Hundred Club

Friday night, and Andrew arrived at my (Sam's) house for a spot of non-leaderboard gaming. The boys were keen to play and Stanley suggested Tokaido. Having just purchased the Crossroads expansion I was curious to try it out, so I was amenable. Andrew and Joe also agreed.

Tokaido is one of the gentlest games GNN has seen - it's a sedate journey where wherever you go, something nice happens. The theme is cultural enrichment, and the mechanic is get stuff. The expansion didn't change that much either; instead of doing a thing on a given location, you had a choice of things to do. But what it did bring to the party was more end-game scoring, which I totally forgot to do for myself - I should have added 8 points to my score for my collected coins.

Not that it would have changed my miserable placing. Stanley took us to the cleaners, breaking the scoreboard by surging past 99 and picking up all the bonus points for chatterbox, gourmand, bather and the other one.

Stanley 103
Andrew 74
Joe 62
Sam 47 (or 55 to be exact)

It's a sweet little game. Stanley went to bed happy and Joe - who not so long ago would insist on watching games - also seemed pleased with his pretty-much solo performance.

I told Andrew to set up whatever he fancied playing while I read stories upstairs, and when I returned to my delight Macao was on the table. Not quite the Euro of Euros (there's dice and luck involved) but still very little screwage.

However, I always find Macao a delight, and tonight was no different, even though Andrew surged off into an early lead... and kept it throughout, racking up a more than respectable 100+ score and breaking a scoreboard for the second time in the evening!

Andrew 112
Sam 93

For the next game we tried two-player Diamonsters. As suspected, it was a much more canny affair than the Dirk-like six player version on Tuesday. Even Finn was intrigued.

We established a house rule of choosing whether to refresh your hand each round or keep what you had - I needed the former with a hand of three 4's and two 2's hampering my bidding options. Official rules are first to five wins, but we played first to three:

Sam 3
Andrew 1

Andrew's turn to select and he went for 7 Wonders. Maybe Duel has had it's very brief day already, as we both went for the original ghost-player option. And in the early running Dirk was looking pretty good, but Andrew scored big for his wonders and guilds, overcoming a scrappy military and blue-buildings score. Before we added up the sciences - the last addition in scoring - I was on a measly 18 points! But my whopping 36points for green buildings took me just far enough to claim a win...

Sam 54
Andrew 53
Dirk 25

We wrapped up with Gobblet Gobblers, the game of flex-noughts and crosses. It looks so simple but you really do have to give each move serious thought, as your noughts/crosses (Gobblers) can be both placed or moved to any adjacent spot... and additionally big Gobblers can jump on small ones. It's possible to do the latter and find you've forgotten your opponent's Gobbler was hidden underneath, gifting them an easy win... that happened once or twice.

We played several games and won a few each, before wrapping up for the weekend...

Cubes

It was just myself (Sam) and Andrew at my place for our semi-regular Thursday gaming. I mooted some biggies - Caverna, Eclipse... but maybe still worn down from his cough, Andrew didn't bite. Instead we began with Battle Line, Reiner Knizia's classic and slightly poker-esque game of combat.

Eight pieces (flags) are laid in a row across the table, and players are dealt a hand of seven troop cards. These have a value of between 1 and 10 and come in six colours. On your turn you simply play a card in front of a flag of your choosing, then pick up a card. Once both sides have played three cards to a flag, armies are compared and the strongest claims the flag. The strength of the army is where the poker similarity comes in, with straight flushes beating three of a kind beating flushes beating straights beating card-high.

As soon as someone wins five flags (or three adjacent) they win the game instantly. And added to the troop cards are the tactics cards, which mix in some rule-breaking or bending. They can turn a flag in your favour, but obviously if you're picking up tactics cards that's one less troop card in your hand. Very clever, very Knizia-y. Andrew's first play too, and he liked it. I claimed two narrow wins.

Next we broke out Railways of the World, and set up Mexico. I decided to throw caution to the wind in terms of bonds and just plough ahead whenever I took a fancy to bid, build, or upgrade. As a result I surged into what looked to me an insurmountable lead - I was up in the twenties with Andrew back on four points. I had fifteen bonds, but Andrew had nine. Surely this was a done deal.

But back Andrew came, steadily shipping goods and picking up points from me courtesy of his two trade depots. Before I knew what was happening he was in the lead, and still had fewer bonds. At this point Andrew - he realized later - should have done everything to end the game, to complete a most unlikely comeback. But Mexico continued to see a lot of railroad activity, and as Andrew's shipping options ran out my more powerful train delivered goods across the western seaboard, shunting me back into the lead. We ended with me on 19 bonds and Andrew 18. We both completed our Barons (most track; most money) and the game ended with me safely ahead again. I didn't note the scores, I think it was 48-56 or something.

Packing Railways away, we both noted how easily everything seemed to fit in the box. "We're so experienced now" Andrew remarked. Being a regular discoverer of random games elements on Wednesday mornings, I looked around the kitchen nervously. "Have we missed anything?" I said, but it appeared we hadn't. Our putting away of the game was almost as successful as our playing of it. More so, in a way.

It was just gone 10pm now so we wanted something short and sweet to wrap things up. I brought out the hit of the Highlands holiday (Stan and Joe both love it) Gobblet Gobblers. This is a twist on noughts and crosses that looks like plastic tat but is actually a rather strategic challenge. Your goal is to get three of your 'Gobblers' in a row, but any Gobbler that has been placed on the 'board' can also move to adjacent squares. And because they come in three sizes, larger ones can jump onto smaller ones and effectively take their place.

As well as placing and movement, there's also a memory element of remembering what's underneath bigger Gobblers, as once you lift one up you have to move it. In one game that's no challenge, but in several, played after a few glasses of wine... it is.

We won a few games each and then called time. Andrew headed off and I inserted Railways back into the cupboard, stopping once again to sigh contentedly at the collection. Maybe I've reached some kind of inner peace, having foregone the current maths trade and elected not to buy anything from the games shop in Glasgow, after an extended period of obsessing over finding and playing new games.

Back in the kitchen, I spotted the bag of cubes from Railways on the table.