Double Ore / Nothing

Last night we broke out the game that "started it all" - Settlers of Catan. Back in the mists of time this was, at one point, the only game I ever played - having been introduced to it by Chris. I introduced it to Joe many years later, and the rest of Joe's downstairs alcove is history.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The evening began much earlier, with just Andrew and myself facing off over herb gardens in Herbaceous, the game that crosses Biblios with Cottage Garden. The rules are very simple - on your turn, you may pot (moving herbs from gardens into pots) and then you must plant: flipping over two herb cards, putting one in your private garden and one in the community garden.

Everyone has four pots they are trying to fill (all the same/all different/pairs/three of any type, including the special herbs) and when you pot, you can take the cards from your own and/or the community garden - so there's a bit of push your luck: hoping nobody will grab what you'd like for yourself, and hoping you don't pot a herb only to flip over cards that would have helped you. Also, if you pot special herbs 1, 2 and 3, you get a biscuit.

No, I don't know either - but it's worth five points.

Sam 61
Andrew 54

And with Ben and Ian still en route, we played again:

Andrew 56
Sam 54

Then Ben arrived, and we played as a three. He took to it pretty well:

Ben 55
Sam 49
Andrew 37

Ian also turned up during the game, so it was time to think about what to play as a four. Panamax had been floated (by me) but also vetoed (by me) as I wasn't sure I was familiar enough with the game to facilitate a four-hander. After some rumination, we settled on Black Orchestra, the game of co-operative assassination attempts. Ben and Ian took on Wehrmacht roles, I was part of the Abwehr, and Andrew was a civilian.

1939

The game began with a air of mild menace, but nothing too dramatic had happened when everything suddenly went terribly wrong. With three of us at Extreme Suspicion (- if the Gestapo raid, you are arrested) Andrew took efforts to lower his own suspicion score to medium. Then Ian, on the subsequent turn, decided to conspire: it went badly wrong, and Andrew (in the same location) saw his suspicion go back to Extreme in an instant. It was the equivalent of handing Andrew a fizzing cartoon bomb, and then running out the door.

Then the Gestapo turned up! All of us but Ben were arrested, and when Ben came to spring us from jail, he was arrested too. Game over, and Ian couldn't apologise enough.

1945

Or not enough for Andrew, anyway, who kept mentioning his error during our next game: Quantum.

Ben was new to this as well, so Andrew and Ian talked him through the rules while I had a call with the absent family. When I returned, we were ready to go, and as it often the case in Quantum, we all got a cube down within our first two turns. After that, it turned dark. Ian and Ben both homed in on my ships and I was blown off the board. Whilst that melee was taking place, Andrew was making hay elsewhere, establishing a cube lead and getting four ships on the board, clustered together.

Dick moves began in earnest. Ian somehow ended up with 3 value three ships, which for whatever reason he decided not to change, but instead embark on a galaxy-wide marathon relay of moving and warping, to get one ship miles from the others. Ben pulled off the move of the game with a two-cube-placement, getting one down via his ships then another through dominance.

I played a sneaky game which was sort of dictated to me by the cards - I could construct from corners, deploy anywhere on the board, and best of all, I was Resourceful: if I removed a ship from the board, I got an additional action. This meant it was hard for the others to predict what I would do, and I nabbed the win:

Sam 0 cubes
Andrew/Ben 2 cubes left
Ian 3 cubes left

We returned Quantum to its box, and as it was only just gone nine, decided to introduce Ian to Settlers! The rules explanation took about 90 seconds, and we were off.

It was nice to revisit from a nostalgic point of view, but I must say we felt the age of the game now. So many turns were an exercise in rolling dice, not getting anything, then passing them on (the blog post title comes from what Andrew / and I picked up every time a six was rolled.)

Gotta love Ian's optimism!

I spent much of the early part of the game either cursing the dice for not rolling 8's, or cursing the others for putting the robber on my 8. As with Quantum, Andrew's blue pieces looked to be in a strong position: as Ben grabbed the largest army and Ian and I fought over the longest road, he spread himself over the island and picked up the odd development card - at one point he was on nine points and just needed a Chapel or University to win. But he got a soldier instead, and I - to my literal surprise, as I thought I'd reached nine points myself - snuck the win from under him:

Sam 10
Andrew 9
Ben 7
Ian 4

Ben called it a night, and - unable to find Push It in the cupboard (despite the recent purge!) - we finished off with Love Letter. It was a slightly chaotic Love Letter, with all of us making basic errors. But Andrew saw off belated challenges from Ian and I to claim the win:

Andrew 3
Ian 2
Sam 1

Herbs, Nazis, Spaceships and Renaissance Romance. A lovely way to start the weekend.

Elementary Canal

The games collection is undergoing a purge: I'm shedding games that don't get played and trying to make front room of our house looks like it belongs to a reasonably sane human being rather than a meeple-obsessed hobbit.

Tangent to that is the idea that I actually play the games I've bought and work my way through the guilty dozen (probably more than a dozen, I imagine) or so games that are sitting lovelorn on the shelves. Recently I've blitzed through A Feast for Odin, Black Orchestra, Euphoria, and Trajan. Feast is now a firm favorite after a shaky start, and Black Orchestra seems to have hit the right spot with myself, Andrew and Stanley too - the pair of us played again last night, and although we didn't get arrested the curfew Nazi curtailed our fun.

 Bedtime for Hitler

After Stan and Joe were settled I duly put on my specs and set up Panamax, the game of shoveling ships though the Panama canal. If that seems an odd choice of verb, just you wait! Ships get shoveled.

"Just push him out the way!"

Despite the location, the theme is very Euro-y, with each player the CEO of a shipping company that is loading ships and taking their cargo through the canal in question. But after that it gets more interesting. For a start, the winner is decided not on the most valuable company, but, in a celebration of rampant capitalism, the richest individual. The straightforward route here is to develop your own company and take payouts from it, but you don't have to do that. You could be a little more creative and, in a celebration of rampant capitalism, let your company go to the dogs whilst you load your cargo onto other players ships at opportune moments and buy shares in their companies instead. Let them do the hard work! As long as you get your money, right?

tiddlywinks/money

The only thing is, the more shares you buy in your own company, the more likely you are to get the 'best CEO' bonus; just like the way those rampant capitalists love to reward themselves for dicking people over in the most anonymous possible way. Plus - the more your company is worth, the more dividends you get...

This meddlesome intrigue gets thicker still when we come to the movement of ships. Each lock in the canal only has a certain amount of space, so any ships coming in behind a full lock will shovel everything forward to the next space in the canal - meaning you can just get in someone's way and have them do the hard work by pushing your cargo forward!

The dice bubble continues to grow

All of this stuff has a random generator too: available actions (12 each round, over 3 rounds) are decided by 12 dice being rolled at the start of the round, and on your turn you take a die, activating the action: get and load an order, move ships. When your ships reach the far end of the canal (routes go in both directions) both the company and you get paid for delivering it. The company gets the pip value of the dice, and you get $2 per die, or you can sacrifice this income to hire some kind of specialists - the stern-looking captain (movement!), the walkie-talkie-wielding stevedore (loading!), the big-chinned financial advisor (money!)

The big-chinned financial advisors are important because they define what you earn at the end of the game by giving you a set of criteria to aim for (you get one at the start of the game too) and make no mistake, these are not optional bonuses á la most-euros you can think of - they really define your plans for the whole game. Like if a real financial advisor tells you to ship goods from China, are you going to start loading a cargo of bratwurst and croissants? - Of course not.

three men called Max

Turn order is important here because going first puts you in the box seat - you have more chance of getting in someone's way and forcing them to move your boats for you. But by the same token, there's an element of risk in this - if nobody takes the plunge then all ships occupying space at the end of each round has to pay for the privilege. So there's a bit of brinkmanship too.

As well as the player ships there are also Cruise ships and military ships that zig zag back and forth - the cruise ships will take a little cargo for you, whereas the military will - potentially - pay you when you shovel them forward. This seeming afterthought makes for a canny tactic, as if you've shipped lots of Chinese goods then the Chinese military adore you and will give you a big payment every time you shovel their ship forward.

After three rounds all players sell their shares and receive cash, plus whatever bonuses their financial advisors bring them. Richest capitalist wins!

just pushing this Military ship through a lake

These are the designers who did the perfectly-serviceable but not that exciting Nippon - on a first impression I think this is streaks ahead of that game. The theme comes through strongly - you're literally pushing boats along the canal. The goal is more disgustingly evident. And the player interaction, which is minimal in Nippon (take an action before X does), is much more present here. I can see quite a few GNNers getting a kick out of this - and getting a kicking too!

Panamax survives the purge.

Birthdaycon

By curious chance, four of us GNNers have birthday’s close enough to each other that we can organise a games weekend on the flimsy pretext that we have successfully circumnavigated the sun again. Me, Sam, Chris (all February birthdays) and Paul (March) all gathered at Chris’ house on Friday evening for a couple of days’ worth of board games.

Sam and I arrived at about quarter to eight, too late to join in with the earliest games: two rounds of Heck Meck between Paul, Chris and Chris’ wife and recent convert to (some) Eurogaming, Jacquie.

Paul 12
Chris 6
Jacquie 0

Jacquie 9 (highest tile)
Paul 9
Chris 0

Once us two latecomers had got settled in (and Sam had played against Chris’ kids at Rhino Hero), our first game was Las Vegas. A nice light, jovial game of dice-rolling to get us started. Chris had a poor last round to drop back into third while, as I recall, Sam picked up some choice wins due to a number of draws.

Sam 520
Andrew 390
Chris 340
Paul 260

After this Sam suggested Black Orchestra, the co-op game of killing Hitler. Chris is not a fan of the co-op style of gaming, but I thought this game might be one even he’d enjoy. It has a sort of Escape From Colditz vibe and an accidental dark humour to it, as the game instructs Hitler and his deputies to amble around Germany, stealing cards and items from you.

But best of all, we finally succeeded! We carried out a coup d’etat in the Gestapo HQ, with all of us present along with Hitler and a whole bunch of dice. Just as Chris was about to roll to see if we were able to finish him off, Paul yelled out “Wait!” freezing Chris mid-shake. Paul then checked a few of his cards before saying actually, no, it’s fine, carry on. After that moment of high drama, Chris rolled the dice and the plan worked perfectly.

We win! Hitler is dead!

Then we got out Istanbul for our next game. We laid out the tiles according to the quick set-up, and Sam certainly lived up to that. He used the Sultan’s Palace to great effect, while the rest of us wandered around warehouses.

Sam 5
Chris 3 + cash
Andrew 3
Paul 2

After this we got out an old familiar: 7Wonders. This favourite never ceases to amaze with its new ways of winning. This time, Paul came away the clear victor thanks to his four (yes, four) guilds netting him thirty points by themselves.

My losing tableau

Paul 61
Chris 47
Sam 47
Andrew 43

This was followed by Biblios, which Sam won more or less with the hand he had at the end of the draw phase, hardly buying any cards in the auction phase.

Mmmm, Biblios....

Sam 6
Andrew 4
Paul 3 + brown
Chris 3 + blue

Interesting fact about Biblios: I haven’t scored over five points for almost two years.

It was by now the end of the evening, so we finished on Push It, giving our colours new and exciting names: Chris was callisto, I was brusque, Paul was octavio and Sam was vongeburp. Chris sealed the win thanks to me hitting the jack neatly between his two pucks.

Chris 12
Paul 6
Sam 6
Andrew 2

Saturday morning and I popped back into Bristol to turn off my heating and pick up Concordia from Sam’s house. I was back by mid-morning, and we picked up where we left off with Tinner’s Trail.

Sam’s monopoly of the Lizard was enough to see him into first place. Chris controlled the eastern part of the board while Paul and I fought over the middle.

Sam 106
Chris 85
Andrew 63
Paul 55

Then, after lunch of pizzas (bought by Sam and prepared by Jacquie) we all sat down for a five-player game of Caverna. None of us had played with more than three players that we could remember, so it was a new and exciting experience for all of us. Especially Paul who’d never played it at all.

It turns out he did pretty well, coming in second just by playing the most Agricola-like bits, and ignoring anything new. He also kept slashing and burning when I wanted to, leaving me seeking other options and ending the game with six unused spaces on my board. Even Sam’s two dwarfs did better than my three.

Sam's stash of stone

Chris 72
Paul 64
Jacquie 61
Sam 50
Andrew 44

We all agreed that with five players, it’s more of a bun fight, with fewer options available. Chris and Jacquie were even forced to go adventuring, which they hardly ever do in their two-player games.

After this, Sam went off somewhere (to call his family, I think) and the rest of us played Heck Meck. Jacquie told us that she’d asked someone to translate the German phrase on the front of the box, “Heckmeck im Bratwurmeck” and the closest they could get was “Hullaballoo in the sausage worm area”.

Most of the hullaballoo in this game involved passing round the 21 and 25 tiles. I got an high tile early on and tried my best to defend it, but to no avail.

Paul 6
Chris 5
Jacquie 4
Andrew 3

After this, the kids Ava-Rose and Ashton joined me and Chris for an exciting game of Outfoxed. I explained the rules, but got one wrong (I forgot you had to announce what you wanted before rolling the dice) but it hardly mattered. We turned over an number of suspects early on and each clue seemed to point to Ingrid as the pie-thief! Eventually, we were certain of our convictions, so we accused her and we were right!

We win!

This was followed by the adults sitting down to play Love Letter to fill in the time until lunch. Ashton asked why it was called Love Letter and I had to admit there was no real reason, despite the first three pages of the rule book trying to convince you there is.

"Are you the handmaid?" Chris asked...

Chris 3
Andrew 1
Sam 0
Paul 0

After this came supper followed by a couple of games of 6nimmt. In the first, a four-player game, we all suffered one bad round:

Chris 50
Paul 63
Andrew 68
Sam 73

During the next five-player game I suffered from a lack of attention, playing cards I thought would be safe, missing the fact that they picked up all the cards from a different row.

Paul 16
Sam 27
Chris 36
Jacquie 39
Andrew 74

Now it was half past eight and if we were going to play Concordia, we would have to do it now. Paul was given a summary of the rules and we found out we’d got another rule wrong with our version drastically increasing the number of movement actions each piece should have. Oh well, c’est la vie.

I started feeling ill halfway through and missed two whole rounds while on toilet duty. Also, Chris’ cold, a bother for him for the whole weekend, seemed to get worse. On the other hand, Paul seemed to get the hang of the game quite quickly. There were moments of AP for everyone, and by half past ten we had reached the end.

Sam 91
Chris 87
Paul 78
Andrew 77

Next up was Codenames. Another new game for Paul, but the first round (with Chris and I as spymasters) was relatively straightforward.

Chris & Paul wins!
Andrew & Sam loses!

In the second round, with roles reversed, Paul & Chris shot off into an early lead, meaning Sam had to take a few risks with his guesses. Luckily, Chris mistook Paul’s clue of “Country Club” (“Is Country Club okay as a clue?” he asked. “It has to be, now” replied Sam) to mean “millionaire” and in that moment, Sam & I snatched the win as I finally understood Sam’s cryptic “Snow White” clue from earlier in the game (“poison” and “mint”).

A bad start

Sam & Andrew wins!
Paul & Chris loses!

The last of the biggish games to be played was Medici. This old favourite needed barely a breath of rules explanation, as we set up and sorted things out. Sam spent most of the game berating himself for spending 9 on two tiles (a five and a one, not matching) in the first auction of the game. He seemed to recover quite well. Other notable events: the gold tile was the very last to be drawn in both rounds two and three, and I filled up my final boat for the princely sum of £3!

Sam 134
Andrew 109
Chris 103
Paul 97

Finally we ended on Push It. Or, in this case, Extreme Push It. Usually, extreme sports are invented to increase adrenalin and push the body to its limits. Extreme Push It came about due to a reluctance to move our chairs. Instead, we stayed where we were and placed the jack in the middle of Chris’ extended dining table, meaning we all had to negotiate two small ridges in the table top where an extra middle bit had been slotted in to lengthen the table.

Oh, how we laughed as our pucks jumped and skipped about. Would the result have been any different in a normal game? We will never know. But it ended (with bespoke colour names in brackets)

Sam (Tacitagreement) 7
Chris (Clunge) 4
Paul (Pastiche) 1
Andrew (Louvre) 1

And so, to bed. Our game-athon finally drew to a close. Sam and I set off early Sunday morning. Many thanks to Chris and Jacquie for hosting and thanks to Paul for making the trek across England to join us. All that’s left is the division and it’s nice to see three different winners for the weekend.

Congrats to Sam, Chris and Jacquie and thanks to all. It was a blast.

Ex of Österreich

The moon hung in the night sky, it's grey light turning the gossamer thin clouds into translucent pools of silver.

None of this was important, though, because it was Tuesday and therefore games night. Sam was hosting, arranging this week's shenanigans from an internet-less stay in the Netherlands via Joe. There were seven of us: Sam, Joe, Ben, Ian, Katy, Martin and me.

Our first game was one that Martin picked up during his recent trip to the US. He described it as a Take It Easy kind of game where everyone has the same numbers to complete the fiendishly difficult task. The idea is to fill in a map of America using numbers (supplied by the roll of two dice, coloured to match different areas on the map) but the trick is that adjacent areas on the map can't have numbers with a difference greater than one. For example, 4s need to be next to 3s, 4s and 5s. If you can't place legally, you have to fill in an area with an X and at the end of the game , the player with least Xs wins.

There's more to it than that, with opportunities to break the rules a limited number of times, but at its heart it's a very simple game.

And, just like Take It Easy, there were constant sighs of frustration at how cruel fate can be, occasionally punctuated by cries of delight. But only occasionally.

Martin 9
Sam 11
Katy 15
Andrew 15
Joe 16
Ben 16
Ian 17

Katy wanted to play again immediately, but the consensus was not in favour. Instead, we split into two groups. These two groups could broadly be characterized as a the Happy Giddy Fun Group and the Thinky Ponderous Assassinate Hitler Group. Martin, Katy and Ben went for chuckles with Eggs of Ostrich while me, Sam, Joe and Ian were more historically minded in Black Orchestra.

Both of these games were new to people, and there was a period of simultaneous rules explanations. The ever-competitive Martin wanted to teach and finish a game of Eggs of Ostrich before Sam had finished explaining the rules to Black Orchestra. He didn't manage it, but they were able to finish two games very quickly.

Martin 4
Ben 4
Katy 3

And then...

Martin 12
Ben 9
Katy 5

As for Black Orchestra, it's a game that squeezes every bit out of its theme. The artwork and text really add to the game as the four of us adopted personae from the real life attempt to assassinate Hitler and we shuffled around a map of west Europe to pick up things we need. It is a co-op game, and it had shades of Pandemic in that it requires a fair amount of choreography among the players, all the time dealing with the historically accurate Event cards that are uncovered after each player's turn.

Early on I had a chance to do the dirty deed, but my dice rolling let me down. At least, oddly, no one noticed my assassination attempt. Ian, too, later had a pop at the fuhrer, but he failed too.

On the other half of the table, they played Biblios which, I believe, was Ben's introduction to the game. He did pretty well.

Martin 9
Ben 3
Katy 2

And the crown of Mr (or Dr, in this case) Biblios passed to Martin.

Then they played Las Vegas, roping Dirk into their game, awarding him money whenever the dummy dice happened to win any.

Katy reminded Ben of his duty as a GNNer to pick on Martin when necessary, but alliances never last long when they rely on the roll of a die.

Martin 440
Katy 380
Ben 340
Dirk 110

And this victory gave Martin his very own Perfect Five. And all in one evening, too.

Meanwhile, back in the grip of the Third Reich, Hitler seemed more powerful than ever. But in case anyone runs away with the idea that Black Orchestra was a dour experience, let me put that to right. There's a grim humour, and you can't help but laugh at the things that fate flings at you. For example, Joe was wandering around southern Germany, minding his own business, when the entirety of the Nazi upper echelons turned up on his doorstep. "The wrong time to visit Nuremberg," he muttered, regretfully.

The game, too ended in fine comedic fashion. With Sam, Joe and Ian all in jail Ian managed to escape only to be instantly arrested again as he ran straight into Bormann. Then I went to get them out, but this time my plan was detected and, just like Seinfeld, the four main characters ended up behind bars.

A pity, but I'd thoroughly enjoyed our attempt. It avoids the usual pitfall of co-op games where the most experienced keeps giving advice to the others, because the text on the card and board allows even the complete newbie to understand what's going on and what needs to be done.

While the Gestapo had been busy rounding us up, one more game of Eggs Of Ostrich had been played.

Katy 10
Martin 5
Ben 0

Now we were all together, we had one last game together to round off the evening. We chose Fuji Flush, described at the time as the new 6nimmt or Pairs, only not as good as 6nimmt... or Pairs.

Ben made early gains by chaining his cards to other players', allowing him to push through on a regular basis (which is always desirable) but he was slowly pegged back and when Sam placed the twenty as his final card ("I was wondering where that was," remarked Martin) and no one else could chain together a decent response, his victory was assured.

Sam 0 cards left
Ben 1
Martin 1
Andrew 2
Ian 3
Katy 4
Joe 4

And with that, the evening was over. We set off into the crisp January night, the moon still shining down on us benignly, as if approving of our weekly battles.

Finally, we come to the Division for the first time this season.

You might be surprised at how many points Katy has. Well, I've been finding the Division a bit boring recently and have been thinking about changing things around a bit. Whether these rules stay or are just a passing fad, I don't know. Any opinions are welcome.

One of the ideas (implemented here) is something I call the Loser's Boost. In this, if you agree to a game you're bad at, you get a little multiplier to add to your score, i.e, x2 on your second game, x3 on your third, etc. So, this week, Katy kept playing Eggs of Ostrich even though she wasn't good at it, and her score was increased as a result. I hope that this will be of consolation to anyone who ends up playing a game they never win.