Fishing for Experts

Although we had unfortunate late drop-outs (Pete and Andrew) there was still a solid six last night at the table. Long-time absentee Adam T was back, and he, Ian and I kicked off the evening whilst we awaited the others with a game of sumo-wrestling shoving match Slambo. I didn't snap pictures but here's my hand v Martin at the weekend.

It's super-simple. All we're doing is playing cards to a shared discard where we keep track of the current, cumulative value, as blue cards (positive) force it up and red cards (negative) down. If anyone is forced to take the value over ten or below zero, they have lost the bout and everyone else gets to crow 'Slambo!' at them. Shame is enforced - in the form of a card - and as soon as someone loses three bouts they lose the game - whomever has least shame at this point wins. We didn't get to three, as other sumo wrestlers were arriving around us, but Adam was least shamed when we packed it back into its tiny box again. 

Adam - top sumo
Sam - average sumo
Ian - abashed

Now Katy and Adam H were here I took the liberty of setting up Whirly Derby. Martin's infamous greens (win most races) had been replaced by a new set from the publisher, and Katy dismissed insider advice on the outsider-ranked black marbles, saying she would navigate the problem with skill. Joe arrived to find himself already marbled, so to speak, as we began racing in earnest. 

Katy's confidence seemed to evaporate fast as the blacks stayed true to the bookie's predictions early on, and Ian - playing green - got off to a solid start. Despite the new green marbles being clearly larger than the old set, class is permanent and they seemed keen to dominate. 

Not entirely though - Adam T's reds pulled off the result of the game with this finish...

...causing him to - temporarily - change his feelings about Whirly Derby not being a 'proper' game. However, it wasn't enough to catch Ian, and again there was talk about perhaps adding a bidding phase for the marbles: green still seem strong, and blacks trailed in nearly last:

Ian Green 45
Adam T Red 43
Sam Blue 21
Joe Orange 20
Katy Black 14
Adam H White 10

We split into trios for the evening's main courses, with Joe, Adam H and I keen to try out Martin Wallace's condensed Railways of the World game, Steam Power, and the others perusing the alcove of joy before deciding on Mille Fiori. 

Steam Power shares a lot of genetics with Railways. There's no turn-order auction or special cards, but you're building track to deliver cubes from factories - this time to fulfil contract cards. There's only four resources and, as with Railways, you can share connected networks. Unlike Railways, once you've started building track, you can only extend from there and not jump around the map - Germany, in our case.

Adam - yellow - and Joe - red - began contesting the mid-west whilst I struck a more independent note in the south. I forgot to take any photos again (apart from the one above) but overall the vibe is recognisably Railwaysy whilst being faster: as soon as anyone completes X amount of contracts (11 with three players) endgame is triggered, so there's a balance between building an empire and exploiting it for all you can. As players can take cubes from opponents factories there's a tangible, and not always totally inadvertent, dickishness to things. We enjoyed it, although Joe and I probably knew what would happen score-wise going in:

Adam H 64
Sam 60
Joe 48

Mille Fiori wrapped up at exactly the same time, having exhibited the same levels of shenanigans and muttering throughout. All three players had taken turns leading, but it was Ian - green! - who emerged triumphant in what, for Mille Fiori, was a tight finish. 

Ian 210

Katy 202
Adam T 190

We shuffled seats. Adam T suggested getting back in the Fellowship trick-taking saddle, and Ian and I joined him. The others went to bathe in the alcove's golden glow and returned with a selection of boxes before ultimately deciding on Fishing, which all of them had played before. I'm not as good as Andrew at keeping track of what's happening on the other side of the table, but I did snap Katy looking very excited by the prospect of fish. 

In the Fellowship, we took on Chapter 13, where we set out from somewhere or other hoping to reach Moria (I think) and mechanically, this meant a 'long' chapter where multiple hands are played until all 7 (or 8, if you include the optional Bill the Pony) characters have made it through.

We got off to a solid start, with a clear opening round as Frodo, Merry and one of the Elves made it through the gauntlet. But Boromir - morally compromised - and Aragorn - picky with numbers - both harpooned the second round. 

Then we rallied somewhat, used the Mithril shirt to protect Frodo, and finished our jaunt to Middle-Earth with a solid victory. There was a brief debate about continuing into Moria, but it was another long chapter so we elected to move on to the different speed of Gadget Builder. 

This is an UNO-inspired card-shedder where you can play like UNO - play matching colour-or-number cards to a shared discard pile - but you can also spend cards to build gadgets which give you special powers. The gadgets are helpful, but you can only use one per turn and you can't go out if any of them are unused. First to three rounds wins, and we were poised at a 1-0-0 score when the others finished Fishing, with Katy the victor in an incredibly tight finish, as all anglers brough their hard-won North Sea experience to bear:

Katy 94

Adam 93

Joe 90

We were going to pack Gadget Builder in, but all three of them were exhausted by their time at sea and bade us goodbye, not even taking up the offer of So Clover! Incredible scenes. More credible scenes followed, as we continued Gadget Builder with all of us utilising gadgets and winning rounds, leaving us poised again, this time on 2-2-2 with a next-round winner. Ian and I conferred this morning that we'd both forgotten who won, but knew it wasn't ourselves. So it must have been Adam!

Adam - 3

Ian and Sam 2 each, plus bonus senior moment

And that was that!

Space Merchants

As it was Ian's birthday, there was an impromptu games night last night at Adam's house as he, Katy and I joined with the birthday boy. My automated calendar insists his birthday is today, although Ian demurs and I guess we have to trust him (even though I clearly recall him struggling to remember how old he was a couple of years ago) but the debate of the night was What To Play: I'd brought along Black Forest but wasn't actually pushing for it as a four-player, as I suspected it would run rather long. I'd also brought Quantum, as it's one of Ian's favourites and - as we reminded ourselves throughout the evening - it was his birthday. "Is it space-themed?" Katy asked.
"Yes" said Ian. Katy wailed.

"We can pretend it's trading in the Meditterranean though" I said. 

"At night" Adam added. 

Katy seemed unconvinced but as it was Ian's birthday, she relented, and after a brief visit to the front room to witness Arthur's rather impressive Star Wars Lego diorama, we set up for a rare four-header.

Adam kicked things off in sedate fashion - moving a single ship on the board, and taking two Research. Unusually, Ian and I did the same: everyone clearly lining up their ducks for turn two. But Katy jumped into an embryonic lead with a cube down on her first turn: we were away. 

With a fairly expansive set-up everyone had some room to manoeuvre, but whilst Katy and I kept to ourselves, Ian found himself targeted by Adam fairly early on. Birthday reminders came through the galaxy PA but to no avail: with Adam's ships all low-numbered, fate was encouraging him to go aggressive and Ian was closest. Normally in Quantum there's a kind of compacted Eclipse-shaped curve of building your engine (Eclipse) or getting cubes down while you can (Quantum) before eventually everyone merges into a punch-up. 

But despite Ian's impressive rally to catch Katy and I (down to two cubes, with zero attacks) my command card of Resourceful (remove a ship for an extra action) was working wonders for me, as I used it to get a cube down three turns running and snag the victory. "That was actually not too bad!" Katy surmised, who took an extra turn after I'd won which we'll have to ignore - otherwise, chaos. 

Sam - no cubes

Katy and Ian - two cubes left

Adam - four cubes left

Arthur came in and when Adam told him that he'd lost, his son muttered "That was inevitable". He's never seen his dad play a Rosenberg, obviously... We moved on to Fishing; new to Ian and Adam. Basic trick-taking rules apply and the idea is that your 'catch' - won tricks - are all worth a point per card. The conceptual catch is that they're also your hand for the next round, and any shortfall is made by drawing from the 'Ocean deck' - which introduces more powerful cards. 

This was the closest game of Fishing I've seen - there was only 12 points between first and fourth going into the final round. Unfortunately my impressive penultimate-round haul gave me a hand of shite and I only won a single card (courtesy of a zero). Katy caused a stewards' enquiry when she was a card short, drew a trump from her stack to win the trick and then subsequently discovered a bland old red '1' on the floor after the game. Adam - who else - took 15 points and returned home most boastful fisher. 

Adam 85

Katy 82

Ian 80

Sam 77

Although Arthur was still up and we could hear him and Hannah giggling in the next room, Katy said it was getting late and she would go home unless Ian opened his birthday Toblerone, so he did. Ian had asked me to bring So Clover but, portentously signalling the mid-life fog he is headed towards, I'd forgotten. So we played No Thanks instead. I didn't take any photos at this point, but we re-established whose birthday it was, perhaps all secretly hoping that Ian would get a victory to take home. Unfortunately his Andrew-esque strategy of nabbing a lowish-card early on didn't pan out - although he did at least beat Adam out of third place. Katy was pleased to end the night on a high:

Katy 22

Sam 29

Ian 50

Adam 65

And we ended Ian's anniversary with a discussion on the deceptive nature of time: Ian's recollections of the last two decades' events all being "a couple of years ago"; my brain's default of up and coming band being the Arctic Monkeys, Adam's confession that he doesn't remember "anything". Katy said as she got older she found herself knowing and more and more people and it was wonderful. Adam replied sonorously that, at some point, that trend will begin to reverse. 

But before then there are more games to be played. We headed out into the now-misty Easton air with the promise of that soon... 

Hot Cathedral Action

Walking along Joe's road, with the cardboard recycling bags neatly hanging up on railings, I arrived at his door and spent about thirty seconds trying to find the doorbell under the large Christmas wreath on his front door. 

After I went in I found I was the last expected attendee. Apart from me and Joe, there was Ian, Katy, Sam, Adam T and Martin. We began with Panda Royale,  the fun new dice game that Martin didn't seem keen on at all. 

Joe taught Katy and Martin the rules, getting couple of sums wrong as he did, and we were off. Our dice clattered loudly against Joe’s table as we progressed through the rounds. Martin didn't seem happy with our lassez faire attitude to some particular rules. Katy got confused by the different phases of each round, forgetting which order things happened in and got a little spiky when Martin cajoled her.

As for the game,  Adam when big on reds which didn't work out for him at first but soon hit the jackpot. Joe went for those big green dice and he had four in front of Katy did too, asking for a green D20, “and that's the first time I've said that,” she said. 

I kept getting very low yellow scores and so I always chose my dice last. As such, at one point I had one of each colour,  which is exactly what you don't want. 

The smart money went big on blues and trading dice. Ian did this and strode to a handsome win.

Ian 463

Joe 429

Sam 424

Katy 422

Adam 420

Martin 414

Andrew 387

It's only now when I type the scores out that I realise that we finished in order of name length. Martin still wasn't keen on it by the end, though.

Then Katy got out her bottle of ginger wine, causing a little flurry of cocktails as Sam made a whisky mac and Joe made a Rusty Nail (ginger wine and drambuie). Joe offered ice around. “It's frozen water,” he told us, helpfully. 

We split into two groups. Joe, Martin and Ian chose Rebirth. I questioned the use of zeppelins as score markers and was told this was set in the future which surprised me because, from a distance, it all looks a bit medieval. 

Sam's amazing customization work

Katy, Sam, Adam and myself played Rebel Princess, the trick-taker that poo-poohs the patriarchal society in which we live. Or something.

Katy took to it immediately, scoring an impressive zero points in rounds one and two. The rules regarding passing cards were a bit much, I felt. One round insisted we passed after every hand. But then in the final round,  we discovered that winning a trick (usually the last thing you want) in a particular suit actually reduces your score (which you definitely do want).

One strange thing - perhaps my brain was confused by all this passing anti-clockwise because when it was my turn to deal, I dealt anticlockwise too. Katy found it disturbing to watch. I blame the coriolis effect or something.

Sam played brilliantly in that final round, gathering a healthy crop of that suit, reducing his score enough to trigger a tie breaker. Which Katy jokingly suggested might be “most rounds with zero points”. Sam checked the rules and it turns out she was right. 

Katy 12 (wins on tie-breaker)

Sam 12

Andrew 16

Adam 24

On Rebirth, it ended with Ian strolling to another win thanks to some helpful bonus cards. 

Ian 209

Martin 187

Joe 169

We ended at the same time and after a little reshuffle later and I’m sat between Sam and Ian for another game of Rebirth. My first and, at this late hour of 9.15, I almost vetoed it but I was swayed by Ian’s happiness to play it twice. So I listened to Sam’s rules explanation with even more intent than usual, wanting to reduce any further questioning. I was distracted by the pieces, though, which smelled faintly of sawdust and I was transported back to the woodworking class at school.

As for the game, it was a typical Knizia of balancing gains for yourself with sub-optimal moves which, nevertheless, stop you opponents. Chain together tiles and surround castles for points. I wrote down “hot cathedral action” in my notebook but sadly forgot to note the context.

Andrew 167

Ian 166

Sam 154

At the other end of the table, Katy, Joe, Adam and Martin played a game of Fishing that I pretty much ignored and then left before it had finished but Sam sent me the scores later.

Martin 86

Joe 85

Adam 77

Katy 75

Without me, Ian and Sam played Agent Avenue twice with Sam winning both times.

Then they ended with two So Clovers. In Sam’s message to me, he tells me that Katy thinks taking speed is festive.

Looking at the clovers, I note that someone wrote “Speed” for “sea/fast”. A reference to Speed 2 perhaps?

28/36 or 38/36 if you include “festive” points, apparently.

Then Adam left and they went again for

27/30

Thanks all. Have a great festive season!

Rebel without a corset

With Winter tapping on Autumn's shoulder, I walked as briskly as I could manage to Sam's kitchen. There I found Joe already seated,  putting away a game called Panda Royale. As Adam T, Adam H and Ian arrived, it never left the table top, hovering within easy reach. And so, when we had all settled down with drinks in front of us, it was chosen for its second time around tonight. 

It's a cleverly designed dice-rolling/drafting game where we all start with a  lowly yellow 6D die and, round by round, we pick up more coloured dice. Each colour has bonus. Purple dice instantly double their score, blue dice double only if you have a glittery blue dice too. Clear dice can be swapped for another player's die (usually blue glittery ones).

I chose red dice as my path to victory. These scored Value of dice x number of dice. There's a chance win big but, also, the lower half of the numbers all count as negative which is a risk. And so it was that once I rolled all minus points and saw my score turn sharply backwards. 

Adam H specialised in blues and the thieving clear dice. Sam did so too, but he usually got his clear dice from Adam when his glittery blue dice were stolen.

The rules were sparse so we devised our own method of deciding who was starting player, which we promptly forgot. 

In the end, Ian’s horde of Purples and Adam T's collection of blues got them a joint win. Was there a tie-breaker, we wondered. Maybe the roll of one last die? But then Sam said that there wasn't one. We were a little disappointed that the game designers had suddenly abandoned the dice-rolling mechanism at such an important juncture. 

Ian 451

Adam T 451

Adam H 446

Sam 376

Joe 314

Andrew 303

And the scores of the first game, before I arrived, were equally close.

Joe 481

Sam 480

Adam H, at this point, told us about a beer left at his house last week. Some sort of rose raspberry concoction. We assumed it was one of Martin's. Adam brought it back and offered it to anyone who was interested. It was put in Sam's fridge where, I believe, it is still there as I write.

Next up we chose Rebel Princess, a feminist trick-taking card game which is hard to find in the UK because (a) of its Spanish origins and (b) the difficulty of searching for it without returning results about Star Wars. 

Our own feminist trick-taker, Katy, was expected later but it played six and everyone seemed intrigued so we didn't wait. After all, Adam T insisted it would only take two minutes to explain. “... five minutes.” he corrected himself after a glance at the rules. 

It's feminist in the sense that every player has a power they can use and these are denoted by princesses from literature and maybe history. To make things more interesting, each round has an additional rule such as: split your hand in half, play the first half then pass the other half to the right and continue playing with your new cards.

Winning cards with suitors (one point per cards) or the frog card (5 points) was bad. The powers added a new dimension to the game. Ian demanded that Adam H begin his hand with a random card. Adam H did so but, before he revealed it, he took a chance and played his own power and reversed the card values such that low cards would win (which would be bad).

Had his clever plan worked? He revealed his card. A two. Disaster! He won the hand on his way to a less than stellar performance, saved from last place only by Adam T's explainers curse. 

Andrew 7

Sam 13

Ian 15

Joe 20

Adam H 23

Adam T 24

Then Katy arrived, and the seven of us split into two groups. Ian and the two Adams played Rebirth, the Ireland map. Ian went through the rules for the two ingenues. I didn't pay much mind to the game, except when Joe balanced a shell from a pistachio nut on one of the meeples. Such fun.

It ended (after I'd left for the night)

Adam H 264

Adam T 233

Ian 212

Me, Joe, Sam and Katy played Fishing. Another trick-taking card game with (aptly enough) hidden depths. The basic premise couldn't be simpler. Win tricks and each card, at the end of the round, scores one point.

But the cards you win are recycled back into your hand. Therefore, if you do badly in one round, you'll only have a few cards. In this case, you can draw up to the required hand size from a stack of cards that are more powerful than those cards you start with, and they get more overpowered as the game goes on.

The game raises an interesting dilemma. Do you deliberately do badly in one of the eight rounds in order to pick up some OP cards from the deck and win the next round or two? It's such a clever mechanic. 

Katy played particularly aggressively and, perhaps swayed by our recent brush with feminism, the rest of us derided her toxic masculinity. 

I was stung in the final round, picking up -6 in special cards allowing Katy to scrape a win. She'd been twenty points ahead mid-game and just about hung on while we whittled her lead away. 

Katy 84

Andrew 82

Sam 78

Joe 78

I dashed out with almost indecent haste and then the trio I left behind played Misfits. 

Katy won

And then they played So Clover. I was sent a photo but no score. But let's be honest,  you can't put a value on fun.

Thanks all. See you next week. 

Trick-taking with a maggot

A rare Saturday night games foray last night, courtesy of Laura and Lucy, and latterly Katy who turned up after an extravagant meal for sixteen people out somewhere in the city. 

While Lucy was putting the kids to bed, I taught Laura - bedecked in reindeer antlers - the game of the moment, Rebirth. Ryker joined us briefly to watch as I explained that in a semi-green post-apocalyptic future, we'll be building castles and cathedrals. Ryker built a tower of them whilst Laura patiently listened, and then we embarked on a pretty speedy 2-player game of the easy-to-grok Scotland side of the board. I won, Ryker went to bed (-not as a result of me winning) and we flipped the board over to play Ireland instead. In the midst of this, Katy turned up and cheerleaded for Laura as she snaffled castles from me at a rate of what seemed like one a minute. Our positions from game one - where I leapfrogged Laura in final scoring - were reversed, as we both broke 200 points, but Laura by a more impressive margin for a debut 'complex' win. I forgot to take pics but here's Ashley Down Road after the storm, covered in bed and bins.

Then Lucy arrived too, and we played So Clover. At first Lucy was super-tired and suggested bowing out, but with a bit of encouragement she contributed a solid six. In the first game the only letdown was my clover, when for some reason everyone started talking about donkey dicks just because I'd written the clue 'long'. But eventually nobody tripped over on the ghostly phallus and it was Leftovers that harpooned the opener. Feeling enervated we went again and picked up a perfect 24/24:

Then it was time for Misfits! We played twice. 

I think Katy won one and Lucy won one. There was a lot of coffeehousing, with Katy realising at one point that's why she enjoys the game so much. We reminisced about Ian's brilliance at it - his ears may have been burning - and basically had the best fun you can have sabotaging each other with offcuts. But all good things come to and end, and so Lucy eventually retired to bed. 

The three of us debated what to play, although mostly this was Laura and I discussing whilst Katy made little 'hmph' noises from her chair. Having initially ruled it out as potentially too long to start on at 11pm, we ended up playing Fishing. I forgot to take photos of everything except the box, earlier in the day...

This is a pretty bonkers must-follow trick-taker where the tricks you win are both points (one per card) and also your hand for the subsequent round. The catch is that if you don't have enough cards in your won tricks for the next hand, you take them from a communal deck instead, and it's this deck that adds increasingly powerful cards to the game: higher numbers in the basic suits, a trump suit, and some special powers. 

Katy got off to a solid start and she was concerned - and Laura and I hopeful - that her personal deck was stacked with enough chaff that we could build much stronger hands: the game has a kind of ebb and flow of winning/not winning, where you want to shed crappy cards into tricks you're not winning. However though we only played six rounds of the official eight, neither Laura or I could catch Katy up and she may well have had a big enough lead to survive any comebacks. 

Something like:
Katy 80
Laura and Sam - back in the 50s

It was gone 11.30 now so even though it was a Saturday, we called it a night. A very fun night!

Storm Warning

Friday

Only two weeks after Novocon, the weekend that I have hilariously termed Chippencon arrived - Chris and Chippenham pals Paul H and Stuart were joined by me (Bristol) and Paul J (Isle of Wight) for two days and three nights of coastal gaming at the quiet (except for the wind) village of West Bexington.

Before that happened though, Stuart kicked things off at Chris' house by beating him being beaten by him at Kingdomino (no pics) before Paul H joined them and won Incan Gold by virtue of serially 'chickening out' (still no pics) before they began HeckMeck - and I arrived in time to join them a couple of rounds in, which was also just enough to win. Still no pics, meaning the visually arresting image below is from the next game we played: Nidavellir. I don't remember Paul looking (or being) this furious though. It was still early.

I picked up another victory here, although in fairness I was in some way nursed toward it with lots of in-game recaps on how things worked. Basically though I got a lot of green dwarves. Here's Chris pretending he's totally fine with Paul H getting in the way of his oranges. 

We still had a bit of time so blasted through three games of Strike. I think Chris won two and I one. But I'm not sure because we realised it was time to hit the road, and after snaffling a sandwich jumped into our cars and headed south in convoy. Chris and I had a good old chinwag about times past and present before we rode into Dorchester South to pick up Paul from the station. Then we spent the next 2 hours in Dorchester experiencing all the traffic it had to offer, which was seemingly endless. Somewhere in the midst of it we also got some shopping done and, with mine and Chris' various maladies in mind, managed to keep the crisps to reasonably minimal. "But I've got nuts" Chris said, "And biscuits". The food groups were looking slightly monocultured so I balanced it out with some bananas. 

Then there was more traffic - initially - before Google took us along some snowy lanes across hill and dale before we finally trundled into West Bexington. Levering ourselves out of the car, we could hear the sea from south of us, hidden in the considerable dark. We ambled around the house for a bit...

Then as Paul H started making his chilli, the other four of us played three games of Strike which Paul J won. So we played another which Chris won, before eating the chilli (delicious!), discovering every single chair in the room made farting noises, and opening up the evenings' ludological main course, which was Lords of Waterdeep. 

Stuart completed a mission on his very first turn and did spend much of the game in the lead. Despite this Paul H's reputation preceded him as he was repeatedly targeted, and as a result struggled to stay in contention. I was poised to haul in 12 points from my last turn, but then Paul J destroyed the building I needed and all I could do was hire a couple of rogues instead. Chris had just minutes before said he was competing for 4th, but this turned out to be not true at all...

Chris 113
Start 109
Sam 105
Paul H 99
Paul J 98

Then Chris introduced us to Fishing, the new Friedmann Friese trick-taker with interesting gimmick. This was really an interesting must-follow affair where winning tricks gives you a point per-won-card, but the won-cards also form your draw deck for the subsequent round. If you don't have enough cards for your hand, you take cards from the shared deck instead, and these have escalating power - a trump suit is introduced, the standard suits get higher numbers, and there's a few special buoy cards as well. So winning no tricks early gets you a powerful hand for the subsequent round, but winning shedloads of tricks means you have shedloads of low-value cards in your deck, and won't be drawing from the shared deck for a while. 

As a result the game ebbs and flows in terms of who is in the box seat. Both Paul H and I tried to build a super-powerful hand for the final round, but that just meant we scored bugger all in the penultimate round, and shared the last few tricks - which wasn't enough for either of us. Stuart had had three productive fishing trips in a row, and that was enough.

Stuart 87
Paul H 74
Sam 66
Chris 65
Paul J 59

An intriguing game. I can already foresee multiple BGG comments about chaos, but I enjoyed it. With Paul J proposing Waterdeep and Chris Fishing, winner Stuart chose the next game and wanted to try MLEM, which needs no introduction here! Chris was always looking solid here, getting a cat into space on every single mission whilst others exploded. We never got to Deep Space, just close enough to chicken out at the last planet!

Chris 33
Sam 26
Pauls 22 each
Stuart 17

Paul H then instigated a hilarious game of Las Vegas where Paul J couldn't stop winning at Casinos and Chris couldn't start - he picked up two cards over the entire three rounds, whilst Paul was doing things like rolling 5 sixes to steal $90k from me, the bastard, 

Paul J $450k
Stuart $260k
Sam $230k
Paul H $190k
Chris $80k

"Fucking hell!" he shrieked, several times. 

It was closing on midnight now and I pondered going to bed. But everyone else was staying up and it was officially my turn to choose, so I plumped for So Clover (sadly, no pics) which was possibly not the optimal choice for our fatigue levels - maybe something sillier would have been better. Everyone got one or two tricky combos and there were a couple of dangerous red herrings as well - overall an okay 20/30 to finish the evening. 

Saturday

Everyone heard the wind in the night as it bombarded the house with air and spray from the sea. It was a fitful one for us as a result, but a little after nine we were all up and Chris - who'd already reconned the trip - led us down to the seafront. The pictures don't do the wildness of this occasion justice - the waves were well over six feet and the wind was pummelling us so much if you stood on the little sea wall you needed to grip the railing or lean well forward into the gale. 

Back at the house the guys started playing Wingspan. I sat in the corner like an old man and grumbled about my cough, whilst I listened to things like Paul J saying "I'll have fish for starters" and Paul H revealed his mockingbird could repeat the brown power. We also had a big talk about what we do and don't like in games, finding there was a lot of common ground about wanting interaction, avoiding cognitive overload, and games where early mistakes put you out of the running. Not covered in glory here: Battlestar Galactica, Grand Austria Hotel and Photosynthesis.

Chris picked up the win in Wingspan, apparently his first since his debut game:

Chris 90
Paul J 81
Stuart 79
Paul H 78

Then I talked the five of us through Around the World in 80 Days, and off we went! Chris was first to reach Paris, as Paul J did some purposeful dawdling. The game was mostly notable for the amount of times the events threw up a Storm or a Delay, usually drawn by Chris. Paul J seemed most affected by them, though I think we all cursed our/his luck. 

Chris won, not only by circumnavigating the globe the fastest, but even getting back first as well (a small logical loophole in the game means you can be fastest even when you arrive last). Stuart and he both did the entire trip in 78 days, and Chris took the win on the tie-breaker.

Chris - Phineas!
Stuart - Passepartout
Paul J - 82 days
Paul H 88 days
Sam 91 days

I think that keeps my record intact of coming last in this game every time I've played it, but I was very pleased to make it home to London instead of kicking my Victorian heels in New York, fucking ages before Studio 54 opened. 

We then ate a table meats, cheeses, bread and even a bit of colour in the form of salad, courtesy of Paul J's trolley dash in the madcap traffic medley of Dorchester. I forgot to take any pictures as I was eating a lot of gouda, sustenance for the afternoon ahead, which was largely comprised of the 4 hours it took us to punch our way through Champions of Midgard. 

This is worker-placement game where the gist is gather dice and use them to fight beasties for points. The most rewarding beasties are further afield though, meaning you need boats to reach them, and wood to build the boats, and food to feed the warriors onboard. On the big journeys Certain Things may occur, like being attacked by a Kraken (me, twice) or falling into a whirlpool (Paul J) but you can usually make it through and, what's more, usually defeat the beast. The catch is in the small print, which is about how many of your precious dice they take off you in the process. 

There's also a bit of mild asymmetry and a canny system of sympathy from the game's AI: when you lose dice, you remember them viking-style by gaining a matching chit, which can in turn be cashed in for a memorial catch-up mechanisming. I found the game rather long, with a lot of rules-referencing, but the battle system was engaging. Chris and Paul H showed a clean pair of heels to the rest of us, and it looked like a two-horse battle until Stuart did a late-game surge up the track. But then Paul H did a late-game surge as well, and wrapped himself up the champion's banner.

Paul H 138
Stuart 115
Chris 111
Paul J 110
Sam 100

Stuart went to make dinner. Paul J strolled down to the beach and I fell into an armchair. Paul H and Chris had no hesitation though, in going straight to the next game! This was Biblios, still a cracker.

Chris took the win, 8 to 5, and barely had time to celebrate before Stuart's chicken curry manifested before our eyes. I finally remembered to take a picture of a mealtime too.

Delicious again, Peter, to quote the Beastie Boys (quoting Peter Sichel). 

Then we played Seas of Strife - better known to me as Texas Showdown - and I got absolutely pasted:

Stuart 6

Paul H 8

Chris 9

Paul J 11

Sam 14

No pictures here but next up was the camera-friendly Sagrada:

Not a tale of derring-dos but a satisfying puzzle. I won this one, narrowly ahead of Paul H if I recall correctly. The scores are missing. Then we reeled from cognitive to constructive, with three games of Misfits!

This actually plays well with 5 despite the official player-count being 2-4: we take 8 pieces instead of ten and the last two players in turn order get the extra cubes. I won two and Paul J took the other. There was plenty of sabotage and laughter, before we moved on to Incan Gold, notable mostly for serial deaths and Paul H not leaving early, which was apparently most unlike him. Chris picked up a win with Stuart close behind. Paul J ended with nothing, as the only time he left it was to grab an artifact he didn't get!

Then we ended the evening with a slightly feeble 7/13 in Just One, where I snapped a picture of Stuart and Paul J impersonating the Kray twins. In fairness to our score, we had a number of duplicates and poor Paul H had to try and guess his word from the clues 'foot' and 'hateful'.

Or at least I ended the evening there - the others stayed up to play Fantasy Realms! 

Chris 169

Paul J 161

Stuart 155

Paul H 149

Sunday

I woke up feeling pretty crappy and unfortunately stayed that way for a couple of hours. After coffee and croissants and some mid-weekend reflections, we broke in the table with the simple dice-chucking fare that is King of Tokyo, in which Chris coronated himself in short, violent order.

Chris 20

Sam 13

Stuart 6

Pauls - both dead

Paul J went out for a walk to get some post-death energy back, whereas I felt slightly perkier now. We played Foundations of Rome, which I hope went down slightly better than the only photo I have suggests.

Both Chris and I got a juicy civic building out early, and this reaped us dividends. Having played before probably gave me an unfair advantage too, but <I like to think> this was maybe balanced out by my bug. Or maybe it was that I stupidly didn't realise the cards were stacked mostly for three players, meaning all the edge-of-town deeds came out very late. I snuck a narrow, heavily-asterisked win ahead of Chris, then with Paul J back in the room we broke out one of the old classics - El Grande.

Chris. Paul J and I used to play this with Andrew a lot about 20 years ago, and I nostalgically recalled being quite bad at it. Little did I know I was reverse-Jefferies-ing myself to a happy (-for me) victory, as I took off down the score track early and there was enough competitive shenanigans between the others to prevent me being caught. Paul J came in second, then Chris, Paul H and Stuart. But Stuart was to turn the tables on us all in the post-lunch epic that was Res Arcana. 

New to Paul, this engine-building odyssey is allegedly 30-60 minutes but we sailed past that despite the game's relatively breezy pace. I guess the first few rounds are a bit mysterious to a newbie (and I was very rusty myself) with Paul regularly asking what he could do, swimming in a sea of icons. Despite this though he was poised to haul in a huge amount of potentially game-winning gold when Stuart hit his tenth -winning - point. Chris was also poised - on nine points. I was considerably unpoised. 

Stuart 10

Chris 9

Paul H 7

Sam 3

Paul J 0

After that epic we needed something seriously silly, and Camel Up stepped manfully - or ungulately - into the breach, giving us a solid half-hour of racing stupidity. Camel Up not being a game to reward wise planning or tactical shrewdness, I won it. 

Then it was Skull King. 

I like to delude myself I'm decent at trick-takers, but I played this terribly. It was the best fun you can have shooting yourself in the foot though. My perception was that Chris seemed to be running away with it, but the scoring is incredibly swingy and Stuart's late game showing, aligned with Chris' late-game collapse, led to an extremely broad palette of numbers!

Stuart 340

Paul J 140

Paul H 120

Sam 60

Chris 40

I shuffled off to make dinner whilst Paul H claimed victory in 7 Wonders, followed by Chris, Stuart then Paul J.

They squeezed in a couple of plays of Strike (wins for Stuart and Chris) before we ate the chorizo stew, which didn't seem that hot until I realised I was coated in sweat. But I recovered in time for another oldie, in the form of Robo-Rally. I took another picture and realised that on a weekend of a lot of chuckling I had numerous images of everyone looking studious. So I asked them to laugh and I think they did quite a decent job of it...

As Chris said, Robo-Rally did show its age a little. Maybe the newer editions have done a little streamlining but it felt a bit phase-heavy and the chaos was ordered by little rules. However, that's not to say we didn't enjoy it. My decent start was harpooned by Chris pushing me off the board, as everyone else came a cropper of their programming skills and/or unfamiliarity with the whole shebang. The Pauls and I spent a lot of time being pushed, crunched, or falling over, whilst Stuart pursued Chris, eventually in vain as the only shove he managed to get in on him actually gave Chris a somewhat fortuitous win!

Then we went for a couple of shorter games in the form of Fantasy Realms and Raj. Chris thought he'd won the former when he triggered the endgame with the 'Sword of Keith' combo-ing it with a shield and something else I now forget. But Paul H's connecting brain sprang a surprise victory, as Stuart ruminated on his past mistakes...

Paul H 217

Chris 212

Sam and Paul J 134

Stuart 105

Raj was more bonkers. I won the first two rounds but collapsed zeppelin-style, as both Stuart and Chris overhauled me. Mojo is such a fragile thing.

Stuart 51

Chris 44

Sam 39

Paul J 37

Paul H 19

We finished off our last evening with more silliness - Chris and Stuart winning Strike...

Before Paul J suggested we finish the weekend with Misfits.

There was much laughter again, though I'm now a bit fuzzy about at whose expense it was. I do know that Paul H took the win though, and with midnight fast approaching, we wrapped up Chippencon as the storm continued to rage outside. 

Monday

There were no games in the morning, but the storm had abated as if in recognition. The sky was no longer elephant grey and the sea was considerably calmer. All that remained was for us to tidy up and get home, which meant navigating the various closed roads from the weekend's flooding. This was something of an epic in itself... thanks all for the weekend chaps. See you soon!