Flowers in your hair

A bumper night of gamers was in the air, so many that Stan and I dragged the kitchen table out from the wall. But unfortunate late drop-outs (Andrew and Andy M) bumped us back down to six: Ian was first to arrive, followed by Martin, Gareth and Laura. With Joe running late we played Hit as a warm-up, Knizia's hot toddy of temptation and being shat on, as Ian regularly was when he pushed his luck. "I've got nothing to lose" he said, before going bust again. "Except that"

At this point we still didn't know about Andrew and Andy's participation, and so blasted through a quick game of Strike - Ian won - before Martin set up San Francisco (a new Reiner!) at one end of the table and I First Rat at the other. 

Andrew texted to say he couldn't make it, so we wondered whether to shanghai Andy into San Francisco or space, but then he dropped out too and rules explanations commenced apace. At this point, I had no idea what happened in San Francisco, but apparently Martin didn't either, ending the game flummoxed by it and demanding to play again immediately!

Laura 11and a half

Joe 11

Martin 4

We finished First Rat just after. Gareth had summoned a huge amount of resources at the death to construct a shitload of rocket components, and it was enough to push him past me. But Ian's focus on building+racing that triggered the game-end saw him finish his First Rat debut safely in first:

Ian 73

Gareth 61

Sam 60

We shuffled chairs as Gareth and I joined Martin for his San Fran kinda-rematch, and he explained the rules. I was slightly concerned about learning a game after 9pm, especially one that seemed as bananas as this, but it was fine. Everyone is building their own San Francisco, and each has overlapping scoring criteria: improve one, and you're no doubt hampering another. Cards are placed from left to right across a tableau of five different landscape types, with points for being first to fill a row, points for having most workers in a row, bonuses for having two architects in a row and additional points for the biggest/best tram network.

On your turn you can either add a card to a column (there are three) or take all cards from a column and add them to your city where applicable. This being a Knizia, there's a catch: when you take cards, you also take a contract, and you can never pick up a column if there are less (or the same) number of cards in it as your number of contracts. But the moment everyone has at least one contract, everyone gets to return one too, meaning what is available when fluctuates according to how invested players have become. 

At the other end of the table, Joe was also teaching rules to Laura and Ian with his new card game Gift of Tulips. 

I didn't hear anything about it though (other than it being a bit like Biblios) apart from the scores:

Ian 67

Joe 47

Laura 42

Laura then headed on home and Joe and Ian played Break the Cube, which I didn't take any photos of. I'm aware Joe won the game though, and around this time we were wrapping up on San Francisco as well, with Martin, now he knew the lay of the hilly land, much more competitive. But my builder-heavy combo combined with tram network and single skyscraper was just enough...

Sam 12and a half

Martin 12

Gareth 9

I put the kettle on as Ian suggested Wavelength as a gaming nightcap: new to Gareth but well-known to the rest of us, with the famous front bottom of Gwyneth making it's appearance once more. Will we ever play Wavelength without it? 

Also featured was Ian's in-depth knowledge of bees, Martin's affected indifference to a bee conversation at a dinner party, me wondering if his affected indifference would bleed into his own bee-related clueing and discovering, to Martin's palpable disdain, that it wouldn't. We did very well overall though, triggering two extra rounds and sailing past the 15 needed to officially win the co-op version. I think we ended with 21. Fun to revisit, we should try the team version again at Novocon perhaps?

The hour was chiming eleven though so that was it for this evening. Hope our absentees are convalescing and we'll see them soon...

Strike then Hit

 I was only slightly late to Joe’s this week, but at least that meant I arrived at the same time as Katy, saving Joe a trip up and down the stairs.

In his kitchen I met Sam, Adam T and Martin and with only brief formalities while Katy assured us she was stoned and that she’d forgotten some zines and then realised that actually, no, she had brought them, we quickly got into a game of Herd Mentality (I was especially pleased by the fact we'd all happily agreed to play, thinking maybe that meant we'd already won). In this game, a question is read out and if your answer is among the most popular, then you get a point. 

It started well. Adam cursed his decision to go highbrow on the question “favourite bodily noise” as everyone else said “fart.” On the question “Name a brand beginning with A” Sam scoffed at Katy’s choice, insisting that “Apple isn’t a brand name,” before he remembered it was an extremely famous one. Alas, the questions took a turn towards multiple choice which kind of ruined the fun, but otherwise it was nice.

Adam 9

Sam 8

Martin 8

Katy 5

Joe 4

Andrew 4

After this we split into two groups of three. Katy was overjoyed when Joe and Adam agreed to play Yokohama while Martin was introduced to First Rat by Sam and I.

While First Rat is at heart very simple, there is a lot to keep track of and Martin’s opinion of the game was that he liked it but there were about three too many things going on. Sam agreed, saying it was a bit like a dog throwing up Christmas tree lights, but he personally never found it overwhelming. I took advatage of Sam’s explainer’s curse and Martin’s inexperience and I copied the strategy I’d seen Adam H use only a couple of days before. Thanks Adam.

Andrew 95

Martin 87

Sam 84

Yokohama had, at this point, barely begun so the three of us embarked on an odyssey of short games. First up was Sea Salt and Paper, a game that looks lovely but I sort of struggled with the scoring system and was never quite sure about how many points I had. That was all academic, though, as halfway through round two Martin stole a mermaid card from me and declared that he had all four mermaid cards and therefore won instantly!

He was amazed, having not seen anything like it despite having 20 plays under his belt. 

Then we played Strike! which I still hadn’t tried yet. It’s simple push your game, rolling dice one at a time into a tiny amphitheatre hoping to get matching values so you get those dice back. Should you be unlucky enough that the person before you emptied the amphitheatre, then you have to roll all your dice. This happened to Sam, who was obliged to throw his five dice and amazingly he got a pair and a three of a kind (a full house, I suppose) and was able to take them all back.

We played three times, Sam won games one and three and Martin won game two.

Then after Strike! we played the similarly named Hit. A very simple set collecting game by Knizia. Draw a card from the deck and decide to stick or keep going, but after three cards any duplicate values mean you are bust. Those cards you stuck with might then be stolen by the other players, though. Then just add up the value of the cards you were able to keep.

Martin had terrible luck, going bust regularly and the most ignominious example was when he drew 3, 1, 1, 2, 2. Still, he did better than me.

Sam 133

Martin 71

Andrew 61

Next up was Dandelions. Roll all your dice and then chose which dice to use as you flit from petal to petal, dropping dice behind you as you go. It’s kind of area control as most dice gets to score a particular petal. Sam got some truly awful luck as he landed on the “reroll dice” space and rolled 1, 1, 2 which meant he couldn’t actually go far enough to leave that petal. That kind of limited his scoring potential.

Andrew 75

Martin 52

Sam 42

Then we learnt that Yokohama was halfway through its final round which meant we had enough time for another game. We chose Hit again. This time a stack of 3s got passed around and around getting longer and more exciting each time until Sam went bust with them and they all got removed. Heartbreaking. I was able to steal some 10s and won the game hansomely.

Andrew 128

Martin 57

Sam 41

Then we watched as the last moves of Yokohama were played and the scores totted up. Katy remains in charge of this particular hub of international trade, but only just.

Katy 143

Joe 138

Adam 114

Lastly we ended on So Clover. Martin and Joe both went clear and Joe’s clue of “Eye” for the words “triangle/pumpkin” was very smart. I was unsure of my clues, since they needed a bit of lateral thinking: I had “Circus” for “circle/cotton” referencing Billy Cotton’s circus. But my decoy card contained the words “show” and “top” and poor old Billy Cotton never got any consideration at all.

Adam was also stymied by the decoy card which contained “cushion” when the real answer was “couch.” Or vice cersa, I don’t recall. And talking of not remembering, Katy forgot what her original answers were. I think that testifies as to how brilliant our guess was. Sam, last to complete his clover, realised that one of his clues was actually a word on a different side of the clover. An easy mistake to make, although Martin had said earlier that game that he’d almost done it.

Didn’t note the score. 27 maybe?

With that I was up those stairs like a whippet up a drainpipe. Thanks all. See you next Tuesday.