Reboth

Adam H was our host last night, and as Martin, Joe and I stepped out of the autumnal air we found deep discussions afoot between the host, Steve, Katy and Ian. I didn't quite pick up everything but I think gigs were mentioned, and food, possibly. It was a good five minutes before Joe broke out Champions, causing Martin to mention again how disgusted he still was with those who voted for Sylvia Plath over Kermit as someone who'd keep their Christmas decorations up all year. We explained again that it was her distracted air of accidental neglect, rather than a desire to relentlessly celebrate, but he wasn't having it. Meantime new arguments were breaking out, about whether Ralph Wiggum or Russell Crowe would know all the reality TV stars. 

Ian was champion of champions, correctly predicting the results to all but one of the match-ups. Impressive!

Ian 29
Adam 25
Katy 24
Martin 22
Joe 20
Sam 18
Steve 14

Then we broke into two groups, both of them playing Rebirth, Knizia's new tile-layer than both Ian and I backed without realising the other had. How fortunate though, that we could now have Advanced Rebirthians in the front room playing the Ireland side of the board...

Whilst in the kitchen I talked Katy, Steve and Adam through the less taxing Scotland version. As everyone is now well aware, you have a hand of a single tile, and place it on your turn to score points off farms (food or energy) or settlements. But you can also get extra points for castles (most tiles adjacent) and missions (get a mission by placing next to a cathedral). Steve instantly forgot you can place farms on empty spaces, but recovered from his mid-game surprise to catch us up: and at one stage it was as tight as can be, with all of us poised on 55 points. 

But things changed in the endgame, when Katy realised she had neglected castles and we all had incomplete missions. I forgot to make a note of the scores, but I won and I think Adam was second, then Steve and Katy. The others were still making noises of rumination over the emerald isle, so we began playing Looot, the take-and-make game where the making is puzzly but the taking is spicy.

Katy liked having vikings but became slightly disconcerted by the plundering, where we get in each other's way on the shared board before hauling our booty home again. Adam seemed to be collecting so many longships it seemed impossible to do them. We proliferated. 

Meantime Ireland had been successfully reborn - by Ian. It was a close run thing though:

Ian 206
Martin 201
Joe 200

They all announced how crazy it was. "I want to try Scotland again now" said Martin, like a man who'd been complaining about stubbing his toe and then had someone hit it with a hammer. Seeing we were knee-deep in sheep and axes, they began playing Tower Up. 

In Looot, there was drama on the final round as Steve snaffled up the gold Katy needed to complete two of her longships. It's a mildly dickish game with two, but with four the vindictive side of the vikings really comes out. What's more, Steve's move was enough for Katy's prediction that he would win 'despite not knowing what he was doing' to come true. I'm not sure what happened to Adam, whom I had expected to beat us. All of us had incomplete longships, but Katy had four of the buggers. 

Steve 100
Sam 99
Adam 88
Katy 51

Tower Up ended around the same time, as Joe triumphantly pranced around the room with his hands in the air. Again, it was super-tight:

Joe 55

Martin 54

Ian 45

And that was that! With no So Clover under the roof and Adam needing a reasonably early night, we were done. 

Storm Warning

Friday

Only two weeks after Novocon, the weekend that I have hilariously termed Chippencon arrived - Chris and Chippenham pals Paul H and Stuart were joined by me (Bristol) and Paul J (Isle of Wight) for two days and three nights of coastal gaming at the quiet (except for the wind) village of West Bexington.

Before that happened though, Stuart kicked things off at Chris' house by beating him being beaten by him at Kingdomino (no pics) before Paul H joined them and won Incan Gold by virtue of serially 'chickening out' (still no pics) before they began HeckMeck - and I arrived in time to join them a couple of rounds in, which was also just enough to win. Still no pics, meaning the visually arresting image below is from the next game we played: Nidavellir. I don't remember Paul looking (or being) this furious though. It was still early.

I picked up another victory here, although in fairness I was in some way nursed toward it with lots of in-game recaps on how things worked. Basically though I got a lot of green dwarves. Here's Chris pretending he's totally fine with Paul H getting in the way of his oranges. 

We still had a bit of time so blasted through three games of Strike. I think Chris won two and I one. But I'm not sure because we realised it was time to hit the road, and after snaffling a sandwich jumped into our cars and headed south in convoy. Chris and I had a good old chinwag about times past and present before we rode into Dorchester South to pick up Paul from the station. Then we spent the next 2 hours in Dorchester experiencing all the traffic it had to offer, which was seemingly endless. Somewhere in the midst of it we also got some shopping done and, with mine and Chris' various maladies in mind, managed to keep the crisps to reasonably minimal. "But I've got nuts" Chris said, "And biscuits". The food groups were looking slightly monocultured so I balanced it out with some bananas. 

Then there was more traffic - initially - before Google took us along some snowy lanes across hill and dale before we finally trundled into West Bexington. Levering ourselves out of the car, we could hear the sea from south of us, hidden in the considerable dark. We ambled around the house for a bit...

Then as Paul H started making his chilli, the other four of us played three games of Strike which Paul J won. So we played another which Chris won, before eating the chilli (delicious!), discovering every single chair in the room made farting noises, and opening up the evenings' ludological main course, which was Lords of Waterdeep. 

Stuart completed a mission on his very first turn and did spend much of the game in the lead. Despite this Paul H's reputation preceded him as he was repeatedly targeted, and as a result struggled to stay in contention. I was poised to haul in 12 points from my last turn, but then Paul J destroyed the building I needed and all I could do was hire a couple of rogues instead. Chris had just minutes before said he was competing for 4th, but this turned out to be not true at all...

Chris 113
Start 109
Sam 105
Paul H 99
Paul J 98

Then Chris introduced us to Fishing, the new Friedmann Friese trick-taker with interesting gimmick. This was really an interesting must-follow affair where winning tricks gives you a point per-won-card, but the won-cards also form your draw deck for the subsequent round. If you don't have enough cards for your hand, you take cards from the shared deck instead, and these have escalating power - a trump suit is introduced, the standard suits get higher numbers, and there's a few special buoy cards as well. So winning no tricks early gets you a powerful hand for the subsequent round, but winning shedloads of tricks means you have shedloads of low-value cards in your deck, and won't be drawing from the shared deck for a while. 

As a result the game ebbs and flows in terms of who is in the box seat. Both Paul H and I tried to build a super-powerful hand for the final round, but that just meant we scored bugger all in the penultimate round, and shared the last few tricks - which wasn't enough for either of us. Stuart had had three productive fishing trips in a row, and that was enough.

Stuart 87
Paul H 74
Sam 66
Chris 65
Paul J 59

An intriguing game. I can already foresee multiple BGG comments about chaos, but I enjoyed it. With Paul J proposing Waterdeep and Chris Fishing, winner Stuart chose the next game and wanted to try MLEM, which needs no introduction here! Chris was always looking solid here, getting a cat into space on every single mission whilst others exploded. We never got to Deep Space, just close enough to chicken out at the last planet!

Chris 33
Sam 26
Pauls 22 each
Stuart 17

Paul H then instigated a hilarious game of Las Vegas where Paul J couldn't stop winning at Casinos and Chris couldn't start - he picked up two cards over the entire three rounds, whilst Paul was doing things like rolling 5 sixes to steal $90k from me, the bastard, 

Paul J $450k
Stuart $260k
Sam $230k
Paul H $190k
Chris $80k

"Fucking hell!" he shrieked, several times. 

It was closing on midnight now and I pondered going to bed. But everyone else was staying up and it was officially my turn to choose, so I plumped for So Clover (sadly, no pics) which was possibly not the optimal choice for our fatigue levels - maybe something sillier would have been better. Everyone got one or two tricky combos and there were a couple of dangerous red herrings as well - overall an okay 20/30 to finish the evening. 

Saturday

Everyone heard the wind in the night as it bombarded the house with air and spray from the sea. It was a fitful one for us as a result, but a little after nine we were all up and Chris - who'd already reconned the trip - led us down to the seafront. The pictures don't do the wildness of this occasion justice - the waves were well over six feet and the wind was pummelling us so much if you stood on the little sea wall you needed to grip the railing or lean well forward into the gale. 

Back at the house the guys started playing Wingspan. I sat in the corner like an old man and grumbled about my cough, whilst I listened to things like Paul J saying "I'll have fish for starters" and Paul H revealed his mockingbird could repeat the brown power. We also had a big talk about what we do and don't like in games, finding there was a lot of common ground about wanting interaction, avoiding cognitive overload, and games where early mistakes put you out of the running. Not covered in glory here: Battlestar Galactica, Grand Austria Hotel and Photosynthesis.

Chris picked up the win in Wingspan, apparently his first since his debut game:

Chris 90
Paul J 81
Stuart 79
Paul H 78

Then I talked the five of us through Around the World in 80 Days, and off we went! Chris was first to reach Paris, as Paul J did some purposeful dawdling. The game was mostly notable for the amount of times the events threw up a Storm or a Delay, usually drawn by Chris. Paul J seemed most affected by them, though I think we all cursed our/his luck. 

Chris won, not only by circumnavigating the globe the fastest, but even getting back first as well (a small logical loophole in the game means you can be fastest even when you arrive last). Stuart and he both did the entire trip in 78 days, and Chris took the win on the tie-breaker.

Chris - Phineas!
Stuart - Passepartout
Paul J - 82 days
Paul H 88 days
Sam 91 days

I think that keeps my record intact of coming last in this game every time I've played it, but I was very pleased to make it home to London instead of kicking my Victorian heels in New York, fucking ages before Studio 54 opened. 

We then ate a table meats, cheeses, bread and even a bit of colour in the form of salad, courtesy of Paul J's trolley dash in the madcap traffic medley of Dorchester. I forgot to take any pictures as I was eating a lot of gouda, sustenance for the afternoon ahead, which was largely comprised of the 4 hours it took us to punch our way through Champions of Midgard. 

This is worker-placement game where the gist is gather dice and use them to fight beasties for points. The most rewarding beasties are further afield though, meaning you need boats to reach them, and wood to build the boats, and food to feed the warriors onboard. On the big journeys Certain Things may occur, like being attacked by a Kraken (me, twice) or falling into a whirlpool (Paul J) but you can usually make it through and, what's more, usually defeat the beast. The catch is in the small print, which is about how many of your precious dice they take off you in the process. 

There's also a bit of mild asymmetry and a canny system of sympathy from the game's AI: when you lose dice, you remember them viking-style by gaining a matching chit, which can in turn be cashed in for a memorial catch-up mechanisming. I found the game rather long, with a lot of rules-referencing, but the battle system was engaging. Chris and Paul H showed a clean pair of heels to the rest of us, and it looked like a two-horse battle until Stuart did a late-game surge up the track. But then Paul H did a late-game surge as well, and wrapped himself up the champion's banner.

Paul H 138
Stuart 115
Chris 111
Paul J 110
Sam 100

Stuart went to make dinner. Paul J strolled down to the beach and I fell into an armchair. Paul H and Chris had no hesitation though, in going straight to the next game! This was Biblios, still a cracker.

Chris took the win, 8 to 5, and barely had time to celebrate before Stuart's chicken curry manifested before our eyes. I finally remembered to take a picture of a mealtime too.

Delicious again, Peter, to quote the Beastie Boys (quoting Peter Sichel). 

Then we played Seas of Strife - better known to me as Texas Showdown - and I got absolutely pasted:

Stuart 6

Paul H 8

Chris 9

Paul J 11

Sam 14

No pictures here but next up was the camera-friendly Sagrada:

Not a tale of derring-dos but a satisfying puzzle. I won this one, narrowly ahead of Paul H if I recall correctly. The scores are missing. Then we reeled from cognitive to constructive, with three games of Misfits!

This actually plays well with 5 despite the official player-count being 2-4: we take 8 pieces instead of ten and the last two players in turn order get the extra cubes. I won two and Paul J took the other. There was plenty of sabotage and laughter, before we moved on to Incan Gold, notable mostly for serial deaths and Paul H not leaving early, which was apparently most unlike him. Chris picked up a win with Stuart close behind. Paul J ended with nothing, as the only time he left it was to grab an artifact he didn't get!

Then we ended the evening with a slightly feeble 7/13 in Just One, where I snapped a picture of Stuart and Paul J impersonating the Kray twins. In fairness to our score, we had a number of duplicates and poor Paul H had to try and guess his word from the clues 'foot' and 'hateful'.

Or at least I ended the evening there - the others stayed up to play Fantasy Realms! 

Chris 169

Paul J 161

Stuart 155

Paul H 149

Sunday

I woke up feeling pretty crappy and unfortunately stayed that way for a couple of hours. After coffee and croissants and some mid-weekend reflections, we broke in the table with the simple dice-chucking fare that is King of Tokyo, in which Chris coronated himself in short, violent order.

Chris 20

Sam 13

Stuart 6

Pauls - both dead

Paul J went out for a walk to get some post-death energy back, whereas I felt slightly perkier now. We played Foundations of Rome, which I hope went down slightly better than the only photo I have suggests.

Both Chris and I got a juicy civic building out early, and this reaped us dividends. Having played before probably gave me an unfair advantage too, but <I like to think> this was maybe balanced out by my bug. Or maybe it was that I stupidly didn't realise the cards were stacked mostly for three players, meaning all the edge-of-town deeds came out very late. I snuck a narrow, heavily-asterisked win ahead of Chris, then with Paul J back in the room we broke out one of the old classics - El Grande.

Chris. Paul J and I used to play this with Andrew a lot about 20 years ago, and I nostalgically recalled being quite bad at it. Little did I know I was reverse-Jefferies-ing myself to a happy (-for me) victory, as I took off down the score track early and there was enough competitive shenanigans between the others to prevent me being caught. Paul J came in second, then Chris, Paul H and Stuart. But Stuart was to turn the tables on us all in the post-lunch epic that was Res Arcana. 

New to Paul, this engine-building odyssey is allegedly 30-60 minutes but we sailed past that despite the game's relatively breezy pace. I guess the first few rounds are a bit mysterious to a newbie (and I was very rusty myself) with Paul regularly asking what he could do, swimming in a sea of icons. Despite this though he was poised to haul in a huge amount of potentially game-winning gold when Stuart hit his tenth -winning - point. Chris was also poised - on nine points. I was considerably unpoised. 

Stuart 10

Chris 9

Paul H 7

Sam 3

Paul J 0

After that epic we needed something seriously silly, and Camel Up stepped manfully - or ungulately - into the breach, giving us a solid half-hour of racing stupidity. Camel Up not being a game to reward wise planning or tactical shrewdness, I won it. 

Then it was Skull King. 

I like to delude myself I'm decent at trick-takers, but I played this terribly. It was the best fun you can have shooting yourself in the foot though. My perception was that Chris seemed to be running away with it, but the scoring is incredibly swingy and Stuart's late game showing, aligned with Chris' late-game collapse, led to an extremely broad palette of numbers!

Stuart 340

Paul J 140

Paul H 120

Sam 60

Chris 40

I shuffled off to make dinner whilst Paul H claimed victory in 7 Wonders, followed by Chris, Stuart then Paul J.

They squeezed in a couple of plays of Strike (wins for Stuart and Chris) before we ate the chorizo stew, which didn't seem that hot until I realised I was coated in sweat. But I recovered in time for another oldie, in the form of Robo-Rally. I took another picture and realised that on a weekend of a lot of chuckling I had numerous images of everyone looking studious. So I asked them to laugh and I think they did quite a decent job of it...

As Chris said, Robo-Rally did show its age a little. Maybe the newer editions have done a little streamlining but it felt a bit phase-heavy and the chaos was ordered by little rules. However, that's not to say we didn't enjoy it. My decent start was harpooned by Chris pushing me off the board, as everyone else came a cropper of their programming skills and/or unfamiliarity with the whole shebang. The Pauls and I spent a lot of time being pushed, crunched, or falling over, whilst Stuart pursued Chris, eventually in vain as the only shove he managed to get in on him actually gave Chris a somewhat fortuitous win!

Then we went for a couple of shorter games in the form of Fantasy Realms and Raj. Chris thought he'd won the former when he triggered the endgame with the 'Sword of Keith' combo-ing it with a shield and something else I now forget. But Paul H's connecting brain sprang a surprise victory, as Stuart ruminated on his past mistakes...

Paul H 217

Chris 212

Sam and Paul J 134

Stuart 105

Raj was more bonkers. I won the first two rounds but collapsed zeppelin-style, as both Stuart and Chris overhauled me. Mojo is such a fragile thing.

Stuart 51

Chris 44

Sam 39

Paul J 37

Paul H 19

We finished off our last evening with more silliness - Chris and Stuart winning Strike...

Before Paul J suggested we finish the weekend with Misfits.

There was much laughter again, though I'm now a bit fuzzy about at whose expense it was. I do know that Paul H took the win though, and with midnight fast approaching, we wrapped up Chippencon as the storm continued to rage outside. 

Monday

There were no games in the morning, but the storm had abated as if in recognition. The sky was no longer elephant grey and the sea was considerably calmer. All that remained was for us to tidy up and get home, which meant navigating the various closed roads from the weekend's flooding. This was something of an epic in itself... thanks all for the weekend chaps. See you soon!

I, Conic

 On the first wintry night of the year, I approached Sam's place and saw a strange shadowy figure moving from house to house, peering at front doors. Was he a burglar staking out his next prey? The bottle of wine suggested otherwise. It was Pete, a newish member of the GNN group, and he and I entered Sam's house together. 

We found Martin at the kitchen table in front of an unfinished game of Conic, a new Knizia which Sam described as “Raj with a map.” They soon ended and, as Martin counted up the scores, Sam's insistence that the game was all luck and chance became ever louder. 

Martin 22

Sam 9

Ian and Joe followed shortly afterwards and, after brief spell where Joe tried to work out if he'd met Peter before, we all sat down to play games. Sam, Martin and Pete played Rebirth while Ian, Joe and I set up good old Mille Fiori.

I know little about Rebirth, except it’s played on a map of Scotland and one minute Martin seems to have two castles in the Outer Hebrides and seemingly the next minute, he’s expanded to six. In the end, it was pretty close.

Martin 180

Sam 177

Pete 169

As for Mille Fiori, in round one Ian found that his choices were invariably taken by other players first. Strangely, we all pile into the markets - usually the least popular area on the board. (Officially, these areas are of the board are called “Townspeople” - I checked on BGG)

Joe ignored the Warehouses in what was a demonstration of a Mille Fiori masterclass. He was first to chain several turns together and did so repeatedly throughout the game. In fact, my smugness at nabbing an “extra action” late on in the game was somewhat tempered by the fact there was only one card left to choose which earned me a single point.

Joe 216

Ian 203

Andrew 156

While we waited for Rebirth to end, the three of us played a quick Tsuro. Ian painted himself into a corner while Joe and I faced off. I got some unlucky cards and could only kill myself in the final reckoning, giving Joe another win. But then he keeps going, guiding himself around the board until the final tile sent him off the board. Another masterclass.

1. Joe

2. Ian

3. Andrew

Now we were all together, there was a reshuffling. Pete wanted to try Orbit and Martin and Joe joined him. My only notes for this game is Martin’s quote “Is there anything I can fuck up?”

Martin home first

Joe and Pete, 2 planets left to do

Ian, Sam and I brought out the much-scuffed and oft-played Quantum. Ian and I quickly get two cubes down, and then Sam manages to wipe Ian’s fleet off the board. With no green dice on the board, I forget that Ian’s still playing and I begin my cleverly thought out move when it was actually his turn. What a faux pas!

Later and with a full fleet back in play, Ian mused to himself that he could win by placing a cube, picking up a card that gave him 2 dominance and let him place a second cube.

He paused.

“In fact, that’s what I will do.”

Ian 0 cubes left

Andrew and Sam both 2 cubes left.

While Orbit ended, Ian Sam and I played a couple of rounds of Misfits, made all the more unpredictable by the occasional tremors, eventually discovered to be caused by Martin’s elbow on the table. 

There was another masterclass, this time from Ian, who placed a series of seemingly impossible pieces on our collective tower while (mostly) me and Sam suffered the consequences. Sam escaped one perilous situation, though, placing a piece, the tower moved notably. Without removing the piece, Sam slowly “walked” the piece to a position of safety.

We played twice. Ian won the first and I think Sam won the second.

While we played Misfits, Joe, Pete and Martin played Conic, which Pete seemed to be doing rather well at as I pulled my coat on and got ready to leave.

Pete 16

Martin 9

Joe 6

Without me, the five of them played Champions. 

Sam 24

Martin 20

Pete 18

Ian 15

Joe 15

I’d love to know who, out of Ron Sexsmith and Gary Lineker, buys books but never reads them.

Then they finish, of course, with So Clover.

26 out of 30

Thanks all, see you next week.

Have a Good Weekend, Yawl

Friday

Novocon is finally here. As is our habit, we set off ludicrously early, with Ian Adam and Martin in Joe's car at the hour of 10.30 and me following a little later. Owing to the vagaries of travel traffic and supermarket stops, I arrived at Yawl House first and after being initially thrown by me rocking up at 2pm, host Richard - who lives next door - let me in, explaining the ropes - thermostat, recycling, 160-year-old grapevines - and I ambled around the palatial hall pretending to be Toad of Toad Hall until the others arrived with bags of shopping. They'd played Sosig on the way:

Ian - Cumberland
Others - Chipolatas

So the games had already commenced, but as Laura, Adam T and Katy -courtesy of a lift from Joe- turned up, we spent a long time chatting before the next game hit the table. What was said?  My notes - I took a leaf from Andrew's playbook and brought a notepad - only say 'We debate rooms'. I'm sure it was more interesting than that, but whatever. We finally broke out the self-professed 'best card game in the world' - Flip 7. 

This is, as Joe described, Pairs with special cards. Mixed in with the numbers are the Freeze, Second Chance and Flip Three cards, which you can play on yourself or someone else. As we debated how to distinguish between the two Adams, moniker-wise (semi-settling on Big T for Adam Taylor), Martin got off to a rough start when Katy froze him on a 2. But Ian had a far worse time - after his initial round haul of fifteen, he didn't pick up another point for the entire game.

Adam T 209
Adam H 196
Laura 161
Joe 160
Katy 157
Sam 121
Martin 35
Ian 15

Suddenly energised, we had a flurry of seat-moving and Ian and Katy took on Adam T and I at Rollet, the balls and ball game of high anxiety. This is far too frantic to get pictures of, but here are the winners, after about six minutes. 

Martin pulled out Discworld and Joe pulled out Tower Up. Novocon was officially underway. Laura, Katy and Ian went off to Pratchett world while the rest of us pondered the abstracted leanings of Tower Up. I was so engaged with the latter I didn't catch much of the former, although I did hear Laura offering a deal/veiled threat to Katy."Or what?" Katy said.

"Or I'll scare you in the night-time" Laura said. It was genuinely terrifying. 

I came off best in Tower Up copying Joe's strategy from the last time I played - looking for places to cap buildings where they couldn't be subsequently raised. If you haven't played Tower Up, this is obviously meaningless. But it worked, just, as Joe suffered explainer's curse:

Sam 51

Adam H 50

Adam T 47

Joe 37

While Discworld continued ("I should have killed Laura!" Katy cried out) we played a few rounds of The Crew, where I began the tense dramatic undersea mission by poking myself in the eye with a card. 

We undertook two missions, succeeding the first one at the third attempt and the second one first-time, courtesy of Big T's sterling captaincy. Discworld, which my computer aptly likes to correct to discord, ended with Martin triumphant. They began playing Tower Up whilst Joe went off on kitchen business, and Adam H and I introduced the other Adam to Looot. 

We were no match for Adam H's connecting-spider mind here - I thought I was doing reasonably well until late-game, when my viking productivity started to feel a little pedestrian. As Tower Up continued, we heard Katy shriek "Fucking Martin!" and Ian ponder aloud that it only took an hour of Novocon for this to happen. "I haven't called him a cunt yet" Katy pointed out. Adam cleaned up in Looot - I didn't actually jot down the scores and right now can't be bothered to go looking for them, but it was something like 

Adam H 116
Sam 88
Adam T 76

Adam H and I raced off to collect Steve and Louie from the station, as Tower Up ended with another victory for 'Town C**t'. 

Martin 60
Ian 48
Laura 47
Katy 43

Outside it was bracing. Nice to see the countryside with its terrifying pitch black lanes, but after getting out to check the arrivals board in the station, we hid in the car again. Moments later Louie was bouncing down the steps, and the final attendees were here. We returned to the house to find them knee deep in Courtisans...

Martin deigned to share his latest victory with Laura (7 apiece), with Adam T second (6), then Ian on 3 and a forlorn Katy in the negative points. Joe's dinner was imminent but Laura felt we had time for Creationary. This is like Block Party - construct images out of blocks - but with Lego. It began as a three-player but grew and grew as everyone joined in... And we did quite well, guessing pretty much everything - although Steve's comet also contained a significant degree of performance to help us.

Steve's comet

Sam 9

Adam T 8

Steve 6

Ian and Adam H 5 each

Laura 4

Katy 2

Although Katy wanted it noted that she joined the game 'very late'. So late that she actually argued she didn't play at all, which in these post-truth times, I found myself moved to overrule. The stewards enquiry was interrupted by Joe's always-delicious chickpea stew!

Perhaps still smarting from Legogate, Katy said she was spoiling for trouble and she and Laura were heard discussing where they might go to 'fight a local'. Possibly food calmed them down, or maybe it was the appearance, post-meal, of more games. Ian set up his new copy of Lords of Vegas (with Laura, Katy and I) whilst everyone else played Challengers. 

New Vegas is very similar to old Vegas, with some minor exceptions. You can sprawl into alleyways but your dice there are only ever at a pip value of one. If you're dominant in a particular colour of casino, sprawling in that colour is cheaper. The very long board also features a lot of jostling, and it's not actually Vegas at all, it's Atlantic City. For whatever reason I kept forgetting whose turn it was, but I definitely had the rub of the green, at one point controlling three huge casinos all on the strip. It was over before it was over:

Sam 54

Ian 26

Laura 20

Katy 16

Meantime Challengers had seen a steward's enquiry of its own, as Steve has misunderstood a rule and drafted multiple maximum power cards into his team. I'm not sure what the upshot of that, my notes just say MARTIN WINS! Katy upset - even though she wasn't playing. Louie went to bed and Martin and Adam T beat Joe and Adam H at Agent Avenue. 

Some of us migrated into the adjoining lounge where Laura temporarily retired to her phone while the rest of us played Hammer Time. 

I picked up another win, proving that I was not only lucky, but good at knocking bits of plastic off a box with a miniature mallet.  

Sam 4 wagons filled

Ian 3 wagons

Steve 2 wagons

Katy 1 wagon

The Agents now joined us and we debated what to play, as the evening briefly changed from games-focused to chat-focused, and inevitably, with midnight looming, there was talk of Hugo, which pivoted to talk of 'live action Hugo' utilising actual rooms and real people. I'm still unclear how that would have worked, but Adam T wasn't even keen on the tiny version, and someone described it as 'briefly awful'. 

"Except it's not that brief" Katy clarified.

"But it is that awful" Steve added. 

We played anyway. 

Joe had an insane game, rolling multiple ones and forever limping vainly in search of a doorway. Katy and Laura policed the movement of Hugo, making sure that when someone was caught they got 'munched'. We accidentally skipped Joe's turn while he was out of the room, making him even more inert, and he got eaten. So the scores come with an asterisk:

Sam -6

Ian -13

Adam H -22

Steve -23

Martin -27

Laura -28

Joe -29

Katy (and in theory, Adam T) -30. 

Adam T celebrated his spectacular defeat by going to bed, and so did Laura and Steve. That left six of us to round off the night with two games of So Clover. I forgot to make notes of one score, but the other was a solid 30/36. The highlight was undoubtedly Ian's clue of 'Bobsleigh" for sponge and snow. 

Saturday

Most of us gathered in the kitchen for a bit, and the aroma of coffee lingered along with the foggy heads of late nights. Then before we knew it, a game of Tower Up broke out, with Ian, Joe and Martin setting themselves up in the morning sun. 

At the other end of the table, Laura, Katy, Adam T and myself played Sea Salt and Paper. In the background Adam H told a story about dog poo which he prefixed with  "You'll have to tell me if I'm a psychopath". And he definitely is. Martin, yet again, won Tower Up, and Adam T won Sea Salt & Paper. 

Then we went to the beach! Everybody came, although only Joe and Katy were mental enough to go into the freezing water. We pottered about on the front, ate bagels, heard sand-hoppers headbutting stones, marvelled at Joe and Katy's fortitude, and then went back to the house again after an hour or so and carried on gaming. 

Laura, Martin and Ian played Up or Down and Martin notched up another win. Louie beat Steve at Cube Quest before Steve exacted revenge of sorts with a mutual-destruction draw. Martin snatched another tediously predictable win over Laura in Marabunta, and while all this was happening Adam T, Ian and I introduced Katy to the alleged delights of Root. 

Katy was the Woodland Alliance, Adam the Duchy, Ian the Vagabond and I the Eyrie. The game was notable mostly for Adam's mid-game surge up the track, Katy's late-game push for a surprise victory, Ian's vagabondal sabotaging and my ineptitude, as I went into Turmoil twice - the second time only two turns after the first - and did a few other stupid things too. It was the punch-up it always is, but though we did our best, Adam held on for a win:

Adam 31

Katy 29

Ian 27

Sam 17

At the other end of the table Blue Lagoon finished around here too.

Guess who won. 

Martin 190
Steve 123
Louie 123
Laura 122

I asked Martin what he really gets from coming to these weekends, and Ian reminisced about Radio 1 ignoring the Sex Pistols as we discussed the idea of having a winner in games whose name can't begin with M. But let's go back in time, to before Blue Lagoon, before Root, Marabunta and back through the fossil strata to the start of Joe playing Adam at Fields of Arle. 

That had begun several hours before, and still continued whilst Steve beat everyone at Captain Flip, and then the Flip gang had a rematch where Louie took the laurels. Martin, Katy, Adam T and I played On The Underground, where I made a series of bad choices, the most critical of which was sitting down to play On The Underground in the first place. 

Competitive tunnel-building was actually a tie, however, between you-know-who and Adam, on 49 points. Katy was nestled behind on 45 and I was way back on 36. It took about an hour, and as we finished so did Joe and Adam H. 

Joe 104 and a half points
Adam H 89 points

One for the history books. How were we to know there'd be another one for the history books later as well, as Adam would go on to beat Katy 98.5 to 91. But! Before then, Martin beat Laura at a head to head of Tower Up, Joe wrapped an epic MLEM ("It dragged" he admitted) as I snuck off to watch another dreary Everton performance, and Martin continued being the most predictable person at Novocon by beating Laura at Agent Avenue. Then there was a flurry of shortish games with American Bookshop (a draw between Martin and Adam T, with Laura and I behind), Ra, and Marrakesh, which were both won by Louie. 

Adam T went off to make a vegetable curry and myself, Ian and Steve set up Clockwork Wars. The gist of this game is the Diplomacy-style deployment of units, that we all do simultaneously and deal with the ramifications afterwards. We all agreed that that was fun, but the huge box, multiple phases and proliferating stuff around it made it feel like a development victim of Kickstarter preferences for maximum cruft. 

Also we got a fairly significant rule wrong, so my victory comes with an asterisk. I'll still take it though - enjoyable despite the shortcomings.

Sam 17

Ian and Steve 14 each. 

The second Fields of Arle finished. Louie won Cabanga...

And then Louie and I successfully made our way off the island in Landmarks, with just a modicum of cheating. Ian won a game of Marrakesh...

...and Martin took another victory as Joe daredevilled himself to death in Agent Avenue. However, with the Not Martin rule invoked, Joe actually wins. It was now time for Adam T's delicious curry...

...another Novocon triumph - and then two new-to-the-weekend games were set up - Nokosu Dice, and Expeditions. 

I don't want to think too hard about Nokosu Dice, where I became obsessed with bidding zero and never succeeded. Martin - who else - ended up with 74 points, followed by Adam and Katy in the 40s and me in the 30s. The other winner was Adam H, who saw off all the competition in Expeditions by a seven point margin (Ian was second). Then there was another interlude of chat, where Martin appeared to be bamboozled by the fact he wasn't winning something. Eventually he, Laura and Steve splintered off to play Tower Up (-Laura didn't win) and the rest of us played Wavelength. I won't list the categories exhaustively here, even though for some reason I wrote them all down. But we discovered Adam doesn't like Flip 7 (or Pairs) in a misfiring opening, before hitting the target somewhere on every subsequent round, and twice - courtesy of Liz Truss and a long story about a handmade umbrella from Malaysia - scored a bullseye and pulled an extra card. Co-operatively 15 points is a win, and we hauled in 22! 

Laura went to bed, apparently agreeing with Martin that "We've still got another day of this bullshit" and keeping her powder dry. The rest of us pooled two copies of So Clover and went at it as an 8-player game. Extraordinarily, we scored seven sixes, and only came a cropper courtesy, as Katy repeatedly reminded us, of our smutty minds, when we assumed Steve was using the word 'hammer' in an unsuitably fruity way. We all saw him smile, we just didn't realise it was at us instead of with us. 

There was now a huge outbreak of going-to-bed noises, but Katy was having none of it, cajoling Adam T, Steve, Martin and myself into a hilarious five-player game of Misfits. Joe alternated between watching us, doing the crossword, and trying to knock the tower over with a skittle ball (missing both times) 

Joe's ball incoming

And that was Saturday. 

Sunday

Ian and I were first up and we pottered in the kitchen for a while. After breaking a bowl on Saturday, I ceremonially saw in the dawning of a new day by smashing a glass, and in looking for a dustpan and brush, we discovered a room we didn't know existed. Then Martin and Louie appeared and we played Fiction. 

This is basically Wordle, but the player operating as the computer is trying not to help by including one lie in every bit of feedback. That was my role, and my word was Godly. It felt quite apt as I watched my helpless subjects try to guess my mysterious motives - mostly Martin, as Ian said it was too early - and they figured it out in seven of their ten guesses. 

We helped Joe finish the crossword and then more games were played - Louie clued me to triumphant safety in Landmarks...

Martin picked up his latest win in Marabunta...

And Katy flipped Joe on the tiebreaker in Captain Flip.

There was then the classic GNN discussion of what to play, as the day opened up with the possibility of what Martin somewhat disturbingly referred to as 'chunkers' - epic games. We discussed for a while, then everyone gave up and played (mostly) Courtisans, as Adam H sleepily emerged. Louie and I splintered off to play the Lord of the Rings version of 7 wonders Duel. 

Lord of the Rings was a mini-epic, as I pushed hard on all three victory fronts (control the map, befriend the peoples, destroy the ring) only to have Frodo and Sam caught by the Black Riders just as I was about to claim a military victory. Courtisans finished around the same time, with Martin catastrophically finishing second-last ahead of lowly Joe. Incredible scenes, but was it a sea-change or merely a blip? Ian won, with Katy a distant second and Laura third. Then the chunkers arrived! 

There were three of them, turning the reality corner like colossal meeple-packed boats: Faiyum (Joe, Martin and Laura), Yokohama (Katy and the Adams) and Xia (Ian, Steve, Louie and myself). Xia can be long, so we implemented our single-mission house-rule and capped the playtime at 90 minutes plus finishing the current round. 

Things began badly for me - I died on my very first turn and then did the same about three turns later. Nonetheless I recovered to sail into what I hoped was an unassailable lead, only to find it was disappointingly assailable. Steve forgot to use his markers for the entirety of the game - except the last round, where he did so with a flourish - and we did a fair amount of rules referencing and tweakage. But despite all that it was great fun, with a dramatic finale!

Steve and Louie - 7 points each

Sam - 6 points

Ian - 4 points

The other games were still going, but Faiyum finished soon enough: it was, needless to say, ANOTHER VICTORY FOR MARTIN and Laura pipped Joe into second. A little while later Yokohama finished too, and Katy was so excited by her score she forgot who came second, except for the fact their name was Adam. 

Katy 153

The Adams - thirty-odd points behind (Adam T second)

Everyone had lunch, except Louie who ate some Pringles and a tomato. While he and Steve munched, I guided them to one treasure and the escape route: Steve, Louie and Sam: Win!

Then a reprieve: Laura offered to take Steve and Louie back, saving them a train trip and giving them a couple more hours of game fun. Ian set up Lords of Vegas (New Orleans map) again for himself, Laura, Martin and Katy, and at the other end of the table the lesser-spotted (8 years ago) Ascending Empires made an appearance. Incredible stuff - and all too much for me; as I went into Lyme for a stroll around the shops and to get some air. I did offer this opportunity around, but everyone looked at me like I was insane. 

New Orleans

Space

Lyme Regis

I returned after an hour to find them still at it. Martin said that New Orleans was nuts, and when Katy said she thought he liked chaos, Martin retorted 'Not this much!' as though after saying he liked hot chocolate, she had run him a bath of it. Shortly afterwards everyone shrieked "Ian!" in huge indignation. Everyone except Ian. "I hate this" Katy decided. Laura said she wasn't going to leave after all, I think meaning that she wasn't leaving until she won something. 

I did some kitchen pottering and Adam came in saying he was doing terribly at Ascending Empires. "It rewards aggression" he said, as if such a thing was bad. It was Sunday afternoon, to be fair. I returned to the table just as he cried out "For fuck's sake!" in tormented grief. I think he'd destroyed himself. 

Speaking of which: Drama! Martin came from way behind to do you-know-what in Lords of Vegas, on a tie-breaker versus Katy that he even admitted himself was 'richly undeserved'. Katy felt she'd shot herself in the foot, in some way I still don't fully understand: the New Orleans version has steamboats that move about and interfere with everything. Martin's verdict was that it's ludicrous, silly, insane, and other descriptors. "But fun" he added. 

"It is, actually, a stupid game" Ian decided. Laura packed her bags, she was so disgusted. Ascending Empires finished just after them:

Steve 24

Adam H 23

Joe and Adam T 19 each

A rough return to space for Joe, though he blamed 'fumblers finger' over explainer's curse. Everyone seemed to be happy about it, though we reflected on the new version's exorbitant price and the possibility of added unneeded stuff such as minis, neoprene mats and books of lore etc. 

Laura, Steve and Louie said their goodbyes and hit the road. And then there was a game of Mamma Mia happening. I won't even say who won it, but while Martin was winning, Joe and I were facing off over the game of three names, 7 wonders Duel Lord of the Rings. 

This was a mini-classic, as it came down to the very last card, and an unfortunate end for the Shire and all who ride in her. Joe was delighted, as he was Sauron. Meantime the pizza gang had finished a game of Cross Clues (21/25) and dealt me in for the second, which was a heartily respectable 24/25.

Martin then won Love Letter and Joe picked up a win in Life in Reterra versus Adam T and Ian.

While that was happening, Martin beat me at Agent Avenue and then, in a stunning turn of events, I beat Martin at Agent Avenue. I half expected fireworks around me, like when you tell someone congratulations on an iPhone, but sadly these didn't materialise. However it managed to disprove a seemingly unbreakable law about Martin winning everything apart from Courtisans and Flip 7. Katy and Adam then dished up their fantastic meal, a sweet potato and spinach combo with rice and highly sought-after garlic bread. Mine and Joe's growing deafness became apparent when a conversation about food confused Joe, who thought Katy had said 'poisoned' instead of 'mince pies'. When she repeated mince pies, Joe said "By Italians?'. And my deafness manifest with me missing the whole thing, although maybe it was more mental absenteeism. Having had several conversations about prostates and cholesterol and seen Ian walk into a door, the old folks' home vibe has never been stronger at a Novocon. 

Perkiness was beginning to wane just a little, but nonetheless Adam T and I perhaps foolishly agreed to take on Joe and Martin at Montage. This was as brutal as a gentle game about crossword-clueing can get, as we won about 2 challenges the entire duration and lost 4-0. Always fun to play, but in hindsight maybe it's one for Friday or Saturday (for me). My clues vacillated from too obvious to too opaque, and I was mentally slow off the mark in finding my team-mate's meaning.

At the other end of the table, Ian seemed as surprised as anyone when about ten minutes after Adam telling us they'd need another hour to finish, he picked up a win in Castles of Mad King Ludwig. 

In the dying flames of Ludwig's insanity, we'd said goodbye to Adam T and had a conversation about how men pat during a hug. "If we don't pat, it's basically a cuddle" I pointed out. Joe said the ideal hug was seven seconds, but we tried it out and it seemed too long - even counting aloud didn't help. "Hugging is broken" Joe surmised. We played Orbit. 

Joe built what my brain now refers to as the fuckrocket, meaning after maximising his energy levels he could suddenly propel himself as far as he liked across the galaxy (in a straight line) whenever he found energy. He put this to excellent use when, with both of us lagging far behind Martin in terms of planets-visited, he overhauled him to prove that the Griffiths victory parade was well and truly broken. 

Joe - all planets 

Martin - all planets but not home

Sam - two planets left

And as far as Adam H and I were concerned, that was Novocon! We all ate Colin the Caterpillar cake and when I questioned the quality Katy tartly pointed out it was from Waitrose. I should really have got a photo of this classic GNN moment - the ingestion of cake, not the middle-class consumer exchange - but I was trying to gird my loins and slap my face into road-ready capacity. After another round of hugs-not-cuddles, we were gone. 

*                    *                    *

But Novocon wasn't! With four people left they were free to exploit the many available rooms and the abundant gaming options. They settled on Tichu, where Martin's losing streak continued as Joe and Katy accrued 490 points to his and Ian's 75. Then, serving as ludological bookends to the weekend, Flip 7 returned. It sounded like a banger, as Joe, nestled on 75 points, scored exactly the 125 he needed to hit 200 and claim a triumphant victory!

Although a bookend isn't really a bookend, of course, unless it's So Clover. So they played that too. Some great clues here, really, but I particularly like Seabed for shark/patio, Rubbery for old/octopus and Landing for plane/kiss. Combotastic!

It seems a weird thing to write now, but that was the end of Novocon 2024. This morning, the reports are that there was no further gaming, just - I assume - coffee and drive-home reflections. Until next year! Or next Tuesday, or something. Thank you everyone.