Methnos

Tuesday night and Joe, Martin and I rolled up at Anja and Steve's house to be admitted by Lennon, who was showing some skills on the Diabolo, reminding me slightly of Andrew's juggling years, when we shared a flat and he used to go to festivals with his clubs. I can't remember what I did with my time. I probably played a lot of Playstation. 

With Lennon and Louie and Louie's pal Jago also present, we quickly split into two groups. Joe entertained the kids with Change Up, his own luck-pushing design, and Anja and I took on Martin and Steve at Agent Avenue. I took some quite bad photos. 

As we approached a finale, Steve and Martin were catching us in Agent Avenue but Anja pulled off a fine bluff to hand them a Daredevil defeat. The gang next to us were still playing Change Up so we went again, and this time my gamble backfired and we lost!

Our second game had taken long enough that Change Up had ended with Joe falling victim of Explainer/Designer's Curse:

Louie 8
Lennon 7
Jago 5
Joe 4

And Joe and Lennon had blasted their way through no less than four games! Joe won three sets of Dobble 2-1, but Lennon had revenge in the speed-reaction-game Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza. 

There was now an interlude of sorts, as Steve was tasked with Lennon's bedtime as Anja cleared up the post-dinner detritus in the kitchen, from where we occasionally heard her yawning melodically. We filled the time with a breezy-ish Ticket to Ride: Berlin.

This game remains a mystery to me. Even when I feel like I'm doing well and complete my routes plus extra routes, I always come last. Maybe I should book a tutorial with Adam. But it's fun regardless, a Ticket to Ride experience but condensed into 20 minutes, with the additional quirk of five of your trains being trams. I came last as expected, but it was close. Both Martin and I anticipated a win for Joe, but though he'd completed a trans-Berlin expressway, he had also failed on a smaller route:

Martin 49
Joe 46
Sam 44

Anja and Steve rejoined us and we debated what to play. My hopeful suggestion of Luzon Rails got no traction, especially after Anja called it Luton Rails. Martin's Bomb Busters was also proffered, before we settled on Ethnos, Paolo Mori's Slovakia-shaped area-control band-builder. Martin went through the rules and we were off.

This was our evening's main event, and in the early running things were tight. The first era ended with Steve in the lead courtesy of a couple of large bands. But his presence in Slovakia was light, something he would come to regret as the second era saw him fall behind. It was a curious thing: Steve led while bamboozled by the rules, then sank to fifth once he understood them. This is a malaise I fully recognise.

I made hay with the Giants, earning me a chunky ten points or so over the first two eras, before Anja claimed them in the third. I also harpooned a whopping nine points for Joe when I pulled the last dragon to end the first era. Sorry Joe. He had a strong second era but going into the final one I had a sturdy enough lead to hang on for victory:

Sam 88
Joe 79
Martin 73
Anja 69
Steve 60

It had been an epic, but we still had time for one more game, and plumped for Knizia's Take-That-athon, Art Robbery. 

We're basically either taking cards from the haul in the centre of the table, or stealing them from each other. Or you can steal the dog and have it protect your cards. I twice ended round when I had a reasonable haul, and it seemed like perhaps Martin was the main threat. But in the final round Anja and Joe stole his shit and I ended the game. Initially I thought I might have too few alibis (fewest alibis and you're eliminated) but Anja took that unwanted distinction:

Sam 24
Joe 20
Martin 15
Steve 10
Anja: Takes the fall! 

And with the time hitting 11 o'clock, I was tired enough to drag Martin and Joe away (sorry all) and bring an end to another fine night of ludological delights. 

Not so clover

It was a scarce night in terms of regulars - with many missing, we only made up a four at full count: Joe, Martin, Andy M and myself (Sam). Joe was first to arrive and we had a couple of games of the very brief and stupidly-named Pina Coladice. This is a Yahtzee-style dice-chucker where you get three rolls to claim territory on the board:

Each tile scores points, and you also get points for any tiles adjacent you occupy as well. The catch is that if you make any row/column/diagonal of four, you win instantly. I pulled this off twice, then Martin arrived and we had a couple of three-handers which he and Joe won. 

The notable takeaway for me was how much it encouraged us to cajole each other to, for example, 'stop Joe' when doing so would help one of us win. By now, Andy was here, and with four of us it seemed the perfect moment to go Bomb Busting.

We attempted the mission we'd failed last time. On this occasion I was assigned the rookie card, which meant if I made a mistake we'd be instantly blown into oblivion. Fortunately the guys cleared a risk-free path for me throughout, and I only had to take one gamble. Mission cleared! And for good measure, we did the next one as well, where the helpful equipment was hard to get hold of. It transpired that we didn't need it. Another bomb busted, despite some early-evening confusion over numbers.

Next up we tried the latest trick-taker with a twist: Prey. There are no trumps, it's a must-follow, and the goal is to win X number of tricks: how many that is is determined by dice rolls. The additional twist is that halfway through the twelve tricks everyone flips their cards upside-down, changing their value.

So more than one player can win a round, and hitting your target in any subsequent round wins you the game. Joe was victorious after he and Martin both hit their targets in round one and Joe and Andy (I think) were successful in round two. I bust out on both occasions. 

Next in our evening of tapas was Gambler x Gamble. I'd only played this once before, and Andy not at all, so Joe and Martin talked us through the intricacies, which are not many: it's largely a game of table-reading and trying to make sure our collective bid values match one of your payout cards. 

Andy and I did best here, maximising our 5-value payouts whilst on the other side of the table, Joe and Martin gnashed their teeth at the repeat failures of their 6 and 7 cards to do anything other than look flashy. I managed to get myself close to winning, but it wasn't as close as Andy, who hit the 15 coins mark to take his first victory of the evening. I don't know if there are second places. 

Andy had suggested Tiger & Dragon and I was more than amenable. After the numeracy shenanigans of Bomb Busters, we jumped the shark here as Joe, Andy and Martin all managed to take too many tiles at some point, quite an achievement for such a simple game. My idiocy didn't extend that far in Tiger & Dragon, but it was in the pipeline for later. 

Martin took round one with a 4 point haul, then I grabbed round two. I could have taken round three easily, but using a dragon for a single point. I gambled on a bigger win, and lost to Andy, who then won the next round as well to wrap up another triumph. The table seemed somewhat divided on this admittedly opaque game, but I love it. 

Andy - 10 points
Sam 6
Martin 4
Joe 0

We moved on to Gang of Dice! I can't remember why I took this photo, but obviously in context these numbers have incredible drama:

This was a two-horse race, as for half the game Martin and I didn't win a single round. Then, in the second half of the game, I continued not winning single rounds until on the last card I couldn't compete at all, having run out of dice entirely! Martin performed better, but it seemed like Joe and Andy shared the majority of wins. And it transpired that Joe won the bigger hauls, as his huge stack of chips attested, making even Andy's second place look feeble.

Joe 88
Andy 53
Martin 23
Sam 0

The four of us had played six games by now and it was late-ish, so we moved on to So Clover, where I had a cognitive catastrophe and gave four bad-to-awful clues, the worst of which was probably Honeydew for cabbage/size. The first attempt to solve it was a write-off, and the second came back with an ignominious 1. How embarrassing! 

I'm blaming Gang of Dice. Collectively we scored an unimpressive 17/24 and I felt responsible. We went again, and my clover got a redemptive six, though I was still traumatised enough to forget photography at this point. This was a slightly better haul overall, with 19/24 instead. I wish I could remember some of the clues, but that was it for the evening. 

These late scores just in…

 I may have been only a few minutes late but even before I reached Joe's, I had a text informing me of the first result of the evening. 

Rainbow

Sam 32

Martin 32

Joe 38

Ian 44

I'm guessing, based solely on Martin's position on the list, that low scores are good. 

I arrived in time to derail a game of For Sale, and the seven of us split into two groups. 

Katy was gaslit into believing she'd enjoyed Bomb Busters the last time she'd played it. And so she, Joe, Sam and Martin set up to bust some bombs. 

Meanwhile, I joined Ian and Adam H in a game of Monkey Palace. It's a nice puzzle game in which you build an increasingly Escher-esque construct of arches and pillars all, apparently, just for one monkey. 

It's quite lovely and thinky with a bit of an engine building aspect in that the cards you pick up as a reward for simian architecture give slightly different supplies of building supplies for as long as they're visible on your player mat.

As we totted up the scores, we were surprised at how close it had been… until i asked about 3 bonus cards next to Adam's drink. 

Adam 36… no, wait, 48

Ian 42

Andrew 36

As for the busting of bombs, I played them scant attention until the mission failed. Joe guessed one of Sam's numbers and got it wrong. “Why did I think it was safe?” he asked himself. A terrible moment of self reflection for any bomb disposalist. 

And now Steve arrived. Monkey Palace was still in full swing, so they became a quintet. They played Reif für die Insel (Ripe for the Island).

This is all about bananas. Ripe, brown bananas in particular. They scored points, I think, while yellow and green ones got you nothing. The only other thing I know about this game is that two parrots are bad. This happened towards the end of the game and prompted all manner of anguish. 

In an echo of the scoring for Monkey Palace, this game also had a late addendum when Martin texted me saying he'd forgotten a rule and could I add 5 points to his tally. Didn’t change the standings in this case, though.

Martin 71 (not 66)

Katy 65

Steve 60

Sam 54

Joe 43

During this, we had finished Monkey Palace and started on Cities, a new worker placement city building game. Ian went big on water, I made a big park and put almost nothing in it while Adam pursued point scoring bonuses. Turns out that was the winning strategy. Go figure. 

Adam 78

Ian 65

Andrew 63

Before we finished Cities, the other half of the table played a quick game of Mlem. This has long been an achilles heel for Sam but he agrees. At first, his luck apparently remained stubbornly bad as he and Steve blew up.

But later he amazed everyone, maye even himself, by getting two cats into deep space. In fact, deep space became pretty full with each player reaching this final frontier.

Joe 42

Martin 35

Sa 32

Steve 31

Katy 30

Next, we all reshuffled. Martin, Joe, Katy and me played the game that Ludo always wanted to be: Agent Avenue. Sam, Ian, Steve and Adam set off on the epic journey that is Fellowship of the Ring. Sam read out the extensive flavour text to give a little context to the co-op trick taker. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t follow that game at all. I was too involved in an epic game (as epic as you can be in 20 minutes) of Agent Avenue. The gameplay is simple - one team plays two cards, one up and one down - but the knots we tied ourselves into trying to guess our opponents details was anything but. 

For most of the game, though, Joe and I were sitting pretty just a few steps behind our rivals. The game ended in dramatic style. We were one space behind Martin and Katy’s spy and we chose their face up card. When the face down card was revealed it actually sent their spy backwards to defeat. We were shocked that Katy had played a card that would inevitably have lead to a loss. But when she showed the rest of her hand they all would have done the same. It was a fait accompli. Typical espionage - you never find out until it’s too late.

Joe and Andrew - win

Martin and Katy - don’t

Then I pull on my coat and set out into the world. Someone else must have left too, since when I receive messages about the final games of the evening, there was glad news of a 36 out of 36 in So Clover.

Finally, Joe, Sam and Martin played Sunrise Lane with Martin winning and Joe in second.

Thanks for the evening everyone. See you next week.

Punnet of the Apes

Louie was our genial host last night, welcoming a bunch of old-ish farts with offers of drinks and glasses. Was this the handing of the GNN baton to future generations? Will the blog still be going in 100 years, written by Louie's children? Quite possibly. Last Tuesday's monkey-dominated evening still fresh in some of our minds, Ian and Martin had brought their simian-themed games with them again - and while they didn't dominate, they both made an appearance. But we kicked off with Rainbow. 

We quickly discovered that Rainbow isn't great with six. But at least it only takes ten minutes. 

Ian 30
Martin and Sam 27 each
Joe and Louie 26 each
Adam 23

Anja was still upstairs so we busted out, with a jaded sigh from Martin, the greatest card game in the world. "I'll try not to finish with zero this time" he said. He ended second-last, as Adam took Martin's traditional role of perennially busting. Joe and Ian were rewarded for their bravado, and though nobody hit the official 200 point finish line, Ian secured a win as we wrapped up when Anja materialised. 

We split into two anthropomorphic groups: Ian and Adam talked Louie through the joys of building a Monkey Palace, whilst Martin introduced Joe and Anja to Ape Town. 

Ape Town was as tense as Charlton Heston's jaw muscles, as we tried to grab juicy instant points and control of neighbourhoods. In comparison, the building of the palace beside us seemed pleasant and almost collaborative. 

I nudged myself into a chunky lead courtesy of some lemur action, then stagnated for a bit as everyone caught me up and I ran out of cash. But lemurs came to my aid once more as the board filled up, the neighbourhoods closed out, and the finale loomed. 

While we approached it, Monkey Palace wrapped up with a win for Adam. Explainer's curse?

Adam 38

Louie 29

Ian 24

Louie, threatened with the fart apocalypse after several bowls of chilli peanuts had been consumed, exited for bed, and Ian and Adam went at it in Misfits. They constructed some kind of mad thing, that kept collapsing. Looking at it you can see why. 

 

Meantime Ape Town was a close-run thing. Joe and Martin had strong finishes but I just about held on. 

Sam 76

Martin and Joe 70 each

Anja 56

Ian and Adam abandoned their Misfits game here, seemingly convinced it would never end. Apparently Joe managed to knock it over as well, despite not playing, but I didn't witness this as I was having a wee. We split into two groups: the Misfits duo teaming up with Martin to play Rebirth whilst Joe and I introduced Anja to rainbow while we waited for Steve to arrive home. 

Anja picked up a debut win in Rainbow:

Anja 46

Sam 44

Joe 41

While Joe reminisced about the show Rainbow, which prompted both some dubious impressions and the theme tune staying in my head for the rest of the night. Meantime Steve returned, and after a brief catch-up we played Sunrise Lane. 

I've serially finished last in Sunrise Lane, I think, every time I've played it, and I confidently announced I could keep this streak going. Something about the dovetailing of situational cards v situational opportunities seems to escape me. Steve was confounded by the hard-to-determine colour scheme on the board, and the fact the player pieces contain two different iterations of 'shit-brown'. Subsequently we referred to Steve - well, his colour - as babyshit. Oh, what larks. Rebirth continued, with Martin haranguing Adam at reasonable volume. 

The game finished with the Creeping Custard victorious, despite being unable to play his beloved yellow - Rebirth had a kind of jaundiced brown instead. Not sure who played that. 

Adam 181

Martin 168

Ian 163

They bashed out another Rainbow while they waited for us to finish, and Martin exacted some small measure of revenge:

Martin 37

Adam 35

Ian 28

And in Sunrise Lane, for whatever planetary reason things finally gelled for me, probably not hindered by the fact the game was new to Steve and Anja, and Joe had of course been the doomed Explainer. 

Sam 91

Joe 83

Babyshit 81

Anja 69

Adam could not be convinced to stay, and rode off home while the remaining six of us played So Clover. It was near-perfect, but my clover let us down with some interchangeable words. 

And after a brief tour of the house renovation updates (lovely parquet flooring! game table plans!!) we left our hosts, tumbled into the car and weaved off home. Thanks all, it was opposably-thumbed. 

Monkey Night

A relatively sparse GNN kicked off when Martin and Ian arrived at my house. While we waited for our fourth member to join us we played Rainbow, a card game that sort of flips Fishing on its head. The cards are numbered 1-6 and you're playing singles or sets to claim cards from the middle of the table as points - but the catch is that whatever you bid will become the points for the next round.

It's a clever game, but  not entirely devoid of luck - dealt a bunch of fives and sixes, I won the first play fairly easily. 

Sam 38
Martin 35
Ian 26

But it only takes ten minutes, so we went again. This time things everyone upped their game a little, which the scores reflect:

Martin 56
Sam 46
Ian 42

Laura had arrived at the finale, and so what was to become the unofficial Monkey Night kicked off: three games with simian flavour, although that's where the similarities ended. We began with one of Martin's: Ape Town, a Knizia tile-layer where we're a kind of monkey mafia, trying to get the most points from a combination of momentary opportunities and longer-term area control.

The track around the edge of the board shows what tiles are available to you: you can take the next one available, or pay money to hop past it to the next one, and so on. Monkeys and Bananas simply score via adjacency. Orangutans and Lemurs score when the neighbourhood they are in is complete: Orangutans for the monkeys in that neighbourhood, Lemurs for the monkeys in adjacent neighbourhoods - as long as they outnumber the Lemurs in it. 

I think we all began with the anticipation that perhaps Orangutans were where the juice was, as they effectively boss the neighbourhoods. But as play continued it transpired that the Lemurs could, at the right moments, haul in huge points. Ian and I sailed off ahead of Laura and Martin, and they didn't catch us. Martin's enforced investment in the empty areas didn't work out, as they filled up with worthless bananas. 

Sam 89
Ian 77
Laura 70
Martin 66

The presentation is a bit bananas too, but it was a fun game. Next up was Monkey Palace!

This is a Lego-based task of building aforementioned palace in order to generate monkey points and cash them in for cards, which represent both end-game points and Lego income for the future. Every turn you must build from the ground up, and the amount of monkey points depends on how many arches you build (1mp per arch) and whether the decoration you place on top is the highest of its' type (+1mp). It's simple mechanically, but quite challenging spatially, especially when the structure grows a size befitting of its name. 

An unusual beast. I snuck a narrow win here.

Sam 26

Martin 24

Ian 15

Laura 14

Though it was getting on a little, Laura felt she couldn't go home without completing the monkey triplet and so Martin explained the rules - thankfully simple - to Reif fur die Insel, yet another Knizia! This is a bidding game where you collect bananas over three rounds. Brown bananas score at the end of the current round, yellow only at the end of round two, and green only at the end of round three: the entire game is thematically a ripening process. 

Four bananas (bunches, to be precise) are drawn randomly from a bag, and then we bid on them with these cards, and keep going until everyone is bidding on a separate banana bunch. Then we put whatever we got onto our boards:

As you can see, space is limited (the round ends when the boards are full) so having too many green bananas early on restricts your involvement in subsequent rounds. But on the other hand, they do tend to be high-scoring. Inevitably, as this is Knizia, there are also rotten bananas and parrots that eat bananas, and someone has to take that shit. 

Your bid cards are gone for good - except for the zero, which always comes back to you. Any cards you still have after round three are worth points! Ian and I held onto our tens, but it was Martin who came away the victor, by a banana-peel margin.

Martin 75

Sam 74

Ian 67

Laura 61

At this point Laura left, uncoaxed by So Clover, but Ian still had beer to finish and Martin requested a whisky as we broke out the traditional closer. Despite the also-traditional mumblings of dismay, we turned in a perfect score. 

"Let's go again" I said, even though we all knew that the second play of So Clover always leads to catastrophe. I said we needed to break the curse, so we summoned what wherewithal we had left after an evening of simian shenanigans. It was another triumph, and the curse was broken.

All that remained was the downing of whiskies, the shucking of coats and grabbing of things. This was slightly held up by Charlie, who was so reluctant to get off Martin's bag that he travelled halfway across the kitchen floor. "He's not one for hints" I admitted. 

And that was that.