Space Merchants

As it was Ian's birthday, there was an impromptu games night last night at Adam's house as he, Katy and I joined with the birthday boy. My automated calendar insists his birthday is today, although Ian demurs and I guess we have to trust him (even though I clearly recall him struggling to remember how old he was a couple of years ago) but the debate of the night was What To Play: I'd brought along Black Forest but wasn't actually pushing for it as a four-player, as I suspected it would run rather long. I'd also brought Quantum, as it's one of Ian's favourites and - as we reminded ourselves throughout the evening - it was his birthday. "Is it space-themed?" Katy asked.
"Yes" said Ian. Katy wailed.

"We can pretend it's trading in the Meditterranean though" I said. 

"At night" Adam added. 

Katy seemed unconvinced but as it was Ian's birthday, she relented, and after a brief visit to the front room to witness Arthur's rather impressive Star Wars Lego diorama, we set up for a rare four-header.

Adam kicked things off in sedate fashion - moving a single ship on the board, and taking two Research. Unusually, Ian and I did the same: everyone clearly lining up their ducks for turn two. But Katy jumped into an embryonic lead with a cube down on her first turn: we were away. 

With a fairly expansive set-up everyone had some room to manoeuvre, but whilst Katy and I kept to ourselves, Ian found himself targeted by Adam fairly early on. Birthday reminders came through the galaxy PA but to no avail: with Adam's ships all low-numbered, fate was encouraging him to go aggressive and Ian was closest. Normally in Quantum there's a kind of compacted Eclipse-shaped curve of building your engine (Eclipse) or getting cubes down while you can (Quantum) before eventually everyone merges into a punch-up. 

But despite Ian's impressive rally to catch Katy and I (down to two cubes, with zero attacks) my command card of Resourceful (remove a ship for an extra action) was working wonders for me, as I used it to get a cube down three turns running and snag the victory. "That was actually not too bad!" Katy surmised, who took an extra turn after I'd won which we'll have to ignore - otherwise, chaos. 

Sam - no cubes

Katy and Ian - two cubes left

Adam - four cubes left

Arthur came in and when Adam told him that he'd lost, his son muttered "That was inevitable". He's never seen his dad play a Rosenberg, obviously... We moved on to Fishing; new to Ian and Adam. Basic trick-taking rules apply and the idea is that your 'catch' - won tricks - are all worth a point per card. The conceptual catch is that they're also your hand for the next round, and any shortfall is made by drawing from the 'Ocean deck' - which introduces more powerful cards. 

This was the closest game of Fishing I've seen - there was only 12 points between first and fourth going into the final round. Unfortunately my impressive penultimate-round haul gave me a hand of shite and I only won a single card (courtesy of a zero). Katy caused a stewards' enquiry when she was a card short, drew a trump from her stack to win the trick and then subsequently discovered a bland old red '1' on the floor after the game. Adam - who else - took 15 points and returned home most boastful fisher. 

Adam 85

Katy 82

Ian 80

Sam 77

Although Arthur was still up and we could hear him and Hannah giggling in the next room, Katy said it was getting late and she would go home unless Ian opened his birthday Toblerone, so he did. Ian had asked me to bring So Clover but, portentously signalling the mid-life fog he is headed towards, I'd forgotten. So we played No Thanks instead. I didn't take any photos at this point, but we re-established whose birthday it was, perhaps all secretly hoping that Ian would get a victory to take home. Unfortunately his Andrew-esque strategy of nabbing a lowish-card early on didn't pan out - although he did at least beat Adam out of third place. Katy was pleased to end the night on a high:

Katy 22

Sam 29

Ian 50

Adam 65

And we ended Ian's anniversary with a discussion on the deceptive nature of time: Ian's recollections of the last two decades' events all being "a couple of years ago"; my brain's default of up and coming band being the Arctic Monkeys, Adam's confession that he doesn't remember "anything". Katy said as she got older she found herself knowing and more and more people and it was wonderful. Adam replied sonorously that, at some point, that trend will begin to reverse. 

But before then there are more games to be played. We headed out into the now-misty Easton air with the promise of that soon... 

The Stupidest Game of All Time

Our hosts were Anja and Steve last night - or at least, they were eventually. As Joe, Andy M, Martin and myself arrived we found Louie had taken on the duties himself, and was entertaining Ian in the lounge with some small assistance from Molly. Steve was in the other room, power-tooling his way through some fireplace renovations, and Anja was upstairs getting Lennon to bed. Under Louie's capable supervision however, we cracked on with the games. While Martin set up Hold Your Ground for everyone else, Joe and I played Kribbeln. 

Hold Your Ground was new to everyone except Martin, but the rules are pretty straightforward and before long they were all dicking each other over. Meantime I beat Joe in a narrow and fairly jammy finale to Kribbeln, recovering a 6-10 deficit going into the final round. As the others were still knee-deep in Hold Your Ground - we could hear Ian's laments - Joe and I set up Tiger and Dragon and Anja appeared just in time to join us. 

I really enjoyed revisiting this game, even though the best strategies escape me. Joe won twice: in the first game, it only took him a single round as he went out with the '1' tile as defence: that's ten points and an insta-win. Anja and I resolved to be more canny as we reset, but our best efforts were no match for Joe, who won again in two rounds. Maybe next time it'll take him three. 

Joe: Tiger!

Anja and Sam: Gazelles

We finished around the same time as Hold Your Ground, as Ian found himself jettisoned into the stratosphere. 

Louie followed him out, leaving just Andy and Martin, and Martin admitted fate favoured him in the face-off.

Martin: Held his ground

Others: Ground to pieces

We did some mild seat rejigging, as Louie retired to bed. I was up for Foundations of Metropolis but had my head turned by Bomb Busters, which was set up for myself, Andy, Joe and Martin. With Adam H a late cancellation, Steve, Anja and Ian plumped for Mille Fiori. 

Joe and Andy were new to Bomb Busters but we took a risk, skipping the training missions and diving in where we'd left off on previous plays with Katy and Laura. We started poorly when Andy took a slightly lassez-faire approach to existence and boomed us into atoms, and had to reset. However, this was a forgivable error for a cadet: it soon transpired the biggest risk in Bomb Busters is having me on the team: I kept costing us lives, and in the second mission completely forgot there were wires to cut of colours other than blue. 

Meantime the glassblowing was hotting up, as Steve cursed Ian's name for depriving him of points. "This is exactly what happened last time!" he cried plaintively. Little did he know there was worse to come - much worse. For a start, Anja wrapped up a fairly comfortable win:

Anja 166

Ian 155

Steve 127

Then, as we saw out our fourth mission in Bomb Busters - (a great game, but not a relaxing one) failing twice; succeeding twice - they collectively failed at flying Kites, which was so rapid I didn't even get a picture. We gathered together again as a seven to crank out a tournament of Champions, which was reason enough for Martin to mildly berate us again about PlathversusKermitgate, now fully established as a GNN meme. 

The first round had some bankers: Hagrid is far more likely to scratch his butt in public than Claudia Winkelman, and Bagpuss seemed more of a toenail biter than Hermione. In fact the most notable moment in these early stages was Andy confessing he read the latter's name to his children as Herm-y-own. Consternation set in in round two however, with the Titchmarsh-Paxman face-off: backing the wrong horse here set you back several furlongs. Steve was maybe distracted by his reminisces of meeting Mickey Dolenz, an anecdote he wanted to indulge further but found himself barraged with get-on-with-it Steve input from across the table. In a bit of competitive celeb-bathing, I recalled the Fonz slapping me on the back at the BAFTAs, although I had to admit he wasn't in character and it was only because I moved a chair out of his way.

Martin 30

Joe 24

Anja, Ian, Sam 22 each

Steve 19 

Ian now also retired, maybe saving a bit of energy for his birthday (today) and we were left as a crestfallen six as we realised nobody had a copy of So Clover. Instead, we played the self-proclaimed 'Greatest Card Game of All Time', Flip 7, which is basically Pairs with a few special cards thrown in. "What promoted this?" Steve asked of the claim.

"I think Christmas was coming" said Joe. 

But it wasn't for Steve, who took Ian's mantle of serial-buster-supreme (see: Novocon) and ran with it. I blew up in the first round and the early running was made by Anja. Steve exploded so often that his verbal contributions settled on various iterations of the post title, as he scorned the idea that the game was even competent. 

Martin caught Anja up, and found himself the target of several freezes. Then Anja caught Martin again with a spectacular turn: emboldened by a Second Chance card, she twisted her way to a huge haul of nearly a seventy or so points. But it wasn't enough to stop Martin, who took the plunge and got the card he needed to hit the 200 point winning mark!

Martin 201

Sam 165

Anja 161

Andy M 79

Joe 77

Steve 34

And that was that! Happy Birthday Ian. 🎂

And all that jazz

 Late as usual, I rocked up at Sam's place at 7.45. Most of tonight's attendees were perusing thr games collection while I got my coat off. Martin asked me if I liked the sound of a tile laying game about Jazz. An easy sell. I replied in the affirmative and booked my place on today's big thinky game, Bebop.

There were eight of us tonight. Sam, Martin, Katy, Pete, Ian, Andy M and myself. Katy expressed concern that she may have to reign in her usual aggressive style in the face of two relative newcomers but when she found out she was playing a game against three old familiars, she was happy that she could be a dick again.

I was joined by Martin, Pete and former semi regular Andy M, who I hadn't seen in years but in finest Games Night tradition, we just nodded and said hello. 

The other game,  chosen by Sam, Katy and Ian with Adam H in mind, who was on his way. He phoned once he was at the door, apparently unable to be heard by us in the kitchen. Once at the table, he got a rules explanation from Sam while Pete guided us through Bebop.

Any idea that this may be about Jazz was quickly quashed - it’s about a Jazz Festival and the idea of the game is to put our “fans” (the dice) next to the stage hosting their favourite instrument (drums, piano or trumper). First you put your seat down and on top of that, you put a die. The idea is to chain colours together in such a way that you have the majority of one instrument on your seats.

The game had a pretty simple mechanic, either place a seat or a fan and five of the seats had special abilities. But the strategy seemed to elude us. “What do I want?” cried Martin midway through the game. Even Pete, who’d only played once before - against himself - couldn’t offer any pointers.

Meanwhile, in Instanbul, Sam worked early on his wagon while Ian got the first jewel. There had been talk at the start of the game about Katy breaking the game last time she played.  I remember hearing about this but tonight she stayed firmly in the middle of the pack. Right up until the end. 

Ian 5

Adam 4 plus cash

Katy 4

Sam 4

After Istanbul they set up a game of misfits. Our jazz fest was showing no sign of ending. 

Whatever plan Katy had once had about being a dick seemed to have dissipated by now as she began with a disc placed flat on the table. Sam, far less amicable, put a cylinder on top of the disk, lying on it's side. 

After that, it was your usual recreation of 1970s public sculpture with exhortation to us not to bang the table. Not much chance of that, as we had entered the thinky standing up period of the game. 

Adam won Misfits 

After this, they played Gold Fever. Adam seemed to play the first part of the game while studying the rule book. They played twice, with wins for Katy and Adam. At the end of the game, Sam seemed to find a number of stones in the lining of his bag. 

Finally our Jazz Festival came to a close. We had, by now, long since passed the playing time suggested on the box. We were heading towards the final scoring with still not any solid idea about how well our strategies do. 

Andy M 98

Martin 97

Pete 87

Ander 71

Andy said he was happy with his win since he liked jazz. I don’t know what to make of Bebop! It was quite long and I never really got a grip of any possible tactics. I was tired, it was approaching 10 by now and I decided to bail out early.

Without me, the evening tore through more games@  Tower Up, Wavelength and two offerings of So Clover.

Some beautiful clues in there. Vampire/Pigeon for Bat is perhaps my favourite. Also, Sam played Agent Avenue four times, losing to Martin 2-1 and then playing against Pete later on. What a night.

Let them eat Cake

It was a winter of content as, not so long after Novocon, and just a few days after Laura's games day, a second festive get-together arrived. This time we were at Anja and Steve's: Joe drove myself and Katy over and we arrived just as they were finishing the first game of the session, with Steve coming a cropper in That's Not a Hat. Martin, Sarah and Effie were present and somewhere in the house Louie and Arthur were navigating pixel world. There was some chat and drinks prep and invasively-shaped breadsticks, and then Sarah and Effie made their way home and then remaining adults played Joe's recent acquisition, Awkward Family Photos. 

It's a party game where one player draws a card and chooses which demented photo they want the other players to provide a quote for. The quotes themselves are on cards, and drawn from movies, meaning there is fun to be had in the juxtaposition of lines we often know and strange people we don't, as well as the weirdness of the images themselves. I should have written some of these down but I didn't - anyway, the active player chooses which quote they thinks works best/is funniest/stupidest and the player who provided the quote gets the picture as a point. Katy cleaned up here, snagging three pics. The rest of us had one or none, but the highlight was no doubt Steve's enthusiastic embracing of reading the lines. 

We split into two groups, with Joe Katy and Hannah joining Martin in the perilous lands of Hold Your Ground and myself, Adam, Anja and Steve playing MLEM. 

Anja was concerned that her conservative approach was boring initially, but she warmed to the theme as serial explosions sent the rest of us into the ether whilst she watched from the warmth of a planet made of yarn. I missed all the fun of Hold Your Ground as I was too busy heckling her - to no avail. Steve and I tried to finish with a flourish making it into Deep Space, but only blew up again. 

Anja 27

Adam 25

Sam 21

Steve 15

Hold Your Ground had finished just before us, with Joe the victor on his debut play. There was some child-wrangling at this point, followed by some soup wrangling, and while we waited for the latter Joe introduced us to his game of counting from 1 to 20. It's always anyone's turn to say the next number, but if two or more people speak at the same time, you have to restart from one. We were all entertained by this - except Katy, who pronounced she couldn't stand it and left the room - but the furthest we got was 17 - unless you accept Joe and Martin's two-player version where they simply took turns. Steve, Martin and I also played a few rounds of Illusion at this point as well - but then the soup was ready! There was also home-made bread and cheese and a discussion about cheese between Louie, Arthur, Joe and I in the kitchen. But I forgot to take photos. When are you back, Andrew? 

After this lovely dinner Steve took some of us on a tour of the bouncy front room and we discussed such construction undertakings as joists and chasing. Then there was an amazing cake, the name of which I now forget but it's a bit like panottoni, and you - or Steve - can slice it into the shape of a Christmas tree. 

We broke into two groups again, with Joe, Adam and Katy playing Thurn and Taxis and the rest of us Mille Fiori. Louie was initially slated to build the German postal system as well, but the arrival of snow outside meant he was lost to the salad days of youth and cold hands. 

Meantime shit was getting slightly less real on the table. Anja's third or fourth turn was an early epic, as she triggered a bunch of bonus turns and catapulted herself into what looked like, to the uninitiated, an insurmountable lead. But we are all sadly initiated at this point, and Martin caught her up later on in the game as Steve and I took turns to make mournful little sounds with our mouths. With apologies, I missed the drama of Thurn and Taxis as a result, but my modest late-game surge in Mille Fiori was almost as pitiful as what came before it. 

Martin 238

Anja 210 

Sam 177

Steve 171

While they entered the final furlong in Thurn and Taxis, there was a lot of bodily movement around the house and I think at this point Steve showed me the upstairs, which I'd never seen before. It's huge! Then Martin and I played Hit! with Arthur and Louie. All of us regularly busted, but then endgame favoured Arthur and I somewhat.

Sam 84

Arthur 72

Martin 68

Louie 4

Thurn and Taxis wrapped up now, with Adam taking a convincing win:

Adam 24

Katy 16

Joe 10

And after some table shenanigans, I set up my Christmas gift Let's Go! To Japan with Adam and Joe, whilst the other end of the table played Agent Avenue. I had now completely abandoned my journalistic responsibilities, but fortunately Steve was on the case...

And here's some Let's Go! To Japanning from earlier times.

In this game we are planning our wonderful trip(s) to Japan by arranging three activities per day over six days - presuming, in my case, my travelling self has more energy than I do. When our final activity/card is placed, we then go on our trips, and each experience increases the holistic and cultural value of it by pushing the component aspects of the vacation (food, temples, unique experiences etc) up the track. If, at the end of the day, we have received enough of said aspect, then we can also score the Highlight of the Day as well. 

That's pretty much the game, save for a couple of wrinkles of your mood increasing (or not) overall, and the fact that your entire trip is based in Tokyo and Kyoto: any time you travel 'between' these cities, you must take the train. This was where Joe's planning fell down - he spent a lot of time whizzing between cities and without the tickets for it, he got hit with minus points. But for the activities themselves, Joe was having a grand old time, keeping costs low and enjoying a kind of thrift-store version of Japan. It was enough to win, though I inevitably made no note of the scores I think it was

Joe 115

Sam 111

Adam 109

But we all had a great trip. Katy's first play of Agent Avenue was less successful, as she and Anja came a cropper at the hands of Martin and Steve. But now it was getting on a bit - Louie had gone to bed, Hannah and Arthur had returned from the snow only to vanish again, and whenever the door opened I complained like an old man about the arctic wind that blew in. In other words, it was time for So Clover. I won't lie, I was smugly thinking about the fact I had a long record of sixes up until tonight when my clover - the first - blew up in my face: we scored three because apparently nobody sees Memory/Sky as poetically as I do (I wrote Dreamland: there were better matches). 

I was also responsible for harpooning Anja's clover when I said "This now looks insane" about the card placements and we started again only to subsequently discover they'd been in the right place. Katy's cake was a great clue for Fairy/Hole and Martin's deoxygenated for Summit/Heart was clever. Overall 35 from a possible 42 (using two sets of the game) wasn't too shabby. 

A fun way to end the evening, as always. Thanks to everyone, especially our hosts, and see you before too long I hope!