Euro Currencies

Last night's GNN meet-up unusually had no Martin at it, as he was away in the US. There was also the rare and welcome sight of Steve, giving the room a slight 2013 kind of vibe. But before he, Adam H and Joe all turned up, at 7.30 there was just Katy, Ian and myself (Sam). And after comparing our weeks - they'd both been to gigs; Katy had crowdsurfed - we played Zombie Kidz Evolution. 

This is a couldn't-be-simpler co-op game of trying to padlock all four school gates before you are overrun by zombies. On your turn, you roll a die and a zombie (probably) arrives in the school. You can move one spot (or stay where you are) and eliminate one or two zombies in the room you stop in. Padlocking the gates is an automatic action, but the catch is there must be two of you present to do it, and if a room ever gathers more than two zombies you can do nothing about it. If you're asked to add more zombies and you've run out, you lose! Which was exactly what happened to us on our first attempt - each game takes about 5-10 minutes - before triumphantly applying padlocks on our second try. 

The game has legacy aspects too: win or lose, after X amount of games there are envelopes to be opened that will change it fractionally. Katy however was more excited by the stickers that get applied to the back of the rulebook, heralding victory or defeat. 

A freshly-shorn Joe arrived. He too had had an interesting week, removing his beard for the sole purpose of a fancy-dress party. One has to admire his commitment to character. With Adam and Steve not here yet, I thought we could bash through a quick play of Coral, as I (erroneously (obviously)) thought I remembered the rules.

This is another speedy game, but rather less co-operative. Each player wants to have the most visible coral (-the colours) from a bird's eye perspective at the end of the game (height being only a tie-breaker). On a turn you can either add a block adjacent to your coral piece, or move your piece: it can travel as far as it likes along the colour it currently occupies (ignoring height differences) or you can remove it entirely, to be returned on your next go. This option is a kind of hedge-betting; holding back your pieces to see what develops. But it can bite you on the bum if nobody else is doing it, as when someone runs out of blocks turns continue, but if you still have blocks after placing one you discard another. I'm not sure who won; it was either me or Joe, but Joe knocked the tower over at the finale and then Katy dove in and scattered the remains across the table - in delight or fury, I'm not sure.

By this time Adam and Steve had arrived and Adam was pointing out we were playing something wrong. I forget what now - there was a flurry of snack bowls on the table and I think I was tripping on sugar and salt. 

We split into groups of three, delighting in our opportunities to play euros without Martin making desultory comments from the sidelines. And indeed, he may have to hold back a gag reflex as he sees we covered the table in big, detailed  and chaotically garish boards. Ian talked Steve and Adam through Terra Nova, as I explained Rajas of the Ganges to Joe and Katy. 

Despite some minor options-overwhelm, Joe seemed to begin strongly, scrutinising the board, asking for one or two rules clarifications and discovering we'd been playing something (erroneously (obviously)) incorrectly about activating markets. I deflected blame by saying someone else taught me it. Joe was going the market route, pretty much ignoring the glorious buildings, whilst Katy and I did the opposite. Katy's early-game progress stalled, though, and she bemoaned her lack of dice, seemingly spending them the moment they arrived. 

In Terra Nova, things were marginally less boisterous, and Adam noted that it sounded like we were having more fun. 

"I'm not" Katy clarified. 

Perhaps she was dreaming of better times; being carried aloft by a crowd. 

Joe meanwhile continued to scrutinise, but his early momentum was lost as well - Rajas is a game of surges and lulls, I think - and as we entered the final stages, Katy's love of buildings surged her past Joe. I triggered the end of the game as we all built like deranged constructionists.

Katy's markers passed each other as well, but not quite enough to catch me. Joe's markers halted within touching distance of each other, making him slightly sad, even though he said he liked the game. But I managed to successfully navigate my way past explainer's curse to claim a win, albeit aided by a familiarity my opponents weren't equipped with. 

Ian wasn't so lucky. However it happened, the winner was the most-likely when they sat down to play it:

Adam 74

Steve 68

Ian 50

We'd squeezed out a quick game of Zombie Kidz while they wrapped up (and won! more stickers) but now Katy went home, perhaps with her interview in mind, and most of us agreed that So Clover was the next logical step. I'm not sure if Steve agreed or not: he said he wanted something fun. We were all immediately stumped by our words, except Joe, who finished in no time at all and started a side-game of competitive number-drawing. I was a bit slower, and less accomplished.

I didn't get a picture of Joe's as at the time I was trying to make sense of my words. 

Steve's Hare for March/Jelly was nice and I was impressed the group got Young/Berry from my clue of Virile. We overcame our collective pessimism to score a faintly remarkable 28/30. Excellent work! But now Adam and Steve left us as well, and the remaining trio played a vintage GNN game in the form of Love Letter.

I warned Joe as we established our 3-3-0 lead over Ian that he has form for coming back from the dead, and even reminded Ian when he complained about zero points that he'd recovered from worse. And so it was! I tried ejecting Joe with a Baron and got my just desserts, then Ian won two rounds in a row with a spy to claim victory! 

I didn't take many pictures, sorry. But a very fun night, thanks all. 

Rouge in the Cheeks

Last week the boys, Sally and I went to Katie and Mark's for a few days away from the big city. After the travails of hiring a car (power cuts at the car rental place, extra charges for not having a credit card, the bank suspecting fraud and declining payment) and then the travails of the M5 (five hours to reach south Devon!) we finally arrived, remembering that we'd not done our lateral flow tests before leaving. This is how all holidays start now...

Monday

Safely in the clear, we spent a while catching up before heading out with dog Nellie for a walk while the weather was reasonable. Nellie isn't pictured here, probably because she was running around or pulling plants out of the ground elsewhere. She's bonkers. 

In the evening the first of the games arrived. These were Love Letter (winners: Peppa and Stan) In Vino Morte (Peppa) before everyone else went to bed (bar Stan) and Mark, Peppa and I broke out the first of our attempts at Flamme Rouge. We plumped for a Tour, where finishing places carry over and scores are cumulative. On the first race, Peppa led from the front, picking up numerous exhaustion cards. She then blocked both Mark and I from overtaking, and afterwards I realised that we were definitely playing something slightly wrong, and we should have been able to overtake. Nonetheless, the scores stood, and Peppa was off to a flyer. 

Tuesday

Early in the morning - well, 10am - I led the boys and Lula off to Kingsbridge for a poke around the games shop, which has now moved from a tucked-away corner to a slightly smaller space, but on the high street itself. After ten minutes perusing the shelves we emerged with Dragomino and Decrypto (me; my Decrypto pad was exhausted and both stands broken) and High Risk (Lula). Sporting some other holiday goods (free books, nectarines, aubergine pickle) we returned to the house and Lula, Mark and I broke out High Risk. 

This is a super-simple luck-pusher of getting your guys to the top of the mountain first. Dice or rolled for movement; do you settle for what you have or roll your duds again and risk going bust? When you move, all movement is assigned to a single climber, and while the bivouac spaces can be shared, the smaller mountain spaces can't, so an arriving climber will shove the current occupant off ('like an asshole' - Mark) to the next available spot below. If you go bust, your highest climber falls in similar fashion - although climbers at the summit won't go anywhere, preventing the game from lasting forever. It's fun enough; not as elegant as K2, but not as long as Pickonimo. 

Then everyone refused to play Dragomino with me, so I played it twice myself. This is the little sibling of Kingdomino: there's no area scoring or multiplication and no claiming of next round's tiles. Instead you simply take one tile from the array and add it to your kingdom - I think the theme is exploring an island - and if any land types match, you 'find' a dragon egg there; taking a face-down egg from the supply and flipping it over. If it's a dragon, that's a point. If it's an empty egg, that's not, but you do take the Mother Dragon token which means you'll choose first in the next round (it's also worth a point at the end of the game).

I enjoyed this so much that at various points in the day I managed to get Stan, Peppa and Sally to all play with me (though I rarely won). The entire game takes ten minutes but despite the simplicity, it certainly doesn't play itself, with Peppa in particular on the lookout for taking tiles others might like. We also tried a small variant where the tiles with watering holes on allow you to take two eggs and choose between them instead of the standard one. 

In the afternoon we trundled down to the beach. Lula was the sole heroine in terms of actually getting in the sea, hurtling off the breakwater while the tide was high enough. The rest of us took turns digging an enormous hole and then inventing a game called Holeball where the hole was the goal and if you scored you went in it as keeper. Surprisingly good fun. I had slept really badly though so at one point I laid down under a towel and closed my eyes. And Joe and I walked out on the breakwater.

We buried Stan's legs in the hole before we left. 

In the evening there was more Dragomino and the little-seen Tomatomato, where you say all the syllables of 'tomato' (plus one rogue potato) in fast but random order. If you make a mistake, all the other players get to pick up a tile, and the winner is the player whose tiles can spell 'tomato' the most. 

My tactic was leaning in like an old man and moving my head along the line of tiles as though peering shortsightedly at a bus timetable, reading as I went. Old man wins!

There was three games of Spicy between Peppa and I, then as tired children and adults tottered off to bed, it was time for Flamme Rouge again. With a huge amount of flat before any hills, Mark and Peppa shot off early and I struggled to catch them. 

I was so far back I was picking up as many exhaustion cards as the leaders, and although I managed to catch them (my rouleur finished second) in the overall positions my team was a distant third as things stood. Noticing that the riders seem to have enormous butt cracks ("that's a seam" Mark pointed out) was scant consolation.

Wednesday

There was a trip planned to Adrenalin Quarry for the early evening, for much cavorting on massive inflatables atop freezing water, so I had to go and get myself a wetsuit. This was a bit like the car hire adventure all over again, as my card was declined and I didn't have the back-up with me, so had to call Sally and get her to transfer money on my laptop back at the house. Factor in the negligible Devon 3G signal and me holding my arms in the air halfway up a hill and you have a decent portrait of the level of chaos I have, day by day, being a scatterbrained halfwit of the highest order. Fortunately, we got there in the end, and I came away with a rather expensive new all-in-one outfit. 

Back at the house Peppa was up, and up for games. We cracked through another two Spicys (one win apiece) before Mark joined us for the next leg of our Flamme Rouge tour. My riders lurked near the back again for most of the race, but ended things a little less lamely this time - true, my sprinter limped in last, but my rouleur sped through the peloton for a win!

Then in a stunning turn of events Joe wanted to play Dragomino, and he beat me 7-4. After a little while we also tried out Pugs in Mugs, which is a fairly standard Exploding-Cats style thing, only a little gentler. Collect three matching coloured card to claim a pug in a mug, and claim all coloured pugs to win. It's okay. Not my kind of thing, even if there's a pug wearing a bra. 

Then we hurtled off to Adrenaline Quarry, where I had 45 minutes of hilarious fun, but felt my age for the last 40 of them. That was it for the games, except for a couple of rambunctious whirls around In Vino Morte as we waited for chips in Plymouth. Owing to Mark's planning and blessed providence, we were also well placed for the final of the UK fireworks championship as it exploded above the sea, not far from where we sat.

Then it was time to go home. Firstly Katie and Mark's home, and this was an adventure in itself with wrong turns, cantankerous GPS systems and eventually, everyone bar myself (-driving) asleep. And the next day, home home, with no final games to play, but a stop off at Hound Tor on the journey back.

Many fond memories, Katie's olive bread, Mark's margaritas, and some great games!

President Hickman

A week might be a long time in politics, but 20 minutes gave Ian and I (Sam) time to play a couple of games of Love Letter while we waited for Adam to arrive. This was notable mainly for Ian thrice playing barons when I had the princess, the third time saying "this has to work at some point" before his countess went down in flames. We played with the new 6-player version, which adds two new characters in the spy (potential point if you played the only spy and make it to the end of the round) and chancellor (draw two cards, place two of your three cards at the bottom of the deck).

Then Adam arrived through the rain, and we sat down to a game of SHASN, which tells the story of an election: the regions, the voters, the underhand tactics (my copy is the Indian version; there's also a USA edition). The board is broken into nine regions that the players contest: simply put, voters are the currency of victory - or not. The currency of progress is down to four political resources: funds, media, trust and the somewhat nebulous clout. Basically, you gather resource tokens representing the public's faith in you and 'spend' them to influence (or buy) voters, which you then add to the map. Having the most voters in a region means you can gerrymander: dicking about with voters in your own or adjacent region to swing things in your favour. Having a majority (-not just the most, but over half all the possible voters) means - if you hang on to it - you'll score points at the end of the game, which arrives when all majorities are claimed. 

But although it sounds, and broadly is, an extremely swingy take-that affair of screwing each other over on a regular basis, SHASN's theme comes through clearly in part because of how you get these resources: at the start of your turn you're asked an interview-style question on policy from a deck of Ideology cards, and you're permitted one of two binary answers. In either case, you take the card and collect the tokens on it: if you answer in the style of an idealist, say, you're going to improve the public trust in you. If you take a more populist view, you'll be a hit with the media. As well as gaining resources, you keep the card itself, and the gathering of cards builds an impression of your political identity, as sets of cards spark first bonus resources (for every two matching cards you have) and then additional abilities - usually of the nasty, interfering kind. Five matching cards endow the players with the really brutal stuff: I, predominantly playing the role of the Trump-esque supremo, could steal resources from other players on every turn and force their voters away from the polls. Adam - a more idealist identity - could get voters at less expense and convert others to his cause. But Ian's extra voters and ability to gerrymander not one, but two voters for every region he controlled was brutal. 

When you hear the question, you don't actually know the ideologue identities of the answers you're offered, and must instead work on your hunches. The idealist and capitalist are usually easy to spot, but the lines between the supremo and showstopper are a bit more murky. They both sound like twats, and oftentimes you feel like each question deserves a bit more nuance as to how they are answered. But the fun of SHASN is in the humour of these moments, and the fact that in order to win this election, you can't take a consistent position: simply having loads of the same type of card is ultimately unproductive, so the idealist is forced to tax sanitary towels, the capitalist must make concessions to healthcare and the populist might decide to be anti-capital punishment. 

As a game it feels like an inelegant punch-up, foregoing the control you might enjoy for round after round of face-slapping and shin-kicking, with interesting seams of luck, trading and pact-making running through it. But that's what we signed up for, and we all enjoyed it as a sort of event: particularly Ian, seeing as how he closed out the game in one fell swoop - suddenly polling day was upon us, and Adam and I didn't have time to form a coalition against him.

Ian 34 / Adam 23 / Sam 12

If a week is a long time in politics though (sorry), SHASN only took a couple of hours so there was plenty of evening left to fill, and we began with Fae, or Land of the Old Men's Penises as I immaturely insisted on calling it. 

I love Fae's simplicity of simply pushing old men's penises druids around on your turn in order for them to throw a party once no-one's looking; the catch being each player's colour is secret. Adam's afternoon siesta perhaps came back to haunt him, or maybe he was fatigued from all that canvassing. I snuck a win despite gifting Ian multiple points for getting the parties started.

Sam 47 / Ian 41 / Adam 39

Next up was For Sale. This is a copy Joe gifted to me and we found after our online adventures in 2020 that the older version had a slightly different make-up, with both properties and cheques numbering zero to 20. Ultimately, it made little difference to my experience of For Sale, which often ends something like this...

Adam 72 / Ian 68 / Sam 60

we were baffled by how the boring 20 skyscraper is considered 

better than these bonkers abodes

And we rounded off our night as a trio by playing Project L, which I thought I was rather well set to win until Adam revealed his score. Adammmmmm!!!

Adam 23 / Sam 19 / Ian 15

The winner hit the thankfully-dry road, but Ian and I felt we had one more game in us, and it was Wavelength. I wrote down all our spectrums and clues, but somehow this morning they don't seem quite as compelling as they did last night. Still, we overcame our different spheres of knowledge (Star Trek; Pokemon Go) and different paradigms of perception (IKEA furniture) to scrape a win. A fun way to round off a fun evening, thanks chaps!

Fear and Slothing

 When one of us becomes prime minister and historians comb through this blog looking for signs of future greatness, will this be one of the entries that they dwell upon? One of us made a decision that had ramifications far in excess of what they expected. One that may echo down the ages until it is pinpointed as the moment when Something Important began to happen. Or maybe it’ll be forgotten by next week.

But first, the games. I arrived at Sam's at 8, to find Joe, Ian (his first games night of the year), Sam and Katy playing Photograph, a game from the same designer as Take The A Chord. I watched the closing stages of the game in bemusement. Sam anguished over the fact he forgot that he has reds. Ian languished in last while Katy vanquished them all. Joe played well too, except I can't think of a fourth rhyme.

Katy 36

Sam 30

Joe 18

Ian 17

Next, as a fivesome, we played Fast Sloths, a racing game in which the sloths can't move in unless carried by one of a number of obliging animas. It was confusing at first with some of the rules regarding movement being a little unintuitive. Why eagles could only fly over rivers if there was a bridge made no sense until Joe pointed out that eagles are constantly worried about dropping out of the sky. 

It began well for Katy once she’d got her head around the rules, and before long she’d pulled of a “two leaves in one move” turn (the target is first to pick up eight leaves) to put herself in first and before long was looking in a strong place to win. But then a misunderstanding of the rules left her becalmed in the corner of the map while she slowly edged towards some ants who would carry her to victory. By the time she was in position, Joe, was on his seventh leaf also closing in on those ants while Sam was in stoney last with four. But he had a plan. An epic history-changing plan.

He put down twelve movement points for ants, used only a couple to get another leaf and then spent the rest of his movement points sending Katy's ants off in a totally useless direction. Katy, exasperated, couldn’t move and considered forfeiting while Sam apologised, saying it was his only sensible move. Katy made a token effort at enticing an animal back in her direction but then Joe swooped: he didn’t need the ants at all, and he got to the eighth leaf using a donkey or something.

Katy was annoyed, and also blamed me for writing “Katy 8” in my notebook since I was so convinced of her imminent win. But thinking about it, even if Sam hadn’t done that, I think Joe would have won anyway since he and Katy would both have eight leaves but Joe had more cards in his hand and so probably would’ve won on a tie breaker. Does that make Katy feel any better?

Joe 8

Katy 7

Ian 7

Andrew 6

Sam 5

After this bruising encounter, we went for something like a group-hug: co-op Wavelength. We all worked together to score fifteen points and did it easily. No help from me, since I believe we scored nothing when I gave clues. BUt it was a lot of fun, with frequent references to "moving ants" as a potential clue. On the category “Wet food/Dry food” Sam said (I think but maybe Ian, though) "Bread". This gave rise to a lot of discussion which continued until after the answer was revealed (we scored 3 points, iirc) regarding whether something "oily" could be described as "wet" or did "wet" imply the presence of just water. Only Wikipedia ended the  debate.

We scored 21 points and won!

Then Katy and I leave while Joe and Ian stayed on for a game of Love Letter. Thanks for the evening and for the excellent range of crisps. See you all soon.

Formula Bum

I arrived online to find a gallery of faces on Discord, intent and serious, so I assumed that they had already started a game. It turns out they hadn't, and no doubt I'd arrived in a lull in the hilarious conversation. Either way, Ian, Martin, Sam, Joe and I began a quick game of For Sale while we waited for Andy.

At the time I was still preparing food for my girlfriend and, besides, my audio connection seemed very quiet so I made little attempt at banter. The bidding round ended in a frustrating manner, with the 29 and 30 coming out in the final round, long after I'd spent most of my money.

I remember little about the second half of the game, except for picking up a zero dollar card with a 21. It ended in a deal heat.

Sam 54 (same cash as Martin)
Martin 54 (same cash as Sam)
Andrew 52
Joe 47
Ian 44

With Andy on board the six of us chose Downforce (odds betting, no superpowers). I never really had any form in this game and that continued. My sole successful bet was due to someone else helpfully pushing my black car over the line. 

Joe was of the opinion that it would be perfectly possible to give this game a colonic retheme. To which Martin added that you wouldn't even need to change the name. There then followed a few punning names for Formula One drivers (Ayrton Senokot, Michael Poomacher) and after this did I imagine things or did the anal puns continue? People complained about being rammed from behind or shunted in the slow lane. Probably my imagination.

Sam won in a tight race of bottlenecks and frustration.

Sam 19
Ian 18
Joe 15
Andrew 7
Martin 1
Andy -4

Then Sam left and, after disappearing to answer the front door for a few minutes, Joe signed off too. The remaining four went for Love Letter. Since we were unable to change the winning criteria to three points, we knew it might be a bit of an undertaking, but we crashed on regardless.

The highlight for me was whenever Andy (screen name Baron Frog) was accused of being a baron. If the guess was right, that was funny because it's so obvious and if it was wrong then BGA would add a note to the commentary down the side of the screen saying "Baron Frog is NOT a baron" as if it were appalled at the presence of an imposter in our midst.

Midway through the game, Andy gave up on Discord and communicated with us on the BGA chat, which Martin used to see which swear words got an automated warning message. Bum did, but Poo didn't, if I recall correctly.

Anyway, the game began by looking like it'd be over soon. Ian won the first two rounds and then Martin got to three points. Andy and I got back into contention until the score was 3-3-3-2. Improbably, Ian hadn't scored since his opening flurry. But then he won the next two rounds to take the victory. It was almost as if he'd just been toying with us.

Ian 4
Andy 3
Martin 3
Andrew 3

And so we were spent and we went our separate ways. Thanks all. See you next Tuesday.

Double Baron Shotgun

This week, with numbers depleted to the usual mid summer level, four gamers gradually logged on. Ian first then, about ten minutes late, I arrived. Followed by Martin and then finally Andy,who entered with his signature method of logging on and off repeatedly until he properly arrived.

While waiting for him, the three of us had decided on Turn The Tide as our first game, previously seen some years ago as Land Unter.  It was so long ago that Andy couldn't remember if he'd played it or not. So he looked it up: he had, and had given it four out of ten. Clearly not his type of game. Meanwhile, Martin was initially upset by the slurping noise the game made when he lost a life, but I had to admit that it’d been me eating.

Martin 16

Andrwe 12

Ian 2

Andy 1

Next up was Downforce with a track chosen especially by Andy, with ramps. This made it a lot more swingy. My red car managed to get from a distant last to a fourth place finish and, more importantly, Andy’s blue car was in third when the first bidding round happened, but finished first. As such, he was the only one to bet on it three times and thus came out the winner. 

Andy $27m

Andrew $15m

Martin $7m

Ian $6m

Next, for a change of pace, some co-operative play with Hanabi. Except that BGA now has a “hand of the day” option where you can try a particular deck and see how well you do against other teams. Finally, Hanabi has gone competitive.

The game was going well, except the blue one didn’t come out. At on point Andy confidently said “I know I haven’t got the red 5” while the red 5 was in his hand, and then I ruined everything by throwing away the second yellow 4, making a perfect finish impossible.

Our score: 21

Finally, with Ian flaking, we decided to finish on Love Letter. Except with four players and first-to-four winning condition, it wasn’t quite as quick as we’d expected. Martin sped into a 2-0-0-0 lead but Ian was first to reach match point on 3-2-2-0. That was me on zero.  But then the tide turned and I started picking up points.

I think a couple of times people got stuck with two Barons in their hand, which is almost certain doom, especially if the guards and a priest have already been played. And at the start of one round, Ian played a King to swap his hand with Martin. I knew that there was only one reason to play your King right at the start so I immediately used my Guard to accuse Martin of being the Princess. Which he was.

By now I was back in the swing of things and in that very round I closed out an unlikely win.

Andrew 4

Ian 3

Andy 3

Martin 3

And, forty minutes after that game had started, we were done. Thanks all. See you soon.

Info static

Another Tuesday in lockdown, another bandwidth or seven taken up with the various GNN members logging on to Discord for another night's digital fun.

First up was 7 Wonders, with Ian, Martin, Adam T, Andy B and myself (Sam) managing to pass cards around at a rate of knots. Online gaming does have some benefits, and the speed of shuffling and dealing is a definite boon on this game. I confess I didn't really watch what anyone was doing apart from my immediate neighbours, who were Andy and Martin. Andy didn't bother with military, and Martin did but only to the point of scolding me for my aggression. I didn't take a screenshot of the placings, but I claimed a win off a tie-breaker with Andy, courtesy of my love of fist-waving and culture.

As we hit the 8pm mark, there was a flurry of new arrivals in the form of Joe, Andrew, Steve and Anja. Joe and Andrew immediately decamped to play The Crew with Adam and Martin, leaving the rest of us to bemoan the current shitshow that is the UK government for a little bit, before we spent almost as long choosing a game. After some debate we ended up playing Coloretto, the best chameleon set-collection game I know. Andy reappraised us of the rules and before long everyone was cursing their luck in classic GNN fashion.

Over the The Crew, Andrew was doing the same as he had to bow out due to illness. After Coloretto wrapped up...




I hopped over to take his place, playing 2 or 3 abortive missions and - I think - three successful ones. Then I retired to bed, drinking tea and swearing at the news. I'm aware Martin went on to thrash Adam and Joe at Race for the Galaxy before they played Love Letter, but I've no idea about scores or what anyone else ended up playing, making this a fairly erratic entry into the GNN logbook. Sorry about that.

Kingdamnino

I "arrived" at this week's games night a little late, but had earlier popped into the group chat long enough to learn that Martin, Ian, Katy and Sam were playing a game of Love Letter. I even watched a hand or two which was pretty entertaining. Once I'd returned, the game was over and I saw that Martin had gone from joint last on 2-2-0-0 to outright winner.

Martin 4
Ian 3
Sam 3
Katy 2

For my first game, Martin introduced us to a website that allowed you to recreate your favourite card games (or even your own creation) online. He had put together a game of Voodoo Prince. It lacked the artwork of the original but the game itself remained intact. Having everyone's cursor visible on screen as a smallish coloured circle was odd since it felt like I was playing against four little Tinkerbells, all drifting around mischievously. Also dealing cards was impossible, so instead it was necessary for everyone to take the required number of cards from the stack in a flurry of Hungry Hippos type activity.

We played a three round game, and Joe joined us midway through the game as a spectator.

Katy had a commanding lead after two rounds but that didn't stop her complaining when she went out third in round three. She cheered herself up by picking up the token we were using to signify the trump suit and waving it around, much to Martin's annoyance.

Katy 29
Martin 21
Sam 18
Andrew 17
Ian 17

After this, Joe joined us for a game of Fuji Flush, again devised by Martin on this new website. The only drawback was how difficult it was to keep track of how many cards people had left. I was first to get down to my last card, but Martin was soon after me and he was able to seal the deal. Don't know how anyone else did.

Martin 0 cards left
Andrew 1
Everyone else… more than that, I suppose

After the game ended the table descended into anarchy with people moving cards around willy nilly and everyone getting a new rude name. I for one will be very disappointed if this behaviour doesn't continue once we're back in the real world.

After this, we all decamped to another site to play Fake Artist Goes To New York. This has the advantage of no one being the clue-giver, so we were all involved all the time. Joe was the first fake but couldn’t guess “bike”, then Katy was next and was able to guess “hunting” (while disputing that it should be in the ‘recreation’ category) then I was last fake and unable to guess “dish rack”.

Katy struggled with the site on her tablet, saying she had difficulty getting to things in corners. Thus her tablet was dubbed the Samsung Round, a rare circular tablet that couldn’t even scroll, apparently.

Then Katy went to see a gig online for half an hour or so while the rest of us played Just One. Not the old fashioned version with webcams and pen and paper, but a slick web-based version. It worked well, except for not eliminating a duplicate due to a spelling error. We got a few amazing correct guesses with only two clues by Ian and Martin and we finished with 10 out of 13 and the traditional snide remark: “huh, colour me impressed. Was it a fluke?”

Then Sam left and the four of us played the world’s most controversial game of Kingdomino. It was all going smoothly until the last move when Martin had first choice and a prize 3-crown tile which would fit nicely onto his board but instead when he chose it, the website selected a different and completely useless tile which probably cost him the win. He was furious, as you can imagine.

Martin (green) had chosen the lowest tile, but been given the second one

Andrew 52
Ian 47
Joe 41
Martin 37 and fuming

Katy had come back by now, but Ian and Joe left so the three of us played two games of Hanabi to finish off. It works well online, although we were able to do our usual trick of giving clues in a happy or sad tone of voice. Both times, I was the first to ruin the game by discarding a pair of values. In game two poor old Martin only got one clue for most of the game, since his hand was all threes and fours - either couldn’t be used or weren’t worth protecting.

Game one: 20 out of 25
Game two 19 out of 25

Well, it looked like we were getting worse, so we finished up there and left the internet to look after itself. Thanks all!

Future Gamers II

The Old London Chapter of GNN - Andrew, Paul J, Chris and myself - gathered online last night for a long-mooted gaming session. I'd not seen Paul in over a year so it was nice to catch up, and see his penchant for impulse purchases was still intact with a spaceship-type lighting system. This effect added to the sense that our cottage-in-the-country weekends were from a different time, and we were now in the Future.

Chris was in Chippenham, and had dyed his hair - as an experiment, he insisted. Whether this was true or not, or how much he was lying to himself, he did look remarkably younger and we discussed the merits of spraying my bald patch, a la Bob Mortimer. Paul mentioned he'd cut his own hair so didn't know what the back looked like.

Andrew was conspicuously on the fence. He began mysteriously uncamera-ed later added a camera, but remained invisible to me throughout the evening, as Zoom refused to show me how much he'd changed. Is he pumping iron every morning and downing protein shakes? Enquiring minds, etc.

After comparing lockdown notes we kicked things off with 7 Wonders. I was surprised to see I hadn't played it in well over a year, but for Paul it was possibly longer. Some things never change though - sandwiched between Paul and Chris, both Andrew and I found ourselves militarily bullied, as he discovered lots of peaceful science and I concentrated on gentle culture. The entire undertaking took about 15 minutes! With a computer around to not-forget which way to pass your cards, 7 Wonders was exceedingly brief. And Paul's absenteeism did him no harm, it turned out:

Paul 60
Chris 56
Sam 47
Andrew 46

We moved on to another speedy undertaking in Love Letter. Again Paul's rustiness did him no harm here either, as he sailed to a 3-1-1-0 lead, at one point ousting Chris with a Priest in the Hole.

But as Andrew and I serially imploded, Chris came back from the dead to claim an improbable victory!

Chris 4
Paul 3
Andrew 1
Sam 1

We stuck with the sillier end of the gaming spectrum with Perudo. Having played this on Tuesday I was already familiar with the foibles of boardgamearena's particular version of the rules, but it didn't help me at all. Dudos kept blowing up in my face as, once again, Paul began to look the dominant stag amongst a bunch of stick-legged deer-children*. The evening does begin to get hazy here though, with various people going off for a wee or simply vanishing for a moment or two. I also realised I'd downed three glasses of wine already at it was barely 9pm. At this point, driven mad by smallish children, Sally came in to confiscate aforementioned wine but before leaving poured me a very large fourth. So my recall - never the best anyway - starts to go on the fritz. I thought I took photos, but I didn't. I do remember Stanley coming in and confusing me by not speaking - it turns out he'd taken a vow of silence that continues this morning - and I also remember, I think, though, that Chris was first out, then Andrew, then it was my two dice versus Paul's five. Twice I tried to bluff him and twice he read me like a book: it was a very convincing win for the man from Croydon:

Paul
Sam
Andrew
Chris

Mine and Andrew's last game of the evening was Carcassonne. This hasn't been seen for years in our house, but the rules are burned into our memories.  Paul was the big points-scorer early on, but as he said himself, he was doing no farming. Andrew and I got into a passive-aggressive farmer battle where I managed to actually connect his fourth Farmer to the main 'board' with a absent-minded placement. D'oh! Chris trod a path between these extremes, getting a couple of Farmers down too but also focusing his efforts on some city expansion. As is often the case with this game, the farming paid off:

Sam 69
Andrew 64
Paul 62
Chris 53

I was fading fast and Andrew had to go to work, so we bowed out, leaving Chris and Paul to crack out a finale in the classic two-player, Jaipur.

1 Chris
2 Paul

They'll have to tell that dramatic tale themselves, as I was probably asleep before it finished. A nice confection of gaming, thanks chaps....

*fawns