A Trick of the Rail

With Andrew off in Japan and Katy not yet returned to the fold, stalwarts Martin, Ian and myself (Sam) were joined at Joe's house by Steve, who made the trek from Easton through the skirts of Storm Freya. Because Ian wasn't arriving until later, the quartet began without him with a game of Byzanz. But before that happened Joe, Martin and I bashed out a quick game of Good Little Tricks, the trick-taker where winning a trick can be harmless, or can be terrible if said trick contains the final card of a suit - the trick winner collects all the cards of that suit and turns them into points.

Points are bad.

Joe 13
Sam 18
Martin 23

Steve rocked up as we wrapped up the second round, so it was Byzanz time. Martin ran Steve through the rules (see Andrew's previous post) and we were off!

Steve seemed perplexed but also seemed to be scoring a lot of fours. Martin scored a bunch of threes, but also traders. Joe tried the tactic that failed me last week and made it work. I bid high and failed again. I didn't even fail better.

Martin 26
Joe 24
Steve 23
Sam 21

Ian watched the last two rounds play out as he sank his first beer so fast he surprised everyone, including himself. Maybe it was Steve's exceedingly hot bombay mix, which had everyone sweating except Joe, who remained curiously unperturbed.

Then it was time for Martin's new game, Northern Pacific. This takes Mini-Rails' simplicity and aligns it with the brinkmanship of Medina: everyone collaborates on building a railroad across America, but can only take one of two options on their turn - build track, or invest in a station. The stations pay out when - if - the track reaches them, and up to three investments can be made in a single station, leading to agonising decisions as to when and where you lead the track, because taking it to Glasgow, say, will eliminate the possibility the train ever arrives in Butte. So if you've invested in Butte - bad luck.

When the train reaches the west coast the whole thing starts over, and after the route is built a third time the game ends with the richest player the winner. Despite some leader-targeting in the mid and late stages, the leader was Martin. I pipped Joe for second on the tie-breaker.

Martin 24
Sam 21
Joe 21
Steve 19
Ian 18

After a quick conflab we moved onto Las Vegas, with one of Joe's expansions mixed in: the big die that represents two dice when placed in a casino. This simple rule was slightly complicated by the spoiler dice (white) also having a big die that didn't represent two, and my big die for purple actually being blue. Echoes of the hostility from Northern Pacific were felt in the game, particularly when Steve disparaged statisticians.

But Joe mellowed the mood by getting us to imagine a beach where "all the pebbles are dice". To really picture the moment you also need to imagine Joe dreamily smiling, with both hands holding lots of dice. He was so immersed in the moment he didn't realise he'd won, until Martin pointed it out.

Joe $380k
Martin $370k
Sam $260k
Ian $210k
Steve $110k

At this point Steve bowed out, so now a quartet again we played a game of partnership trick-taker Yokai Septet, with Joe and Ian taking on me and Martin. This is a neat trick-taker where players are trying to win the '7' cards from seven suits which each have a 7 in, but in the lowest numbered suit the 7 is the highest card and in the highest numbered suit it's the lowest. Win four '7's to win the round, or win seven tricks (without winning four 7s) to lose it.

We didn't play more than a couple of rounds, but won one each, with mine and Martin's tricks proving slightly more valuable:

Martin and Sam 4
Joe and Ian 3

With the storm blowing lustily outside and the hour now past 11pm the curtains drew on another marvellous GNN night.

"Jedi" seems to be the hardest word

As England basked in a unusually warm winter, seven happy gamers congregated at Joe's house for the regular dose of cardboard-based entertainment. We were Joe, Andy, Adam, Sam, Martin, Ian and me.

We began as one big group with Just One, the word game where duplicate clues must be avoided. And we did pretty well at first in that regard, although some of our clues were a little obscure. Adam's clue for "Passion" was "Iniesta" while my clue for "Lamp" was "aldiss". With hindsight I suppose "tower" and "shipwreck" make a great definition for "lighthouse" but it took me a while. And it didn't even occur to me that Jedi would be a word at all, so I failed that particular word despite the obvious clues.

As the game went on, duplicates started appearing and well done to Andy for guessing "Mars" from the two remaining clues, "Attacks" and "Snickers".

We were "awesome" according to the scoring system.

Next we split into two and I faced the surprising situation that both games I suggested were chosen. Me, Adam and Andy went for Can't Stop, the dice game of pushing your luck (then again, aren't they all?) while the other four played Zendo, the game of questioning the Buddhist nature of things.

Zendo doesn't have a winner (expect maybe Martin this time, with Sam pretty sure he was last) and I know little about what happened but I think they had fun.

Can't Stop, meanwhile, was proving to be a very cagey game as they three of us proved time and time again that we could stop, actually. This cautious play lasted until the closing stages when Andy went on a rolling spree of mostly sevens and nines and then Adam, forced into relying on his unreliable luck with dice, had to really go for it to steal the eight column from Andy and take the win.

Adam 3
Andy 1
Andrew 1

During these two games we pretty much demolished three bags of crisps in about three minutes, including Martin's snack that looked like Wotsits but tasted different, causing a brief moment of confusion the first time you tried one.

We were pretty much completely out of sync so at some point we started playing Kingdomino and they played Byzanz. This was new to me and, if the brief snatches of conversation I heard are anything to go by, it revolves around trading in your merchants and "getting shit for one."

Ian 25 (plus 5)
Martin 25 (plus 3)
Joe 24
Sam 22

Kingdomino was fun, although I was often last to choose, meaning I didn't have to think too much. Just as well since my 7.5% cider had gone straight to my head.

Andy 37
Andrew 34
Adam 23

We then shot through a game of No Thanks, complete with the ubiquitous complaints about who shuffled these cards. It was yours truly and while I understand that the human mind is predisposed to find patterns that aren't there, I have to admit that there were more runs of numbers being revealed than was normal. I even shuffled the cards before putting them back so that the next game wouldn't have that problem.

Adam's single run of cards meant he strolled to a dominant win.

Adam 16
Andy 52
Andrew 90

The other half of the table played an Avenue-ish game called Railway Links. In this game dice are rolled and the players have to draw what they see on the dice.

Joe was quietly optimistic mid-game, based solely on the fact he wasn't cursing as much as the others were. Alas, the scores show his tranquillity did him no favours.

Sam 50
Martin 48
Ian 39
Joe 37

While this played out, we sped through a game of Qwixx which saw Adam's newfound love affair with dice continuing.

Adam 95
Andrew 60
Andy 44

And finally we were all together again. Ian took the opportunity to bow out and head home but the remainers had a rousing game of For Sale. I made no notes and, frankly, I remember little. I was drunk enough that, while I was writing down the scores, I asked what Ian got and had to be reminded that he'd already left. Cider followed by Soju. A potent combination.

Joe 53
Martin 47
Andy 46
Sam 40
Adam 40
Andrew 35

Thanks all. That's my last games night until late March as I'm off to Japan again. I'm genuinely sad to miss Katy's homecoming, but I'm sure I'll enjoy the blog posts.