Glass is blue

 Joe’s kitchen was the happy venue for this week’s gamers and we began as a five: Joe, Ian, Laura, Adam H and myself. A bowl of unsalted peanuts sat in front of Adam until he asked them to be taken away.

The first game was a new one: The Numbers. It’s a very simple game where you have to write a three-digit number. Then they are arranged in order of value, highest at the top, and starting at the top numbers are eliminated if they use any digits that appear in the numbers below. Any remaining numbers score according to their leftmost digits. 

But then, those players who successfully score have to cross off the numbers they used on their player mat and those numbers can’t be used again.

The rules were simple, but the strategy wasn’t. Adam wrote numbers with all the same digits which seems sensible but rarely worked and Ian scored nothing at all in round two. It seemed like only Laura got a hang of this and she graciously shared her tactics with us after the game, which was something about ending with middling numbers to get the better bonuses in rounds four and five.

Laura 66

Joe 57

Andrew 49

Adam 22

Ian 21

We all voiced our appreciation of the indented player tiles which allowed us to place them face down without fear of the ink smearing off onto Joe’s clean white table top.

Next we dug out an old classic: No Thanks. Another new game for Laura so Adam and Joe shared the rules explanation. We played twice. Ian went for high cards and Adam went low. I ended the first game with no chips, which I thought deserved a bonus point or two. Laura did the same on the second game and then I thought maybe it shouldn’t.

Adam 5

Andrew 10

Joe 10

Ian 49

Laura 49

And then...

Ian 8

Adam 19

Joe 21

Andrew 27

Laura 28

With Sam expected shortly, we banged out a quick Art Robbery. A third new game for Laura this evening! And the unsalted peanuts were poured back into their packet with Laura promising to do something with them: mix in szechuan sauce and roast them a bit. And add salt.

As for the game, Adam seemed curiously attached to the guard dog. Is he hankering after a pet? When Ian had a 5 token and the guard dog, Adam tried to steal from him. To his surprise Ian handed over the 5 token, not the dog. Ian then immediately stole the 5 token back with his next turn. A smooth move.

Joe 24

Adam 21

Andrew 18

Laura 13

Ian – fewest alibis (but had 18 points)

Then we discussed the guard dog token, with Joe assuming it was a severed head and Laura saying it was a complete dog with a disproportionately huge head sitting down. Joe decided that if we ever meet Reiner Knizia, we’d have to ask.

Sam arrived mid game and we split into two groups of three. Joe, Laura and Ian went for the lush opulence of the Pharaoh Edition of Ra. While he unpacked its enormous pieces, including metal money tokens which looked like they might actually be worth something, he gave Laura her fourth rules explanation of the evening.

The game was a sight to behold. They’d certainly overcome the old criticism that the bag for the tiles was too small: this edition had a bag large enough to carry groceries.

Joe 49

Ian 39

Laura 30

Adam, Sam and I played Cat In A Box, the quantum trick-taker. Adam was taught the rules and seemed so confused that he actually asked if it was a good idea to screw over other players. Who was this impostor? I thought.

Sam 13

Andrew 12

Adam 11

Since Ra was still in its second epoch, we played a quick Block Party. I sped off into a quick lead while Sam and Adam provided comedy moments such as:

Adam: Is it an elf?

Sam (sighing): yeah, it does look like an elf, doesn’t it?

(It was Robin Hood)

Sam: Is it France?

Adam: It’s a bottle of hot sauce.

This last one attracted Joe’s attention who asked why the bottle was blue instead of red and I had to remind him that, as every child knows, glass is blue.

Andrew 9

Sam 7

Adam 5

Then Ra ended and the Block Party expanded across the table. Laura got her fifth rules explanation (a probably unique perfect five) of the evening and we began. Adam managed to finish his guessing round getting none at all and Sam forgot to give us a countdown so that a few of us hadn’t finished. My “moustache” was just two rows of cubes. 

Joe tried to do “bottle” but he used green cubes and no one got it. We reminded him that glass is blue. Ian’s “peacock,” in retrospect, was very good but if I hadn’t already used up my guess I was going to say “quad bike.” Sam had a last-second structural collapse in one round, meaning no one could guess his “dice”.

Ian 11

Laura 10

Joe 8

Andrew 7

Sam 6

Adam 6

Then Adam and Laura left but I had no work the next day so I stuck around and the four of us played Stinker. Joe’s answer to “worst thing to say at a job interview” was “I am not a doctor” while Sam invented a new insult when he answered “eat me tits, airbone.” Possibly better in an Australian accent, we decided.

The most interesting aspect was how prophetic Stinker had become. Sam vetoed a number of cards which were once amusing asides but now referred to very real dangers facing us: Putin, climate change and Kim Jong Un were all topics that were swiftly replaced by lighter fare.

Joe 39

Ian 29

Sam 28

Andrew 20

Finally, Joe tempted us to one last game The Fuzzies. Very simple. Draw a card and remove a fuzzy ball of that colour from the tower and place it somewhere higher. Ian, already dressed in high-vis jacket and cycle helmet, looked as if he were taking the risk of the tower collapsing far too seriously.

Joe made the tower fall down.

Was there a scoring system? I’ve no idea.

Then, way past my bedtime I went home and found that my phone was on 3% battery but would no longer change. I transferred tonight’s pictures at a smaller size to make sure they uploaded before it finally died hence the lack of 4K HD style widescreen imagery. 

Thanks all. See you next week.

Smurf’s up

I arrived only fractionally late, at 7.35 to find Ian, Sam and Martin sitting around Sam’s kitchen table: we were already at this week’s expected attendance, with only a vague chance of a Joe later on who was stranded in Clifton. Before I’d even sat down, Sam began with a rules explanation for Heat, which is basically Flamme Rouge on four wheels. Although technically you’re in control of four wheels in Flamme Rouge, too, but you know what I mean. This game has one car instead of two bikes.

It uses the same card-drafting mechanism as FR to get you around a track, along with a familiar slipstreaming option. But there are more random elements, especially in the form of “stress” cards which allow you to reveal cards in your deck until you draw a movement card. This could see you going too fast around a corner or stall on a wide open straight.

We played the basic game on the Italia circuit. It was pretty tight at the start until I struggled round a corner and got left behind on lap one. Ian was in the lead in lap two but with a severely overheated engine that limited his options. 

I clawed my way back into third, but the last lap was all about Sam and Martin. We used the kind of language that I’m sure all Formula 1 drivers would recognise (“Oh shit, I’m going really fast,” and “Corners are annoying”). Both Sam and Martin went past the finish line on the same turn, so it was a matter of who passed the furthest and after playing a stress card Martin revealed a 3, which pushed him past Sam for the win.

Martin

Sam

Andrew

Ian

Next we played Cat In A Box, the quantum trick-taking game. In this, all the cards in your hand (values 1-8 in a four player game) have no colour until your nominate a colour when you play it.  Other than that, it’s a pretty standard trick-taker where you predict the number of tricks you’re going to win. Oh, until a little bit of area control comes into play during the scoring phase. This rule was so unexpected that we actually laughed. We’re so invested in board game culture that we found the rules of a game amusing. I think we crossed a line there.

As for the game, I got a bit lucky, with a healthy supply of 8s and 7s, meaning I was able to predict the maximum 3 tricks each time. Martin fared less well, though. Apart from the very first hand, he didn’t win again until round four. Ian was my closest rival, notwithstanding my mid-game score summary as 11-11 when it was actually 13-10 in my favour.

Andrew 19

Ian 14

Martin 8

Sam 6

An interesting game. No green player pieces, but two shades of blue…

Last (for me) was Block Party, the 3D Pictionary of limited means. All you have is a selection of coloured cubes to communicate on of the objects listed on your card. It’s really satisfying when you guess right or someone guesses yours. On the round with “fewest cubes” I thought my sandwich (white cube, yellow cube, white cube) was a definite winner until Martin’s minimalist Smurf (a blue cube and a neighboring white cube at a rakish angle) was correctly guessed by Ian.

Spot the difference...

It was a lot of fun. Sam’s rough pyramid of brown cubes with orange cubes underneath was definitely a volcano, I thought, but it turned out to be poo. Meanwhile, my egg was mistaken for a snowman. The only downside was the number of times a card had to be replaced because it had recently been played and written up on the blog. We played twice.

An aubergine

Sam & Martin 6

Ian and Andrew 5

And then, 

Martin 7

Ian 7

Sam 5

Andrew 4

I set off home, although I was sorely tempted for a quick So Clover. Instead the three of them played it twice, scoring 18 out of 18 and then 16.

Thanks all for the evening. See you all soon.

Happy New Lockdown

I arrived at 8.00 to find a game of For Sale already in full swing featuring Andy, Sam, Martin, Katy and Ian. I watched in a semi distracted state, but I paid enough attention to see Sam get hit twice when everyone else went big, leaving his biggish cards looking rather small. At the end of the game, he noted that his low cards had scored better than his high ones.

Martin 57

Katy 53

Andy 50

Sam 47

Ian 41

Then the six of us played 6nimmt. I started brilliantly, but then I collapsed faster than my hopes of visiting Japan this Spring. At the start of round three, it was Ian versus Martin for top spot. Ian, too, had a run of bad luck but while mine sent me into fifth, he ended the game still in second. Martin's reward was a message from BGA saying something about a 6nimmt bang bang. Just what he's always wanted.

Martin 37

Ian 17

Andy 12

Sam 11

Andrew -10

Katy -15

Then we split up. Andy, Martin and Katy played a new crazy trick taker from Japan called Cat in a Box. Ian, Sam and I chose a more eurogamey affair: Kingdomino. My lack of form continued into this game as I built further out from the castle, thinking it was a 7x7 grid. It wasn't since it was a three player game, as I was reminded.

Sam 84

Ian 64

Andrew 39

Then we banged out a quick 7 Wonders, and Sam crushed us all, while I took consolation in having not made any stupid mistakes this time. I still didn’t win, though.

Sam 66

Andrew 49

Ian 40

Sam left and Ian and I rejoined the other three just in time to watch the impenetrable ending of Cat in a Box. I understood nothing except for Andy feeling he'd messed up and Katy insisting that the game was "rubbish" as she couldn't place a card and lost four points as a consequence.

Martin 13

Andy 8

Katy 6

Finally we were together as a quintet, so we played Texas Showdown. Officially, the game lasts until someone hits the 12 trick mark, but after a lengthy pause while Andy lost the internet and then saw his laptop freeze up. We played for one more hand  and ended with…

Martin 3

Andy 4

Katy 5

Ian 6

Andrew 6

And so with that, we bade each other farewell and went our separate ways. See you all soon!