Easton Uprising

Katy writes from the frontline:

For my (Katy) inaugural blog posting I took home scribbles on the back of a receipt after a rather epic evening of fifteen games at Anja and Steve’s (thank you for your excellent hostings). None of the usual bloggers were available and no one else seemed keen, so I thought I’d give it a go, apologies for the lack of the usual humour, wit, concise reporting and gaming insight.

We were nine in total, and as soon as myself, Joe and Ben arrived, a rather stirring (mainly Adam, who almost woke Luther) rendition of Happy Birthday was projected towards Joe, who will be 21 (again) on Thursday. The choir, initiated by Anja, also included Steve, Adam, Ian, Matt and Martin, the Easton (ish) masses.

We started with the usual negotiation of what game to play with whom and the rest is history:

Isle of Skye
Rather embarrassingly I’d forgotten most of the rules for Isle of Skye, which is actually now my game. Thanks for Matt and Ian for their patience with explaining the rules and the various uncertainties we faced. It seems like a quick game though and rather close throughout and at the end. Bothies and lighthouses were win win but scarce and fought over for most of the game.

Katy 51
Matt 49
Ian 44

Eggs of Ostrich
It was my turn to explain the rules of Eggs of Ostrich to both Ian and Matt as I was the only one to have played, thankfully it’s quite simple and from the results you can see that we were all playing rather nicely in the second game, once all the rules had been ironed out. This was obviously not going to last and we clearly became a bit more cut-throat towards the end; Martin would have been proud.

Katy 14
Ian 10
Matt 1

Ian 9
Matt 8
Katy 8

Matt 11
Katy 6
Ian 2

Aggregated
Katy 27
Ian 21
Matt 20

Push it
Ian 7
Katy 4
Matt 2

At this point myself, Ian and Matt had played five games, push it being a filler whilst kingdoms were finished being built in the lounging area.

Kingdom Builder
I’m unable to comment on this game, apart from the fact that they seemed to be getting on well, as I can’t remember hearing any loud profanities, which was surprising as both Martin and Adam were playing… together!

Adam 61
Steve 60
Martin 54
Anja 44

At this point in the evening we did some switching around, although looking at it, we only actually made one change; Martin left the lounging area, complete with comedy poising cat over the back of the sofa, and Ian lounged in his place and the following games were played

Web of Power
The key to web of power, which was rather nice and simple, looked impressive, had nice wooden pieces and played fairly quickly, was the Advisors. Advisors are tokens that you place on shields/cities in one of many countries depending on your cards (you have three each, playing up to all three to place up to two pieces). There are also Cloisters that can be placed on roads across and between cities. Cloisters score twice, on the first and second time through the deck of cards, but Advisors score only on the last, but when they score they score big and gave me the win. Whilst Martin and Matt seemed to be slogging it out in the same two or three countries, I seemed to have several to myself; skill rather than the luck of the cards? Who knows.

Katy 72
Martin 54
Matt 40

Whilst the above seven games had been taking place the, until now, in blog terms, allusive Ben and Joe had been playing Arkham Horror, the card game.

Arkham Horror, the card game
They started to chat about this on the way over and I thought I’d transported into a parallel universe… when I remembered, they don’t actually exist (or do they)! I understood not a word of what they said and looking over at the game I also had no clue what dark magic they were up to. At the end of their epic journey they reported having won, it’s a cooperative, and defeating a Ghoul Priest, whoever s/he may be. This, apparently is the only game that Joe allows himself to buy any of, although he did say he was in a game shop foundling games and muttering under his breath twice in the last week!

Ben and Joe Win
Ghoul Priest No Win

Eggs of Ostrich (again)
Martin managed to persuade both myself and Matt to play Eggs of Ostrich again, I did not fare as well against Martin’s ruthlessness, although I expect I was equally almost as ruthless, which is how we handed two out of the three matches to Matt, playing the same hands and fighting amongst ourselves. We played three games, which seems traditional and there was some debate about how these should be reported on the leader board, the question on everyone’s lips was, do we continue as before, each game is a game or do we aggregate our scores over three? I’ll leave it up to the master of the leader board, Andrew to decided.

Matt 12
Martin 4
Katy 4

Martin 11
Katy 10
Matt 6

Matt 8
Katy 7
Martin 4

Aggregated
Matt 24
Katy 21
Martin 19

Actually… in both cases, maybe it should be aggregated :D

Battle Line
Whilst we were engrossed in Web of Power, or was it Eggs of Ostrich, Joe and Ben played Battle Line, there was a line and I presume a battle, using cards in various ways and maybe some other mechanisms to win. Joe felt that Ben was playing some rookie errors early on, but he managed to smash Joe in this game of war… what is it good for…

Ben Wins
Joes Does not win

Fuji Flush
We managed to finish two games at more or less the same time and so myself, Martin and Matt joined forces with Ben and Joe to play this ever more innuendo based game. This time, as well as dick points, for putting a card down one higher than any opponent and stopping them pushing it through, there was also the swinging dick, which is where you wipe out everyone else’s cards in one go. We briefly discussed scoring this alongside the standard scoring. I envisage counters that are handed out during the game, one standard counter for a dick point and some sort of shiny gem for each swinging dick. Next time please. The first game was notable for Joe handing the win to Martin, so he could come third!

Martin Win
Matt 2
Joe 3
Katy 4
Ben 5

Ben Win
Martin 1
Joe 1
Matt 2
Katy 2

St Petersburg
St Petersburg, in the latter stages played to the sounds of much swearing and foul language (sorry about that), apart from that I know little, apart from the results, that needed to be texted in, by Adam, at 23:13, the scores were worryingly similar to Kingdom Builder

Adam 65
Steve 54
Ian 46
Anja 43

When thinking about writing the blog last night I thought I’d summarise by awarding everyone at least one prize, such as most plays of Eggs of Ostrich (myself and Matt, six each) and most profanities (Joe). Alas, I was too ambitious in my thinking and this has gone on long enough. Thanks for having me, a good night was had by all, until next time.

And here's this week's division, in glorious technicolor.

Cubes

It was just myself (Sam) and Andrew at my place for our semi-regular Thursday gaming. I mooted some biggies - Caverna, Eclipse... but maybe still worn down from his cough, Andrew didn't bite. Instead we began with Battle Line, Reiner Knizia's classic and slightly poker-esque game of combat.

Eight pieces (flags) are laid in a row across the table, and players are dealt a hand of seven troop cards. These have a value of between 1 and 10 and come in six colours. On your turn you simply play a card in front of a flag of your choosing, then pick up a card. Once both sides have played three cards to a flag, armies are compared and the strongest claims the flag. The strength of the army is where the poker similarity comes in, with straight flushes beating three of a kind beating flushes beating straights beating card-high.

As soon as someone wins five flags (or three adjacent) they win the game instantly. And added to the troop cards are the tactics cards, which mix in some rule-breaking or bending. They can turn a flag in your favour, but obviously if you're picking up tactics cards that's one less troop card in your hand. Very clever, very Knizia-y. Andrew's first play too, and he liked it. I claimed two narrow wins.

Next we broke out Railways of the World, and set up Mexico. I decided to throw caution to the wind in terms of bonds and just plough ahead whenever I took a fancy to bid, build, or upgrade. As a result I surged into what looked to me an insurmountable lead - I was up in the twenties with Andrew back on four points. I had fifteen bonds, but Andrew had nine. Surely this was a done deal.

But back Andrew came, steadily shipping goods and picking up points from me courtesy of his two trade depots. Before I knew what was happening he was in the lead, and still had fewer bonds. At this point Andrew - he realized later - should have done everything to end the game, to complete a most unlikely comeback. But Mexico continued to see a lot of railroad activity, and as Andrew's shipping options ran out my more powerful train delivered goods across the western seaboard, shunting me back into the lead. We ended with me on 19 bonds and Andrew 18. We both completed our Barons (most track; most money) and the game ended with me safely ahead again. I didn't note the scores, I think it was 48-56 or something.

Packing Railways away, we both noted how easily everything seemed to fit in the box. "We're so experienced now" Andrew remarked. Being a regular discoverer of random games elements on Wednesday mornings, I looked around the kitchen nervously. "Have we missed anything?" I said, but it appeared we hadn't. Our putting away of the game was almost as successful as our playing of it. More so, in a way.

It was just gone 10pm now so we wanted something short and sweet to wrap things up. I brought out the hit of the Highlands holiday (Stan and Joe both love it) Gobblet Gobblers. This is a twist on noughts and crosses that looks like plastic tat but is actually a rather strategic challenge. Your goal is to get three of your 'Gobblers' in a row, but any Gobbler that has been placed on the 'board' can also move to adjacent squares. And because they come in three sizes, larger ones can jump onto smaller ones and effectively take their place.

As well as placing and movement, there's also a memory element of remembering what's underneath bigger Gobblers, as once you lift one up you have to move it. In one game that's no challenge, but in several, played after a few glasses of wine... it is.

We won a few games each and then called time. Andrew headed off and I inserted Railways back into the cupboard, stopping once again to sigh contentedly at the collection. Maybe I've reached some kind of inner peace, having foregone the current maths trade and elected not to buy anything from the games shop in Glasgow, after an extended period of obsessing over finding and playing new games.

Back in the kitchen, I spotted the bag of cubes from Railways on the table.