Silly starts today

 I arrived at Sam's at 7.50, excited for a return to normality, eager to have a break from online gaming (although I felt a little sad that there wasn't a concurrent online GNN happening that we could watch). You can imagine my slight disappointment, then, when I found Sam, Joe and Katy deep in a board game based on Tetris! 

Oh well, at least it wasn't actual Tetris. I watched in faint puzzlement until they added up some numbers and Sam had won.

Sam 24

Joe 21

Katy 19

But what to play next? The possibilities seemed endless, and it was during this debate that Sam uttered the words that are this blog's title. It all seemed very fresh and new.

In the end we chose Cubitos, a dice rolling, push-your-luck, deck-building race game. You start with a set of pretty tedious dice that allow you to move forward or buy better dice, if they allow you to do anything at all. You can roll as often as you want with the risk of going bust if you roll all blanks. 

The powered-up dice had nicely silly names which allowed Sam to say things like "that's one step from Smelly Cat and Mr Dog goes back for two cash," without anyone thinking it strange. Joe hoarded money until he could afford a Rollersaurus. I stayed firmly in last throughout but the battle for first was very close. 

Sam's Reckless Cheese got him into a winning position, but Katy crossed the line first. Sam also finished on the same turn and the tie breaker couldn't separate them so we had to play another round. Katy edged ahead and it was down to Sam's final roll to see if he could outpace her. Luckily his Smelly Cat saved the day, allowing him to move twice and take the win.

1st Sam
2nd Katy
3rd Joe
4th Andrew

Next up, we played Master Word, a kind of 20 Questions crossed with Mastermind. One of us looks at a word, and the rest of have to write yes/no questions to guess it, knowing only the category. But the word-knower can't answer each individually, only say how many yeses there are in a particular round of questions.

In round one, category: Animals, we became fixated on the idea that the answer was Peacock. Colourful, feathered, not flying. In the last round Sam wrote Peacock on his card and I almost wrote "seriously, though, is it a peacock?" on mine, so convinced was I. But at the last minute I decided to be sensible and wrote Cockerel since that fitted the description too and you never know… Turns out I was right! I also did well in round two, when the category was weapons and I was the first to mention crossbows. 

But the real highlight was after we'd finished and were putting it away when Joe remembered there is a ranking system. "If you get it in seven rounds, that's Master Fox and if you get it in four then you have very soft palms." I dutifully wrote this down, thinking how nice it was to have a game that recognised the arbitrary nature of rankings by filling it with non sequiturs, when Joe clarified that the last bit wasn't the ranking but a comment about Katy's hands after she'd passed him some game tokens to put in the box. How we laughed at the misunderstanding. The genuine (and, by now, very ordinary) ranking was "bloodhound." But I prefer ours

.
Joe, Katy, Sam and Andrew: very soft palms

Then we played Telestration Upside Drawn. This is a guessing game played in pairs. One person holds a pen vertically, nib down, perfectly still, above the table and the other has to move the pad beneath it and draw something that allows the first person to guess a word. It was fun for a brief burst of silliness,  although it became a bit gruelling when the clue was "sinkhole." Katy tried to draw buttons because they have holes in them, but all I saw were tortured faces of the dammed.

We still won, though.

Katy and Andrew 6
Joe and Sam 4

I was ready to leave at this point but then discovered Joe had driven and was offering lifts. So I stayed for one more and it was my choice, too. I wanted to play Push It, since it's the kind of physical game that you can't play online. But Sam found that he'd lent his copy to someone so we played Karambolage instead. Sam sped into an early 3-1-0-0 lead but didn't score again for ages, allowing Katy to storm gradually into a 5-3-3-0 lead. I was last to score anything, my aim being wayward throughout. 

Joe showed his usual form of having the Yips. At one point, when trying to push the puck with the string he somehow missed such that the string went over the puck, caught it on the opposite side and then he pulled the string taught again, pushing the puck backwards towards him. 

And so that was us finished for the evening. No one froze or had to restart their phone. Three of us set off into the rain, happy with our life choices. At least for today.

Handrags and Karambolags

As Andrew had missed Tuesday, he - fortunately for me - didn't need much enticing to join me on Thursday. I was originally scheduled for a works party, but I was so tired I could only drink red wine and learn the rules to a heavy euro.

Oh, except Ragusa is not actually that heavy at all. From the same designer as sleepy rocket Calimala, Ragusa features the similar actions-beget-actions dynamic as its predecessor, only here we are building the titular city, rather than trading silk. I'd played it through myself earlier in the year, so could explain the basics to Andrew - excluding my © classic overlooked rule - along with the special rule for two players, although with an audience of Stan - mainly interested in the snacks - and friend Katie - mainly interested in going out to the pub - it was a real rules-sweats situation and frankly I think I did pretty well to hold it together. Before you could say "Stan, don't eat all the crisps" we were away, and doing Ragusa-y things such as gathering wood/stone/ore/olives/grapes in order to build/make silver/oil/wine, contribute to the construction of the city wall and trade with merchants from the high seas.

Thematically it gets the big EURO rubber stamp, but like Calimala the non-interactive, ponderous air is largely absent. We did a bit of pondering, but neither Andrew and I are real zero-sum gamers and we played with a mostly exploratory air: I built a lot of walls, whereas Andrew traded with the traders and constructed the cathedral. In the fields, the gentle gathering is done in isolation, but in the city any house built in a particular location activates all previous houses there from all players, lending the decisions a fruity sense of reluctance. Once all houses are placed, the game ends, and - again, much like the earlier game - it really doesn't last long. Not with two, anyway. My longest-wall beat back Andrews most-trades, aided by a slightly fortuitous end-game scoring: it was something like

Sam 80
Andrew 68

And despite the rules, the crisps, some bedtime shenanigans and birthday requests from Stan, it was not even half past nine. We followed the deli-style meat of Ragusa with Karambolage, Haba's pre-Push It (we described it pushitty, which perhaps does it a disservice) game of flicking pucks into other pucks. In both games I sped into an early lead - in the first I made the somewhat panicked and ludicrous decision to stick on nine when Andrew was on seven. He wrapped that up pretty quickly:

Andrew 10
Sam 9

...and then won the second game too as the Considerable Yips descended on me and I repeatedly picked up nifty points only to chuck them away on easy shots! Andrew wasn't perfect either...

But he did well enough to claim a second win:

Andrew 10
Sam 4

And although the night was still relatively young, Andrew headed home in order to drink himself into a stupor - I presume - over the exit polls. Nice to play a relatively breezy Euro, and Karambolage is always fun!

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. 

One, two, three...

I was late to this week's games night, arriving just as Stanley stepped down from the table, allowing me to take his place in a game of Medium. Joe, Sam (hosting), Martin and Katy were also there and had already played three games of Hurlyburly, with Katy winning twice and Sam once.

In Medium, each player forms two teams with the two people either side of them. Thus I was paired with Katy (on my left) and Sam (to my right). Each player has a hand of cards with words on them, and each couple takes turns to play cards to the table and on the count of three both say a word that links the two. If you both say the same word, you pick up a scoring jewel type thing. If not, then you get the chance to try again with the two new words.

Morse?

For example, Katy played "toaster" and Martin replied by playing "butter." On the count of three they simultaneously spoke, with Katy saying Crumpet and Martin saying Bread. Martin, appalled at this missed easy win, asked the rest of us if we all thought "bread." I said yes, but Sam said he'd thought of "knife" giving us all a glimpse of what Martin, Katy and Sam usually put in their toasters. Anyway, Katy and Martin went again to try to link Crumpet and Bread. Katy said Jam and Martin said Muffin. With an air of desperation, they tried again but still couldn't gel, saying Cake and Scone.

The highlight was Martin and Joe. The words were Hospital and Band. Martin said "wrist" and Joe said "aid." A fail but surely those two new words pointed to only one thing. Joe seemed reluctant to admit that he was thinking what everyone else was thinking but he came good when it mattered

"1, 2, 3, wank." they chorused. And a little bit of gaming history was written.

I struggled a bit. Sam and I were on different wavelengths and Katy confused me by pairing my Caribbean with the word Telescope and then saying Submarine. Was Caribbean Telescope slang for a submarine? It baffled me all evening until she and I were walking back home and she realised that she'd got telescope confused with periscope. She still did well, though.

Katy and Martin 6
Andrew and Katy 5
Sam and Andrew 4
Joe and Sam 3
Martin and Joe 3

After this was another new word game called Letter Jam. In this game each player is given a five letter word made up of five cards with letters on, that they do not know. Every player has one letter at a time on show such that everyone else can see it but them. Then people discuss what words they can make out of the visible cards, plus a wild card and a "public" card which everyone can see.

"I can make a three letter word that uses the wild card," someone may suggest. If no one can think of anything better (unlikely) then that word is spelt out by handing out numbered tokens. For example, Sam would get the 1 token since he had the D, the 2 token would go on the wild card since no one has an O and Martin gets the 3 token since he has a G.

After several rounds the idea is to work out each of your letters and, therefore, the word. Everyone except me succeeded, having been stymied by the W (I thought my word was Chats, turned out to be Watch). But it was fun. And I especially liked the entirely nonsensical scoring system. We ended with 66 points, which relates to three strawberries which, in turn, relates to "it's yummy."

So, having scored Yummy, we continued with the co operative theme with Die Crew. Finally, I got to try this exciting new trick taker. I was eased in with mission 2. We failed and after the second attempt we decided to skip the easy intro and go back to where they left off: mission 15. Now we started to succeed as we left Mars and set off towards Jupiter. We cleared 15, 16 and 17 before failing on 18 and Sam's ambivalence towards another try saw us finish up there, somewhere near the asteroid belt.

Next we played Karambolage. It's meant to be for four players max, but Sam insisted it could be played by one hundred players... although the last eighty might not get a turn.

Joe had a case of the Can't Stops as he racked up a six point move but kept going for one move too many and lost it all. I specialised in near misses - it looked like I knew what I was doing but I was actually clueless. Sam took an early lead but Martin hit 10 points to nab the win.

Martin 10
Sam 7
Joe 0
Katy 0
Andrew 0

Then Katy and I left at a sensible time, leaving the three remainers to play The Mind Extreme. It seems they beat the curse of round six and got to round nine, as Sam texted me later. Thanks all for a surprisingly team based evening.

Photo credit: Sam.

Reach for the Skyscrapers

Thursday! It's not Tuesday, but one is still allowed to game in the right circumstances, and those circumstances arrived at 8.30pm for myself (Sam) Andrew and Steve. Steve was unfashionably early, so the quick two-player game of Just One Andrew and I settled on quickly became a three.

It's tough with three. For the guesser in particular, although Andrew and I did manage to duplicate our clues for Powder by both writing Talcum; Steve guessed we'd both written gun. A reasonable assumption - but the game as a whole didn’t  reach the heights of success that Tuesday's did. Nonetheless Just One is always fun. 

The meat of the evening, even if it's more thin-sliced ham than gammon steak, was New York 1901. It's New York - I forget the year - and we're all building, building for the skies in the days when the gherkin would have been frowned on as not nearly square enough. Turns are simple - grab a lot, place a worker on the lot. Build there now, or hope to grab an adjacent lot later, in order to build bigger and better buildings. 

But because you only have four workers at your disposal, there is a kind of economy to things. There's also rewards for having the most buildings on particular streets, and the possibility to demolish previously-built buildings in order to build better ones. Sadly, you can only demolish your own... 

Steve and Andrew were off the marks quickly and before I knew what was happening, they were dominating Broadway and Cedar Street. I focused my energy on building, building, building, and was the first to claim a legendary skyscraper in order to leap ahead on the scoretrack. But you can only build one of these in the entire game, so in the parlance of architects, I'd basically run out of scaffolding. 

As the lots ran out it was clearly a two-way battle between Steve and Andrew: I claimed nothing from the most-buildings-on-streets rewards and they surged past me. Steve getting two was key to his victory:

Steve 70

Andrew 67

Sam 63

With the time now nearing ten, Andrew headed for home, but Steve and I still had some games left in us, and we kicked off a delightful hour of 2-player silliness with Karambolage. This is a 25-year-vintage Haba game where a play area defined by string contains a number of coloured discs. Dice are rolled showing matching colours, and your job is to flick one colour into another, as Steve demonstrates deftly here:

The wooden block can be placed wherever you like before you make your shot. As deft as we - Steve especially - were, we were also regularly catastrophically over or under-flicking. Often the dice are unkind and the colours rolled are blocked from a direct shot, so you have to attempt a rebound. 

I never managed it at all, but Steve did a couple of times. There's a Can't Stop style point-scoring system where you can bank what you have or choose to roll again and push your luck, and we regularly fell foul of our own insatiable greed for points as well. If you roll doubles on the dice, you roll again and keep rolling until you get two colours, but every doubles roll increases the points value of your next shot. We had a lot of fun with this, and I managed to conquer Steve over three games despite getting the Uncontrollable Yips when on the verge of victory in game three. 

Sam 2

Steve 1

It was nearing eleven but our gaming tank still had fuel in it, so I introduced Steve to Kariba, the game of waterhole dominance, and overcame a terrible start in order to gain a second win - at least in part to a slight rules misunderstanding.

Sam 28

Steve 22

There was just enough time for me to try and drunkenly explain the rules to Outfoxed (I think I might have called it Fox in the Forest, which is, er, different...) to Steve before we called it a night. As always, splendid fun, thanks gentlemen!