The Sponge and Nestle

Anja and Steve were our hosts last night, so we kicked off the evening with an update on the latter's fly-by-night plumbing activities. What does Anja do when Steve is hurdling rooftops with a tap spanner in his belt? Maybe she mixes cement. But in this instance she was getting Lennon to bed, so we began without her, kicking off with Meister Makatsu, new to Steve, but familiar to the rest of us: Pete, Martin, Joe, Ian and myself. 

 

We'd only just kicked off when Anja and Louie materialised, happy to watch and wait as we played out Knizia's tricks-are-bad semi-trick-taker. If I knew the tie-breaker rule before I'd forgotten it, so was interested to hear that if points leaders are tied, whoever holds the Meister Makatsu token wins instead. I decided early on to try and engineer this position for myself, but though I had the card I needed in the last round, I didn't have the circumstances.

Ian 7 wins on tie-break
Steve 7
Martin and Sam 11 each
Pete 13
Joe 'a horrible amount' 

We split into two groups: Pete, Steve and Ian joined me for Medina as the other four played 2 Win. 

On our end of the table I talked newbies Steve and Ian through Medina's thankfully-simple rules and refreshed Pete, who hadn't - I belatedly remembered - played it with me on Saturday after all (at OGFest). Collectively, we're building the city of Medina, which consists entirely of palaces, stables, and a single street along which citizens march in an erratic procession. 

But it's not a co-operative game: you're trying to maximise the size of your palaces (one of each colour) and position them by the walls and street for extra points. The catch is that as soon as you take ownership of a palace, you can no longer make it any bigger (exception: add a stable). There's some structural ordinance in Medina too: no abutting of buildings, and the walls each side must leave room for a gate (even if, as we subsequently discovered, it's blocked by a building.) We were a short way into our adventure when 2Win finished with a victory for Joe. 

1 Joe

2 Martin

3 Louie

4 Anja

Louie retired to bed, and Joe, Martin and Anja set up Renature, with Joe's new board that changes the mechanics slightly (in ways I unfortunately missed). 

Back in Medina, Steve was constantly foiled by the rest of us grabbing palaces before he could, as I held onto the largest orange palace and Pete held a big brown palace he managed to nuzzle up against the point-giving citizens. 

I forgot to take a picture of the finished thing, possibly because I was focused on sabotaging Steve's late-game attempts to build anything that might push him into the lead. I thought I was harmlessly littering the perimeter with walls but it transpired I was helping Pete nick a wall bonus off Ian. He and I were first out of pieces as Steve and Pete entered a tit-for-tat finale, hedge-betting on who could be the Last Dick. It was Steve, but it wasn't quite enough:

Sam 36

Pete and Steve 34 each

Ian (stolen wall by Pete) 31

Very close! Renature still had a short time to go, so we filled it with the magnetic fun of Kluster. 

Actually not all of the fun is magnetic. Some is in the bizarre rules translation, which tells you to set up the string to make a play area as above, and then instructs players to place their magnets in 'any groove of the sponge'. There were also references to a Nestle which left us none the wiser. The game was fun though, especially after we made the play area smaller. I think we all won once, except possibly Steve. And then Renature finished. 

 

Anja enjoyed her debut, but suffered a little at the hands of non-debutants Joe and Martin. We didn't have precise scores but it was something like

Martin 60ish

Joe 50ish

Anja 40ish

We rejigged, with Martin keen to play Better Letters and me unable to coax Steve into it so I could play Robo Rally instead. He splintered with Anja Pete and Ian into a game of Hey That's My Fish, whilst I sat down with Martin and Joe to make words. 

With no Jo here to maximise the personal scoring I wondered if I might be in with a shout. But my 'shortest word' wasn't as short as Martin's - who had en - and I misread the board, leaving me lagging early on. You can't lag against this pair: Joe was putting in words like liminal and Martin transubstantiation (or similar). Whilst this wordy drama played out, Pete was savaging the other penguins in HTMF.

I'm not sure how he did it, but look at that face. Clearly a self-hating sphenisciphobic. 

Pete 39

Ian 21

Anja 17

Steve 15

They grabbed Misfits off the shelf and went into the front room to play, possibly anticipating me bashing my fists on the table in a fit of pique. 

Better Letters finished just after 11, with Martin narrowly taking the laurels from Joe. 

Martin 50

Joe 44

Sam 32

And I left for home with Misfits still continuing! I heard later from Ian that he caused a huge collapse and Steve jumped in for the win. Whilst that was happening in the front room, Joe was beating Martin at Le Chocolat next door. I don't know much about this other than you're having to split a bar of chocolate and try not to eat - as Martin put it this morning - 'too much shitty orange'. Don't know if there's a score?

Apparently they even considered more gaming with So Clover available, before common sense took hold and everyone went home. 

How to win 2 Win

 My first games night in over a month and I strode towards Joe's with such purpose that I walked straight past it and had to turn back.
In Joe's kitchen were the six friendly faces of Joe, Jo, Martin, Ian, Adam H and Sam. They had done that old familiar trick of starting a game, safe in the knowledge that this would magically cause another gamer to arrive at the door. And it worked, but they kept playing while I sorted myself out. 

The game was Win 2. A card game where you play two cards from your hand to make a two digit number. The player who plays the highest gets a new card to add to their hand. The trouble is, in each round you have to play a higher number than before. The winner is the player who lasts longest.

Sam started cagey, keeping his numbers low such that by round three he was still only on 19.while Joe had 66. But by round 7, his cards had forced him to advance to 98, meaning he really needed to draw two nines to avoid defeat. He didn't, but equally Joe, Martin and Adam also couldn't progress. That left Jo and Ian and Jo found they couldn't play again. Ian, last man standing had won and did a little showboating by putting down 99 as a final hand.

Ian wins

Next we split into two. Jo, Martin, Sam and I played Better Letters while Adam, Joe and Ian chose Renature.

Better Letters is a word game which is played on a grid of cards which describe a rule that a word has to obey, such as “Must start with a P” or “must have two syllables”. The players have one minute to come up with a word that meets as many rules as they can, tracing a path across the grid. Each square gives points, especially if you're the only player who uses it.

I got lucky in my first round as the very ordinary word FLOATS landed on some unused tiles and picked up 5 points while other longer and more inventive words didn't score as high. And that's kind of the interesting part: the notion that long words would score highest isn't always true. For example, my FIREFIGHTING was outscored by Sam's MUNCH.

It was fun, although the games one minute time limit seemed punishing, but at least it kept things moving. And it was fun. I know Adam won't believe it, since he seemed to physically recoil when the game was described to him, but the agony of trying to come up with a word that maybe fits just one more rule is quite a challenge. 

Jo 45
Martin 31
Sam 29
Andrew 27

After this, Renature was still half and hour from completion so we left them to their curious incantations of “badger, badger, badger” and we played The Crew: Journey To The Centre Of The Earth. 

This new member of The Crew family had a twist. Each round had a score allocated to it, either according to difficulty or by how well you do. And overall success is measured on a little track which we make our way down, trying to reach the destination before another meeple does.


We thought this new format worked well, and it meant that there was no risk of getting stuck on one hand, getting frustrated at playing the same rules over and over.

There was one round in which each player secretly wrote down how many tricks they would win. In that round, at least, the camaraderie among us was replaced by something more dickish.

But we achieved our goals and got to the destination before the automatic meeple did.

Success!!

Also at this point Renature ended,  with Joe sadly adding up what his points might have been if things had turned out differently:

Adam 82

Ian 53

Joe 40

At this point I left. Nice to be back after all these weeks. I'll let Sam take over…

Post-Andrew, we were still at six and as Martin said to the room, the night was young. There was some low-level debate before we all realised we were happy to play Phantom Ink. At least initially. Joe and Martin became the spirits (ie clue-givers) and the rest of us the Media (ie idiots). Martin was paired with Jo and I whilst Joe teamed up with Ian and Adam. 

Jo and I asked Martin if the word was (associated with) a Greek or Roman figure of mythology, who would it be. Martin wrote DEM and I honestly didn't have a clue, but Jo figured out it was Demeter. Then Joe's first clue was AG before he was silencioed, leading us to think of agriculture. Jo suggested Bread, and we went for an early guess. Wrong! Martin gave us the first of many meaningful looks. 

Fortunately the other team were struggling too, and we were all - even Martin - baffled by Joe's DISS, even after he added an O to the end. Jo and I were still on a wheat theory but more guesses proved wayward, conjuring only an air of jadedness from our spirit, like he'd done a long week at the clueing office and didn't need this shit on a Friday. Ian and Adam went wrong again too and Jo and I were left with our two theories: the long-mooted wheat, or Jo's recent theory of jam. I was allowed to choose and guessed wheat - it was jam! The other team won. My biggest contribution was selecting defeat from victory. Or maybe just being generally baffled. 

Next was So Clover. I bashed out my clues feeling reasonably okay about three of them, but the fourth hit the rocks and we kicked off with a 4. We followed that with three sixes, however, before we reached Joe's, who had - with some ambition, it seemed, clued apple and scrumpers next to each other. Amongst his cards were the words fruit and orchard. We were initially flummoxed, but when we looked closer and tried some things out, we were still flummoxed as well. "Joe!" Martin castigated him. Joe chortled. In fairness though it did make sense in the end - we'd maybe just ported a little spirit confusion over from the previous game. 

Both Ian and started making moves to go, and Adam did go, but Martin suggested Slow Co-ver, his invention of last week where there's a single clover and you're all trying to come up with the same clues. We did very well! The scoring is still under discussion but Ian and I combined, and then there was a trio of hits, and a couple more and we were so enamoured we played again. At this point Jo stopped, reaching peak clue for the evening, and merely watched as the scene played out before them. It was another minor triumph. Tweak the scoring, pdf the rules, stick it on BGG and before you can say 'solo mode' it'll have it's very own just an activity thread. 

Until next week!

Green on Green on Green

 A majorly late, and majorly minimal, account of last Tuesday's, sliding in under the wire just before tonight's games.

We were four; Katy, Ian, Martin and me (Joe), at mine. We took advantage of that fact to play some card games, starting with a Friedemann Friese gem called FTW; Fuck The What? according to Katy. That does sound like a feasible name for a party game, to be fair.

I didn't capture the gameplay, in all it's rainbow-coloured glory, but here's the box - green on green. 

Katy was wearing green too, and Martin noted the general green-ness of everything. In any case we were all green at FTW, and whilst the gameplay is simple, along the lines of Abluxxen or Fuji Flush (sort of but not really) any obvious winning strategy eluded us. It reminded me slightly of 6Nimmt. We all liked it, would like to try again.

Katy 153

Ian 136

Joe 113

Martin 84

Next up Null unt Nichtig, a much older German (no shit) card game which Martin was briefly in possession of, having collected it from someone to deliver to someone else. A simple trick taker with five suits, the twist being that you don't have to follow suit; highest card wins, and you'll bank your won cards by suit, scoring the top card of each at the end of the game. Along the lines of Sticheln, it's a game of crapping on your opponents from a great height, to gails of laughter and howls of despair, as you ensure their high scoring cards get covered by zeros (two in each suit). 

It was completely beastly, and I did terribly. I'd play it again, but it's currently winging its way to its new owner. Feel like it might be playable with a Sticheln deck - does that have two zeros? 

Martin 110

Katy 96

Ian 80

Joe 73

(I think I've got the scores the right way round - I wrote them all down but not in order, and without the game titles).

It was only a little after nine, but Katy was keen to a) play So Clover and b) go home and get some rest, so we bust it out and played three rounds. I think we only achieved a perfect 24 on the last round - in any case that's the only one I took a photo of.  More green! I seem to remember Ian getting royally portobello-ed but I can't remember the details now. If only I'd taken more photos.

After this Katy left, and we three played three rounds of 2Win. I tried a strategy of starting high, which failed miserably in the first game, as I failed miserably to draw any nines. I tried again starting a bit lower in the second game, and succeeded admirably. In the third game I lost again - in the end we won a game apiece. Harmony was restored, and we bade one another good morrow. A fun night, thanks all.

Alibi checks out

Another warm evening began with one of those things GNN doesn't have a tag for - conversation. But this didn't last long and soon we were trying to impress Meister Makatsu with our ninja moves, a theme so far-fetched for this game of card-shedding that Martin's inward sigh could be heard as he began explaining it to us. 

We were six: as well as Martin and myself (Sam) Pete, Ian, Adam and Joe clustered around the table. Meister Makatsu is a demanding meister: our goal is to try to not win tricks - of a sort - as each round we play two cards of four, from three potential suits, with the highest in each suit claiming a point - points are bad - unless it's the orange suit, in which case it's two points. Unless it's round two in which case tricks win 2 points (orange 4) or round three in which case 3 (6). Getting rid of high cards early is ideal and there's definitely some luck. You don't want all your high cards at the bottom of your deck. 

But there are also two cards you'll never play, so the last hand gives you something of a get-out clause. I hoovered up more early tricks than felt ideal, but things worked out for me in the final round, when I got nothing at all. It was a game notable for how much it made Martin swear at us. 

Sam 7

Joe 9

Pete 10

Ian 13

Martin 16

Adam 19

Next up was Qork. This an extremely silly real-time reactions game where one player - the Cupper - rolls and reveals two big chunky dice. All the other players have corks on strings on a Qork mat and if the dice are doubles or add up to seven, must whip the corks away before the cupper slams the big rubber cup down on them. If you're caught, you get a point and as with Meister Makatsu, points are bad. If you yank your cork unnecessarily, that's a point. If you're the cupper and you don't catch anyone, that's a point for you. 

It's very stupid. Most of us at some point yanked our corks in a panic and Adam gamely gamed the system by lifting the cup off the dice to hold it immediately over the corks. Perhaps that helped him. Pete's reactions seemed like they could use some work, but on the other hand I'm not sure when this skill has real-world applications. He triggered the endgame by hitting ten unwanted points.

Adam 3
Martin 4
Everyone else: miles behind.

We did a third game with six of us: 2 Win. I think this has been explained elsewhere but it was a first time playing with so many players, and it seemed to go down pretty well. Martin chose to start fairly high and kept b[icking up cards for being the highest until Adam stormed past him into the early nineties. 

Despite his proximity to a century, Adam survived a couple more rounds whilst first Pete Joe and Ian and then myself fell by the wayside. But Martin clung on for the win. 

We split into threes now, with Martin and Joe introducing Pete to an old and fairly brutal Knizia tile-layer called Genesis and myself Ian and Adam opting for Rebuilding Chicago. 

Genesis is pretty simple. Players 'collaborate' on creating terrain types, but fight over majorities with only first and second place scoring. Each area must be at least three tiles, but there's also bonuses to be had for the largest of each terrain type (x2), and the largest of overall x3. There's also obstructions on the board to factor in, meaning you want to avoid the geographic cul-de-sacs that inevitably emerge. 

Final board (face-down tiles are just denoting scoring)

Pete took a debut victory here as Martin fell victim to Explainer's Curse. 

Pete 45

Joe 39

Martin 36

In Rebuilding Chicago we don't have that shared space, but the timing and claiming of events was the most critical in this play that I've yet encountered. 

Ian and I could probably have done more to hamper Adam though: not exactly a whitewash but a solid win thanks to his late-game placing of Landmarks. Thank God Ian ended things before he could build a third. 

Adam 154

Sam 143

Ian 129

In the short time Chicago overran Genesis, they'd played Chocolates, also known as Martin's Revenge.

Martin 25

Pete 17

Joe 11

I missed every chocolate-based photo opportunity as I was so focused on polyominoing in Illinois, but I did manage to snap Martin packing it away, apparently in a fine late-evening mist. 

It was late enough that Adam felt he could clover before bedtime, so that's what we did. Some really good stuff here and oh-so-close to a Record of Legends score of 36/36. We fell just short on Pete's clover which had a slightly unfortunate red herring of rifle, which we thought went with repartee. We should have listened to Adam, who correctly thought it was comedy/tennis. A solid clue, but 34/36 ain't half bad, and a memorable play as well for Martin's workplace tale of an abandoned Zoom call after someone shared their screen in a highly unsuitable manner. Not him, I should make clear.  

 

So we then lost Adam to the night but felt it was early enough that we could play on, and stayed in cloveresque territory with newbie Alibis. 

Like So Clover, it's a word-association co-op, with a theme that floats away in the breeze, although the deduction element is intact: we're collectively trying to work out who the 'criminal' is and we all dealt two of the line-up ourselves. First off we must convey which two we have by looking at the random words on them and attempting to link them in a clue: just like one side of a clover, basically. Then we announce our clues one at a time and everyone ticks off which pair we think that player has on our own little elimination boards.

After that we all announce who we are and hope that at least one other player deduced correctly: if so we can reduce the 'heat' on us by one. Then we'll remove three heat for every player who successfully figured out who the criminal was; the goal being to remove all the heat over three rounds. 

And we succeeded! It was a close-run thing but we swept the board win round three with everyone figuring out that Japan was the rogue word (I forget which superhero it was though). A great success, and a fine way to wrap up the evening.