It's the trick that kills you

Steve and Anja were our hosts last night, with Louie sadly unwell enough to join but Lennon pitching in to open proceedings with a nine-player crack at Flip 7. Weirdly, this was suggested by Martin, even though he has regularly disdained the game. As is our established preference we took out the Freeze cards, although in hindsight they might have helped Ian and Lennon, who both imploded with incredible regularity. In fact I'm not sure Ian ever got past three cards. Adam did though. He almost needed an occasional table for his cards at one stage. 

Adam 202

Anja 152

Sam 146

Steve and Martin 89 each

Katy 66

Joe 54

Ian and Lennon - DNS

We split into two groups. Joe joining the Dalton-Dales for a gambol around the pyramid in Camel Up...

...whilst Martin explained the rules of Skull Queen to Adam and Katy (Ian and I had played before).

Both games took quite a while, even though we only played four rounds of Skull Queen as opposed to the one-round-per-player. The game is somewhat like contract whist in that you're predicting trick wins, but you're predicting for each suit rather than overall, and incorrect predictions can end up giving you zero points if your prediction pirates plunge off the plank. 

Martin dicked Katy over on her very first trick, rationalising that it was 'the best way to learn'. Katy frowned. To my left Joe was enjoying the racing/betting experience of camels who are capable of flea-like springing onto each other's backs, apparently having never played before. We were sure it did the rounds on GNN about ten years ago, but maybe Joe was playing Brass or Agricola. 

There was no Explainer's Curse for Steve as he ungulated his way to a convincing victory:

Steve 46

Anja 29

Joe 26

Lennon 22

And we wrapped up around the same time:

Sam 96

Adam 81

Martin 76

Katy 75

Ian 69

The double-movement cards (5 pushes the loser down twice, 8 up twice) played a significant role in prompting pirates into the pointless sea. Now there was some chat and bedtime duties so the remainder of us played The Gang. 

We made a poor start, although it was a close-run thing with first Jacks and 10s and then sixes and eights (I think?) the wrong way around. Down 0-2 to the incoming cops things looked bleak. But we rallied, aided by a Muscle card, and pulled off a slightly curious win: in the final round all but Joe had their strongest hand in the table cards. This drama didn't quite captivate Steve though, who chose reading his book over being dealt in for the finale. Steve! It's games night!

Everyone bar Lennon was back at the table now and we split into two fours, with Joe leading Anja, Martin and Adam in a game of TRND, which unfortunately I know nothing about, and the rest of us playing a hugely dickish session of Misfits. 

In game one, Ian defied gravity, physics, expectations and the fabric of reality as he pulled off three or four insane moves, earning him the title Prince of Darkness. Both he and Steve started new towers with horrible foundation blocks that we managed to build upon regardless. 

Ian took the win, but as TRND was ongoing we began again. There were rules arguments as Katy attempted to executive-decision Ian's opening gambit - upside-down cloud - back to him. There was a group decision that the cloud rolling didn't equate it falling. Then it fell anyway. 

There was a lot of shenanigans and complaints that the TRND players kept 'using the table' but Steve overcame all obstacles to claim the win: this 'despite Katy' my notes say. TRND finished with Martin the victor; not sure the word 'convincing' does the margin justice:

Martin 85

Adam 36

Anja 9

Joe 4

Joe's final hand was one card away from a huge points haul: close, but no red chair. We did briefly flirt with the idea of one last game, but that crushing disappointment for the Berge turned out to be the night's last act. We trundled out into the night, sated. See you in a couple of weeks!

TRNDing

 

I arrived at Sam’s house at the same time as Ian (bike) and Katy (walking) and, technically, also Andy M but he stayed sitting in his car for now.

Inside, the three of us found the host and Joe and, shortly, Jo in attendance. We thought of a game we could play that would allow any latecomers to join in, and so Cross Clues was brought to the table.

It was clearly going to be tricky with “Air” and “Airport” next to each other on the y-axis. But it turned out that “hat” proved more difficult. Joe had to repeatedly warn us “I still don't think it's Doctor/Hat.” Sam clued “Fedora” which baffled us as to which hat it should be. It turned out to be “lentil/hat” because both are kind of brown. 

23 out of 25

Everyone had, by now, arrived. Adam H and Andy M rounded off the numbers. We had a rare treat of staying as a single group for the next game. Jo had brought in a few prototype games that they'd been working on. Exciting times. It had been a long time since GNN had hosted anything that could be described as a homegrown game and now there were three!

We chose Squirl, since it could comfortably include all of us playing together. It's a word game where everyone builds up words, letter by letter, left to right, using letters that appear on a card revealed at the start of the round. 

Jo talked us through the rules and, like consummate play-testers/clueless idiots, we kept asking for rules clarifications throughout the first few rounds. Each letter had a value and occasional bonuses would appear in order to tempt players to gamble on an unlikely letter. 

It was fun. I played a very pedestrian game, with words like “glitter” looking a bit ordinary next to Sam's “crypt” and Joe's “vexings”. Mid-game, Katy realised that her word “vertigo” wouldn’t fit into the six spaces on the sheet.

Andy poured Maltesers into the same bowl that had previously held Frazzles while he predicted that we’ll all be swearing soon. By the end, I’m dead last but there’s a moment of tension while the scores are added up - will the inventor be beaten at their own game?

No, it seems not.

Jo 143

Andy 129

Adam 124

Joe 120

Sam 115

Ian 115

Katy 87

Andrew 71

Despite my placing, I enjoyed it and was impressed to hear it’ll be published in a couple of years or so. You read about it here first!

Finally we split into two groups. Me, Joe, Andy M and Katy went lighter and shorter. Jo, Sam, Ian and Adam H played Foundations of Metropolis . I know little about that game except the end results.

Sam 82

Ian 72

Jo 69

Adam 62

At the lighter end of the table, the four of us began with TRND - a set collecting card game with chairs. It’s blindingly simple.Three colours, three types of chairs. You pick up and discard from the array of visible cards or just pick up (and don’t discard) from the deck. Once you have a hand of identical chairs you reveal your hand. Last one to reveal gets no points. First to 81 wins.

So simple, but with a push your luck aspect, especially when there are only two people left and the temptation to get out as soon as possible for fewer points is too great to resist.

Andy 86

Katy 72

Andrew 34

Joe 16

Then we played Xylator. The packaging of this game had earlier caught Katy’s eye with its polar bear playing a guitar-shaped xylophone. Joe explained that it was a trick-taking game with, admittedly, a lengthy back-story to explain the cover art. Andy had to go at 10.15 and I was thinking about bed too, so we only played one round.

If TRND is simple, Xylotar is anything but. The cards come in five colours and the highest value of each colour is different. All cards are dealt out and then we arrange our hands numerically, but trying to do so in such a way to disguise the real value of the card because once that’s done, the cards are placed face down so the only information available is the colour and the person next to you uses it as their hand when playing a round of, basically, whist.

After a single round, the scores were.

Andy 9

Joe 8

Andrew 5

Katy 2

It was interesting. Hard to tell what was going on after a single round, but I’m curious to see what strategies emerge after several plays.

With that, I was gone. Thanks all. See you all soon.

*

Sam here. Just to add that we played a couple of games of So Clover and another newbie of Jo's which was a Perudo-esque risk-taking, word-making game that was a lot of fun. I now don't remember who won though. 

Bloops in Hoops

Six of us assembled at Joe's house last night, or seven if you include Sybil, who stalked the table alternating between demanding Adam H's chips and barking at the cat in the garden/harrumphing at life. As well as Adam and the hosts there was myself (Sam), Ian, Katy and Martin. As we discussed Joe's baize-like tablecloth, I took a photo that made Martin look much smaller than usual. 

And then we began the night by extorting half of Adam's tea from him and playing Team Play. I apologised to Martin in advance as I have no knack for this game at all and spent most of it hoping a 1 would come out. Adam was similarly bereft - he didn't complete his own goal the entire game - and Katy and Joe made the early running, completing 3 goal cards before Martin and I had even done one. 

Martin did most of the work for our team and while Ian completed his own goals his partner went for the public ones. I finally grabbed a 1 and got involved, but it was too little too late: 

Katy and Joe 35
Ian and Adam 30

Martin and Sam 29

We split into two groups, with Joe Adam and Ian setting up Thurn and Taxis and Martin cajoling Katy and I into a game of Greed. 

Greed is a pretty simple and pretty feisty card-drafting game: everyone is dealt twelve cards and adds one to their hand, then adds one from the eleven they were passed and so on. From round three, everyone also plays a card from their hand: loosely speaking Holdings raise money, Actions do a thing and Thugs are a sort of combination of both. Holdings and Thugs also have symbols on them, which are way of generating revenue, something Martin seemed to be rather intent on, judging by the proliferating cash on all his holdings:

I only had two the entire game, but went heavy on a good Thug combination that showered me with cash every time I played an action. Katy found herself cash-bereft with a hand that demanded payment to play cards, and was also a little unfortunate with timing. It ended with a somewhat fortuitous debut win, as Martin slightly undid himself by misreading an action card in the penultimate round:

Sam $170k

Martin $150k

Katy $125k

Thurn was still taxi-ing (sorry) with Adam describing current events as 'subjectively shite' so we broke out Misfits. 

We ended up playing twice, as the Thurn trio eyed our structures nervously, aware that any collapse might have catastrophic consequences for the post offices of Bavaria. I cheekily began the first game, even though Misfits doesn't actually have one of those 'last person to x' starter rules. 

Martin tried some ambitious things and they didn't come off, and in short order I was down to my cubes - and a win. We reset and Martin started, quickly degenerating the idea of a tower into something less imposing...

Which we collapsed and built again, slightly more impressively at first before realising there was precious little to do with it. More collapses followed.

I was laughing so much I'm still not sure how I took this picture of Katy and Ian.

But I picked up another win and as they hit the closing stages of Thurn we bashed out a quick game of Panda Panda. This is a super-simple card-drafter where you win two rounds to win the game. To win a round you need to have any of the possible winning hands (there are ten, varying from two specific cards to seven) at the start of your turn, at which point you call out 'Panda Panda' and delight in Martin's disdain. 

On a turn you can either pick up - from the deck, or the top of another player's discard pile - or discard to your own discards. If anyone discards an A (the most common card) everyone passes a card to their left, a kind of sabotage/lottery combo you can use to screw over someone who looks like they're about to panda but also stumble on something useful.

Luck over judgement for sure, but I won again just as Thurn and Taxis wrapped up with some dramatic scores: 

Adam 32

Joe 10

Ian 7

Joe would have won had he played his last turn differently, it transpired, pulling Adam back a couple of points and catapulting himself forwards. But just like Martin in Greed, he came away with regret instead. "It wouldn't have made any difference to me" Ian piped cheerily as he raised his mug of beer "Because I was last either way".

As they packed away, Adam pointed out I was now on four wins - one away from the perfect five. I realised I also won Expeditions at the weekend - had I done it already? I didn't think so because I was a critical part of coming last in Team Play since then: a team game, but still a competitive one. No matter - I'd just have to win the next game too. Unfortunately the next game was Things in Rings. 

Joe was the Knower who knew the rules of the three Venn circles. Ian, Martin and Adam were the Keen Deductionists. Katy and I were the bewildered Starers in Bafflement. Only a few cards in, Martin murmured that he'd worked one of the rules out already and Ian and Adam mumbled assent. I could only see words and string, though in hindsight the yellow rule ('contains an o') was gettable. But that's the thing about hindsight... Adam won this one as Joe revealed the other rules were 'useful' (context) and 'flammable' (attribute). Flammable is quite a broad concept, we've found (it's appeared before) as so many things can burn if you put your mind to it. Or even if you don't, as my perfect five went up in smoke (sad face).

We played again, but this time trying the co-operative game. I demanded to be the Knower because I wasn't enjoying feeling stupid, and Martin said it can be even harder. I explained at least I would know why I was stupid, and Katy and I teamed up to respond to guesses as new cards appeared. Our rules were one syllable, often has spots or stripes, and you expect to find it at a school. 

The school was our flammable: there are a billion things at a school so we leant into the word 'expect' and tried to stick to that cognitive connection. The team worked out single syllable very quickly and Ian pointed out that underwear, skunk and kite (stripes/spots) all had a wind element. But shirt put paid to that theory - kind of a shame. However Joe spotted the reoccurring stripes and they figured out the last circle not by definition but by noticing a kind of logical pattern. It came down to the last card in the end - goggles - that Joe put in 'None' for no connection. It could have gone in 'expect to find at a school' - as Ian pointed out, there are goggles in a science lab - but Katy and I allowed it, reasoning that they looked more like pilots goggles: the rules do say if you're unsure you can use the images as a steer. So: a victory for everyone!

It was So Clover time. And what a clovering it was as we began with a couple of solid sixes and got excited about the prospect of a hall-of-famer. Then we hit Martin's clover and struggled with the amount of possibilities for Laughtrack, ultimately failing after two guesses to spot syrup/comedy and that glasses might go in a dresser. Martin was so disappointed he openly canvassed for more failures and had to be reminded that it's co-operative game. Maybe he was pleased when stumbled on the last clover - Joe's - as we were convinced that tea must go with his clue of 'scald', particularly as he has scalded his own hands numerous times. But it didn't. 

Still, 31/36 is not to be scoffed at. Some nice clues. We called it there and all - except Joe and Sybil - made our way out into the Bristol rain. Until next week!

Lucky (thirty) sevens

I walked into Joe’s place on a relatively mild day between peaks of British summer and found myself walking into a game of Cross Clues with Joe, Sam, Katy, Adam T, Ian and Adam H. Before long it became clear that everyone were on very different frequencies when it came to giving clues. One misunderstanding followed another. “Club” for “weird/foot” was missed and my one contribution was also hopelessly wide of the mark as I thought “Solstice” would go with “mean/night” since mean can also mean “average.” Katy tried to dissuade us that the Solstice wasn’t the average night but too late. 

We didn’t even count up the score, that’s how badly we did.

 

With Martin on his way, we decided to give Cross Clues another go. This time we did better but still not amazing. Hats off to Adam T for his clue “diarrhoea” for “brown/lightning.” Classy. His clue “bite” for “angry/horse” sparked off a discussion about what angry horses are best known for: biting or kicking. But that’s all horse feathers. We did well enough to count up the score this time. 

22 out of 25

With Martin still en route, we broke out Flip 7 and took out the freeze cards. In fact, it was quite dick-move-free. Whenever someone got a “Flip Three” card, they almost always used it on themselves. And, in fact, it almost always worked. Especially if you were Ian who seemed to be blessed with a surfeit of bonus point cards.

Katy only scored in four rounds but on three of them, she clocked up 37 points. She also found herself concerned when Adam H shuffled the deck of cards just as she was about to draw another card. Convinced that the deck was now stacked against her, she asked the dealer (Adam T) to cut the deck before handing her a card. He did so. She went bust all the same.

Adam H managed to flip seven cards in one round and he’d run Ian a close second throughout until the last round. Ian decided to stick first and Adam just pushed his luck long enough for him to squeak a close win.

Adam H 209

Ian 203

Katy 144

Joe 128

Adam T 105

Andrew 95

Sam 0

By now Martin was here and we split into two groups at two separate tables. Sam, Martin, Adam T and Ian set off for the Shires in The Fellowship Of The Ring. I think I heard mention of starting on Chapter 10. Impressive but I've no idea how far through the game that is.

Katy, Adam H, Joe and myself indulged in the luxury of Ra - Pharaoh edition, with its chunky tiles and metal money. Katy got a brief overview of the rules, just to refresh her memory and then we began. 

Round one saw a lot of disasters and floods pulled from the bag. Adam and Katy were the last two players and they let tiles fill up and clear themselves out twice, due to the grim nature of what was on offer. 

Round two ended in a similar fashion,  with Katy the last active player insisting that it was more fun to play with yourself. 

By round three,  the Nile had pretty much dried up and I was regretting buying quite so many pharaohs. Also, I had very few buildings unlike Adam who had so many that Joe had to explain about stacking the same buildings on top of each other, you know, like they did in Ancient Egypt. 

At the end, Katy was delighted by her score and I was pleasantly surprised by mine. Joe said he usually did better than his and Adam admitted that he didn't really like Ra.

Katy 43

Andrew 41

Joe 33

Adam H 32

And so, I gathered up my belongings and set off at a sensibly early hour, leaving the rest of the evening in safe gaming hands.

Over to you, Sam.

*             *             *

In Tolkien-world things started out well, as I recall - not that I recall that much now. But I believe we cleared chapter 10 and Adam T read out the narrative intro for the next chapter. I don't remember that either, but it was either 11 or 12 where we ran into trouble, as it's a 'long' one: meaning there are multiple characters to complete and two of them were rather tricky: Boromir needed to win the last trick but couldn't be trusted with the ring, and someone else needed something crazy like a card of each rank. We - or Adam - pulled the latter off, but went wrong somewhere else and needed the Vest of Mithril or something to save us. But then we went wrong again anyway. Fellowships are work.

After Andrew left Martin tempted Adam T and and Katy into a game of Greed. I don't know what the mechanics are, but the name does a pretty good job on the theme.

...whilst Ian, Adam H and I showed Joe the ropes - ho ho - to Monkey Palace. For a reason that I missed, the rules weren't in the box and so we did a little hazarding around the finer points. The basic ones are easy: build a monkey palace, build your engine, get bananas. The result on the table was as impressive as ever.

Not sure if our slightly fudged rules favoured me, but I picked up a win as debutant Joe found himself up against three experienced simians. 

Sam 42

Adam 38

Ian 36

Joe 29

I don't know what happened in Greed, other than Martin was greediest:

Martin 160

Adam and Katy 155 each

Katy and the Adams now left for home, leaving just four of us to clover out the evening, which we attempted twice. Our first effort was a very solid 22/24, with only my clover muddying the waters.

We went again, which as everyone knows is always a terrible mistake. And so it proved here, with a shabby 18/24 thanks to a couple of dodgy red herrings and maybe some heat/game fatigue creeping in. Did like (Joe's?) essential for friend/oil though. 

Muddle Management

Feast or famine: after last week's bumper crop of gamers, we were suddenly down to three. But moving the venue to Martin's meant we could coax a tired Ian out to join the host, Adam H and myself. We kicked the evening off with another new one of Martin's: Big Boss. 

This is a curious thing: what looks like a score track is actually a shared board where companies are established: a mix of financial heft and physical geography. Players have numbered cards that can be played to establish (in the early game) or develop - ie make larger - companies along the track. When you do either of these things, you collect cash equal to the current worth of the company, and may also buy shares. At the end of the game, players compare share value (and cash) and the richest wins.

We begin with a hand of cards and on a turn can either play one as above, or pay $5m to get an extra card. In addition to that, players have the option - at a cost - of adding a 'radio tower' to a company, meaning that they now own three additional shares in it. Where the game gets interesting is the shared (or not) incentives of development, and the unknown aspect of who has what cards. I found myself improving Ian's share ownership in Lunar several times when I picked up cards of numbers I had no kinship wth. 

early game

mid-game

As companies grow they will sometimes come into contact with each other, and this causes a merger. The bigger company subsumes the smaller one and suddenly there's a vast behemoth where once a Mom and Pop store sold you homemade sandwiches. Martin and Ian were the significant beneficiaries of these corporate takeovers, whereas Adam and I less so. But Adam still managed the inscrutability of the game rather well, and only a late-game error shunted him into third (as well as boosting my score into a more respectable fourth).

1 Ian $610m
2 Martin $565m
3 Adam $563m
4 Sam $510m

I struggled a bit making sense of it all, and I think we all felt the second half of the game was an improvement on the first: it significantly sped up and things got more interesting. 

late game

Next up was a new one of mine: Sardegna. Actually it's a reskin of an old game (Kreta) but packed into a tiny box that unfolds to become the board: quite a neat little device. Over 11 rounds we contest for control in different regions of the island, which we do by playing cards to add forts (influence all surrounding regions) villagers, priests, boats and villages (influence the region they're in). Everything has one influence except villages, which are two.

An array of region cards define the rounds and which regions will be contested, but we can only ever see the next two, so building in anticipation - as I did - turns out to be kind of a dumb strategy. On a turn you play a single card which allows you to add/move villagers, boats, priests, place a fort, or establish the more powerful village - if you have used a villager/boat combo to harvest resources: you can't build villages without them. 

The moment someone plays a Sentinel the next region in the array is scored, and everyone gets their played cards back into hand. But there's a catch here: when the next region card is revealed, whoever played the Sentinel can choose to discard it and flip a random one from the deck. I was bitten three or four times by this, as my strong south side of the island kept missing out on scoring opportunities. 

The board can be a bit fiddly to read but I enjoyed this; very interactive but reasonably speedy. My lack of strategic/tactical/any management skills steered me into last place again, as further up the track Adam and Martin duked it out on in the north, and Ian navigated his way to a joint first place by triggering the final scoring round!

Ian and Martin 61 rejoice in shared victory
Adam 53
Sam 47 

It was past 10 by now so we moved on to So Clover. Maybe it was the heat but instantly there was a round of plaintive groaning as we all looked at our words and grumbled about them. Surprisingly we opened with a six, but followed it with a four and two threes as there seemed to be so many possible combos and luck was not on our side. Adam's snip for bomb/gamble was a highlight though - when we eventually saw it. 

It was now moments from 11pm and loose talk of a second crack evaporated in the heat, and we made our ways home.