Whisky Remorse

The weekend started badly, with Stanley taking a tumble at school and a Friday night trip to A+E diagnosing him with a 'buckled' bone - the bone compacts on impact and bulges out to one side. Forced to wear a cast for 6-8 weeks, Stan does at least live in a house that's coming down with boardgames. So after some weekend Safranito, Pairs, and Codenames, on Sunday night Andrew and Ian rolled up for our belated 'Thursday' session, and the boys joined us for a game of Love Letter. Joe and I made a team, whilst the others played solo.

The patient

Stanley got off to a good start, winning the opening round. I recalled our Love Letter session over the holidays, where Stanley correctly identified we had the Countess after Joe said to me "I can see her boobies". No such mistakes from Joe this time, who successfully eliminated Andrew's King. Ian, the expectant winner going by previous form, accrued two cubes and in a game of first-to-three things looked ominous. But Stanley knocked him out in the final round and Joe and I were lucky enough to have the Princess:

Sam and Joe - 3 cubes
Stanley - 2 cubes
Ian - 2 cubes
Andrew - 0 cubes

I took the boys up to bed, whilst Ian and Andrew debated which two-player game to bash out. When I returned 20 minutes later, they were deep in a gripping game of 7 Wonders with Dirk, who appeared to be outscoring at least Ian, possibly both of them. Ian's lack of resources hadn't worked out for him, whereas Andrew had plenty to choose from. It was tight, and Dirk *almost* took his first outright victory. As it was, he shared the honor with Andrew:

Dirk - 38
Andrew - 38
Ian - 30

It was time for Safranito! For those not yet in the know, this game is like a cross between Istanbul and bowls. Rather than a race for rubies, the first to complete three recipes wins. On your turn you throw coins onto the board, hoping to A. grab the spices you need by landing your coin above the correct bowl and B. knock other people's coins into shitty non-productive areas.

I started badly, at one point with a solitary spice in front of me compared to Ian's 3 and Andrew's 4. So I was pleased as punch to engineer myself into a winning position half an hour later - with a secret recipe in front of me, all I needed was a bit of cinnamon. There was loads out there, and I didn't even need to worry about turn order. But my three successive throws were all diabolical, meaning I missed out on my lovely cinnamon - and the win, as Andrew completed his secret recipe as well!

Andrew - wins
Ian - 2nd (two recipes)
Sam - 3rd (two recipes)

What now? We nearly played Africana but I think the shelf being so high put us off. Instead we played Bruges, Stefan Feld's possibly most point-salad-y game after Bora Bora. Build houses, put characters in them, build canals, improve reputation, fend off disasters... I nabbed majorities in reputation and canal (points!) early on, whilst Andrew grabbed majority in characters (points). Andrew's tactic seemed to be build as many characters as possible (points!), and in this way he stopped Ian and I ever flipping our character majority markers. Ian built some canals and got a statue (points!). Andrew built some more characters, including one who gave him money every time Ian or I built a character (money!)

Where's the balsamic?

To me it seemed Andrew was going to walk away with it - but come the count-up my two majorities (the others only had one apiece) and maximum reputation clinched me an unexpected win:

Sam 57
Andrew 55
Ian 50

By now it was fairly late, and we'd started drinking whisky. Possibly this contributed to our insatiable appetite for Pairs, as well as our inability to find anything to record the scores on. They started on my hand, but I ran out of room, and said I couldn't write on my right hand because I'm right-handed. So Ian found a Tesco receipt in his pocket and Andrew recorded the scores on that. I kept going bust on 7's. I think we all twisted at times when sticking might have been more sensible. Andrew's view on the game with three players changed from "It's not the same without Martin hassling me" to "This is brilliant. Why don't we play Pairs with three more often?". His head may tell him why this morning.

Beyond the general chaos and plaintive crying it's all a bit muddy now - but Ian won two games whereas Andrew and I picked up a solitary one. And with that, the weekend came to an end. Unless Stanley demanding Codenames at 7.10 this morning counts?

The Sleeping Custard

When Sam found out he was unable to attend Tuesday’s meet, he sent out a call to any available gamers for a Bank Holiday Monday meet. Ian, Adam and myself answered this call.

At first, we began with Pantheon: chosen because its author was the same guy who created Stone Age. But before too long, however, we gave up on it. A mix of odd terminology and a twenty-page rule book meant that it just looked too much like work.

Instead Railways of the World was brought out. This classic has everything a gamer needs: tension, bidding, territorial struggles and tiny hexagons with railway track on them.

At first, I went south to try and pick up an early delivery bonus. I wasn’t too happy about this, because it meant building in the area around Mexico City which usually gets pretty clogged up with competing players.

Instead, though, Ian, Sam and Adam all went north. Ian played very aggressively from the start, apparently going head to head against Adam. It wasn’t until Ian revealed his baron at the end that we realised Ian was simply trying to link two towns for points.

During the game, with alcohol flowing, Sam and Ian got into a bidding war over a Engine Upgrade card. Higher and higher it went until Ian was bidding $12,000 to upgrade to a $15,000 engine. Sam was about to bid, until he glanced down at his engine card and realised it only cost him $10,000 to upgrade normally. He quickly passed, grateful that Ian didn’t call him when he offered to pay $11,000 for the card.

Sam and Ian went for a high bond strategy. Ian, though, was shipping goods around for four and five points far sooner than the rest of us. Adam started with two separate networks that he joined up mid-game, and he had two depots working for him. I had my network in the south and, despite Ian nicking all my black cubes, I did pretty well for myself.

In the end, Ian saw his bonds drag him back, while Adam and I both completed our barons for that last points-push into first and second.

Adam 54
Andrew 53
Ian 49
Sam 39

What a game! And it was only nine o’clock. Next we introduced Adam to Bruges, the game that we’re pretty sure Martin wouldn’t like. You roll dice and play cards to acquire workers or influence, build canals or houses, recruit people and fight off threats.

It may have been only nine when we started, but Adam felt his energy levels drop off a cliff midway through the game. He yawned and blinked and asked how long was left. Afterwards, he admitted he played most of the game in a haze. All of which doesn’t explain how he managed his second win of the evening. I scored my second second place, while Ian got his second third and Sam picked up his second fourth.

Adam 50
Andrew 47 and cash
Ian 47
Sam 46

That sinking feeling

Atlantis! City under the sea! Or, as once supposed, above the sea, and imminently to sink. It's at this point that hardy gamers - myself (Sam), Ian and Andy - step into the breach, if for no other reason than to give Andrew something to read on that long flight to Japan.

Atlantis the game assumes the moments of the city's descent, where the population swiftly descend themselves - from neighbourly lawn-mower borrowing civilians (or whatever) to a manic screw-everyone-else fuckos engaged in a frenzied dash for safety.

Soggy, linear Atlantis

Set-up and play is not hugely dissimilar to That's Life, as players move their pawns from one end of a track (Atlantis) to the other (the mainland). But whereas in the former the track closes up when people take tiles, in this game the sinking city leaves water behind - which can only be negotiated by discarding your hard-earned points, or discarding your much-needed cards, or discarding your hastily-constructed but one-use-only bridge. And using your bridge means everyone coming up behind you can cross it for free as well.

The game strikes a nice balance between dashing headlong or lingering and picking up more points - the later you leave it to get to the mainland the more water you have to cross. Also, rather than dice-rolling you are playing cards to move, and there is a strategy to this as well, as your cards allow you to move to the next tile of a certain colour... I played the first couple of rounds not sure if was any kind of improvement on That's Life, but grew more enamoured as the game went on. Maybe that was because I was doing well, though...

Sam 25
Ian 24
Andy (explainer's curse) 12

Ian and were keen to try Bruges again after its debut on Tuesday, and Andy was amenable. It's a classic Feld points salad, where you can build canals, gain majorities, activate characters, boost your prestige... the stuff of Martin's nightmares basically. Unlike say Amerigo, however, you can explain it in ten minutes and play it in around an hour.

After digging enough canals to rival Birmingham on my previous play, I went for a more three-pronged approach of canals, cards, and getting cheesed off that I didn't have the workers to activate my cards. Andy got a good engine going early on and always seemed to have a couple of extra moves to play. Ian built a lot of character cards that scored him points - this time getting a King to go with his Queen and picking up big points at the final scoring.

Need Flanders

We were all bamboozled by the sheer amount of brown cards in the deck, which seemed to be never-ending. Despite my utilising all this brown to continually hit Ian and Andy with disasters - a latent, potentially screwage-led seam of destruction in the game - I floundered, continually finding myself without the right colour cards. The others had similar problems but managed them better, and my lack of majorities came back to bite me on the ass:

Andy 62
Ian 53
Sam 46

We all - I think - liked it. I certainly did, anyway.

With a couple of decent lightish games under our belts, we called it a night and Andy (in a T-shirt!) strolled out into the chilly night with a surprisingly mobile Ian, considering his recent encounter with a set of stairs. Until Tuesday, then...

Oh, and bon voyage to Andrew!

Trees are good! Trees are good!

It is Spring, and as flowers bloom and birds sing their mating calls, on Tuesday I received an email with those three words that everyone wants to hear:

"Games at Joe's"

We were six in number, the host and myself, with Sam, Ian, Martin and Katy. We fell into what can only be described as a "conversation" until we came to our senses and started to play. We promised ourselves some six-player parks at the end of the evening, and we began by splitting into two groups of three. Joe, Martin and Katy went for the leafy delights of Arboretum. Sam, Ian and I chose Stefan Feld's Bruges.

Bruges is a pretty typical Eurogame. You roll dice, move up tracks, hire workers, earn and spend money, and all the while you'll be having enormous fun.

On the other table, Arboretum seemed straight forward enough: play a card to the table, and then someone swears at you. That was pretty much it. Oh, and no one liked Dogwood.

Joe 24
Katy 16
Martin 13

We three were still up to our elbows in workers and aristocrats, so they played Botswana. Another game of things' values suddenly changing, only this time it was animals, not trees. I’ve no idea about how the game went, except for Katy squealing with joy at the plastic animals, and Martin’s amusing positioning of two animals trying a bit of, shall we say, hybridisation. I do know it ended, though.

Martin 78
Katy 71
Joe 53

By the time they’d finished Botswana, we had completed Bruges. It had been a relatively lightweight game, with plenty of options, but not enough to cause an unbearable block of AP. We wouldn’t go so far as to say even Martin would like it, but it was a pleasant game and not too long.

Ian had a Queen that scored a point every round, I had some people multipliers and Sam went for canals (and so did Ian, now I think about it). All hail the Queen!

Ian 59
Andrew 48
Sam 42

Then we joined together again and split up in a different formation like one of those fancy T-1000s from Terminator 2. Except one that plays games, not assassinates people in the past. First, during some toilet breaks, Sam, Joe, Katy and Martin played Rattle Snake. It was Katy’s first go, and it took her a while to get used to the awesome power of the magnets. And in the time it did take her, Martin managed to get all his magnets onto the board.

Martin 0
Sam 1
Joe 1
Katy lots

Then Joe, Martin and I played Basari, a nice little card game of bluffing and bidding. Similarly, Katy, Sam and Ian played High Society on the big table. Trying to capture that much game theorising and double bluffing into one pithy paragraph is impossible so I’ll just give you the scores and you can fill in the rest.

Basari:
Martin 86
Joe 79
Andrew 60

High Society I:
Sam 26
Katy 12
Ian BUST!!

High Society II:
Ian 30
Katy 17
Sam BUST!!

Finally, the six of us got together to do battle in the fiercest arena there is: Take It Easy! During the game, Joe, Sam and I were the bingo callers. Sam went for the films of DeNiro, I chose defunct or obscure football teams but the award for style went to Joe who did the songs of Bob Dylan (suggested by Martin). After a while, he gave up since he was thinking about what to say more than the actual game. This lead to people just doing Bob Dylan impersonations, before Joe dropped the bombshell that his favourite Dylan album was Street Legal. To convince us he wasn’t mad, he put it on to show what a good album it was. If only it had helped his game.

Martin 498
Andrew 495
Sam 470
Joe 445
Ian 411
Katy 383

And that was that. Out the door, into the night.

I’m off on my hols now. I’ll be keeping an eye on the blog, so don’t go slacking off, now. You hear?

Meanwhile, on the Division, Ian remains clinging to top spot. Martin storms to first on the medal table and Andy regains Points Ratio.