Once more unto the beach

 This week, six gamers arrived at Joe’s house in alphabetical order (Adam, Adam, Andrew, Ian, Martin, Sam) for another dose of gaming goodness. This was my first games night in a few weeks and immediately people started making jokey references to a game that I knew nothing about. How swiftly things move on without you.

We split into two groups. A quartet (Martin, Adam T, Adam H, Joe) played Challengers! Beach Party. Ian asked what new features this variant had and Adam ummed and ahhed a bit before saying “different cards”. Oh, and each player has their own special power and there’s some kind of change in the drafting method. Nothing to do with beaches, as far as I could tell.

The trio (myself, Ian and Sam) played World Wonders, a tile-placement tessellation game that allows players to build famous historical buildings with little concern for cultural or temporal fidelity. For example, Ian built Easter Island’s famous statues of Maoi near his Trojan Horse. It’s a nice game, nothing groundbreaking but fun. I build the pyramid complex at Giza for two points, even though it covered three natural resources, costing me a potential three points. A bad move, strategically, but it looked nice on my board. The scores were so close, they needed a recount.

Ian 37

Sam 36

Andrew 35

Challengers was still ongoing, so we set up Little Tavern. This is a silly, dickish game where a player picks a card at random and decides if they want to keep it at their table or place it at someone else’s. There are event cards, allowing characters to be swapped, removed or added to a table face down so that no one else knows what it is. If you get the right people sitting at your desk, then you can score big points. Ian cleverly got three romantics around his table which, instead of being the start of a menage a trois, actually got him 20+ points.

Ian 35

Sam 35

Andrew 30

Around this time, Challengers ended. Martin had won four out of the first five games, but it was Adam H v Joe in the final, with Adam coming out the winner.

After this, we reshuffled. This time the quartet (Ian, Sam, Adam and Adam) played Forest Shuffle, a game that looks lovely but I know little about. Halfway through Adam T said that he was enjoying it, but he wasn’t sure if anyone else was.

I was involved in a game of Faraway, an odd game with a wafer thin theme of going on a journey tacked onto a quite brain-burning card placement game. The idea is to put down cards that then score bonuses according to other cards in your tableau. However, in a normal game the cards would all be visible when you add up your scores, in this game that cards are revealed in reverse order and bonuses only score for whatever’s visible at the time. For example, you play a card that scores 15 points if you have three stone cards and then you have to make sure that you later play three stone cards otherwise that card is worthless when it gets turned over. There’s a certain amount of player interaction such as when Martin looked at Joe’s cards and said “What are you collecting…. Pineapples?” and I asked Joe when had Martin started calling him Pineapples.

We played twice. I managed to grab a fifth stone card right at the end which meant my 24pointer card was valid when it was revealed!

Joe 81

Martin 72

Andrew 48

Andrew 84

Joe 80

Martin 63

I had to go at this point. Any regrets I had about leaving Martin and Joe as a couple were dispelled when Martin said the next game worked better as a two-player.

I don’t know what that game was, but when Forest Shuffle ended the scores were (according to Sam’s memory)

Adam T 125

Sam 125

Adam H 116

Ian 96

Then five of them played So Clover and “did rather well”. Looking at the photo I have to tip my hat to the audacity of clueing “Water” when “river” was one of the words on a different side.

Rather well out of 30

Thanks all. See  you next week.

Enjoy your temporary wetness

I rolled up to Laura's front door at eight and rang the doorbell. Then I texted Joe but he couldn't work out how to open the front door from the inside, and finally I went down the overgrown footpath to the gate at the end of Laura's back garden where I was let in and I startled a cat.

I sat down to discover that the other gamers there (Joe, Martin, Gareth, Katy and Laura) had already played The Numbers and Laura had won again. Katy didn’t seem impressed by the game.

We played Challengers. This game of deck-building is like a football manager game inasmuch as you put together a team as best you can and then watch the game unfurl. In round one there was a bit of controversy when it was discovered Gareth had beaten Laura with a B card when only A cards are in play. But a few minutes later we found out Laura also had a B card, so it was okay after all.

Joe started as a clear leader, going through the first six rounds unbeaten. He looked like he was definitely going through to the final. And Gareth, with his trophies and fans looked like he’d be the other finalist. But then Martin won the last three rounds (after losing each of the previous three by a single point) including a win against Joe and when we added up our points, the tally was

Joe 29

Martin27

Gareth 20

Katy 18

Laura 14

Andrew 12

The nail-biting final

So Martin and Joe faced off for the final and, thanks to Martin’s ability to keep his bench clear for more cards, he was able to win! What a comeback story. And his winning strategy? “I had lots of animals and a stable boy and then I got loads of vacuum cleaners.”

Then we stayed as a group of six for a co-operative game of Not That Movie. It’s a simple game of groupthink. First, two columns of cards are laid so. These have the names of real films, except they’re flipped so that once they’re laid out they make titles of new films.

I think a photo can explain it better than I can.

Then, once we have eight new film titles to look at, two “reviews” are drawn from a deck, one bad, one good, and we all had to secretly chose which of the titles these reviews refer to.

It proved tricky, even on those occasions when it seemed obvious. In one round the reviews referred to “ultraviolence” and “too complicated” so I thought The Dark List seemed like the only candidate, but Laura and Gareth disagreed. And why Katy didn’t think that The Silence Of The Dog wasn’t an introspective three-hour movie all shot in the same room, I’ve no idea. Mind you, I think everybody had “The Lady In The Shell” as the perfect film for those two reviews except that Laura’s other half was listening in and when she heard the reviews she said “Well, it’s obviously The Lady In The Shell” and there were scenes not dissimilar to LaLa Land getting the wrong Oscar as we had to replace it with a different film.

There was a scoring system and I think our rating was “good”. Laura didn’t seem to rate it, wondering where the cooperation was and Martin didn’t see the point of keeping score.

Then we split into two groups. Laura, Martin and Joe played Ra: The Pharaoh's Edition and Katy, Gareth and I played Azul. Despite not being a fan of Ra, Katy admitted she’d be happy to play that version. Halfway through that game, Joe must have won some floods at Martin’s expense because I distinctly heard Martin say “enjoy your temporary wetness” and not in a good way.

Joe 63

Martin 39

Laura 16

We gave ourselves a rules refresher on Azul, which seems amazing considering how often we used to play it. It was quite a nice game, with little attempt at ruining each others game although Katy did declare that “I’ve cock blocked myself on the bottom”

Andrew 59

Katy 49

Gareth 36

Now it was 10.30 but this would be my last chance to stay up late for weeks so I stayed for a six-player game of So Clover. Martin was first and his clues were pretty straightforward, even if “multigenerational” (for full/heritage) didn’t quite fit on the clover. Katy, too, had some simple definitions (snail/room = “shell”) and I started to have a sinking feeling. Laura went a little bit surreal with “octopus” as her clue for plastic/medusa but we still got it. Three down, three to go.

Gareth clued nicely, with human/rooster = cock. Then Joe’s caused a bit of difficulty. I was sure “gameboy” was the clue for vacation/console but that didn't fit with the rest of the clover. In the end we tried bucket/console out of desperation and it was right! He explained that it meant it in the sense of Bargain Bucket, since it’s the cheapest console.

Finally there was me, with my dissatisfyingly vague clues. “Silver”? “Yellow”? I didn’t have much hope. But then they got chalk=limb/marker and after that paper/beer=mats. Then it was just a case of which words fitted the last two clues best and they got it right! Pandemonium! Delirium! A chance to immortalize ourselves in the book of perfect results!

We were so excited I tried to take a group selfie

Or two..

And then five of us crammed into Joe’s car for a journey around Bristol as he gave lifts home for everyone! Thanks for hosting Laura. See you all next week.

Challenge Accepted

Knowing that Adam T finishes work well before 7.30, I (Sam) told him he was welcome to arrive early, and after consuming his own tea at the Lazy Dog, he was treated to my family eating the last of theirs. Adam's presence may have played a part in the boys not arguing over who wipes the table too: good work, Mr T. 

Martin joined us a little after seven, just as we were setting up the first game of the night: Akropolis!

It's a super-simple game, although not so simple that I couldn't get a rule wrong, as we discovered this morning. Martin may thus contest the results, but basically your cities score in different ways: residences like to be together, markets apart, temples surrounded etc. But each district only scores if you have matching plazas, who don't care where they go. Martin was indifferent to its charms; I rather like it myself for it's breezy play and weight of decisions. But liking it and being any good at it are two different things. 

Adam: 131

Martin: 129

Sam: never mind

By the time we were totting up, Joe had joined us and, with Ian and Adam H hot on his heels - sadly we lost Andrew and Laura to 'fatigue' and 'pyjamas' - it was time for a six-player crack at Challengers, the fun deck-builder and possibly-less-fun card-flipper du jour. 

Unbeknownst to me, Ian had been burnt on Sunday when his cards serially came out in non-combo-ing order, and having suffered a similar fate last Tuesday, he had my sympathy when history repeated and he took a battering over the first four rounds. I did better this time; enough in fact to cockily assume I was in the final, only to crestfallenly discover Joe had outscored me, at which point I hated Challengers again. Ian won his last two rounds, like Lazarus rising from a hardback chair, but Adam T was the man to beat, and he and Joe faced off over the final. With almost no power on my phone, I was like a disorganised journo intern, racing back and forth from charger to the table to try and record momentous events. 

Adam wins!

Joe runner-up

Sam third on points, if that means anything

Adam H

Ian

Martin

Then we broke into threes. There was talk of Pan Am again, but with four of us keen to play, it somehow never reached the table. Martin was pushing for Longboards, or Bonerz as it has been somewhat immaturely renamed (see pics). Having coaxed Joe and Ian into Reiner's phallic surfing bonanza, the Adams and I were left to peruse the alcove and settled on Ahoy. 

Last seen at the GNN Christmas shindig, Ahoy's mechanically-specific charms are how it interweaves two types of game into one: as Adam T and I battled (well, I hid) across the water for dominance, the Creeping Custard played a game of pick up and deliver: the aforementioned weaving is his deliveries increase the value of the territories we were fighting over, and he gets to wager each delivery on which of us he thinks will score that territory at the end of the game - getting bonus points if he's right. 

Adam T immediately loaded cannons and, not long after that, recruited crew who made coming anywhere near him a high-risk manoeuvre. I basically kept my distance, using my deck of Plans to run interference when I could. For a couple of rounds we scored equally, but Adam's visible strength and bonus half-turn each round was swinging things his way. Between us, that is. We were so busy circling each other, like boxers in a pond, that we neglected to stop Adam H running away with the game. Meantime Bonerz had subsided, to coin a phrase, and Martin had triumphed. I'll leave it at that. 

Martin 43
Ian 39
Joe 27

They were now playing Spots, but ten minutes in, still hadn't managed to claim a single dog. I think they tried a variant where the action cards keep changing, but found it made the pace a bit stodgy. I didn't actually see who won, in the end, but someone must have done because when Ahoy finished they were playing Sea Salt & Paper.

No such stodginess at our end of the table, however, as Ahoy wrapped up with Adam's smuggler easing to a win of non-sneaky margins:

Adam H 37
Adam T 25
Sam 20

The others graciously packed up Sea Salt & Paper (Joe was winning/won/delete as appropriate) so we could play So Clover as a six. Even for a game as marvellously bamboozling as So Clover, this felt like a high watermark of despair as almost everyone around the table complained that their combos were impossible (full transparency: my 'terrible' pairing was OCEAN/RAY and manta never occurred to me). Despite our misgivings, however, we did rather well. Martin's heehaw clue was nice, and I was quite pleased with Ahoy for ROOT/GATE. Joe's random card stumped us, as shirt/tail went rather well his office and surveillance clues, but despite these red herrings, it was overall a very respectable 30/36. 

I would have been up for a nightcap of the meeple variety, but with the hour approaching eleven and the night air chilly, we called it there. 

Challengers Accepted

 7.50 on a rainy Tuesday evening and six gamers were grouped around a kitchen table: Joe (host), Sam, Martin, Gareth, Ian and myself. “I have to play San Francisco,” insisted Martin, sounding like some cardboard junkie desperate for a fix. But it was because he’d written a review of the game and needed some photos of it mid-play.

Since there were an even number of us Joe suggested we begin with Challengers. In this game everyone plays two-player games against each other in a tournament format and the idea of each game is to “capture the flag” and you do that by playing cards from your deck. If you have a number of equal or higher value then you take the flag, and any defeated cards go onto your “bench”. The trouble is, if you run out of cards or fill up your bench, then you lose.

There are more rules than that, but it’s basically a simple game which, at first, I thought was too simple. You have no control over what card to play (just take it off the top of your deck) so I felt like I was just watching us play rather than playing. Then I realised that as your deck built up then your choices about what to take and what to discard between rounds is kind of pivotal.

So anyway, we had three playing areas that we rotated around according to our “fixture list” except for Joe who found that all of his games were played at the same end of the same pitch. Sam started well, but then discovered he’d picked up two “C” cards which had got mixed into the “A” deck and so his deck was pretty over powered. After this had been rectified, he fell into a run of defeats. Ian took a long time between changing seats, prompting Sam to suggest he was engaging in psychological games. I actually thought there should be more ritual between games. Maybe slamming our decks of cards on the table before we start in a Sumo-esque display of strength.

Anyway, after the tournament ended the scores were Gareth 32, Joe 31, Martin 18, Ian 17, Andrew 16, Sam 3 so Joe and Gareth went head-to-head in a final. It was pretty thematic at first: the Heroin card beat the Villain and then a werewolf beat another werewolf. Then a horse and dog teamed up to beat a werwolf and I stopped making notes after that. 

Gareth won! After Joe over-filled his bench

Then we split into two groups of three. Martin got his wish to play San Fran, with Gareth and I in tow, while Sam, Ian and Joe played Pan Am - a very nice looking game with a map of the world that has the north pole in the middle.

And Sam hated his beer so Joe took it and replaced it with a gin and tonic. Clearly getting into the whole air hostess thing.

Gareth and I got a rules refresher for San Francisco and off we sped. I apparently, kept taking the pile that Gareth needed (not a bad strategy) but I think we all had moments like that. I resented them leaving two grey foundations in play until I was in a position to take one but Gareth and then Martin took them.

Still, it was nice to play again and Martin got his photos done.

Martin 13

Gareth 8

Andrew 8

Pan Am was still in full flow so we played Spots. I played safe, taking turns to bank cards when I completed them. Gareth had terrible luck, constantly rolling fours when they were no use to him and then when he needed one - just one - he burnt through his entire stack of treats but never rolled a four. Cruel.

Martin 6

Andrew 4

Gareth 0

I had to head off now, and as I left the Pan Am game was just entering its final stage and Sam and Joe were feeling threatened by Ian's enormous stack. But it ended…

Sam 16

Ian 14

Joe 12

Martin and Gareth played Strike while Pan Am ended and then the five of them ended with So Clover.

26/30

But perhaps most important, as relayed by Sam the following day, was that Joe read out a dream he’d written in an exercise book when he was 15 years old. Just as he was reading about Clint Eastwood doing the hovering and someone was taking their knickers off when his children and all their friends came into the kitchen.

Thanks everyone. Enormous fun as always.