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.