Shaken, not spelt

Has it really been a year since the venerable Andy B graced us on a Tuesday? That’s what we thought, but were too lazy to check. Nevertheless, it’s been a long time since he was here. Long enough that we’ve acquired a new regular member – Adam T, although it turned out the two knew each other from Eastbourne. It’s a small gaming world.

I got to Joe’s studio at six and found Joe and Ian eating supper. We were dealing out Coloretto when the aforementioned Andy B arrived, and so he was dealt in too. The game required a bit of rules refreshing for all concerned, since none of us were up to speed, but once we got going, it was plain sailing. Except for Joe.

Andy 36
Ian 35
Andrew 34
Joe 24

During this, Adam T and Sam arrived and since we weren’t expecting anyone else for a while, we all sat around the big table for a game of Team Play. I paired up with Andy and we soon got stuck with two difficult mission cards (is that what you call them?) while the others sped off without us. Sam and Adam were first to hit seven tricks (not really tricks, you know what I mean) and then Joe and Ian had a late surge to bring them back into contention.

Sam and Adam 32
Ian and Joe 32
Andy and Andrew 29

We were trying to find a tie-breaker, but Martin told us there weren’t any. However, for the rest of the evening, we kept finding Team Play cards around Ian’s chair making us suspect that they’d completed more tricks than they’d counted up.

As well as Martin, Katy and Adam H were also here. It seemed like the perfect moment to bring out Sam’s birthday cake to celebrate his half century. For some reason, our rendition of Happy Birthday was an octave or two lower than normal. I suppose as we age, we find the baritone range more natural.

Happy birthday!

We split into two groups. Andy, Adam H, Martin and Joe played Babylonia (back after its one-week absence) and the remaining five played Letter Jam, the surprisingly stressful co-operative card game. This time, we went for six-letter words: a step up from the usual five-letter standard game. I think I’ve played it three times and failed to get my word each time and this was no exception. At least this time I wasn’t alone in my failure. Adam failed to get “HOLING” despite getting all the letters, since he convinced himself that the G and H should go next to each other. Katy, meanwhile, blamed her dyslexia for her mistake. She’d successfully got SHAKE but couldn’t work out where the N would go. “Shaken,” we prompted. She looked suitably crestfallen.

With only Sam and Ian getting there words, we scored a mere two strawberries.

Babylonia ended

Martin 162
Adam 124
Joe 108
Andy 99

At this point a spate of reorganisation was achieved, with the nine of us forming into three groups of three. Ian, Joe and Martin played Ra and it was notable for Martin’s many pharaohs, Joe’s many monuments and Ian’s very long Nile. Joe was confident that he’d won until the final count.

Ian 64
Martin 54
Joe 50

Followed by Eggs of Ostrich…

Joe 10
Martin 10
Ian 8

Then Ian went home, mumbling something about getting back at “a sensible hour” so Martin and Joe broke out the Res Arcana.

Martin 15
Joe 4

Meanwhile, Andy, Adam and Sam tried the new game Crown of Emara, with it’s two (TWO) rondels and it’s pretty typical medieval-type Eurogame setting. I didn’t check if you could turn wood into sheep but it looked like that kind of game.

Andy 78
Adam 72
Sam 62

Sam insisted that he won a victory of sorts since he ended as Marquis, the highest ranked noble.

Adam H, Katy and me broke out Lords of Vegas since it was the only game that we all had some kind of enthusiasm for. We began with a lot of plots in seedy back streets and a lot of brown cards coming out early on.

Seedy back streets

I started well and stayed well. Katy built up then lost all but one of her casinos, but towards the end she started to close the gap on me. I was nervous that her strong presence on the strip would be my downfall but happily the game over card came out and saved me.

Andrew 73
Katy 60
Adam 26

Adam said that halfway through the game he’d remember that he had issues with the advantage of being first player and during the game he started searching for rules variants to counter this. Katy pointed out that she went third.

At this point Adam T and I set off, leaving the rest of them to go crazy with 6nimmt. No idea how that ended, though.

Thanks everyone.

I've been through the desert in a house with no games

The first "normal" games night of 2020 was hosted by Joe even though, in preparation for some house renovations, almost all of his collection is currently kept elsewhere. He was joined by Ian, Adam T, Adam H (who both arrived together raising worries of an alliance of Adams), Sam, Martin, Katy and myself. Martin had an aptly named beer: Game Theory and then broke the (already fragile) fridge handle.

After a shocking fifteen minutes of chat, we split into two groups. Adam T, Katy, Sam and me played Gugong, while the other four played Babylonia. The size of the two games was such that the kitchen table couldn't hold both, so Babylonia was built on the card table instead. This means that I have little idea of what went on except that Ian won after the other three players left him alone. The scores weren’t recorded, but Martin said he lost “really badly”.

After this they played Was Sticht, which ended

Martin 3
Ian 2
Adam 2
Joe 1

As for Gugong, Sam explained the rules and (barring one that he remembered soon after we began) it looks like he got them all. The game is worker-placement with a difference: they’re cards, not workers. And the value of the card you play has to be higher than the one that’s already in the space for a particular action (1s beat 9s, though). If you want to place a lower card, then you have to pay two worker cubes and since this’ll often be your only option, then you need to be careful to always have a healthy stock of workers available.

With all this talk over actions and workers, you’d expect Adam H to be good at it and so it proved to be. He swiftly got into the jade business before it got too expensive. I dd the same, but far too late. In the closing stages it was Katy versus Adam, with Adam’s jade bonus pushing him into a comfortable win. Sam and I must’ve been distracted by something. Possibly Sam's bottle of red wine that kept getting kicked over as people walked by.

Adam 47
Katy 40
Sam 24
Andrew 23

At this point Ian and Adam T left and the remaining six played Letter Jam. I'm afraid, just like last time, I was the one to let the team down. I thought my word was CHIPS but instead it was CHIRP. So my grand finale where I use two of the communal letters to make SAPPHIC was ruined when I revealed what should have been an S only for it to be an R. Every one else got their word, though, which meant we got 79 points and 3 strawberries.

Finally, with Katy and Adam departing, we ended on The Mind Extreme. We started well but then lost three lives in round four. Then we got through round five clear, leaving us with the task of facing round six with only one life left.

Somehow we made it. With a little creative interpretation of the rules: we lost a life, but also at the end of the round you gain a life, so we called it evens.

We then failed in round seven but since we’d already broken the rules once, we tried round eight anyway. Twice. The first time was probably the worst round of The Mind ever: the last card on one of the piles was a 20.Then in our second attempt we expertly cleared the white pile, ending in an unlikely 44, 45, 46, 47, 48. The red pile, however, failed immediately.

Having filled ourselves with all the gaming goodness we could hold, it was time to retire to bed. Thanks for the evening everyone. A good start to the year.

∞≠∆≈≤µ

With Andrew a late-drop-out, Martin's suggestion of a six-player opener looked in danger, until Adam H became a late addition. With him around the table were Adam T (who brought After Eights), Ian, Martin and myself (Sam) with Katy en route, delayed by social activities. When she finally arrived we had Letter Jam set up and ready to go, Adam and Ian had been informed of the rules, and poor Katy barely had time to tell us she'd bought a chocolate yule log (which I hid from the boys) before she was sat down and the game began. Katy immediately looked at her own cards and had to be given a new word, but after that the game was relatively serene, apart Katy's insistence that she couldn't get her letters and Martin telling her it was obvious.

Ian also spent some time looking baffled, but as it turned out we collectively did rather a good job - everyone identified their words and Martin and Adam T added extra letters at the end: the game rated us delicious, which is our best effort yet. "How the fuck do you get 115 points?!" Martin exclaimed, looking at the scorecard, before realising we'd need to take on the six-letter challenge. One for next time, maybe.

It was all so exciting and After Eight-fuelled that I didn't take any photos, but here's one from another time.

I was going to try and tempt the Adams to try Ragusa, but Adam T had a game called Christmas Tree with him and all things considered it seemed inappropriate to pass on it. Katy joined us while Ian, Adam H and Martin played Azul and made pointed comments about their game finishing before ours started.

But Christmas Tree mechanically is rather simple - a drafting game where you add a tile to your tree and look for multiple ways of scoring: patterns of bauble colours or shapes, lights, candy, gingerbread men. Where it gets complicated is in the scoring, as some things will score and some won't, and you won't know which scoring tiles the other players have chosen until you've laid your first couple of tiles.

Adam went into an early lead, but Katy pulled him back mid-game. I'm pretty duff at these multiple-consideration games (it reminded me of Circle the Wagons in that regard) but it was rather fun all the same:

Adam 156
Katy 153
Sam 106

By which time Azul had concluded...

Ian 70
Martin 69
Adam H 65

and Adam had revenge in a game of NMBR9 which happened so fast I missed the opportunity to take pictures again...

Adam 81
Martin 59
Ian 40

Now back as a six, there was a brief chocolate yule log interlude courtesy of Katy, before we settled on the last game of the night: First Contact. It was still in its shrink-wrap and nobody knew the rules, but fortunately that didn't stop Martin diving in and teaching us on the spot. Here's what happened:

Ian, Katy and I were aliens who flew to Earth in ancient times and established contact with the Egyptians - specifically, Martin and the Adams. We managed to communicate the meaning of three hieroglyphs to them (for instance, metal, pointed, alive) before translation got more difficult, and we needed to communicate meanings via a kind-of process of elimination on a 5x5 grid of things (very like Codenames) that shared some facets of meaning.

Both teams have the same 25 words to hand, but the Egyptians don't know the attendant hieroglyph and the aliens do. The Egyptians can work out a meaning by indicating a few cards (for instance the lion, spear, snake cards to get the hieroglyph for Danger) but as we discovered it is possible for things to get lost in translation.

Conversely, the alien team are trying to get the Egyptians to identify specific cards (see: Codenames again) by clueing them hieroglyphs - if the Egyptians identify the card in question, the active alien puts a token on it and gives another to anyone who successfully identified it. Note it's the active alien: although there are aliens and Egyptians in teams, the game is actually won by individuals: an alien wins by getting rid of three tokens, or an earthling wins by collecting three tokens.

Although it was the wrong time of the evening for Ian, who looked like he was starting to melt towards the end, I think we were all rather enamoured of First Contact in the end, although Martin caused a mini-contretemps when he changed his final guess after the Adams had revealed theirs - and Katy had given away some information! Martin insisted he'd noticed neither and was the winner, although the Adams did not look convinced.

To be fair though, ending the night on an argument about what was said and done in the distant past did make it really feel like a proper Christmas-themed evening. Thanks everybody!

Ten of the Best

On Saturday night, Chris, Jacquie and I convened over their kitchen table for what would turn out to be something of an epic night of short games. After tea - which also involved a discussion of tactical voting with the kids - the three (relative) grown-ups kicked things off with Azul. Chris mentioned that Jacquie was evil in Azul, and I noticed with some alarm that I was sitting to her left. As it happened though, Chris got the worst of the broken tiles in a fairly close-run battle:

Jacquie 82
Sam 80
Chris 69

Before we moved on to slightly sillier fare with Letter Jam. For the uninitiated, Letter Jam is a co-op where everyone is trying to help everyone else figure out what letters they have - like Just One, your own cards face away from you - in order to figure out their word. It's surprisingly easy to go wrong, even for seasoned Scrabble players like Jacquie. We tried again - Ashton joining us for the second attempt - but once again failed. A clever game though.

one I took earlier

By now it was approaching nine so we kicked the kids into bed and re-introduced Jacquie to the murky world of High Society. Despite our warnings, she spent too much money in our first game and ended destitute. I won with something like ten points, whereas Chris had both the x2 cards but with no points at all, it was double nothing. In the second I grabbed to early high cards but undid my good work - I bid to force up the prices of two subsequent cards and both times Chris and Jacquie deviously passed on me, leaving me points-rich but cash-poor. Chris won this one.

Jacquie then retired to bed and Chris introduced me to Jaipur, the game of trading for two in India. It has been around for years but I'd never actually played it, and I can see why it has a good reputation: the basic idea is collecting cards and cashing them in for chips (chips being points) but the way it works allows for safety-first or luck-pushing and spoiling tactics galore as you see what your opponent is picking up and play accordingly.

We liked it so much we played it twice, although in between them we also had a double-crack at Blitzkrieg!

This is another two-player, but rather than trading you are trying to kill each other in a "20 minute" reenactment of WWII. One player is the Axis, the other the Allies, and you are drawing chits from a bag and deciding where to lay them in five theatres of war across the globe, each subdivided into two or three campaigns. Adding a chit swings momentum your way on a battle track, and when a campaign is finished whoever is in the lead on the battle track claims the points. Most places on a campaign also give rewards as well, so although the mechanics are very simple, the decisions are extremely meaningful. I really like this and Chris seemed enamoured of it too, despite me claiming a win just as he was one turn from a 7point swing in his favour...

After our second play of Jaipur we realised it was rather late however, so we finished up with NMBR9, deciding halfway through to go through the deck twice and build some epic, high-scoring constructions. As always moments of delight and confidence were outweighed by our castigating fate, God, kismet and anything else you could mention as the pieces refused to align meaningfully. Kind of like life, one might say.

Ten games in one night - and very excellent games too. Thanks again!

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.