Why did the pterodactyl have to like cake?

A solid six gamers last night, as Ian and Martin arrived earlyish and we kicked off with a three-player Vivo whilst waiting. It's a trick-taker where winning the trick is worth 2 points but playing the lowest card gets you the number value of that card in points, a twist that as Martin remarked makes the game fairly chaotic, but quite funny. We played again with Joe on his arrival, with Martin and I winning a game each. 

Adam and Katy arrived at the same time and as a sextet we kicked off the evening proper with Jibber Jabble, the Just One of limited clues and zero communication. 

This was as funny as previous games, as from the get-go I had no idea what Katy's T might have meant for Martin's word of jungle. Thinking back now there are numerous Ts in the jungle. We recovered from this, and Katy's reluctance to add an S to trunk (the word was swimsuit) and even Katy's horror at the romance/happy combo we supplied her for her word of Love. Could Adam steer us over the line for a perfect 6/6? Yes he could. A very funny 20 minutes, albeit I think the difficult words make the game better. 

We now split into to two threes, with Adam Katy and Martin setting up Hanami as Ian and I signed up for Joe's suggestion of Codenames: Critical Role Adventures. This is very like Codenames, as one might expect, only with a Crew-esque adventure saddled onto it. One player is the cluer and the others control three adventurers, as you make your way through a fantasy fictional world, improving your character abilities for when things no doubt get tougher later. 

The core of clue/number of words wanted remains intact, and we played two missions, first seeing off bandits as hired protectors of a chatty merchant, and then finagling our way into a warehouse. Does Codenames need this additional fiction? No, but it's still silly fun and improving a thing always has a little satisfaction to it. We were all happy to play and eager to return to it in the near future. Meantime, Adam had won Hanami. 

Hanami doesn't do wild scoring variations - the biggest deficit would be 3 points - but multiple ties left two celebration tokens unclaimed and Adam's single point enough to be Most Vicious Picnicker. 

Adam - 1

Martin and Katy - both zero

Whilst waiting for us to escape the warehouse, they'd also played Misfits. I don't actually have a record of who won, but I think it was Adam again. 

Around this point Katy prevented Sally from throwing some processed cheese slices in the bin and began eating her way through what she referred to as burger cheese. Slightly concerned she wasn't looking after herself, I made everyone toast. I don't remember why there are scissors here too. 

 It wasn't even 10 yet but Katy asked for So Clover before she went home, so we did that, seriously threatening the record of legends before coming a cropper on our last clover: Adam's. One of his clues was Gaff-Rig and nobody knew what it was, my guess of a scaffold in an open air concert being so far off I must commend him on his straight face. We struggled for so long that Joe and I were told off for clueing words that weren't actually there, and a fatigued Katy suggested the sun was the centre of the universe. Poor Adam had to watch us score a paltry one, distracted from 'basement' for foundation by my gaff-rig gaucheness. Inevitably as I write I had to google gaff-rig, but maybe you should have a guess. 

Katy wanted to play again, claiming she was now revived, but there wasn't enough momentum in the room and she and Adam - also tired - made their way home leaving us as a four. Martin thought it might be funny to play So Clover and send them a picture, but what we eventually settled on was Roaring 20s, a game about dinosaurs who like kebabs. 

Each round we bid for the dinosaurs (blue card) in question, who have an individual points value but - as they are numbered - will also score points for sets and runs. If you drop out of the bidding, you can claim a bidding card (white), with the extra wrinkle that certain dinosaurs eaten certain foodstuffs: one, two or three of kebabs, cocktails or cake. Or possibly gems. No wonder they died out. 

Everyone liked this. It takes about 20 minutes and you definitely need to keep an eye on what dinosaurs are being collected by others, and can be screwed over by a particular dino not wanting what you have to offer. Or possibly even having too broad a palate, leading to Joe's lament about pterodactyls and confectionary. 

Ian 35

Sam 30

Joe 25

Martin 21

Joe now left as well but as Ian had a beer to finish so we squeezed one more game in: the lesser-seen Love Letter, last glimpsed on these pages three years ago. Martin eliminated Ian in round one but then I eliminated Martin. I was just recalling to myself how Ian has something of a knack for this game though when he won the next two rounds to take the win.

Ian 2

Sam 1

Martin 0

And then, like the dinosaurs, they were gone. 

Enjoying the Shoelace

More games!

A quiet one this week as only Martin and I could make the trip to Anja and Steve's house. Whilst Steve got Lennon settled however Louie joined us for the evening's starter of Pictures. 

This was a hit with everyone, Anja enjoying it despite getting off to a terrible start where none of us could decode her imagery. It's a lovely mash-up of art, deduction and silliness, leading to the post title where Anja checked in on how Louie was faring with his shoelace medium. 

Martin 19

Louie and Sam 18 each

Anja 11

Steve joined us whilst we set up Jibber Jabble, making five players. As previously mentioned, there's a Just One-type vibe to this (one player doesn't know a word; everyone else tries to clue what it is) but the cluers must combine on the clueing, spelling out words without conferring on what they might be. Because of this my opening clues were LUNAR, BEG, and ASPKO, as the second and third clues hit the rocks of limited/no communication. Fortunately my guess of moon was correct. 

As with last time we played, it was notable how all the agonising and confusion is foisted onto the players who actually know what the word is. Here's a bamboozled Steve, trying to think of a letter.

One of our words - Martin's -  actually was letter, and Louie handled this with aplomb, starting off with ENVELOPE and PEN before we added WRITE. Poised on 5/6 I was the guesser for the final round, but despite Anja playing her 'bonus clue' I unfortunately only had WATER, CHAW, VEPICTORIA and BIOSA to go on. The word was lake, but I guessed surf.  No cigar. 

Louie then headed to bed and the evening's main course was determined to be Mille Fiori. I secretly guessed the order we'd finish in (Martin, Anja, Steve, myself) and said if I got them right I'd get a bonus 100 points. Then I realised that my bonus hundred points would no doubt mean I'd got it wrong.

It's not my favourite Knizia but it's nice and speedy and personally speaking I managed to stage a mini-recovery after Martin twice harpooned early turns I had planned. Despite lagging, I suspected he'd surge in the late game and I was right: at one stage he pulled off three bonus turns in a row. But it wasn't enough to catch Steve, who had sailed off to unreachable numbers. My predications were all out:

Steve 220
Martin 197
Sam 191
Anja 185

We debated what to follow this with, eventually settling on Gang of Dice, because Martin insisted it would be fun. This looked dubious at one stage, especially from Steve's perspective as he watched his dice evaporate over the early rounds. 

But it was his turn to surge in the late-game, as Martin ended the game with less than he started with.

Sam 63
Steve 56
Anja 29
Martin 14

It was close to 11pm now and we called it a night. 

The Games Larbotory

After last week's feast of 8 gamers, this Tuesday shrank to a comparatively meagre four. Come 7.30 it was myself (Sam) Ian, Katy and Martin around the table, with no more to come. We kicked off with a new game of Martin's: Pictures. 

A grid of pictures are laid out and, à la Cross Clues, each player is given a secret co-ordinate. The goal is to make a picture that clues everyone else in to what that co-ordinate is, and you'll score points for correct guesses and being guessed correctly. Then any 'used' pictures are discarded and new ones appear for the next round. The catch is that you're making pictures with very specific palettes: a 3x3 grid of cubes, or a couple of shoelaces, some wooden blocks or a collection of sticks and stones. Trickiest of all, perhaps, a bunch of cards with symbols on. 

This was fun. It was surprising how often we managed to guess correctly, but equally there were occasions when someone was appalled by how obvious their picture allegedly was, only for the rest of us to fail to spot it! Martin took this with a solid 20 points after five rounds, during which everyone gets a turn with each medium.

Martin 20

Sam 18

Ian 16

Katy 15

Next up was  Gold Country, Knizia's mining and share-dicking business. Andrew has just given a brief overview in last week's post, but essentially it's buy low, sell high, and fuck everyone over. 

 

I struggled to really make sense of it. It wasn't just Katy calling the gold nuggets potatoes that confused me - I couldn't quite grasp how the spatial element affected the shares, even though whenever I explained it to myself (or someone else did) it seemed simple. But a lot of variables, and a fairly chaotic experience that Martin, perhaps unsurprisingly, handled best. But it was close...

Martin 79

Ian 71

Sam 63

Katy 54

Then we played a new game of mine called Jibber Jabble. This is a co-operative where, like Just One, everyone is collectively trying to clue a single team-mate in on a random word. However in Jibber Jabble we must spell out clues without actually conferring on what they are, so a cluer can end up even more bamboozled by the guesser. When Martin's word was microscope, Katy - unbeknownst to us, thinking of small - began cluing him with S. Thinking of study, I said T. Ian had been assuming science so said C (in Jibber Jabber, you're allowed to misspell words and keep going). Katy and I floundered and Martin's first clue ended up being stcu. Luckily you're allowed three clues total: we followed that with Larbotory and Petridish, but it was still pretty vague. 

That was one of the hard words though. I think we succeeded on the easy and medium ones to finish 4/6 overall. Very funny. You can say Jibber if you think you know what a teammate is trying to do, and Jabble if you can't - not very helpful really, but added to the inanity. 

Martin was keen to try a game called One Round which we could proxy with cards from The Mind. This is another make-connections co-op, where we're trying to get numbers in sequential order in a circle. We start with three random cards at the 12, 4, and 8 o'clock positions (100/zero, 33, and 66) each with a word assigned to it already. and then take turns drawing a card and giving clues that will tell your team-mates where it should go in the circle. 

As the circle fills up, so there become more spaces between cards and more potential connections. But the words also become more and more similar and, one would assume, potentially harder to differentiate between the gaps. We did pretty well, only losing one life (of three) before completing our task in about 15 minutes, I think. 

We went back to competitive with dnup, the Scout-esque card shedder. I won round one and Katy and Martin won a round each leaving us poised to win. But then Ian won the next round forcing a final decider, where Katie was first out to claim victory!

It was So Clover time by this point so we dove in and our first attempt was pretty poor, something like 16/24. Katy - despite noticing it was gone 11pm - demanded we make amends immediately, so we did. And we did! We overcame a potential portobello on my opener and then sailed through the next three clovers for a perfect end to a very nice evening. thanks all. 

Hope to see you soon.