Fünf for all the Family

Tuesday rolled around again and despite the inevitable post-weekend (see Andrew's odysseyian previous post) drop in numbers from the regulars, the lesser-spotted GNNers were out in force, at one point bumping up the numbers to nine around my (Sam's) table!

First to arrive was Joe, and the embryonic hour of 6pm. Sadly he was just dropping off things I'd left at Novocon, so after a chat, he left again.

Then at the allotted hour of 7.30, Laura Izzard was first through the door, followed by Matt, Martin, and Ian. With Anja and Andy Mosse both running late, we cracked into our games. Or to clarify, Martin heaped disdain on me for buying another game (abetted by Stanley, and then even Ian joining in) before getting out the game he'd just bought. Whilst Stanley, Ian and Matt began contesting Love Letter at the other end of the table, he talked Laura and I through the rules.

The game in question was Blue Lagoon, Reiner Knizia's latest offering. Arriving into the eponymous lagoon as settlers, you discover there are eight islands, and over two rounds you score points for having a presence on each one, for making connections between them, for having majority presence and for collecting resources. If it sounds like rote gaming circa-2018 (or earlier) the implementation is very Knizian - on their turn, everyone simply places one piece on the board and watches in agony as all the things you want slip away from you. It's part race, part bunfight, part mental torture.

After one round, all pieces bar your five villages are removed, and a second round begins with placement having to spread from your villages. I won our first game (I didn't note down the scores) but I mentioned that now I knew how it all worked, I wouldn't win next time - which proved to be true.

Meanwhile Stanley had won Love Letter, after successfully outing Ian's hidden cards four times:

Stanley 3
Matt 2
Ian 0

And with Anja now present, they began explaining Heck Meck to her. At our end of the table, meanwhile, Andy had also arrived, and as Blue Lagoon was already on the table, we set it up again for four. Little Joe turned up to watch for a bit, as people briefly outnumbered seats.

With Martin now familiar with the games' overlapping scoring criteria, it was a tougher proposition. He scored the bonus for being on all eight islands in the first round, collected a big resource bonus and then in the second harvested up lots of statues. The game played quite staccato though; lots of rapid turns occasionally broken by a long, cognitive-heavy one. I'd say it was close, but it wasn't:

Martin 192
Laura 127
Sam 126
Andy 124

Martin was flush with new love for another Reinerssance masterpiece, and we all liked it, albeit it hurt my brain. I struggle judging the need to further your own advances (in multiple criteria) with the overlapping/competing need to stop others (also multiple criteria!) is hard. From one angle, it's very very simple, but from another - it's not.

Meanwhile Heck Meck was continuing, with Anja rolling a spectacular set of worms:

Laura made moves to go, but the three dads present showed their paternal understanding by harassing her into playing one more game - Face Cards, the game that needs almost no introduction - make pairs of faces, and hope somebody spots your pair in the melee. Andy took the win despite our failure to see his Coati/Parking Meter combination.

Andy 12
Martin 8
Sam 7
Laura 5

And I forgot to take photos. Laura bid her adieus and disappeared into the night - the next time we see her she'll be with (actual) child, so good luck Laura!

Stanley also disappeared around this time, off to bed, as Heck Meck finally concluded:

Matt 15
Stanley 8
Ian 5
Anja 1

As Ian brought in a collection of games to choose from, he tripped over Andy's growing pile of rubbish on the floor, which he announced he'd left there on purpose. He gazed at the mess with a glow of pride, before I tidied it away. Now a pair of trios. Ian found himself explaining Istanbul to one, whilst Martin explained Kingdoms, my birthday present to him (also a Knizia) to the other.

Kingdoms was not massively dissimilar to Blue Lagoon, only slightly simpler, and slightly screwier. Tiles are played on a 6x6 grid, and you can pick up and place a points tile (there are positive and negative) or place one of your castles, which will score for both the row and column it's on. As soon as someone places a castle, of course, everyone else tries to put negative tiles next to it.

Mix in the mountains (block rows and columns) the gold (doubles everything) and the dragon (cancels the good stuff) and you have a game brimming with evil - so evil that you start with fifty points, just to give everyone the opportunity to lose them all in the first round. Andy made a great start, but Martin overhauled him. I played badly and got what I deserved:

Martin 249
Andy 239
Sam 212

Fun. Whilst that was going on, Matt won Istabul:

Matt 5 gems
Ian and Anja 3 gems each (Ian second on tie-breaker)

And they'd also played NMBR9, which Anja didn't like at all. Ian did, though:

Ian 86
Matt 79
Anja 49

Considering how brief Kingdoms was, I've probably got the timeline of events all muddled up, but whatever had gone on previously, Anja certainly left at this point because we found ourselves a quintet, and began playing Five Cucumbers - or to give it it's German title, Fünf Gurken. Tricks are played (there's only one suit) and you must either match or beat the previous card, or lay your lowest card. The winner of the final trick picks up cucumbers, which are bad - collect five, and you lose the game.

The youngest player starts, but that took some time to establish, as Matt discovered he was younger than he realised, and Ian didn't even know what year we were living in. After that bombshell, Andy took an instant dislike to Fünf Gurken, openly scathing of the choice of vegetable and the fact there was only one. He critiqued the wooden cucumbers, which he claimed didn't resemble a cucumber - more on that later - and mimicked Martin and I throughout the game as we hissed at our cards. If it was a strategy, it paid dividends, as he ended with the fewest cucumbers. But unfortunately for Matt, we all won apart from him:

Matt: Five cucumbers.

or are they?

He actually ended with six cucumbers, which - by now we'd all conceded the cucumbers did have a scrotal quality to them - I said in a way, made him the winner. We speculated as to how much fun (or fünf ) one could have with six ball sacs; needlework, say, or artisan baking. Ian suggesting skiing. Martin and I got the giggles and I'm ashamed to say it was all rather immature. Especially considering we'd just played a game about not wanting five cucumbers.

Anyway, the witching hour was now upon us, so Martin and Ian put on their coats for the walk home. Andy said he wasn't going anywhere though, and Matt was tempted to stay as well, so we played Dice Heist - rob museums, collect artwork, gems and artifacts!

But owing to ancient heist-related traditions, only score paintings if you have the most combined value of them. Also if you have two gems, the second one is worth twice as much as the first! Matt and I celebrated our shared victory:

Matt and Sam - 27
Andy - 15

But we weren't done yet, with Ganz Schon Clever next to hit the table.

To be honest, I don't remember a huge amount about it now, except I recall Matt had to police my crossings off because I was pretty haphazard at this point and kept cheating. But I somehow managed to add up the scores correctly, to my surprise. We checked with a calculator.

Sam 236
Matt 228
Andy 200

With Tuesday now behind us and Wednesday begun, we bade each other good night, the end of a doozy of an evening: the return of Laura and Matt, some very feisty games, and a protracted schoolboy riff on dark green scrotums. What more can one ask of a Tuesday night?

It must be LoV

Tuesday evenings are our weekly helping of jollity and humour, but it's also a chance to show off our tactical nous and this week saw a number of devilish moves that any strategist would be proud of.

At the start, there were six of us. Joe the host, Sam, Martin, Katy, Matt and me. Ian was expected later. The presence of Matt W prompted a little discussion about what happened to the other two Matts and some other fleeting visitors, and we considered the possibility that perhaps we aren't as much fun to be with as we think we are.

But we pushed such negativity aside and set up a six player game to occupy us until Ian arrived. We chose Auf Teuful Komm Raus as a jolly push-your-luck game.

Instead it was luck that pushed us around. Devil after devil came out in round one, much to everyone's surprise. We had to keep assuring Matt (playing his first game) that it really wasn't like this usually. Round one ended with five of us occupying the lowest space on the score track. A shocking situation. The one player who wasn't stoney broke was Matt, whose inexperience actually helped, since he didn't bid absurdly high.

Early Devils

We slowly dragged ourselves up the score track, with a bit of luck and a lot of advice to people who looked as if they might be about to stick too soon. Only Joe stayed mired in the lower reaches of the score track. His propensity for bidding as high as possible and then drawing a ten tile followed by a devil was remarkable enough for me to write it down in my notes.

Joe did enough to regain a little respectability but at the business end of the scoring, it was the dark horse, Matt, who stole the win from a confident Martin in the final round.

Matt 1640
Martin 1620
Sam 1540
Joe 1380
Andrew 1150
Katy 910

Ian still hadn't arrived, so we started a game of Funf Gürken, with the agreement that we just stop when Ian gets here.

This trick-taking game is all about not winning the final trick. Sam played it well, and was able to poison the well in the final hand by playing a 1 card. This doubled the penalty for Katy who won that hand, leaving her with Veir Gürken, only one off being eliminated.

Ian arrived during the next round so we finished up. Matt lost that round, just for the record, picking up two gherkins.

Now we were seven, we split into two groups. Sam, Martin and Joe were keen to play The Quest For Eldorado. On the other side of the table, since it was Ian, Katy and I, Lords of Vegas was suggested. A bit late to start, but certainly possible. Matt joined us on Sunset Strip. Matt had played before, but not for a while. I gave him a brief rules refresher, sure that once he had begun, it would all come flooding back.

Katy's early tactic was to get lots of one-tile casinos in order to push herself up the score track. But, as the cards came out, the four of us were very close early on. Interestingly (if you were playing, otherwise probably not) three Strip cards came out very early on. The first was drawn before anyone had actually built on the Strip!

Perhaps the pivotal moment was when Katy remodelled her two-tile casino (with a six die) into a silver, thus joining my silver three tile casino (with no six dice) to Matt's two tile silver casino (also with no sixes). Thus she had control of a seven tile casino. Albeit one where she only had one die. She needed it to pay out before Matt reorganised.

Katy's audacious move

It didn't. And that seven-tile casino became a major point of contention between Matt and I with Katy always hopeful at every reorganisation. Always hopeful, but always disappointed. Matt had major analysis paralysis when thinking about whether to add a neighbouring one-tile casino to the melee before a re-roll or after. In the end, it became a nine-tile casino under Matt's control. Katy's lone die never posed a serious threat to the issue of ownership.

So, since I had shared the management of a large casino with Matt, we had pushed ahead, the two of us trading blows while Katy and Ian remained stuck.

Eldorado ended much closer than the previous game. Sam had clearly learnt from his last game when he slowed down in the middle of the board. He arrived first with Martin hot on his heels and Joe not far behind.

1. Sam
2. Martin
3. Joe

Since we were still knee deep in Vegas, they began a game of Azul. I know little about this game, except for Martin complimenting himself when he said “I made some really good piles.”

But it was, once again, Sam who made best use of Martin’s piles. His victory was large enough that Martin and Joe discussed where they went wrong. They decided it was when Martin tried to stop Joe and, instead of trying to stop Sam, Joe turned on Martin. This left Sam largely unaffected and able to do whatever he wanted to do. It looks like he wanted to humiliate his two opponents.

Sam 75
Martin 46
Joe 38

In Lords of Vegas, their was also a certain amount of spoiling tactics. Katy tried to sabotage me, with the logic that I wouldn’t be able to respond until three more cards had been turned over. Ian, by rights, should’ve been doing the same to Katy, but he had other plans.

Ian and his plans

He built up a healthy and unchallenged five-tile purple casino in one corner in only one turn and then he fought over a six-tile brown casino with Matt in the other corner. Suddenly, his fortunes turned. The brown casino paid out twice and then the Strip paid out for the final time. This sent Ian from grim third into a slim first place right at the end, despite Matt’s ownership of the nine-tile silver casino on the strip. Ian’s huge reserve of cash was the tie-breaker. An astonishing comeback.

Ian 32 + $64m
Matt 32 + $29m
Andrew 29
Katy 16

Katy’s distant last place was due to her green casino not paying out at all. In fact, once the game had ended, I looked through the remaining cards to find a lot of greens and a fair few silvers, too. The results could’ve been very different.

Now we were all together again and in the mood for a seven-player game to cap off the night. We chose a three-round game of Take It Easy. Thanks to Joe’s two copies of the basic game, all seven players were easily accommodated.

Sam began, choosing sitcoms as his topic for calling out the numbers. This showed his age as the younger (relatively speaking) players claimed no knowledge of sitcoms like “Robin’s Nest”. At the end of this first round, Sam found himself in a healthy first place. I languished in last, with less than half of Sam’s 205 points.

Martin took the second round with the topic “sub atomic particles”. I think it was during this round that the phrase “I’m still intact” was devised to describe a player mat where no lines had been broken. A very useful phrase, and one that was well used for the rest of the game.

I had a better second round, lifting myself out of last place. But it was a brief respite. Joe hosted the third round, with the topic of “Cartoonists”. There was a recurring theme of people needing a tile that had already been played. The English Language needs a word for this feeling.

What is Martin trying to say?

I had a terrible last round, leaving me nailed to the bottom of the results. Back in fourth, we had a rare example of a tie in Take It Easy. But Sam, on the other hand, had built upon his early lead.

Sam 622
Ian 483
Katy 473
Matt 429
Martin 429
Joe 403
Andrew 376

And so we were done. All that was left was for everyone to make Katy nervous because we’d all sorted out our Secret Santas and she hadn’t.

See you all next week for the Christmas Special!

Get Cartel!

Barely 48 hours after the Games Weekend, three hardy gamers, Sam, Ian and me, met for the regular weekly session along with non-weekender Martin.

I arrived a little late, and found them deep in a game of Funf Gurken, another example of Martin's beloved trick-taking genre. And the trick to this game is that you don't want to win the last trick, because if you do, you'll pick up gherkins. Get five, and you're out.

I was dealt into the second hand with Sam already looking perilously close to going out. And so it was, with Ian then myself. Martin won, without picking up a single gherkin.

Martin
Andrew
Ian
Sam

Next to the table was Ethnos, a game that fits the rare sweet spot between deep/strategic and swift/short. At the start of the game when choosing the races, we deliberately discarded any that we were too familiar with, and Ian made a special request for no halflings. And so, we did battle with mermaids, giants, minotaurs, etc across a map that Martin reliably informed us was based on Slovakia.

I started very slowly. In fact, I barely scored at all in round one. "It's very close," said Martin, clearly referring to the three-way battle for first in the mid thirties, and not me on six points.

And it stayed close until the end. Martin, Ian and Sam all battled to the end, with Sam just scraping a win.

Sam 120
Martin 118
Ian 104
Andrew 77

After this, we chose another new game. Star Cartel, with a neon font on the box that suggested tatty eighties nightclubs, not intergalactic trade. But that's beside the point. The game involves picking up various goods and putting them in your ship, a bit like Medici.When your ship is full, you have to make a delivery. The item you have most of goes up in value. The item you have least of goes down, but you don't keep either: you keep one of the items in the middle.

It was a lot of fun, although maybe I didn't quite get the hang of it. Ian, though, almost pulled off a Derren Brown-esque piece of misdirection. When it came to count up, he revealed one red item after another and no one had noticed him take them. Almost a tactical masterstroke.

Martin 94
Ian 93
Sam 69
Andrew 59

There had been talk of Polterfass, but Martin had yet another new game to set before us. And it's a Knizia! It was Voodoo Prince, another trick taking game. This time, the theme was once you'd won three tricks, you were finished for that round. Your score was the total of all tricks won by everyone else. But, if you are the last one in after everyone else is out, you only score your own tricks. In other words, you have to judge it so you go out third.

There are a couple of other rules to liven things up a bit, but it's pretty simple. But devilish, as you'd expect from a Knizia. Ian took an early lead, and then Sam was first in the fourth round out of five. It looked hopeless but in the final round I was out third (for eight points), while Sam was last man standing (for two). This pushed me from second into first.

Andrew 26
Sam 24
Ian 21
Martin 21

Maybe it was half past ten by now, but none of us showed any signs of slowing down. The aforementioned Polterfass was brought out and we played a remarkably even game. No one crashed out early with hopeless bets and no one stormed into an early lead on blind luck. By round six, the score was 32, 33, 35, 37. It could barely be closer.

But then Martin got hit by an unfulfilled order and fell away, so in the latter stages it was a three way race. In the end, Sam won when he bet just enough to hit 75, while I bet low and Martin unfortunately (for me) didn't bet high and go bust, giving me lots of points.

Sam 76
Andrew 70
Ian 52
Martin 29

It was now 11.30 and time to call it a night. But what a night. Four corking games for four cracking guys. If I had been apprehensive about gaming so soon after a weekend, my doubts were firmly dispelled. Thanks all. It was special.