10cc on a plane ordering snacks

 This week’s GNN started unusually early for two lucky gamers, with Ian joining Sam at around half six for a two player game of Quantum before Joe and Katy arrived and enjoyed a rousing game of Perudo.

When I finally did get there, the table was set up for a five player game of Free Ride, with Joe, Katy and Ian the newcomers on board.

Compared to the only other time I played it, we started much more centrally, which meant a lot more blocking and nationalising of routes. Ian barely moved at all, preferring to stay in Napoli and make lots of money with his sensibly placed routes.

Katy went through a smorgasbord of emotions, at one point saying she was pleased and angry at the same time. She also said she enjoyed it. Joe was the other moneybags, as he almost monopolised East Europe and the Urals. My track in the UK was totally ignored for the entire game.

Sam zipped around the map, only briefly distracted by a wine spillage which dampened an Oslo card and some coins but not his enthusiasm for the game. At the end, as we counted up our scores, he revealed he had no duplicate cities in his stack of cards. Professional level gaming.

Sam 100

Joe 92

Ian 86

Katy 82

Andrew 81

After this the next (and my last) game was a co-op game of Wavelength. In this variant you score points for being in the Segment of Correctitude (possibly not it's official name) but only a perfect hit will get you another card and the chance to increase the score further.

It was fun as always. Katy wanted to know how long a clue could be; could it be a sentence? And that's when Sam uttered the blog title by means of an example of how long a clue could reasonably be. Trying to ignore the image of Kevin Godley and Lol Creme arguing over peanuts or olives, we began.

There were a few duds. I can't remember if we thought Katy's example of "buying your mother imported flowers" was more or less ethical than she did, but we were definitely wide of the mark.

Sam's clue of "day old bread" for "smelly in a good way/smelly in a bad way" seemed very specific but a bullseye eluded us. My clue "beer" for "guilty pleasure/openly love" was the shortest of the evening and was close but still no cigar.

Ian's clue for "normal greeting/weird greeting" was to say "helloooo" in a high pitched slightly Irish accent. Our mistake was misjudging the frame of reference, thinking it only slightly weird especially compared to a punch in the face as a greeting, and we put the Indicator of Opinion in the normal half. But Ian thought that slightly weird meant it should go in the weird half. 

I think we scored 11. And Katy discovered that you could run on custard.

By now it was 10.00 and my choice was a sensible early night or risk a late one, so I took the easy option and went home. Sam messaged me the late results.

The rest of them played For Sale twice.

Joe 62

Sam 61

Ian 51

Katy 40

And...

Sam 79

Ian 59

Katy 49

Joe 37

Then they ended with good old Tsuro.

Joe and Ian die in first 

2 Sam

3 Katy

Thanks all. Special as always.

Wien about it

I arrived bang on time this week and experienced the pre game chat that I'm usually absent for. 

Present were Ian, Joe (hosting), Martin, Gareth and Adam T followed by Sam. We were expecting Laura and tentatively began setting up a couple of games before we learnt she couldn't make it. 

This meant that Joe, Ian and Adam put away their potential four player game of La Corsa and instead had a three player game of Conspiracy, the game of espionage and bluffing. Under the sea. And it comes in a tin box which still doesn't fit well with us at GNN.

On my half of the table, Martin, Gareth, Sam and I played Free Ride. This game feels like someone wanted to play Ticket To Ride but wanted to get rid of the random card choices or building the longest track and concentrate solely on completing journeys.

It was nice. Very simple. Build track that allows you to get your train to a starting city, pick up the route cards and then try and get to the destination. Certainly basic enough for me to get my head round, apart from a bit of brain fog midway through. We’d all started at the edge and then slowly moved into the centre. As a consequence no one’s track was “nationalised” until near the end of round two. 

In the end, Gareth and I tied on points and then on the tie-breaker too. Gareth wondered if his incomplete railway counted against him, but apparently not.

Andrew 121

Gareth 121

Sam 115

Martin 95

Conspiracy ended 

Adam T 54

Joe 49

Ian 48

And with that, sad to say, I had to leave. Pity that my early arrival was matched by my early departure, but life won’t go away. I’ll hand over to Sam to finish off the evening…

*        *       *

Without Andrew's immense power of recall, casting my mind back to Tuesday now - on Friday - is like stumbling around in a fog of victory points. When I texted him the scores of our final games, I'd already forgotten that we'd played Ra. That was the same night we played them.

But play Ra we did - or Joe, Ian and I did - whilst Martin Adam and Gareth turned their minds to Mille Fiori. I'm not sure what occurred there other than Gareth winning: 

Gareth 217

Adam 199

Martin 165

Meanwhile in ancient Egypt Ian was taking short-term pummellings but building a hefty collection of monuments. Joe's last-out tactics worked well for him in the first epoch, but in the final one Ra decided enough was enough, and his bag-scraping resulted in nothing more than a red face, and his chance of snatching the wind was blown away in a sirocco. Ian beat me on some kind of stupid tie-breaker.

Ian 53

Sam 53

Joe 247

Then we negated the leaving noises emanating from Gareth and Adam by breaking out So Clover and tempting them to stay. 

We got off to an okay start, but my clue of Fairground for Wheel / Mirage foxed everyone because I was too distracted/drunk to remember that I'd written Safari for Lion / Attraction. They not-unreasonably assumed Fairground and Attraction went together whilst I tried to keep a poker face, and the disdain when I removed the card hung in the air unvoiced (except for Martin, who voiced it). However despite one or two other shaky moments we recovered to score a more than decent 30/36. I can't remember who wrote it but I particularly like Mr Blobby for Jelly / Father.

Gareth and Adam then did leave, and we were now a four. Joe's mooted LACORSA now made it to the table, and we faced off over a wooden track that, like Martin's Formula Motor Racing game, is solely there to establish positions relative to each other.

It's pretty simple - in each round the car at the back begins by challenging the one immediately in front of it. A challenge consists of both players choosing a card from their hand and revealing at the same time: if the car behind wins, they move up (and can challenge again if there's another car immediately in front of them). If the car in front wins, or it's a tie, positions remain as they are and it's now this player's turn to challenge the next car. You can do up to two challenges per turn - as long as you win the first one.

The cards are numbered 1-12 plus a Redline that can be played in combination with a number to boost it's value by two. The crappy-valued 1-3 cards can be played as extends: move into an empty space ahead of you. It's quite luck-driven in terms of what cards you get (my hand above contains more 4's and 5's than ideal) but as a beer-and-pretzels game it's pretty fun. And like Formula Motor Racing, it's probably at it's best experienced over a number of races...

Martin came home winner with Ian in second. Joe upheld Explainer's Curse by trailing in behind me. And that was that!