Snacks Entertainment

This week's games night missed Hallowe'en by a day, but landed smack on Martin's birthday. And, boy, did we celebrate. We were five in total: Martin the host, Sam, Ian, Chris and me. Sam came bearing a gift of a second hand Reiner Knizia game. Chris came bearing gifts of sweets, personally selected by him and put in individual fun party bags. Thus began our snack odyssey.

First up was a new game from Martin, fresh out the wrapper, making its second appearance on GNN: Circus Flohcati. This collection game is all about getting "trios" (three of a kind) or trying to pick up high cards in each of the ten suits. The game ends when one player has one card from each suit (a Gala Show) or the draw deck is used up.

Ian and I seemed to spend a lot of time going bust, while Chris had issues with the similarity of some of the colours. Sam managed to achieve a Gala Show just a few cards before the draw deck was exhausted, but the ten point bonus was not enough to make up for his lack of trios.

Martin 53
Chris 49
Sam 37
Ian 37
Andrew 33

An inaugural win for Martin. Happy birthday indeed. I'm not sure if anyone worked out a strategy, although there were prolonged thoughtful silences punctuated by the sound of happy chewing.

Next up was Druids, another trick taking game where your points are the value of the lowest card in the trick you won. If you later won a trick with the same suit, then that card would be replaced. You have one value per suit in front of you, but if anyone has a value for all five suits, then the round ends and they score minus three.

It all seemed a bit hippy-ish, with the rules talking about "domain cards" and "gaia cards". But the game itself had opportunities for a wide range of dickish behaviour and ways to attack your opponent.

We played just three rounds and Chris's win came courtesy of a round two windfall, when he won a trick that helped him score highly in four of the five suits. An optimal result.

Four suits. Don't want another!

Chris 35
Andrew 25
Martin 19
Sam 14
Ian 5

During this game we tore through some wasabi crisps and then straight onto the lime and chutney (I think) poppadom type things.

Next up was Decrypto. Sam and Martin teamed up again in an attempt at removing the hex that appears to hang over them whenever they play this game together.

Talking of hexes, there must have been one over the third word in our quartet, since it only appeared once for us in six rounds. This made the sixth round a real problem for me as I had to give clues to three words that had already been clued to death.

Sam pulled off a magnificent literary clue that went "The party was a hoot / I decided to strip off / Everybody stared at me with massive eyes." A great effort, but we intercepted the signal to give us a real advantage, since they'd miscommunicated earlier. The words he was trying to convey were Owl, Comic Book, and Frog.

Ian, Chris and Andrew – George Smiley from Smiley’s People
Martin and Sam - Guy Smiley from Sesame Street

We were sustained through this with some "two for a pound" salt and vinegar crisps. And we still had further to fall. Oh yes.

Finally, we played Skull King. This Contract Whist with knobs on is a tricky one to judge. There are plenty of special cards to render the normal suits redundant which makes guessing how many tricks you'll take a bit of a shot in the dark.

Notable events were: Martin bidding only one trick each round (until a last minute bid for glory) and, apart from once, always getting it; people bidding No Tricks despite having a pirate in their hand and, the main feature of the game, Ian's crazy roller coaster of luck which mostly involved him wiping out whatever he'd scored in one round by a terrible following round. It was a sight to see when, in round seven, he successfully bid Zero to put himself right back in contention only to fail with a Zero bid in rounds eight and nine to send him right back into negative figures. I guess this was karma since, by now, our snacking had moved on to Ian's two (two?!) packs of pork scratchings. Mind you, while we told each other how unhealthy they were, we kept munching away in a kind of The Rope's Around My Neck, I May As Well Kick Away The Chair kind of attitude.

Everyone is ready to bid while I struggle to take a photo

I played a fairly cautious game until I saw Ian gain 70 points for a zero bid. I had a safe round eight thanks to that pirate/escape card. In round nine, inspired by Ian I also went for zero (with a pirate in my hand, of course) and got it. This put me in pole position in the final round and when I got my four tricks with my Skull King card beating two pirates, I was untouchable.

Although, in the last round, Martin had a dilemma. He could have used the escape/pirate card to win or lose a trick. If he won, he'd screw himself and me. If he lost, he'd pretty much hand victory to me. When we totted up the scores we realised that Martin could have gifted Sam a win as he snuck up at the last minute thanks to him (and Chris) scoring zero tricks in the final round.

Andrew 360
Martin 270
Sam 250
Chris 190
Ian -90

A very enjoyable game, mostly thanks to Ian's wild swings of (mis)fortune.

By now it was ten to eleven. We'd played, drank and snacked as well as anyone could expect five aging gentlemen to do on a weekday, so we called it a night. Thanks to Martin for hosting and thanks to everyone for joining us.

A no score report

Saturday, Sam and I met up for a quick evening of him versus me. It was not meant to be blogged, hence my lack of notes regarding the scores, but my remarkable performance on Take It Easy cannot go without mention. Luckily I’d been trying out the camera on my new phone this evening, so we have photos too.

We began at seven, with a game of Circus Flohcati. A simple game of set collecting. The main mechanic being a bit like Port Royal: keep turning cards as long as you want, but if you turn over two of the same kind, you go bust and cannot pick up a card.

Unlike Port Royal, though, only the last card goes into the discard pile. The rest remain on the table and your opponent can take one. And then you can take one. In fact going bust doesn’t seem massively punitive, apart from having one less card.

The idea is to put down trios (three of a kind in value) and with seven suits there were enough of each value for us both to complete any value of trios. I won’t go into the scoring system, but although Sam scored a “Gala” (got a trio of each value) I got points for unused cards in my hand.

Possibly Knizia’s simplest game. Maybe too simple? Looks nice, though.

Andrew won!

Then Sam mentioned that he’d bought a number of games from Joe who was having a bit of a clear out. Among the titles was Russian Railroads! We got it down and, after some rule refreshment, we got going.

It’s all well and good remembering the rules, but I’d forgotten about the strategy. I went for the usual Eurogame thing of “a little bit of everything” while Sam focussed solely on the top track with its multipliers. It was a thrashing.

Sam won!

It was over rather quickly, so we played again. This time, I went for the Kiev track as the quickest route to victory and it worked. My margin of victory was small – less than ten – by a victory is a victory, right?

Andrew won!

Then we played Codenames as a co-op two-player. We played twice, taking a turn to be the Spymaster, and both times we got a “Your watches are synchronized” rating on the chart of success in the rule book.

Sam knows me well, and went for a childish clue “Off” which I used to successfully identify “Mouth” and “Pants”. He needed to consult Google though, regarding a particular definition: Kiwi was a fruit but was it also a bird? When it was my turn to pick out the word, I also found myself hesitant over the definition of Kiwi in exactly the same way.

We both won!

Then we played Take It Easy, a game that I have difficulty with. This time, I boldly started by placing my first tile in the middle. After that, things started to go downhill and I ended the first round with what might be an all-time low score of 57.

Sam, on the other hand, got lucky in round two. He needed three five tiles in a row to finish and that was exactly what I chose.

Sam won!

So with the score tied at two wins apiece, we needed a decider. We chose Elk Fest, the game of shove ha’penny with massive ungulates using the pennies as stepping stones. Being quite drunk, the most difficult part was putting the elk on the stones.

Although I got almost within stepping distance of Sam’s base first, I couldn’t get that final stone to stop in the right place.

Sam won!

Then we played Push It. First to eleven and I had an end-game collapse, giving Sam an easy win to finish the night with.

Sam won!

Phew. What an evening.