Mel Fiori

A bumper pack of gamers on Tuesday kicked off with Adam T and I facing off across the two 'islands' of BORD, the abstract viking punch-up game.

This plays over two seasons (summer and winter) but we ran out of time at the end of summer with Adam in a points lead. Martin, Ian and Gareth now here, we kicked off proper with Hot Lead, another Knizia of devilish properties. It reminded me of 6Nimmt in the all-choose, all-reveal pattern, and how hazarding others choices define your own, in part at least. 

It was a baptism of fire for Gareth and I, as we were both stung with negative points hauls:

Martin 67

Adam 61

Ian 53

Gareth and Sam 35 each

Still a quintet, we busted out my recently-returned copy of Cross Clues and scored a moderately bad 19/25, enough - or not enough - to make us attempt it again. I was stuck on Mars/King for ages until the word came to me unbidden: Apollo! And immediately Martin and Adam agreed it was Mars/King. Then they talked themselves out of it with two qualities my own brain lacks - knowledge, and logic. Still, we got 22/25 and were emboldened to go one more time (I forgot to take photos) this time with the presence of Mel assisting. It was a nearly-triumphant 24/25, and I wish I could remember any of the words/clues/funny moments but unfortunately it's been too long now, sorry. 

My notes say that Laura now arrived however, with Joe hot on her heels, and - although she didn't join the table - Sally returned as well, adding to the sense of a full house. We split into two groups, with Martin introducing Joe Laura and Gareth to Harvest, the multi-player Connect 4 with tornadoes. At the other end of the table, Adam thrashed the three of us at Photograph, and Ian and I fell foul of multiple over-exposures.

Adam T 28

Mel 15

Ian 12

Sam 6

Although it was pretty speedy, it wasn't as quick as Harvest. Martin beat the others 110-70 (each) in the first game, and they dealt a newly-arrived Katy in for the second. Laura cleaned up in this one:

Laura 160

Joe 90

Katy 70

Martin 60

Gareth 40 

With everyone now present who was going to be, we split into three - three! - groups across the table. Katy was keen to have a history-making (we suspect) GNN women-only game, and corralled Laura and Mel into Mille Fiori. Martin, Joe and Gareth set up KuZOOka leaving the remaining three of us just enough table space for Babylonia. Good times!

With two Knizias and a non-quarterbacking minimal-comms co-op on the table, Martin rhapsodized at length, almost as though his long-term scheme had finally come to fruition and he could move on to the next group enjoying some heads-down individual player boards somewhere in the south-west. But hopefully he'll stay - they triumphed at Kuzooka on the final round just as we finished not only a tense and tight Babylonia (Adam 155, Sam 152, Ian 151) but a dastardly chaser in Harvest, which Adam won again. Who invited this guy?

We packed away our games whilst also attending to the drama playing out on Mille Fiori, where debutant Mel was having the debut from heaven, a fact which Laura and Katy both tried to take credit for by being good teachers. Possibly true, but either way it was a spectacular score!

Mel 323

Katy 257

Laura 236

Incredible stuff.

However, that was the headliners done with and we lost some players to fatigue, with Joe, Adam and Mel retiring and leaving the rest of us to crack out a couple of attempts at So Clover. Our first attempt was very impressive, too, as we scored 34/36. Sadly I took no photos of our clovers and time hasn't been kind to my memory for the last decade or two, and especially since Tuesday. But it was a triumphant finale.

Or was it? As Laura and Ian headed for their respective beds, a brightly awake Katy cajoled us into the second game and this time we were rather less triumphant, scoring just 16/24 and prompting an unusually mournful tone from Martin about staying after the bell has rung. 

*

Somewhere in the midst of all this I think we played Strike twice as well. I won one of them, and Martin the other. I think? 

 

Breathless

Tuesday arrived, and so did Ian. We chatted for a bit and then realised as we were here, we might as well play So Clover. Ian had tricky words so while he was thinking I attempted to draw the singer we were listening to. Any guesses?

Joe arrived during our ruminations, and together we scored a reasonable 10/12. We were still only three and I mentioned I'd like to try KuZOOka when everyone got here, so Ian encouraged me to set it up. That's why Katy, Adam and Gareth all walked in to find their first game decided for them (sorry) as we collaborated on getting some animals out of a zoo. 

Initially there was some confusion, and I must admit I was feeling a touch of the cosmic frogs as Joe queried my interpretation of the rules. However the confusion turned out to be I'd actually got them correct for a change, and we ploughed on. It was thirsty work.

   

We all had a small hand of cards and use them to advance along the track, and hopefully get the animals to freedom by reaching the white zone at the end (see pic). However we don't play or reveal cards, but just place markers where we think we can collectively reach once some decides that's far enough for now, and all cards are revealed. Hopefully, we get experience points which means more cards and further progress next round.

The advancing along the track is less about movement then, and more planning - how far you advance and where you place your marker is, one hopes, revealing information about your hand. It's like a co-op Perudo. But we started badly when I took a risk in round one, then we busted in round two as well and in round four we busted when going further would actually have made us safe! In the seventh and final round we had to go for broke, but unfortunately the game ended in disaster.

I really liked it and was up for another stab, but Katy's excitement over the animal meeples had faded and it just made her want to play Perudo, which sadly nobody else was keen on. Instead we played My Gold Mine.

In this Incan Gold-esque undertaking, we're all trying to grab gold whilst avoiding being caught by the dragon. Instead of Incan Gold's table-reading though, we're flipping cards: either movement cards to get us to safety, or gold cards that may trigger the dragon's movement. It's quite dickish, especially when movement cards allow you to swap places with someone. Ian had a strong start in round one, Gareth had a good round two, but I snuck ahead of both in the final round - when instead of 'most gold' all your gold scores - as Joe went down in flames. 

Sam 14

Ian 12

Adam 9

Gareth 8

Katy and Joe 6 each

Then we split into two groups. Ian Adam and Katy played Biblios whilst Joe, Gareth and I revisited 7 Wonders Architects. With three of us the game was much quicker than the seven of last week, and divergent strategies emerged, with Gareth going a mostly civil route - with attendant cat noises - me building a hefty military, and Joe focusing on a swiftly-constructed wonder.

Meanwhile in Biblios things were marginally more raucous, as you can probably tell from the facial comparisons below.

The planets aligned with the finales, with everyone wrapping up almost to the second. It was a tense finale, with Adam winning tie-breaker for second according to the official rules and Ian winning it according to Extreme Biblios variant. "I prefer that" Ian said. Either way, they both lost.

Katy 7

Adam 7/Ian 7

In Architects, neither Joe's completed wonder and my warlike ways were enough to prevent Gareth from taking a debut win, despite me grabbing the cat off him. His city full of statues apparently made up for a wonder without a head:

Gareth 46

Sam 39

Joe 34

I canvassed immediately for Fun Facts, and to my recollection there were very little protests. I wish I'd written the categories down now from a fascinating couple of plays. For every dud (How many cousins do you have) there were several bangers, like how much we like animals to how much we think money brings happiness, and we did reasonably well in game one (35 from a possible 48) before falling marginally shorter in game two (34/48) probably because of the dumb cousins question. 

How many cups of coffee or tea had we had today? How many hats did we own? It transpired that Katy owns Many Hats, and Gareth very few. Joe thinks of himself (correctly) as the Most Creative, and Ian has a lot of cousins. Most grippingly of all, the How long can you hold your breath question had us all attempting to live up to our claims at the end of the game. Gareth did much better than he thought he would. I fell 7 seconds short of my 60 seconds. But Adam and Joe can hold their breath, it turns out, quite a long time. Joe can even perform mimes and - to Katy's skepticism - 'open his mouth' while holding his breath, up to an astonishing two minutes. All those swims up at Henleaze in the icy water finally counted for something, even though he'd only written 60 seconds during the actual game. 

But after these eye-watering scenes, it was now time for bed, and as everyone (except me, obviously) made their way into the summery night air, another GNN came to a close.