Crossover Crops

 This week's Tuesday night games was preceded by a sort of musical chairs of hosts and attendees popping up and dropping out; and just as four of us (Martin, Jo, Ian and me (Joe)) prepared to depart for the genteel climes of Anja and Steve's, Steve called to say their hosting was off due to an emergency. Given that they've hosted their way through several urgent plumbing situations recently, we were concerned that it must be something very serious; a small nuclear reactor meltdown, perhaps, or the discovery of a portal to Hell? Actually Anja had fallen on the stairs and hurt her arm - we hope you're on the mend Anja. 

The four of us abandoned the car and decamped to the Greenbank pub, and while awaiting the arrival of Pete, we played Llama Llama; from the designer of Panda Panda, played with the same deck make up, and just as agonising. I didn't record the scores. Martin won. 

Pete arrived in time to mention he'd played it when it was called Dog Poker. And Panda Panda was Cat Poker. We neatly segued into one of Jo's prototypes, Untrustwordy, which they pitched to us as poker but with words.  After the first round, I was lowest on the score track, having struggled to assimilate the relatively few rules of the game, and I suggested we play again, so I could regain some dignity. I did so badly in the second round (falling for Jo's bait that they were holding an X) that I dropped off the bottom of the scoreboard! Meanwhile Martin did so well he shot off the top. It's an interesting design, and Jo's planning to pitch it at the Games Expo this year, so fingers crossed we'll play it again in published form.

Though I'd brought Mü, we felt it might be a little late in th evening to be enjoying it's head-scratchy delights, and Martin had brought Reif für die Insel, which at least also has an umlaut. It translates, we think, to 'ripe for the island' which sounds like it might mean something slightly dubious to German ears, and involves an awful lot of bananas. Pete pointed out that this week, bananas were the crossover crop, as they appear in Santiago, which we played last week. As do potatoes, which feature in Maya, which we played the week before. The problem, we discovered, is that bananas are a bit of a crossover crop cul-de-sac, as they appear in loads of games but mostly on their own. 

I didn't take any pictures, but that's really no bad thing, as this game has about as much table presence as half a packet of banana flavour Chewits. It's an auction game, one of Reiner Knitzia's dodecorilogy (at the very least) of auction games. And it's quite neat, but fairly one note. Having played it a couple of times I can say I prefer something like High Society, which it reminds me of slightly. But it's fine. It's no Santiago!

Jo 89

Martin 75

Pete 67

Joe 63

Ian 59

After that we played Hot Streak - which has tons of table presence - but I still didn't take any pictures. Silly me. It was a fun game - in one race Dangler and Gobbler responded to the start whistle by turning around and running off the end of the board together. Very funny, and I pipped Jo to the win. Or do none of us win, we just enjoy a different life outcome. 

Joe 62

Jo 60

Pete 55

Ian 35

Martin 24

Before disappearing into the night, we gave it some So Clover. Of course we did. Martin saw my clue of toothed, and spotted tiger. "As in saber-toothed tiger!". I waited for him to spot Saber on another card, which he did eventually. What a gift. We scored 26, which is exactly the score I thought we got last week with three players, so clearly I was just thinking ahead.

With that we wandered into the night - it's fun to play in a pub every once in a while, and The Greenbank is very well-appointed in that regard; we were accompanied by lovely live music all evening too. Let's do it again some time! 

Baby Catan, Baby Ra

There were five of us last night; Pete, Jo, Martin and Sam and I (Joe) congregated in my kitchen for the regular GNN Tuesday amusements. Jo's game Molly House had won the American Tabletop Award for complex game earlier the very same day, and after congratulations on this amazing achievement, we set up Hot Streak, coincidentally the ATA's 2026 pick for casual game.

Hot Streak works best with 5 or 6, though for higher numbers there's a variant we're keen to try, which dispenses with the betting cards, and sounds like a lot of fun for a lot of people. 

Last night's game was the usual hilarious mix of volte face's and stumblebums, and only Pete seemed to have a true bookie's eye for what was coming down the pike. It's impressive how varied the three races can be, the order the cards come out in having a huge effect, naturally enough. Raucous fun, and our life outcomes were equally daft, as recorded by Sam with cryptic economy against the scores:

Pete 69 jumps house

Jo 52 zoo koala

Sam 37 toupee

Martin 25 book

Joe 24 nickels

We moved on to a game that the words 'raucous fun' don't have much to do with, although Martin's early entreaty to Sam to come on his bananas did cause some amusement. Santiago used to be our go-to for five players, many many moons ago. 

It last saw play at GNN in 2019, and I'm surprised to see that prior to that I'd won it in September 2013, as my recollection is of being terrible at its particular mix of bribery and potato planting. Digging a little deeper into the archive, I find the game earlier in 2013 in which I scored a paltry 29 points - it's funny how the losses stay with you. 29 was a particularly ignominious score, as you start the game with 10 money, and receive 27 during the game, so I'd have done better to sit on my hands the whole game.

Last night I won again, much to my surprise - I like to think that my early game of not being completely horrible lead to some karmic fortune at the end, but who knows. It's an OG gem, and we should probably play it more often, even though my next game will be another sub 37-er, you can be sure. This time the scores were admirably close, with 13 separating first from last:

Joe 70

Jo 65

Martin 64

Sam 59

Pete 57

Sam clearly found it as tense as I did; "Let's play coops for the rest of the night" he said afterwards, and then left.

The remaining four of us opted for Catan - On The Road, the new 15 minute card game version of Catan. We were all keen to try it, and we all felt similarly afterwards - it was fine. Just, fine. I don't know what we were expecting, it does exactly what it sets out to do; but I couldn't help wondering if it wouldn't seem completely incoherent to someone who hadn't played the original game. Martin was the first to 7 points and thus the winner.

We moved onto another (sort of) pocket version of an esteemed classic, Swat! This Knizia game was described by Martin as 'real time Ra' and you can see the lineage, though the gameplay and mozzy-swatting theme are very different. One player deals cards face up in a stack, as the others hover, ready to swat the mat as soon as the offer gets tempting enough. It took us a few rounds to get the measure of when to 'buzz in' (they should have called it that), but it's a clever and very silly at the same time, and I'm going to say if not raucous then at least rumbunctious fun.

Jo 71 

Joe 58

Martin 47

Pete 31

Earlier when Pete checked the train times they had all disappeared; but luckily they'd appeared again by now, so he left to get the last Montpelier to Temple Meads and beyond. Jo, Martin and I opted for a final So Clover. I sadly forgot to take a picture of our first effort, but maybe that's ok because we didn't do brilliantly. We went again, doing marginally better - not quite as well as the 26 I announced, Martin pointing out that 6, 6 and 4 add up to 16, the brainiac. I did get a picture of our second efforts.

   With that we were done and dusted, having had more than enough rauc for one night. 

A series of unconnected events

Gamers gathered in Fishponds on a balmy April evening. Joe, Martin and I (Adam) arrived to find Steve and Anja engaged in emergency plumbing, so we introduced the kids to gambling with a quick game of Hot Streak. 

In Hot Streak players make two bets on which of four mascots will win each race or on a weird side bet (two mascots will be sprawled on the ground at the same time, one will fall off the track, etc). We got to see some of the cards to be used at the start of the game which seemed pretty good for Hurley (the hot dog). Then over each of three races we added one card of our own to spice up the race deck and the comedy began. 

In amongst the swerving and tumbling Hurley won every race, which left me confident as I'd backed him every time, but Joe's smart side-bets nudged him into second and Martin's risky play (you get extra reward for first place if you flip the betting slip to the "risky" side) galloped him to victory. 

Martin 62
Joe 59
Adam 57
Lennon 33
Louie 22

Steve and Anja (having defeated the toilet) arrived in time for a 7-player game of Just One. The game was a hive of cheating and treachery, notable for Louie and Lennon conspiring to put complimentary words into the mix. We only played 7 rounds, but somehow got a perfect score.

Anja took Lennon off to bed now and the rest of us turned to No Thanks. In spite of never knowing when it was his turn Steve put together a nice run and trounced us, not far from a positive score!

Steve -15
Adam -39
Louie -43
Martin -55
Joe -57

Anja returned and Louie reluctantly bade us goodnight as Whale Riders was set up. Molly the cat sulked on one end of the table (disappointed at the lack of real fish?) as the rest of us were distracted by Steve's choices of background music. Whale song gave way to Inuit throat singing and then on to whaling sea shanties - not really the vibe of the game at all. 

Joe was least distracted, managing to fulfill three contracts in one go and never really looking back. 

Joe 21
Adam 19 + more money
Martin 19
Steve 15
Anja 13

As we tried to decide on the next game Steve showed off his new glasses.

 

Bluffit was selected as a quickie which everyone had played before, but the rules seemed baffling to everyone, even Martin as he attempted to explain them. Everyone started with an identical hand from 1-10, then hidden bids and theft ensued as we competed for the previous hand's cards throughout the game.

Joe and Anja's bitter feud didn't work out for them. My strategy of only bluffing occasionally did.

Adam 65
Steve 50
Martin 49
Anja 42
Joe 35

We finished as ever with So Clover, notable for Anja's "Cruise" for Cocktail Demon and Joe's "78" for Attic Record. I was Portabelloed when Chameleon snuck into my "Camouflage" for Landscape Uniform and we only got 24/30. But we didn't mind because we'd all had a lovely evening.

Chocolate cider

 This week’s games night seemed to start early for me this week, as I awoke on Tuesday morning from a dream in which me, Martin, Joe and Ian were in a badly stocked off licence trying to buy alcohol. Ian was tempted by the chocolate cider by Thatchers while Joe had to be content with a 2 litre bottle of white wine called Sembrini that had party balloons on the label.

And then, as I approached this week’s venue, I arrived at Sam's at the same time as Adam T and Joe. Katy opened the front door to greet us. At least, she greeted Adam. He got a hug on the doorstep that lasted long enough for the silence between Joe and I to get awkward.

Once Katy was finished ignoring us, we all went into Sam’s kitchen which now held eight gamers: me, Adam, Joe and Katy as well as Ian, Martin, Pete and, of course, Sam.

Since there were eight, there wasn’t a chance for an initial communal game so we immediately split into two groups. Martin, Katy, Adam and Joe played Divinare - a rare but familiar game here at GNN, while Ian, Sam and me introduced Pete to Quantum - a very familiar sight on our tables.

Divinare played out on the far end of the table, and I couldn’t follow it’s progress although I was aware of Martin’s increasing despair and his insistence that he used to be good at this game. Katy procrastinated at one point, saying “I’m just touching cards,” to which Adam supportively replied “we’ve all been there.”

Katy 16

Adam T 16

Joe 12

Martin 0

There's no tie breaker in Divinare but Katy graciously accepts the win “because I'm a witch.” Joe found it intriguing: “I've never played it before,” he said. 

“But you said you just needed a rule refresher,” said Martin, aghast.

“Yeah…” Joe replied. And we'll probably never know what he meant by that.

As for Quantum, Pete got a rules explanation and, thanks to a fortuitous roll of dice, was able to place a cube in his first go.

Pete and Sam were the early leaders with two cubes each, while Ian went warlike, even managing to wipe out four ships in one turn (attacked three, put cube down for dominance, picked up card with two extra moves, attacked again) and I expanded my fleet to the maximum five cubes.

But late in the game, i am in a winning position. I have the Agile card, meaning that deploying isn't an action and so i actually have three turns in a row where I'm able to set myself up for a win. But each time, someone attacks me, and the chance is lost. 

Ian is too spread across the map to get a cube down (“I'm very vulnerable,” he says. “We're here for you,” Katy reassures him) and Pete still has two cubes, so it's between me and Sam when suddenly he deploys, warps and puts down a cube to win the game.

Sam 0 cubes

Andrew 1

Ian 1

Pete 2

The Divinare group had started playing Maya while we were still midgame. The only thing I remember about that is all the comments about Joe's massive rack.

Martin 173

Joe 144

Adam 129

Katy 115

And now we were all free of our respective gaming commitments, we could reassemble ourselves as our whims dictated.

Ian, Pete, Joe and myself all whimmed ourselves into a game of Wandering Towers, while Katy, Sam, Adam and Martin played Fearless. 

Shockingly I didn’t note the result of Fearless, but I did note that leading with a zero seemed to be a dick move - and observation based on Martin's “fuck orrrrf” to Sam after he kept leading with zeroes.

As for Wandering Towers, we rapidly forgot where our wizards were as we built an incredibly tall tower. 

Mid game, we checked the contents of the Raven tower to see how well we were doing and Joe was upset to see only one of his wizards in there, since he was sure he'd done two. In the Ian, Ian was most nimble, getting his fourth wizard into the black tower while no one else could manage that on the same turn.

Ian 4 wizards 

Andrew 3

Pete 2

Joe 2

And with that, Katy and I set off home. The remaining sextet played so clover. Sam texted the score: 34/36

And then they played again as a quartet, but Sam was stymied by a card that could've gone on all four sides of his clover.

19/24

And so it ended. Thanks all, another evening of dreams coming true especially since Ian told us that chocolate cider does actually exist.