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!