Gameathon

Thursday night saw my (Chris) old board gaming world in Bracknell and beyond meet my new one in Chippenham. A long over due visit from Paul coincided with my semi regular Thursday games session here in my relocated home. Paul was here early this time so an afternoon of games beaconed after we got the perfunctory nuisance of lunch out of the way.

First up saw Jacquie join us in a couple of games of Heck Meck. This recent purchase of mine has seen a lot of activity in the household since I tentatively asked my understanding wife to indulge me in a game. Subsequently, it seems, I now never win a game and that vein continued for the two matches we managed before she had to rush off and collect the kids.

Jacquie 11
Paul 7
Chris 0

Jacquie 12
Chris 7
Paul 6

With the kitchen table to ourselves I then convinced Paul to take me on at 5 Tribes. Sam off loaded this to me a little while ago but I hadn't got to play it yet. As documented before in these fair pages its a simple enough game to learn but quite a brain burner to play. I didn't think too much about my strategy and picked up what ever looked good whereas Paul collected goods cards. Toward the end of the game I was nervously eying his colossal stack knowing how much they could score. Unfortunately due to a misunderstanding of how the multipliers worked he had collected a fair few of the same card and thus negated his advantage.

Chris 245
Paul 169

Then Paul was whisked away for Lego duties with the kids whilst dinner was being prepared and even though the general melee of kids bedtime then ensued we still manufactured enough time to play Nations the Dice Game. Again, possibly, a new title to Paul but this didn't hold him back squeezing in a very neat final round by scoring heavily on famine and war where I narrowly missed out.

Paul 27
Chris 23

Shortly after this was packed away my gaming buddies from Chippenham (Paul H and Stuart) arrived for an evening of laying cards, pushing cubes, making bids and pretending to be a medieval sheriff. After some introductions and quick laugh about there being two Pauls, we got down to it.

The general consensus was many quicker games rather than one big one. A kinda schedule was drawn up with Pairs getting its first airing for the collective. I'm not sure if the rules we play are actually the right ones but it doesn't seem to matter because the objective is met. A quick, light, fun jaunt to get the gaming muscles warmed up. In this bout Paul H calculated his winning position very well by sticking when he was assured of enough points.

Paul H 21
Stuart 16
Chris 16
Paul J 15

Next to the table was King of Tokyo. The remarkable part of Paul H's win in this game was the lack  of visits to Tokyo he made. This many have been instigated by the 5 damage whacking he got from me in his first foray to the bright lighted city. However, three strong rounds in a row which saw him collect 13 points was enough to see him slip in to first place with Paul J narrowly missing out on his turn.

Paul H 20
Paul J 19
Chris 12
Stuart 10

The bits had barely been stuffed back in to their box when 7 Wonders was being decanted and arranged. The first game of the night where nobody needed a rules refresher. Well nearly. This game still causes a memory black spot for Paul J even though he's been playing it on and off for 6 years!

Didn't prove to be much of a hinderance though as he squeaked past me and wrapped up first place. The game was notable for the lack of any cloth which I discovered late into the second era. This threw the proverbial spanner into the machinery of my careful devised plans and meant I couldn't build my last wonder. Shame.

Paul J 46
Chris 45
Paul H 42
Stuart 33

See...No cloth.

Then it was Kingdom Builders turn to be hastily arranged on the table. Stuart absorbed the quick rules explanation like a boss and was playing within 5 minutes. It was here that I managed to catch a bit of luck. My long and winding civilisation finally meeting up to make one large settlement area to take advantage of the citizen scoring card and score big

Chris 62
Paul H 50
Stuart 40
Paul J 37

By now the beers had been sampled to an appropriate level to bring out Sheriff of Nottingham. Nobody really stood out as a particularly good liar but with Paul J, the eventual winner, it was possible that his nursing of a single bottle of ale may have aided his decision making processes. Who knows?

Paul J 205
Stuart 153
Chris 138
Paul H 105

With the late hour approaching there was just enough time for a 13 point game of Push It. Paul J's 'technique' of blasting the pucks to the four corners of the table may need some work as his final score of minus 3 bares testament to a bit of jack abuse.

Chris 13
Paul H
Stuart 7
Paul J -3

And at that we called it a night. I'm not sure we could have squeezed any more games into the evening. What a corker.

From Athina to the Pharaohs

Sunday night, and after missing several GNN meets recently, I (Sam) was keen to break out some cubes. Just back from Greece, we'd played some Dice Heist and Pairs, and a lot of Heck Meck - but even in the land of Socrates I couldn't have gotten anyone to play a Greek-themed Euro - especially as I don't own one. So I was craving for something a little heavier - Eclipse, say.

However the evening started belatedly as Sally and I and the boys dashed back from Wales later than planned. My phone was dead and Sally had dropped her phone in the toilet. With no way to contact the guests, we could only veer wildly between traffic up the M4. Luckily they were loitering outside like middle-aged teens, and having gained entry to the house, Ian, Chris and Andrew began playing King of Tokyo whilst Sally and I did housey and parenty things. I didn't witness much of the game, therefore, but Chris was declared King.

Ian then suggested we play Eclipse but by this point my yen for something deep and strategic had slightly waned. Sorry Ian! Instead we proceeded to play a whole bunch of short games, that Chris won. I can't actually remember the order of them all now, despite  drinking no alcohol at all. I must have been drunk on games!

I think the first game was Blockers. Chris was new to it, but it's not hard to pick up. Everyone seemed to have a strategy; Chris going for a ever-widening single group of tiles, Andrew and I going for two groups. Ian berated his tiles, which seemed to come out as some kind of biblical penance. As the game closed out we were all forced to make unproductive moves, and my insistence on sticking to plan A meant I picked up four of Andrew's tiles. Silly game!

Chris
Andrew
Sam
Ian

Then we played Pharaoh's Gulo Gulo, which is exceedingly silly. It's fun though, although the finale can feel a bit of a damp squib if when someone (me, in this instance) enters the Pharaoh's tomb the curse (lifting balls out of a bowl) has been recently reset. Sam wins!

Next up was Spooky Stairs, which is very like Midnight Party in that ghosts are after you, but different in that the hiding in Spooky Stairs is the player's pieces, which get consumed by ghosts. The winner is the first one to the top of the stairs, but the main task of the game (and fun it generates) is all about attempting to keep track of which ghost is yours. When a ghost is rolled, you may swap the positions of two ghosts - even with the early hour, we were thrown into doubt by these shenanigans. I won, but only because Andrew moved my ghost to the top thinking he was winning. And Chris indulged in a (successful) spot of bluff when he deliberately swapped someone else's ghost instead of his own.

We decided to go for a bit of an old-timer after that, breaking out Poison.  It's a filler that takes a little longer than a filler really should, but nice to revisit it all the same. I thought I might be able to snatch the victory from Chris, but a final card with a sting in the tail put paid to me:

Chris 13
Andrew 17
Ian 18
Sam 20

We brought in a few short games to try out but then ignored most of them in favour of playing the quiz game About Time. I've never actually tried the board and bits that come with this game - maybe it's worth a pop, but I can't help feeling the fun is mostly in the cards, were you are trying to identify a year from several facts. We played first to five cards, and Chris won!

There was just time for a little game of Push It before we called it a night.  Chris won...

Chris 11
Ian 10
Andrew 10
Sam 8

Spies like us

The first games night of 2016 arrived this evening at my house (Sam's). I'd managed to get Stanley to play Macao on the first of January, mainly by repeatedly saying "Macao" in the style of a deranged parrot, but despite winning (80-79) Stan was not taken with it. After a Christmas of Codenames, Spyfall, King of Tokyo and Dragon Run, the Feldian mechanics probably seemed rather dry.

Chris arrived early and we played Spyfall with himself, myself, Sally, Stanley and Joe all in the mix. I don't remember everything at this point, but I do recall being the spy a couple of times and figuring out where we were. Joe pulled off being the spy and voting out other people. Then whilst Joe and Sally danced upstairs the three of us played King of Tokyo, the game of fighting beasts. Stanley's dice rolls let him down and Chris led for a while, only for me to pip him to the post:

Sam 20
Chris 18
Stanley 12

As we finished Andrew, Katy and Ian arrived en masse and we embarked on a game of Dragon Run. This game is similar to Incan Gold in the push-your-luck sense; as the players represent adventurers trying to escape the dragon's fiery breath, having stolen his gold. On your turn you have three choices - charge recklessly ahead, hide in the shadows, or cry like a baby. Charging is high risk, hiding is a calculated risk, and crying is no-risk but no reward. Chris played the Psychic and despite his psychic powers letting him down, he did enough to claim the win:

Chris 16
Sam 11
Katy 10
Andrew 8
Ian 7

As we ended Joe arrived! I had missed his texts and assumed he was out of the picture, but he was merely fashionably late. We broke into two parties of three, with Joe and Chris teaching Katy Alhambra and Ian, Andrew and I playing Railways of Mexico. I have to say I was pleased with my first round - not only did I deliver the first cube, I also (thanks to the Railroad Executive) completed one of the long-distance routes!

However, it was a bond-heavy strategy that ultimately would count against me. First Andrew the Ian overhauled me and Andrew, thanks to his leeching off Ian's delivery route, surged into the lead whilst Ian and I fought over second. It remained competitive throughout, but to win I needed Andrew to have failed his Baron - he hadn't:

Andrew 62
Sam 58
Ian 55

I didn't witness much of Alhambra, but that girl Katy did it again:

Katy 144
Chris 136
Joe 123

Joe unfortunately was not feeling great and now retired, despite the early hour. Hope you're better Joe. The rest of us played several rounds of Spyfall, much of which has now faded from view in my memory. I think Chris and I were the spy quite a lot though.

Sticking with the clandestine mood we broke out a long-forgotten favourite: The Resistance! Chris and Ian were the spies in the first game and we, the resistance, foiled them. Then Andrew and Ian were the spies and we foiled them too! I was bamboozled by Chris and Andrew in the second game: Chris seemed so set on me being the spy I thought he must be one himself, but I'd forgotten about my drunken proclamation of the resistance cards being green, inadvertently implicating myself.

Finally we played Yardmaster, my new game of train-loading. In a yard. I have to say, having played it with Stan and now a bunch of GNNers, I don't massively rate it. With five players especially you're often just waiting for your turn in order to pick up Cargo cards so later you can (hopefully) buy Railcar cards which need to be a certain colour or a certain number to add to your engine. But Katy and Chris liked it, and Andrew won, so he might look at it favourably too:

Andrew 16
Katy 14
Chris 12
Sam 12
Ian 9

I will concede the game does look lovely though.

So! The first games night of 2016 came to an end.  Let's hope for many more that don't have the headache the following day like I'm going to have tomorrow. Best wishes for the new year all!