Future Gamers II

The Old London Chapter of GNN - Andrew, Paul J, Chris and myself - gathered online last night for a long-mooted gaming session. I'd not seen Paul in over a year so it was nice to catch up, and see his penchant for impulse purchases was still intact with a spaceship-type lighting system. This effect added to the sense that our cottage-in-the-country weekends were from a different time, and we were now in the Future.

Chris was in Chippenham, and had dyed his hair - as an experiment, he insisted. Whether this was true or not, or how much he was lying to himself, he did look remarkably younger and we discussed the merits of spraying my bald patch, a la Bob Mortimer. Paul mentioned he'd cut his own hair so didn't know what the back looked like.

Andrew was conspicuously on the fence. He began mysteriously uncamera-ed later added a camera, but remained invisible to me throughout the evening, as Zoom refused to show me how much he'd changed. Is he pumping iron every morning and downing protein shakes? Enquiring minds, etc.

After comparing lockdown notes we kicked things off with 7 Wonders. I was surprised to see I hadn't played it in well over a year, but for Paul it was possibly longer. Some things never change though - sandwiched between Paul and Chris, both Andrew and I found ourselves militarily bullied, as he discovered lots of peaceful science and I concentrated on gentle culture. The entire undertaking took about 15 minutes! With a computer around to not-forget which way to pass your cards, 7 Wonders was exceedingly brief. And Paul's absenteeism did him no harm, it turned out:

Paul 60
Chris 56
Sam 47
Andrew 46

We moved on to another speedy undertaking in Love Letter. Again Paul's rustiness did him no harm here either, as he sailed to a 3-1-1-0 lead, at one point ousting Chris with a Priest in the Hole.

But as Andrew and I serially imploded, Chris came back from the dead to claim an improbable victory!

Chris 4
Paul 3
Andrew 1
Sam 1

We stuck with the sillier end of the gaming spectrum with Perudo. Having played this on Tuesday I was already familiar with the foibles of boardgamearena's particular version of the rules, but it didn't help me at all. Dudos kept blowing up in my face as, once again, Paul began to look the dominant stag amongst a bunch of stick-legged deer-children*. The evening does begin to get hazy here though, with various people going off for a wee or simply vanishing for a moment or two. I also realised I'd downed three glasses of wine already at it was barely 9pm. At this point, driven mad by smallish children, Sally came in to confiscate aforementioned wine but before leaving poured me a very large fourth. So my recall - never the best anyway - starts to go on the fritz. I thought I took photos, but I didn't. I do remember Stanley coming in and confusing me by not speaking - it turns out he'd taken a vow of silence that continues this morning - and I also remember, I think, though, that Chris was first out, then Andrew, then it was my two dice versus Paul's five. Twice I tried to bluff him and twice he read me like a book: it was a very convincing win for the man from Croydon:

Paul
Sam
Andrew
Chris

Mine and Andrew's last game of the evening was Carcassonne. This hasn't been seen for years in our house, but the rules are burned into our memories.  Paul was the big points-scorer early on, but as he said himself, he was doing no farming. Andrew and I got into a passive-aggressive farmer battle where I managed to actually connect his fourth Farmer to the main 'board' with a absent-minded placement. D'oh! Chris trod a path between these extremes, getting a couple of Farmers down too but also focusing his efforts on some city expansion. As is often the case with this game, the farming paid off:

Sam 69
Andrew 64
Paul 62
Chris 53

I was fading fast and Andrew had to go to work, so we bowed out, leaving Chris and Paul to crack out a finale in the classic two-player, Jaipur.

1 Chris
2 Paul

They'll have to tell that dramatic tale themselves, as I was probably asleep before it finished. A nice confection of gaming, thanks chaps....

*fawns

Ten of the Best

On Saturday night, Chris, Jacquie and I convened over their kitchen table for what would turn out to be something of an epic night of short games. After tea - which also involved a discussion of tactical voting with the kids - the three (relative) grown-ups kicked things off with Azul. Chris mentioned that Jacquie was evil in Azul, and I noticed with some alarm that I was sitting to her left. As it happened though, Chris got the worst of the broken tiles in a fairly close-run battle:

Jacquie 82
Sam 80
Chris 69

Before we moved on to slightly sillier fare with Letter Jam. For the uninitiated, Letter Jam is a co-op where everyone is trying to help everyone else figure out what letters they have - like Just One, your own cards face away from you - in order to figure out their word. It's surprisingly easy to go wrong, even for seasoned Scrabble players like Jacquie. We tried again - Ashton joining us for the second attempt - but once again failed. A clever game though.

one I took earlier

By now it was approaching nine so we kicked the kids into bed and re-introduced Jacquie to the murky world of High Society. Despite our warnings, she spent too much money in our first game and ended destitute. I won with something like ten points, whereas Chris had both the x2 cards but with no points at all, it was double nothing. In the second I grabbed to early high cards but undid my good work - I bid to force up the prices of two subsequent cards and both times Chris and Jacquie deviously passed on me, leaving me points-rich but cash-poor. Chris won this one.

Jacquie then retired to bed and Chris introduced me to Jaipur, the game of trading for two in India. It has been around for years but I'd never actually played it, and I can see why it has a good reputation: the basic idea is collecting cards and cashing them in for chips (chips being points) but the way it works allows for safety-first or luck-pushing and spoiling tactics galore as you see what your opponent is picking up and play accordingly.

We liked it so much we played it twice, although in between them we also had a double-crack at Blitzkrieg!

This is another two-player, but rather than trading you are trying to kill each other in a "20 minute" reenactment of WWII. One player is the Axis, the other the Allies, and you are drawing chits from a bag and deciding where to lay them in five theatres of war across the globe, each subdivided into two or three campaigns. Adding a chit swings momentum your way on a battle track, and when a campaign is finished whoever is in the lead on the battle track claims the points. Most places on a campaign also give rewards as well, so although the mechanics are very simple, the decisions are extremely meaningful. I really like this and Chris seemed enamoured of it too, despite me claiming a win just as he was one turn from a 7point swing in his favour...

After our second play of Jaipur we realised it was rather late however, so we finished up with NMBR9, deciding halfway through to go through the deck twice and build some epic, high-scoring constructions. As always moments of delight and confidence were outweighed by our castigating fate, God, kismet and anything else you could mention as the pieces refused to align meaningfully. Kind of like life, one might say.

Ten games in one night - and very excellent games too. Thanks again!