And then there were four

It was a very old-school GNN last night in terms of numbers - no Andrew, no Katy, and several other potential attendees absent meant that by the time 7.30 rolled around, there were a paltry four of us perched in Joe's kitchen - or five if you count Sybil, who populated the evening with her Victorian harrumphs at well-chosen intervals. The host was joined by Martin, Ian, and myself (Sam) - we began with Bemused.

me

I'm hard-pressed to describe this game even now, having played it. The conceit is that each player takes some kind of creative role (painter/poet/singer/musician) and has a muse, which is one of the roles - perhaps even your own, if you're a complete narcissist. They also have a secret which describes how their muse inspires them. It might be love, but then again they might hate their friggin' guts. On your turn you cast Doubt or Dread on another player's role, or play your special ability which allows you to move or discard the aforementioned afflictions. If anyone hits a five-card affliction (doubt or dread) they go insane, and if three of them are dread cards, they also die.

me later

You can still win if you die, but you need to try and kill the other players in order to do so. Which is hard to pull off when you're dead.

I had no idea what I was doing, but the game was mainly notable for the table talk, with people exercising their doubt by saying Martin's last song was a little bit Dire Straits or Joe's recent poem was doggerel. Ian's rule clarification enquiry was to check whether being dead counted as insane, and Joe cut a deal with Martin where he promised if Martin made him sane again, he wouldn't kill him.

I was first to go mad, first to die, and in last place. It was kinda enjoyable but as Ian pointed out, mostly in terms of its bemusement. Because my muse was myself, I had no real strategy other than to pretend to target someone else - Joe, in this instance, as I had matching doubt cards - and I'm not sure I'm as enamoured of the game as everyone else. It felt like it was made by someone who detested creativity.

Ian 8
Joe 5
Martin 4
Sam 3

With that appetiser done, we blasted into the first - the only - meaty (ish) game of the night in Clank! the luck-pushing, deck-building adventurer of trying not to make too much noise. I went a risk-heavy route by picking up noisy cards, but planned to exit first having grabbed the (third best) 20 point artefact. With the fresh air in my nostrils though, I was tempted away to try and grab a bit of treasure, and it was to prove an exacting downfall.

Whilst I struggled to make it back to safety, Martin triggered the game end and Ian and Joe sashayed their way to the surface despite multiple dragon attacks. Meanwhile I dealt myself non-moving cards and succumbed pathetically, tragically, and greedily. Joe waltzed his way home with the most prized artefact of all for a convincing debut win:

Joe 94
Ian 65
Martin 55
Sam 42

If I'd only listened to the voice, maybe things coulda been different...

Spires was next, the new card game of tower-building where if you build more than three sections (cards) in a tower, they cease to be worth 5pts per card and become -1pt per card instead. This was a first play with four and the main thing to note was how many contests there were over the cards. Martin wrapped things up with a flourish at the end - the (possible) sting in the tail with Spires is your have to add any cards in your hand at game-end to your towers, which often makes them too tall. But Martin had saved the point-scoring symbols to ensure his over-building was substantially offset by rewards for swords and crowns. Joe took the points for scrolls:

Martin 56
Joe 54
Sam 47
Ian 46

We finished off with not one, but two - two! - games of Polterfass. I'm terrible at this game but I do really enjoy it; and fortunately (for me) this evening Joe was even terribler than I was. Falling behind, Joe repeatedly bid big in an attempt to catch up and went bust, handing over points to the opposition, often to Martin's appalled chagrin. Meanwhile we all bid fractionally too high for Ian's 25 beer haul (we bid 26!) ensuring him a solid win in game one:

Ian 79
Martin 63
Sam 49
Joe 26

Then in the second game - after we talked Martin out of playing Super Potato - I got off to a flier, up in the forties with Joe and Martin still hovering around or under zero. But Ian hauled me back to set up a dramatic finish. I needed one point, Ian needed eleven. But if he got more than eleven, he could potentially beat me. As innkeeper, I rolled again... and went bust! Disaster! As it turned out though, Ian had bid low, thinking I would play nasty. Now he was the innkeeper, and I bid low... it was enough for the win... just.

Sam 77
Ian 73
Martin 34
Joe 14

It wasn't yet eleven pm, but with Joe and Ian feeling a little under the weather, the most sparsely populated GNN in a while came to a civilised close.

Lost Causes

Saturday games began early yesterday, with Andrew and Ian rocking up at 6pm as Stan and I set up Clank! for a four-player. We'd already cranked out a game of Railways during the afternoon...

 Going loco

During which I raced off into an early lead thanks to grabbing all three of those point-scorers: four different cubes, delivered, three-link delivery and so on. In fact I was at one stage about twenty points ahead of Stan with less bonds, but as my goods dried up on the east, his bigger network on the west starting paying out big. I held on for the win, but in the end Stan had ground his way back to a two point deficit. 

Back to Clank! I played this a couple of weeks back with Adam and Hannah and we'd really enjoyed it. And I played with Stan with similar results, although I'm not sure it's best as a two-player really. The game is like a card-drafting version of Incan Gold; grabbing what you can and hoping to get out before you're knocked out by the dragon. 

forgot to take pics of Clank, so here's Adam again

Ian decided to get out early, and put the pressure on the rest of us - once one player leaves, everyone only has four turns left to do the same. This strategy worked for Adam, but it proved Ian's undoing: despite numerous dragon attacks, the clanking cubes coming out of the bag didn't stop us all reaching the surface. There was only one winner though:

Stanley 94

Sam 79

Andrew 70

Ian 64

We all liked it. Next up was a quick blast of Lost Expedition. This can be played as a head to head game or a co-op, and the six of us combined into a three-player version. It's a pretty simple game of trying to make your way to the Lost City of Z - following the footsteps of the explorer Percy Fawcett, whose recently inspired the recent film. (Though there is plenty of doubt about the film and Percy himself, as this somewhat huffily worded critique points out). 

In the game everyone plays cards which form a 'hike' - one in the morning, one in the evening. How you negotiate each hike - from left to right - dictates your progress, as many cards have mandatory events, but also opportunities to manage both your resources (health, food, ammunition) and the hike  itself (adding/discarding cards). You begin with three explorers but only need one to reach the city in order to win. 

But a combination of my desire to push ourselves quickly along the trail, and Joe killing off Roy (the only explorer with the specialist knowledge we needed at a crucial moment!) meant we failed three-quarters of the way!

Ian, Andrew, Stanley, Joe and Sam: lose

Peer Sylvester: wins

With our leafy graves assured just as Andy walked through the door, the boys were packed off to bed and we perused the Alcove of Joy. Much muttering was heard before we finally agreed to revisit Lords of Waterdeep. It's been a long time, but we were all familiar enough with it - bar a couple of rules-checks - to include the Skullport expansion. 

Andrew rocketed off into an early lead, before we caught him up and - occasionally - overhauled him. Ian began to regret his big-quest strategy early on, as the rest of us were ducking and diving he was stoically left to collect adventurers - or cubes, as everyone but me insisting on calling them. Despite Andrew's healthy lead I felt pretty confident at this stage - I had the fewest skulls, and planned to play an Intrigue card in the final round to make having them even more punitive for the others. My only concern was Andy, who seemed to be collecting numerous Arcadia quests and chaining them in classic Bate style. 

Then Andy allowed everyone to return skulls to the corruption track and my plans suddenly didn't look remotely effective any more. I'm not sure what happened to Ian - he said he was coming last from about the sixth round - "just like my life" - and he was right: 

Andy 123

Andrew 109

Sam 100

Ian 81

Sticking with the Old School, we then played Poison. Once upon a time this was the GNN go-to filler, but it doesn't come out the box much these days. 

Maybe because the box is something of an artefact itself, with Berger artwork from that classic sitcom Games Night. Andy hadn't played it before, but that didn't stop him taking us to the cleaners on his very first round, scoring a measly two points. I had to draw on all my Knizian powers/luck to pull this one back from the dead:

Sam 15

Andy 17

Andrew 20 

Ian 28

With the time now gone ten, we finished off with a recent classic - NMBR9. I love this game, but despite my many plays I made a humdinger of an error - leaving a space for a 9 where I could only actually place it the wrong way up. I wasn't alone - all manner of swearing made its way around the table as the game entered its final furlong. But Ian shucked off his three last places to claim a very convincing win:

Ian 81

Andrew 76

Andy 68

Sam 60

And that was that! 

Oh, except to say Stan and I played Steam Park on Friday night. This is a dice-rolling, funfair-building game where what dice you roll dictate your tactics for the round: you want to build and attract visitors, but visitors bring dirt with them, and too much dirt at the end of the game will get you hit with huge fines.

Circular dirt, bottom left

In the midst of this simple roll-to-build thing though is a race: everyone rolls simultaneously and as soon as you're happy with your dice you grab the first (or second, or third) player marker. Finishing your dice rolling first gets you the bonus of removing dirt - and if you're last to finish, you add dirt instead. 

This can be really brutal in a two-player game, especially your opponent declares themselves happy with their very first roll. I wasn't sure how I felt about it, but I can imagine Katy getting a kick out of this one. 

The Art of Noise

Thursday night games! Adam and Hannah were the hosts, and I (Sam) was the guest. The first point of order was to change my clothes, as I had come straight from football and was drenched. That resolved, we stepped lightly to the Games Cupboard and debated our choices. It quickly narrowed down to either Tinner’s Trail or Clank!, which I had brought along, and Hannah plumped for Clank over TT.

I went through the rules and we set off. In Clank! you’re racing around a dungeon trying to emerge victorious by having the most treasure, which comes in the form of artefacts and gold, (many cards also score points). It’s a deck-building game, so you’re improving your cards as you go, and they have three currencies: skill to gain more cards, travel to navigate the dungeon, and swords to deal with any lurking monsters. 

The dungeon, Easton

Which all sounds very generic, but the clank of the title is the noise you make that puts you in dragon-related peril. Whenever you play a card that makes clank (it’s a noun as well as a verb) you have to place a cube of your colour on the Clank! area - and when the dragon attacks all these cubes go in the bag, before a certain amount (it increases as the game goes on) are pulled out. If your cubes are among them, you take damage. 

That's clanking!

That's clank!

That’s basically it - there are some other frills on the board that can help you and cards that can hinder, but the gist of the game is grab loot and get out. The getting out is also pertinent though, because as soon as one player returns to the surface (getting a Mastery bonus for doing so) there are only 4 turns left for the remaining players underground to try and make the surface, and in each round the dragon attacks again!

Adam chickens out whilst Hannah and I are stranded

This endgame was pretty tense. Adam was first to the surface, and Hannah and I had to dash back as quickly as we could. I made it thanks to a fortuitous deal of the cards, but Hannah was blasted to unconsciousness by the dragon. Adam!!!!

Adam and I are safe, whilst Hannah (red) is one cube from comatose

Because she wasn’t in the depths - the lower part of the board - she could be rescued and score her points. But she missed out on the Mastery token, and as a result, finished third behind me. Adam was first!!!

Adam 105

Sam 92

Hannah 73

It was really fun. Very silly, with no dice-rolling but a genuine push-your-luck feel throughout. The best treasure is down deep, but then you have further to get back. If you do trigger the endgame, you need to be confident you’re going to outscore your opponents. And the dragon attacks are laced with tension, because you really don’t want your cubes to come out. Like Hit Z Road, I found myself rooting for Hannah to make it. 

Thanks guys - thanks for bailing me out with T-Shirt and socks too!