A Potted History of Games Night News, part two 2015=2020

2015

To kick off the year, we gifted Andrew a copy of Robinson Crusoe, and he played it solo a few nights later, resulting in one of my favourite posts ever. Katy won a 9-player game of 6Nimmt and unofficial game of the month is Castles of Mad King Ludwig, which is getting played quite a bit - Adam returns from paternity leave to wipe the floor with us at it. 

Mid-January Andrew wins a poker night, ousting perennial champ Tom Russell. Ian comes close to a Perfect 5 but is stymied by Timeline. Joe shouts "Immigrants!" in a crowded Bristol cafe (solving a crossword clue), Potato Man and Pairs both appear, and Adam manages a minus score in No Thanks. 

What's partly fun about rereading old posts are the little game-adjacent details, like my new fridge arriving on February 11th. There was probably about an hour before it ran out of space. Five regular GNNers have their birthdays in this month, and Hannah wonders:

The night I play all the games in my onesie is also the night I accidentally sit on Finn, who has developed a habit of jumping onto recently-vacated chairs (usually Andrew's). Katy plays Impulse for the first time, a game - like Carrara - which just seems always to be a fight for second behind Martin. Was this the night his foul-mouthed firmament-related nickname was born? It was definitely the first night of Win, Lose or Banana. Although there's no record of the winner, Katy had an actual banana. 

Quiz question: in which game did Chris get a round of applause for exploring Australia? 

Hannah won an epic game of Chinatown. Martin introduced/re-introduced Tigris and Euphrates to the group, and amazingly Joe beat him. Whilst the oft-seen Macao from 2014 hasn't been seen yet this year, Biblios is still hitting the table regularly. 

We had a six-player game of Quartermaster General that Andrew, usually so sanguine, detested. The first season of the year ends with Katy triumphant, even though she isn't actually present the night the curtain comes down. Martin and Sarah move into their new Easton home, and after several attempts at serial murder, Jack the Ripper finally pulls off a win in Letters from Whitechapel. 

Come May, we hold a board game day at Centrespace, raising a modest amount for the NSPCC in the protest. The head of natural history at the BBC wins Fauna, and Martin proves to be rather good at table tennis.

The following week marks the first appearance of the term 'Kickstarter crap' and the offending game is Scoville, which has not been seen since. Andrew returns from Japan and joins a GNN night where the blackboard makes a debut. I rather like this, but I suppose it's a bit of a pain to cart around. 

In late May, Andrew and Andy Bate beat Martin into third in a game of impulse. However any temptation to carry this momentum into a game of Carrara is sadly resisted. Railways of the World seems to be a go-to, especially on non-Tuesday nights, and in an effort to give it a little more immersion we come up with some cube colour contents:

At the first games night at Martin's house, Andy has a game called Midnight Party in his bag. But it doesn't get played until the following week, curiously as the evening-opener! How young and naive we were. But it's clearly a hit, regardless. 

The second season of the year wraps up with Katy Points Ratio Queen and Martin winning by pretty much every other metric (Adam is still largely absent, however, with a baby at home). Andrew drunkenly writes a slightly confusing blogpost regarding Joe's gender, and Charlotte bans Midnight Party for being too loud. 

Come the high summer, come also Zendo, which appears for the first time. Katy hosts a Tuesday night for the first time, and a Knizia from way back in 1979 gets played (Circus Maximus). It's rarely been seen since, despite an apparently warm reception, and a young Reiner himself peering out twinklingly from the rulebook. 

I nearly get a Perfect 5 in one night before coming last in the suitably-named No Thanks. As if to ram home the disappointment, I end the evening treading on a slug. 

There was a highly dextrous night with chip-flipper Safranito, level-upper Villa Paletti and even the thematic game of mountain-climbing, K2, on the table. Joe introduces his home-made dice tower as well, continuing his hobby of buying or building dice-based objects that one can throw dice in. 

On September 9th, Codenames makes its bow. Everyone likes it, and perhaps this is truly the moment where the puzzly euros begin to drop away and shorter, more party-vibed stuff edges toward centre-stage (although it should be noted both Quantum and Lords of Vegas have already become regulars). Little Joe gives away my cards in Love Letter by saying "I can see her boobies" and Dirk tied for a win (with Andrew) in 7 Wonders, pushing Ian into third. In September Bandu arrives, and with it crestfallen tower-builders and Bandu-breath. 

But the biggest news of the autumn is that Martin and Sarah are now expecting a child. Almost as bigly, Ian absolutely obliterates Andrew at Biblios, ending with a score that probably still wakes Andrew in a cold sweat when the moon is high. Although as it happens, he actually blames the rainbow.

The third season of the year concludes with my clammy fists clutching a points ratio victory. Martin won everything else. In two games of Mystery of the Abbey, Brother Malachi is unmasked as the killer. Unnerved, we pack him away in his box and don't play again, instead gallivanting about in Tales of the Arabian Nights, a Joe purchase that we all find enjoyable for it's silliness, offering all manner of things from ensorcellment to crippling. 

In October, Andrew brings a pal from work called Ben for the first time. He's part of an epic evening that ends with some crazy Bandu constructions on the table, and enjoys it enough that he joins us on a regular basis here on in.

After a long silence from Robinson Crusoe, Andrew returns to the cursed island once more, with another classic journal of his demise. And sick of peeing in people's gardens on his way home from games night, he pivots to spirits on the next Tuesday, which seems to meet the basic principles of success. 

What with Bandu being such a success, more dexterity games hit the table, and Martin suffers from being c**tside of me in Hamsterolle. 

But whilst Hamsterolle only stuck around for a couple of plays,Take It Easy was now a regular on the table and the tiles being announced with their own theme had become a thing: Phil Collins songs, Middle Earth characters, etc. Sometimes even interesting things. Chris took this meme in an interesting direction by naming all the people he hated at school. Andrew and I started off teasing him but ended up casting nervous glances at each other. 

In November we see the word 'Novocon' for the first time as we descend en masse to south Devon, complete with cars full of games, lasagne, and so on. There's an epic game of Eclipse on the sunday (Jon wins) and Adam's home-made Settlers set is also spied. 

I also recall a lot of exhausting football in the garden with Adam and Stan, who let's not forget are both considerably younger than me (and were back then too). The weekend's winners on Andrew's leaderboard are Anja with points ratio and Katy with everything else. As we near the end of the year there's a post looking at the most-played games, and it's interesting (to me) to see how many of the list are still played either occasionally or even regularly now, a decade later: 6Nimmt, Railways, Quantum, etc. Of the big hitters on the numbers front, only Trans America/Europa are the ones that have almost disappeared. First place is no huge surprise, even as remarked at the time, it's nobody's favourite.

Ian scored the same amount of points (49) in Railways of the World three plays running. The winter season wraps up with Adam points ratio king and Katy queen of everything else (on the leaderboard, I mean). Andrew does a huge yearly round-up over two posts, and then what do you know, the year is done.

2016

Ben, having spent his initiation period nestling in the lower places of most games, comes out the traps like a greyhound, leading the early running in our ongoing metadata. In the mists of January, we deal Andrew in for a game of Pairs not realising he's not ever going to make it, and - making collective decisions for him - he comes second. Joe's latest dice arena - the records do not say, but I assume built by him? - is shaped perfectly for the Boulevard in Lords of Vegas. 

We had the famous 'long' game of Quantum that put Martin off it, as he Joe and I all constantly cancelled each other out. Sally is briefly seen in a game of Push It and Ian, Chris and I come up with this delightful box-cover image for Codenames. 

The regular games are Pairs, Timeline, the now-forgotten FUSE. and Push It. The latter is seen so often - and clearly so violated - that we add new rules for flicking pucks off the table. This leads to an incredible zero (minus zero, in fact) to hero story for Adam and Andy, which Andrew helpfully represents in graph form. 

It's early March when Dead Man's Chest first appears, with its crazy spread-the-rules-over-multiple-tiny-cards approach. Matt takes a debut win with both gems intact, and Joe doesn't even play at all (we are nine; it plays eight) instead watching us from the shadows and possibly rubbing his hands together. Spyfall is played often enough that Katy establishes a standard opener: "What's the atmosphere like?" At Martin's house, the atmosphere is familial as Effie is born. Stan (now 8) counts up how many games on my shelves he's played, and it comes to seventy. 

Riff Raff arrives and becomes a new favourite. 

The night of the season's finale sees A Fake Artist Goes to New York arrive and some wonderful pictures ensue. But the big drama is over whether Ian or Katy can oust absent Martin from pole on the leaderboard, but whilst Katy grabs top spot in many metrics, he clings on to points ratio. Andrew celebrates with another bunch of spider graphs: here's Joe's. 

I begin playing games at work with some of the Digital department.

In May, Effie makes her first trip to a GNN evening, albeit strapped to her father's chest (and asleep). The lovely collage below by Andrew also shows Ben, as Martin and I exchange fatherly notes in one corner. Curiously this night was also the debut evening of Team Play, which was won by Ben and Adam.

Russian Railroads returns and Tumblin' Dice appears along with - unrelated - the first mention of the 'rules sweats' (La Granja). Andrew and I went to the UK board game expo for the first time and I was so overcome I put the wrong fuel in the car on the way home, giving us a 40 minute wait for rescue before a tow back to Bristol.

In June, Andy Mosse returns after a six-year absence. He plays Fool's Gold - something of a summer hit - and disappears again. I begin moonlighting in a splinter group with Alex, Scott and Aisha. A board game cafe opens on Christmas Steps and we play our regular Tuesday session there as a one-off. The key takeaways are that it's an expensive way to play games and the tables seem off. That's how nerdy we've become.

The following week there's an eight-player Push It using two copies of the game, which Adam and Andrew win. My mum invents a new Pairs variant where if you don't go bust you immediately lose interest, and Hannah takes the points ratio crown at the end of the month, with Andrew and Ian sharing the other honours. As summer begins, the first moment of note is baby Effie being more captivated by Beowulf than she is the bright colours of Blockers. Is it a Knizia gene? Katy comes up with a bash-the-leader synonym ('collectively Martin') and Andrew wins the first two plays of Scythe. 

Hollie - last seen in 2014 - was glimpsed fleetingly, and as four of us played Magician's Night in a pitch black room, Joe 'sat this one out' doing who knows what in the dark. The same evening. the season concludes with Adam Points ratio King, even though he's not there for the ceremony. As Terraforming Mars makes a first appearance, we're still finding out more about each other after many years of friendship. 

And on a late-October autumnal evening, Jacquie asked Chris if he thought she'd enjoy Agricola. His eyes lit up and they began a Friday-night tradition that continues to this day (which is playing Agricola, just to be totally clear). The gaming getaway weekend was in October (Octocon, of course) and in November, Fuji Flush arrives to an apparently underwhelmed set of recipients.

Joe began bringing Captain Sonar to games night but refusing to play it without eight players. Quiz question 2: what game is this?

When December folds itself into a ball, Martin is points ratio king and Katy wins everything else. But there was just time for a busy Jon-appended Christmascon, with almost all the regulars attending and Captain Sonar finally getting its day in the sun/ocean. 

2017

Christmascon has made almost everyone ill, so the first Tuesday of the year is a three-headed beast of Joe Adam and Hannah playing Caverana. Adam wins:

And shortly after this, Martin gets a Perfect 5 in one night. Ian, Andrew and I spend the entire time it takes him to achieve this playing Black Orchestra, and finished the game all in prison, awaiting execution <insert irony game-related irony here>. 

With the new year possibly inspiring him, Andrew's spreadsheet tinkering births a new wrinkle aimed to console people bamboozled into playing games they're bad at. 

Speaking of which, I begin playing A Feast for Odin, firstly by myself and then getting a Nordic battering at the hands of Stanley, and then Adam wins his debut game as Anja and I fail miserably. In the other room, something like a dozen games get played in the time it takes us to realise our terrible mistake. The next week, Andrew wins, and he wins his next play of it as well. Maybe that's what inspires him to introduce colour to his collection of data. 

Perhaps the most insightful numbers however are the ones that track the Dick Moves in two games of Fuji Flush, with innocuous Ian and avuncular Andrew coming in last places. 

In early March, Adam picks up another Perfect 5, and what's more from playing only five games in the season. Andrew's leaderboard confections get ever more idiosyncratic... (scroll down for explanation here)

And there's a bona fide insane leaderboard involving Katy's initials here. As winter turns to spring, so the turning wheels of Flamme Rouge arrive, and Adam takes the points ratio crown, although heaven knows how it's calculated at this point. Laura - not Laura Izzard, but Chris' pal from the Chippenham club - joins us for the first time, and Great Western Trail makes a bow and so do Insider, NMBR9 and Movable Type. Perudo makes a persistent comeback. 

Adam picks up yet another points ratio victory but Katy wins everything else, in what proves to be the last-ever 'season' of games as Andrew abandons the leaderboards. Summer arrives and so do the names of Stuart and Paul H (Chippenham branch) whom Chris has been gaming with at home. Joe buys a new title from a niche publisher who specialises in war games - GMT - called Time of Crisis. Before long there's a ToC monthly group. Stanley wins seven games of Ninjato in a row. 

Quiz question 3: name the games!

Martin has been little-seen for a while but he celebrates a rare hosting by imprisoning us all in San Quentin, complete with low-grade narcotics and the odd shiv. We lose at FlipShips but Steve wonders if that is such a bad thing after all. 

Ethnos appears for the first time, with its inimitable ability to explode components on various directions. Before you know it, November is here and we all decamp to Powys for another weekend of ludological delights. Shortly after this, The Quest for El Dorado and Azul are both hits on the block and Matt spills so much beer on Zendo that a salad spinner is used to dry the pieces out.

Joe hosts a Christmascon at his parents house and then 2017 comes to a close. 

2018

A rare Quentin sighting occurred in January and I can't believe Andrew's confection of football badges raised only a paltry three comments. On the table, Tichu was getting a flurry of plays, and Joe was getting a new car. 

In February, Bristol-based designer Frank West runs the City of Games convention and I attend with Stan - who is yet to be fully pulled away from card by the power of Fortnite et al. Joe and Charlotte played the Bernie DeKoven (designer/philosopher/writer) legacy box with Sally and I and had a wonderful;y curious evening. 

In March, The Mind makes its first appearance and Martin's pal Stuart becomes a semi-regular attendee. Martin continues winning pretty much every Time of Crisis game there is and in Chippenham the hammer-and-treaty epic that is Twilight Imperium makes its debut with a big evening-eating hello. Saying goodbye after 16 years with me is Finn, who goes to the great cat cushion in the sky along with Otto. 

As spring looms, Katy and Rob exit the UK for an epic bike ride across the Americas. Andrew's drinking shows no sign of abating, as he keeps quoting notes he made from the night before that he no longer comprehends. 

Joe is still insisting that all the Perudo dice can fit under the cap and we're playing a lot of trick-takers - Voodoo Prince, Texas Showdown. As if in response, Stuart, Joe, Andrew and I spend a Saturday night playing Cuba Libre, along with actual cigars, in which Andrew triumphs as the Syndicate. We all have a blast but the jury appears to be out on COIN games, largely because of the combination of play-length and AP-generation: Cuba Libre is the 'gateway' coin and a short game takes us 4 hours. 

As if in answer to Katy's absence, Laura Izzard rocks up for the first time in May and is put through the rules-learning grinder, playing three new games in a single night. A week or two later we try out the Expanse, which nobody seems to like and Andrew compares unfavourably to the currently in-vogue Eggs of Ostrich.  

Decrypto arrives and sticks around. Laura returns and does the same. Sally starts demanding plays of The Mind. Everyone loves JamSumo, a game I now wish I'd kept. Ganz School Clever is released and bamboozles everyone. 

On July 11th Andrew posts the thousandth blogpost! It's a five-hander at Laura and Lucy's house, where the latter joins us for The Mind and Movable Type. A few days later, he, Joe and I try playing Through the Ages and give up after 2 hours. Quiz question 4 - what games are these?

The Times of Crises are still going strong and amazingly Martin hasn't won for three games running (Ian/Ian/Joe). Ian also beats Martin at Impulse, and FaceCards arrives to much hilarity.

Root also makes a debut, although it's only me who seems to love it of the regular Tuesday bunch, as more than one person is pretty vocal in their dislike. I set off on a series of plays with the boys to make up for it.

Andrew completes a Perfect 5, which seems to have been somehow missed by history. In one night he won Quantum, Heaven and Ale, Love Letter and No Thanks. Then the next <games> night he kicked off the evening with a triumphant Fuji Flush. Adam wins his first try at Root. Joe creates a game-themed crossword. November arrives as so does the now-established weekend away. I won't regurgitate it all here except to note that Jon at one point had his finger stuck in a colander and Hannah did not attend. At some point around here - it could be a few months either side - she was forced into a six player game of Root and has been off games ever since. Well, it seems like it was Root. It may also have been our moronic sense of humour. 

BY the time the curtain falls on 2018, Martin has reestablished himself as perpetual emperor and we agree it's been a vintage year for new <to us> games, with Heaven and Ale, Just One, Root, Burgle Bros, The Mind, Decrypto and Texas Showdown to name just seven. Which is plenty. 

2019

Joe opens the new year by bringing both Western Legends and - in a departure from his dice-driven objet d'art, a card shuffler that makes a lot of noise. Portentously, Andrew's phone correctly predicts Martin's score in Azul. 

And Martin and I, after serial failures, finally win a game of Decrypto whilst being on the same team. In February, SpaceCorp arrives, and Joe wins the first multi-player game on a tie-breaker. Momentous March arrives with both Katy and Quentin returning from epic absences on the same evening. They're rewarded with the bamboozlement of Chameleon and Fuji Flush. 

Steve and I are so confused by the rules to Maskmen that we are giving up on the game only to be rescued by Martin, who rides in like a cross between Lancelot and Dilbert. Senators appears in April, and so does 'Big T' - the always-amiable Adam Taylor. Orbit arrives, and divides the group down the middle into love it/yet to play it (albeit some of the yet-to-play would hate it). Res Arcana and Belratti grace the table too. 

In July, Martin is finally dethroned at Time of Crisis as Joe takes the laurels. I get a Perfect 5 one night at Joe's and one of the games is Pax Pamir. I follow this with two more victories a couple of nights later. Joe is so in shock a bookcase falls on his head. Joe brings Stinker to the table, to great appreciation. 

In October, Katy gave Adam her now famous/infamous clue of "the" in Just One. The same night, Adam H comes last in Orbit, and a week or three later we hide Martin's birthday cake inside the Fauna box. 

Trick-taking starts its third wave, with The Crew hitting the table, and Novocon passes in a flash of meeples and card. Then Babylonia becomes the latest Knizia title to start racking up plays, and Medium makes a happy bedfellow. 

The year closes out with Joe hosting a bijou Christmascon at his studio, with only three others able to attend. Nonetheless, they put in the hours and crack a host of games, and this chapter of GNN history finishes up with oft-seen but little-mentioned (here) Kribbeln. 

And then 2020 arrives, with none of us really suspecting how the coming year would turn out...

Ten years into GNN history thus far, and one notable takeaway for me is how awful my diet was, largely consisting of whisky and crisps. Games I somehow missed playing despite their regular appearances: Beasty Bar, Acquire, and Impulse. Games that putting this post together has made me want to play again: too many to mention!