Magenta Devine Reflected in the Back of a Spoon

Despite his monthly Time of Crisis battle looming, Andrew was good enough to join me Friday night and bash out some two-player games on the spotty tablecloth of destiny.

First out of the blocks was Transatlantic. This is the game Mac Gerdts designed using his card system in Concordia but replacing the generic Mediterranean Trading theme with a marginally more specific Age of Steam vibe, as you manufacture steam ships from 1870 onwards (including the Titanic!) until the game ends with the arrival of the combustion engine ship (or something) around 1915.

Just like Concordia, you have a hand of cards to play and each played card is out of your reach until you play the specific card (the Director, in this case) that returns all previously-played cards to you. The cards are used to purchase ships, load them with coal, transport their freight (for cash and points!) and invest in various companies - these investments will define how much you score for your ships when they get too old to be competitive any more, and are bumped from the seas like yesterday's iron-riveted dreams...

We both preferred it to Concordia, because despite the underwhelming appearance - Concordia's ugly sibling, one might say - it plays faster and despite lots of interactive possibilities with ship-bumping and trade-house-building, doesn't stall with Concordia's potential for analysis paralysis. Not for two anyway. Andrew surged into a lead despite doing very little trade, instead focusing on building ships as often as possible and cashing in on his aged fleet when the opportunity arose. But as the game entered its final stages, he found his ships coalless and I sailed past him for a narrow-ish win:

Sam about 170
Andrew about 150

Next up was Wordsy, the rapid fire word game of thinking of words. Andrew again began the stronger as I snatched up the timer, thinking of the word fastest, only to have him outscore me and claim a bonus for doing so. But I came back into contention near the end and just about snatched a win.

goes too fast for photos

Then I introduced Andrew to the two-player delights of Kami. We tried this as a 2v2 a couple of weeks back and were underwhelmed, but the two player version is more engaging. Each player has eight cards and it's a race to be rid of them, scoring the points of your last-played card. Each turn has a defensive play - negating the attack of your opponent by playing a matching card - and an attacking one. With two players the sixteen spare cards become 'mercenaries' - at your disposal to use as defence or attack - the caveat being, of course, that doing so isn't making your hand any smaller.
Andrew took this one:

Andrew: Lord of the Spirit World
Sam: not

Before at Andrew's suggestion we broke out Knit Wit, which has no been played for many a moon. You create a venn diagram of overlapping loops, each representing a word. Inside the loops are spools - maybe in one loop, maybe in two or more.

Then you write a definition for each spool: for instance, a spool might be Electrical, Bitter and Curved or Narrow and Funny. I wasn't sure it would really work with two players, but it was hilarious. We played twice. I can't remember who won - I think it was me but only by dint of being faster. Andrew's definitions were funnier.

Sam: Knit?
Andrew: Wit

We'd drunk our fill of wine, delighted in padron peppers and stuffed our faces with cheap crisps, so it was time to say goodnight. Shortly after Andrew left though Sally arrived home, so we had a quick game of Wordsy too. A fine Friday night.

Handsome beyond words

With mass absences ruling out Tuesday's gaming, we gathered together on a Thursday for our weekly fix. There were five of us around Joe's freshly cleaned kitchen table: Joe himself, Sam, Ian, Martin and me. Martin was itching to get started, having not played any games for ages and we began with some light hearted luck pushing with Push.

Deal yourself some cards, avoiding duplicates of colour or number, making up to three columns to help you avoid going bust. You choose which column to keep but, and here's the twist, your neighbours get the other two columns. Added to this is the little matter of the die which, when rolled, requires you to discard all of your cards of the colour showing on the die.

It's a fun game, where a lot of the fun is watching other people struggle with bad luck. Especially if the person in question is Martin. "Random nonsense!" he declared as the die sliced away another high scoring set of cards from his collection while leaving the rest of us relatively unscathed. He couldn't even take solace in his beer since his regular subscription ales were nasty sweet tasting novelty flavours.

Ian and I both banked cards to keep them safe and when Ian did suffer at the hands of the die, he was able to shrug off losing twelve points with a unconcerned "I can live with that." But it turned out to be pivotal.

Andrew 64
Ian 56
Joe 41
Sam 38
Martin 29

After this we played the Dixit / Face Cards type game of Belratti. We only had the rules in German, so Martin searched for the English version online.

In this, we are artists and collectors. We all have a hand of nine cards with pictures of objects and then two more picture cards are revealed, indicating the topics that the collectors want in their art works. But in among these hand picked cards are four randomly drawn pictures by Belratti, the famous painter of forgeries. Picking his cards instead of ours is a minus point and six of them will end the game in defeat.

We began optimistically by declaring that Sam and Ian (our two painters) could successfully chose six paintings to sell to me, Martin and Joe. To cut a long story short, they couldn't. Belratti snuck three of his paintings into the deal. He was already halfway to beating us and we never recovered. We had only nine pictures successfully identified when Belratti hit six which, according to the score sheet, is "a picture of misery."

Next up, we needed something more meaty to go with the just-opened crisps. Northern Pacific was introduced to me as a simple but mean train game set in the US. Put your cubes in the city where the train is going to be sometime in the future, but all the other players are doing the same. In doing so, alliances are forged and rivalries are cemented.

It was a difficult game to judge and we all struggled with the problem of trying to make a move that doesn't immediately make people move the train elsewhere. Joe stoutly defended himself against any accusations that he was taking a "Joe turn" pointing out we'd all had moments of excess pondering. It was a bit mean of us since he was in last at the time and needed a decent round to get back into contention, which he got.

In fact it ended very close. After leading for rounds one and two, Martin found himself caught by Sam right at the end, despite his great joke about dropping a big one in Butte.

Sam 21
Martin 20 (fewer wasted cubes)
Andrew 20 (more wasted cubes)
Joe 19
Ian 18

With the news that England were winning 3-0 against Norway in the Women's World Cup ringing in our ears, we played L. A. M. A. The fun game of picking up or putting down cards. So simple yet so amusing. I adopted the role of cock blocker for this game. I suggested that Martin should start and then, having checked his cards, he immediately had to pick up. Then I kept ruining Sam's plans with a sequence of moves that kept increasing the value of the cards past the one he wanted.

Joe played a clear round and got to put back a ten. He also went to the toilet and while he was away we complained about how long he was taking over his turn. Hilarious. But he had the last laugh with a decisive win.

Joe 11
Martin 32
Andrew 34
Ian 39
Sam 46

At this point, Ian set off home but we were still very much in the zone. We tried Kami, a very pretty Japanese themed game from France (I think) which was simple, although with a frustratingly opaque rule sheet that spent more time telling us the characters’ back story than how to play the game.

The basic jist is that one player plays an attack card and the next player has to play the same card (or an empress) to counter it and then they can play an attack card of their own. Winning team (you play in pairs) is decided by the first person to play all eight cards in their hand. It seemed simple and a bit random. The winning total is supposed to be fifteen but when Joe and I ran into a 9-0 lead after two rounds, the game was ended.

After this we played Handsome, An Elegant Word Game. This game comes in a tiny pack and it concerns making words from the five communal cards in the middle (one supplied by each player and one drawn randomly at the start) and the two cards in each players’ hand. Only consonants are supplied, so you have to come up with the longest word using whatever vowels you choose. In the “party variant” consonants can be repeated. These people party hard.

Sam was in his element, winning on QUASHED. I just checked and we owe Joe an apology since HELIXES is a valid plural of HELIX, which would have got him an extra point for longest word that round. Martin was all musical, starting with VOGUED and JIVE while I was channeling my inner fisherman with WHELKS and an underwhelming (and non-scoring) BOX.

Sam 11
Joe 8
Martin 7
Andrew 4

Finally, we had another go at Belratti. This time we stuck to low numbers of paintings to match to our topics, and we made sure to use those useful special action cards. With this, we did far better. I clearly thought that either familiarity or a smaller player count had improved matters but what I said was “This is so much better without Ian!” Then they insisted I blog that, so here I am. Sorry, Ian. Didn’t mean it.

Joe, Sam, Andrew and Martin 16
Belratti 3

A marvelous way to end the evening and set off into the hot June night. See you all soon, I hope.