Breathless

Tuesday arrived, and so did Ian. We chatted for a bit and then realised as we were here, we might as well play So Clover. Ian had tricky words so while he was thinking I attempted to draw the singer we were listening to. Any guesses?

Joe arrived during our ruminations, and together we scored a reasonable 10/12. We were still only three and I mentioned I'd like to try KuZOOka when everyone got here, so Ian encouraged me to set it up. That's why Katy, Adam and Gareth all walked in to find their first game decided for them (sorry) as we collaborated on getting some animals out of a zoo. 

Initially there was some confusion, and I must admit I was feeling a touch of the cosmic frogs as Joe queried my interpretation of the rules. However the confusion turned out to be I'd actually got them correct for a change, and we ploughed on. It was thirsty work.

   

We all had a small hand of cards and use them to advance along the track, and hopefully get the animals to freedom by reaching the white zone at the end (see pic). However we don't play or reveal cards, but just place markers where we think we can collectively reach once some decides that's far enough for now, and all cards are revealed. Hopefully, we get experience points which means more cards and further progress next round.

The advancing along the track is less about movement then, and more planning - how far you advance and where you place your marker is, one hopes, revealing information about your hand. It's like a co-op Perudo. But we started badly when I took a risk in round one, then we busted in round two as well and in round four we busted when going further would actually have made us safe! In the seventh and final round we had to go for broke, but unfortunately the game ended in disaster.

I really liked it and was up for another stab, but Katy's excitement over the animal meeples had faded and it just made her want to play Perudo, which sadly nobody else was keen on. Instead we played My Gold Mine.

In this Incan Gold-esque undertaking, we're all trying to grab gold whilst avoiding being caught by the dragon. Instead of Incan Gold's table-reading though, we're flipping cards: either movement cards to get us to safety, or gold cards that may trigger the dragon's movement. It's quite dickish, especially when movement cards allow you to swap places with someone. Ian had a strong start in round one, Gareth had a good round two, but I snuck ahead of both in the final round - when instead of 'most gold' all your gold scores - as Joe went down in flames. 

Sam 14

Ian 12

Adam 9

Gareth 8

Katy and Joe 6 each

Then we split into two groups. Ian Adam and Katy played Biblios whilst Joe, Gareth and I revisited 7 Wonders Architects. With three of us the game was much quicker than the seven of last week, and divergent strategies emerged, with Gareth going a mostly civil route - with attendant cat noises - me building a hefty military, and Joe focusing on a swiftly-constructed wonder.

Meanwhile in Biblios things were marginally more raucous, as you can probably tell from the facial comparisons below.

The planets aligned with the finales, with everyone wrapping up almost to the second. It was a tense finale, with Adam winning tie-breaker for second according to the official rules and Ian winning it according to Extreme Biblios variant. "I prefer that" Ian said. Either way, they both lost.

Katy 7

Adam 7/Ian 7

In Architects, neither Joe's completed wonder and my warlike ways were enough to prevent Gareth from taking a debut win, despite me grabbing the cat off him. His city full of statues apparently made up for a wonder without a head:

Gareth 46

Sam 39

Joe 34

I canvassed immediately for Fun Facts, and to my recollection there were very little protests. I wish I'd written the categories down now from a fascinating couple of plays. For every dud (How many cousins do you have) there were several bangers, like how much we like animals to how much we think money brings happiness, and we did reasonably well in game one (35 from a possible 48) before falling marginally shorter in game two (34/48) probably because of the dumb cousins question. 

How many cups of coffee or tea had we had today? How many hats did we own? It transpired that Katy owns Many Hats, and Gareth very few. Joe thinks of himself (correctly) as the Most Creative, and Ian has a lot of cousins. Most grippingly of all, the How long can you hold your breath question had us all attempting to live up to our claims at the end of the game. Gareth did much better than he thought he would. I fell 7 seconds short of my 60 seconds. But Adam and Joe can hold their breath, it turns out, quite a long time. Joe can even perform mimes and - to Katy's skepticism - 'open his mouth' while holding his breath, up to an astonishing two minutes. All those swims up at Henleaze in the icy water finally counted for something, even though he'd only written 60 seconds during the actual game. 

But after these eye-watering scenes, it was now time for bed, and as everyone (except me, obviously) made their way into the summery night air, another GNN came to a close. 

We're all the 99%

At 7.45 there were seven of us clustered around Steve and Anja's table: along with Steve and Louie, Joe and I were first to arrive, then Ian, Adam and Martin made it a septet. Lennon made a brief appearance too, but mainly to collect a squidgy toy for bed. At Joe's suggestion, we set up 7 Wonders Architects, one of a clutch of new games in his bag. 

This is like an even-speedier 7 Wonders, or at least it would be with less players. Everyone's cardboard wonder starts scaffold-side up, and as soon as you've the resources to build it it's mandatory to do so, discarding the cards and flipping it over, starting from the bottom and working up - as Louie pointed out, you can't build from the top down in real life either. 

Ian's Big Dude, with pedestals flipped

Flipped wonder sections score points and - as with the original game - may also trigger bonuses. So far, so similar. But rather than drafting cards simultaneously, players take turns taking one card from the decks placed between players face-up, or - as I kept forgetting - from a shared face-down central deck, representing a mini-gamble. Wonder resource needs are fairly flexible: it's usually x number of matching or non-matching resources and what they actually are is immaterial. I think someone built a pedestal out of glass at one point. 

Science cards are cashed in for science tokens (one-off rewards/end-game scoring) and military cards compete with neighbours whenever war is triggered, which is less predictable than the end of a round. In fact, there are no rounds, and the game chugs along at a fairly rapid pace until someone - Adam, in this case - completes their wonder:

Adam 35

Louie 34

Ian 30

Sam and Joe 28 each

Steve 26

Martin 24

It was a bit long with seven of us, but the reaction was mostly positive. "I enjoyed it" I said. 

"I'll enjoy writing about it" Martin muttered. With Anja now joining us and Louie wanting one quick game before he was exiled to his bedroom, we set up That's Not a Hat.

The chalice of palpable disdain passed from Martin to Adam as confusion reigned supreme - the game's actual aim, rather than an inadvertent by-product. Ian and Anja confessed to having no idea what cards they had, and Ian's speculative skateboard proved his undoing. 

Ian loses (three penalty points)

Adam, Joe, Steve, Martin and Sam all win (no penalty points)

Louie left us and we split into groups. It was now Martin's turn to break out a new game in Hot Lead, for which he was joined by Joe and Ian. 

Anja was keen to try Hansa Teutonica and I needed no encouragement. Steve looked slightly askance at the busy board but signed up, and soon established a classic confused-Steve-scores-loads-of-points strategy. I missed what happened in Hot Lead, other than it finished before before I'd concluded teaching Hansa Teutonica, as Martin crowed happily. Joe win twice and Ian once before they moved on to Gang of Dice. 

Ian's view

We'd kicked off in Hansa Teutonica by now, and Steve's early trading post in Guttingen (I think?) started hoovering him up points. We kept remarking on it, but didn't actually do anything about it, each of us busy concocting our own little schemes. 

But you know in a game where one concocts their own little schemes, Adam will probably concoct more efficiently than anyone else, and so it proved in a tense - for some - conclusion. Steve triggered the end of the game by hitting 20 points, with the rest of us some way behind. Anja had no network to speak of, as our scheming around Guttingen kept her on a miserly two actions for half the game. I had some end-game points to score, but not enough to catch the breakaway leaders: Adam and Steve tied on points, and were only separated by the second tie-breaker!

Adam 48 and most valuable network
Steve 48
Sam 35
Anja 15

Brutal stuff. At the other end of the table Ian was wrapping up a win in Spots, of which I missed all the drama as we were hypnotised by Adam's scoretrack action in HT. Joe and Martin finished with three dogs each. We made a big group again for another new game out of Joe's magical bag: Fun Facts. 

This a slightly Wavelength-esque co-operative where in each round we are asked a hypothetical question such as How much would you need to be paid to work for a year at a research station in Antarctica or a factual question like How long have you been doing your favourite hobby. Everyone writes their answer - always expressed as a number - on the back of their own plastic chevron and then we go around the table adding ours to the column, placing it where we think it's correct relative to everyone else's. Once that's done, the starting player has the option of moving their own chevron before they are revealed, starting at the bottom. Collectively the hope is we're in ascending order, but of course the game throws up surprises. 

We score points for each chevron that keeps to the 'order' we're trying to establish. Above we are discovering everyone's liking for celebrating their own birthday. Ian (35) is perhaps unsurprisingly at the bottom. Joe (orange) and Anja (red) are the numbers slightly out of kilter. 

I loved this game, even if some of the questions skew it rather heavily away from joyful innocence and into unabashed smut. How comfortable are you around nudity? Do you enjoy time with old people? By the time the relatively innocuous query about favourite hobbies arrived, everyone was basically talking about wanking and how much Steve likes reading on the toilet (99%) which he not unreasonably argued was a percentage of the time he enjoyed reading, imagining one would assume that if he's not enjoying it, he'll stop. 

We didn't do brilliantly but it was a fascinating insight into everyone's psyche, sending Ian and Adam home with possible big thoughts. Steve was starting to yawn but we coaxed another game out of him that turned into four games - the rapid and tense Kites. Our first attempt was the most successful as we weren't that far off emptying the deck. But every time we said one more time, we seemed to get worse.

So much so we had to eventually accept that we are just shit at flying kites, and better at judging each other's peccadillos. After decades of our favourite hobby (exceptions: Ian (video games), Adam (football), Anja (listening to music)), at least there's something to show for it.