and (b) the difficulty of searching for it without returning results about Star Wars. 

Our own feminist trick-taker, Katy, was expected later but it played six and everyone seemed intrigued so we didn't wait. After all, Adam T insisted it would only take two minutes to explain. “... five minutes.” he corrected himself after a glance at the rules. 

It's feminist in the sense that every player has a power they can use and these are denoted by princesses from literature and maybe history. To make things more interesting, each round has an additional rule such as: split your hand in half, play the first half then pass the other half to the right and continue playing with your new cards.

Winning cards with suitors (one point per cards) or the frog card (5 points) was bad. The powers added a new dimension to the game. Ian demanded that Adam H begin his hand with a random card. Adam H did so but, before he revealed it, he took a chance and played his own power and reversed the card values such that low cards would win (which would be bad).

Had his clever plan worked? He revealed his card. A two. Disaster! He won the hand on his way to a less than stellar performance, saved from last place only by Adam T's explainers curse. 

Andrew 7

Sam 13

Ian 15

Joe 20

Adam H 23

Adam T 24

Then Katy arrived, and the seven of us split into two groups. Ian and the two Adams played Rebirth, the Ireland map. Ian went through the rules for the two ingenues. I didn't pay much mind to the game, except when Joe balanced a shell from a pistachio nut on one of the meeples. Such fun.

It ended (after I'd left for the night)

Adam H 264

Adam T 233

Ian 212

Me, Joe, Sam and Katy played Fishing. Another trick-taking card game with (aptly enough) hidden depths. The basic premise couldn't be simpler. Win tricks and each card, at the end of the round, scores one point.

But the cards you win are recycled back into your hand. Therefore, if you do badly in one round, you'll only have a few cards. In this case, you can draw up to the required hand size from a stack of cards that are more powerful than those cards you start with, and they get more overpowered as the game goes on.

The game raises an interesting dilemma. Do you deliberately do badly in one of the eight rounds in order to pick up some OP cards from the deck and win the next round or two? It's such a clever mechanic. 

Katy played particularly aggressively and, perhaps swayed by our recent brush with feminism, the rest of us derided her toxic masculinity. 

I was stung in the final round, picking up -6 in special cards allowing Katy to scrape a win. She'd been twenty points ahead mid-game and just about hung on while we whittled her lead away. 

Katy 84

Andrew 82

Sam 78

Joe 78

I dashed out with almost indecent haste and then the trio I left behind played Misfits. 

Katy won

And then they played So Clover. I was sent a photo but no score. But let's be honest,  you can't put a value on fun.

Thanks all. See you next week. 

Trick-taking with a maggot

A rare Saturday night games foray last night, courtesy of Laura and Lucy, and latterly Katy who turned up after an extravagant meal for sixteen people out somewhere in the city. 

While Lucy was putting the kids to bed, I taught Laura - bedecked in reindeer antlers - the game of the moment, Rebirth. Ryker joined us briefly to watch as I explained that in a semi-green post-apocalyptic future, we'll be building castles and cathedrals. Ryker built a tower of them whilst Laura patiently listened, and then we embarked on a pretty speedy 2-player game of the easy-to-grok Scotland side of the board. I won, Ryker went to bed (-not as a result of me winning) and we flipped the board over to play Ireland instead. In the midst of this, Katy turned up and cheerleaded for Laura as she snaffled castles from me at a rate of what seemed like one a minute. Our positions from game one - where I leapfrogged Laura in final scoring - were reversed, as we both broke 200 points, but Laura by a more impressive margin for a debut 'complex' win. I forgot to take pics but here's Ashley Down Road after the storm, covered in bed and bins.

Then Lucy arrived too, and we played So Clover. At first Lucy was super-tired and suggested bowing out, but with a bit of encouragement she contributed a solid six. In the first game the only letdown was my clover, when for some reason everyone started talking about donkey dicks just because I'd written the clue 'long'. But eventually nobody tripped over on the ghostly phallus and it was Leftovers that harpooned the opener. Feeling enervated we went again and picked up a perfect 24/24:

Then it was time for Misfits! We played twice. 

I think Katy won one and Lucy won one. There was a lot of coffeehousing, with Katy realising at one point that's why she enjoys the game so much. We reminisced about Ian's brilliance at it - his ears may have been burning - and basically had the best fun you can have sabotaging each other with offcuts. But all good things come to and end, and so Lucy eventually retired to bed. 

The three of us debated what to play, although mostly this was Laura and I discussing whilst Katy made little 'hmph' noises from her chair. Having initially ruled it out as potentially too long to start on at 11pm, we ended up playing Fishing. I forgot to take photos of everything except the box, earlier in the day...

This is a pretty bonkers must-follow trick-taker where the tricks you win are both points (one per card) and also your hand for the subsequent round. The catch is that if you don't have enough cards in your won tricks for the next hand, you take them from a communal deck instead, and it's this deck that adds increasingly powerful cards to the game: higher numbers in the basic suits, a trump suit, and some special powers. 

Katy got off to a solid start and she was concerned - and Laura and I hopeful - that her personal deck was stacked with enough chaff that we could build much stronger hands: the game has a kind of ebb and flow of winning/not winning, where you want to shed crappy cards into tricks you're not winning. However though we only played six rounds of the official eight, neither Laura or I could catch Katy up and she may well have had a big enough lead to survive any comebacks. 

Something like:
Katy 80
Laura and Sam - back in the 50s

It was gone 11.30 now so even though it was a Saturday, we called it a night. A very fun night!

Colonel Berge

I was a little late to Joe's house but in time to see him bidding on sticks with Ian, Katy and Martin. This is Stick Collection, where players are trying to create a 'staircase' of sticks by collecting different lengths, with disparities of 5mm between them. You score ten points for each stair in your longest staircase, plus whatever cash you have left (to a maximum of 22) - or you can win instantly by getting four sticks of identical length. The considerable catch is that you have to judge the length by eye from your seat, while it sits in the middle of the table. 

It's more boisterous than this photo makes it look, with regular laughter and howls of complaint - largely from Martin - as people outbid each other only to discover the stick is not staircase-friendly.

Katy fretted that her good start had gone up in smoke, but she stayed out of a lot of biddings and it seemed to give her a strong enough end as well:

Katy 44
Ian 39
Joe and Martin 24 each

Mel had arrived towards the end, glasses steamed up from the chilly outside, but her sight had returned as we split into two groups with Martin signing up/press-ganging Mel and Katy into a game of Camden as Ian, Joe and I rejected it for various reasons: Ian didn't want to learn rules, Joe and I objected to the artwork. I know nothing of Camden other than it's by the designer of Lords of Vegas, there's some tile-placing and tangible dickishness. 

Similar vibes were being felt in Ireland, where Ian got off to a stormer as Joe seemingly dawdled behind, on zero for a while as his urban settlement tiles came out early. I say 'seemingly' because we suddenly realised he had seven castles out to mine and Ian's 2 apiece, and he was picking up speed...

Whilst at the other end of the table Martin picked up a win in Camden, with Mel runner-up.

Martin 55
Mel 45
Katy 42

They began playing Conic, a Knizian area-control with blind-bidding. 

After last week's epic everyone anticipated Rebirth would go on far longer, but we wrapped up shortly after Camden had finished. Somehow Joe had an extra tile, which he got to place at the end. But it wasn't quite enough to stop victorious Ian!

Ian 220
Joe 218
Sam 210

They'd only just started Conic (I think) so we broke out Misfits. And what a dastardly game it was, with Ian kicking things off with a doozy of a foundation...

Before it backfired, collapsing on him in such a way that even the bottom piece flipped over. Joe began things anew with the hexagon of relative safety...

Which grew and grew, but so precariously the top half of the structure wobbled whenever we put anything on it. But it didn't fall, and didn't fall, and still didn't fall... until it did. 

Joe simply had to place his last cube on top of the ruins to win - and he did. 

Joe wins!

Although it was slightly less rambunctious, Martin was claiming a similar victory in Conic at the same time:

Martin 12
Mel 9
Katy 4

It was only 9.30 but I was starting to fade and said I could do one more game. The group graciously defied convention to make that game So Clover, with its meta-game of who can draw the most lewd or revolting number on the back of their plastic leaf. Katy is normally Queen at this but I threw myself into contention with a poo in a bum that - along with Joe's musings about which direction it was travelling - made me feel so nauseous I had to change it to a frog. Then we actually played the game.

There was a lot of tension - especially from Katy...

...and some excellent clueing - although we came a cropper on Mel's clover missing an obvious choice - until we reached Joe's clover, which included two words I didn't even know. 'Col' I thought might be overhanging snow (actually cornice, I now remember: Martin identified it as a kind of mountain pass) or maybe Colonel, but I'd never heard of 'Nimh'. Fortunately Ian had, and identified it as a mouse. But 'Col' turned out to be Flea/Cake, which - bizarrely, but having no suitable alternates - we'd guessed!

"Explain yourself Joe!" Martin demanded, and Joe did. Although my notes say 'explanation unacceptable' I recall that because Colin the Caterpillar is a cake, then a contraction of this would be a smaller cake, and a smaller name: a flea cake. Or something. We got it, so maybe we knew more than we realised! Mysterious ways from the Berge. 

Katy and I both left at this point, but the remaining quartet went on to play Tower Up:

Which was another victory for Ian:

Ian 54
Joe 49
Mel 34

Martin 41

And that was apparently that!