Their hands met in a crowded tile bag

The latest stage of Project Arthur (turning Sally from games widow to games enthusiast via subtle NLP, opportunism and high-pitched wheedling) took place on Friday. Sally was keen - all things being relative - to play Biblios, but in an effort to expand her gaming horizons I set up Ingenius, the abstract game of making colours go next to other colours the same colour.

Initially able to contain her enthusiasm, Sally grew into the game and indeed seemed to recollect playing it before - something I don't recall myself, but then my retention is fairly flimsy.

Something we both struggled with was the scoring - do you score the number of symbols in each string, or the number of connections between them? I think it's the latter, but either way I kept staring at the rules like an uncomprehending dolt, something that still resonates today.

In our game Sally made the fatal error of letting one of her colours (green) fall way behind the others, and it was the greens I sought to cut off in order to preserve my win. But I made the even-more-fatal-error of not realizing she'd snuck it forward just enough to go past my own green marker - hence I was hoist by my own petard as Sally won with a low score of 11 Green to my 9.

I don't think it was the game to turn Sally but it didn't put her off either. Games are definitely a source of fun for her, just a slightly different type of fun (see her ironic post title above)...

Sam, the man-who-ver y nearly beat me at Manoeuvre

Whilst other GNN gamers Andrew and Adam were busy pogo-ing to Bucky at Cafe Kino (how was it chaps?), Sam and I convened for a spot of two-player cardboard, erm 'mayhem'. If that sounds tame, I can tell you there was also some plastic involved. You could have an eye out with those Ingenious tile racks!

I finally got a chance to introduce Manoeuvre, my favourite short two-player direct conflict game, to Sam. Sam, Manoeuvre; Manoeuvre, Sam. Cautious handshakes, muttered pleasantries.

After Andrew's problems galvanising the Dutch-Belgian English regiment last time we played, I offered Sam the French, as a slightly more reliable starting army.
The game usually starts gently, with lots of quick turns as both player's units head for prime positions on the middle of the board, ready for the mid-game stand-off. Except that as soon as my Cavalry arrived Sam punched them in the face. A rookie error, I thought - not waiting to build up a co-ordinated attack.
But it set the tone for the whole game; lots of opportunistic attacks, whittling down and battling back units, though Sam definitely had the edge, having taken one of my cavalry units and two infantry against my prize of a single French infantry unit. It became clear that neither of us was likely to win by attrition, so we both did a last minute dance to get the best position on each others side of the board and claim the nightfall victory. In the end it was so close we thought it was a draw, but I pipped a win by a single VP.

It wasn't the best iteration of this lovely game with which to woo Sam - a little more bitty and indecisive than usual, but I think he quite enjoyed it - no doubt he shall tell us in the comments. Still, he grasped the fundamentals (ouch) with ease, and dominated my side of the battlefield well into the second half.

It was only nine, so we cast about for a shorter two-player game, settling on perennial fave Ingenious, a Knizia classic. We played two games, Sam winning both - several times I had to refresh my hand, and in both games I realised my opportunities for scoring a particular colour were dwindling fast. There's a very steep drop-off once the board starts filling up, and in the second game we were both being far more circumspect in placing each tile, looking for ways to keep colours open and close others down.
It's a deserving classic - but I do wish the tiles and board were prettier. God I'm shallow.

A good combo of games for a thursday night, and nice to get a chance to play Manoeuvre again.
If we can get the other GNN-ers to learn the rules, perhaps we could have a Euro-style competition - all eight armies playing each other over several rounds, quarter and semi-finals, and then we could all stand around watching two people play the grand final. Hmm, maybe not.

Stuff and Nonsense

What's fast becoming 'the usual' crowd last night, comprising Adam, Andrew, me, Quent and Sam.

Sam was going to be arriving late, so we needed something for four that wouldn't take ages. Ingenious caught Adam's eye, Reiner Knitzia's crowd-pleasing abstract. It is very simple, with a clever scoring trick that is similar I think to Tigris and Euphrates (also by RK), in that although you are advancing multiple tracks, your final score will be determined by your least advanced one. So it's imperative that you try to push each of the six tracks evenly. This becomes harder to do as the board fills up, and your opponents cap off big point-scoring chains. Everyone grasped it quickly, and although it looked like I was winning, my trailing yellow track proved my undoing, Adam winning by a couple of points. Quent and I came joint second, Andrew third. It's a great two-player game, not totally sure about the four-player . . .

Next up was 7 Wonders for five, Sam having joined us by then. It was the usual fast-paced stuff, and it is in fact during the scoring round that everybody sits up and takes notice of each other's achievements, the majority of the game being played in relative silence. Adam romped in to first with a cracking 63 points, Sam in second with 49. Quent came third, me fourth and Andrew fifth. It's the second game in a row I've played where several turns have felt like there's nothing useful to do — several identical cards meaning you can't even deny your neighbour something helpful. I think the key to combatting those lulls is to hold off building your wonder stages until there's really nothing better to do with the cards in your hand.

I played the Colossus of Rhodes (B), which only has two stages to build, so perhaps that's a consideration. Or perhaps I'm just rubbish. Anyway it was fun; as I remarked at the time, rather than giving me the flavour of a big civ game in a fraction of the time, I find it gives me a bit of a yearning for one. But perhaps that's a symptom of a couple of weeks playing a few short games rather than one big chewy one. Republic of Rome next time then? Or Die Macher?
We rounded out the night with No Thanks, and Quent trounced us all despite (or maybe because of) being the only neophyte.

[edit]Hello - Andrew here. Despite Joe's peculiar belief that having a leaderboard increases a games club's mortality rate, here's this weeks update. I've decided to use Quentin's method, hereby known as The Q System.

	Played	Points
Adam	4	22
Quentin	5	20
Joe	5	18
Andrew	5	16
Sam	2	10.5
Hannah	1	5