For Goodness' Saké

Like a rare planetary alignment, every year or so four increasingly aging board gamers meet to catch up and share news, ancient in-jokes and some dubious double-entendres.

I arrived at about 1.30, and Sam told me that Chris and Paul were running late, still picking their way through Bristol’s bank holiday traffic. We drank coffee and chatted while I idly looked at the packaging for Tokkuri Taking, a game that would be our first once we were all here.

The packaging promises a bacchanial party of sake with dinosaurs. In practice, we were playing cards to either represent a clay bottle full of sake (the tokkuri) or the amount of sake each player will drink.

You have to play cards which will empty a (or many) tokkuri(s) exactly. If you achieve this, you flip the tokkuri card, action any text that you may see and keep it as a point. Unless it is a Dummy card, in which case the card is removed from the game and everyone else chuckles at your bad luck.

In fact, the revelation of a dummy card remained funny until the end of the game. It was a nice little game but, as Chris pointed out, where were the dinosaurs?

Sam 20

Chris 13

Paul 4

Andrew 0

After this game, to commemorate the day, Chris took a selfie of the four of us and unfortunately demonstrated how age turns technology into a mystery. We all posed and smiled and, instead of taking a photo, Chris promptly turned his phone off.

Never mind, we got there in the end.

Then we chose our next game. At least, me, Sam and Paul did. Chris stayed at the kitchen table, declaring himself too tired to make a decision. And so we played Tower Up, in which we were rampant civil engineers/town planners, intent on placing our roofs across city skyscrapers. Each of us had a player board with four scoring tracks in white, black, brown and grey which gave us the first childish sniggers as we spoke about “one up the brown” or a lack of “brown movement.”

Sam did impress mid-game with one move that got him three bonuses at once, but Chris’ slew of prominent yellow domes across the city pushed him into first place.

Chris 53

Andrew 50

Sam 46

Paul 40

Next up was Azul. I explained the rules to Paul and we were off. Sam kept picking up the first player token for minus points, insisting that he liked going first. Paul started slowly, with disparate tiles on his board, but managed to weave them all together with a final round that scored over 20 points by itself.

Paul 76

Sam 72

Andrew 70

Chris 66

We discussed food and, since Sam’s son Joe was going to get pizza for him and his friends, it made sense for him to get some pizza for us at the same time. That plan didn’t go down well and not even the promise of a side salad could persuade Joe.

Then we played Scout. A sort of trick taking game with a really light Circus theme. Not as tenuous as dinosaurs drinking sake, but still very tangential. I tried to bring the circus motif into play: when I put down a pair of tens I introduced it as “Lisa and Rebecca with their two cannons” but it didn’t really catch on.

Chris 38

Paul 34

Andrew 27

Sam 18

Next up was Misfits. Chris started with a cylinder placed upright. Then he sat back and smirked. We carefully placed piece after impossible piece until the entire edifice collapsed, leading Sam to declare “every c*nting piece!” as he ruefully swept the debris into his reserve.

We played twice and Chris won both times. After Chris’ second win, we kept playing Speed Misfits for second place, with Chris counting down the time limit in a vague German accent. I placed second.

After this we played Ito - the pocket version of Wavelength where everyone gets to make a guess. We didn’t do too well, with some pretty close calls. 

“Places to have a secret lair” did okay, with some nice distance between our guesses but in the category Imaginary Worlds to Visit we failed to differentiate the two-point gap between The Planet of Stale Farts and Pubic Hair World.

Following this we gave up on pizza and decide to get curry delivered. After that was ordered, we played Pina Coladice. Yahtzee mixed with Noughts And Crosses. Each square of a 4x4 grid has a target to achieve with five dice rolled three times. Place your meeple (if there’s still room) and four in a row will instantly win the game.

It was okay. I felt a bit like I was watching myself play, but there’s a certain amount of strategy as first Paul then Sam found their paths to glory blocked by other players taking the spaces they needed. But in the end, Chris won with four in a row.

With the curry imminent we played a couple of quick games of Toy Battle. A very simple war game with basic mechanics but a nicely balanced range of soldiers at your disposal. Sam beat Paul on a tie-breaker and Chris beat me outright, having successfully stormed my HQ.

Next we broke for food and then I chose the next game - my last of the day.

It was Quest for El Dorado. Paul’s first game, and he got a rules explanation from, as I recall, most of us at one point or another. It was pretty close throughout, apart from the usual early stages of one playing hanging back for tokens (Sam) while another sped off into the jungle (Chris). But Chris was no amatuer just pegging it and hoping for the best. He neatly balanced his deck and picked up tokens as he went. An purchase of the Captain just as he reached the watery fifth hex was probably pivotal.

I tried to think like Adam by buying a Travel Log (or Travelodge, as Paul called it) to whittle away the flab from my hand, but when I appeared I really didn’t know what to do with it. Nevertheless I actually thought I had a chance until quite late on. False hope.

Chris 1st to arrive, wins tie breaker

Sam, arrived same turn

Paul, only a few spaces short

Andrew, at least I reached the final hex.

*                *                *

mysterious change of narrator

*                *                *

Sam here. The hour was around 9pm, I think, when Andrew left us, and we had a couple more hours of ludological frolics ahead of us. We began them with Rebirth, the game of cathedral and castle construction in post-apocalyptic Scotland. I can't help thinking that if all the efforts going into these rebuilding games went into avoiding an apocalypse in the first place, maybe these great designer minds could come up with something. But anyway. This was new to the ever-patient Paul, so I went through the fortuitously-simple rules and away we went, brick by brick. 

Whilst I set about cathedralling like some kind of Ken Follet enthusiast and Paul remarked that he kept pulling the same type of tile, Chris sped off into a chunky lead, passing 100 points way before we did and enjoying saying the word 'dirigible' in celebration. But his momentum slowed in the final act, and my haul of highland castles and completed objectives got me a vanishingly rare win - by a single point! Chris threw his cards on the table in disgust. 

Sam - can't remember

Chris - can't remember -1

Paul - a few points further back

We celebrated/drowned our sorrows in the Milk Tray chocolates Chris had brought with him. There was no flavour reference so I tried one at random, which turned out to be a hazelnut whirl. I enjoyed it so much I had another, before discovering they were everyone's favourite, including Jacquie, who wasn't even here, but added to the chocolatey shame. Apologies all. 

We played Fantasy Realms next, and any crowing I might have been tempted to do in my Rebirth triumph stuck in my throat as I proved abysmally bad at realming fantasies. 

The game is super-simple: you have a hand of cards that score in different ways, and on your turn you pick up a new card and discard one to the table. You can pick up either from the table, or the top of the deck, but the catch is top-decking hastens the end of the game, which happens when a tenth card is added to the communal cards. Chris more than doubled my score, I think it was something like

Chris 190?

Paul 140?

Sam 80

I poured myself another gin as Paul asked me if I was getting tired. "He's got to wait up for his kids!" Chris pointed out, as if we needed an excuse to keep gaming. Little Tavern was next. 

Chris started and immediately parked an elf at his table. I advised him this was maybe not the best move, because elves in this game are racists and only like sitting with other elves. Chris nodded that he understood and immediately picked up three more elves to score 16 points in the first round. In the second I gave him a face-down romantic and he paired it with another face-up to win! Stupid game. 

We finished off with So Clover, of course, but whether it was the marathon games, the gin, the chocolate, the red herrings or the late hour, did appallingly badly with a 3-2-4 haul giving us 9 points from a possible 18! 

By this time, Joe and his pals were home and Stan was on his way back too. It had been ten hours of gaming and with midnight not too far off, we elected to end it there. Thanks all! Sorry about my foul-mouthed breakdown in Misfits. 

One Disaster after Another

Just the four of us last night as GNN continues its sparsely-populated run. Adam T arrived early and after a brief catch-up and exchange of grief-stricken lamentations that our Root group has gone into a hiatus, we consoled ourselves by playing his recent acquisition, which is Knarr, the game of Viking crewing, sailing, and combo-ing. 

The rhythm of the game is nice and easy: you're either playing a card into your crew(s) and activating all the bonuses at the top, or you are cashing them in/sailing them to far-flung climes to grab destination cards for points/other bonuses. Helmets can be spent as wild cards and bracelets - I think they're bracelets - can activate the columns in your destination cards. 

It's the kind of game where it's easy to learn but also easy, I found, to discover while you're farting about in the late teens of the score track, Adam has combo-ed his way to an imminent win. My last turn salvaged a small degree of pride...

Adam 42ish

Sam 30ish

We still had a good half hour or so before the arrival of Adam H and Martin, so cracked out a play of Empire's End. This uses the bidding system of No Thanks but instead of trying to chain numbers, you're trying to protect your civilisation from decay: most rounds are simply a disaster that will befall someone and cause them to flip over part of their tableau, and in doing so, lose all the points for it. I forgot to take any pictures, so gripped was I by the drama and panic, but here's Joe and I playing it a few days ago.

When you concede and take the disaster, you do at least get all the stuff everyone bid not to take it, and you get to append your tableau with an innovation, which - while the location it sits under remains undisastered - offers some kind of mechanical consolation for the loss of your farm/road/army/town/city. 

Disaster!

Interspersed between the almost relentless downers are economy (get stuff) industry (fix stuff) and military (fight stuff) rounds, the latter containing an element of risk as we both fight the same threat, but whoever contributes the most gets an extra reward. In one of the industry rounds I spent big to fix my (most valuable) city, only to have the next disaster hit it, and I had no resources to palm it off on Adam. He took a convincing win, something 150 to 105. 

But it was now time for Cascadero!

Whilst I went off to corral two teenagers upstairs Martin explained the rules to newbie Adam H. Then off we went, with Adam T immediately pursuing a strategy of building a 'big snake' network, as the rest of us took a more geographically diverse approach. I built an early lead, but was (correctly) assuming it wouldn't last. But as our envoys multiplied across the board, I did make significant progress up the tracks - particularly blue, which wasn't even my colour. It was Martin's. "What the fuck are you doing on my track!" he said, once or twice. Maybe more. 

Adam H initially seemed slightly bamboozled, and we did offer mild assistance once or twice. Or maybe moderate assistance, when I pointed out to him he could claim the first-to-x-spaces reward. "I was about to do that!" Martin cried. Sorry Martin. 

Adam T was openly regretting his network strategy as he dawdled some way behind us on the score track, and found his plans to get the ten point all-links bonus held up by our chicanery. However as the game entered its final stages he did belatedly bound up beside the three of us, who were inching forward in increments now. When Martin pointed out Adam H only had a spinrkling envoys left, I realised that to reach the top of my track I needed to move away from orange cities in order to visit them again, and didn't have enough turns left. Martin thought he was in with a shout but made a shocking Sam-style error, shooting himself in the foot with drastic mistake. As a result, he didn't reach the top of his track either. And nor did Adam T.

Adam H 38

Martin 38 but DNF

Sam 36 but DNF

Adam T 34 but DNF

Disaster again!

Adam H professed himself to be pleased with a debut win and liked the game. It was, as Martin said, brutal with four - if you don't reach the top of your track early enough, it becomes nigh on impossible to do so later. But we all enjoyed ourselves - even Adam T, I think. 

Martin then waved Courtisans around, his UKBG EXPO purchase, and he seemed excited enough that we agreed to play it.  It was better than this picture makes it look. 

Each turn you've a hand of three courtisans and must choose, Biblios-style, one to keep, one to gift, and one to play to the middle of the table. When the deck is empty everyone will score their kept cards, and the cards in the middle determine whether you'll get points for them (more cards above the board) or lose (more cards below). Mix in some dickish shenanigans and you've a very Martin-style game: assassins kill someone at their location when they arrive, royals are worth two, spies are played face-down and knights (I think? they have a shield) can't be killed by assassins. 

Everyone has two secret objectives as well, such as making sure the green suit falls from grace - ie scores negative - or that you have less cards or the red suit than your neighbour. These were mine, anyway, and I succeeded at one of them. I think we all managed one, in fact, but Martin's tableau of dicks scored more than everyone else's:

Martin 10

Everyone else 8

Fun, and quite speedy too - we raced through a thick deck of cards in about 25 minutes. However with Adam T making going-home noises and Adam H yawning wearily - Cascadero does take it out of you - we quickly moved on to So Clover. This was my 200th play and we hoped to mark it with an entry in the record of legends or whatever it's called. I think we've done a few perfect rounds with my copy before, but I've never recorded them - it was nice that we hit a home run of 24/24 this evening, with some nice clues guiding us there: Landfill for Garbage/Forest and C for Moon/Letter.

Adam T left us on this llinguistical high, and as a trio we played Misfits. Martin dicked us all over with a horrible opening move of the gaping-maw-triangle, but on reflection Adam H did not help the situation by putting a bloody cylinder in it. Every time Martin's turn arrived it collapsed again, until he was practically hidden by a mound of misshapen wooden bits, while his opening piece remained there, stoically being a pain in the arse.

I fell foul of it too, more than once, as Adam deftly shed his trickier pieces to finally, and triumphantly, dump his last cube. No fantastical structures tonight, but a funny, slapstick, and disastrous experience. Keeping with the mechanics of dickery, we moved on to Little Tavern. The less said about this the better as my early lead after round one made me a serial target in round two. 

Martin recovered from being back in third to sneak by Adam for a win:

Martin 26

Adam 25

Sam 22

And then Adam was gone too, his bedtime calling him. Martin and I finished off as a pair with Schnipp & Weg, which I am really surprised has never featured in GNN before! 

This is a head-to-head flicking game (lazy susan courtesy of Joe B) where you each begin at the far end of a hourglass-shaped board and the goal is to flick all your opponent's pieces off it. If you succeed with one flick (without your own pieces falling off) you keep going, and if you win the round you lose a piece but shuffle forward a row towards the middle - first player to the middle wins. 

The canny thing about Schnipp & Weg is that whoever lost a round starts the next one, which is - as long as you don't get the yips - a huge advantage. And whoever is closer to the middle is, in one way, weaker, as they have less presence on the board. We did a best of three, which Martin won 2-1 after I rallied from a poor start. A night of consecutive losses for me, So Clover notwithstanding, but a very fun one all the same. See you next week!

Indian Winter

Last night three of us - Ian, Chris, and myself - faced off across the board of Vijayanagara: The Deccan Empires of Medieval India 1290-1398. This is a GMT game but flies in the face of GMT's standard output in terms of accessibility and brevity: I taught it in 15 minutes and we finished in a shade over 2 hours. 

The game is a fight for power across the provinces that all begin the game under the control of the Delhi Sultanate, played by Ian. Chris (Vijayanagara, yellow) and I (Bahmani, blue) are the upstart empires sensing weakness and looking to gain control for ourselves. Ian begins the game cash rich and in command of every province, meaning his victory marker currently sits at 18 compared to mine and Chris' zero. We're at peace, meaning all the provinces are tributaries, happily - or begrudgingly - deferring to the Sultanate's power and numerous troops. But we're scheming. 

Ian doesn't just have the Vijayanagara and Bahmani to worry about though - from the north, Mongols periodically invade, making it as far as Delhi - Ian's capital - and generally getting in his shit. 

It works like this: each round a card is flipped denoting turn order and offering an event. One by one we decide whether to take the event (a special action, for one player only) do a command & decree (two distinct actions, again for just one player) or a limited command/pass (limited action/get some cash). The catch is that command & decree and about half the events make you ineligible for the next round, essentially sacrificing a turn for jam now. 

That's as complicated as it gets: the actions are largely get some dudes on the board, move them around, attack each other and - for Chris and I - rebel against the Sultanate's rule, wrestling a province from Ian's grasp. Doing so pushes our victory marker up the track, and drags his down. Other actions get you cash and cavalry, which are dead handy in combat. 

Chris and I also have an influence track to ponder: you can feasibly stay at zero influence for the whole game, but increasing it not only makes certain commands and decrees more powerful, it also affects the victory point marker for the Vijayanagara / Bahmani. Influence entices us away from the unspoken - or often spoken - agreement to attack Ian: if we manage to knock each other out of a province, our influence goes up and the other empire's decreases. 

Combat is simple too: attacker rolls four dice and defender two: each side does damage for rolls that match or are less-than units-present. So if you have six units, all your rolls will be hits! The aforementioned cavalry come into play here: used to 'charge' and decrease a die value by one, or 'screen' and remove an opponent's hit. 

Essentially it's a game of shenanigans: more reactive and tactical than beholden to long-term strategising. Power ebbs and flows and there's a palpable bit of leader-bashing, although the Sultanate cannot attack the Vijayanagara and Bahmani empires unless they have rebelled in that province, meaning they have to march past 'obedient' smirking Amirs and Rajas to reach their more brazen co-conspirators.

The other empires start off focused on the Sultanate, but late-game are just as likely to be attacking each other, using special decrees like Conspire and Compel to engineer treachery amongst the ranks of their opponents. Which is handy for Delhi as the game-end is triggered by the Mongols launching a huge invasion on the capital, meaning the Sultanate player has a kind of pub-carpark finale where they can gain as many as three points - a big swing - or lose up to three, depending on how many Mongols remaining in Delhi after the battle. Ian had prepared well and managed to defeat them all, giving him the maximum points haul. But the abrupt ending had favoured me and I finished a point ahead of him!

Sam 11
Ian 10
Chris 7

We all liked this. It has an epic feel but moves at a reasonable clip, and I think familiarity would bring the play-time down further. The asymmetry is noticeable but not at Root-levels of density, and you sit out far fewer rounds than standard COIN games in the 'eligible' stakes. What's more it finishes early enough to play Little Tavern (Chris won) and So Clover (twice) where Ian's clover appeared to be solvable with a single card:

Amazing. Even more amazingly, we cracked this one and scored 18 on our first attempt, before turning in a far less impressive 13 in our second. 

Wyrm Sweet Wyrm

 A new venue always feels special, like GNN is slowly extending it’s influence across this great nation. And so, at 7.30, four of us (Katy, Sam, Joe and me) squeezed into Sam’s car and drove away to the far reaches of Bristol. It almost felt like a Novocon. Steve and Anja were the hosts, in their converted ex-care home. Anja welcomed us while Steve was upstairs on bedtime duty. Due to the delicate nature of trying to get a child to sleep, we weren’t given a tour of the whole house but what we did see was pretty impressive.

Then Martin, Adam H and Ian arrived and we began to play. Sam had brought Sticky Cthulu, thinking that Louie might enjoy it, but he wasn’t here tonight so instead eight grown adults found themselves whipping the table with sticky plastic tentacles, trying to pick up illustrated bits of cardboard chosen by the roll of two dice, with the illustrations having a vague HP Lovecraft theme. It was frantic and a bit insane. Only one of my photos did it justice.

“This is monstrous,” said Martin. “Literally,” replied Anja. Finally, Ian was awarded his third coin of the game and he was declared winner. Steve arrived and despite the look of intrigued excitement on his face, we couldn’t be persuaded to play again. As the game was being put away, mentioned that the tentacles needed to be cleaned after every game which seems like very high maintenance for a board game.

We were a nine now and Steve chatted about the supposed haunted qualities of their new home. The automatic lights on the hallways keep turning on, apparently, which initially was a bit spooky but now Steve finds it quite useful.

We split into three groups of three. Katy, Adam and Ian played World Wonders. Joe, Martin and Sam squeezed onto one half of the table and played Dawn of Ulos while Steve, Anja and I took up the rest of the table with Wyrmspan.

The room hummed with rules being explained. Joe noticed that the orc meeple in Dawn of Ulos had boobs. I was disappointed that a booklet in Wyrmspan was called “Dragon Facts” since, strictly speaking, those two words shouldn’t go together at all.

Soon after Wyrmspan began, I heard Adam say “My first wonder!” so we were clearly the last to start. Wyrmspan initially looks like Wingspan with a new look, but it is different enough to be considered a new game. So I’m told, anyway, because I couldn’t remember anything about Wingspan. We explored caverns, and enticed dragons with names of varying silliness into our sanctuary. It was all quite sedate without any real interference in other people’s plans.

Meanwhile World Wonders ended with Katy ruing her habit of building wonders whenever possible.

Adam 41 (broke the scoretrack)

Ian 32

Katy 30

And Dawn of Ulos ended after an odd episode where Sam had to take cards from Martin’s hand and Joe advised Martin “why don’t you just pretend they’re shuffled.”

Martin 154

Joe 121

Sam 90

The other six players reshuffled into two groups. Katy sat at the end of the table not fully aware that she was volunteering herself into a game of Faraway (the me of building up a high-scoring tableau of cards backwards) against Joe and Martin.

Martin 85

Katy 64

Joe 53

And Sam, Adam and Ian set up camp on the small table where they played Misfits. Sam’s audacious early use of the drunken elephant couldn’t seal a win, as Adam took first place.

Then they played Little Tavern.

Ian 28

Sam 26

Adam 17

By now, it was late and the only thing left to do was wait for the last round of Wyrmspan to play out and then listen to the scores being totted up, with help from Martin as Steve called out sums that were too difficult for him to deal with at this hour.

Waiting for the scores for Wyrmspan to come in

Steve 94

Anja 93

Andrew 73

And with that, we were off! A new venue was christened and everyone was excited by it, especially at the thought of a game of Hugo in the damp basement of a genuine* haunted house. Thanks all. See you next week!

* approx

Animal House

Sam’s kitchen table, at eight o’clock, was already groaning under the weight of three nature parks. I arrived to find Sam, Katy and Ian playing Caldera Park, with Mel watching. Sam assured us that they were almost finished. During scoring, Ian had some big scoring animals but Katy’s consistency across all groups gave her a surprise win.

Katy 153

Ian 147

Sam 139

Ian described Caldera Park as Kingdomino crossed with Take It Easy, and Sam said it was growing on him.

Next we stayed in a natural setting, this time hiking, cycling or kayaking through woodland in Trailblazers. 

It was new to Mel, so she got a quick rules explanation. I listened in since I’d only played it once and then I spent my game trying to complete the hardest end-of-game bonus despite it scoring only 6 points. And I almost did it, just one card short of having two loops around two camps. Katy really wanted a bison, Sam admitted to sacrificing some animals, Mel asked a last-minute rules clarification and Ian was tired.

Katy 78

Mel 70

Sam 64

Andrew 34

Ian 28

After this, we chose something a bit less thinky and Mlem was brought to the table. Mel admired the roll-out board made from something like wetsuit material. She was taught the rules and we were off into space! Commander Ian must have still been tired, since his first rocket exploded on the first space. Katy, too, had teething problems with her space program, suffering two early catastrophes.

No one got even close to deep space, with Sam and Mel fighting over the same planet, having both commited their x2 Planet cat to the same place. 

Sam placed his cats quickly and was on his last cat while Katy still had five. I managed to get the 4-moon bonus on the last roll of the dice and I also got a very cheap six points by colonising the lowest planet with a bonus while everyone else ignored it.

Andrew 25

Sam 23

Mel 16

Katy 11

Ian 8

Mel left at this point and the four of us ploughed into the night with Misfits. I was exploiting my newly-acquired unemployed status to stay until the end for a change. Misfits is a game that defies explanation, with a whole host of “you have to be there” moments.

I was first to use all my pieces. Sam also used his last piece on the same round, but refused the title of joint winner.

Then we played Little Tavern. More dickish moves, as Katy couldn’t resist events which inevitably made her the poorest player. Something she mentioned whenever someone else had to give money to another player for an event. In round two we started reading out each character's little quote in the style of their race. Possibly offensive but luckily there were no elves, nobles, witches etc to witness this.

Ian 26

Katy 23

Andrew 22

Sam 22

Then we played So Clover. Sam had finished his clover by the time I’d come back from the toilet. But then we floundered on everyone’s clover except Ian’s. Only 16 out of 24 so we went again.

This time I was first but got hit by a bad decoy. My clue of Kabblammm!!! went better with Strong/explosion instead of the correct Physical/explosion. Everyone else went clear, despite controversy over Katy’s clue of “Apple” for “Heavy/Pear”. Immediately after we’d solved her clover, Sam went to get an apple and a pear and it was clear that pears are actually heavier than apples.

And hats off to Ian’s clue of “Any” for “Port/Storm”. Poetic.

22 out of 24.

And we were done. Thanks all. There’s a chance of a new venue next week, so let’s hope I’m still unemployed so I have enough time to get there and back.