Games night of the living dead

 I arrived at 8, just in time to see the final stages of La Fiesta de los Muertos, the game of guessing identities according to clues based on clues based on clues. I was handed a card and asked to pair clue to personality as best I could. The scores (and this may as well be how I introduce everyone) were

Adam (H), Sam, Laura (hosting) 5

Joe, Ian, Katy 4

Me 3

Then we played 6nimmt (the zombie version). Once this would have been the big end-of-evening crescendo but, with so many of us leaving early these days, the only chance to play a large scale version is at the start of the evening.

It was a disaster. Maybe we weren’t drunk enough or maybe we've relied on Martin too much as an arranger/adjudicator but there were a few confusing moments when cards were played to the wrong row or in the wrong order. Katy told everyone that “it’s not so bad” when they picked up a row of five or ten points but then was appalled when she ended round one with 16 points. Joe spent most of round three trying to skim his cards across the table into the correct place, which never worked but he did go clear in that round so perhaps, in a way, it did.  He also tried to Faro Shuffle the entire deck in one go, threatening to give him hand cramps.

Finally, we stumbled to the end. Laura’s first ever game of 6nimmt was a brutal introduction.

Joe 11

Katy 27

Ian 32

Andrew 38

Adam 49

Sam 49

Laura 85

So we put that away with a firm resolve to not play it unless Martin was here, and decided on our next adventure. Katy was keen to continue the zombies theme with Hit Z Road, and she persuaded Laura, Joe and Ian into a jaunt across America. Sam, Adam and I revisited Gold West. This game hasn’t been seen since 2017 and, amazingly, the last time I played it, the other half of the table was hosting Hit Z Road as well!

Sam explained while Adam and I listened, but Adam clearly listened better as he sped off into an early lead. It was close, though, and at the end of round eight (out of twelve) I was in the lead by a single point. Adam went big on metal for cards, while Sam did a lot of looting, which is what you have to do if you don’t have the resources to build a settlement. I hoped for those end-of-game bonuses on having the most discs of each colour.

Adam 103

Andrew 94

Sam 80

But Hit Z Road was still in it’s final stages. Katy had long since died, like a character in a TV series who has to die early on otherwise the zombies just won’t seem threatening. Pity. She’d even lined up her meeples in single file, with her at the back.

I left before they reached the ocean but apparently it ended

Ian

Laura

Joe… all made it

Katy… will be remembered fondly

Then they played Skylo twice

Adam 4

Ian 16

Sam 22

Katy 23

Joe 24

Laura 35

And

Joe 13

Ian 14

Adam 15

Sam 18

Katy 27

Laura 31

Thanks all. See you next week.

Games in a Vacuum

With Andrew an eventual no-show last night, blogging duties fell to me (Sam) but I actually missed the first hour of games, as I was getting Joe (my Joe) ready for first day of secondary school this morning. Whilst we were knocking around the house doing various schooly things (eg bath) and non-schooly things (watching The Office) those present - Martin, Ian, Joe, Adam, Katy and Andy - played some games in the kitchen. I think they began with Joe's bonkers Nachtschwarmer game of erratic moth movement (-not sure who won) before Adam won Colt Super Express (the card version of Colt Express, where everyone runs around on a train shooting each other), with Joe/Katy/Ian and Andy bringing up the rear and Martin first off the train. 

I joined just in time to watch them spectacularly implode at Biss 20. It seemed a bit like Arlington Road at first, with numbers being said in scattergun order and people standing up to bow. Despite watching for a good few minutes, the number twenty was a distant dream and they packed up when Andy seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown. By this point we knew Andrew wasn't coming, so began our seven-player stuff splitting into two groups: whilst Martin introduced Joe, Katy and Andy to Daring Dustbunnies, Adam and I coaxed Ian into trying Luzon Rails. 

Daring Dustbunnies involves some hidden identities and trying to keep your dustbunny out of the vacuum. Even though it was short and silly, we'd started playing longer and not-silly Luzon Rails whilst they were still going through the rules.

Luzon Rails was the classic simple rules/tough decisions, with players owning shares in (up to) five companies, and trying to improve their worth for dividend payouts at the end of each round. Ian's early high bid for the yellow company (which has only three shares) looked like a strong early move until Adam and I got one apiece slightly cheaper. In fact as I was comparatively cash-rich in round one, I scooped up several shares cheaply, but outside of that clearly made a poor early-20th-century industrialist, as Ian and I sensed Adam pulling away mid-game like a Formula 1 car passing a couple of mid-range saloon drivers scrutinising a map. Ian did a lot of head-scratching as the classic cube-rail dilemmas weighed heavy. 

Meantime Daring Dustbunnies was over with Katy getting a debut win over Andy in a tie-breaker (-most static), with Martin behind them and Joe apparently "lost". The rules to DD are slightly beyond my recall now so perhaps he triggered the end of the game. They began playing another new title, Silencio. I've no idea what any of it was about, except that they finished, according to the rulebook, so near and yet so far. Clarifications in the comments please!

We wrapped up Luzon Rails around the same time with Ian grimly satisfied he had more cash than the 25 he started with. No much though:

Adam 87

Sam 68

Ian 28

We all came together again for not one, but two games of Fiesta de los Muertos, notable for how badly we did, failing to appease more than two of the dead in either attempt. I'm not sure this game of clue-chaining and deduction is an entirely unqualified success - it's fun, but much of the time seems to be spent wondering what happened, and why. Plus I kept forgetting to fill in my teeth. 

Adam and Andy then bade us goodnight, and as with last week, one word-connection game beget another, with So Clover hitting the table twice in a row as well. I can't speak for everyone but at this point I was drunk enough to laugh about Joe's suggestion being rejected for a reason, it transpired, I had completely imagined. Considering the state of us - or me, anyway - we did rather well, only struggling with Katy's clues, who after all Martin reminded us, once used 'the' as a clue in Just One. Even so, a reasonably coherent display, I think, though I didn't write down any scores...

With 11 now in the past, we wrapped up another delightful GNN - until the same time next week!

Too clover by half

 This Tuesday I arrived at Sam's at eight o'clock to find five gamers already into their second game. They (Martin, Joe, Sam, Andy and Adam H) had played Regicide. "It felt like we'd just got started and then we lost," Martin summarised.

Then they began a new game So Clover. This game involves putting four square cards into a two by two grid and then write a word on each side that thematically link the two words on the grid. Hopefully this will make more sense if you look at the photos.

Katy joined a little after me and we watched the game play out. Sam’s and Martin’s clovers were both deduced first time, Andy remarked that he first needed to remember which words matched with his clues before he showed us his clover, Adam bamboozled us with Marriotski, which we were supposed to work out was a Russian Hotel. But Joe went out of the box, with a couple of punning clues: “Goldbrum” was a clue for “Human” and “Fry” and “Walrus” was a clue for “whip”. As in “walrus whip”. Of course. We still got all four of his clues right, though.

Then we played another co-op game: Fiesta de los Muertos. In this everyone gets the name of a dead person, and on their player board they write the name of the person (which is then hidden) and a one-word clue. Pass this to the next and they have to change the word to something with the same meaning. Each player board is passed four times, so the final word showing is four times removed from the initial word. Then all names are revealed (with an extra random one thrown in) and it’s up to everyone to guess which clue fits which person.

Joe, again, did well. He guessed six out of seven in round one and then seven out of seven in round two which would have made him a winner if it weren’t co-op. One clue in the second round baffled Martin: Minotaur was represented by “heifer” which everyone else was fine with, but Martin started Minotaur by writing “labyrinth” and he couldn’t see how it got from one word to the next. It turns out it was good old Joe. Martin wrote “labyrinth” then Adam wrote “maze” and then Joe, staying firmly outside the box, thought the clue must refer to Minotaur (a guess, but a correct one) so he wrote “bull” with Sam finally writing “heifer”. Joe’s remarkable leap of logic was fine, but Martin was expecting something a little more labyrinthine.

No we split into two groups, with Sam, Adam and Katy playing Mariposas which looked like a proper eurogame. I don’t know anything about it but I did jot down the following exclamations from Sam during the game:

You don’t pick up butterflied you haven’t moved.”

“I’ve got a shitload of flowers.”

“I’m still at zero points by the way.”

In the end, Adam won. Because it was a proper eurogame, after all.

Adam 27

Katy 24

Sam 21

We played Scout! A trick taking game where cards have two values, one at each end, and once you are dealt a card, you can’t rearrange anything, only decide which way up it should go. After that, you have to play sequences (runs or x-of-a-kind) to clear your hand. If you can’t play, you have to pick up a card from whatever is showing on the table, giving that player a point and then you can add it to your hand (anywhere, either way up).

Joe suspected it was all luck, but Martin was not convinced at all. 

Martin 37

Andy 26

Andrew 17

Joe 2

Then we played Anansi, a sort of contract whist, except you pick up followers during each round by playing a card not for its value but for the number of heads (sero, one or two). At the end of the round, you have to have the same number of followers as tricks that you’ve won. After two rounds, Martin went for winning no tricks and getting no followers, just for the bonus points. It almost worked too,

Andrew 21

Martin 20

Joe 12

Andy 8

At the other end of the table, Sam continued in his role as the unlucky host as he picked up “two more empty eggs!” and Katy insisted I photograph Sam’s sad board.

Adam 9 + tie breaker

Katy 9

Sam 5

Then I dashed out, hoping to be home by eleven, at least. No idea what went on without me but I’m sure it was fun.