Come on, Eilan

When I arrived at Sam’s house, Joe, Jo, Ian, Adam T and Sam were all knee-deep in a game of Inkling. In this game, players are dealt some cards with some markings on them which resemble parts of letters. Place these cards anyway you want, and hopefully you’ll be able to spell out one (or more) of the six words on your card.

It was interesting to watch, but are there hidden strategies still to be uncovered? It seemed to reward literally writing the word, while any attempt at cryptical clueing fell flat. Ian tried to clue two of his words with one, admitting he’d “tried to So Clover it.” While Sam went all Rebus on the group. One of his clues looked like “OIST” which I noted may be the noise you make when you pick up something heavy. But it was actually a clue for “FLOOR” - it was the word “1st” with a button next to it, ie. first floor.

Joe 17

Adam 14

Jo 11

Ian 11

Sam 9

Adam tried to encapsulate it’s qualities by saying “It’s like a cross between a word game and…” “a break down.” Sam helpfully suggested.

By now Martin was here, and then a ghost from the past breezed in. Mark, who once appeared in this blog on a semi-regular basis, was visiting from Devon. How nice to see him again. With eight of us, we split into two. Sam, Mark, Ian and myself played Rebirth while Jo, Joe, Adam and Martin played Eternals Deck.

I didn’t notice much of Eternals Deck except for its lovely cloth board and the look of disappointment when, halfway through the game, Jo explained to their colleagues that they were playing the easy version of the beginners stage. But, they all won!

As for Rebirth, after a rules explanation to Mark (that I needed too, frankly) we set off rebuilding a post apocalyptic Scotland with our farms, castles and zeppelins. Mid-game, Sam and Mark started chaining together farms for big returns. Ian and I tussled in the housing market and I also focused on castles. 

Mark expressed surprise at the score, saying he'd only really got the hang of it 70% of the way through the game and that before then he'd been copying us.

I guess that makes it a shared victory?

Mark 141

Sam 132

Andrew 113

Ian 109

After this we rearranged. Both Adam and I were in the market for something shortish and Martin suggested Greed. We agreed (no pun intended) and were joined by Jo. The remaining four brought out The Gang, a clever cross between Texas Hold ‘Em and The Mind. I’ve played this before with six players and little success, but this time the sounds of cheers wafted across the table as they succeeded round after round in an atmosphere of co-operative bon homie.

Greed, as you can gather, is far less communal. There was a lot of PvP action as we took out each others thugs and holdings, but at the start both Jo and Adam complained about the opening hand they’d created for themselves, which were far too forward thinking so left them with few options in the short term.

I, on the other hand, barely looked more than two turns ahead such that apart from an early flourish where I picked up some cash, I was reacting to what other players were doing. Adam had abandoned whatever plan he’d started with and gone aggressive, playing a lot of spoiling cards. Jo, though, smartly got themselves into a winning position, playing a double-your-money card and then another card netting $45,000 which turned into $90,000. 

Jo 170,000

Martin 120,000

Andrew 85,000

Adam 10,000

With that, I was gone. Handing over to Sam for part two. Thanks all.

* * *

Adam also left now, and we were down to six. Martin promptly brought out Things in Rings and attempted

to explain it whilst the rest of us attempted to understand it. At least I did anyway - having slightly indulged things by now I mostly spent my time proclaiming my bafflement. 

As far as I could comprehend it's kind of like a wordy version of Zendo, where instead of figuring out the spatial rule to a bunch of pyramids, we're trying to deduce the conceptual rules for each circle in a Venn diagram, and there are three qualities: the context (eg can be dangerous) an attribute (eg larger than a person) and the text of the word itself (eg it starts with a vowel, which happened to be the one we figured out first). 

Turns are taken by placing a Word card into the puzzle somewhere (or indeed, outside of it) and hoping you're right: first person to successfully shed all cards wins. The person making these decisions was the "knower' - Martin, who didn't get to guess - and there's definitely a subjective element to where things end up - is a zipper dangerous? -  it's possible. Jo sussed out the attribute, but we were all thrown by the context and things ended up there on speculative punts more than Holmesian genius. 

After a 40 minutes or so of bewilderment Jo won (I think) and we all professed our admiration for something so bonkers. Tough being the 'Knower' though. 

It was time for So Clover. I don't recall a huge amount about at this point but it was a reasonable success. 

Post-script: At the start of the night, Adam T thrashed me 3-0 at Toy Battle and he also beat Ian and I at Rainbow!

Plank's Wobbly

There was a flurry of late drop-outs and one happy addition of Adam H as even the venue changed and finally Ian, the Adams and myself (Sam) arranged ourselves around Martin's table, ready to clash swords. And that we did, firstly in the form of Martin's latest trick-taker, Skull Queen. No relation to Skull King, other than that both are trick-takers with a pirate veneer, and both feature cries of dismay. 

Skull Queen follows standard trick-taking rules in that it's a must-follow and highest card wins the trick. There's no trump suit. However, the trick winner will push their pirate up the plank, and the trick loser (lowest card of the led suit) will push their pirate down. Before play starts, you can place each of your pirates wherever you like on the plank though, so it's 'simply' a matter of looking at your cards and working out where you think you can get your pirates to: at the end of the round they'll score for their position on the plank - if they haven't fallen off entirely. 

The extra twists are that this highest/lowest dynamic doesn't just apply to the led suit, but any non-matching suits as well (as long as there is at least two of them - if not, they stay out on the table for the next trick). There's also a wild 13 and a wild zero, and 5s and 8s will cause trick losers/winners to move two spaces instead of one. Adam H was a perpetual victim of this as almost everyone took a turn dumping his pirates into the sea (in a flagrant disregard for how ships work, they can fall off either end). 

Martin led from the moment we left the harbour and never let up his iron grip. We tried to target him but couldn't work out how to manufacture his demise: Ian was on his coattails at first but faded in the last couple of rounds, as the rest of us were just grateful to have pirates left at all.

Martin 109
Sam 92
Adam T 89
Adam H 85
Ian 79

Next up was Bites. This is a kind of commodities game where we move ants along a track - any ant you like, players don't have a specific colour - taking them to their next matching-coloured food spot and picking up either the food token ahead or behind it. When there are no more matching spots ahead, the ant will move onto the anthill, which will define the value of all it's matching food pieces.

The catch is that if you want to up the value of apple, say, then you want to get the red ant to the anthill as quickly as possible - but moving the red ant generally doesn't let you pick up apples, as it lands on them. Mix in a couple of wrinkles - wine for set-collection, chocolate that allows you to grab two pieces instead of one - and you have Bites. 

It was interesting, but felt like a puzzle that never totally swam into focus, probably because although it officially plays 2-5 with the full complement turns were in short supply and decisions verged on the arbitrary-feeling, so much so that Adam T was mildly underwhelmed by his triumphant anting. We did manage to prevent Martin winning again though. 

Adam T 17
Ian 16
Adam H / Sam 15 each
Martin 14

We moved on to Whale Riders. Recalling Louie's push-the-pace strategy, I decided to race to the end, cash in a couple of contracts and buy my way to victory. This plan was harpooned when Ian picked up the free tile I needed and I decided there and then that Whale Riding is a silly occupation. 

Behind me there were plenty of busier whales going about their business in a more ambulatory fashion, and it served them well - mostly. Adam H made a rare miscalculation and the game ended literally one turn before he could rectify it. 

Martin 19

Adam T/Ian 17 each

Sam 16

Adam H 14

The Adams then left us for home, so our traditional closer of So Clover featured just three players. We played twice, and our opening game was so profoundly average I didn't take a picture: we scored 4 each. Ian still had beer in his glass so we set up for a second, and this time did much better: seeing off a couple of plausible red herrings to nail an 18/18 to finish! Ian's Gentrified for tame/region was nice. 

Hope to see more of you next week...

Miele Furore

 With various stalwarts of the Tuesday night gang absent and/or unable to host, Martin, Jo and I (Joe) rolled up to Anja and Steve's at just shy of 8pm, each of us armed with several high player count games. Louie was on a trampoline somewhere else, but joined us just as Puerto Banana hit the table, and seemed to grasp the inherent idiocy quite quickly. "Can I bid ten million bananas?", he asked. "Of course!", we replied. 

I don't think anyone bid ten million bananas, but I might have missed it - after a few rounds, Martin accidentally handed what he described as a pyrrhic victory to Jo, winning the round with 1234 bananas but owing Jo so many bananas they ultimately won the game. As pointed out by Steve, it's game that probably teaches us more than we'd really like to know about how financial systems work. Bananas!

A photo of Puerto Banana that really captures the fun...

Louie had about half an hour before bedtime, so he, Steve and I played Ticket to Ride Berlin, whilst Martin and Anja introduced Jo to Mille Fiore. Louie schooled me and Steve at TTR, springing the end game on us before we could complete our extra routes. Steve and I played Sea, Salt and Paper while Mille Fiore wrapped up; my win was convincing enough to make Steve peer at me from over his glasses in a withering way.

Joe 40

Steve 18

Mille Fiore finished with a squeaker, Martin edging past Anja by two points, with Jo only 30 points behind her:

Martin 205

Anja 203

Jo 173

Together at last, we five embarked on a pun-laden trick-taker that's not a trick-taker except it sort of is a trick-taker in the form of Jo's UKGE purchase, Power Vacuum. Jo had explained it to me in the car on the way over; "It's based on the death of Stalin, but with household appliances". Of course! The game was notable for the fine art and lavish production values, players demonstrating their points by building multi-part statues to themselves (in the event of a tie, the best statue wins). The reason it's not really a trick taker is that it's far more beneficial really to lose the trick, and get to manipulate the power each player is going to win at the end of the round (along with your bid on who's going to win and lose) than to win it. That part was the crux, and lead to some agonising moments. Anja, Jo and Steve I think all managed to score their bids at some point - I only managed a half bid a couple of times. It was a lot of fun, though quite befuddling at first, and according to Martin, perhaps having one or two too many good ideas crammed into it. 

Despite the game's exceptional table-presence I didn't take any photos because I'm a twit, so here's a couple of really quite odd Berger & Wyse cartoons we managed to get the Guardian to publish a few years ago...

We only managed four hands of Power Vacuum before the clock struck 11 and we felt we ought to leave our hosts in peace, so we called it: Anja took the win - was on the cusp of the winning prerequisite of 40 points:

Anja 37

Jo 31

Martin 25

Steve 23

Joe 20

It was a fun night - I really should have taken some photos.

Mothers of Incension

Just the four of us last night in the end: Joe, Ian, Martin and myself (Sam). Martin was justly cheery about his fresh new best-in-world ELO rating at online Tigris and Euphrates and when I said it's better than being number 1 shithead, he said "Well, I am that as well". He had a bag of new goodies with him and after some heavy sprue-popping, we began with Die Patin, the game of the raccoon mafia. 

 

yellow (Joe) green (Martin) red (Ian) and blue (me) start feeling the heat

Die Patin translates as The Godmother, but this is a Mario Puzo reference rather than any benevolent fairy. Over five rounds, we send our four raccoons out onto the board, either to patrol our own territory, setting up illegal card-playing 'back rooms' and extort loot - or to extend our turf across town, whereupon we start bumping into each other and having the gangster equivalent of a squabble. 

my fledgling hood

As well as the card games and protection rackets, the raccoons can also add to their presence on the street corners/manhole covers of the city - or remove an opponents' - and it's these 'rats', along with the presence of a raccoon, who determine who controls each area. At the end of each round players can add score markers to the board if they dominate in one of the ongoing objectives (biggest territory, most loot etc) and achieving them later is better than earlier: in round 1, they're only worth a point, but when round 5 comes around they're each worth 5 points (though you can only claim one per round). 

crazily, nobody currently occupies the city centre!

It was a game of punch and counter-punch. We more or less divided the board into two wars - Ian and I came to serial blows in the north whilst elsewhere Martin and Joe wrangled with each other so regularly that by the end of the game they'd basically swapped territories. Martin grabbed the loot objective and then cock-blocked it for the next few rounds, until I nabbed it in the finale. Both Ian and I suffered for our expansionist tendencies, as late-game Joe and Martin both made inroads into our territories - there's not much sense on holding on to what you have here, other than to stymie: the game, just like a capitalism-loving gangster boss, demands expansion. We ended bloodied but unbowed. Well, Martin was unbowed anyway. 

Martin 22
Sam 19
Joe 18
Ian 15

Joe and I felt it was maybe a little too brutal for the 90 minutes it took - a slugfest of underhanded moves and overhanded face slaps. But Ian and Martin disagreed. It's certainly an interesting game though, if you're up for a bruising brawl. 

Joe felt we needed some remedial ludic loving and so we decided to defuse some bombs. 

In our first mission we had to cut certain wires in sequential order, and we succeeded easily - although Joe (and in fairness, all of us) forgot about the specificities of the number 11. It was such a tiny (reversed) mistake though, I think you really need to peer close to see the asterisk. The game was still out on the table, so we thought Why Not defuse some more explosives. The next mission was interesting: Joe was new recruit Rhett Herring, and the standard game now had the additional challenge of Rhett always lying (with his number signifiers) about what numbers he had. For example if someone asked him if he had a six, Rhett will tell the truth about whether he does or not, but if he doesn't then he'll lie about what number wire it really was. 

Rhett's problem with the bomb disposal department is never made totally clear, but we accidentally cheated again and then lost anyway. 

It was already Clover o'Clock, so we set up for our standard evening-closer. "What is Fun Facts doing on the table??" Martin said, as though it was an actual steaming turd. All was forgiven when I explained we just needed the pens. 

Our first attempt was not a classic. There were some lovely clues in there (I enjoyed Joe's inferior for short/lake and my own Model T for garage/bone) but we were dealt some bastard Rhett Herrings and scored something pretty average. 

So, employing Bomb Busters logic, we went again. But as with Bomb Busters mark II, we couldn't pull off a success. Ian's Vogon for grate/poetry was a highlight (after I was reminded who the Vogons were) and both he and Joe harvested sixers, but Martin and I couldn't match them. This one was 19/24 - not awful, but not championship form either. 

And that was another GNN wrapped up and sent on its way. Hope to see you all next week.