Big Farmer Conspiracy

This week we began our games night as a quartet. Martin, Ian, Adam H and myself began with Kingdomino, hoping to squeeze in a game before the imminent arrival of the other three gamers who were no doubt frantically eating food or completing domestic tasks before arriving.

The game was pretty straightforward. Martin had a moment of blindness when, mid-game, he picked up a tile he couldn't place. The lack of bonuses was to prove costly. Not as costly as Adam's enormous forest that scored no points at all.

Andrew 81

Martin 77

Adam H 64

Ian 51

Then Joe, Andy and Adam T logged on and, as is now compulsory when there are seven of us, we played 7 Wonders. Adam T luxuriated in his work monitor which was large enough to see everyone's boards, although he found his peaty cider disappointing.

Was there a lack of things to do in round two? Joe sighed that he may as well finish his wonder, and Adam T, Adam H, and Andy also had their wonders done and dusted early on. I had Halikanassos which involves building as late as possible. It didn't go well.  My neighbor Joe built a massive army simply because he couldn't build much else.

Martin was delighted with his first place, saying that he never wins. He was not enthusiastic about a suggestion of a rematch, saying the game isn't good enough to play twice in a row.

Martin 61

Andy 59

Adam T 54

Joe 47

Adam H 46

Ian 37

Andrew 34

Then we split into two groups. Martin, Adam T and Joe went off to play 99.

Martin 389

Joe 237

Adam T 165

The rest of us chose Carcassonne, with inns and cathedrals. I played my big farmer on my first turn not knowing about it's special powers when deciding majorities. I declined the opportunity to start again figuring may as well go there as anywhere, but found myself constantly trying to  to connect it to the more lucrative areas in the south.

Ian and Adam got into an early fight over a city but then decided to share the points just so they could get their meeples back. How genteel.

Andy 94

Adam 88

Ian 86

Andrew 83

As the others waited for us to finish, they played a quick Eggs of Ostrich which Adam T “won handsomely.”

Then we played 6nimmt and it was a bit of a classic. Lady Luck appeared to desert everyone evenly and it wasn’t until round four that one of us passed the game end trigger. No one went clear in round one, and Joe had an attack of indecision, as he repeatedly chose and rechose his card, causing “Joe picked another card” to scroll up the text commentary box multiple times.

As we progressed, Adam T’s bookcase seemed to be getting bigger. Adam surmised that this was because he was slouching back in his chair more. Meanwhile, at the end of the game, the cards 101, 102, 103 and 104 were all successfully played. Talk about hanging on by the skin of your teeth.

Adam H 38

Martin 24

Ian 18

Andy 9

Joe 8

Andrew 2

Adam T -8

Then everyone left except got me, Martin and Andy so we played out a quick game of Coloretto.

Martin 33

Andy 29

Andrew 26

And with that we were done. Thanks all. See you next week.

Four aces

After bowing out prematurely on Tuesday, I viewed the fortnightly Thursday meet as a chance to get back on the gaming horse, as it were. Sam, Paul, Chris and I met up on Zoom and sent our virtual selves to do battle on Board Game Arena.

We began with For Sale, which was new to Paul. Sam talked him through the rules and did a great job, as evidenced by the result.

Paul 72
Sam 62
Chris 58
Andrew 54

Paul suggested a second go, now he knew what was going on, but was somewhat less fortune. There's a moral in here somewhere.

Andrew 68
Sam 67
Paul 59
Chris 57

Next we played Carcassone, which has had a bit of a revival in these online times. I went big on roads and farmers (and I managed to isolate one of Sam’s farmers), while Paul hit the jackpot on roads, farms and cities.

Paul 74
Andrew 63
Sam 47
Chris 40

Then we played Incan Gold. Sam started off light on his toes as usual, but then stayed in just as one of the temples paid out big.

Sam 36
Andrew 31
Chris 30
Paul 23

In Perudo, Chris and I were out quicksticks. Paul hung on to his five dice longer than anyone else and then as he and Sam faced off man to man, he had the good fortune of eight aces in a row to finish Sam off.

1. Paul
2. Sam
3. Andrew
4. Chris

Sam was eyeing the clock, hankering for rest, but assured us he was fine for one more short one. We fired up good old 7 Wonders. Paul had his usual slow start as he tried to remember the rules, but it wasn’t long before we were firing on all cylinders. I must say, I was surprised to come last since I thought I’d done okay.

Chris 60
Paul 56
Sam 43
Andrew 42

Lastly, with Sam off to bed, we ended on Stone Age. It took us to eleven at night in mostly total silence. Paul’s space age lighting making it look like he was dialling in from the Nostromo. At least my candle light was slightly more thematic. I was too slow, however, in picking up multiplier cards and after Chris nabbed a few axe cards, I switched focus to huts. Too late to mount any real challenge, though. Paul’s large tribe got him a bumper score despite having next to no artefacts in his collection.

Chris 206
Paul 201
Andrew 157

And so we were done. Thanks guys, I needed that.

Paul's lighting turns him into Max Headroom

Future Gamers II

The Old London Chapter of GNN - Andrew, Paul J, Chris and myself - gathered online last night for a long-mooted gaming session. I'd not seen Paul in over a year so it was nice to catch up, and see his penchant for impulse purchases was still intact with a spaceship-type lighting system. This effect added to the sense that our cottage-in-the-country weekends were from a different time, and we were now in the Future.

Chris was in Chippenham, and had dyed his hair - as an experiment, he insisted. Whether this was true or not, or how much he was lying to himself, he did look remarkably younger and we discussed the merits of spraying my bald patch, a la Bob Mortimer. Paul mentioned he'd cut his own hair so didn't know what the back looked like.

Andrew was conspicuously on the fence. He began mysteriously uncamera-ed later added a camera, but remained invisible to me throughout the evening, as Zoom refused to show me how much he'd changed. Is he pumping iron every morning and downing protein shakes? Enquiring minds, etc.

After comparing lockdown notes we kicked things off with 7 Wonders. I was surprised to see I hadn't played it in well over a year, but for Paul it was possibly longer. Some things never change though - sandwiched between Paul and Chris, both Andrew and I found ourselves militarily bullied, as he discovered lots of peaceful science and I concentrated on gentle culture. The entire undertaking took about 15 minutes! With a computer around to not-forget which way to pass your cards, 7 Wonders was exceedingly brief. And Paul's absenteeism did him no harm, it turned out:

Paul 60
Chris 56
Sam 47
Andrew 46

We moved on to another speedy undertaking in Love Letter. Again Paul's rustiness did him no harm here either, as he sailed to a 3-1-1-0 lead, at one point ousting Chris with a Priest in the Hole.

But as Andrew and I serially imploded, Chris came back from the dead to claim an improbable victory!

Chris 4
Paul 3
Andrew 1
Sam 1

We stuck with the sillier end of the gaming spectrum with Perudo. Having played this on Tuesday I was already familiar with the foibles of boardgamearena's particular version of the rules, but it didn't help me at all. Dudos kept blowing up in my face as, once again, Paul began to look the dominant stag amongst a bunch of stick-legged deer-children*. The evening does begin to get hazy here though, with various people going off for a wee or simply vanishing for a moment or two. I also realised I'd downed three glasses of wine already at it was barely 9pm. At this point, driven mad by smallish children, Sally came in to confiscate aforementioned wine but before leaving poured me a very large fourth. So my recall - never the best anyway - starts to go on the fritz. I thought I took photos, but I didn't. I do remember Stanley coming in and confusing me by not speaking - it turns out he'd taken a vow of silence that continues this morning - and I also remember, I think, though, that Chris was first out, then Andrew, then it was my two dice versus Paul's five. Twice I tried to bluff him and twice he read me like a book: it was a very convincing win for the man from Croydon:

Paul
Sam
Andrew
Chris

Mine and Andrew's last game of the evening was Carcassonne. This hasn't been seen for years in our house, but the rules are burned into our memories.  Paul was the big points-scorer early on, but as he said himself, he was doing no farming. Andrew and I got into a passive-aggressive farmer battle where I managed to actually connect his fourth Farmer to the main 'board' with a absent-minded placement. D'oh! Chris trod a path between these extremes, getting a couple of Farmers down too but also focusing his efforts on some city expansion. As is often the case with this game, the farming paid off:

Sam 69
Andrew 64
Paul 62
Chris 53

I was fading fast and Andrew had to go to work, so we bowed out, leaving Chris and Paul to crack out a finale in the classic two-player, Jaipur.

1 Chris
2 Paul

They'll have to tell that dramatic tale themselves, as I was probably asleep before it finished. A nice confection of gaming, thanks chaps....

*fawns

Choose your demise!

Chippenham, April. Paul Jefferies had made the long journey from Croydon to Chris' house, so I came the other way from Bristol, armed with a small selection of shortish games.

When I had arrived, they'd just finished playing Carcassonne, which Chris had won by a narrow margin:

Chris 120
Paul 117

And they were in the mood for something reasonably short, reasonably luck-driven, with a side-helping of watery death. So Deep Sea Adventure it was, which Chris roped Jacqui into playing. She liked so much, we played it twice!

 what a dive

first game:
Sam 16
Paul 6
Chris 4
Jacqui 3

second game:
Chris 34
Jacqui 31
Paul 16
Sam 10

After that, Jacqui retired from gaming for the evening to rustle the kids to bed, and the three of us played Sluff Off. This is a trick-taking game where it's all but impossible to finish with zero points - you'll usually have less. At the start of each round players take tokens (minus 2 points) showing how many and which colour tricks they think they'll win. Win the trick, and you get rid of the token. But win a trick you don't have a matching token for, and you pick up a -3 token.

what a card

But - one person can also play the Sluffer, who doesn't care how many tricks they do or don't win. Their role is to be Loki - making mischief, and trying to get the other players to pick up the -3 tokens. The Sluffer scores -4 points at worst at the end of the round - every -3 token the others pick up improves their play by a point.

Paul/Sam -7
Chris -10

Chris's old pal from the Reading Board Game Club, Laura, arrived, as we finished up; so we quickly explained the rules, and played again.

Sam -7
Laura -10
Chris -12
Paul -14

There was no plan for an epic game this evening, so we kept with reasonably lighter fare, setting up Flamme Rouge next. We went with one of the game's suggested tracks, only flipping the final stretch to give exhausted riders a nice downhill finish. I played a cagey game, never attempting to get into the lead, but my careful hedge-betting counted for nothing when I realised that Paul's exhausted roullier was about to freewheel over the line, and I was miles behind!

Laura leads, but Paul is in pursuit

Paul: triumphantly puffy
Chris and Laura: consolatorarily breathless
Sam: knackered and last

what Paul's winning rider had left in the tank

Chris bought in a selection of games but the general feeling seemed to be erring toward HitZRoad, the game of zombie fight or flight. I made the same mistake I made before by not bidding, and only broke this rule when I bid eight resources in order to pick up five. Not very good apocalyptic economising, and I was out first, eaten before we even reached the final third of the game. 

Laura made it a lot further, but couldn't quite reach California before being turned into a zombie pudding. Only Chris and Paul survived the trip alive...

Paul 10
Chris 8
Laura dead last
Sam dead first

rotten luck

We finished our four-player adventures with some Fuji Flush, in which your demise is more frequent, but less grisly.  Everyone professed not to understand it. But you don't need to understand Fuji Flush in order to win it...

Laura
Paul
Chris
Sam

Everyone enjoyed not knowing what was going on so much, we played it again:

Sam
Laura
Paul
Chris

Laura made for the hills - or Bristol - with the time now past eleven. But with nowhere to drive to, us boys were up for one last game or so, so after not much debate we ended up playing 6Nimmt. It might not have the utter chaos of an eight-player 6Nimmt, but it was still entertainly replete with wails of despair. My strong start disintegrated into a final two rounds of terribleness:

Chris 52
Paul 59
Sam 69

There was just enough space left before bed for Push It. So we pushed! Paul pushed rather hard, even flicking the jack off the table at one point, and it became a two-way fight between Chris and I, which I managed to finagle at the death:

Sam 11
Chris 10
Paul 2

With midnight approaching, the evening came to a close. Thanks all!

Blocked and Bound

This week’s regular board-brawl featured a new face: Hollie. Visiting Bristol for a short period, this was her chance to experience for herself what she’d only seen in fictionalised form since she was one of the crew in the sitcom pilot we made last year.

Apart from Hollie, we were Adam (host), Martin, Sam, Andy, Katy, Ian and myself. We began with a nice game involving all of us: 6nimmt! If, that is, 6nimmt can ever be called “nice”. We were using Adam’s Living Dead pack, which brought a little sneering from the purists. But at least, thematically, it’s quite apt because I noticed that during the game we were saying things that could easily be dialogue from a zombie film: “This is horrendous,” “We’re screwed,” etc.

It was close, with me in the lead until the final round. Martin and Katy both posted what they thought were their worst ever rounds (42 and 35 respectively). But most of all, at least you can’t say we make special efforts to be nice to the newcomers.

Andy 19
Adam 20
Andrew 22
Sam 39
Ian 50
Katy 62
Martin 65
Hollie 79

Next up was a game designed by a friend of Martin’s. In this, you draw a card which has an instruction (eg, right palm face down, or always touching nose) that you must obey. During the game, you pick up more cards and end up looking increasingly stupid. Cards against physicality, you could say.

Sam was out first but, ironically, seemed to be the one having most fun. Martin managed to successfully fulfil the wishes of nine cards before he failed. Well done him.

Martin
Hollie
Adam
= Andrew, Katy, Andy
Ian
Sam

Next up we played A Fake Artist goes to New York. We only played one round and Adam cleverly evaded detection by simply copying other player’s drawings of feet. Katy fooled everyone by saying "What is this supposed to be?" and she got most votes as the fake artist, if that means anything.

Then we spilt into two groups of four. Hollie had mentioned to Sam earlier that day a fondness for Dungeons and Dragons, so Sam put two and two together and got Lords of Waterdeep, the D&D themed Eurogame. Andy, Adam, Martin and I went for Blockers.

Unlike LoW and its evocative quest names and locales, Blockers does not lend itself to exciting descriptions. Halfway through, Sam came in to see why we were all so quiet (and also to complain that everyone was stealing his rouges). Meanwhile Martin tried to liven things up by saying “Blockers!” in a singsong voice whenever someone player their Blockers tile. In the end, I did best.

Andrew 4
Martin 5
Adam 6
Andy 7

As for Lords of Waterdeep, Sam lack of rogues undid him while Hollie must;ve felt right at home as she took the win on her debut game.

Hollie 122
Ian 114
Katy 106
Sam 105

Meanwhile, we’d started on Hogger Logger, a game where you simply have to guess whether the next card will be higher or lower than the showing card. Except that the other players are trying to put you off by changing the card (you can change your guess too) or executing actions to try and make things harder.

Adam had no luck, and in his two guesses he had what looked like a safe bet, only to be undone by some unlikely cards. Martin managed to win while I was in the toilet. Martin played a card that made everyone pass their cards (or, in this case, lack of cards) to the left, so he got my card and was the only player with a card. Since no one could stop him, he was able to make a bet on the final card and he was correct. Two victories is enough to win.

Martin 2
Andrew 1
Andy and Adam 0

Then Adam got out Carcassonne. Now, this is a game that I’ve happily been avoiding for the past five years but who can resist Adam’s homemade version. Especially now the fimo meeples are starting to fall to pieces. Well, I sort of pottered about a bit and didn’t do much, while the more experienced players shot off into the lead.

Martin 108
Adam 104
Andy 96
Andrew 56

In the next room, they finished off with Pickomino.

Sam 8 + most tiles
Hollie 8
Ian 3
Katy 2

So, farewell then, Hollie. Will we see her again? Who can say? But she has left us a marker to match on points ratio.

James gamer on!

The title of this post follows on from Andrews director based pun heading and like his this one has very little to do with the evening itself. Hectic preparations proceeded last nights event where the venue was switched to James' house and I had an After School Club committee meeting to attend before collecting Ashton, picking up Paul from the station, eating dinner, bathing kids and putting them to bed.

Alhambra was the first of our cardboard based treats, carried over from last weeks selection. Additional games drawn were Industry and Carcasonne. Industry was deemed to long to play after Alhambra so it was left until next time.

I made myself promise that I wouldn't block myself in when building my town this time. Due to the nature of the tile design this quite difficult to do. The type of building you're chasing nearly always has a wall facing the wrong way or conversely the piece you really want is on yellow money and you have a fist full of greens.

Paul made the early running with an impressive long wall in the first scoring round. I was being partly successful in keeping my complex open and when it wasn't I had Paul to remind me (politely) I was stuffing it up.

Then a shift in play occurred (unnoticed by all) where James emerged from second place to post a useful lead going into the final act. His tussle with Paul over the most towers proved decisive as the final scores show.

James - 151

Paul - 137

Chris -129

Next up was Carcasonne but instead of my boring old original copy out came James' winter themed gingerbread version. That's right you heard me. The game is essentially the same with one variation, the gingerbread man piece. This little guy hangs around in partially completed cities waiting for one of the six additional specially marked tiles to appear. Once drawn he is off, scoring points for the person in control of that city, and jumping into another unfinished one. There were a few other changes as well in that there are a few more cloisters and more roads than cities. 

Yummy.

I decided early on to try and monopolise the farm land spaces which was going well until the others cottoned on and started challenging by using clever placement of tiles. Damn them. In the end James' adventurous decision to build a big city paid off and scored a big 22 points with his penultimate tile.

James - 118

Chris - 108

Paul - 66

Carcass: Four

Yesterday Sally and I joined Mark and Katie for a post-Christmas drink or two, and as often happens, post-kids-bedtime found ourselves congregating round the table for a game.

I'd brought a few options and subtly (ie transparently) mentioned that Tinner's Trail was my favourite game. Already a margarita or two to the good, nobody bit. Instead we played Love Letter, the game where each player is a suitor desperate to get a letter to the princess. Why she'd go for any of such a bunch of cut-throats  is anyone's guess, but after a tentative first round we were quickly up to speed, and it was Katie who won the Princess' heart:

Katie - 3 cubes
Mark/Sam - 1 cube
Sally - no cubes

courtesy Nekau, BGG

After that we moved on to hardy perennial Carcassone, the game of geographical and geometric discovery and possession. You place tiles; you hope no-one notices your farmer stealthily encroaching on someone else's. Sally spent the first half of the game picking up chapels and the second picking up roads, so much so that I assumed she was no threat and used the last tile of the game to complete her one city (benefiting my farmer). It was a mistake:

Sally 83
Sam 79
Mark 59
Katie 57

Sally's incomplete chapels and very long cul-de-sac (12 tiles!) were enough, aligned with one productive farmer, to cement her victory in a game of curiously few completed cities. When she realised she had won the look on her face was one of several competing emotions - I think shock won out over disbelief and awe.

KMSS						Points
Sam		2	2	1	1	6
Katie		4	1	3	2	10
Sally		1	3	4	3	11
Mark		3	2	2	4	11

All of which means my iron grip on the table has been loosened, and there's some jostling for position below me as Katie and Sally both climb past Mark, pushing him down to fourth.

Then we all slept really badly and woke up with margarita heads. See you tonight!

East Berks round up.

I've been a little bit tardy with the reports from this end and thats a shame because we've started a new set of competitions to mix it up a bit. For both James and myself with two player games and the bi-weekly three player, we have decided to put all of the games (Their names anyway) into a hat and draw them out each week. The aim being that we should get to play all of them over the period of a year. This meant that we had a starting point for a mini league of our own for both nights.

On the two player week we have played two rounds and the results are as follows;
Nile - James
Hey Thats My Fish - James
Agricola ACSAB - Chris
Airlines Europe - James
Ticket to Ride - James

So James 4  - 1 up with plenty of games yet to go.

So on Wednesday Paul joined in the fun after missing the previous meet up owing to an administrative cock up. Names out of the hat this week were Airlines Europe again and Carcasonne the Discovery.

Airlines Europe has quickly become a game I totally suck at and in no quick time I was seemingly behind. With my tendency to back the wrong horse and jump on the band wagon when the optimum moment had gone left me up the creek without a paddle. I needed it to be a game of two halves. Obviously. Anyway, I did rally, but my battle with James over the high scoring Air Abacus stock was an example of how not to play the game. I was exactly one card behind him at all times, therefore each stock card I bought James added another. Paul must have been mentally rubbing his hands with glee. Eventually the game finished and the Air Abacas score was significant in giving James the win.

James - 100
Paul - 86
Chris - 77

Then on to Carcasonne the Discovery. Tabling this game was just the reason we chose to go down this route of game selection. Paul hadn't played it in probably 12 years. However he has still retained the instinct for tile placement games and didn't suffer any hinderance. In fact his skill and natural tendency to be a helpful chap often spilled over into helping his opponents. Which was nice.

I managed to stay a little ahead throughout the game, scoring little amounts here and there and cashing in on the odd biggy. Both Paul and James appeared to be stuck in potentially high scoring places but needed highly improbable tiles to make them pay off. In the end it was me with the last tile of the game that managed to slot in an unlikely setting and gain around 10 points.

Chris - 60
James - 56
Paul - 51

Our mini league stands at C 1, J 1, P 0

Notable mention must go to the mint choc pringles that were as foul as they sound. Unsurprisingly, rather like eating plain pringles after several after eights. I managed 4.

The Gaming Dead

Chris and James were exhausted. Half-term dads syndrome. Chris had hauled his family to London Zoo while James had, well, buried stones and twigs in the garden (his son’s idea*). Less exhausting than a trip to the zoo, but James did have to hold the bucket for the soil and was forced to watch. All the time. “Watch, Dad. Dad, watch. Put your phone away and watch me.”

If real life was ‘worker placement’, James and Chris might have placed themselves elsewhere yesterday. As they couldn’t, because it’s not (shame), they were baggy-eyed and delirious by the time kids had gone to bed and they settled/slouched into two-player conflict.

First up, Agricola: All Creatures Great and Small. James hasn’t played this that often, so while all the symbology was familiar from the big version, he couldn’t really remember what to aim for, and how fast to aim for it. Chris claimed similar, though he could have zonked and been talking in his sleep. Somehow, James assembled a neat Tetris-like arrangement of horses and sheep. Chris developed a farm with wide-open spaces for unknown reasons. (It would have hurt less, perhaps, if he’d nodded off and  fallen face-first into it).

What would be the worst game to fall face-first asleep into? El Grande with its Castillo, maybe?

The scores were added. James won. They compared scores to the old scorecards Chris collects (it’s a passion) and chortled nervously at their pathetically low scores, eyes darting to and fro, frantically trying to spot something they’d done wrong. Something they hadn’t added points for. But no. Shame-faced, that game was packed away sharpish.

(And Chris had spent the day looking at creatures in fences. You’d have thought he’d have put that to use).

James 34, Chris 27.

Next up, James’ fondness for Carcassonne, the first set, was catered for. Normally a casual game where  life is put to rights through wise debate as the tiles are idly considered and twiddled between finger and thumb; or mercurial banter fizzes between players or they talk nostalgically about childhood (they both had Demon Driver – and loved it (such low standards of realism in 1980!)). But this night, chatter was subdued as they stared bleary-eyed and tried to concentrate.

With little effect. The whole game was a bit of a botch-job as the simplest rules seemed forgotten. James found a tile next to his Opal Fruits he seemed to remember taking off the pile several turns earlier when Chris had halted proceedings to check the rulebook to see if gaps were allowed. Both players, perhaps from post traumatic stress disorder, made huge mistakes. Chris was in constant commentary mode, regularly announcing how beaten he clearly was, with James’ farmers dominating three quarters of the tiles.

But when it ended, Chris was shocked to find he’d won. James had carefully dominated a large area with just three completed castles in it. Chris got more points from his weedy little patches and won.

Chris 116, James 112.

*James’ son is 4 so there’s yet hope he’ll grow out of ‘planting stones’. One day.

Soul Through The Ages

I arrived late at the fortnightly Roll For The Soul games meet, and I found four gamers (Hannah, Martin, Adam and Ryan) knee-deep in a game of Carcassone, and Joe watching while he ate. It was Adam’s homegrown version, where the fimo farmers tower over their fields and cities like a B-movie version of Carcassone. Except that the usual B-movie trope of the woman falling over at important moments and needing to be rescued by the hero did not take place. In fact, Hannah won, with the others not winning.

While they finished their game, Joe and I played Roll Through The Ages. Joe was a bit rusty on the rules but not on strategy as he went for the quick win, filling himself up with cheap developments, while I got more cities nice and early and went for more exclusive developments. Joe’s spoiler tactic won, and he got to five developments, ending the game, when I had only got three.

I got a beer from the counter, and I guess I must be a regular now since the owner handed me my order before I’d even said anything.

Hannah left and more people arrived, and we decided to split into two groups. The friendly, mixed-gender group playing a game on a recognisable map with trains that passers-by can instantly understand. And the other, less friendly group of three old men in the corner, playing a game with cubes and tiles and no clear objective unless you’ve already played it twice.

Adam cleverly sold Ticket To Ride to the newcomers by describing as being like Inter-Railing. That seemed to swing it, but one of them was intrigued by Tinners’ Trail, amazed that there was a board game set in Cornwall.

I didn’t take many pictures today, so instead here’s one I took earlier:

Happy Adam

Joe, Martin and I decided to give The Palaces of Carrara another go. This game has tantalised us with its sense of almost understanding it, but not quite. Maybe next go it’ll click. Not since Biblios has a game hidden its winning strategy so effectively.

Except that maybe Martin has cracked it. He won the first game, although it was close between himself and Joe. Martin’s strategy was to end the game soon as possible and rely on after-game bonuses, even though he’d barely scored a point during the game itself. Joe got second and I was third.

During this game, a drunken man wobbled over to us, pointed out of the window at a passing bus and stammered “Look! A train! In London!” After a few seconds, he changed London to Bristol, but was still shocked at seeing a train in the street. And then the cafe owner gave him some food in a brown paper bag, and that distracted him long enough for him to forget that he’d been talking to us at all and he wobbled away again.

Then we begun on a second attempt at Palaces... and found it was a closer affair. Possibly because Martin misread one of the end-game criteria (which change every game) and far from being about to finish he was, in fact, in a terrible position.

Despite that, he still grabbed a couple of powerful upgrade tiles and shot himself off around the scoretrack. As for me and Joe, our tussle for second relied on one decision: whether or not Joe would build a new building, or score what he already had. If he built, he risked a cheap building being drawn from the pile which I’d be able to build and end the game immediately leaving him without a chance to score.

He chose to build. A cheap building came out, and his fate was sealed. Martin hit triple figures, I got seventy-something and Joe lay in a distant third in the 30s, cursing his luck.

On the other table, Ticket To Ride ended. Adam didn’t win, despite his usual tactic of hoarding masses of cards in his huge spade-like hands. I can’t remember who did win, but they got 114 points. More or less the only number I remember from that evening.

But before they finished, we were able to squeeze in a quick game of Sticheln. This cunning trick-taking game is beautifully designed, even if it did take us a couple of attempts at getting the dealing right. Joe won, despite picking up the highest number of bad cards. I got no cards at all and came in second.

And then it was time to wend our ways away, into Bristol’s darkened, drunk-lined streets. See you in two weeks!

Good (Ritter) Sports

It was 1985 when mates would turn up at James’ house on a BMX. Almost three decades on, history was repeating itself as Chris arrived on his Raleigh Burner with his board games in a backpack. The games had been decided with little deliberation. Agricola, with Carcassonne for afters. Far more fretting went into choosing the night’s Ritter Sport flavour. Perhaps hoping to dull Chris’ game-playing focus, James fanned out four large-sized, hard-to-find blocks of Chris’ favourite chocolate, fingers crossed he’d soon be too euphoric to concentrate fully.

Abundance was to be the in-game theme too, as James’ hand contained the maid, the fruit tree and the animal pen. Soon, each remaining round card was stacked with a Vegas-style buffet to feed James’ farmers. That accomplished, what could he do to actually win? He’d never won before.

James says "balls" to the diet

Chris was snatching wood like a twelve year-old before Bonfire Night. And to befuddle James, Chris didn’t seem to be cultivating his usual crops. Instead, he was knocking up an array of pens and eying up the sheep. James didn’t know whether to cruelly release them into the wilderness before Chris bought them, but there were other things to be done. Once again, James was frightened near-to-death by the fast-approaching end of the game. How would he get everything ready?

Yet again, James fenced off his farm into one giant pasture to avoid penalties for unused spaces. Ho-hum. He added a sprinkling of finest cattle and did a touch of sowing, but concentrated on the bonus points his occupations and improvements would produce.

Chris had sheep, boar and cattle and stables; slaughtering the excess for food in his oven when his canoeist couldn’t bring back the goods. Watching James pick up the basketweavers major improvement at the end, already having a fair bit of leftover reed from his reed pond, Chris considered swiping the huge pile of reed that remained on the board to intercept the points. But with a whirring of brain cogs, he finished with an orgy of breeding, to end with five farmers for a huge 15 points!

They thought it would be close. It was. They thought there’d be regret. There was. With his card bonuses, his full farm-board and a few bonus points for the reed stacked up in his basketweavers’, James narrowly clinched victory. Chris had done well, but suffered from a misplaced stable, an unused square and from not pinching that reed from under James’ nose.

An Agricola win for James. More Ritter Sport next time.

James 35, Chris 34.

So Carcassonne was produced. The vanilla version that James prefers, though with the river addition to get things going. This was intended as a care-free distraction while they yapped about manly man-stuff. And BMXs. But soon the silence was thick with frustration as tiles hovered in shaking fingers and farmers lay prostrate on unconnected fields. Too many meeples were stuck in castles or on roads that refused to reach completion.

Cloisters always seem satisfying, but two came up and went down empty, all meeples otherwise engaged. James trapped one of Chris’ farmers in an empty field between roads and then called in a score of 48 when one huge castle was finally finished. Phew! Even so, he was concerned Chris’ farmers seemed to have the upper hand. They did, but it wasn’t quite enough to catch up. Very close again. And a long night. It was almost midnight when Chris launched out of James’ gate on his BMX. Like Street Hawk. Three decades late.

Now James wants a BMX.

James 97, Chris 94.