Gwyneth Paltrow *is* a Person

On Saturday Katy, Ian and I (Sam) met at my place for some extra-curricular gaming. Katy was running slightly late so we set up Project L, but after a couple of turns she arrived, so after the briefest of chats we reset and started again as a trio. As touched on previously, this is the simplest of games to learn - bar perhaps Gold Fever - and all you're doing is gathering tetris-type shapes to complete puzzles, which equal points. The juice is really in the bits, which are gorgeous, and that tactility (along with the satisfaction of completing each puzzle) counters any shortcomings. Although I'd won very few of the previous 25 times I'd played it, 26th was a charm:

Sam 25

Katy/Ian 19 each

After a brief discussion we moved on to The Quest for El Dorado, Knizia's always pleasurable deck-building racing game. I couldn't recall if you were allowed to buy more than one card on your turn, and as my rules were in German I texted Martin, assuring Katy that this would probably be quicker than looking up the rules online. Sure enough it took only a few moments for Martin to reply with not only a clarifier, but in the form of a screengrab of the relevant rule. This astonished Katy, who became convinced Martin is a robot. Maybe that's why she didn't win. 

I know why I didn't - I loaded up with money to buy good cards, then kept finding I was just buying good cards with handfuls of money. Until I arrived at the place where I needed money, only to find I had a hand full of machetes. Ian meanwhile sashayed to an extremely convincing win:

Ian - El Dorado!

Katy/Sam - El Stupido

Then we played a new game called Cabo: each player is dealt four face-down cards from a deck numbered 0-13, and the goal is to have the four lowest-numbered cards collectively. Everyone looks at just two of their cards before play begins, then on a turn you can draw the top card from either the deck or the discards. 

If it's the discards, you simply exchange it with a card in your tableau. If it's the deck, you can either a. do the same b. simply discard it or c. discard it and take the action on the card (if there is one). There's only three actions: Peek at one of your own cards, Spy at one of someone else's and Swap with someone else. Or, if you think you're in a good position numerically-speaking, you can forego drawing at all and call 'Cabo'. Now everyone else has one final turn before cards are revealed and scored. Points are bad, so a successful cabo scores zero. Everyone else scores the number value of their cards. An unsuccessful cabo scores the number value plus ten, and as soon as someone goes over 100 points the player with the fewest points wins.

There's two twists: if you manage to hit 100 points exactly, your score gets halved to 50. And if when cards are revealed you have the 'kamikaze' hand - two 12s and two 13s - you score zero and everyone else scores 50!

(There's a rule I missed as well: you're allowed to swap a card you pick up for multiple cards, but the catch is they must be the same number. If you flip them over and they don't match, you have to keep them and the card you drew - I'm not sure any of us were ever quite aware enough of what we had to attempt this though!)

Ian sailed through this game as he had through El Dorado: calmly, drinking strong beer. Katy and I regularly imploded, both of us calling cabo more often than was sensible and suffering as a result. Poised on 97 points Katy needed either a 3 point hand or a kamikaze to save her, but I called cabo before she could engineer either of those things. Inevitably, Ian won. 

Ian 57

Sam 112

Katy 121

Next up was Fae, or the Land of Old Men's Penises as we fondly christened it. 

Turns couldn't be simpler: move a penis, or a group of penises, from one region to another. They will refuse to go into an empty region, and instantly throw a party if the region they gather in is (somewhat topically) isolated: if there's no penises in adjacent regions, they score points. The catch in this game is all colours score and nobody is can be totally sure what colour anyone else is until the end of the game, when identities are revealed. My gray penises - don't say anything - triumphed, though I didn't write down the scores:

Sam 

Ian

Katy

"We need something fun after that" said Katy, who had found arranging all the plastic pieces into a socially-isolating party on her side of the table more entertaining than the actual game, although I like Fae quite a lot myself. And so we played the most abysmal game of Wavelength ever: very fun, and funny, but a point-scoring catastrophe: we finished with two points. Ian's clues were probably the most logical, but at this point I was a little drunk and forgot, for instance, that there are many thousand tv programmes that are inarguably lower-brow than You've Been Framed. Not able to take that result lying down, we tried again, appalling Katy with our guess that Gwyneth Paltrow looks 'somewhat' like a person. "Gwyneth Paltrow is a person!" she cried in despair, revealing that the target was very much in the person zone and accusing us of guessing a place that would be occupied by a potato. Another mostly-inarguable truth, but Ian and I were factoring in Katy's recent candle-related disdain, that had threatened to turn into a late night rant about "the system". 

I didn't take photos, we were having too much fun/scorn. 

Then we played Push It, which Ian won. My memory of this is mostly about Katy trying to cheat. I think it was before or after this game that we had a long cereal-based tangent that took in kitchen size, milk type, relationship status and the joys of living alone. Katy also insisted she knew "nothing" about us, as we all conceded games nights were mostly "business". I told Katy I have one kidney. Ian stayed enigmatically silent. Who knows how many internal organs he possesses?

And finally we midnight looming we broke out Gold Fever, the simplest bag-builder/deconstructor there is, where you're trying to be first to draw four gold out a bag made of mostly rubble. With Ian having won El Dorado, Cabo and Push It and my name on the Project L and Fae cups, Katy finally picked up the win she craved, with Ian poised on three gold and myself a pitiful one. 

A fantastic night of games and silly fun, thanks guys!

Choc Rocking Beats

Two weeks ago, late withdrawals lead to us going from ten attendees down to five. This week, we went from seven down to five. Does this make us more popular or less?

The five of us were Martin, Katy, Sam, Joe and me with Joe expected a little late so we began as a four. First we banged out a quick Gold Fever. Its King-of-the-hill type strategy of attacking the leader meant that I ended the game with very few stones in my sack at all since I was never a threat. Sam won it, though, declaring “I’m going for it!” before pulling another gold nugget from his bag.

Sam 4
Martin 3
Katy 3
Andrew 2

Still no Joe, so we played L.A.M.A. Katy went clear in round two but, pivotally, Sam went clear in round four when the rest of us were laden with cards and he was able to put back a ten-point token.

Sam 20
Katy 23
Martin 38
Andrew 50

But still no Joe. Twice now the method of starting a game, expecting it to be interrupted by a knock on the door had failed. We debated what to play and Katy suggested Beowulf again, only to see it rejected again. Instead we went for a new game, King Chocolate. While we set up Joe finally arrived, a little frazzled after his ordeal in trying to find a parking space. He sat down at his allocated space and was introduced to the world of making chocolate.

In this game players place tiles in the shape of two conjoined hexagons that become areas representing different stages of chocolate productions from bean to chocolate via things like "nibs" and "liquor." It was pretty bemusing. With six stages of production but only four workers per player, the game required a certain amount of cooperation. We seemed unwilling to go down that path and did so only begrudgingly, especially if it benefited Martin and his vast liquor fields.

Katy initially gave herself a winning score but among widespread surprise, not least from herself, at her victory, she remembered a potential mistake when changing some currency and then she nobly took five points off her score, giving Sam his third win of the evening.

Sam 49
Katy 48
Joe 47
Martin 36
Andrew 27


Next up, we were in the mood for something silly and knockabout. Stinker was brought back to the table after too long away. I didn’t even remember the rules and I started slowly, scoring nothing for the first five cards. Katy’s new Nike slogan, “Love de shoe” was an early winner, as was her “Go arses” which was her way of telling people to leave. I got back into the groove, though, with my reason for being sent to the headmaster’s office: Tintin cosplay. This was hard for Martin to take since he’d made an answer using all of his tiles. Martin did okay, though, with quality answers like: tips to give a marathon runner - Move more haughtily.

Martin 40
Katy 40
Andrew 30
Sam 30
Joe 26

Next up we played co-operative Wavelength. We did better than before, and the card-winning answers were Dog/Cat name = Rover (from Joe, who admitted it was too easy), Un/hygenic + washing your hands for thirty seconds (Martin’s tweaking of health advice put us on the right track) and Gossip/News = Katie Price’s maternity dress (from me, and I suspect this was blind luck, although they did discuss it a lot).

Harmless or harmful: according to Katy, a pencil is pretty lethal.

Us: 18 points

Then, as we put it away, we marvelled at the best box fart in town.

Katy went back at this stage so the remaining four played Melee: a short war game with some very nice 16-bit graphics. Each player got a castle and then a limited number of moves and money to wage war on your neighbours. War is curious: the attacker reveals how much money they have in total and then they put some (or all) of that in a closed fist. The defender has to guess how much is in there. Get it right and they successfully defend. Get it wrong and they are vanquished.

It was, you know, fun. Joe and I attacked each other. Martin attacked Sam who successfully defended, but then lost to Martin’s knight. Not to be downhearted, he rallied and took the centre area which gave him another win.

Sam 3 provinces
Joe 2
Andrew 2
Martin 1

It was okay. Hard to tell, really, it was over so soon. But we were quite pooped and we bade our farewells for another week. Thanks for hosting Sam, see you all next week which will apparently involve cake.

Five Get Over-tired

Originally, there were going to be ten hardy GNNers around the table last night, but something happened in the firmament and one by one, people dropped out. It were Ian who begun it, followed swiftly by Andrew, then Andy Bate, on whose hot heels came Steve, and finally Laura. Looking at each other in shock and dismay were Joe, Katy, Adam T, Martin and myself. Still expecting Laura to arrive as the curtains rose, we'd begun with Gold Fever. Martin said it was a terrible game. I said what made it so great is that when people turn up at the door halfway through, nobody minds packing it away.

Joe began badly, twice pulling out matching gravel. Adam did the same and said "this is why I hate this game". Martin was tickled no end, and reversed his opinion on it based solely on Adam's discomfort. However he was less enamoured of Katy's decision to repeatedly throw her gravel in his bag. I made my way to three gold as the pair engaged in a battle of grits, but surprisingly the winner was actually Adam, who reversed his opinion of the game just as Martin decided it was shit after all. Either way, it packed a lot of drama into ten minutes.

Adam: Gold!

At this point we discovered we'd lost Laura, and all Joe and Martin's carefully packed bags for six people went up in metaphorical smoke. Instead we debated what to play from the Alcove, with Katy pooh-poohing Tulip Bubble and Martin ignoring my suggestion of Orbit, even as Adam murmured approvingly at the idea. We finally settled on Taj Mahal, the classic Knizia of yore!

It's been so long since we last played it (it seems to appear once every 30 months) we needed a refresher from Martin. The essence is simple - play cards containing various suits; if when your turn arrives you are leading in any particular suit you can choose to drop out (-you can also drop out in misery as well) and gain the rewards. Four suits allow you to place palaces on the board (points) potentially scoring more (points!) if you link to previously-placed palaces in other regions. One suit allows a 'Ghost' palace that can share foundations with an otherwise solitary palace of another player. And one suit (elephants) allows you to collect the goods from that region - more goods of the same previously-collected type will score collectively, and repeatedly, and it was this route that Adam took...

But the early leader was Joe, with such dizzying speed and economical frugality that everyone was reeling with alarm, Martin in particular. Katy started badly, getting into a 'pissing contest' that she lost. "Beowulf is more fun than this" she pointed out.
"Yes, this is more cerebral" Martin conceded.

I tried to play a kind of guerrilla tactic, picking up what I could when I could whilst building a reasonably strong hand... the problem with that approach is that dropping out early hands easy picking to the other players - oh Reiner! Joe meanwhile was claiming palaces all over the shop and chaining them together like a bunch of point-scoring brick-built daisies. Adam was shrewdly building his goods collection, whilst me, Katy and Martin were mostly complaining about Joe, who in turn was complaining about having a card that scored him 2 points every time he played it, which invited even more scathing from the other side of the table. Joe defended his observations by reminding us how cerebral the game was, and in his position we might understand.

Suddenly Adam surged past him and into a six-point lead. Katy and I got into an expensive pissing match that I lost, and it cost me seven points. "Katy!" I wailed. "What about me?!" Katy shrieked back, pointing at her score marker. At this point my sympathy wasn't overwhelming, though. We were like the kids playing with the adults, who were now clearly going to finish way ahead of us.

Another pissing contest between Adam and Martin went the latter's way and Adam suffered a devastating fate - not only did Joe surge past him again, but Martin had kept an enormous chain of cards of the same colour (points!) for the end game scoring, and barrelled by him as well for a sneaky second!

Joe 46
Martin 39
Adam 38
Sam 33
Katy 28

Adam had time for just one more game, so we let him choose, and the choice was the thematically appropriate Just One. We've played this so much now we're getting a little bit familiar with the words, and sailed to an impressive score even despite our final word not providing a single clue for Katy: Joe and I wrote 'fiddle' Martin and Adam wrote 'Stradavarius'. With nothing to go on at all, Katy guessed water, completely ignoring my charades-style violin-playing on the other side of the table. Maybe she thought I was being sarcastic.

Martin then started canvassing for The Crew before Adam had even got his coat on, and by the time he reached the front door we were already laughing about the rulebook's "gazing at Uranus". We started with a new mission - it didn't matter who won what cards, as long as no player had two tricks more than another player at any one time. It proved very tough, taking us four attempts to pass. In between the tense space-ship repair and anus-related laughs, there was also time for Martin and Katy to continue calling each other c**ts in inventive new ways.

We played two more missions after that, before ending the game with co-operative Wavelength, where Gwyneth Paltrow's vagina still proves to be a surprisingly apt clue for so many cards, as Katy pointed out. Maybe a bit embarrassed about our Uranus behaviour though, we resisted. It was as fun as it always is, but we did very badly, gaining zero bonus cards and finishing on nine points. Lowlights were Joe's "late afternoon" being dramatically light, and Martin's "Michael Gove" being unexpectedly acceptable. "I'd forgotten how reactionary you all are!" Martin complained, when we practically aligned Govey with the Nazis by twisting the dial all the way to Least likeable living person. "I mean, I don't like him" he quickly added.

I also clued Doctors as a fairly bad TV show, only to have the others decide it was pretty much the worst TV show ever even though they'd just been discussing Naked Attraction! Where everyone picks partners based on the appearance of their shaved nobs.

Everyone: 9 - dismal failure!

And that was that. Thanks all, a miniature classic. Hopefully everyone else got a good night's kip and we'll see you soon!

Babble on

This week's GNN was a relatively sparse affair, with just three of us joining Martin at his kitchen table - Katy, Adam T, and myself (Sam). Adam was last to arrive, and we realised if we started playing Gold Fever he would undoubtedly show up. This proved to be the case, but we simply dealt him in a bag, and he instantly drew two grey gravel. On his next go he drew two white gravel. "It's one of those luck-pushing games" he realised, while Martin complained that I gave him my gravel when he didn't have any gold. Katy gave him gravel too; but he just didn't know, as he was answering the door...

Sam - 4 gold!
Everyone else - Can't remember. Think Katy had one.

Forgot to take photos

Then we started on the first 'proper' game of the night with Babylonia. Katy wasn't keen, but Martin said she'd enjoy it now she knew what was going on, and this was at least partly true. It reminded me most of Samurai, with certain things being scored when surrounded, although the placement was also a bit Blue Lagoony, and the various nobles also put me in mind of Tigris and Euphrates.

it's so simple

That's not a bad ancestry, and although the game is very abstract, the turns were surprisingly quick. Adam emerged triumphant from whatever it was, thematically speaking, we were actually doing (I was never entirely clear) causing much gnashing of teeth from Martin. Katy lost, but wanted it noted that she led for most of the game. Another solid entry in the good doctor's ever-lengthening list of games that make you wail with despair.

Adam 118
Martin 113
Sam 111
Katy 109

me, and the the farmers

Then it was Die Crew again, so we all suited up and launched ourselves into trick-taking, google-translated space, where the trickiness of the missions is foreshadowed in the confusing commentary. Despite my failings - I was usually culpable - we completed Missions 19-22 with only a few dead cosmonauts along the way. We were so submerged in the narrative that I entirely forgot to take photos again!

Imagine the Crew here

Next to the table was either Montage, or Maskmen. Katy said she didn't want to play a word game, so Maskmen it was. Despite several plays, we - or Katy and I anyway - still needed to check with Martin what cards could be played when. I think it was new to Adam, and as last person to play he was surprised to find he couldn't legally play cards after we three had. He checked if it worked with four, and Martin - who'd just dumped three cards - assured him it worked perfectly well. Adam recovered from this indignity happening again moments later to recover, but not enough: Martin won both the opening rounds and, even though I could have drawn level in round three, we awarded him the win in favour of moving on...

Martin 4
Sam 2
Katy and Adam: 0

Forgot to take photos again. Come back, Andrew!

Adam was keen to try Hurlyburly and everyone else was more than amenable. After Martin explained the rules to Adam...

I made up for lost time by embarking on a spree of slow-motion movies that failed to capture any of the pivotal moments...

...the most satisfying being when my one and only block knocked down Martin's tower as he stood on the verge of victory. Adam won the first game, and although I thought there was a second this morning both my notes and Martin insist there wasn't. This is slightly alarming considering I was drinking alcohol-free beer.

confused again

Adam then started making going home noises, but we cajoled one final game out of him, which was Karambolage. I sped into an early 4-point lead but then got the Considerable Yips, and remained stuck there for the duration. Martin scored big but when bust when he sent pucks flying off the table. Adam managed to miss a shot from about 4 centimetres away; as he walked into the kitchen in disgust Katy rolled the same dice and missed an even easier shot...

Before Martin surged up to a resplendent finish to claim the win:

Martin 10
Sam 4
Katy 3
Adam 0

Adam's walk of disgust then turned into a slightly longer drive home, and it was Katy's turn to be cajoled: this time into playing The Mind Extreme. She reasoned that she was terrible at The Mind and would be even worse at this, which actually proved to be not the case right up until it was on level 5 - when she sat pat on the 46 and pooh-poohed the idea of re-syncing until she realised what re-syncing was.

 I think we crashed out on level 6, but it was a decent effort considering these were all played face-down...

dastardly fifteen

And with the time nearing 11, it was pumpkin o'clock for us - we headed home with another little chapter of GNN history allotted it's parcel of time, drama, comedy, and too many smutty innuendoes to begin listing here involving almost every aspect of Hurlyburly you could mention. 

The First Flush of Spring

It was a momentous occasion at Hannah and Adam's house - perhaps Arthur sensed something in the air, as he was unable to get to sleep - with long-time absentee Katy returning from her year-long cycle across America and even-longer absentee Quentin returning from his enigmatic doings in the UK. Andrew was still away in Japan, but joining our hosts and regulars Joe, Martin, Ian and myself was also fellow Eastonite Steve, doubling down on last week's appearance.

We began with cake, courtesy of Katy. In classic Katy style she pulled the rug from under the confectionary by saying what she learned from her trip was that "all gaming groups are the same", leaving us emotionally on the ropes before the evening had even begun. She's back, ladies and gentlemen! Katy floundered to justify this seeming broadside at our interchangeability before Joe came gallantly to her rescue with some sanguine philosophical reflections, and then Martin proved the truth of the statement by lifting the lid on the first game of the night: The Chameleon. It'd not been seen for a good while either, but the fact there were eight of us (at this point Hannah was still trying to get Arthur settled) made it a good fit.

In the first round, the word was Soup and Quentin was the chameleon. I can't remember who was accused, but Quentin got away with the word "tray" despite Ian pointing out you can carry many things on a tray, not just soup. Quent also guessed the word, courtesy of Joe and Steve's clues "Kitchen" and "Pea".

In the second round the word was Risk, and Ian was the chameleon, covering his back by saying the word "Strategy". Many of us thought Katy was the chameleon, with the word 'gray' that I'm still not clear on the reasoning of. Then we had one more round where the word was Insects. Joe did his best to incriminate himself by clueing the word "Startled" in reference to a Bristol band no-one had heard of; even his reading of the entire wikipedia entry not convincing us that it was a non-suspicious clue. But Katy's clue of 'Black' didn't convince enough people for her to get away with being the chameleon; though to be fair she did have to go first.

Hannah now swapped bedtime roles with Adam and we split into two groups. On the big table Hannah, Martin, Katy and Joe took on the evil-doing that is Northern Pacific. On the coffee table in the front room Ian, Steve, Quentin and myself collaborated beautifically on reconstructing the ancient temple of Menara.

Or at least we did until I knocked it over. Then we started again, determined to succeed, as the room rang to the soundtrack of the other table. At first there was much mirth, delighted cackling and verdant swearing coming from the direction of Northern Pacific. Then: silence. I'm not sure when exactly it happened, but clearly the fun of track-laying and station-investing had been superseded by the fun of revenge fantasies conjured and in some cases realised.

They later blamed Adam, who had returned to restart the game and tie for a three-way win:

Adam/Martin/Katy 23 (tied on tie-breaker!)
Joe/Hannah 18 (tied on tie-breaker!!)

Whilst they blasted out a game of Gold Fever...

...we came to the end of Menara in the front room, with Steve and I putting together the last Temple Floor. Quentin, ever the strategist, didn't want us to place it at all, reasoning we didn't need to to secure the victory. But we decided a glorious failure was better than a clinical win. Fortunately, it was neither: a glorious victory instead. We all took photos.

Hannah now retired to bed and Steve too, with an early morning looming, hit the road. The rest of us settled around the big table for the returnee's debuts at Just One. It was a hilariously catastrophic attempt with a number of clues overlapping and cancelling each other out. Including clues for 'shower' which I won't reproduce here, and poor Joe being left trying to guess the word Buffy from Giles and resurrection and Quentin trying to glean the word Shower from 'psycho' and 'power'. We failed, failed, and failed again, just hitting the disappointing 'average' score.

We wrapped up the evening with the return of another absentee - Fuji Flush, which remains a slightly tricky game to explain despite the simple rules. Quentin was already looking marginally baffled when Ian mentioned dick points. "Don't confuse him with dick points" Martin said, adding another aphorism to the GNN canon. Katy threatened to go out first but kept getting busted. Martin picked up a whole bunch of rubbish throughout the game, giving up all confidentiality to show me his cards.

And I won, going out on a 17 when nobody had the cards to collaborate with - essentially, they were collectively dickless.

Sam 0
Katy 1
Adam 2
Ian and Joe 3
Quentin 4
Martin 5

A fun end to a fun night. Thanks to our hosts in particular, and welcome back strangers!

Safe Potatoes

This week, the familiar five of Joe, Sam, Martin, Ian and me rocked up around Joe's kitchen table for our regular dose of quality entertainment and pretentious crisps.

First up was Gold Fever, the game of randomly pulling things from your hessian bag. Gold is good, gravel is bad. It was my first go and I was told the few rules while we were playing.

It was nice. Sam's bag seemed to be moulting and, as the early leader, perhaps because it was full of other people's gravel. Joe won it when a ruby came out of someone's bag, signifying an undignified rush to be the first to pull out a nugget of gold. You could say he literally pulled it out of the bag at the last minute.

Joe 4
Sam 3
Martin 3
Ian 2 or 3
Andrew 2

After this light fare, we dug out Santiago. An old game but one that is perfect for five. It's a game that mixes bidding with bribery, and tile placement with hopes of some short term co-operation from the very bribeable Canal Master. He decides where the irrigation channel goes and whose fields get watered.

Santiago's remarkably bland board

It's a game, like many others, that prompts the kind of sentences that could be misconstrued by anyone listening in, and not just the phrase currently adorning the heading of this particular blog post. "No damp patches," sighed Ian, looking at a board where all the irrigation channels were surrounded. "If there'd been a banana out there, things would have been very different," mused Martin as he looked over the crops on offer. Such is the arcane language used by the finest gamers. Or desperate luck-junkies. However you care to look at us.

Martin, much like last week, had a final turn where it felt like he'd either win or lose by his own hand. He made the right choice, but it was closer than anyone suspected.

Martin 98
Sam 97
Ian 69
Joe 64
Andrew 43

The third game of the evening was good old Decrypto. Sam and Martin buddied up into their usual duo, while Ian, Joe and I faced them from across the table.

Sam and Martin started in fine style, putting forward six clues in the first two rounds that bordered on raunchy. "Red, hole, hot" was followed by "Tits, arse, nuts." They were definitely thematic but also good clues. "Tits", especially, baffled us, becoming a real weight around our necks.

Joe initially used a "military grade" torch to try and indicate which word he thought went with which clue, but it needed five or six clicks to turn off while it cycled through its various lighting options. "It's still on!" we had to tell him, once he'd put it down. Before long he gave up on it as being impractical.

Both teams worked out at least one word early on (we got squirrel from Red and Nuts, they got pencil from Scribe and Lead) but any kind of certainty alluded us. Indeed, after some "high brow" clues from Sam, I was convinced we didn't have any of them right. In the end, they got two interceptions to our one and it was over in round seven.

Martin and Sam, Spies Like Us
Ian, Andrew and Joe, Spies dislike us.

Despite Decrypto's length, there was still enough time for one more game: Tag City. I managed a remarkable achievement by filling in a coloured area in only three moves. But that was the end of my dominance. While I was mucking about with the low scoring yellows, everyone else had made a claim for the larger and more rewarding areas which they proceeded to complete long before I could challenge for them.

Perhaps five players is too many for this game, since it's impossible to keep track of what people want and how to avoid giving it to them. As such, it's a bit of a luckfest. Right?

Joe 36
Ian 29
Martin 23
Andrew 8
Sam 7

And once that was done, we could no longer ignore the distant call of our beds. Mine even had a hot water bottle in it I'd put there before I'd gone out.

Thanks to all for another fun evening.

Gravel in the Bag

At one point this week's GNN threatened to people no less than seven, but Andrew was lost to fatigue and Ian's mysterious friend Paul remained, for now at least, mysterious. Instead we began as a four: our host Joe, Martin, Matt, and myself (Sam). As we pondered over whether a fifth person would arrive shortly, we played Gold Fever: possibly one of the silliest games to somersault through the GNN door: each player has a bag of five gold pieces, and the first to draw four of them wins the game. But - you also have twelve gravel pieces (four each of white, grey and black) and if you draw two of the same type of gravel, you're bust, and must chuck everything back in your bag.

What adds a soupçon of strategy is the option to stick: instead of continuing to draw, keep any gold you drew and chuck your gravel in someone else's bag instead. It's not the sort of game where you can pause and take photos, as if anyone draws a ruby, it becomes a simultaneous race to pull out a gold piece. The result is a very swingy, silly, Take-That affair, which I now can't remember who won. Not me though. And not Martin either, who declared the game "stupid" - but in a fairly complimentary way.

With Mysterious Paul's absence now established, we realised we had an hour as a four to play with. And so we set up Oregon.

The board is a grid of sorts where you can play a combo of landscape cards to add a cowperson (or a 'guy' as we referred to them) to a square, or you can play a single landscape card and a building card to add a building. Both score when placed: guys score any building they're adjacent to, buildings trigger adjacent guys. I think. I found the very simple mechanic weirdly hard to get my head around, despite playing the game before. Matt surged off into an early lead as Joe struggled to get going. Martin gathered his guys together in a huddle (points!) and made sure he was adjacent to a lot of mines. I kept pace for a bit but started to lag when my hand was full of bird cards.

It got crowded.

It also got extremely thinky, and we were all mid-pause when Ian arrived and had to be patient as we lurched towards the end. It's not the sort of game you'll get a kick out of watching as it's mostly like wandering around a library and hearing someone murmur 'shit' under their breath every now and then.

Joe's late-game performance was such that he actually surged into the lead at one point, but come the final count-up, Martin's collection of coal and gold saw him crowned most convincing cowperson:

Martin 93
Sam 80
Joe 75
Matt 65

Matt realised his lack of coal and gold counted against him. Martin confessed to cockblocking Joe. The game met with lots of approving murmurs, if not the outright excitement of our next conquest: Decrypto. Martin and I teamed up again to see if our losing run would continue, whilst Ian joined with Joe and Matt. We - Martin and I - felt pretty confident early on, when we'd deciphered two of the other team's words pretty quickly. But our confidence evaporated when they successfully intercepted us. We intercepted right back, but then - disaster! - Martin's clue of 'end' for Bell was identified by Joe, and we'd need to intercept again successfully to even have the chance of a draw. It came down to the single word of 'Horn' which could go with word 4, which we'd already identified as Boat. But was it a bluff, designed to make us guess 4? We'd wagered it was a bluff, and put our money on the enigmatic second word - and we were right!

So it came down to the decider - which team could identify the most words? Thanks to Matt's horn  Martin realised that the second word (magical/horn) could be unicorn, and he was right. In the narrowest of wins, we identified all four words to their three:

Martin and Sam - win! (finally)
Ian, Joe, Matt - don't win

The hour was still early, and we had no less than four more games in us. First up was High Society, which I said might be my favourite Knizia. This got the room rustling like a Jose Mourinho press conference, what with the likes of Ra and Tigris and Euphrates out there. But I love the simplicity and silliness of High Society, where every card flip can be a mini-drama.

And this proved to be a particularly dramatic night: I began the spending with a x2 card the first to flip, but before too long there were three x2 cards on the table and Joe in particular seemed to have spent a lot of money. Martin was convinced he (- Joe) was nailed on for last place (so was I), but there was to be a twist in the tail. Joe made us all spend cash to pick up the -5 card, and Ian spent big on the 2. Then the fourth red flipped over and the game instantly ended. Contrary to expectations, Matt had somehow spent the most and was bust. Martin and I had 2x zero, and the convincing winner was Joe!

Joe 12
Ian 6
Martin/Sam 0
Matt - BUST!

Martin still reckoned Joe should have lost, despite the evidence. Another GNN story to tell our grandchildren.

Next up was Perudo, as canvassed for by Ian and seconded by me. It was the usual Perudo story of deception and brutality, as we hedge-betted and lied our way around the table. Matt was first out after he went into a semi-death-spiral and lost dice on subsequent turns. Ian followed him shortly afterwards. With three of us and Martin palafico, he bet on three fives. I had none, and he was out. Joe and I faced off with Joe palafico and me with three. He paused for so long I started convincing myself he was reading my mind, but fortunately whatever he discovered there was as unreliable as I've ever found it:

1 Sam
2 Joe
3 Martin
4 Ian
5 Matt

We then busted out another game of Gold Fever, notable mostly for Joe passing gravel to Martin when both Matt and Ian had gold in front of them. "I've got no fucking gold!" he protested.
"But you're Martin" said Joe.
Martin promised bitter revenge but we all got sidetracked by trying to shaft Ian first, whose bag was filling up with everyone else's gravel. I think Joe won, but oddly I can't remember. Games of Gold Fever are a bit like an Intercity 125 zipping through a station of steam trains.

Last game of the night, then, with Joe setting up Botswana AKA Wildlife Safari AKA They Must Have Had Loads of Plastic Animals They Didn't Know What To Do With (Martin).

This is another neat Knizia where you play an animal card, and take an animal (a plastic animal). You can take any animal you like, but you must take one. The cards have values between 0 and 6, though, and when the sixth card is played on any row, the game ends and the last card played in each row defines the value of your animals.

My lions were looking pretty valuable too, until Martin played the zero on them. But fortune smiled on Joe as the game ended before he had to play his last card on the zebras: the zero. Joe had a lot of zebras:

Joe 23
Martin 16
Ian 11
Sam 10
Matt 5

And that was that! A lot of foul-mouthed fun was had in an evening of short games. "They're all short games!" Martin said when I mentioned as much. We'd forgotten about Oregon.