A hundred kingdoms under the stairs

Martin offered to host games night this week, with the tantalising opportunity on offer to view his new games cupboard, under the stairs, barely six feet from the games table (or "dining table", as I suppose some people might call it).

We admired the perfect proportions and clean lines of the Ikea shelving used to house such a collection. Then we decided to use some of this collection.

But first, while we waited for Chris caught in traffic, the six of us (Martin, Sam, Ben, Andy, Ian and myself) played Celestia, a game of pushing your luck and hoping that your captain has the right cards to see off any dangers as your slightly over-designed airship sails towards ever more exciting rewards.

If you suspected the captain wasn’t up to the job, you could jump ship and take whatever rewards were there.

It was a fun game and hats off to Ian who had few cards in his hand, but usually seemed to have enough to see off any hazards, much to our disbelief. Oh, how we laughed as he sailed off without us on more than one occasion.

Andrew 53
Andy 50
Ian 48
Martin 47
Sam 47
Ben 43

Then Chris arrived and we split into two groups. Sam, Andy, Ben and Ian chose Broom Service. Chris mentioned that he’d like to try Impulse. Well, Martin and I needed no prompting and this tiny space epic was brought out.

Chris was given a quick run through of the rules, and we were off! I set off in an early lead after a move where I traded a red card and shot down one of Martin’s ships. This left me high up the score track, but low on cards. Chris, despite being a newbie, kept up well against the two experienced hands and Martin, perhaps slighted by my early success at his expense, spread out expansively across the board.

I was down to one ship at one point, and I could’ve been obliterated but Martin held back. A rare act of kindness, but he finished the game in the next round with a series of moves that got him eleven points, pushing him past the target score of twenty.

Martin 22
Chris 10
Andrew 10

Broom Service still had some way to got, so we began a game of Hanabi, using Martin’s deluxe set.

It was Chris’ first go on this one, too, although he’d often seen other people playing it at the Reading meet. Perhaps not in as much style as us, though, as the Mah Jong-esque tiles felt nice and weighty.

We did well, not picking up a single storm counter, and we were only stymied at the very end by Martin have the green four and five, meaning he couldn’t put both down. Still, with me correctly guessing at the end which of my tiles was a blue five, we were able to complete four of the five tracks for a creditable score of 24 out of 25.

By now Broom Service was over:

Sam 85
Andy 84
Ben 72
Ian 65

But since we were knee-deep in Hanabi, Andy suggested Koryo. Sam recoiled like Andy had just sprayed the room with Mace, and kindly declined the offer. Ben and Ian were up for it, though, and it ended in Ben’s first win of his GNN career!

Ben 17
Andy 14
Ian 7

Meanwhile, in the gap between Hana-bi ending and Koryo ending, Sam introduced the rest of us to Matcha, the very quick two-player bidding game for tea-making utensils (either one each of the five different items, or a set of four). The design was nice, and it kept the Japanese vibe going after Hanabi.

Chris and Sam played first, with Sam quickly winning with his four tea leaves. Then Sam and I played and, in a longer game where we cancelled each other out most of the time, we finished with a draw.

And now we were all together again, keen for a final game before we headed home. Pairs was chosen. Ben never got going, crashing out early one. Usually after the second card. In one round, Andy dealt out onions like they were going out of fashion. Then, next round, he was sent out by a pair of lowly cherries. But Martin kept his cool to claim the win.

Martin 22
Chris 20
Sam 15
Ian 11
Andrew 10
Andy 7
Ben 0

So that’s it, until the weekend gaming fest that is Novocon. And then next Tuesday again, of course.

It’s the hope that hurts the most

First Tuesday of the season, and seven hungry gamers were hunched around Joe’s kitchen table, keen for gaming sustenance. Apart from the host, Joe, it was an all-male affair with Martin, Andy, Sam, Ian, Matt and myself making up the numbers.

While waiting for Andy, we began with Go Stop (or Ghost Op, as some of us thought Martin said when he suggested it, perhaps expecting a Tom Clancy style strategy Black Ops game with a supernatural theme).

This card game resists any attempt at working out how to put it on the leaderboard. Adding up the scores doesn’t make any sense because this is a game where winning with a one (as Matt did) is far more impressive than winning with a high card. We will have to leave it as non-leaderboard.

Any way, we played three rounds, and we scored (winning scores in bold):

Sam 0, 0, 0
Ian 3,0, 0
Martin 9, 7, 0
Joe 0,0, 0
Matt 0, 5, 1
Andrew 5,0,0

Sam's tactic of going Dirk in rounds two and three badly went wrong as both times he shuffled his cards, played them without looking at them, only to discover his only scoring Stop card still in his hand when the bets had been placed.

Then Andy arrived and we split into a group of four (playing Africa) and a group of three (playing Darjeeling). Africa is a new game to GNN, and Joe explained the rules to me, Martin and Ian while Sam explained Darjeeling to Matt and Andy.

Africa is all about exploration. You might find animals, jewels, nomads or monuments. Each one can be used in a different way to score points either when you find them, or later in the game if you find yourself next to them and can move them to a more suitable place on the board. With all of Africa to explore, you’d imagine it would be quite a solitary game, but in fact we spent most of the game in a group, moving from one area of the board to another like herding animals. How apt.

As you’d expect from a Knizia, it’s a bit thinky and strategic, but it also seems a lot more luck based than usual. It got a rather guarded appraisal of “I’d play it again” from us. Maybe we were missing something.

Joe 69
Martin 65
Ian 56
Andrew 52

Over in India (confusingly, set up on the table to the east of Africa) I noticed that new boy Matt had a huge lead halfway through the game, and he did enough to hang on despite a late push up the score chart.

Matt 96
Sam 94
Andy83

However, at this point we got stuck in a bit of rut of games that never seemed to end at the same time. Sam, Andy and Matt played Koryo, a card game. I know nothing about it.

Andy19
Sam 15
Matt 14

We played Die Dolmengötter, a game with a singularly uninteresting board. I noticed that the borders had a bit of grass on it, showing that they had made an effort to make it look nice. Joe said it looked like pubic hair. I’ll let the reader decide.

First impressions were not helped by some very ordinary game pieces. But once we got going, it had a certain charm. Place your stones by moving your men around stone circles. If you have a majority, you can place a scoring tile of your choice (face down) on top of the stack. If you draw then you can put a tile at the bottom of the stack. The further up a tile is in the stack, the more its value is multiplied for points.

Four stages of indecision

Quite clever and cunning. Joe clocked up his second win of the evening.

Joe 70
Andrew 60
Martin 58
Ian 55

On the other half of the table, Sam was teaching Matt and Andy the joys of Bullfrogs. It ended:

Sam 57
Andy 52
Matt 46

While those frogs battled it out, we played a couple of games of Qwixx: a dice game which showed Das Exclusive off to its fullest potential. Finally, a game where its stadium-like dimensions are a bonus, not a hindrance.

We scored:

Martin 78
Andrew 69
Ian 56
Joe 49

And then...

Ian 64
Andrew 60
Martin 57
Joe 54

By now we had all ended at the same time, so we decided to finish with the closest thing to Ghost Op that we had: Midnight Party! Or Fuck Off, Hugo as Martin dubbed it after some bad luck with the die. It was a very close game. Clearly, we’re all getting the hang of it. Still, it gave us enough anguish as we Self-Hugoed our own pieces and Martin uttered the line (immortalised in this blog post) to describe the very special cruelty that this game demonstrates.

Sam -18
Andy -22
Ian -24
Joe -25
Martin -25
Andrew -28
Matt -28

And that was that. We set out into the warm summer rain, invigorated and alive.

The Division currently looks like this: